The complete idiot's guide to Windows 11 | How to do EVERYTHING

unfortunately Microsoft Windows doesn't come with an owner's manual anymore so today I'm going to help you out with that and show you all the things that you need to know in order to use Windows maybe you just got a brand new windows 11 computer or you've recently upgraded from Windows 10 to the latest version either way you've probably noticed some differences between Windows 10 and windows 11 and if you're a novice user there are some things that might be a little confusing for you now some of these changes in the windows 11 layout are very subtle supposedly to make your Windows Experience a little more fluid but some of these settings are brand brand new to all versions of Windows now if you're looking to perform a very specific Windows 11 function please refer to the timestamps down below I'll have everything listed for you so you can jump right to the part that you want to know about I'm making this video for people who are brand new to Windows 11 so please keep that in mind so in today's video I'm going to show you how to do a ton of different things in Windows 11 a lot of things you're probably already used to but now with the new version the way you do those things might be a little bit different so if I go too fast for you or you need to watch something again just either hit the pause button or re rewind just a little bit and watch it again if you still have questions feel free to leave me a comment down below so before we get started I am going to mention that there is one change that Microsoft made in Windows 11 and honestly I don't know a single person who likes it or wants it and unfortunately it's not something you can simply turn on or off but stick around to the end of the video cuz I'm going to show you how to reverse this setting with one simple tweak with that said let's get started number one the Windows start menu now the first thing you're going to notice about Windows 11 is that the start menu is completely different different if you left click on the menu you'll see a completely rearranged start menu showing your most recently used apps as well as recommended apps down below at the Top If You click on all apps you'll see the complete list of apps and programs that are installed on your computer and then you can scroll up and down to find the program that you want to open or you can simply type the program name at the top and then click on the name of the program that pops up which matches that search term Additionally you can do the same Thing by clicking on the search box next to the start button and typing in the name of the program you could pin any app you want to this menu by scrolling through all apps and then right clicking on a particular app to pin to the start menu and as you can see here when you go back there's the app that you just pin to the start menu you can also easily rightclick and unpin it and it will go away this is super convenient for frequently used programs so you don't have to search for them or clut up your desktop with a lot of icons you can easily rearrange any items on your start menu by simply clicking and dragging the icon to wherever you want to show up let go of your mouse when you place the icon and that's where it will be pinned to additionally for apps that you likely will never use you can simply right click on that app on the start menu and then choose unpin from the start menu and it goes away the icon disappears from the start menu but the program does remain installed in case you need to use it later and it's still searchable through either of the search search boxes up top or down below if you rightclick on your start button you will see shortcuts to many of the most common window settings such as apps and features task manager and file explorer just click on the shortcut to open that specific program unfortunately these are locked into place so you can't move them around or delete them next is shut down restart or sign out if you need to shut down restart or sign out of your computer you can click the start button then select the power option to the right choose whichever one you need and windows will then perform that task to sign out of Windows right click the start button then click shutdown or sign out and the pop out menu will give you an additional option to sign out of your computer if you want to remove any of the recommended items from the start menu just right click on that item and remove from the list the Apper file will only disappear from that list it won't be removed from your system you'll also have the option to uninstall an app directly from the right click menu number three centered taskar the start menu is kind of the central Hub to everything in just about every Windows version that's ever been released but for some reason in Windows 11 Microsoft decided to give Windows more of an apple- likee feel by placing the start menu in the center of the taskbar for some this may be kind of cool but for others it's kind of irritating thankfully it's an easy fix just right click in any empty area of your taskbar click on taskbar settings scroll down to taskbar behaviors and then change the alignment here from Center to left now as you can see you have a left Justified start menu that you might be more familiar with from previous versions of Windows you can always switch it back to Center if you change your mind later so let's talk about the control panel or what is more commonly called settings in new versions of Windows if you prefer to use the old school method of accessing your control panel you can get to it by simply typing control panel into the search box this works in both Windows 10 and windows 11 however Microsoft has integrated the old school control panel with the new settings menu starting in Windows 10 and even more so in Windows 11 so just be aware that some of the old school features you might be used to in control panel have now been fully migrated