7 Windows 10 Tricks and Hidden Features

7-windows-10-tricks-and-hidden-features

Ever since Windows 10 has been released, Microsoft has brought a number of updates e.g. Anniversary update, creators update, recent 2004 update etc. These updates have brought numerous cool features to the operating system. There are several hidden features and tricks in Windows 10 that you might have missed out. We are going to talk about those hidden features today.

 I'm going to tell you 7 Windows 10 Tricks and Hidden Features that are fairly unknown.

1. There are situations when you get up from your office desk to grab a cup of coffee but you forget to lock your laptop/desktop. Well, you wouldn't want your co-workers to take a peek inside your laptop/desktop. Here comes the cool new dynamic lock feature. Dynamic lock automatically locks your PC when you're away. You have to enable it by pairing your phone to your PC via Bluetooth. Then you can just head to Settings, go to accounts and then go to sign-in options. Then scroll down and just check the option under dynamic lock. Whenever you move away from your laptop/desktop with your phone, your laptop/desktop will automatically be locked when your phone is out of the computer's Bluetooth range.

2. If you have a high-end Windows laptop/desktop with an SSD you must have storage problems once in a while. Windows 10 brings a great storage management. Go to settings> system> storage option. Here you will find all the drives in a PC. You can just click on a drive to get the specific details around what's using up storage on your device, so you can remove files that you don't really need. There are also temporary files. You can just click on it to delete temporary files, downloaded files & empty the recycle bin and files from a previous Windows version. If you don't want to go through the hassle of cleaning up these files every now and then you can enable storage sense which deletes temporary files from apps and files in the recycle bin that have been there for over 30 days. This will surely free up some space for you.

3. If you tend to use a laptop/desktop for long working hours especially in the night, you might have felt a little discomfort in your eyes. That's because of the blue light in the display. Windows users have used flux that filters out the blue light. Windows now offers a native solution. You can just head to windows settings> system> display. You should see the nightlight option. Just enable it and you will  see the colour temperature of the screen change to a warmer tone. You can also personalize things if you want. You can schedule nightlight from sunset to sunrise or set a custom time. 

4. Checking notifications on your phone while you are working on your laptop/desktop is a great experience. You might have guessed, can you get your phone notifications on your Windows laptop/desktop! You just need to install the Your Phone app on your Android smartphone then setup Your Phone with the same Microsoft account that you use on your PC. Once it's set up, tap on the profile icon in the Your Phone, here go to settings and tap on the options> sync settings. Now just enable notifications for missed calls, messages, apps etc. Once done, open up your Windows PC and go to Your Phone settings, here click on the notifications and enable send notifications between devices. You can also click on manage notifications to make sure notification syncing from your phone is enabled. Once done you will see every notification from your smartphone and you will even be able to respond to messages and calls right from your PC. 

5. Teaching some of the steps to do a particular task on windows through texting or a call can be very annoying. The best way is through images. Windows includes cool steps to record a feature. You can just launch the step recorder through Cortana and a small window should open up, just hit the ‘start record’ button to record the steps you want to show someone. For instance I'm enabling the dark theme, once done click stop and windows will show you the steps you just did. You can review the steps and even add any comments. 

6. Windows have a really intelligent feature named ‘Sticky Notes’.  Just open ‘sticky notes’ by searching it in Cortana and in the sticky note hit the menu button and then click on the gear icon at the bottom. Just enable the ‘insights’ option. Once done, you will just write a note like ‘get the car checked tomorrow’. And you will see the tomorrow highlighted. You can just click on it to save the note as a reminder. In Cortana, you can even specify the time in the note itself. You can even note down phone numbers and then dial it through sticky notes. You can also use it to check stock value. 

7. Emojis have become an integral part of our conversation on the Internet. Sadly there's no way to type in an emoji easily from the hardware keyboard. The good news is you can send emojis from the on-screen windows keyboard. Just right-click on the taskbar and take the show touch keyboard option. Now the touch keyboard will be available to you all the time and you can just open it. Go to the emoji page and send as many emojis as you want.