By MellowD / Tips and Advice / • • • • • • • / 0 Comments

Windows 10 Tips and Tricks for Cortana

Cortana can perform context-based search and to illustrate exactly what that means, imagine you’re working on a PowerPoint presentation you save it and right when you need it you just can’t find it maybe it’s not saved in the place you thought it would be.

Rather than searching through file explorer you can actually just ask what Cortana to show you PowerPoint presentations from today if you have a Windows Phone or even an Android phone with Cortana installed, Cortana can send SMS text messages.

That’s right, actually use phone number to send messages from your phone.

All you have to do is say “send an SMS message to” and the name of the recipient a box will pop up for you go ahead and enter your message If you’re sitting at a local Starbucks and a song comes on and you wanna know who plays that song so you can add it to your collection you can actually asked Cortana to identify the song for you.

You can either verbally give her these instructions by saying “what song is this” or you can click on the microphone icon and then the musical icon to have her start listening Beyond identifying songs, Cortana can also play any artist, album or song that you have in your Groove Music collection.

“Here’s Supremacy” Now even if you’re not a Groove Music subscriber you can import your music into the groove music app, so you can use this functionality.

If you want to play a song or artist or album that is not in your groove music collection, Cortana will still give you different options that you can use to play that song.

In addition to finding music and then playing it, Cortana can also pause and resume music using voice commands.

“Pausing” Cortana can also change a number of different settings in Windows.

So if you can’t find where the Bluetooth setting is in order to turn it off or on you can actually just ask for Cortana to turn off or on for you.

“Bluetooth is now off”Rather than opening your web browser and then typing an address into the address bar to navigate to that website, you can actually just type the full web addresses into Cortana hit enter and then that website will launch for you.

There are also a number of shortcut keys that you can use to launch different Cortana functions Windows key + Q will show the Cortana home, Windows key +S will allow you to immediately start typing into Cortana.

Windows key + C will send Cortana into listening mode so you can provide voice commands.

There’s no need to perform complex conversions on your own.

All you need to do is ask Cortana to convert.

Now, you can do things like convert dollars to euros or feet to meters right in Cortana.

In addition to conversions, Cortana can also do all kinds of simple calculations.

So rather than opening up the calculator app to perform a calculation, just go ahead and type the whole calculation into Cortana and she’ll do that for you.

Cortana is also a built in dictionary so rather than having to go to dictionary.

Com or something like that to find the definition of a word, just go ahead and type define and then the word that you need defined,and Cortana will give you the answer.

You don’t need to go to fandango.Com to find out when James Bond is playing.

Just type movie times and then the name of the movie that you wanna see and Cortana will show you times in your area.

 

By MellowD / Tips and Advice / • • • • • • • • • • • • / 0 Comments

Top 20 Best Windows 10 Tips and Tricks To Improve Productivity

20 ultra-fast Windows 10 Little Tricks to help you be more production in your routine works.

So, let’s get started!

1.

If you are working in several apps and want to minimize all windows except the active one, then just grab the Title Bar of the window that you want to remain open and shake it back and forth.

After a few shakes, all other windows will minimize leaving only that window open which you are shaking.

2.

If you often see file or folder properties, then you no longer need to right-click and choose Properties from the context-menu.

Just hold down the ALT key and double-click ona file or folder to open the object’s Properties menu, and if your hands are on keyboard then you can also press ALT+Enter Key.

3.

You can also pin the Recycle Bin icon tothe Start menu to access it more conveniently.

4.

When exploring through All apps sectionof the Start menu, click the numbers or alphabetical section to open a jump list and then click the letter or number to jump to that section of the Start.

5.

In Windows 10, the most useful keyboard shortcuts are :

Windows Key + I for Settings menu, Windows Key + A for Action Center, Windows + E for File Explorer, Windows + X to open Power Start menu, F2 to rename the selected file or folder, Alt+F4 to close active app or window, and if you don’t already know, Ctrl+Shift+N to create a New Folder.

6.

A quick way to clean up your desktop when you want to remove all the clutter from your desktop and want to texture the desktop background, right-click on an empty space of your desktop,point to View, and then uncheck Show Desktop Icons option.

7.

When you need to concentrate on your work or when watching a movie and don’t want Windows to disturb you through notifications, then press the Windows+A key to bring the Action Center window and then click on Quiet Hours.

Later, press Win+A key again and turn off Quiet Hours option.

8.

If you often access a particular section within from the Settings app, then keep in mind that you can Pin any specific section of the Settings app to the Start menu, just by right-clicking and then click Pin to Start.

