Windows 10’s Top 30 Tricks, Tips, and Tweaks in Pictures

Windows 10 comes with a lot of amazing features but not all of them are readily available. Let’s dig a little deeper and unveil new tweaks, tricks and features that will change the way you use your PC.

Have you heard? Windows XP is dead—it’s been officially dead for a while now—and if you haven’t already made the switch to Windows 10 on your primary operating system, this might be the final nudge you need (that’s if Jake’s experience with Windows 10 doesn’t convince you). By the way, you can install Windows 10 using your USB flash drive.

Digging a little deeper into Windows 10 Features

With it being free, and Microsoft pushing the update to users, most of you probably already have migrated to Windows 10. Its constantly evolving nature means fresh features arrive twice per year, and with all the new goodies come a legion of new tweaks and tricks—some of which unlock powerful functionality hidden to everyday users. Others simply let you mold the Windows 10 experience into the shape you see fit. Here are some of the most useful tweaks, tricks, and tips that we are able to put together.

[Further Reading: How to Display your Favorite Websites on your Windows 10 Start Menu]

However, you need to brace yourself as some of these may break as the operating system evolves given Microsoft’s new “Windows as a service” mentality. The idea is to keep this page updated overtime to reflect the OS’s current status.

Activate Windows 10 Night Light

If you use an iPhone, iPad or macOS system you may use the built-in blue light feature ‘Night Shift’.

The Night Light feature you’ll find in Windows 10 is pretty much Night Shift for Windows.

Night Light makes the screen warmer in the evenings as it reduces the amount of blue light emitted.

Various scientific studies show that exposure to blue light in the evening makes it harder to fall asleep because (like all artificial light) it affects the circadian rhythms that manage our body clock.

Once preserve of late-night caffeine fuelled coders and over-worked, under-fed writers, screen temperature features have since become mainstream. Google’s Android and ChromeOS operating systems have one, as do iOS and macOS from Apple, and Microsoft’s Windows 10.

Like those features, Windows 10 Night Light automatically warms the temperature of your display after sunset. This makes your laptop screen or PC monitor easier on your eyes and reduces disruption to your circadian rhythm, helping it to tick along nicely.

In the morning, your display returns to its regular settings.

Night Light is a system feature; you do not need to install a separate application like Flux to use it. This makes it very easy to automatically adjust the screen temperature in Windows 10.

Night Light for Ubuntu will automatically adjust the amount of blue light your monitor or laptop display emits based on your location and the time of day.

These features are said to help reduce eye strain by adjusting your screen’s color temperature during after-dark computing sessions. That makes it easier to fall asleep when you’re done.

To activate Night Light, head to Settings > System > Display. Once you’ve done so, open the feature’s settings to fine-tune its behavior.

Scroll any window even when they’re inactive

It used to be that Windows only allowed you to scroll active windows. Now in Windows 10, you can set an option to scroll both active and inactive windows by just hovering with the mouse cursor over a window.

This feature is not a ground-breaking Windows 10 hack or tweak but it comes quite handy when time is in essence and your need to peek through your to-do list.

Windows 10 inactive scroll feature is enabled by default, but if it’s not, go to Settings > Devices > Mouse & touchpad, and make sure to enable the Scroll inactive windows when I hover over them option.

Find the hidden images

It may seems Microsoft has a CDN that updates these images based on what you click that you like or not. Want to save one or more of those images for future use? Here’s where they are hiding!

• Open Explorer and browse to:

%localappdata%PackagesMicrosoft.ContentDeliveryManager_[custom string of characters]LocalStateAssets

• Copy all of the files to a new directory.
• Open a command prompt in that directory.
• Run this command ren . *.png and [enter]
• Browse through them and find the ones you like!

Make Cortana’s ears perk up

Cortana’s finally made the leap to the PC in Windows 10, assuming many of the operating system’s search functions and dishing out just as much sass as the Windows Phone version. But by default, she doesn’t listen for your commands. But by default, she doesn’t listen for your commands.

If you’d like to be able to just shout commands at your PC, launch Cortana by clicking the search field in the taskbar and select the three-lined options menu in the upper-left corner. Select Settings for the list, then simply enable the “Let Cortana respond when you say ‘Hey Cortana’” option. You’ll need an active microphone for this to work, of course.

While you’re poking around Cortana’s options, you can dive into the Notebook menu to fine-tune exactly what personal data Microsoft’s digital assistant can access. Remember, however, that like Google Now, Cortana’s effectiveness is directly related to how much she knows about you.

