How can I quickly run a third party script, like with a Scripts panel, Keyboard Shortcut, or Action?

[Andrew Welker]

I have a third party script installed that precisely measures color contrast. Currently to run it, I have to move my mouse up to File, click it, move it down to Scripts, click it, move it over to the script I want, and click it. 

That isn't necessarily bad, but right now I'm working on developing a master color palette for my work that meets WCAG 2.0 guidelines for user-friendly readability and color contrast. That means to get the exact contrast between every combination of 8 colors (white, black, and 6 monochromatic shades), I have to run the script around 64 times. Plus a bajillion more once I start incorporating more than just 6 shades of one color.

File > Scripts > The One I Want, therefore, quickly becomes tedious.

I'd love to have something like one of the following I can use instead to quickly run the script:

• A Scripts panel.
• Custom keyboard shortcuts. In the Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts window, I'd love to navigate through Menu Commands > File > Scripts > The One I Want. Currently, this window only lists "Other Script" there, not the third party scripts themselves, even though I can already find them there manually via File > Scripts.
• A custom Action in the Actions Panel. Actions can be assigned to Fn keyboard shortcuts, like F11 or Alt + F4. I've figured out how to make simple actions to let me use F2 and F3 to flip objects vertically and horizontally (respectively*), but I don't know how to get a custom Action to call an installed Script. I prefer normal keyboard shortcuts to the Fn keys, but this would be better than what I currently have to do.

Anyone got any ideas of where I could find solutions like these?

The script in question is already saved in the proper file to make it readily available whenever I open Illustrator (Windows C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator 2025/Presets/en_US/Scripts). Here's more info on it.

Contrast Checker, by Sergey Osokin

YouTube: Check and improve color contrast in Adobe Illustrator using the script

GitHub: illustrator-scripts/md/Color.md at master · creold/illustrator-scripts · GitHub

Sergey's Website: ContrastChecker - {AISCRIPTS}

*I was surprised to discover that even though we can do this on the Properties panel with an object selected, there's not actually an option to do it in the Object > Transform menu or in the Transform panel main GUI (although they're in that panel's dropdown menu). The only way I could find to make a keyboard shortcut for flipping vertically and horizontally was to make a custom Action for it (via Reflect at either 0 or 90 degree angles, no copy).

[m1b]

Hi @Andrew Welker you might be interested in @jduncan 's terrific AI Command Palette.

Or you could look into platform specific keyboard shortcut utilities, like AutoHotKey for Windows. I personally use Raycast on MacOS for launching all my installed Illustrator scripts without touching the mouse.. There are many other options.

- Mark

[Kirkwad · Accepted solution]

You can create an action to call a script.

Record a new action, click the 3 line hamburger icon in the actions window, click 'Insert Menu Item', click File > Scripts > "your script", click OK after it's loaded in the dialog, Stop Record action, then assign a shortcut via action options & save your action/set.

If a script doesn't work when executed via this method, you have an underlying issue with the script logic that needs to be corrected.

[Andrew Welker]

Thank you so much! I didn't know that could be done. I now have it set to F5.

[Kirkwad]

Glad I could help!

[Sergey Osokin]

Hi Andrew. It's great that the script helps you. In addition to the Actions panel, I have a list of PC/Mac utilities on GitHub where you can set hotkeys to run JSX files from a specific folder in Illustrator.

Extensions:
* Scripshon Trees
* LAScripts

Utilities:
* SPAi (Mac OS, free)
* Hammerspoon (Mac OS, free, needs programming, can be done with ChatGPT)
* Keyboard Maestro (Mac OS, paid)
* BetterTouchTool (Mac OS, paid)
* AutoHotkey (Windows, free, needs programming, can be done with ChatGPT)

[Andrew Welker]

Hahaha speak of the devil, and the devil shall appear! Hello Sergey! Yes, I love your products that I've used. Highly recommend.

I tried those two extensions you just recommended, Scripshon Trees and LAScripts, with uninteresting results.

Scripshon Trees let me easily navigate where I have scripts saved, which is nice. But it didn't let me set hotkeys other than Fn keys. Since Actions already do that and I don't need to navigate the scripts files very much right now, I'd rather just use Illustrator's native Actions panel and Fn hotkeys.

LAScripts looked more promising. It let me easily navigate too, and it said I could assign custom hotkeys to scripts and that I could even add custom buttons with custom icons to the panel, so I can build my own GUI for running my favorite scripts! But then when I exited out of Illustrator and reopened it, the LAScripts panel wouldn't load. I could open it, it just didn't have any contents. When I went to their support website (linked in the extension's Adobe Marketplace listing) the website didn't exist.

Since Scripshon Trees didn't add anything new I needed, and LAScripts appears to be a bit unreliable and without updates or support, I'll stick to the Actions panel for now.

However, your suggestions got me exploring the Adobe Marketplace plugins more and I found one that looks promising. It's super barebones, very simple, but it provides that same easy navigation as the other two plugins without any extra features I wouldn't or can't use. You can take a look here: https://adobe.com/go/cc_plugins_discover_plugin?pluginId=108124&workflow=share

[Silly-V]

You know, this works and it is quite convenient: https://github.com/Silly-V/Adobe-Illustrator/blob/master/Script%20Panel%202/ScriptPanel_2.jsx