Windows

Here is the ultimate compilation of Windows 10 tips and tricks to enhance your skills using Microsoft Windows. I’ve combined long-established tips and tricks with prominent new tricks that Microsoft added in 2020 and 2021. You’ll find these tips and tricks useful whether you’re using Windows for the first time or just wanting to enhance your Windows 10 skills.

Below is the complete list of contents. Click on any trick if you want to jump to it else, we can go one by one. Let’s get started.

Contents

1. Windows + V
2. Snip & Sketch
3. Aero Shake
4. Snap Assist
5. Dark Mode
6. Night Light
7. Dictation
8. Focus Assist
9. Calculator
10. Nearby Sharing

#1 Windows + V

You may be already aware that you can highlight text with Control + C and then use Control + V to paste it. It copies the text to the clipboard and then allows you to paste it in any Windows 10 app. One problem with this feature is it only keeps track of the last item you’ve copied to the clipboard, but Windows + V (Windows logo key + V) makes this even better.

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Go down to the “Start Menu” -> Go to “Settings”, into “System” and then choose “Clipboard” among the left-hand side options. Now on the right-hand side, you will see options for enable clipboard history and syncing paste options across devices. Turn these options on to enable the clipboard history and to sync it across different devices if you want. Once that is done, now when you copy any text, it will place those items in the clipboard. And when you will hold down the Windows + V, it will show you multiple items that are in your clipboard. You can select anyone that you would like to paste at your location. Once a text is pasted you can press Windows + V again to select another copied text. Windows V is a great new feature to keep track of multiple copy and paste options in your clipboard.

#2 Snip & Sketch

Snip & Sketch is a replacement for the snipping tool from Windows 10. You can access it by typing “Snip” in the Windows search box and opening up “Snip & Sketch”. Or you can press the Windows logo key + Shift + S as a keyboard shortcut to open it. Snip & Sketch lets you capture screen clippings, edit them and save them as a file. If you create a new snip, it gives you choices at the top whether you want to do a rectangular snip or something else. You can also do a freeform one or you can try to capture an entire window or the full screen.

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If you choose the rectangular snip, then you can just mark an area on your screen that you want to capture. And it will load it into Snip & Sketch. Once the screen capture is loaded into Snip & Sketch, you can edit it. You can draw using brushes or shapes, highlight text, or use an eraser to erase your edited stuff. You can crop the image as well. When you’re done you could save the image or copy it and paste it somewhere. You can also share it online or print it to share it offline or use it as paperwork. It also provides the flexibility to open it with another application.

You have one more option down in the notifications area. You can go to the notification area of your desktop and choose “Screen Snip”. It lets you do the same thing, and it loads that snip to the clipboard. Once you open it, it will be on the inside of Snip & Sketch. You can then do your editing there. So, if you need to capture any image on your screen just use the Snip & Sketch trick of Windows.

Also see – How to fix video TDR failure blue screen in Windows?

#3 Aero Shake

Aero Shake gives you the ability to close all the windows except the one that you have selected. If you click on the header portion at the top of a window and then shake it back and forth it closes all the windows behind it. Shake it again and it brings them back. That’s Aero Shake.

#4 Snap Assist

Snap Assist is another awesome addition to Windows 10 tips and tricks, It provides a smart way to manage windows on your screen. If you grab a header of a window and drag it to the top, Snap Assist snaps it into full screen. You can do the same thing by dragging it over to a corner and it brings it up into the corner section of the screen. You can do that to either side or to the top and bottom.

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If you drag it all the way to the left, it gives you the choice to select a second window to put on the right. Then it evenly splits them between the two sides of the screen. Snap Assist is controlled by going into the “Start Menu” -> “Settings” -> “System” -> “Multi-tasking” and then turn on the option for “Snap windows” on the right-hand side of the screen. You will also see some other options like “When I snap a window, automatically side it to fill available space”, “When I snap a window show what can I snap next to it” etc. Select the ones you like or check them all (default version) to take maximum advantage.

