![]() ![]() I must confess that I don’t use this darn-useful keyboard shortcut much, but I plan on changing that. You can remember it as the I standing for information. The Windows 11 interface makes access to this somewhat less prominent than Windows 10 did, so using the keyboard shortcut can alleviate that. Windows Key-I opens the Windows Settings app. It’s useful for a business or public environment where you don’t want to leave your computer open for anyone to see or use but you don’t want to shut it down completely. Pressing Windows Key-L simply locks the PC to the lock screen. For more on gaming in the new OS, read Jordan Minor's piece, With Windows 11, Microsoft Makes Every PC an Xbox. It can be useful even for nongamers like yours truly. It offers a bunch of controls and displays for things like performance, audio settings, friend activity, and screen recording. To see the Xbox Game Bar, use the keyboard shortcut Windows Key-G. When you need to kill an unruly application or process, Task Manager is your friend. It's handy when your PC seems sluggish, and you want to find out which application is hogging the CPU cycles or memory. This keyboard shortcut, which has been around since the early days of Windows, opens the Task Manager. You can also turn on desktop peek, which lets you move the cursor to the bottom-right corner of the screen to get the same result. It’s useful when your screen is cluttered with a plethora of app windows, and you want to start with a fresh palette. On a laptop with a trackpad, swiping four fingers left or right does the same thing. To quickly move back and forth between virtual desktops in Windows 11, just press Ctrl-Windows Key-Left/Right Arrow. ![]() Ctrl-Windows Key-Left/Right Arrow: Switch Desktop The way to remember this shortcut is the H stands for “hear.” If you're interested in speech-to-text, see our tips on how to use Voice Typing in Windows.Ħ. The shortcut also works in Windows 10, but the interface (shown above) is now simpler. If you haven’t used speech recognition in a while, you’re likely to be blown away by how good it’s become. Voice Typing works any place where you’d normally type. Pressing Windows Key-H opens Voice Typing it saves you from having to type with your fingers and instead lets you enter text with your voice. I like to have a work desktop and a personal one, so when a personal app, like WhatsApp sneaks into my work desktop, Windows Key–Tab lets me drag its tile onto the appropriate desktop. You can then drag apps from one desktop to another. The Windows key flavor shows the full Task view, meaning you can see and switch among all your multiple desktops and all the apps running in each of them. Sure, you can still use plain-old Alt-Tab to switch among running applications (holding down the Alt key after the initial press shows all apps in the current desktop). A helpful feature of this tool is that it gives you quick access to your most recently used symbols. It’s also great for entering accented characters, Greek letters, and other symbols that aren't on a standard US keyboard. I often use it to enter em dashes and en dashes. This shortcut opens a panel offering emoji, special characters, symbols, and even GIFs to enter at the cursor. Note that for Windows 11, the panel that pops up is combined with the next keyboard shortcut I’ll discuss. It works with both text and images you’ve copied to the clipboard. The Clipboard History lets you copy several things from one document or webpage and then paste them into another, without you having to go back and forth for each item. This key combo brings up one of the best things to come to Windows in the last 20 years: Clipboard History. This shortcut isn't the only way to take a screenshot in Windows 11, but I use it at least 20 times a day. A notification panel opens offering to open the screenshot in an editing window for editing and sharing. It takes a screenshot of a rectangle or freeform shape you draw, a full window, or the entire screen. Pressing Windows Key-Shift-S opens the Snipping Tool screen capture interface. I’ve loosely ordered them by how often I use them and how useful I consider them to be. First, we’ll run down the most useful shortcuts that have made the leap from Windows 10 (numbers 1-13), and then the all-new ones for Windows 11 (numbers 14–20). ![]()
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