into the settings feature in Windows so to access settings you can rightclick on the start menu and click settings or you can left click on the start menu and click settings right here which should be a pinned app on your start menu or you can type settings into any search box and get to it that way all three methods take you to the same place next up is desktop personalization so say you want to quickly change your desktop wallpaper add a new theme to your windows layout or modify what your screen looks like when it's locked all these can be done through what's called personalization you just want to find an empty area of your background or wall wpaper rightclick and choose personalize from here you can choose a different photo for your desktop wallpaper by clicking on background you can play with different color schemes for title bars and other windows by clicking on colors you can completely change the overall look in Windows by clicking on and installing a new theme by clicking on themes if you click on lock screen you can choose whether you want a standard photo to show on your windows lock screen or if you want to use one that Microsoft thinks you might like using what's called Windows Spotlight these will be randomly sent to your computer throughout the day and if you go up to the top right of your screen you can give it a thumbs up or thumbs down to help personalize the types of pictures you want to be shown on that lock screen under lock screen status you can also select if you'd like to see the weather mail notifications or calendar to be shown on that lock screen as well if you use a touch keyboard This section here will allow you to customize the look and feel of that keyboard you can adjust the theme background colors key and font sizes the start section allows you to adjust what you would like to see on your start menu now remember earlier when I showed you the frequently used stuff on your start menu this section right here is where you can turn all of that on or off if you'd rather not see anything at all you can also enable show most used apps to show on that start menu and control whether you want recently open items to show on the start menu jump lists and file explorer finally click on fold ERS and you can control which frequently used folders you'd like to appear next to the power button for example if I clicked on settings and file explorer now when I go to the start button next to the power button you see the settings and file explorer it's just another way to quickly access frequently used folders back on the main personalization screen the taskbar section helps you decide what you want to see on the taskbar at the bottom of your screen personally I'm never going to use chat this icon here here so I just turn it off and just like that it disappears the task view here which is this icon is very similar to the old alt tab in Windows but now you can do that with just one click the widgets option is here on the taskbar as well and let you quickly access news weather stocks and other things that you might find useful if you like the widgets each suggested widget has the option for you to remove that specific widget by clicking the three dot menu at the top right keep the ones you want and you can go down here and click see more to go to a personalized Microsoft start page based on your preferences if you don't care about widgets click here to turn them off and the widgets icon now is gone from your taskbar the next section in personalization is for font management from here you can easily add new fonts by dragging them and dropping them directly into this box right here or you can view the pre-installed fonts already on Windows by scrolling through this list the last thing on the personalization list is your device usage depending on what you primarily use your computer for you can select one or more of the options and Microsoft will then deliver personalized tips ads and recommendations based on those settings personally I always make sure these are set to off cuz nobody wants to see any more ads than absolutely necessary now that we've gone through all the basic personalization settings let's head into some more advanced personalization settings that you might find useful so right click on your background or wallpaper here again go to display settings from here you can make all kinds of changes to how your display looks so click on scale and adjust this number up or down if you want to increase the visibility of text and apps as a whole or you can actually click on scale and adjust those sizes for each specific thing that you want so you could modify just the font size or the display size independently in the next section you can adjust the slider up or down to increase or lower your desktop resolution the higher the resolution the smaller everything gets and vice versa now if you have a monitor that can support vertical display display you can slide over here and choose portrait instead of landscape you can also choose to flip the screen as well but be very careful because it's incredibly awkward to try and flip it back if you accidentally change this moving left with your mouse is now down and moving up with your mouse is moving left now so it's better just to leave this alone unless you specifically need it if you use multiple displays on your computer this next section allows you to make changes including which of your screens you wish to be the primary display and also changing individual screen resolutions so that pretty much covers all of the windows personalization so now let's move on to other windows settings that you might find useful so perhaps you may want to add a new account on your PC maybe for your kids to use so they don't mess up any of your personal settings or maybe you want to switch from a Microsoft account to a local account or from a local account back to a Microsoft account you can do all of this in the user account settings in the main settings page of