Hands-On Windows 173 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Paul Thurrott [00:00:00]:
Coming up next on Hands on Windows, we're going to take a long overdue look at something we talked about way back in the beginning of this podcast, keyboard shortcuts.
TWIT.tv [00:00:12]:
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Paul Thurrott [00:00:22]:
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Hands on Windows. I'm Paul Thurrott, and this week we're going to take a look at keyboard shortcuts. I think it's the first time in about two and a half years since we've done this. I looked this up. We did do an episode about keyboard shortcuts way back in episode four. That was August 2022. So it's been a while. A few things have changed.
Paul Thurrott [00:00:44]:
A lot of things haven't changed, but I feel like keyboard shortcuts aren't widely used. I do recall Microsoft saying at one point that some of the most common keyboard shortcuts in Windows, like Alt Tab, which is the way you switch between apps most people don't even know about, they just don't do it right. And that's one of the reasons they put the Task View button in the taskbar so that you have something you can see and it does basically the same thing and a few other things. And they'll do that sometimes. But there's just a couple of general points. I feel like you can't really master Windows without knowing some selection of keyboard shortcuts. It's sort of like the apps we talked about in the previous episodes. It's gonna be subjective, different for different.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:24]:
Some people are going to have their kind of, you know, little selection of keyboard shortcuts I use all the time. But a lot of these things are designed really just to make you more efficient. They can help you remove UI from the screen so you have less going on. So, for example, on my screen here, you can see I do not have a search box. I don't have the Task view. And the reason I don't have those things is because I can still access those features without having something to click on. And so now I have more room down there for my icons, you know, for shortcuts. For apps I use.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:54]:
If you use an app like Word, right, we have giant ribbon at the top. You can minimize that thing and use keyboard shortcuts for bold, italic. You know, you want to create a link, whatever it might be, you have more room to write, right? You don't have to have this giant UI in the way. So there's all kinds of reasons to use these things. Modifier keys are important to understand if you look at a Windows keyboard, you know, we all have a function or control key, an alt key. A keyboard will have a function key. But that's not really for anything we're doing here today. We've had a Windows key on keyboards for, you know, 20, 25 years.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:28]:
Whatever that's been. That was controversial at first. It's not today. In fact, some of the best keyboard shortcuts we have Today in Windows 11 use the Windows key instead of Control or Alt, or maybe it'll be the Windows key in, you know, tandem with another key like shift or Control alt or whatever. So we'll go through some of that stuff. And now we also have a copilot key, and that one is also controversial. I think that one's always going to be controversial. It's terrible.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:53]:
The one thing that's weird about the. Well, one of the things that's weird about the copilot key is there are no keyboard shortcuts associated with it. You hit it and it does whatever it does, and that's it. There's no copilot key, plus C or D or whatever. It's just by itself. So maybe that changes over time. I'm actually kind of hoping it just goes away, but we'll see. Okay, so I'm going to rapid fire through some of this stuff because some of it is just so common.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:17]:
I'm sure you know this stuff. Everyone knows if you hit the Windows key on the keyboard, the Windows Start menu comes up. Right. You can also do Control Escape. But the Windows key, everyone has the Windows key. So that's an easy way to get that up. The most common use case for that isn't. So you bring it up and then use a mouse.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:33]:
It's your. Your hands are on the keyboard. You want to launch an app. So I could type Windows key and then Notepad hit Enter and Notepad runs. Right. So that key combination has been around in Windows for at least 25 years, if not longer. It's something we've been doing for a long time. So that sort of start search functionality, it's not just applications, you could also search for files.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:55]:
But I use it mostly to just run apps. Right. And so that's pretty quick. You can also just do Windows key +s to bring up that search interface, if that's. You want to go right to. And as you sort of. I'll just type nonsense here. But you'll get these things at the top where you can say, well, actually this time I'm looking for folder names or something.
Paul Thurrott [00:04:15]:
It's not going to find one, hopefully, with that name, but you can do that if you have a Copilot plus PC. There's a new keyboard shortcut that uses the mouse that's associated with the Windows key. So you hold down the Windows key and let me bring that back, and you get this little purple pink AI sparkly thing. And there's nothing here to really click on, but I'll do it anyway. And it brings up click to do right. And so the Windows key is super versatile. So if you look at across the bottom of the screen, from widgets to the middle part, over to the far side, Windows key +W brings up widgets. Windows key s like I said, brings up search.