#5 Dark Mode

Windows 10 has a new dark mode setting. It’s available from the menu under “Start” -> “Settings” -> “Personalization” -> “Colors” among the left-hand panel. And here you have a choice of light, dark, or custom theme. Essentially these settings will decide the default windows mode and the default app mode. So, if you select “Dark” from the menu, it sets both, the default Windows mode and default app mode in dark. And if you choose light from the menu, it sets both to light. I personally prefer the dark windows mode with the light app mode, but you can set them however you like.

#6 Night Light

Normally your display emits a blue light which is what keeps you awake late at night. There is a feature available in Windows 10 to turn on a night light. You can access it by going to “Start Menu” -> “Settings” -> “System” -> “Display” and there you’ll see an option to turn on the night light. When you’ll look at the night light settings, you will see an option to adjust the strength of the night light.

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You can also schedule the night light time like from sunset to sunrise or maybe set individual hours. When you turn it on, it dims the emitted blue light which makes it is easier for you to sleep. Night light is a great feature to use if you plan on working on your computer late at night.

Also see – How to fix 0x80080005 error on Windows?

#7 Dictation

Dictation is a brand-new feature in Windows 10 that allows you to record your voice in different apps. You can enable it by going to “Start Menu” -> “Settings” -> “Ease of Access”. Then scroll down to “Speech” on the left-hand side. Now, turn on the “Speech Recognition” to enable the dictation control. You will find this option on the right-hand panel below the heading “Dictate text and control your device using only your voice”.

You can also press the Windows key + Ctrl + S to toggle speech recognition on and off. When it’s enabled you can tell it what to do, maybe something like “open notepad”. And keep on speaking the text you want to write in the notepad. You can also make corrections by saying something like “Select the last paragraph”, “Strike the last word” etc. Once you turn it off you can go back to regular use. Dictation can help you do some really cool Windows tricks, so give it a try.

Also see – How to transfer files from Windows to iPhone without iTunes?

#8 Focus Assist

Focus assist is a utility that lets you get notifications in your Action Center in the bottom right corner of your Windows desktop screen. When you will click on it, you will see that there is a focus assist option among other options in a square box structure.

Focus assist option switches between “Priority only”, “Alarms only” or off. If you right-click on it and go to “Settings”, you can adjust the settings.

• Off mode – When it’s off you get all notifications from your apps.
• Priority only – When you set it to “Priority only”, you can customize your priority list so that it only shows incoming calls and reminder notifications from pinned contacts and specific apps.
• Alarm only – When you set it to “Alarms only”, it hides all the notifications except for major alarm notifications.  

Once you scroll down, you’ll see many other options to configure. You can also choose the time of the day when you might want those notifications to be disabled. You can choose to turn notifications on/off when you are duplicating your display. In case you’re doing a presentation or when you’re playing a game or when you’re using an app in full-screen mode. Window’s focus assist provides you variety of options to stay focused. I like to set mine to “Priority only” as I’m working through the day. But you can scroll down and choose to turn it to alarms only you’re really trying to focus on the work.

#9 Calculator

The Windows 10 Calculator has been improved dramatically. Take a look at the options you have now available. You have your standard calculator that you’re used to, and you’ve probably seen the scientific calculator before but now you have options for graphing, programmer, date calculation and a whole bunch of other conversions. If you select graphing put in a function like y = X ^2 – 2. You’ll see what that looks like on a graph. And the date calculation lets you pick from different dates and it’ll tell you what the difference is. You can add and subtract from a date as well.

Currency conversion lets you update to the latest exchange rates. Just put in a dollar amount and you can choose from a whole bunch of different country’s currency to get the conversion rate. You also have conversions for volume, length, weight, mass, temperature, energy, area, speed, time, and power data. It’s amazing how many different options you have available here. With the latest version of Windows 10 you have a whole bunch of new features available in Calculator.

Also see. – How to transfer Windows 10 license to a new computer owner?

