Here are my top 20 Windows 10 tips and
tricks. Windows 10 has been around for a while and there's been several updates
released, including the fall 2017 creators update. I'm going to cover
several tips and tricks that I found useful all the way through early 2018. I
hope you'll find them useful too. Here are my top 20 in no particular order.
Number 1 - Spatial Sound. Give your computer an easy upgrade to 3D Spatial
Sound with the new Windows 10 feature. All you do is go in the lower right
corner and right-click on your earpiece and choose Spatial Sound. From the menu
choose Windows Sonic or Dolby Atmos. now i've noticed that both of those sound
very much the same but the Dolby Atmos requires a download of an app so i'm
going to choose the Windows Sonic and hit OK. Try that sound quality now and
see if you notice the difference. Number 2 - Steps Recorder. Steps Recorder is a
way to record your actions in Windows 10 and translates them to a handy document
you can save and share. To run it, go to your Start menu and type in Steps. You'll
see the Steps Recorder app. Click on that and it opens up a simple recorder with a
start and stop. I'm going to go ahead and start the record and do something as
simple as open up a browser, move the browser around, and hit stop. It's
recorded all those steps including the images followed by a detailed step by
step instruction of every movement you've made. You can easily save this to
a location on your hard drive and then attach it and send it to somebody with
an explanation of how you wanted to walk through some steps. It makes it really handy to show somebody what you're trying to do. Number 3 - Media Streaming. Media Streaming allows you to share music,
photos, and videos with other people on your local network. To enable it find
your network icon in the bottom right corner of your desktop. Right-click on
that and go to Open Network and Sharing Center. Choose this Change Advanced
Sharing settings and hit the down-arrow next to all networks. You'll see the
media streaming menu with Choose Media Streaming Options. Click on that and this
is where you enable the streaming. You can choose to allow All Computers, you
can select between All Networks or Local Networks, and when you're ready with a
name just hit OK and that makes your media files discoverable by other
computers on your network. Number 4 - Quick Assist. Quick Assist is available
from your Start menu. Just click Start, type in Quick, and select the Quick
Assist desktop app. This brings up the Quick Assist menu and you have two
choices. You can either Get Assistance from somebody else or you can Give
Assistance. In this case I'm going to select Give Assistance. You sign into
your Microsoft account and it provides you a security code with ten minutes to
make the connection. All you have to do is contact the other person, give them
the security code. They choose Get Assistance from the menu and enter the
code to connect to you remotely. You can also choose to copy it to your clipboard
or send it to them via email and once they open the email they can select that
code and connect. Once the code is entered you will remotely control their
desktop and you can walk through stuff together with them over the screen.
Number 5 - Reset This PC. Occasionally we run into problems with
Windows and you have to reinstall. Well you can prevent doing that by choosing
Reset This PC. Go to Start, click on the Settings gear, go into Update & Security, and choose Recovery from the menu. Right at the top is Reset This PC.
If you click Get Started it gives you two choices.
You can keep your files or you can remove everything. Windows takes a few
minutes and it recovers everything back to the original factory defaults. If you
choose to keep your files all of your files will be there but it does remove
apps and you'll have to reinstall software but it's surprising how many
problems with Windows this will actually solve. Number 6 - Fast Startup.
Fast Startup has been around since Windows 8 but the fall creators update turned Fast
Startup on by default. You can get to it by going to the Start menu, going into
Settings, click on Power, select Power and Sleep, choose Additional Power Settings,
and select Choose What the Power Buttons Do. And here it is with Fast Startup
enabled. Shutting down your computer doesn't really shut it down. It enters a
hibernation mode that allows for quick booting. You may want to turn this
feature off to shutdown fully but if speed is your preference check to
make sure this option is enabled. Number 7 - Storage Sense. Storage sense helps you get rid of junk files when you're getting low on disk space. It is turned
off by default but to turn it on go to your Start menu, into Settings, click on
System, and go to Storage. Right here is Storage Sense and as you can see it's
turned off. So we're gonna click that to turn it on and we're gonna change how we
free up space. With it turned on it automatically deletes temporary files
that apps aren't using and it deletes files that have been in the recycle bin
over 30 days. You can also go to Clean Now and it triggers those commands
automatically. It's a helpful tool to keep this automated process of cleaning
up your disk space. Number 8 - Snipping Tool. The Snipping tool is a handy app
for taking snapshots of your screen. To run it, click on the Start menu and just
type in Snip. Select the Snipping Tool app and it opens the Snipping Tool. Click
New and it allows you to select an area of the screen and it brings it up into
the snipping tool where you can edit and copy, paste, save, do whatever you want to.
It comes with nifty little tools like a pen you can change the colors, a
highlighter, or an eraser and you can select the highlighter for example, and
highlight an area on your screen that you want to identify.
You can turn around and save it, give it a name, and send it to somebody. You also have a mode option where you can change it to a rectangular snip which is the
standard or you can make it a freeform snip and it allows you to highlight an
area by drawing a circle around it and then it just captures that information.
