Awesome Windows10 Keyboard Shortcuts You Must Know About

Awesome Windows 10 Keyboard Shortcuts You Must Know About

With every new update of Windows OS, new shortcuts are added. Most of the shortcuts works for all the versions. But here are some of them which are new and probably not everyone knows about them. So rejoice!

From window management with Snap and Task View to virtual desktops and the Command Prompt, there are lots of new features are incorporated in Windows 10.

Let's have a look at them one by one.

Window Resizing/ Splitting the Screen/ Snapping :

This is by far the most interesting and useful feature since previous versions of Windows. I use it more than often during everyday activities.

In earlier versions of Windows, you could do this by just clicking and holding on a window and throwing it on the either of the side of the screen. This would immediately resize it so that it acquires exactly half of the screen size the side it was thrown. It was also known as "Aero Snap" in Windows 7.

But in Windows 10 it was made more sophisticated by use of Windows Key. So you can now divide screen in at most 4 equal parts, each one having one window.

This helps in multitasking and faster navigation especially if you have larger screen. You can now snap windows vertically one on top of each other, instead of side-by-side or snap windows to a 2×2 grid.

• Windows Key + Left : Snap current window to the left  side of the screen.
• Windows Key + Right : Snap current window to the right side of the screen.
• Windows Key + Up : Snap current window to the top of the screen.
• Windows Key + Down : Snap current window to the bottom of the screen.

You can keep experimenting with this combinations until you get the window where you want. For example - Windows Key + Right and then Windows Key + Up will take  your window to the top right quadrant of your screen. 

Also, as I said earlier you can also do this by mouse by dragging and dropping the window to edges of the screen.

Snapping

Virtual Desktops :

This is the new feature in Windows 10 and it's similar to the multiple virtual desktops in Linux Operating Systems.

There may be times when you have plenty of windows open at a time and they are important to be kept open. So you may want a clean new desktop to start working on something else with less cluttering of windows. Well this feature lets you do that easily.

You can create virtual desktops and manage them by navigating through each one of them. This is how you do it :

• Windows Key + Ctrl + D : Create new virtual desktop
• Windows Key + Ctrl + F4 : Close the current virtual desktop
• Windows Key + Ctrl + Left/Right : Switch from one virtual desktop to its adjacent.

Virtual Desktops

You can also see all the created desktops by dragging up two fingers on your laptop's touchpad. It will appear like the image above.

Managing Multiple Windows :

It's annoying when you have multiple windows open and when you want to move from one window to another, you've to go to the taskbar and find it there by mouse. You can do all that quickly by using following keyboard shortcuts.

• Windows Key + Tab : This opens the new Task View Interface. It displays all the windows including virtual desktops at the bottom. Here you can get the complete picture of what all things are open.In earlier versions of Windows, this combination would result into beautiful flow of tabs showing one after the another from behind. 

• Alt + Tab : This shortcut is up since previous versions of Windows. It will give you overview of all the open windows and you can switch from one window to other by keeping the Alt button pressed tapping the Tab button. You can release the buttons when you've reached the desired window. 

Alt + Tab results

Standard Shortcuts you might not be aware of :

If you are the person who hates to use mouse often. Then these are the best shortcuts that can come handy every other second.

• Windows Key + E : It will open the My Computer (File Explorer). You no longer have to run towards mouse to open the My Computer.
• Windows Key + L : If you ever intent to lock your desktop immediately the this is the best option.
•  Windows Key + PrtSc : Take a screenshot of entire display and saves it to Screenshots folder in system Pictures folder.
• Alt + PrtSc : This is the coolest feature since it takes the screenshot of your current window and copies it to your clipboard. So, now you don't have to go find your screenshot for a quick pasting.

Some Browser Shortcuts :

• Ctrl + T: Opens the new tab. 
• Ctrl + D: Bookmarks the page you currently are.
• Ctrl + L: Highlight current URL (good for typing a new address or copying the current one) 
• Ctrl + Tab: Cycle through your open tabs 
• Ctrl + J : Opens the Downloads page of your browser. This helps when you quickly want to see the progress of your downloading items.

Let me know in comments, if I have missed out any.