10 Handy Windows 10 Keyboard Shortcuts

Digital Literacy For Dummies

Most of the useful Windows keyboard shortcuts on your laptop involve the Windows key. It’s labeled with the Windows logo, and it’s referred to as the Win key. Several Win key shortcuts are good to know, especially on a laptop where using the keyboard can often be faster than using the touchpad or finding an external mouse.

Here are ten handy Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts:

Win+A: Display the Action Center. If you have a Tablet PC, then swiping the touchscreen from the left edge of the screen inward is faster, but Win+A is handy if your hands are already over the keyboard.
Win+D: Display the Desktop. This keyboard shortcut doesn’t work when the laptop is in Tablet Mode.
Win+E: Open a Windows Explorer window, specifically to the Quick Access window.
Win+I: Open the Settings app.
Win+L: Lock the laptop. Any time you get up to leave the laptop, even for a short spell, lock it. This command is a vital part of laptop security.
Win+O: Turn the Auto Rotate feature off or on. When Auto Rotate is on, the Tablet PC’s screen changes orientation depending on how you’re holding the device. When Auto Rotate is locked, the screen stays in its current orientation.
Win+P: Choose how to handle an eternal monitor or projector. Four options are shown on a slide-in panel.
Win+S: Bring up a web search window, where you can view trending events or use Bing to search the Internet.
Win+U: Show the Ease of Access center, where settings can be made for more easily using the laptop.
Win+X: Summon the super-secret menu, on which you find shortcuts to common places in Windows, such as the Control Panel.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.