Paul Thurrott [00:04:57]:
Windows key by itself brings up Windows. I mentioned the Task view. We're going to look at that in a little while. But Windows Key plus tab will bring up that and that stays on screen, unlike Alt Tab. But again, we'll talk about that in a moment. Windows key +A quick settings right over there in the corner. Windows key +N is going to bring up the Notification center, which also has the calendar, which is also going to improve a lot in 2026, by the way. So we'll be looking at that again.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:28]:
You can see that there are. Not counting this, I have 1, 2, 3, whatever number of app icons here. So if I want to run Notepad, which is the fourth icon in, I can hit Window Key plus four and that app runs. Windows Key plus one will run Windows Explorer because that's where it is in that list. Right? Those are good to know as well. Windows, if you just want to run Explorer, you know, just arbitrarily. Windows Key plus E right for Explorer, brings that up. I'm going to open just a couple of windows, so this makes more sense.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:58]:
But paint and make that float. So there's some stuff going on here. So if I want to, if I'm working and I'm busy and maybe I have some files on the desktop and I can't see them, although I could see them right now if I wanted to. You can always do windows key +d to hide all of the folders. That's for Show Desktop. If you hit it again, it brings everything back. But there's kind of a fun additional shortcut that I don't think a lot of people know about, which is Windows key comma. I've got an unusual keyboard here, so I have to look at it.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:29]:
You have to hold it down. Hold down the Windows key. But if you hit the comma you get show desktop, but when you let go of the key, everything comes back. So it's kind of like a temporary on the fly show desktop. I don't think a lot of people know about that one. It's kind of an interesting, kind of an interesting one I think. And we will get back to our list after this quick message.
Leo Laporte [00:06:53]:
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Leo Laporte [00:11:17]:
All right, now back to hands on Windows.
Paul Thurrott [00:11:19]:
Paul all right, welcome back. Looking at multitasking, there are many, many keyboard shortcuts. I am not going to be able to go through all of them. I don't use all of them a lot necessarily, but I do use a bunch of them. So let me just get again some Windows Going here, so you can kind of see that stuff. Just so there's something to look at here. So Control Alt Delete might be the most famous keyboard shortcut in all of Windows. I don't know if you can see this in the recording, but it brings up a screen that lets you lock the screen.
Paul Thurrott [00:11:50]:
It lets you get into Task Manager and do different things. And so it's kind of the. Everything's gone haywire. Break the glass, get out of here. This is kind of the way out I mentioned earlier, Alt Tab. So when I. I'm going to hold this down. So you hold down the Alt key and hit Tab and you get a list of all of the apps that are running.
Paul Thurrott [00:12:09]:
And so some of these things aren't on this screen. I've got multiple screens going, recording, etc. But you can see everything that's available. And if you just select one, it goes to that app. Right? Most people. Well, I just said most people don't know this, but most people watching this probably know this. If you don't know this one though, you can also do Alt Shift Tab, which feels a little weird at first, but it goes in the opposite direction. And so the reason that's important is sometimes I'll be working.
Paul Thurrott [00:12:35]:
I have, you know, 25, 30 apps running and the app I want to get to is the last one or near the end of the list. If you go backwards, you can get to it really quickly. Right. And I find myself doing that a lot with affinity for some reason. This photo app, like, it's. It's usually it gets pushed down at the end. So I just Alt Shift Tab and I tip, tip and get right over to it. So that's pretty good.
Paul Thurrott [00:12:54]:
That's a. A lesser known, I mentioned Win Key plus tab is Task View. So Task View works like Alt Tab, except it's persistent. I'm not holding down any keys. You hit it, it stays up. I can use the arrow keys to navigate around if that's what I want. I can also access the Desktops feature, which is that virtual desktop thing. I have multiple screens going here.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:16]:
So what you can't see is that where Alt Tab shows all of the apps in that one interface, this one only shows the apps that are on that screen. So the screen over here to the left has three other windows that are not the same that you're looking at. And the one that's over on the right has a different app. Just one app in that case. But it actually segregates the apps to whatever screen they're on, which is also very cool, right? Because you can go back and forth, you know, just go over and select the one you want. You know where it's going to open, too, which is kind of nice. So it's a little more sophisticated. We talk a lot about Snap.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:48]:
And one of the previous episodes I mentioned, I normally turn this thing off. So this is that layout deal. And I do. I. It was off when. When I recorded whatever that episode was a couple times ago. But I normally do turn that off. But it's kind of a handy way to, you know, get up and get the layouts.
Paul Thurrott [00:14:04]:
But you can do this stuff with your keyboard as well. So I'm going to stick to the one screen. But you can do this across screens as well. So Windows key plus, you know, you get. I'm getting that little sparkle. But Windows key plus up arrow will maximize or go up like that. Windows key plus down will go down from maximize to restore. And if I do it again, we'll go to minimize.
Paul Thurrott [00:14:26]:
Right. You can also use it just to snap to a side of the screen, right? So I can snap to the left side and then I'll just get out of that and snap to the right side. Right. So to me, this is very natural. I've been doing this for so many years and it just. This is how I do things. It's nice. There's also a really good keyboard shortcut for Task Manager.
