Top Windows 10 Beginner Tips
Turn on Night Light
A small but nifty addition to Windows 10 is a feature called Night Light. What this feature does is that it removes all the blue light from your screen which is a big reason behind why we remain awake late at night. If you work on your laptop in the night and don’t want it to affect your sleeping habits, you need to turn this feature on. You can either manually enable this feature whenever you want to or you can schedule Night Light which will enable this feature at a specific time of day. To enable Night Light, go to Settings -> System -> Display, and turn on the toggle next to Night Light. You can also configure the intensity of Night Light and schedule its time by clicking on the “Night light settings” option marked in the picture below.
Quickly Access Emoji Keyboard
Emojis have become more popular than anyone could have ever imagined and while it’s easier to access them on a mobile device, there is no apparent way to quickly access emojis on your Windows machine. Not many people know about this feature, but Windows 10 actually allows you to quickly access an emoji keyboard with just a few clicks. All you need to do is enable this feature first. To access emoji keyboard first enable the virtual keyboard button by right-clicking on the Taskbar and clicking on the “Show touch keyboard button”.
Now, whenever you want to access emoji keyboard, first click on the touch keyboard button in the bottom right and then click on the emoji symbol. Here, you can select and use all the emojis that you want to. But before you start using emojis, remember to learn the emoji meanings so you don’t send the wrong emojis and make a fool of yourself.
Turn on the New Screenshot Tool
Since I write a ton of how to articles I take a ton of screenshots on a daily basis. Previously, taking a screenshot on Windows was not as intuitive as users had to jump through a lot of hoops if they wanted to capture a part of the display and not the entire display. However, the new screenshot tool alleviates this problem by giving users more control. As it is with most of these features, it is not turned on by default and you will have to enable it by going into Settings. Just go to Settings -> Ease of Access -> Keyboard and turn on the “Print Screen Shortcut”. Once you have done this, whenever you hit the Print Screen button you will be presented with three options. You can either capture the entire desktop, capture a part of the desktop, or capture a part of the desktop in free form. Once you capture the screenshot it will open in a window where you can also easily annotate it, and share it with anyone you want to.
Enable Dark Mode
One of the most requested features by Windows users has finally been introduced in Windows 10. Users can now easily enable Dark mode by going to the Settings app. To enable dark mode go to Settings -> Personalization -> Colors and scroll down and enable the dark mode. What I love about the dark mode here is that it’s truly dark so you are not getting that dark gray color which you generally see on other operating systems. Also, since this is a system enabled dark mode, all your navigation panels in every app, including Settings, File Explorer, and more turn to dark mode. That said, the feature still needs refining especially in the File Explorer as currently, it makes it a little hard to find things you’re looking for.
Learn new Windows 10 Keyboard Shortcuts
You can become more productive if you learn the shortcuts to perform various regular tasks such as using virtual desktops, snapping apps and more. Below are the shortcuts to help you do things faster.
- Win + Tab (open Tasks View)
- Win + Left + Up (move app to top-left quadrant)
- Win + Left + Down (move app to bottom-left quadrant)
- Win + Right + Up (move app to top-right quadrant)
- Win + Right + Down (move app to bottom-right quadrant)
- Win + Ctrl + Left or Right (change virtual desktops)
- Win + Ctrl + D (new virtual desktop)
- Win + Ctrl + C (speak to Cortana)
- Win + S (view weather, news, sports, help, etc.)
- Win + Ctrl + F4 (close virtual desktop)
- Win + Up and Down (snap apps to top or bottom of screen or maximize them)