Windows 10

Digging deep into Windows 10

Windows 10, Microsoft’s back-to-basics re-embracing of the PC, is brimming with handy new features, and with all the new goodies come a legion of new tweaks and tricks—some of which unlock powerful functionality hidden to everyday users.

Others simply let you mold some of Windows 10’s new features into the shape you see fit. Here are some of the most useful Windows 10 tweaks, tricks, and tips we’ve found, including a spate of fresh finds from August’s massive Anniversary Update.

Be warned: Some of these may break as the operating system evolves, given Microsoft’s new “Windows as a service” mentality. We plan to update this article over time to reflect the OS’s current status. Got any tricks of your own? Share them in the comments!

Shop with Edge
After you install the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you might just want to make Microsoft’s Edge your go-to browser—at least for shopping.

That’s because Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana, will often appear and offer to use one of several coupons it found automatically. Now that’s helpful.

You can also install extensions in Edge now, though the selection is incredibly limited in these early days.

Activation Troubleshooter
The Windows 10 Anniversary Update added a killer feature for DIY types: The ability to tie your Windows 10 license to your Microsoft Account, rather than to your PC’s hardware. Say sayonara to the days of calling Microsoft support to activate your OS simply because you swapped out your motherboard.

If Windows 10 freaks out after you upgrade your PC, go to Settings > Update & Security, add your Microsoft account (if it isn’t linked already), and then click Troubleshoot at the bottom of the screen. Hit Microsoft’s Account Troubleshooter FAQ for the full scoop.

Another awesome perk for enthusiasts: You’ll find a new Start fresh with a clean Windows install option alongside Windows 10’s Refresh and Reset tools, which goes even further than the other options by blasting away any bloatware preinstalled by your device manufacturer. You’ll be prompted to download a tool from Microsoft’s website in order to start the procedure, though.

Dark theme
Believe it or not, a dark theme was the most-requested feature that users wanted from the Anniversary Update. Your wish has been granted. Find it at Settings > Personalization > Colors.

Calendar embraces Calendar
The Anniversary Update also worked some helpful new functionality into the Windows taskbar’s calendar, which has long been the barest of bare-bones features. Now, the taskbar calendar integrates with Windows 10’s core Calendar app, so if you click the date and time in the right-hand side of your taskbar, the calendar that pops up includes a full look at your schedule for the day.

Make Cortana’s ears perk up
Cortana’s finally made the leap to the PC in Windows 10, assuming control of the operating system’s search functions and dishing out just as much as the Windows Phone version.

If you’d like to be able to just bark commands at your PC, open Cortana by clicking the search field in the taskbar and select the Notebook icon in the left-side options pane. Select Settings from the list, then simply enable the Let Cortana respond when you say “Hey Cortana” option. You’ll need an active microphone for this to work, of course.

While you’re poking around Cortana’s options, you can dive into the Notebook menu to fine-tune exactly what personal data Microsoft’s digital assistant can access. Remember, however, that like Google Now, Cortana’s effectiveness is directly related to how much she knows about you.

Powerful natural language search
Cortana can handle all sorts of commands you issue using natural language, such as playing music, creating reminders, showing the weather, or even remembering random facts for you, but the most powerful use of her natural language abilities revolves around basic search capabilities. You can give Cortana basic commands like “Find pictures from June” or “Find documents with Windows 10” and she’ll apply the appropriate filters, then scour your local files and OneDrive storage for results.

You can now enable Cortana on the Windows lock screen as well, where you can use voice commands to view and edit your schedule at a glance. It’s pretty handy! To turn on the feature, open Cortana and head to “Cog” icon > Apple Mac mini A1283 DesktopSettings > Use Cortana even when my device is locked.

Cortana everywhere
The Windows 10 Anniversary Update ties Cortana on your PC and Cortana on your phone closer together, drastically increasing the usefulness of installing the digital assistant on all your devices.