Enabling Cortana on the Windows lock screen lets you use voice commands to view and edit your schedule at a glance. It’s pretty handy! To turn on the feature, open Cortana and head to “Cog” icon > Settings > Use Cortana even when my device is locked.

Secret, powerful new command line tools

Windows 10 packs a slew of nifty new command line features, including—hallelujah!—the ability to copy and paste inside the command prompt with Crtl + C and Crtl + V.

To activate the goodies, open the command prompt. Right-click its title bar, then select Properties. You can find and enable the new features under the Edit Options section of the Options tab.

Bash comes to Windows

If you got all hot and bothered over the ability to use keyboard shortcuts to paste text in the Command Prompt, wait until you get a load of this.

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update added the full, legendary Bash shell to Microsoft’s operating system, thanks to a partnership with Canonical, the company that guided Ubuntu Linux’s development. And it’s running natively, without virtual machines or containers. With the right tricks, you can even use Bash to run graphic Linux applications or even the Unity desktop itself right inside Windows—though those unintended features are definitely limited. Look for Ubuntu, Fedora, and SUSE Linux entries in the Windows Store to start using Bash in Windows.

Windows 10 Audio Source Switching

Windows 10’s in-taskbar volume controls pack a niche, yet nifty touch: selectable sources. Clicking the audio device name in the volume controls summons a list of all connected audio outputs, meaning you can switch from your headphones to your speakers and back again without having to dive into the Control Panel. Yay!

The April 2018 Update added more granular audio options to the Settings app too, breaking them away from the Control Panel even further.

Activate Windows 10 Spatial Sound

That’s not the only audio trick lurking within Windows 10. Windows Sonic for Headphones offers a virtual surround sound format that can make the audio coming from your headset feel more lush and atmospheric. The effectiveness of the feature varies depending on your gear and how sensitive you are towards audio cues.

To activate Windows Sonic, right-click the speaker/audio icon in the system tray on the right side of your task bar, then select Spatial sound (none). In the window that opens, click the drop-down menu and select Windows Sonic for Headphones. Click , then OK, and you’re done!

Windows Timeline

Timeline helps you pick up where you left off. Clicking the Task View button in the taskbar or pressing Windows Key + Tab summons the feature, which displays a—you guessed it—time line of your activity in supported apps, stretching back over the past. Even more handily, Microsoft lets you group related apps together into “Activities” in Timeline, so that when you open that week-old budget document, for example, the presentations and websites you referenced at the time can be easily summoned as well. This even syncs across devices, so it could be especially useful if you use multiple PCs.

The fly in the ointment: Only a limited number of apps work with Timeline currently, though Microsoft offers tools for developers to bake in support. That includes Office, Adobe’s Creative Cloud, and native Windows 10 apps like News and Maps, but Microsoft Edge is the only compatible browser. Bummer. You can deactivate Timeline by heading to Settings > Privacy > Activity History.

Cloud clipboard

Windows 10’s copy and paste functionality has been hit and miss for years, but now you can deploy that bugginess across multiple PCs with cloud clipboard—a genuinely useful feature introduced in the October 2018 Update. Head to Start > Settings > System > Clipboard and enable “Sync across devices” to start copying data on one PC and pasting it on another PC.

While you’re in this menu, enabling “Clipboard history” lets you save multiple items to the clipboard so you can use them again later. Nifty stuff.

Your Phone

Want to tie your phone and PC closer together? Download Microsoft’s Your Phone companion app for Android, and link it to your PC using the new Your Phone app from the Microsoft Store.

[Further Reading: Learn how you can track the location of your Windows 10 PC, Tablet or Phone]

Your Phone lets you open, view, copy, and share photos that you took on your phone, as well as send and reply to texts right on your PC. There’s an iOS version as well, but it’s much, much more limited.

Snip & Sketch

The firmly entrenched Snipping Tool within Windows is finally getting replaced and upgraded. The October 2018 Update added Snip & Sketch, a new tool that lets you select a portion of the screen to copy when you press Windows + Shift + S. After doing so, the selected screenshot will be copied to your clipboard, so you can paste it into any image editing software—including the standalone Snip & Sketch app, which lets you annotate and share your marked-up images.

Near Share

Near Share makes it easy to share files and URLs with local PCs over the air, negating the need for flash drives or chat apps to pass something along. If you open the Share interface in Microsoft Edge or File Explorer, you’ll see PCs with Nearby Sharing enabled appear as an option if you have the April 2018 Update installed. Recipients receive a pop-up notification when something is sent. Think of it as an alternative to Apple’s Airdrop, albeit one without any mobile support.