It makes it very easy to copy screen information to share with others. Number
9 - Night Light. Night Light is a setting to reduce the blue light emitted from
your screen that often keeps you awake at night. To enable it, click on the Start
menu, go into Settings, click on System and right on the main display screen
scroll down to the Night Light. You can check this box to turn it on and you can
go into the Night Light Settings to adjust things. If you want to enable it
right now you can click this button. If you want to adjust the temperature slide
this bar back and forth and you can even set it to be on a schedule and set the
hours of when you want to turn it on and when you want to turn it off. So if you
want to use your computer at night you may want to enable the Night Light
setting. Number 10 - Aero Shake & Snap. Windows
10 brings new capabilities to manage windows on your desktop. If you grab a
window and shake it, it minimizes everything behind it. If you
shake it again, it brings them back. You can also take a window and bump it to
the top to make it full screen. Drag it down and it returns to the original
position. If you drag it to the left it opens it up on half of the left side of
the screen and allows you to select from one of the other windows to bring up in
the right side of the screen. Drag them back down and they return to their
original size. You can also drag a window down to the left corner and it brings it
up into the one-quarter area of the screen. Drag the other ones to the other corners and you can adjust Windows by doing the
Aero Snap & Aero Shake capabilities. Number 11 - Edge Reading View.
Windows 10 has replaced Internet Explorer with Edge but did you know that
Edge has a reading view option? If you look at this page there's a number of
graphics and advertisements mixed within the text but if you click this Reading
View option it makes it into a nice readable format and eliminates a lot of
the other junk. Number 12 - System Restore Point. To avoid having to
reset your PC as I shown earlier it's a good idea to create a system restore
point. Go to the Start menu, type in Restore and click on this Create a
Restore Point. Now at the bottom click Create and type the name and hit the
Create button. This creates a system restore point if you have any problems
with Windows updates or other damage to Windows files. To restore you can click
on this System Restore button, click Next and you can select from the list of
previous restore points. Hit next and your computer will be restored to the state
it was in at that point. When I have a good clean working copy of Windows I
go ahead and make a restore point so that I'll be able to recover back to
that at a later date if I run into problems. Number 13 - Hidden Start menu. Did you know Windows has a hidden Start menu? All you have to
do is right-click on the Start menu and it brings up a number of options mostly
from your system settings but it also gives you the File Explorer and some
other options for shutting down or signing out. It's a handy little quick
menu. Number 14 - Default Apps. Have you ever had the wrong application load when
clicking on a file? Windows 10 has moved the location of default app settings.
Click on Start, go to Settings, choose Apps, and select Default Apps. The most
common apps are listed with their associated defaults. Just click on the
app that you want to change and select a different one from the list
or if it's not listed you can look it up in the App Store. The default apps are
listed here but if you don't see the one that you want to change you can choose
Default Apps by File Type. This brings up hundreds of known file extensions
with their associated default app and you can change one just by clicking on
it and selecting from the list in the same manner. So if the wrong app opens
when you click on a file this is how you fix it.
Number 15 - Download Maps. If you intend to go offline with a mobile device running
Windows 10 it's a good idea to download your maps before you do that. Click on
Start, Settings, and go into Apps and choose Offline Maps. Click this to choose
an area that you want to download and it will download that map and make it
available when you're offline. Number 16 - Notifications. In the bottom right corner
of your screen is the Notification Action Center which gives you quick
access to commonly used settings and notifications. You can customize this
area by going to Start, Settings, System, and click on Notifications & Actions.
Modify the list by holding down and dragging these icons around and you can
rearrange them however you want. You can also change the notifications coming
from apps by turning on and off these different settings here and you can
select individual apps and turn them on or off for notifications. So if you have
a bunch of pesky notifications coming up just turn these off. Number 17 - Startup
Programs. When Windows 10 boots some applications load automatically at
startup. Over time you may have made changes that leave unwanted applications
in the startup. To speed up your computer and clear these unwanted apps go down to
the taskbar, right-click and run the Task Manager. In the window click the Startup
tab. You'll notice there are several apps loading at startup. Take a look at this
list and right-click on any that you want to disable. That reduces the load at
startup and makes your computer boot much better.
Number 18 - God Mode. As you've seen in this video several settings and windows
are divided between the Control Panel, the Start menu, and the Settings menu.
With each new version of Windows we often see changes to menus and it's not
always easy to find them. God Mode is the answer. Just create a new folder on your
desktop and copy and paste this information and hit enter. This creates
an icon that connects you to the program tasks list. Open it up and you'll see all
of those menu items in one big long list. That's God Mode. Number 19 - Advanced
Performance. Windows 10 has added animated controls, animations, translucent
windows, and a host of other features to improve the look and feel of the system.
If you're looking for peak performance and don't care about those improvements,
you can crank up the system performance by going into the Control Panel, click on
System, and go to Advanced System Settings. From the Advanced Menu click on Settings. Change this from Let Windows Choose What's Best for my Computer to
Adjust for Best Performance. That eliminates a lot of those settings and
speeds up your system. Give it a try and see if you notice the difference.
Number 20 - Virtual Desktops. An advanced feature in Windows 10 is
Virtual Desktops. With Virtual Desktops you can create multiple, separate
desktops with different apps and windows allowing you to organize distinct
desktops for each purpose. Its represented by this Task View button on
your taskbar. When you click it, it comes up with the open applications on your
desktop and there's an option in the bottom right corner to create a New
Desktop. If you hit that, it creates a desktop 1 and a desktop 2 and you
can now move applications into each one of those. So for example, I can take this
Word document and drag it over to the desktop 2 and now I have different
applications between those two locations. Now you can open up windows in your new
location, click the task view, switch over to another desktop, and you have a
separate set of windows and applications located there. Click the Windows-Tab
buttons to select between those desktops rather than clicking the task view. You
can also switch between them with Ctrl-Windows-Left-Arrow and Right-Arrow. You can create as many virtual desktops as you would like but I
recommend using them as temporary workspaces to help you get organized.
That is the main purpose. You've just watched the Top 20 Windows 10
Tips & Tricks. Don't forget to check out the other tips and tricks playlist
and watch PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Skype for Business, OneDrive and several others.
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