I've got a minor annoyance that I'm hoping there's a fix for. It seems like if you've got two of the same item, in my case a silver sword, and you assign a silver sword with a hotkey via the favorites menu, then if you unequip it, the hotkey gets unnassigned and you can't hotkey-equip it again.

This is annoying because I like to start with my bow, then switch to my sword when the enemy closes in, but then my hotkey doesn't equip it like it should

Yes you are correct this does indeed happen.
If you have two of anything you can initially assign a hotkey but it will randomly unassign itself. I have noticed this with bows.
You are not the only one.

You can sorta work around it by making the two items not the same, like smith one silver sword to a higher level than the other.

I think you can also use just the bow hotkey; if you press it again while the bow is already up it should unequip it but automatically switch back to the melee weapon.

Thanks for the tip!