windows so from the search bar you can just type settings and this will likely bring up the personalization settings here so what you want to do is click on this menu here and then from there click on accounts now if you scroll down to where it says your info you'll see all the specific user settings according to how you initially set up your windows the very first time this is where you can change your avatar or login photo or switch from a local account to a Microsoft account or vice versa if you'd like to know more about why I recommend using a local account versus a Microsoft account you can click on the card at the top of your screen so back to the main account screen if you'd like to add or remove a user on this computer scroll down and click on family and other users if there are any other users here that you'd like to remove you will see them here and you can just click the drop- down arrow next to that and click remove you will get prompted to delete not only the user account but all of the users data that's stored on the computer make sure you have everything you need backed up from that user account before you delete it because once it's gone it's gone forever so to add a user you're going to click on add an account on the right hand side you'll get a Microsoft prompt to either use this person's Microsoft login or if you just want to create a local account say for the kids click on I don't have this person's sign information then click on add a user without a Microsoft account then give the person a username it can be their personal name or a nickname and if you want them to have a password go ahead and enter it here and then confirm it if you don't want a password just leave it blank click next now if you want this user to have administrator rights on the machine where you just created that account click that drop down arrow and then change account type change it from standard user to administrator and then click okay but be aware that doing this allows that user profile to have full permissions to everything on the computer and including your personal profile information and any files you've saved under your profile as an aside it is a good practice to create a standard user for daily usage and a special administrator account as well and that helps mitigate malware and virus attacks I'll be making a video about that coming up in the next few weeks now from the main accounts Window if you want to change how you log into the computer such as facial recognition or a login pin you can do that under signin options choose the login method that works best for you there is no best way so choose the one that makes logging in easiest for you the next section is Windows backup now if you're using a Microsoft account to log in and you want to have all your files and settings automatically backed up to your Microsoft account this is where you can make those changes select the option that fits your needs and you're good to go click on setup syncing to get started now the next thing I use frequently is device manager especially if I'm dealing with a brand new piece of Hardware or dealing with a pesky driver that won't install you can right click on your start button and then select device manager so from here you can quickly and easily remove a device by simply right clicking on the specific device and then choosing uninstalled device if you get prompted to delete the driver be aware that you will need to make sure that you are still connected to the internet in order for Windows to redownload a replacement driver if you are deleting a wireless adapter driver make sure you have already downloaded that driver from the manufacturer or your Brand's website prior to selecting the option to delete the driver otherwise if you're only using a wireless connection you're not going to have any way to get back online so that Windows update can download a new driver so make sure you have it backed up prior to deleting a wireless driver now say you download a program that you no longer use or you want to free up some space on your hard drive you can easily do this by removing the apps from Windows settings so what you want to do is right click on your start button and just click on apps and features if there is a spefic specific app that you want to remove then all you have to do is scroll down to it click on the three buttons to the right and then choose uninstall and then just follow the uninstallation steps once that program is uninstalled it will no longer be viewable here in the list of installed programs so just be aware that some apps such as alarms and clock or Xbox game bar things like that are built into windows and they cannot be uninstalled why are they're even listed here makes no sense to me but just understand that just because you click on it doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to uninstall it at the very top of the apps and features page is the option to choose where to get apps if you want the absolute safix experience possible you want to choose the Microsoft store only this will guarantee that any program you try to download will only download if Microsoft has also tested it and listed it in their store for safe download most people will leave it on this setting or the anywhere but warn me option option whichever you feel more comfortable with based on your skill level is what you should select just selecting anywhere means that any program tested or not regardless of where it came from can and will be installed if you attempt to do so and that can cause security issues down the road so please be careful of that option and choose the one that best fits your skill level now at some point you may need to access the Windows Task Manager maybe you have a program that's frozen and you need to terminate it so all you have to do is rightclick on your start menu and choose task manager the screen that pops up may be rather basic so if you click on more details at the bottom you'll see all