Cortana will be able to pull notifications and low-battery warnings from your phone and beam them to your PC, reducing the need to pull your phone out of your pocket—and the threat of a dead device at the end of the day. You’ll be able to receive your Android or Windows 10 Mobile phone’s notifications on your Windows PC, and be able to respond to texts via Cortana. One last trick: Pulling up Maps directions on your PC and pushing them over to your phone via the Cortana app.

Muzzle Cortana
But what if you don’t want Cortana listening in on you whatsoever? Microsoft unfortunately disabled all overt methods for disabling the digital assistant in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, along with a handful of other things.

Don’t despair. There’s still a workaround for closing her eyes and ears: Simply logging out of your Microsoft Account in Cortana. To do so, head to Notebook > About me > User account > Sign out. This will severely limit functionality, though. Alternatively, you can limit Cortana’s awareness and use a third-party local search tool.

Customize your Start menu
Don’t forget to make the Start menu your own. If you appreciate the blend of the traditional interface with the Live Tiles, note that you can right-click on any tile and select Resize to alter the tile’s dimensions—just like on the Windows 8 Start screen.

Alternatively, if you loathe Live Tiles and the Metro interface with the ferocity of a thousand suns, you can also right-click on every one of the defaults in the Start menu and select Uninstall to wipe them from your system. (Or simply Unpin from Start if you’d rather hide than eradicate them.) Repopulate them with desktop software of your choosing—you can right-click any app or program and select Pin to Start—and before you know it, it’ll be kind-of-sort-of like the Windows 7 Start menu all over again.

Secret, powerful new Command Prompt tools
Windows 10 packs a slew of nifty new command-line features, including—hallelujah!—the ability to copy and paste inside the command prompt with Crtl + C and Crtl + V.

To activate the goodies, open the command prompt. Right-click its title bar, then select Properties. You can find and enable the new features under the Edit Options section of the Options tab.

Bash comes to Windows
If you got all hot and bothered over the ability to use keyboard shortcuts to paste text in the Command Prompt, wait until you get a load of this.

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update added the full, legendary Bash shell to Microsoft’s operating, thanks to a partnership with Canonical, the company that guided Ubuntu Linux’s development. And it’s running natively, without virtual machines or containers. With the right tricks, you can even use Bash to run graphic Linux applications or even the Unity desktop itself right inside Windows—though those unintended features are definitely limited.

To enable Bash, you’ll need to be using a 64-bit Windows 10 AU build. Head to Settings > Update & Security > For Developers and enable Developer Mode. With that done, navigate to Control Panel > Programs > Turn Windows Features On or Off and activate Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta), then click OK. You’ll be prompted to restart your PC. After you do, just search for “Bash” in the taskbar search menu to start your development engines.

Audio source switching
The Anniversary Update added a niche, yet nifty touch to Windows 10’s in-taskbar volume controls: selectable sources. Now, clicking the audio device name in the volume controls summons a list of all connected audio outputs, meaning you can switch from your headphones to your speakers and back again without having to dive into the Control Panel.

Find My Device
Windows ain’t just on desktops anymore, and a handy new feature released in the Windows 10 November Update acknowledges that: Find My Device, which does exactly what you’d think. (Though sadly, it doesn’t offer remote lock or wipe capabilities yet.)

To active it, head to Start > Update & Security > Find My Device, then click the big Change button and enable the “Save my device’s location periodically” option when prompted. Once it’s on, you can log into your Microsoft account and head to account.microsoft.com/devices to see the last known location of your Windows 10 gizmo.

Install Windows Store apps elsewhere
The Windows 10 November Update fixes another longstanding frustration for both mobile and desktop users: The inability to install Windows Store apps to external storage. Ever since the Windows Store debuted in Windows 8, it’s forced you to install apps to your device’s primary hard drive—a sore point for Windows tablet owners, or users who run Windows off a small SSD boot drive.

No more! After you’ve installed the Windows 10 November Update, you can save apps to external storage or secondary drives by heading to Start > Settings > System > Storage after you’ve connected the storage to your PC, be it a thumb drive or SD card. From there, click the drop-down menu under “New apps will save to” and select the external storage drive you want to use.

