#36: Navigating Windows by keyboard

Posted on July 19, 2024 by ewand

Now and again, it’s useful to be able to use Windows without mouse or touch, especially should the unexpected happen. Accessibility needs aside, it’s been possible to move around and control Windows since the very early days, just by using combinations of keystrokes.

ALT+F4 is maybe the most memorable (for closing a window), apart from CTRL+ALT+DEL.

A few other window management keystrokes worthy of mention:

WindowsKey+up/down/right/left arrows – maximize the current window to fullscreen (up), back from fullscreen to previous size or minimizes it (down), and snaps the window to one side of the screen or back (left/right).

ALT+TAB / SHIFT+ALT+TAB – cycles through the current open windows (and add SHIFT to go backwards). Releasing the ALT+TAB combo then jumps to whichever window is highlighted; press CTRL+ALT+TAB to just display the open windows, let you move between them and jump to one by clicking on it or pressing ENTER.

ALT+left/right arrow – moves back and forward, as in clicking the back/forward arrow icons in a browser

WindowsKey + number – jumps to the nth application on your taskbar; if you pin an app/window to the taskbar and it stays in the same place so you could use WindowsKey+1 to jump to Explorer, Win+2 to go to the browser etc.

See more here. Many more.

Powered Up

As previous ToWs have mentioned (here, here, here etc), the collection of utilities called PowerToys is well worth installing; one of its default apps is a shortcut guide showing some key WindowsKey + nnn options. (Press WindowsKey+SHIFT+/ to display temporarily).

On the topic of PowerToys, one of the utilities is a special “Run” app which does a good bit more than the standard WindowsKey+R command which displays the old fashioned Run dialog;

PowerToys Run has a load of special characters to make special searches; enter ?? something will search the web using your default, or (optionally) put o: something searches your OneNote notebooks for that term.

Somewhat controversially, the default activation keystroke for PowerToys Run is ALT+Space, which has been a Windows shortcut to display the context menu of the current window. Pressing that combo followed by M or R would be used to move / resize (using the arrow keys) or N and X would minimize / maximize that window.

In a curmudgeonly article, El Reg complained that old school keyboard warriors would be most upset. The also suggest that the pre-Win95 icon for that corner of the window was a Spacebar, supposedly to illustrate that you press ALT+SPACE to open it.

Never fear, keyboard fans – you can simply remap the activation key to something else (like WindowsKey+Space) and the ALT+SPACE combo will continue to work like it’s 1987.

610 – Windows 11 Hokey Cokey

Posted on December 10, 2021 by ewand

The Hokey Cokey / Hokey Pokey is a childhood party tradition many of us will recall, where you put something in and take it out again, or a step forward then a step back. The transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 aims to simplify the user interface to a large extent, hiding things that some people think just get in the way, while beautifying the stuff that remains.

Power users might grind their teeth at some choices – like the context menu when you right-click on a file; it’s more spaced out (in terms of screen size) but designed to be clearer and more relevant, hiding some of the chaff that 3^rd party applications might install.

It even adds some hitherto hidden features, like Copy as path, which puts the full path & name of the selected file into the clipboard, ready to be pasted into a file selection dialog, for example. Some common commands – like cut or copy – have been replaced with icons at either the top or bottom of the dialog. If you want to use the old-style menu with the full set of options, you can do that too by selecting Show more… or pressing SHIFT+F10.

You can disable the new menu if you prefer the old style – just run a single command from an elevated command prompt then use Task Manager to restart the Windows Explorer application (or reboot).

Another piece of Windows that’s had a refresh is the notification function – first appearing in Windows 8 and having redesigns with every variant of Windows since, this is an attempt to summarize alerts from multiple apps in a similar way to how smartphones do it.

Windows 10 shows a little callout in the corner of the screen with the number of notifications to read; click on that or press WindowsKey+A and you’ll see a pane slide in showing notifications on the top, and a load of Quick Actions icons below.

Windows 11 has cleaned the UI up somewhat, with notifications and Quick Actions being separated out – look for a simple bubble with a number in the corner of the screen. Clicking on that or the date/time in the system tray (or press WindowsKey+N) displays notifications.

Pressing WindowsKey+A or just clicking on one of the network / sound / battery icons on the system tray will display the Quick Settings pop up, which can be tweaked by clicking on the pen icon. You can easily remove settings you don’t use – like Battery Saver, maybe – and swap in others from a fairly short list. Perhaps that list will grow in time.

Also worth a note is that WindowsKey+W brings in widgets from the other side, showing news, weather, calendar etc.

Tip o’ the Week 473 – Teams Shortcuts

Posted on April 5, 2019 by ewand

Many people who rely on the same applications to do repetitive tasks, will want to learn quicker ways of doing them – and use shortcut keys to good effect. Shortcuts have been covered in ToW previously – eg. how to start modern apps quickly, or navigating between running apps.

As world+dog moves from internal corporate email to Teams, Slack etc, it’s handy to know how to get the best out of the new messaging environment. Before abandoning Outlook already, here’s a reminder of some especially useful shortcut keys:

CTRL-2 – jumps to Calendar; useful if you’re in mail and want to quickly check something in the diary.
CTRL-1 – sets focus to “mail” – whatever folder you were looking at before moving away to check your calendar etc. CTRL-SHIFT-i will jump to your Inbox regardless of where you are in the UI (eg you might be in another mail folder, or looking at Calendar/Tasks etc)
CTRL-3 – jumps to Contacts (or “People” as Outlook now calls it)
CTRL-4 – jump to Tasks.
CTRL-5, -6, -7 and -8 will take you to long-dead Outlook features. Try them. Take a teary trip down memory lane.

And there are lots and lots more.

When it comes to using Teams, one of the most useful shortcut tips is essentially the same as the Outlook set above – CTRL-number takes you to one of the nodes on the side-bar that corresponds to the number from the top – eg CTRL-4 will jump to Meetings, which is handy if you have Teams calls in you calendar and want to join the calls from there rather than Outlook.

Incidentally, if you normally go into an appointment in Outlook and click the “Join Teams Meeting” link in the text body, you may tire of continually telling Outlook that yes, you did mean to switch applications, and it’s OK, you already have the desktop app…

Click the “Join Teams Meeting” icon on the Ribbon in Outlook instead, and you’ll skip this. If you’re super-skilful then you can jump straight to that command without lifting your fingers from the keyboard – just press the ALT key and you’ll see shortcut letters appear under each of the sections of the Ribbon; press the corresponding one (“H” if you’ve opened the meeting up in Outlook already), and you’ll then see a letter combo that will activate the Ribbon commands – Y1 in this case will jump straight into the meeting.

There are many other shortcuts in Teams, with varying degrees of usefulness. Customising the UI is still a bit clunky (eg you can’t add shortcuts straight to the sidebar or move items on it up and down) but you may be able to find a quick way of doing the things you need most. To see a summary of shortcut keys whilst in teams, just press CTRL-. (ie CTRL and full stop/period ‘.’).