Easy Windows 10 Tricks and Tips

Published on: April 07th, 2016

If you are one of the more than 75 million people who have upgraded to Windows 10, this email will help you understand some of the cool, new features.  Haven’t upgraded yet?  We can help!  Click Here to request info.

The tricks and tips chosen to share in this email are some of our Office Manager’s favorites!   I mean, who doesn’t love being able to have a purple task bar or press just two keys to get a quick glance of weather, news, and sports!

Below are the tricks and tips we wanted to share:

Keyboard Shortcuts 

• Windows Key-S = Daily Glance for Weather, News, and Sports
• Windows Key-Ctrl-C = Cortana listening (need an active microphone for this feature)
• Windows Key-Up Arrow = Maximizes Screen
• Windows Key-Down Arrow = Minimizes Screen

Make Your Desktop more Stylish
Windows 10 lets you personalize your desktop more thoroughly than before.  Go to Start, then Settings, Personalization, Colors, and choose Show color on taskbar and Start Menu.  (Our Office Manager chose purple).  You can also tell it to automatically pick a color from your wallpaper and apply it underneath icons of open apps, and you can remove the Start Menu’s translucent option.  Personalization is also where you can chose your backgrounds for your home and lock screens.

Customize Your Start Menu (Delete or Add new Tiles)
While having a full app list is great, it can be a pain to scroll through if you find yourself constantly opening the same few apps over and over.  To make them easier to access, simply right-click on them, then choose “Pin to Start” option to have it placed as a Tile.  This can also be done with folders and documents from File Explorer.  To Delete Tiles you don’t use, right-click and choose “Unpin from Start”.

Battery Saver
If you are on a laptop and your battery is running low, Windows 10 is smart enough to begin throttling back background services and other threads so that you can squeeze the last bit of battery life out of your machine.  To enable Battery Saver, click the Start menu and head to Settings, then System, Battery Saver.

Print to PDF
You can finally print a document (or save it) as PDF without using a third-party utility.  This makes it much easier to save and distribute documents that aren’t easily modified or that you do not want modified.  This is a great feature for those who work from home or have a lot of important documents on their computers.

For those of you home PC folks who are contemplating upgrading to Windows 10, we highly recommend taking the plunge now. Business owners will want to check with your local IT professional before proceeding. If for any reason you are not comfortable performing the upgrade yourself, which can be tricky and doesn’t always work as advertised, then reach out to our highly trained experts at Computer Troubleshooters and let us perform the upgrade for you.