the various options now you can see the active system processes CPU and memory usage and more now while you're in the task manager you might also want to remove apps that run every time the computer starts up these can sometimes be installed by default when you install a program but they aren't always needed every single time the computer boots up so what you want to do is just click on the start start up tab which is the fourth from the left now to quickly see what is enabled or disabled you can click on the word status up at the top that will sort all the enabled items up at the top for you now be careful in this menu and don't disable anything that you are not 100% sure what it is for example Microsoft One Drive is running every single time I start the computer and as you can see by the enabled status now I only need to run one drive when I actually want to access one drive and since I know what it is I'm going to rightclick on it and choose disable you'll now see that the status is listed as disabled now you can always go back to the startup field at any point and simply rightclick and enable anything that you have previously disabled removing items from your startup means that your computer will boot a little bit faster and because that is one less program that has to load every single time you start your computer so removing a handful of these and again only if you know what you're doing can sometimes really make a big difference when the computer's booting up now if you suspect that someone is actively connected to your computer perhaps using a secret account while you're on the computer you can click on the users Tab and that will show you only the people that are actively logged into your computer at this time if you see more than one user profile here and only one person should be logged in then you definitely have a problem and you should definitely scan for malware or viruses or use some other method to clean your computer if you need to make changes to your windows discs inside your computer you can do that from Disk Management so what you want to do is right click on your start menu and choose Disk Management from here you can resize Windows partitions change Drive letters delete partitions and more but full disclosure if you don't know exactly what you're doing do not poke around in this setting you could very well click one wrong thing and cause your computer to not boot up again Advanced users only if your date or time is incorrect in Windows perhaps it's because you chose the wrong time zone when you first set up your computer all you have to do is rightclick on the time and date at the bottom right and just choose adjust date and time then make sure that the time zone listed in your computer matches your actual time zone click the drop- down box to change it and it should update the time correctly and so now everything will be accurate you can also add additional clocks in your system tray by scrolling down and selecting additional clocks then you can simply add another clock based on the time zone that you want to see click on show this clock then choose this specific time zone and give it a name so for example if your partner is working in Tokyo for a month and you want to make sure you don't disturb them while they're working or sleeping you can create a new clock for that time zone and it will now show Once you click okay and apply down in your time zone as you can see here 2:12 p.m. local time and it's 4:12 a.m. in Tokyo perhaps you need to troubleshoot your network settings or remove older cache network settings connect to a hidden network or just make changes to your existing DNS S servers so what you want to do is you want to rightclick on your existing network connection and click Network in the internet settings at the top you can click on properties to make changes to your existing Network such as changing DNS entries just scroll down the page and click on edit for whichever setting you need to change at the very top of this window you can see how much data usage you've used so if you have a limited data plan you can click on this and it will break down your usage by application you can also set a data limit here so that you don't go over your amount of data usage and not get hit with a big Bill at the end of the month you can scroll all the way down and click reset and that will put all your statistics back to zero so you can keep up with your data usage month after month if you want to add a VPN to your existing network connection you can click here and then add your individual VPN login credentials now please please note if you already have a vpm program that you have downloaded and use you likely won't need this step as the program is going to configure all of this during the initial installation for you but if you ever want to put it in manually you can do it right here if you want to use your existing internet connection as a mobile hotspot you can click this right here you can select this here and then configure it so that others can use your connection to enable airplane mode you can just click this slider on and it will turn off all outside Communications just just like it does with your cell phone if you want to set up a proxy server for your internet connection click here this is an advanced setting most people will never use it but perhaps if you want to Route all your internet traffic through a different server than your existing internet provider this is where you would configure that the next section is dialup internet connection I'm not really sure how in 2023 that there are actually people on the planet that still need this but there may be some situations where you need to dial into a remote server using your your computer's modem this is where you would set up and configure that connection the next setting is Advanced network settings as stated these are advanced settings and not for your average novice to be poking around say you have both a wired and