You can also pin your favorite folder or website when using Edge browser to the Start menu.

9.

If you ever wish to open an additional instance of an application like Word, Excel,Chrome, FireFox or any application which support multiple instances, then use the middle button of mouse (or the scroll wheel) on the app button from Taskbar.

10.

When searching for particular contents using Windows Search, you can click on MyStuff link, if you want to get a richer search experience with filters, sorting capability and better results.

11.

You can also use Taskbar Search for Calculations and Conversion and you don’t need to open the calculator or go online to perform a conversion.

Such as you can type the math equation or conversion formula in the search bar, and you can get an instant result or conversion right into the search result.

12.

Hold down the Windows Key and then press Print Screen to quickly capture the entire screen and then automatically save it to Screenshot folder under Pictures.

13.

When ever you need to restore or maximize a window, just click and hold the title bar and drag it to the edge of your screen, or pull out to restore.

14.

As you might know that you can create multiple Virtual Desktop in Windows 10 by clicking Task View icon and then clicking New Desktop.

As you can open different apps over different virtual desktop to save yourself from cluttered desktop but not only that but you can move running apps between the Virtual Desktop, by right-clicking on app icon in Task View and then click move to.

15.

From the Performance tab of the Task Manager,you can know the exact system up time.

16.

In Windows 10 and 8.

1, to reduce the boot load time you can enable Fast Startup option through Control Panel, Power Options.

If the option is missing, then you can open the command prompt in admin mode and then type powercfg -h on.

That’s it and there you have the Fast Startup and Hibernate.

17.

As a power user, if you have to use Command Prompt several times in a day to work inside different folders then right-click on an empty area within a folder while holding down the shift key and there you have a new option,Open command window here, which save you on time when you need to open command prompt and move to that particular folder.

18.

Right-click on an empty area of the Desktop,point to New, and then click Shortcut.

In the location box type, slide to shutdown, click Next, and type a name like Slide To Shutdown.

Click Finish and here you have a new interesting way of shutting down your PC.

19.

If you move several items using the Send To command, then next time hold down the Shift key while right-clicking and then point to Send To and there you have several more locations to use, and if you customize the Send To menu by adding your favorite place in Send To menu, then type Shell:SendTo in the address bar and hit the enter key.

Right-click Point to New and then click Shortcut.

In the location box, type your favorite folder path inside the Quotation.

Click Next, name the new Send To item and the click Finish.

Now, next time you can move or copy items to your favorite folder by just right-clicking and pointing to Send To.

20.

If you are the only user who use the system and you don’t want to see any login or lockscreen during system startup and want directly login to windows, then open the Run command,type CONTROL USERPASSWORDS2 and hit the enter key.

Select the user from the list to which you want automatically login into, and then uncheck the option “User must enter a username and password to use this computer”.

Type the current password, if there are any and the next time upon boot up you will not be asked for any user credentials and no loginor lock screen will display.

 

By MellowD / Tips and Advice / • • • • • / 0 Comments

Windows 10 Tips & Tricks

Today I’m gonna go ahead and show you some tips and tricks that you can use on Windows 10.

Whether you upgraded or not yet you might just be curious and here’s some of the stuff that after playing with it for a few days I found out that you can do.

Multitasking is great on Windows 10! Not only will you be able to snap like your familiar with before.

Lets say we want to put our store on one side and our Steam store on the other side.

You can use hot keys for that.

The WINDOWS key either direction while your in a program will work for that.

Windows to one side and then you’ll see snap assist pops up on the other side here saying, “What do you want to put on the other side?” Oh, we changed our minds,we’re going to play a little bit of Minesweeper.

Yeah, Minesweeper is back.

That’s pretty cool.

But say you want to snap more than one thing at a time you can also use WINDOWS-UPand DOWN to snap up and down.

Or you can take it and pull it into the corner.

Lets pullit into our bottom corner; it snaps into that corner.

Lets go ahead and snap this rightup here just kinda so you can see multiple things at the same time.

And lets put thatthere, that there and we’re still hanging out on Steam over here.

So, you have all these different options.

Again, those hot keys are WINDOWS-UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT.

But not only can you switch between apps that way, ALT-TAB, the good ol’ faithful is still there unchanged from prior versions of Windows.

The tried and true.

You also have Windows TAB now, will take you into task view.

Task view is a new thing you’ll see just downhere on the task bar.

You can either take that on or off of the task bar, it’s upto you.

But it shows you everything you have open in one spot.

And you’ll see down here desktop one and desktop two; now that’s because I’ve chosen to open multiple desktops which is also an options here in Windows.

