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SO WINDOWS 10 has officially arrived and the upgrade is still rolling out to users everywhere (although there’s a way to get it now).
Those of you who have it will be familiar with the basics, but there are many other hidden features that can help you get the most out of the system. Here are a few to get you started.
Fun with the start menu
Upon opening the Start button for the first time, you’ll notice that it’s a combination of the traditional menu and Windows 8 apps. The good thing is, you can customise this by dragging apps and programmes from your menu to the side.
While you can resize the section, you can also resize apps themselves by right-clicking on one and changing it to small, medium, wide and large. This is useful for those with larger screens to work with as most Microsoft apps incorporate live tiles (for those unsure, it shows updates on the tiles itself).
If you right-click any of the apps in the Start menu, you can pin them to the taskbar or uninstall them directly from your computer. Very useful.
Snapping windows
If you want to quickly resize a window, you can do so in two ways. The first is drag it up to the top of the screen to make it full-screen, or you can drag it to the side so it takes up half the screen.
When you snap a window to the side, Windows will bring up a quick view of the other apps you have opened. Click on one and it will fill up the remainder space.
Download offline Maps
This is more useful for laptops and tablets but a great feature on Maps is the ability to download maps or update them.
In the Maps app, go into settings and select ‘Download or update maps’. Here it will ask you which continent you want, and then which country and it will download it. It will warn you about the file size first so you don’t encounter any surprises.
Create virtual desktops
One of the new additions to Windows 10 is virtual desktops, useful if your original desktop gets too cluttered and want to organise your windows better.
You can press the Task View button at the bottom (the icon left of Microsoft Edge) or you can press Windows Key + Tab to do the same action. Here you can create a new desktop or drag an open app to another one.
Another handy shortcut (which can be found on Windows 7 and 8.1) is to hold down Alt and press Tab. This allows you to cycle through all open apps.
Record video footage
This mightn’t seem particularly useful from first glance, but Game DVR allows you to record footage of any open app, not just games.
Press Windows Key + G to turn it on and bring up a small, floating dashboard. Press record and capture whatever footage you want
Saved videos can be found in the Game DVR section of the Xbox app or inside Video > Captures.
Take control of notifications
You may have noticed the notification tray at the right-hand side of your screen where updates and notifications are placed, but they can easily overwhelm you. Instead, you should go into Settings > Systems > Notifications and actions.
Much like your phone or tablet, you can control notifications for all apps and services. Also worth noting is specific notification settings can be found inside the apps under settings so it’s worth checking them as well if you want to prioritise specific updates.
Scheduling updates
Unlike previous versions, Windows updates are now mandatory, but you can schedule when they happen so they don’t interrupt you during important work.
Go into Settings > Updates and Security > Advanced to decide when to organise your updates.
Learn the new shortcuts
A new system brings with it additional keyboard shortcuts that are worth knowing (on top of the old ones)
Windows Key + Up/Down/Left/Right = snap an active window to the top/bottom/side.
Windows Key + T = Cycle through taskbar items and hit enter to launch.
Windows Key + I = Open Windows 10 Settings.
Windows Key + , = Temporary hides apps to briefly show desktop.
Windows Key + D = Minimises apps to go straight to desktop.
Windows Key + Ctrl + D = Creates a new virtual desktop.
Windows Key + Tab = See all desktops and open apps.
Windows Key + Home = Minimises all windows except the one you’re using.
Windows Key + Ctrl + F4 = Closes the current virtual desktop
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I have it and I’m quite impressed so far,
Any problem running chrome or streaming videos William.
I haven’t managed to get it yet
Can I play a CD with it?
@Genius, i have win10 too and sadly chrome and related apps do not run. video streaming with flash is fine.
You don’t have to wait in line to get Windows 10. You can download and install it now if you want to through this Microsoft page – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10. Just download the media creation tool from one of the purple links (32 or 64 bit), open up the tool, click upgrade and follow the steps. You can choose to make a bootable USB or iso if you want a clean installation instead of upgrading. I upgraded and everything’s working fine. I like Windows 10. Clean interface and snappy performance.
Also I haven’t any problems with programs or drivers running in Windows 10, including Chrome, which I’m using right now.
@Vaibhav Borse
Thanks for that i read on line there were streaming issues with chrome so i will stick with 8.1 for the moment.
I have it and chrome works perfect as does Firefox.