Turn off File Explorer’s Quick Access view
When you open File Explorer in Windows 10, it defaults to a new Quick Access view that shows your most frequently accessed folders and recently viewed files. I love it, personally, but if you’d rather File Explorer defaulted to the “This PC” view found in Windows 8, here’s how.

Open File Explorer, then select View > Options from the Ribbon. A Folder Options window will open. Click the “Open File Explorer” drop-down menu at top, then select the “This PC” option. Click OK and you’re done!

Cast videos to TVs and more
No Chromecast? No problem, at least after Windows 10’s November update, which enabled the Edge browser to cast media to Miracast- or DLNA-equipped devices with just a few clicks—though beware that the implementation has some quirks, and won’t work with DRM-protected streams from Netflix, Hulu, and the like. YouTube works just fine though!

To beam a video to your TV, open it in Edge, then click on the three horizontal dots in the upper-right corner of the browser. A drop-down menu appears; click Cast media to device. After a moment, a black window with the names of all nearby Miracast/DLNA devices will appear. Simply choose the one you want and after a few minutes, it should begin to play.

Move open windows between virtual desktops
Virtual desktops let you segregate your open apps into discrete areas—literally multiple, virtualized versions of your PC’s desktops. Switching between open virtual desktops is easy enough using Task View (the button that looks like two panels, one over the other, in the taskbard) or Windows key + Tab, while Alt + Tab jumps you between open apps across all desktops. There’s also a way to actually shift an open app from one virtual desktop to another if you’d like to shuffle things around.

First, head to the virtual desktop housing the app you’d like to move to another virtual desktop, then open the Task View interface. Just click-and-hold on the app you’d like to move, then drag it to the desired virtual desktop at the bottom of the screen. You can also drag it to the “+New Desktop” option in the lower-right corner to create a new virtual desktop for the app.

Schedule your restarts
This is wonderful. If you’ve got pending updates that require you to reboot your PC, Windows 10 will allow you to schedule a specific time for it to do so. Finally!

Open the Settings option in the Start menu, then head to Updates and Recovery > Windows Update. If you have an update pending, you’ll see the screen at left, which lets you schedule your reboot after you select the “Select a restart time” radio button. Even better, you can dive into the Advanced options and link and ask Windows to notify you to schedule a reboot whenever updates are ready to rock.

Seize control of Windows Updates
While the ability to schedule installation times for updates is very welcome indeed, not everyone is happy about the way Windows 10 handles patches—specifically, that you can’t refuse them. Windows 10 Pro users—but not Windows 10 Home users—can delay downloading updates for some time, but eventually, Microsoft will force them on you.

There are some actions you can take to exert control over your Windows Update experience, however. Most notably, if you’re using Wi-Fi for connectivity, you can set Windows 10’s Wi-Fi connections as metered to download updates when you’d like to, rather than when Microsoft wants you to. The new Active Hours feature in the Anniversary Update let you tell Windows specific times not to install updates. And if you ever encounter a borked update that refuses to play nice with your PC, Microsoft’s released a tool that allows you to choose individual updates so they won’t be downloaded again.

Those workarounds aren’t a replacement for being able to manually choose the Windows Update you’d like to install, but they should help ease the sting a little, at least.

Record a video of an app
Windows 10’s new Game DVR function is supposed to be used for recording video evidence of your most glorious gaming moments, but it’ll actually let you create videos of any open app or desktop software (though not OS-level areas like File Explorer or the desktop).

To summon it, simply press Windows key + G. A prompt will ask you if you want to open the Game bar. Lie your butt off and click the “Yes, this is a game box” and various options will appear in a floating bar. Simply click the circular Record button to capture a video. You can find your saved videos in the Game DVR section of the Xbox app, or inside your user folder under Video > Captures.

Our guide to Windows 10’s Game DVR feature can fill you in on everything you need to know about the handy new tool.

Fresh keyboard shortcuts!
Windows 10 packs a handful of fresh keyboard shortcuts, all tied to newfound abilities inside the revamped operating system. If you really want to get fancy, augment those hotkeys with Windows 10’s new touchpad gestures for true shortcut mastery. I will post these up next

(Visited 289 times, 1 visits today)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.