To use Near Share, your computer needs both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi working, and you’ll have to enable the Nearby Sharing option in Settings before you can start using it. Transfer speeds were pretty slow and Bluetooth-like in our tests, so you may still want to resort to alternative means to pass especially large files around. Microsoft says the feature automatically chooses to use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth depending on what’s available, and what’s faster.

Ransomware protection

Ransomware is a growing problem. It infects PCs, encrypts your files, and holds everything hostage until you pay a ransom—hence the name. The best defense against ransomware is frequent backups and strong security software, but Windows 10 now includes basic protection right in your operating system.

Controlled Folder Access “protects your files and folders from unauthorized changes by unfriendly applications.” Your Documents, Pictures, Movies, and Desktop folders are protected by default, though you can block other folders manually or whitelist trusted software to access your locked-down info. You can tweak Controlled Folder Access by opening the Windows Security app (formerly Windows Defender), heading to the Virus & threat protection tab, and clicking the “Manage ransomware protection” link at the bottom.

Dark theme

If you love dark themes, you love dark themes. Light themes sear your eyeballs. Fortunately, Windows 10 now supports a dark theme.

Head to Start > Settings > Personalization > Color and select the “dark” option under “Choose your default app mode.” The Windows 10 October 2018 Update extended the dark theme to include File Explorer, too. Enjoy!

Enable Windows 10 Dynamic Lock

Say goodbye to Windows + L. Dynamic Lock is a handy feature that pairs your PC with your phone over Bluetooth, then automatically locks your computer when you wander away from it.

To start using it, marry the two devices in Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers, then activate Dynamic Lock at Settings > Account > Sign-in options.

Game Bar

If you’re into playing around on your PC, Windows 10’s Game Bar—summoned by pressing Windows + G in-game—holds all sorts of nifty extras. It’s always been able to take screenshots or videos of gameplay clips, but as of the Windows 10 Creators Update, the Game Bar also offers easy-peasy Beam game streaming and the intriguing Game Mode, which can improve performance on resource-limited systems. The October 2018 Update overhauled the interface yet again, adding inline volume controls.

The Game Bar’s handy even if you don’t actually play, as it can be used to record video of any app—not just games. Windows 10 also has a dedicated Gaming section in its Start menu Settings to let you tinker with options, including Xbox networking and parental controls.

Per-app GPU management

The Windows 10 April 2018 Update added the ability to tell Windows which graphics hardware—discrete or integrated—to use when you open specific apps. It sounds niche, but the feature could prove pretty helpful if you’ve got a gaming laptop and want it to last longer.

By default, booting up a game switches over to discrete graphics, which use a lot more energy than the graphics cores integrated in Intel chips and AMD Ryzen APUs. But a lot of indie and retro games play just fine on integrated graphics. With Windows 10’s per-app GPU management, you can manually tell the system to stick to the more power-efficient option for games that don’t need the extra oomph.

Go to Settings > Display, then click the Graphics settings link at the very bottom of the page to start tinkering.

OneDrive Files on Demand

It’s back, huzzah! OneDrive Files on Demand resurrects Windows 8.1’s “placeholder” feature for the cloud storage service baked into Windows 10. OneDrive Files on Demand shows all of the files you have stored in OneDrive in a folder on your PC, but they’re just pointers synced with the cloud—not actually files installed on your PC. Unless you want them to be. You can select which files and folders to make available locally.

Storage Sense

Over time, your PC can quietly fill with needless junk without your even realizing it, as the Recycle Bin and temporary files suck up your storage. Storage Sense helps combat the creep. Head to Settings > System > Storage and enable the Storage Sense option to have Windows start automatically clearing out unneeded temporary files, and deleting any files in your Recycle Bin over 30 days old. You can tweak those options using the Change how we free up space link underneath the option.

The October 2018 Update added the ability to have Storage Sense send long-untouched files from anywhere on your computer to your OneDrive cloud storage, freeing up space on your hard drive. It could be a useful addition if you’re close to filling up your local storage, but keep an eye on your available OneDrive space—cloud storage isn’t free. Fortunately, the feature includes granular controls.

Mixed Reality

The Fall Creators Update added “Mixed Reality” to Windows 10. The most obvious use for it is in the legion of new Windows Mixed Reality headsets, but you can check out the benefits even if you don’t have one of those. The Mixed Reality Viewer app lets you drag digital 3D objects you’ve created in the Paint 3D app into the real world, using the combined might of your device’s camera and display. It’s not really augmented reality since you can’t interact with the objects, but it’s closer to “Mixed Reality” than the headsets are.

Somewhat related, the nifty Story Remix tool in the Photos app lets you add fantastic 3D animations to videos you’ve captured, among many other talents. It’s pretty sweet!

