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by 72deluxe 2139 days ago
Loads of shortcuts: F2: rename

F3: find

Alt F4: close window, ctrl-w seems to do this a lot these days too

Alt minus: show child document window menu

Alt space: show window menu, useful if you remember the X for maximize/minimize, z for resize, m for move, r for restore immediately afterwards.

F4 go to address bar in Explorer

F5 refresh

Ctrl F6 switch windows in MDI interface

Ctrl escape: show start menu

Shift-F10: right click menu

Windows E: explorer

Alt-up in explorer: go to directory above; backspace/alt-left: go to previous history item

Windows W windows ink for annotation

Windows R for run

Windows U for narrator

Windows F used to do find but now shows the feedback tool, which I think is a loss

Any command after the word control will open control panel to the right place, eg control display

Windows D show desktop toggle

Windows M minimise all windows, windows shift M restore windows

Ctrl-shift-escape: show task manager

Ctrl tab/ctrl-shift-tab move to next/previous UI item so you can use the UI with a keyboard; this is why web apps that pretend to be native are so useless and annoying because this doesn't work

Also system items normally end with .msc to open the management console, eg. Compmgmt.msc. There's a load of these that help you get to the nitty gritty of the system.

Turn on "show accelerators" in accessibility and menu entries and buttons will have their accelerator underlined, eg the O in OK or F in File. You can then use alt-(letter) to go to it, eg alt-f to open the file menu, s for save.

Honestly I don't know how I would have got through using Windows for decades without these shortcuts. I always find the Mac relies on mouse usage a lot more and the ctrl-F2 and ctrl-F3 shortcut to get to the menu bar and dock on Mac doesn't compare.

2 comments

Windows G: "game bar" - includes built in screen recorder, which launches quickly and captures audio etc along with screen
Thanks for the list - there are quite a few I didn't know! Hopefully more keyboard navigation is in my future.