#10 Nearby Sharing

Windows 10 allows you to share documents, photos, links to websites, and more with nearby sharing. You can enable it by going to the “Start Menu” -> “Settings” -> “System” -> “Shared Experiences” (among the left-hand side options) and then select the toggle on the right-hand side of the screen to enable “Nearby Sharing”.

Under the enable button you’ll see a configuration “I can share or receive content from” with two options. You can choose to share documents and other items with “Everyone Nearby” rather than just “My devices”. If you choose my devices, it will restrict others around you to connect with your system.

Once that’s set, you’ll be able to see in your notification area on the right-hand corner of your Windows screen, the “Nearby Sharing” option. You can turn it on and off. Once it’s turned on you can go into a link for a web page in the browser and select the share option from the Menu bar to share it.

Once you select “Share”, a new dialog box will pop up which will show you available devices nearby.  When you select one of those devices, it will send a notification to receive the document or link on the other device.

You can also share photos. To share pictures, open the picture and you’ll see a share option in the upper right corner of the menu bar. Once you select it, a dialog box will appear again with the available devices to choose from. Select the device with which you want to share the picture and it will send a prompt to accept the photo to the selected device. It is similar to someone receiving a document or link. You get a prompt that someone is trying to send the data to your device, and you can choose to save, open or decline it. “Share Nearby” works great if you have Bluetooth enabled on those devices.

So, these were some cool Windows 10 tips and tricks for 2021. Do let us know if you use these features and add ons for Windows already. And if you have some more cool tips and tricks then do comment down below to let us know and we will add them to this list.

Windows is an awesome operating system and does come with a lot of functionalities that eases our day-to-day task. One of them is the “type here to search” box, which windows have provided on the left-hand corner of the screen, near the start menu button. It’s pretty handy and helps to find files and folders on the system quickly. If you are looking for any app, settings, files, or maybe any new information from the web, you can just type it in the search box to get results. It also works as a calculator and can get you answers to some math problems ;).

In this post, I’m going to talk about the windows search box and how you can remove this search bar from the taskbar if you don’t want it.

Also see – Fix video TDR failure blue screen in windows 10.

Windows Search Box Features

Microsoft is trying to promote its Windows search box. One of the big steps that they took is to provide rewards for using their search box. Microsoft started a rewards program where if you do web searches from their search box, you will be awarded points. These will be counted daily when you are signed in and will keep on aggregating. Once you collect enough, you can claim them for rewards. Check out the Microsoft rewards program here.

“Type here to search” box also provides you some quick answers similar to Alexa and Siri. So, if you want to get some information regarding the weather, news, etc. you do not need any browser. You can just type in your search query and get the result instantly from the web

One more good feature is you can use it with other Microsoft tools like OneDrive, Outlook, etc. Search box can provide you some quick results for these queries. It does not only search the files and information on your device but also across other Microsoft products.

Microsoft search box comes with some cool features and rewards opportunities. But are you among the users who do not like the search box in the taskbar? Do you rarely use it and aren’t even sure whether that search box was there before? Then keep on reading.

Windows keeps coming up with new updates and one of them involved getting the “type here to search” box near your start menu option. I can understand most people don’t like changes. In this case, the search bar anyway takes up extra space that you can use to pin your essential windows apps. If you think the same, then check the section below. I’ll show you how you can revert this Windows 10 update. It came in the 1903 version, which automatically puts the search box in your taskbar.

Also see – Best free Google Chrome extensions to download.

How to Remove the “Type Here to Search” Box from Taskbar?

The “type here to search” box is a white rectangle box that sits near the Windows 10 start button. It is on the left-hand side of your screen. And takes up the space of a lot of apps that you can pin in.

To remove the “Type here to search box” from your windows screen or your windows taskbar you can do is just select the “Search” option by right-clicking on the menu bar and click the “hidden” option.

