Windows keyboard shortcuts you must know

You use your keyboard everyday but are you aware of numerous windows keyboard shortcuts that will help you breeze through your daily work? You might know some of them, but there are certainly some hidden gems that you wouldn’t have heard of before. Here is a list of a few shortcuts that are guaranteed to increase your productivity:

Let’s start with the basic shortcuts that you ought to already know. Functions ‘Ctrl + C’ copies, ‘Ctrl + V’ pastes and ‘Ctrl + X’ cuts a piece of selected text, table, image or file at the particular place.

Other basics include ‘Alt + F4’ that closes an application, ‘Ctrl + F’ that will open a quick bar where you can find a word, ‘Ctrl +H’ will find & replace, ‘Ctrl + N’ opens a new window and ‘Ctrl + Mouse Scroll Wheel’ will simply zoom in to the page.

Now to the more advanced keys for windows navigation:

 

Win+L: Lock Screen

You might be stepping away, but don’t want to shut down or put your system to sleep. ‘Win + L’ helps you lock down your screen and unless you re-enter your password nobody can open it, assuming you have a password set for your system.

 

Win + D: Show Desktop

It is in fact a quick minimize option. No matter how many tabs/windows are open, this shortcut quickly minimizes all of them and shows you the desktop and allows you to access files/application in a couple of clicks.

 

Win + Tab + Shift: Toggle Task View

Very close to what ‘Alt + Tab’ does but at a more advanced level. When you press it you will see tiles of all the open programs and most used programs. You can scroll or jump between them by additionally pressing the shift key with the ‘Win + Tab’ command.

 

Win + Prtscn: Save Screenshot

While Prtscn allows you to take a screenshot, pressing the windows button alongside it allows you to automatically save the screenshot. There is a folder named screenshot in your pictures destination, where PNG files of the screenshot will get saved. You won’t require to manually save the screenshot.

 

Win + I: Open Settings

To quickly open the settings tab, you don’t need to browse through 3-4 destinations to reach the settings tab. Just hit Win + I and you can open up the settings menu for windows.

 

Win + S: Search for Windows

You will always have that file or application that you can’t find on your PC. For this, windows introduced the search bar. Press Win + S and type in the file name you want to look up.

 

Fn + F2: Rename

Depending on the hardware manufacturer, F2 keys perform various tasks like, volume up/down, turn wifi off/on. However, using the Fn + F2 you can quickly use the Rename file option when a file/folder is selected. Say good bye to the right click.

 

Win + X: Hidden Menu

Did you know that windows had a hidden menu? Press Win + X and see it pop-up. It will give you access to all the essential areas of the system.