What's a good keystroke macro recorder and replayer on Windows?

Question

I use macros a lot and I'd like to use them regardless of which program I'm using. I use them most when refactoring code. The problem is that Visual Studio's macro recording and playback engine is so lethargic that by the time it starts up, I could have done it by hand. So I'm looking for a tiny app that only records and replays keystrokes.

It would ideally have one keyboard shortcut to start and stop recording of keystrokes and another to play back the macro you just recorded. That's it.

Does such a program exist? Ideally, it would be open source and free and would work on Windows 7.

I don't care about recording mouse movements and would prefer it if mouse movements were not recorded at all.

Answer 1

Mouse Recorder Pro 2 is an excellent choice for such tasks. Don't let the name fool you, it's free! It's able to record keystrokes and mouse movement, offers editing templates to (for example) quickly remove mouse input while leaving key events, which is optimal for your case. Luckily it has an editor built-in as well, if you need to change anything by hand (time, keys, coordinates of the mouse pointer, etc).

It even installs a 'Mouse Recorder Pro 2 Calendar' which is a task manager that lets you schedule the execution of recorded scripts.

It's not open source though.

Alternatively, there is the freeware TinyTask, but it's a lot more simplified (no editor, no editing templates, etc).