Once you do this you can see that type here to search box is now gone. What just now happened is, since we selected the hidden option, Windows called the built-in function to remove the search bar from the Start menu. It does not have any impact on the Windows search capabilities and just changes the appearance of the taskbar.

Of course, if you, later on, decide that you want the search box back or maybe want to experiment with it a little bit, you can get it back easily as well. For that, you have to do the same thing. Like right-click on the taskbar, go to the “Search” option by right-clicking on the taskbar and select “Show Search Box”. The search box will again be visible.

You will see that there is also one other option besides “show search box” and “hidden” which is “show search icon”. So, instead of a search box if you want a search icon just select this option and you would be good. The search icon will also appear at the same place, on the left-hand side, right next to the start menu option. When you will hover over it, it will again show you the same windows search box.    

Are you guys frustrated because your windows just crashed with some unknown video TDR failure error? Do you see a big blue screen with a sad word emoji that doesn’t let you log in to Windows? Then you are looking at the right post. In this post, I’m going to tell you how you can get rid of this video TDR failure blue screen either by updating your graphic card settings. And if that doesn’t work then using a blue screen stop code that will do the magic.

What does video TDR Failure mean and why it occurs?

To begin with, let’s understand what the error means and why it occurred? TDR stands for Timeout, Detection, and Recovery. It is used by windows to check your video cards and video card drivers. So, like if there is an NVIDIA graphic card in your laptop or if there is an AMD graphic card that is not working properly, then Windows gets stuck and throws this error. This usually happens when you are doing some activity that puts a heavy load on the graphic card, maybe like creating three-dimensional model sketches, video editing, or playing high-quality graphic games and things like that.  Most of the time it is a software issue and the error can be fixed just by updating the graphic card drivers or changing their settings.

Usually when this error occurs your windows system restarts automatically or you can restart it as well, then it starts working fine again. But the error never really goes away until you make any changes to the graphic card properties or update the power settings.

Now that you know this error occurs because of improper functioning of graphic cards, so based on the graphic cards you will probably see one of the below mentioned variants on your windows blue screen:

• If you are using an NVIDIA graphic card the Window blue screen will show the error with nvlddmkm.sys file name, where .sys stand for system file
• If you are using an AMD or ATI graphic card the error will come up as atikmpag.sys
• And for Intel graphic card users, this error shows up as igdkmd64.sys

Also see – How to find name of unknown caller?

How to fix this video TDR failure error?

Updating the Driver

The first and the simplest solution is to update your graphic card driver. You can use the steps below to update your driver:

1. First, go to the Start menu of your windows and select the “Device Manager” option.
   

2. Expand the “Display Adapters” menu and right click on the adapter mentioned and select “Update Driver”.

2. A dialog box will appear asking how you want to update the driver. Select the option, “Search automatically for drivers”. The other option is relevant only when you have a driver disc with you that usually comes with a new graphic card.

Do make sure that your internet connection is working fine before going for the update. If your driver was not updated, it will now be, and your video TDR failure blue screen should never appear again. But if the driver was already updated and the error still popped up then you might want to try something else from below.

If you want, you can also reinstall the drivers. Below is the link to official graphic drivers for Windows 10 for various manufacturers:

• AMD Radeon Software Driver
• NVIDIA Geforce Windows 10 Driver
• Intel Graphics Windows 10 DCH Drivers

Also see – Type here to search, windows search box.

Change your Power Option settings

1. Go to “Control Panel” using start menu option in Windows.

2. Select “Power Options”

How to avoid blue screen TDR failure issues in future?

1. Keep updating your graphic card driver from time to time to avoid these issues. You can follow the instructions mentioned above every six to nine months and update your Window graphic card driver. Your blue screen TDR error should never appear then.
2. Optimize the usage of graphic card drivers. If your graphic card is overloaded, no which brand you are using it will probably stop responding and will leave you with the blue screen. Better to close other programs that are consuming a lot of resources while you are playing games, creating model designs, or completing any work that utilizes your graphic card usage.