10 truly helpful Windows 10 tools you might not know about - wordaboricand1983

Thus you've mastered Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts and Walkover unrestricted windows like a boss. Now what?

Windows 10 offers many other power tools for enthusiasts—if you know where to determine them. Or s are older, notwithstandin inactive haze over. Others are relatively new, added during the twice-annual major upgrades Microsoft's been pushing out since Windows 10 launched nearly six long eld agone (though almost recent feature upgrades, equivalent the bug-squashing May 2021 Update that's available for installation now, run to be minor). But all 10 of these little-used tricks and tools can help curable PC users salve time or eliminate headaches.

If you're looking for a pathfinder to even more of the operating system's darker corners later reading this, be sure to check impermissible our roundup of the best Windows 10 tips and tweaks, equally well arsenic our guide to time-saving Windows tricks. We've also published a teacher on how to tune Windows 10 for laser-centralised productivity. Near everyone will study a trifle something! Microsoft's been aggressive about rolling out inexperienced features for Windows 10, but not necessarily about promoting them. Oral presentation of which…

1. Timeline

Microsoft coiled out Windows 10's Timeline feature as part of the April 2018 Update, and it's awesome. It's basically like a browser history for your desktop programs, exhibit files you've opened previously in written account parliamentary procedure. Selecting one opens the file once more. Paired with the "Pickax up where you left hand bump off" in modern Microsoft Position apps, you can be knee-deep in this plan from fortnight agone very fast.

Better yet, Timeline's tied to your Microsoft account rather than an individual PC. If you store your files in the haze over, you can pick up where you left disconnected no substance which device you happen to use—though not for much longer. Microsoft sadly plans to kill Timeline's cross-device sync. IT's a great feature while it lasts though.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Windows 10 Timeline sport is part of the in operation system's Task Opinion interface.

Timeline isn't perfect. Developers need to admit their software to hook into the feature, and umpteen touristed programs—including Google Chrome—father't rile (though Microsoft offers a "World Wide Web Activities" extension that adds Chromium-plate reinforcement). That gives the joyride a Microsoft-centric feel for. But it's incredibly handy heedless, especially if you pass a lot of time working in Office.

Visible Timeline by clicking the Task View icon in Windows 10's taskbar or past urgent Windows Key + Tab, and be sure to read our Windows 10 Timeline guide for Thomas More granular inside information.

2. Essential desktops

Virtual desktops are catnip for brass-haunted power users. They're wildly useful, rental you launch separate "virtual" versions of your desktop, each running its own instances of software. You could run one virtual desktop for work tasks and another for your entertainment apps, for instance, OR keep a primary working desktop stocked with Bureau apps for spreadsheet-slinging, and another dedicated to multimedia editing.

Virtual desktops finally became native in Windows 10 later years of popularity on Linux operative systems…but Microsoft's hidden absent the once-prominent feature as the years have passed. To take off resounding your have, click the Task View image in Windows 10's taskbar to mobilize your Timeline and choose the tiny +New desktop text at the elevation-left-wing of the screen. Once you're set upward, use the same Task View port to switch among open virtual desktops in the bar that appears at the top of the screen. Delight your newfound productivity!

3. Cloud clipboard

Brad Chacos/IDG

It's a multi-twist world. If you have a habit of hopping from PC to PC, Windows 10's synchronization features (tied to your Microsoft chronicle) can pull in every system you sit at feel like home. As of the October 2018 Update, even the contents of your clipboard can travel with you. The new Cloud Clipboard lets you copy text on one PC, then paste it along another. IT's a sterling compounding with the also-new Clipboard History enabled in the October 2018 Update.

To get started using it, head to Bug out > Settings > System > Clipboard and flip both toggles to the Happening position.

4. Close Sharing

Brad Chacos/IDG

Sometimes you pauperization to partake in more than just schoolbook among multiple PCs, and inevitably information technology's when you can't put hands on your trusty flash effort. Enter Nearby Sharing, another recent Windows 10 addition that uses the power of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba you wirelessly share files and hyperlinks with local PCs. Simply right-click a file, select the Share option, and break up the finish local anesthetic data processor. The recipient volition receive a Windows pop fly notification showing the transfer.

You'll need to set up Nearby Sharing before you can use it, and your rigs require Bluetooth capabilities to shoot advantage of the feature. If you meet that necessity, channelise to Start > Settings > System > Shared Experiences and turn along the pick to "Share crossways devices." You arse select whether the sharing feature works with whatever nearby PC, or only ones tied to your own Microsoft account.

Check out our Near Sharing explainer for more nitty-gritty details.

5. Computer memory Signified

Brad Chacos/IDG

Your Recycle bin and Downloads brochure are the silent space-eaters on your Windows PC. Over time, they give the sack all bloat to gigabytes and gigabytes in size—specially if you regularly update your discrete graphics drivers, each iteration of which weighs in at about 500MB a pop. Fighting the creep! Windows 10's Storage Sense helps to purge cast-off files in those locations mechanically when specific, drug user-formed scenarios are met.

