How to View the Action Center on Your Windows 10 Laptop

Digital Literacy For Dummies

The first location for checking security issues on your laptop is the Action Center. To view the Action Center in Windows 10, click the Notifications icon on the taskbar. The Action Center lists items requiring attention, such as updating software or checking the status of a failed backup. At the bottom of the Action Center lie the Quick Settings buttons.

The Action Center.

Click a notification in the Action Center list to carry out whatever task is necessary to deal with the issue.

Windows 10 also sports the traditional Action Center from earlier versions of Windows. It offers more details than the newer Action Center, which confusingly goes by the same name. To display the traditional Action Center, follow these steps:

Display the Control Panel window.

Press Win+X to show the supersecret menu, and choose the Control Panel item.
Below the System and Security heading, click the link Review Your Computer’s Status.

The Security and Maintenance screen appears. In older versions of Windows, this screen was known as the Action Center.

The traditional Action Center.

The Security and Maintenance screen displays the status of necessary security measures, including Windows Firewall, Windows Defender, and other protective measures. It may also display warnings prompting you to activate or complete actions that help make your laptop more secure. Follow the directions in the window to carry out those tasks.

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.