Open your whole work setup with one hotkey

The job, in plain words

• • The desk: the same team chat, mail, calendar and notes, opened in the same order, every working day.
• • The checks: before any of it, whether you are online at all and whether the VPN is connected.
• • The record: a line saying when you started, for your timesheet or for a client.
• • The ask: one key, pressed when you sit down, that does all of it; and if one client needs a different desk, a second key for that.

The free way first: what Windows and PowerToys already do

Start with what you already have. Each fact below is from Microsoft's own pages, linked under each card. Checked on 25 October 2026.

When the free tools are enough

If your setup is a set of desktop apps that should land in the same places on your screens every morning, PowerToys Workspaces does that for free, and Seqtrix does not: Seqtrix opens things, it does not place their windows. If you open two or three things, a shortcut key on each, or Windows key plus a number, may be all you need. And if you write scripts, Task Scheduler can run yours at sign-in.

What the free tools leave to you is the rest of the routine, in order, on one key: checking you are online before anything opens, writing the day's log line, creating today's notes file and waiting between steps, without writing the script yourself. That is the part Seqtrix does.

The Seqtrix way: the Start of a remote day template

Seqtrix is a Windows app where you put steps in a sequence and fire it from a hotkey, a schedule or a click. Start of a remote day is a ready-made start to the working day: two checks, a log line, three web apps and a notes file for the day, in that order.

From template: Start of a remote day

Template

Start of a remote day

Plan

Advanced

Steps

8

Trigger

None built in: it runs when you click it. The hotkey below is on every plan.

In the template's own words: Signals the start of work when there is no office to walk into: checks you are actually online, opens the tools in order, creates the day's log, and posts you into your team chat ready to say good morning. These are its steps, as they ship:

1. 1
   Check you are actually online

   Run Command

   Pings 8.8.8.8 from PowerShell and writes the answer, True or False, to online.txt in a PC-Reports folder it makes on your Desktop. It only writes the answer down: the step succeeds either way, so the steps after it run even when the answer is False.

2. 2
   Check the VPN adapter state

   Run Command

   Adds the name and status of each network adapter Windows shows to the same online.txt. If your VPN shows up there as an adapter, its line tells you whether it is up. It does not connect the VPN.

3. 3
   Start the day log

   Run Command

   Adds a line with the date, the time and "started work" to worklog.txt in your Documents folder. The End of a remote day template logs your finish in the same file.

4. 4
   Open team chat

   Run Command

   Opens Slack in your browser at app.slack.com.

5. 5
   Let it load

   Wait

   Waits 4 seconds before the next step.

6. 6
   Open mail

   Run Command

   Opens Outlook on the web at outlook.office.com/mail.

7. 7
   Open the calendar

   Run Command

   Opens Google Calendar at calendar.google.com.

8. 8
   Open today's plan

   Run Command

   Makes a Weekly-Plans folder in Documents if there is none, creates a file named week- plus today's date in year-month-day order, ending .md, with the date as its heading if it is not there yet, and opens it in Notepad.

What the two checks write is from Microsoft's pages for Test-NetConnection and Get-NetAdapter. Checked on 25 October 2026.

Make it your desk

The template ships with Slack, Outlook on the web and Google Calendar. Four steps turn it into your own setup:

1. 1
   Add the template

   In Seqtrix, open Templates, search for Start of a remote day and click its card. On Advanced or Pro, or during the trial, Seqtrix saves it as one of your sequences and opens it in the editor with its 8 steps. On Starter the card opens a read-only preview, and its Add button offers the 15-day Advanced trial, if you have not used it, or Advanced.

2. 2
   Point it at your own tools

   Open team chat, Open mail and Open the calendar are Run Command steps with one web address each. Change app.slack.com, outlook.office.com/mail and calendar.google.com to the chat, mail and calendar you use, and delete any step you do not need.

3. 3
   Add the apps and files you work in

   Add an Open Application step for each desktop program, such as your editor, your accounting software or a VPN client, picked from the apps on this PC or browsed to. The same step opens a file, such as the spreadsheet you start the day in, with its usual program. Add a Wait step after anything slow to start, so the next step does not run ahead of it. Folders are not in the step's own description, so Test run a folder path before you rely on it.

4. 4
   Test it, then save

   Click Test run and watch the steps run in order, then save the sequence and give it a name you will recognise in a list, such as Start work. Open online.txt in the PC-Reports folder on your Desktop: True means the online check got a reply.

Bind it to one hotkey

A sequence has no trigger until you give it one, and a hotkey is a schedule like any other: the same form the features page shows under schedules and triggers, which lists Hotkey as a global keyboard shortcut trigger from anywhere.

1. 1
   Open a new schedule

   In Seqtrix, open Schedules and choose + New Schedule.

2. 2
   Name it and pick the sequence

   Type a Name, such as Start work, and choose your sequence under Sequence.

3. 3
   Choose Hotkey and press the chord

   Under Trigger, choose Hotkey. Click the Keyboard chord box and press the keys together, for example Ctrl+Alt+W. A modifier key on its own is not taken, Esc cancels and Clear empties the box. Seqtrix records the Windows key as Ctrl, so build the chord from Ctrl, Alt and Shift.

4. 4
   Create the schedule

   Click Create Schedule. In the app's own words, pressing the chord anywhere on Windows fires the sequence, in the background, even while another app has focus.

Pick a chord no other program uses. If another app already owns it, Seqtrix logs the conflict on that schedule and the hotkey stays inactive until you change it. The Hotkey trigger is on every plan, Starter included, and each hotkey counts as one of Starter's 3 schedules.

Before you rely on it

• • Seqtrix has to be running. Closing its window leaves it in the system tray (Minimize to system tray on close is on by default), and schedules and hotkeys keep running there; Quit from the tray icon stops them. To have it ready when you sign in, turn on Launch on startup in Settings, which stays off until you do.
• • Rather not press a key? The same sequence can run on a Time schedule, for example weekly on Mon to Fri at the time you start, on every plan. On Advanced and Pro, a System trigger set to Login fires once shortly after Seqtrix starts, so with Launch on startup on, your desk opens when you sign in. Or assign it to a slot on the Mini Mode ring, the floating launcher with eight slots, of which Starter has 3 live, and click it there.

More than one setup, each on its own key

Each schedule ties one sequence to one trigger, so a second setup is a second sequence with a hotkey schedule of its own. For example:

• • Start work on Ctrl+Alt+W: the checks, the day log, your team chat, mail and calendar, and today's plan.
• • Client A on Ctrl+Alt+A: the same checks, then that client's portal and chat in the browser and the program you do their work in.

Click the Start of a remote day card again for a second copy, give it the client's name and change its steps for that client. Then choose + New Schedule again, pick the second sequence, choose Hotkey and press a different chord. On the free Starter plan two setups use 2 of its 5 sequences and 2 of its 3 schedules; Advanced runs 50 of each, and Pro has no limit.

What Seqtrix cannot do

Common questions

Keep going

• Template: Start of a remote day, and the rest of the template library
• Open multiple apps at once on Windows: when all you need is a few programs launched together
• Schedules and triggers: every way to fire a sequence
• Lock a client folder automatically when you finish work: the other end of the day
• Automate your OBS stream setup with one hotkey
• Focus mode on Windows: block apps and sites