wireless internet and they're constantly switching back and forth one being faster than the other here you can choose which one to enable or disable and that will keep your internet connection a little more consistent or you could just unplug your ethernet cable if your Wi-Fi is strong enough just just select the one you want to turn off and click disable and now the other connection will be the only usable connection which will keep them from switching back and forth if you want to enable and connect a Bluetooth device you can do that here by selecting enable and you can also rename the connection here as well obviously if you don't have Bluetooth on your computer this option should be disabled and you won't be able to enable it if you want to see all the specifics about your current network connection you're going to click hardware and connection properties this will tell you your local IP address your gate way DNS servers computer Mac addresses and more a technician would be able to look at this information and tell you exactly what's wrong with your computer now if you're having constant issues with your network going up and down or just intermittent problems it could be that there's a problem with your network adapter settings or or the stored connection to that Network you can go down here and click on network reset to reset all your network settings back to Windows defaults and that might resolve your problem now please note all your wireless pass passwords and configurations will also be reset so if you do rely on wireless internet make sure that you know the SSID and password to that connection before you click reset once you do that if you don't know the username and password you won't be able to get back onto the wireless network now to see the old school style of network settings go down here and click on more network adapter options this will bring up the control panel method of troubleshooting networks and you can make all the changes you need to through here they're basically the same it's just a different way of looking at it click on Windows Firewall to bring up Windows Firewall protection Now the default should all be set to the on position here but if you're running into an issue with an app or program that isn't working right this is a good place to start troubleshooting in that situation I would click on allow an app through the firewall and if it's a program that you trust make sure it's configured correctly to reach outside of your local network now let's talk about Windows updates so Windows update settings can be changed or you can check for new updates by just simply typing Windows update in the search bar and you can click on check for updates now if there's updates available you'll see them at the top and they should download automatically down below you can customize when you want to receive updates how they should be delivered whether you want these updates as soon as they're available also when your active hours are so that Windows doesn't try to update while you're actively using your computer all that is available under Advanced options now if you have a newer computer this really shouldn't be an issue for a while but as you use your computer more and more it's going to start collecting temporary files and more that can and should regularly be cleaned out so what you can do is go to the search bar and type in disk cleanup and select the app now from here you can pick and choose which files you want Windows to delete for you it will also tell you how much estimated hard drive space that deleting those files will free up it is completely safe to delete all the items in this list but just know that if Windows has downloaded any Windows update files but not yet installed them they will show up in this list as well and then if you delete them you're going to have to redownload those Windows update files and you can click on cleanup system files for even more advanced features now a lot of people disagree with me on this but I think this just makes sense now every computer in my opinion should have system restore enabled system restore is a feature in Windows that lets you create what are called restore points to which windows can then go back to and reload if you have a problem getting back into Windows now system restore is historically unreliable but sometimes just sometimes it actually works and that might save you a service call so here's how you want to set it up from the search bar you can just type system restore and then click on create a restore point now as you can see by default Microsoft turns this off and I don't know why and it aggravates me to know in but first thing we need to do is we need to turn it on so we can create a restore point so what you want want to do right here is on your local dis C where it says off you just click configure check turn on system protection and for disc space usage I usually put it between 5 and 10% of my drive depending on how large the drive is Click apply and okay now you can see that the system restore is actually on but we don't have any restore points yet so what we want to do is go down here and click create give it a name like perfectly working something that you would recognize when you see it click create and then what Windows is going to do is it's going to go through all your settings and it's going to create that restore point as you can see the restore point created successfully so now if we clicked on system restore there's our perfectly working restore point now that you have that enabled windows will create those randomly but I would definitely recommend you create a new restore point anytime you make a major change to your computer it only takes a couple minutes and it may be the difference of whether you get back into your computer or not so now you have a new restore point in case 5 minutes from now your computer doesn't boot and again it doesn't always work but in my opinion it's better to have that option to