Head to Start > Settings > System > Storage to enable Storage Signified, then fine-tune the settings by clicking the Change how we free up blank space automatically link. Personally, I look-alike to running play it every sidereal day, but have the scans erase only files that are much 30 days old.

If you want to give Storage Sense even Sir Thomas More control over your stuff, you can give IT manage the files that are stored in your local OneDrive folder and backed up to your OneDrive account in the cloud. Depot Sense can send whatsoever files that have been left unopened for a given length of time straight to the cloud, deleting the section version. That's a bridge excessively far for my tastes, but if you incline heavily on OneDrive taint storage, IT could atomic number 4 a very convenient pick to activate.

6. File History

Michael Homnick/IDG

Sometimes you don't want to lose what you've left behind. Windows 10's awful, yet obscure File History feature keeps redeemable records of all change you've ready-made to a document, taking backup snapshots of your Libraries, Desktop, Contacts, and Favorites every hour (though the frequency can be tweaked). If you need to domesticise deleted text from a previous version of a file, File History has your bet on.

You'll need to dedicate a secondary drive off to File History, but it can be either internal storage or a portable drive—yay! Check out our File History guide for step-away-step instructions happening place setting it aweigh, and our roundup of the best external calculative drives if you need hardware to store all those bits and bytes connected.

Here's an golden oldie but a goodie: If you compensate-click the Start menu, it'll summon a bigger list of golf links to enthusiast-grade features, like the Gimmick Manager, Undertaking Managing director, Event Viewer, Disk Management, and PowerShell.

8. Immortal Mode

If you want tardily access to a livelong host of tweaking options, spirit no promote than this other ancient, notwithstandin oft-forgotten enthusiast tweak: God Mode. This Easter Egg consolidates a massive sum of money of power user settings into a only, well-heeled-to-parse port. The options are grouped into lucid categories supported on undertaking types, much A "Administrative tools," "Ease of access middle-of-the-road," and "System." It's great.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Behold, the facial expressio of God Mode.

To enable Supreme Being Musical mode, create a new folder and leave information technology empty. (I like to plop Supreme Being Mode on my desktop.) Past right-click the booklet, select Rename, and give information technology the following name:

God Modal value.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.

Just cut and paste that in to represent sure you get into't make any typos. Feel unimprisoned to change the text ahead the first period, which gives the folder its name—if you aren't great on the traditional "Immortal Mode" moniker, you can change it to whatever pleases you. Press Enter to save the name change, and the folder's icon will change to mimic the Control Panel's fancy. Spread functioning and bask in God Mode's fully unified halo.

If you want to learn more about this Easter Egg, including choice versions sacred to particularised types of settings, hold in out our God Mode explainer from the Windows 7 era. Told you it's been around a while—but many enthusiasts I mouth to take never detected of IT.

9. Dynamic lock

Enthusiasts often juggle multiple tasks simultaneously, and you don't want prying eyes peeking at those projects when you ill-use away from your desk. But if you forget to jam Windows + L when you saunter off, your PC will be an open book to whatever bystanders—unless you use Windows 10's Dynamic Lock.

IDG / Mark Hachman

Windows 10 tush use your earpiece to determine when you're away from your Personal computer and lock it down.

Dynamic Lock pairs with your headphone via Bluetooth and mechanically locks the paired PC when you wander away. What Sir Thomas More bum you ask for? Activating the feature requires a quick multi-ill-trea process where you tie your devices in collaboration. Hit up our Dynamic Lock tutorial to turn information technology on, complete with deeper execution insights and golf links to convenient tools that can avail you polish how far you need to wander before Dynamic Lock kicks in.

Heads up: Your reckoner leave pauperism Bluetooth capabilities to run Dynamic Lock, and the lineament impacts the battery life of both your phone and laptop.

10. Windows Reliability Monitor

Brad Chacos/IDG

Finally, there's a little-far-famed tool that can sometimes warn you of impending disaster—atomic number 4 it in software or ironware take form—before your system gives up the ghost. The Windows Reliability Proctor provides a day-by-day and case-by-suit snapshot of the health of your system of rules. It's especially handy if you're hard to hunt down questionable software that could be causing unbalance in your fishing gear. (On my system, it's the notoriously buggy withal uproariously awesome Goat Simulator that causes the most issues.)

To retrieve it, simply type Reliability into the Windows search bar and choice the View reliability history option that appears.

If you see an roll down of blood-red X's when you check it out, make a point your backups are in order—and no, File History ISN't an acceptable backup solution away its lonesome. Better unadventurous than sorry!

Editor's note: We update this article periodically to mention newfound developments and update the tips. We most lately updated the article to refer the Windows 10 English hawthorn 2021 Update and quotatio Timeline's impending cross-device sync demise.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/403543/windows-10-tools-you-might-not-know-about.html

Posted by: wordaboricand1983.blogspot.com

Share this post