keyboard-shortcuts has 3.7k questions. Its tag guidance says: “Keyboard shortcuts are combinations and oft-struck keys that help you work faster, or do more with less typing.”
hotkeys has 626 questions. Its tag guidance is: “A hotkey is a keyboard key or a set of keys that, when pressed simultaneously, cause the operating system or a program to execute a specific and pre-configured action.”
From what I understand these are two names for functionally the same thing: a key or key combination that perform a function when pressed. It looks like it's not just me either though, sources I dig up also treat them as functionally the same:
- The Wikipedia entries for Hotkey and Hotkeys redirect to Keyboard shortcut.
- Merriam-Webster dictionary directs “hot key” to “shortcut”.
- The Oxford dictionary entries for “hot key” and “keyboard shortcut” are identical but for a single letter difference.
- The Cambridge dictionary entries for “hot key” and “keyboard shortcut” are the same thing said in two different ways.
The Wikipedia article mentions some sources like Windows would prefer to say hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts are different things, but I think that's splitting hairs for our purposes.
I believe we should make one of these tags a synonym of the other. We should probably keep keyboard-shortcuts as the main tag since it's six times more commonly used; hotkeys would be the synonym.