I did have to restore windows firewall to default before it worked though.
I do appear to have issue with video play back using MS media player. VLC works perfect though.
Overall, it’s not bad at all
I got 10 quite quickly and noticed quite a few issues with chrome but they seem to be ironed not now. I have had some other issues, for example the start menu didn’t work for an hour or so. Eventually I got a notification to reboot to fix it and it did. Also at first it didn’t always respond when I clicked on something, sometimes I had to click twice or more times to open something or change screen. This too seems to have been ironed out.
Genius I don’t use chrome I use the not very well known Maxthon cloud browser has everything you need in a browser Chrome is boring, win 10 is very snappy and the likes of you tube videos load almost in an instant.
Right click on start menu bring up a useful menu. It’s also on windows 8, but many people would have skipped it.
This is about the most helpful thing I’ve ever read on here. I was forced onto W8 after XP was no longer supported and although I mostly like it, I hated that I couldn’t get the menu to come up on the start button. Never occurred to me to right click. Champion tip! Thanks!
The Edge browser is quite good, much improved on IE. I like Windows 10 in general, better than 7 and a huge improvement on 8. Still a few bugs but definitely worth the upgrade.
chrome has become very bloated and now edge is much faster, so is the way with the browser wars
the only “feature” of windows 10 that I care about, is that I don’t have to deal with that garbage, because I run Linux. :)
how do you know someone uses Linux? they’ll tell you, repeatedly
I ran linux for about 2 years also – but there are some things you can’t do with it, despite Wine and other utilities. I need to run a lot of 3D design software for example, and things are changing so fast there that linux is last on the list for development. You can’t run SolidWorks on any linux distro I know of – MeshMixer is experimental on deb based systems only, Skanect (using an xbox kinect as a 3d scanner) isn’t on linux and there are many others with the same issue.
It’s horses for courses – if everything were available, I’d be running Ubuntu – but it’s not. In the same way, if I wanted a hardcore media machine I’d be going the apple route. Windows 10 is actually a very clean look and I’m very happy with it.
I’d also be surprised if you’re not running a dual boot or virtual machine with windows on it….
Just VM’s, and very rarely. They mostly get turned on twice a year to do software updates, then suspended again.
There are 3-D design software packages for Linux. Sad that 3-D software makes would make so much more work for themselves by coding for Windows. and there must be software out there to work with kinect. (OpenKinect comes to mind.)
and.. for a media machine, you can’t do better than Plex running on Linux, not even with a Mac. (You could, I believe, run Plex on a Mac and have a tie.)
Todd, when you are completely familiar with one of the single best 3D design programs out there you accept that it’s available only on certain formats – you don’t try to shoe-horn your knowledge into another program with the sole purpose of sticking with a particular OS/distro.
As for working with Kinect – yest, there are projects out there, however, they are nowhere near as simple as Skanect and I’m aware of none which do what skanect does; handle low cost 3D scanning. There is also the cubify scanner we often work with which, again, doesn’t work on linux.
There are a ton of things where linux is last to be developed for – that’s a reality. In a ton of ways it suits what most people will use a laptop for and is a whole lot more user friendly than it used to be. For me, it’s a shoe that doesn’t fit my work no matter how many suggestions someone might make (Setting up OpenKinect is something I’ve undertaken several times and is painful).
Oh joy, – more needless & pointless crap to memorize.
I’m getting too old for this.
Anyway, thanks for the heads-up Quinton.
The start button when clicked on didn’t work for me, had to get on to Microsoft to fix it, booting up and restarting now takes twice as long.
9 second boot up times for me. Get yourself a SSD
This sounds like a load of unwanted rubbish. I’ll stick to W7.
Good lad R.J. Stay in the past while everybody else whizzes past u. Personally I’ve been using Windows 10 for over year now and it’s fantastic development from Microsoft
Windows 10 has some useful features, but here’s one feature i do not like at all:
“Available updates will be downloaded and installed automatically”.
I’m hoping they’ll change that.
Microsoft are doing this to ensure their software is as security tight as possible…they are doing it to keep you and others safe from attack.
sorry start button
Can I get rid of the stupid live tiles and go back to the traditional start button desktop homepage !
Download and install a program called ‘Classic Shell’. It will transform your desktop to a windows 7 clone. I’ve been using it on 8.1 for a year now ant it works perfectly. Here’s a linkie
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