restore than to just not use it at all because sometimes it doesn't work that just doesn't make any sense to me go ahead and create the restore point so say you need to know the technical specs on your computer your CPU speed and how much memory you've got installed or exactly what version of Windows you have all of this can be actually found in the Windows settings so what you want to do is right click on your start menu and click the word settings scroll all the way down to the about section and you will see all the information you need about your computer from here you can click rename this PC if you want to give it a different name scroll down to see your product key or activation information if you have Windows Pro you can use bit Locker for Drive encryption here if you're considering a memory upgrade you can't tell from this menu but there is a free and easy way to see how much memory you can install and which kind I'll link that in the descript deson for you now there may be times where you're having a certain issue with a particular function in Windows like a sound issue um you have a built-in troubleshooter in Windows to help isolate and fix these problems so from the search bar you can type the word trouble and you'll see troubleshoot settings now you can choose the default automatic troubleshooters but if you know the particular issue for example your speakers are plugged in but you have no sound you can click on other troubleshooters and then you can go to to this section right here which is playing audio and click run and then run that specific troubleshooter for that specific problem same with internet connections printers Windows updates Etc they don't always work but it's kind of nice to have just follow the steps and hopefully that'll fix your problem now say for example your computer keeps blue screening on you or a certain app keeps crashing out of the blue you can use a program in Windows called Event Viewer to isolate these issues and then start digging towards a solution so from the search bar just type the word event and you'll see Event Viewer at the top now for the vast majority of people this will all seem like Greek but you might run into a situation where someone is assisting you and needs you to actually open Event Viewer so you can tell them at a particular time what happened and then they might be able to troubleshoot it from there there's all kinds of different views and different errors so and they're all broken down by type this is a good place to look around if you can continue to have issues with a certain app or a system function you can't break anything here it's all just reporting and viewing but if you'd like to get a better idea of why something is happening this is where you find that information now if you need to change your windows power settings like screen savers screen timeout or system sleep mode you can make all these changes in the windows power settings right click on the start menu and then click on power options so from here you can adjust your individual power settings based on your personal preferences under screen and sleep you can set your computer to turn off your screen after so many minutes that's really handy with laptops to conserve your battery under power mode you can set your power mode based on your specific needs I prefer mine to be on best performance which is fine for a desktop computer for a laptop computer this will consume more battery power but will give you a brighter display and allow your La your laptop to run at maximum performance for a longer lasting battery consider a balanced or best power setting a lot of people prefer the minimalist approach to what they see on on their screen and down here in their system tray located at the bottom right corner of your screen you can click the up Arrow here near your clock and you can move the applications around as needed you drag them up here and or if you need one to be down here you can click and drag it put it right back down here on the taskbar you can also move them around in this window if you want to organize them differently and you can slide them all down to make them all visible or you can slide them back up here to where they're out of the way you might have certain apps that you want to run by default for certain types of programs for example in Windows 11 your default web browser is going to be Microsoft Edge but let's say you prefer Milla Firefox instead you can change the default apps that you've got installed to open any file by clicking in the search box and typing default apps and it will pop up here at the top here you can change which program you wish to open for a specific file now there is a much easier way to do this in the case of the web browser simply just install that web browser and then when you open that web browser if it's not your default it should automatically ask you do you want to set this as your default I would check don't ask me again and then click set as a default browser and what that does is it makes all the necessary change in the background so you don't have to go through that list and click on multiple items now I have a test file here that by default opens in in notepad what if I want to open it in wordpad I can rightclick on that option choose open with and then check this box to always use this app to open this kind of file but click on more apps and then if you had another application on your computer such as Microsoft Word or something like that you could select that click okay and then from that point on that document would no longer open in the first application it would open it in the application that that you selected that's an much easier way to do it just right click and open with or open that program and make it your default now the same applies with programs like Adobe Acrobat Reader by default files like PDFs are going to open up in Microsoft Edge but if you want or prefer the flexibility of Adobe Reader you can download and