Windows10 tips

Cortana, the Windows personal assistant is a powerful aide that can be compared to the likes of Apple's Siri or Samsung's Bixby, or the popular Google Assistant. “Microsoft’s voice-activated virtual assistant is more than just a direct link to Bing (or whatever search engine you’ve got her to use) — she’s, well, an assistant.”, writes CNET about this wonderful assistant. And while she can do almost anything right from singing songs (bet you didn’t know that) to setting reminders, you can also customize the way Cortana operates. Whether it’s the type of cards that you want to see or the data that Cortana accesses, there’s a whole bunch of things hiding beneath the notebook icon. Plus, Cortana handles most of the natural language commands seamlessly. All you have to say is Hey Cortana followed by the query and the humble assistant will do the work for you. While I did face an issue of Siri understanding my accent, Cortana just wowed me. Cool Tip: Cortana has a useful built-in dictionary. So if you want to test her skills, type define followed by the word and the meaning will appear instantly.

Surely, you must be knowing that you can right-click on the start button to access the Power User Menu, but what if you need it real quick? Just hit Win + X and the menu will pop up. The menu holds a lot of useful apps in its quiver, like Command Prompt, Control Panel, Mobility center, etc. And if you want to use the keys to navigate around, the up/down keys should do the trick. Another nifty trick to open the tools swiftly is to just press the underlined letter. For instance, hitting P would open the Control Panel.

One of the best things about customization is that it lets you achieve a unique look and Windows isn’t far behind. The start menu can be customized in many ways. Right from displaying the recently added apps to the frequently used apps, all these can be turned off/on depending on your choice. You can also opt to have a full-screen display of the start menu in all its glory through the Use start full screen option. Plus, if you want to get your hands on a sleek start menu, you can start by removing all the tiles and resizing it. Did you know that Windows 10 comes packed with Action Center which keeps track of all your notifications?

I love the start menu tiles since the time when they were first launched, providing me with useful insights into the weather, mail snippets, news, Twitter feed, etc. In order to get the most out of it, this live tiles section can be customized to your utmost satisfaction. For instance, if you want your favorite tile to occupy a much wider berth, right-click on it and choose the resize option. Similarly, for removing right-click and select Unpin from Start. Moreover, with a little tweaking in the Settings app, you can have an almost transparent start menu in Windows 10. Speaking of weather, did you know that just pressing Win+S will show you the weather and news? Well, you know it now.

The Windows dark theme is one of the newer features of the Windows 10 operating system. It comes in a time when most of us were bored of the ordinary look (read ancient). Initially, the darker theme could be enabled only through the registry, but now it can be achieved with just a few clicks. Head over to the Settings > Personalisation > Colours, scroll down and choose Dark as the app mode. The dark mode would appear mostly in the settings window, though. But explore the other features of this mode and you might end up with a very different looking desktop.