Common Fn Key Combos for Your Laptop

Digital Literacy For Dummies

Most laptops feature an Fn key. It’s the fun key, although Fn most likely stands for Function — but not the traditional computer keyboard function keys. On a laptop, the Fn key is used in combination with other keys to access special features. In a way, the Fn key combinations save the laptop from having an inordinate number of buttons and knobs, which is always a good thing.

Here’s a list of things the Fn key may do in combination with other keys on your laptop’s keyboard:

Turn the laptop’s speaker volume up and down
Mute the laptop’s speaker
Increase or decrease the screen brightness or contrast
Activate an external monitor for giving a presentation
Initiate Sleep mode
Hibernate the laptop
Eject an optical disc
Enable or disable the wireless networking adapter or enter Airplane Mode
Play, stop, pause, rewind, and advance media playing
Turn on the laptop’s webcam
Perform other special and specific tricks unique to the laptop

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.