install that program and then when you open it for the first time you'll be prompted to make it your default application for PDF files you can click right here here and do that or as I showed you before right click on the file you want to open select open with now if you just select this the one time it's only going to open it in acrobat the one time and it's still going to open with Edge every other time so you want to click on choose another app so that you can check this box and then select Adobe Acrobat you can see the icon changed on the desktop to Adobe Acrobat and now that file opens in that program every time you can still use the Windows 7 settings to change the default apps but I think this is just a much easier way to do it and this works for pretty much every version of Windows but I just thought I would include it because PDF files now open with Edge where they didn't before if you would like to pin items to the taskbar or the start menu you can just open them using the start button then right click that specific app you'd like to pin and then choose pin to taskbar or pin to start or both just like that your app is permanently on the taskar and also permanently on the start menu now I want to talk about the desktop layout the default layout for your program icons on Windows desktops is known as Auto arrange this places your icons in neat little columns to keep everything tidy but sometimes you might want to put certain icons in other places on the desktop or arrange them how they would most benefit you as you can see when you drag an icon anywhere else it snaps back to these columns to fix this you can just just simply turn off auto arrange and that allows you to put your icons wherever you'd like so for example these icons right here that point to websites I'd like them to be as far right on my screen so what I want to do is just right click on an empty space on my desktop click on view and then simply uncheck Auto arrange icons now you can take your icons and move them wherever you want and arrange them however you like if you reenable the auto arrange all those icons will immediately snap back into columns again so if you spent a lot of time customizing where you want everything make sure to leave this unchecked additionally if you wish to just see your background wallpaper and not see any icons on the desktop at all you can just simply right click on your wallpaper go to view and uncheck show desktop icons and just like that everything will disappear you still have access to everything on your computer including your files you just physically don't see them on your desktop if you've customized where you like everything to be turning this option on and off isn't going to change that customization your icons will be exactly where you left them it will just hide them if you don't want to see them since we're on the subject of customizing your desktop maybe you want to tweak your icons a little bit so they make more sense to you the most important thing to know is that any program you install when it puts an icon on your desktop that icon is most likely just a shortcut to an installed program you can rename any icon you wish on the desktop with the exception of the recycle bin so if you want to rename a desktop shortcut you can simply choose a shortcut here like in this example where it's a big long name for my Bank of America login so I can just rightclick on that click on properties and if I click on General now I can go and just call it online banking and just like that it changes the name of the shortcut now just as program icons on your desktop point to programs that you've installed you can also create shortcuts to point to your favorite websites as I just showed you here's how just right click on any blank area click on new and then shortcut you're going to type in the location of the item in this case I'll say www.yahoo.com click next and then now just give it a friendly name I'll just call it Yahoo and click finish now I have an icon called Yahoo so now when I click on it it'll take me straight to the Yahoo website this is convenient for people who might have three or four different websites they check throughout the day you can create shortcuts to go straight to them without having to open your browser and then type in an address now Windows File Explorer is a bit different in Windows 11 than in previous versions you might have used but it's very similar I'm going to cover the basics here for you at the bottom of your screen click on file explorer and as you can see at the top left you have what's called quick access this is a dynamically changing list of folders as you access certain folders on your computer you'll see these folders start to appear under quick access if you wish to remove a folder that shows up under quick access you can just just right click on it and simply say remove from quick access additionally you'll see recently opened files show up here under recent files this is also part of the quick access utility as well to help you quickly and easily open up recent files same thing applies you can rightclick and remove anything that you don't want to be visible any of the files or folders that you remove from quick access are not deleted off your computer they're just no longer visible under quick access for some reason Microsoft oft has disabled the visibility of file extensions by default this is important because without file extension showing you might actually get tricked into opening a file that you think is a PDF for example but is actually an exe file that contains a virus so here's how to fix that click on the file folder to open File Explorer click the three dot menu at the top and then click options now click on The View Tab and then uncheck hide extensions for known file types and then click apply now if you look at the names of your files you don't just see the name of the file you see the file with the extension enabled this one small change could