But help is on the way.
We've assembled a list of our favorite Windows 8 shortcuts, tricks, and
workarounds. Many focus on making the most of the OS on a traditional
desktop PC, so if you're interested in touch gestures, please check out our article
that focuses directly on the Windows 8 touch experience. Now let's
start our journey of discovery with a look at easy-to-use (though often
tough to remember!) Windows 8 hotkey commands.
Employ the hottest hotkeys we know
In these key combinations, hold down the Windows key (normally located
between Alt and Ctrl) and another key, as described on this list.
Zoom in tight
The Start Screen is full of nice, big, chunky tiles that represent all
your apps. The tiles are easy to see in small groups, but what if you
have hundreds of apps installed? Most will be hidden from view, unless
you want to do a lot of scrolling. Enter the new semantic zoom feature.
If you’re using a touch display, squeeze the Start screen with two
fingers to receive a bird’s eye view of your entire screen contents. And
the feature is also available to mouse and keyboard users: Simply hold
down the Ctrl button, and use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
Categorize your apps
Your Start screen can become a cluttered mess if you collect too many
apps and other elements that have been pinned to the screen as tiles, so
take advantage of built-in organization tools that let you divide
everything into labeled groups.
First, drag all the tiles you want to assign to a single group to the
far right-hand side of your Start screen in vacant territory; the OS
should sequester the tiles together. Once you're satisfied with your
assembly, use semantic zoom (described above) to get a bird's eye view
of your desktop. Now right-click the group (or simply drag down on it),
and select the "Name group" option on the left of the bar that appears
below. Type in the name, and enjoy your newly organized Start screen!
Close an application
Closing an app sounds simple enough, but you'll quickly notice
that close buttons are hard to find in Windows 8. That's because
Microsoft encourages us to run apps in the background where they'll take
up minimal resources, but still be accessible at any time.
Nonetheless, if you insist on being rebellious, you can close an app by
dragging it with your mouse or finger from the top of the screen all the
way down to the bottom. As you drag, the app will miminize into a
thumbnail, and when you reach the bottom, it will disappear from
view. Alternatively, you can still close apps via Alt + F4 and through
the Task Manager.
Use centralized, contextual search
The Search function located on the Charms bar is packed with power,
letting you search the directories of not only your Windows 8 machine,
but also the greater Windows ecosystem. Simply choose the bucket of data
you want to sift through—it could be all your installed apps, your
system settings, your files, your mail messages, or even an external
service like the Windows Store or Bing Maps—type in a keyword, and hit
Enter. The Search function will then return the results, perfectly
contextualized for the database you’ve addressed
Oh, and how's this for cool? You don't even need to hit the Charms bar
to access Search. From the Start screen, simply start typing, and you'll
be quickly whisked to the text-entry field for search queries. Try it.
It works!
Adjust privacy settings
A lot of apps tap into very personal information by default. Indeed,
your pictures, location, and name are liberally woven throughout the
system, and like many users you may not be comfortable trusting your
machine with that much sensitive data. To adjust the settings, press the
Windows key + I, and go to Change PC Settings. Select the Privacy
option, and personalize the settings for your personal data there.
Adjust SmartScreen settings
SmartScreen warns you before running an unrecognized app or file from
the Internet. While it's helpful to be aware of a file's source,
constant warnings can also get a little annoying. By default, you need
an administrator's permission, but this can easily be adjusted to just a
warning or no indication at all. Using the magic search function
described above, type "security" at the Start screen and find the "Check
security status" in the Settings tab. From this area, you can adjust
various security settings, including the Windows SmartScreen.
Bring up the Quick Access Menu
Right-clicking on the lower left of the screen—whether you’re in the
Windows 8 Start screen or in the desktop—will bring up the Quick Access
Menu, which enables a direct line to many key system management chores,
including Disk Management, Task Manager, Device Manager, and Control
Panel.
Use Windows 8 apps and your desktop simultaneously
Because the Windows 8 experience is split between new Windows 8 Store
apps and old-school desktop apps, the operating system is prone to some
strange behaviors. Case in point: When running a multimonitor setup,
Windows 8 apps will consume your main screen, leaving your secondary
screen running the desktop. This arrangement would seem to
allow full-screen multitasking among both types of apps—a modern app on
the left side, a desktop app on the right side—but this isn’t the case.
Indeed, as soon as you begin using the desktop on your secondary screen,
the new-style Windows 8 app disappears, and your primary screen begins
running the desktop.
But here’s a workaround. On your primary screen, use the new Windows 8
split-screen “snapping” function to run the desktop and a new Windows 8
Store app together. The desktop can take up the left-hand sliver, while
the Windows 8 app consumes the majority of the screen. Now use your second
display for a full desktop view. In this arrangement, you can fully
multitask between new-style apps and desktop apps, and both windows will
be large enough to be useful.
Go to Task Manager for Startup items
You no longer have to run the MSConfig program to change startup items.
Startup items now show up in a tab on Task Manager. Simply press Ctrl +
Alt + Del and select Task Manager. Click the "More details" tab at the
bottom and find the Startup tab at the top.
Share and share alike
Windows 8 is Microsoft’s first social-media-aware PC operating system.
Using the Share button located on the Charms bar, you can pick any
number of elements from your Windows 8 Store apps—say, a location from
your Maps app, a news story from the Finance app, or a even a contact
from your People app—and then distribute that item to friends via other
Windows 8 programs.