Start menu folders

What’s old is new again: You can create basic Start menu folders in Windows 10, organizing Live Tiles into clusters. Simply drag your Start menu apps on top of each other to create folders that expand when clicked on. As of the October 2018 Update, you can now name the folders you create, but you have to expand it open to see the option.

Troubleshooting, troubleshot

The Windows 10 Creators Update added a helpful touch for distressed PC users. The operating system’s consolidated all of its troubleshooting tools in a single location: Home > Update & Security > Troubleshoot. If you run into trouble, run there first.

Turn off File Explorer’s Quick Access view

When you open File Explorer in Windows 10, it defaults to a new Quick Access view that shows your most frequently accessed folders and recently viewed files. I love it, personally, but if you’d rather File Explorer defaulted to the “This PC” view found in Windows 8, here’s how.

Open File Explorer, then select View > Options from the Ribbon. A Folder Options window will open. Click the “Open File Explorer” drop-down menu at top, then select the “This PC” option. Click OK and you’re done!

Manage notifications

Windows 10’s Action Center houses and manages the notifications spawned by your system’s various apps. You might not want every Windows Store app you install barking at you all the time, however, or maybe you don’t want to see any notifications while you’re in presentation mode. You might just want to silent the annoying ads that the Get Office app spawns. Fortunately, those are easy to tweak.

To tinker with you your notification settings, head to Start menu > Settings > Systems > Notifications and actions. Individual Windows Store apps, like the Mail app, tend to have more granular notification options in the Settings menus inside the apps themselves.

Schedule your restarts

This is wonderful. If you’ve got pending updates that require you to reboot your PC, Windows 10 will allow you to schedule a specific time for it to do so. Finally!

Open the Settings option in the Start menu, then head to Updates and Recovery > Windows Update > Restart options to see the scheduling screen above.

Get Windows updates from other sources

But the Windows Update upgrades don’t end there. Windows 10 introduces a new option that lets you download updates using peer-to-peer technology, rather than Microsoft directly. It could help you get that hot security patch faster when everybody’s hammering Microsoft’s dedicated servers, or save you bandwidth in a computer-crowded house—just download the new patch once from Microsoft, then share it among the PCs under your care.

To tinker with the setting, head to Start > Settings > Update & Recovery > Delivery Optimization. By default, “Get updates from more than one place” is enabled and configured to grab updates from PCs on both your local network and the Internet at large. If you don’t like the idea of your PC using your bandwidth to share Windows Updates with strangers, be sure to disable it. If you leave it active, the “Advanced options” link lets you fine-tune how Windows uses your network to download and share updates, as you can see above.

Seize control of Windows Updates

While the ability to schedule installation times for updates is very welcome indeed, not everyone is happy about the way Windows 10 handles patches—specifically, that you can’t refuse them. Windows 10 Pro users—but not Windows 10 Home users—can delay downloading updates for some time, but eventually, Microsoft will force them on you.

There are some actions you can take to exert control over your Windows Update experience, however. Most notably, if you’re using Wi-Fi for connectivity, you can set Windows 10’s Wi-Fi connections as metered to download updates when you’d like to, rather than when Microsoft wants you to. The Active Hours feature lets you tell Windows specific times not to install updates. And if you ever encounter a borked update that refuses to play nice with your PC, Microsoft’s released a tool that allows you to choose individual updates so they won’t be downloaded again.

Those workarounds aren’t a replacement for being able to manually choose the Windows Update you’d like to install, but they should help ease the sting a little, at least.

Fresh keyboard shortcuts!

Windows 10 packs a handful of fresh keyboard shortcuts, all tied to newfound abilities inside the revamped operating system. There are many more than we can list here, so head over to our guide to Windows 10’s keyboard shortcuts to learn all about them. If you really want to get fancy, augment those hotkeys with Windows 10’s new touchpad gestures for true shortcut mastery.

Declutter your taskbar

Two of Windows 10’s standout features are its Cortana search integration and newly added virtual desktop support—but they claim a sizeable chunk of your taskbar. If you don’t care about either (or don’t mind using Windows key + Tab to leap through virtual desktops) you can reclaim that onscreen real estate.

Everything starts by right-clicking an empty section of your taskbar. Select Cortana, and choose to Show Cortana icon only. You can also remove the Cortana and Task View buttons from the same Taskbar menu.

Thank You!

We feel the need to thank you following through with this long episode of top 30 Windows 10 trick, tips and tweaks. The article doesn’t stop here; share your ideas with us on the comment section.

We look forward to seeing you again!