potentially keep you from accidentally clicking on a malicious file later on down the road there are other options in this view window that you might want to customize personally I always show file extensions and I also enable show hidden files or folders and this is because I don't want a malicious file to suddenly appear on my computer because it may be marked as hidden I never see it now please note there are some folders inside the windows directory that are marked as hidden folders so if you enable that you will have full visibility of it never delete anything from the windows directory or any of the subdirectories unless you know exactly what you're doing if you delete one wrong file or folder it could potentially cause your windows to suddenly no longer boot up you can go back through the different folder options and the rest of these are basically customizations what you want or don't want to see so play around with it if you like if you check something and then click apply and then don't like the way it looks just go back and uncheck it click apply again and it'll be right back to the way it was before now Windows notepad has a couple of new features the two I like the best are the tabbed browsing which allows you to run multiple text documents at the same time so you can switch from one to the other copy and paste so forth the other feature is an autosave option which remembers what you typed in each document and then when you close it it doesn't ask you to save it it just Auto automatically saves it and the next time you open the document your changes are still there I saved the system registry for the end because you need to know what it is and how it works but if you are a novice user I recommend that you never use it for anything unless you know exactly what you're doing or you're being Guided by a professional one wrong click in the registry and your computer may not boot up and if you haven't made backups of that registry and you clicked the wrong thing you're going to be in a world of hurt that being said if you do need to open your registry for any reason on the search bar you you can just type registry and open the registry editor the Windows registry is basically like a table of contents in a book but it's also an extremely powerful instruction manual almost every single feature or setting in Windows can be changed or tweaked using the right registry keys I'm not going to go into what each of these registry subsections do because again I don't recommend you ever modify your registry without professional assistance but knowing what the registry does is important to my very last point now for some reason or another Microsoft decided to do a way with the traditional rightclick context menu and replace it with this abbreviated menu with tiny icons for things like copy paste delete Etc now if you want to get to the original menu you have to click on show more options at the bottom and now it appears not only does this now require one extra click it's also kind of annoying and unfortunately there isn't an easy way to just turn this menu off and back on and give us back our full content context menu there is a way to edit that Windows registry I just talked about to restore the full rightclick context menu now remember what I said about the registry before well I'm the professional telling you to do this because I've personally tested it it works and it will not harm your machine so if you'd like to get your full context menu back here's what you do now I've put the link to the file that you need in the description for you when you click on that link it will take you to this page at howto geek what you want to do is scroll down about 3/4 of the way to the bottom of the page to where you see download our oneclick registry hack go ahead and click on this link underneath and it's going to start downloading the file when the file is finished downloading you're going to open your download folder and you'll see that file that you just downloaded right click on the file and choose extract all just leave the defaults as they are and click extract you'll get a new window that pops up with the contents of that file that we're just extracted now you're going to see two files one starts with win 11 classicor context menu and then you're going to see another one that says undo what you're going to want to do is double click on the file that starts with win 11 uncore classic you're going to get prompted with a security warning click okay or run go ahead and say yes to edit the registry say Yes again to confirm and then click okay now the last step you can right click on anything right now and you're going to still see that context menu and you still have to click show more options so what you want to do is right click on your taskbar click on task manager under processes you want to find Windows Explorer you want to rightclick on that and just choose restart your display is going to Blink for a second that's okay now if you go and right click on any other item you now have that full context menu as before no more clicking on show more options so congratulations if you've made it this far you can now patch yourself on the back and call yourself a Windows expert or at least tell people you know your way around windows so please take a moment to like And subscribe if you enjoyed this type of content and also let me know down in the comments which of these windows 11 tips you found the most useful thanks so much for watching we'll see you in the next video

Channel: Ask Your Computer Guy

Views: 173,084

Keywords: windows 11 tutorial for beginners, windows 11 customization, windows 11 tips and tricks, windows 11 tutorial, windows 11 tutorial for seniors, windows 11 crash course, windows 11 full walkthrough, how to do everything in windows 11, windows 11, how to use windows 11, windows 11 features, windows 11 basics

Id: 5kt4t2gzt9g

Length: 44min 6sec (2646 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2023