Perhaps most conveniently, you can quickly share a photo via email or
Twitter, or to your own SkyDrive or Windows Phone. The Share button is
contextual, and the more you use it, the more you’ll discover which apps
share with each other, and which don’t. (Hint: None of your desktop
apps offer sharing opportunities through the Charms menu.)
Create a picture password
Using a picture password is a fun way keep your device secure while not
having to remember a complex password. To enable it, press the Windows
key + I to get to the settings charm. Click "Change PC settings" at the
bottom right, and go to the Users tab. Under "Sign-in options" will be
the "Create a picture password" button. This will give you the option to
choose any picture, and then define three gestures anywhere on the
image. Your gestures can be circles, swipes and clicks.
For example, to set a picture password for the image above, you could
click on the highest palm tree, draw a circle around the island, and
then swipe down from the lens flare in the upper right. Just beware: The
direction of each gesture matters! After confirming it a couple times,
your picture password will be set.
Boot to the desktop without an app
One of biggest complaints about Windows 8 is that it boots straight to
the Start screen—an annoyance for many committed desktop users. The Start8 utility
helps you avoid this indignity (among other cool features), but you can
actually boot straight to the desktop without installing anything
extra.
Go to the start screen and type in "schedule" to search for Schedule Task in Settings. Click on Task Scheduler Library to the left, and select Create Task. Name your task something like "Boot to desktop." Now select the Triggers tab, choose New, and use the drop-down box to select starting the task "At log on." Click OK and go to the Actions tab, choose New, and enter "explorer" for the Program/Script value.
Press OK, save the task, and restart to test it out!
Log in without a username or password
To speed up the log-in process, you may want to disable the username and
password log-in screen. You can do so by opening the Run window (press
the Windows key + R) and typing in "netplwiz" to access the User
Accounts dialog box. Uncheck the box near the top that says "Users must
enter a user name and password to use this computer." Click OK, and enter the username and password one last time to confirm your choice, and you are all set for easy access to your system.
Refresh your PC
If your system is feeling a little sluggish, it may be time for a
refresh. In the past we would have to find our copy of Windows 7, back
up all of our data, and perform a fresh install to enjoy that
back-to-factory-fresh feeling. But now Windows 8 allows you to perform a
fresh install from within Windows without losing any data.
In order to perform the refresh, go to Settings and click the Change PC Settings tab near the bottom. Select the General
tab and find the "Refresh your PC without affecting your files" section
near the middle (you may also select "Remove everything and reinstall
Windows" to get the true factory settings treatment). Select "Get
started" and press "Refresh." After a few minutes the PC will restart,
and you will have a fresh copy of Windows 8.
Start in Safe Mode
Safe Mode is a great way to get into your system when something won't
allow you to start up normally. Troubleshooting becomes a breeze when
corrupted drivers and files aren't loaded that prevents a system from
functioning. It used to be as easy as pressing F8 when the system starts
up, but doing so with Windows 8 will take you to Automatic Repair Mode.
The trick to getting back to good old fashioned Safe Mode? Hold down
the Shift key and press F8 while booting up.
This takes you to the Recovery mode. Select "advanced options," then
"troubleshoot," then the "advanced options" again (there are a lot of
advanced options). Select Windows Startup Settings and finally the Restart button. This will reboot the computer and give you the option to boot into Safe Mode.
If you need to get into Safe Mode from within Windows, open the dialog box (the Windows key + R) and type "msconfig" (no quote marks). Select the Boot tab and check the Safe boot box. The system will continually boot into Safe Mode until you go back and uncheck the box.
Turn Live Tiles on and off
When looking at the plethora of tiles on your Start screen, the view can
get stagnant, despite all the pretty colors.This is where Live Tiles
come in. They offer real-time data right on your Start screen, and you
don't need to open any apps. For example, the Weather tile will show you
the current conditions, and Mail will show you the subject of the
latest message you've received.
You can customize which apps are live and which aren't by right-clicking
on the tiles. A settings bar on the bottom will pop up with an option
to turn the Live Tile on or off. Simply select the preferred option, and
you're all set. Note, however, that not all apps have a live, real-time
data-streaming option.
Find the Windows games folder
Currently, the games folder used in Windows 7 isn’t present in Windows
8. Fear not; if you install any current-generation PC game that would
regularly save to this folder, the folder is automatically created. For a
quick way to find it, right-click on the game icon on the Start screen
and choose “Open file location” at the bottom.
Activate Family Safety
Want
to avoid some nasty surprises on your credit card? Create a separate,
standard account on the device for your kids (Family Safety can't be
applied to an administrator account). You can activate Family Safety by
going to the Control Panel, User Accounts, and Family Safety,
and selecting the account you would like to apply it to. From these
settings you can get reports on the account's activity; set a level of
Web filtering; set time limits; and enforce Windows Store, game, and app
restrictions.
Shut down with one click
Windows 8 hides the Power button in the Settings menu, forcing a
multistep process just to shut down one's PC. But thanks to a crafty
shortcut trick, you can pin a Shutdown button right onto the bottom of
your desktop. Here's how.
Create a shortcut on your desktop (right-click, go to New, then Shortcut). Enter "shutdown /s /t 0" (with no quotes, and, yes, that's a zero not an "O") as the location of the item, and press Next. Now name the shortcut (prefereably "Shutdown") and press Finish.
Right-click the shortcut, and navigate to Properties. Choose Change Icon in the Shortcut tab, and then OK
to leave the warning box. Choose an icon of your choice from the list.
In the screenshot above, you'll see we chose a Power button.
Right-click the shortcut again, and select Pin to Start. You can place the icon on your Start screen wherever it's convenient. Clicking it will instantly shut down your computer.
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