So it’s like, “Aw, look at this nice clean desktop that I have.

” And if you want to swap between desktops you’ll do WINDOWS-CNTRL,and the other direction.

So you can work on multiple desktops at a time, you can work on multiple apps at a time and really increase your functionality that way.

And the hot keyto switch between desktops again is WINDOWS-CNTRL, and then LEFT or RIGHT.

If you want to make a new desktop thats, WINDOWS-CNTRL-D.

If you want to close a new desktop it’s, WINDOWS-CNTRL-F4.

And swapping between, if you’re like, “Oh, I have only Hearth Stone on this desktop,”and I want to go into task view and say, move one of these messier things, perhaps from one desktop to another.

So lets go into that and say, “Lets put Minesweeper in the same desktop,” you can literally just click it and drag it down there.

Also, new in Windows 10 there are Universal Apps.

These are basically to make the experience the same whether you are on a tablet, whether you’re on a phone, etc.

But if you’re like, “Hey, but Trisha what if I don’t have a Windows’ phone or Window’s tablet?” Well you’ll be happy to know in the Start Menu, yes the Start Menu is back, it includes a little live tile love over here.

You will see Phone Companion, which I am going to pop open for you.

Phone Companion basically lets you have that Universal App experience if you want those apps on aphone that is not a Windows’s phone.

So, if you have an Android phone or and iPhoneor and iPad or and Android tablet, etc, you can still get those.

So lets go ahead and say I wanted to link my Android phone up to some of the things I was really enjoying on Windows 10.

You can put the new Windows’ Photo app, you can put your Windows’ Musicapp, you can put one note on there, you can put Skype on there, etc.

And this is justa really easy way to do all that in one spot.

So thats kinda fun.

Something else new onWindows 10 is Cortana, Cortana’s in everything.

And before you get all, “Wait, voice recognitionis not that good.

I’d rather just type it.

” You can ask Cortana by just typing and that’ssuper easy.

Or you can ask her things like lets.

She’s good at trivia lets try, “What’sup?” Oh, she says, “A brilliant star during World War II, Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarrco-invented a secret communication system that can change radio frequencies to keep enemies from decoding messages.

Used today in cell phone technology, very cool.

Thankyou so much Cortana.

But thats not all that Cortana can do.

Cortana is also in MicrosoftEdge if you’ve played with the Edge browser.

So let me go ahead and “merp, merp” get rid of those and lets maximize this so we can look at Edge.

So I’m in Microsoft Edge and you can see Cortana is already up here in the address bar saying, “I got directions, hours andmore!” Let’s go ahead and click that.

And she puts all that stuff right there onthe side so I don’t even have to go away from the page and she’s gotten it togetherfor me which is a very, very cool feature to have in my opinion, I like that a lot.

Also if there’s something you don’t understand on the page, let’s say, “I have no idea what, blue agave tequilas are.

” I can highlight, “blue agave tequilas,” and then click,Ask Cortana.

And right here in the side again without having to open up a new tab and search for it, Cortana will tell me via Bing what I need to know about tequila.

Edge also introduces,Inking.

So when you’re on the page here you can see just up here it looks like a littlepen writing on a notepad.

It says, “Make a Web Note.

” So you can ink, I feel like,“Oh, no he made me ink,” from Finding Nemo.

But you can ink all over whatever you want.

You’re like, “Hey, welcome.

” And if you want to send it to you’re friendslike, “We’re going here for dinner.

” You can either save it or share it right fromhere, theres also highlight if you want to highlight, add a type note.

You can take a clip of it if you want to save that to something else.

That’s an option built right intothe browser.

Alright, now screw Edge lets go ahead and get to gaming.

Windows is actually coming around and talking to the gamers now.

Yay! There’s improved support for DirectX12in Windows 10 which is great and they give you the ability to stream your Xbox gamesto you Windows 10 computer through the Xbox app.

I tried to dig into my sources to seehow long we would have to wait to stream PC games to the Xbox and they were not allowedto tell me anything about that but, “It’s in the works,” was kind of the unofficialanswer.

Fingers crossed that we get that soon because I like my PC collection.

I have amuch greater PC collection than Xbox collection and I’d love to be able to play those onmy living room couch.

You can also use the Xbox app to record gameplay now within Windows which is cool.

Lets go ahead and bring up Hearth Stone.

We’re gonna launch it, we’regonna pretend that I’m going to play.

I know, sadly I can’t play right now, buteven it tells me press, WIN-ALT-R to start or stop a recording.

So those are just a few of the tips and tricks that I’ve learned in the past couple days using Windows 10.