Keyboard shortcut to minimize Remote Desktop

CTRL + ALT + BREAK will un-maximize the fullscreen connection window on the host PC.

Ctrl + Alt + Home will bring focus to your local machine (at least in Win 8). Ctrl + Alt + Home then Win will open the windows menu on your local machine.

With virtual machine use, I often have multiple RDP sessions open, and switch by Ctrl + Alt + Home then Win + T then arrow keys to pick the RDP session I want to be in.

This bugged me for the longest time as well.

Initial attempts to solve it with AutoHotkey failed, because the Remote Desktop client installs a keyboard hook and swallows all input.

I finally discovered that the Caps Lock key gets passed through to the local system.

So, this AutoHotkey script will do the trick, making Ctrl+Shift+CapsLock minimize Remote Desktop:

#IfWinActive ahk_class TscShellContainerClass
  ^+CapsLock::
    ; Need a short sleep here for focus to restore properly.
    Sleep 50
    WinMinimize
  return
#IfWinActive

Corrected version that works for me:

#IfWinActive ahk_class TSSHELLWND
  ^Capslock::           ; Ctrl+Caps Lock (couldn't make Ctrl+Shift+Caps Lock work for some reason
    ; Need a short sleep here for focus to restore properly.
    Sleep 50
    WinMinimize A    ; need A to specify Active window
    ;MsgBox, Received Remote Desktop minimize hotkey    ; uncomment for debugging
  return
#IfWinActive

It is possible to use the normal, comfortable, Alt+Tab keyboard shortcut to get out of a full screen Remote Desktop, but requires a slightly different setup before connecting. Instead of minimizing the remote system, I just switch to another local program and leave the remote system in the background with the following:

1. Before connecting to the remote machine with Remote Desktop Connection, on the "Local Resources" tab, I set "Keyboard" to "On this computer". This allows using Alt+Tab to get you back to any other program on the local system.
2. When I want to switch between programs on the remote system, I use Alt+Page Up, which works just like Alt+Tab would, but only on the remote system.

In addition, you can use Alt+Page Down (or Alt+Shift+Page Up) to cycle through the active programs on the remote system in reverse.

One caveat Luc mentioned should be pointed out: using this setup, all keyboard shortcuts using the Windows Key are sent to the local system. An example would be Windows Key+E to open Windows Explorer, which will get you to the local file system, not the remote one.

It took a short amount of time to get used to, but this setup has worked well for me without the need for additional software or more than one shortcut.