Paul Thurrott [00:14:47]:
So most people probably know that you can right click on the Taskbar, get the Task Manager. You can right click on the Start menu, which, by the way, I should have mentioned that one before. So Windows Key plus X brings up this Quick Settings menu. So you can get to Task Manager in this list as well. You can do the Control Alt delete thing I said before, but you can also do. It's Control Shift Escape just to launch it directly. So if you have to get into Task Manager for some reason, typically you're going to come in here because something is not doing well and you have to kill it. But that's one way to do that.
Paul Thurrott [00:15:21]:
Okay, now, clipboards type keyboard shortcuts, right? I think most people. I'll just type some nonsense, right? I can select this thing. Control A, select. All right, Control C, copy it to the clipboard, Control X, cut it so it's in the clipboard. And then Control V to paste it back into the app. In this case, it's just some, you know, nonsense text. It's fine. So those are basic, and I think most people probably do understand those.
Paul Thurrott [00:15:48]:
Windows also Supports an optional feature called Clipboard History. So in this case It's Windows Windows key plus Control V. So instead of Control V, it's Windows Key Control Voice. No, it isn't the right thing. There it is. It's Windows Windows Key Control V. I'm doing the right thing. Anyway, what it should bring up is Clipboard History.
Paul Thurrott [00:16:09]:
So I don't have that enabled on here, but if normally you would get the chance to do that. I should also mention that in PowerToys there's an advanced paste which is pretty useful. I'm still kind of sorting through this myself because I like to paste as text and this is one of those things you can use this for. But where is it? What did I say? It's called Advanced Paste. So it's right there. So if you enable this and you get. You can change this. But it's Windows Key Shift V which very similar to what I was just doing.
Paul Thurrott [00:16:43]:
You get these options and so paste is plain text is the top options could be useful for me. Also Paste is Markdown. I use Markdown a lot. So this might be useful to you if you're doing a lot of stuff with the Clipboard. Also pretty useful. The Print key. The Print screen key has changed a lot in Windows over the years. It used to always just copy the screen a screenshot to the Clipboard they added.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:08]:
Microsoft added a Windows key plus print screen which would copy that screenshot to a file in your screenshots folder. So if I do that from here, this is kind of a non standard keyboard. So I have to think about this. Maybe I should just do it over there. Yeah, this keyboard's a little strange. Let me see what that does. Nope, wrong one. All right.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:27]:
Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to have to use this. Let me see if that does it. Yeah, that should do it. Flash. So if I go into the pictures folder and then screenshots, it will eventually come here and I have multiple screens. So you're seeing three screens there, but it will still save it to the file. So that's useful.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:44]:
The other thing is that Microsoft has in Windows 11 set the default for Print screen from copy to the Clipboard to the snipping tool. So this is one thing I disabled because I don't typically use the snipping tool. Not because it's not great, because I just have very specific needs. So I disable that. But typically if that thing was on and I think we'll try this. Nope, wrong one. I was at the wrong one. This is a strange keyboard.
Paul Thurrott [00:18:12]:
Well, I'm not. I'm not. I have a weird keyboard, but without an actual print screen key. But that would bring up a snipping tool in that case. So I just am not going to do that. But you could do that if you wanted to get this out of here. Okay. And then there's, you know, things like control Z for undo, Control Y, redo.
Paul Thurrott [00:18:33]:
I think most people pretty much, you know, kind of get that stuff. There are windows, window, I should say window related shortcuts. The weird one, because it's starting to change because different apps are taking this over. Let me see if I can bring up an app where this might make sense. If you hit alt space for a long, long time, since the earliest days of Windows, it would bring up this, what they call a window menu. And depending on the state of the window, you're going to see different options. So for example, I can maximize now, but if I do that again, you'll see now I don't have those same options. Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:10]:
Because now it's maximized. But the useful thing here to me is move. Sometimes you might have a window that's a little off the screen and you can't see the top to click it and drag it. And when that happens, you can just hit it's alt space and then M as you can see for move. And then you can just use the arrow keys to move it around to get it back on screen. That's super useful to me. The problem is certain apps, including Copilot, are trying to override that key. Press the PowerToys.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:40]:
The app, I forget the name of it, what used to be powertoys run also wants to take over that. So I changed the keyboard shortcut for that app to be Windows key plus space, not alt space. But you can kind of play around with that. Alt4 still works in many, many apps. I. I will try that here. Let's see if it works here. No, it does not, because I'm not doing this.
Paul Thurrott [00:20:01]:
Yeah, so it did work, actually, because it wants to save. I don't. I feel like people kind of don't use that one as much anymore. If I have multiple documents open here, Control W. Right, close a document. But not the app that's going to work in Word, it's going to work in web browsers, et cetera. So Copilot, like we talked in a previous episode, no keyboard shortcuts, alt space. If you enable it, it's going to steal that.
Paul Thurrott [00:20:30]:
I don't like that personally. It can be used to launch search. I Just try to get rid of that thing. I just don't like it. I mentioned Windows Key+ comma right, is sort of a temporary show desktop. Windows Key+ period brings up this thing called. People call this like the emoji panel, but it's really emojis and more. And you might look at this and think, look, I'm an adult.
Paul Thurrott [00:20:57]:
I'm not going to be using emojis. I don't necessarily want this happy face thing in my document or whatever. And I hear you. However, there's other stuff in here and this is actually very useful. So if you go over to symbols, this is the type of thing. I never understood why there weren't keyboard shortcuts for this stuff in Windows. And you can use this instead. So if you need something like the euro or the pound, you know, we're in the United States, so it's not on our keyboard or the yen, sign here a lot.
Paul Thurrott [00:21:24]:
These symbols are all just available in here. And this is a much easier way to find this stuff than Googling it, finding whatever the control code is or this. Or maybe you want the euro and you can copy it from a web document and then paste it like this. You can just get right to it. And so, you know, for the euro or whatever, you can just get right to it. So this is actually very useful to know. So even if you are disdainful of emojis, which I understand, be sure to look at this. I keep mentioning PowerToys, but there's also a PowerToys tool called Quick Accent, which is a way to have a toolbar running so that when you can, like you do on mobile, hold down a key on the N and one of the options will be like a tilde over the end, that kind of thing.
Paul Thurrott [00:22:03]:
Pretty useful. Windows key +G will bring up the game bar, which usually you would want to do in a game. This is not a game, but you can see the game bar. So that's useful. If you're playing a game on your computer and using the keyboard, you don't want to take your hands, you know, off the keyboard, obviously you can just do that really quick. It's nice. And then let me. I don't have edge on here because, yeah, that's what I do.
Paul Thurrott [00:22:24]:
But let me. Let me run this. And then need a new window here. So this is just. I'm running a web browser, hopefully, and just some standard keys that everyone knows, right? And so everyone kind of knows, like Windows key +t is going to be new tab. Windows key +w is going to close the tab. But if I were to go to say like the Microsoft website, right? And I go there and then I go to the Apple website, I'm doing whatever I'm doing. So like a lot of people I've got a lot of stuff going on.
Paul Thurrott [00:22:56]:
I've got all these tabs going and open a third one and maybe this one's Google or whatever and Maybe I have 27 tabs but it doesn't really matter. But I close this tab, right? So it's the Microsoft website. Not super important really. But let's say it was something important. I closed the wrong tab. So I'm like control dumbloop. Like oh, that's not what I meant. So you can do Control Shift T right away actually you can just keep going.
Paul Thurrott [00:23:20]:
I could Control Shift T all the way back to you know, I think when the browser first started running and get it back. It's most useful for the thing you just closed by mistake. But I've done it, you know, 15, 20, 30, whatever minutes into whatever I was doing like oh, I need that thing back and I could just do it repeatedly. It's going to open a bunch of tabs but I'll eventually get back to that thing. I mean obviously you can go to History or whatever but this is, I feel like very few people know about this. Super, super useful control shift +t to get back a tab that you close by mistake. You know, it's, it's good to know about. So I've only scraped the surface of what's possible with keyboard shortcuts.
Paul Thurrott [00:24:02]:
There are so, so many. But I wanted to go over this because there. I feel like people don't know a lot about these things. I feel like there are Windows key based shortcuts especially that people don't know about. This is this copilot thing we have to deal with and just the this emoji thing which again I think people, some people like. What is this? I don't know. I don't really. I don't want to add like an animated GIF to my word my text document here which actually you can't anyway in Notepad but it's useful for the more part which is a few things but this symbols interface which has you know, different subheadings for simple, you know, currencies and punctuations.
Paul Thurrott [00:24:41]:
Very, very, very useful. So that one's good to know about too. So hopefully you found this to be useful. We will have a new episode of Hands on Windows every Thursday. You can find out more at Twitter tv hrw. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you especially to our club. To IT members.
Paul Thurrott [00:24:59]:
We love you. If you're not a member, please do check that out at TWIT TV Club twit. Thank you. I'll see you next week.
Leo Laporte [00:25:08]:
Hey, everybody, it's Leo laporte. It's the last week to take our annual survey. This is so important for us to get to know you better. We thank everybody who's already taken the survey. And if you're one of the few who has not, you have a few days left. Visit our website, TWIT TV Survey 26. Fill it out before January 31st day. Thank you so much.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:30]:
We appreciate it.
