Ninja's Windows Tips and Tricks ⋆ Techblogg.ninja

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Windows 10 has been introduced since July 2015 and has received mixed reviews. Privacy issues with Cortana and in windows itself was a real issue. On the other side of things though it has gotten good reviews for the new Edge browser some saying it is great to use. I have never really hated any version of Windows except Vista. Vista was just bad despite what you may here. Whenever I see a device with Vista my first though is always to upgrade it to at least Windows 7 which will fix a good amount of issues anyone runs into when using Vista.We are now on Windows 10 and from the door out it has been pretty good. Of course there were bugs but Microsoft has been good at fixing the issues. Overall Windows 10 is solid… Well it feels pretty solid. So here are some tips and tricks to help things out. You may know some of these but some you may not. You should be able find something though to help you out.

If you play around with windows you will find options to customize your desktop.

The lock screen has been given some love. You can choose between the default Microsoft backgrounds or you can upload your own background. Once you do that you can change what shows on the lock screen, namely application statuses. By default there aren’t that many to choose from for my tastes. I will check if there are ways to add more.

Bypass the Login Screen

You probably could care less for the lock screen and you want your PC to login automatically. In other versions of Windows you can do this and in windows 10 it has not gone away. Now you should only do this if you have no security and privacy concerns at your home. Pranks or stolen data is not cool.

So if you still want to do this. Click the Windows key, type netplwiz, and hit Enter. This will launch the User Accounts manager. From the list you will see the users on your PC. Just select the account you want your PC to log into by default and uncheck the option Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer then click Apply. After enter your password and confirm with OK and, boom!, you will not have to login again. You can reverse this change later on if you want to.

Start Menu

You can change the color of the start menu. In Windows 10 the start menu has gotten bigger. Minus the Start Screen from windows 8 but that was really annoying for a lot of people. Bringing the start menu back was a good move for Microsoft but then again removing it was also their bad idea. So not being able to change its color is a great move away from Microsoft’s norm which is less customization. In the options you can also choose to allow the start menu color to change based on colors in the current background. Which is cool cause if you so choose to have your background change ever so often (also an available feature) your start menu color will also change.

If you do wish to customize your windows further a good application to do that by Stardock is called WindowsBlinds. Stardock has a suite of customizations that can do a lot of things to your windows environment. Check out the Stardock site to see the themes they have but you can find a lot of themes to make windows just look great. Definitely check out those themes by going to the WinCustomize site. Doing so though costs a fee. WindowsBlinds itself costs $9.99 or you can purchase the whole suite of customization apps for $49.99 including Fences which is what I use to keep my Desktop icons in order without having to see them all the time as i am working on my PC.

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Virtual Desktops

Having several monitors is great but if you do not have the money nor the space for more than one monitor then windows 10 has something for you, virtual desktops. For all you hardcore techs out there, yeah, like Linux. This feature has been a Linux things for years and now Windows has it. Virtual Desktops allow you to create an unlimited number of desktops on one instance of Windows 10. So…. you have one for personal stuff, or one for research, one for work, and so on…

If you want to switch between them you are only a keyboard short away. Also you may find a weird little icon on your taskbar that looks like 3 squares side by side. The keyboard shortcut is WIN + TAB which will show all of the open windows. On the bottom right is the option to add a new desktop. if you are a shortcut person you can speed things up and use CTRL+WIN+left/right arrow to switch between desktops.

Open File Explorer to ‘This PC’

One aspect I found very annoying is that file explorer opens to a view of your recently used files and folders. I like to see my installed drives and how much space if left over on them and dig into look for whatever I need from there. The extra click is just annoying really. The good things you can change that.

Once you open File Explorer there is a menu (a.k.a ribbon) on top. Look for the “View” option and click on it which will open the ribbon choices. All the way on the end of the ribbon you will see “Options“. Once you click on options a dialog box will open up and right on top of it you will see Open File Explorer to: with a drop-down box. Just click to see the options and change it to This PC and click OK.

Dark Mode

Is the white too much for you in windows 10? Or are you the Goth type and/or just simply like everything black. A lot of users do like it though and Apple has built a dark mode into OSX. Well Microsoft has responded sort of… Apple, of course makes it all easy by providing a tick box but Microsoft makes you hunt for it.

First off this change requires altering the registry. If you not comfortable with making changes to the registry I would advise you not to do this. It is easy though. You go into the registry by hitting the windows key and type in regedit then hit Enter. When you type in regedit just take a glance at the screen to make sure only one app shows up before you hit enter. Okay while in the registry goto: HKEY_CURRENT_USER > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > CurrentVersion > Themes > Personalize. On the right-hand side you will see the entry AppsUseLightTheme. Double-click on that one to open the box and change “Value Data” from a 1 to a 0 (a zero). Click OK to close.

If you do not see “AppsUseLightTheme,” you can create it by right-clicking inside the right side of the registry window, select New, then select DWORD (32-bit) Value. Make sure the “value data” field is set to 0 and type the name of the entry exactly as you see it here on this site. (No quotations or periods of course.)

To make it more clear by changing the value to a 0 you are turning off the Light Theme. To see the change you will most likely have to logout and log back in or reboot. If you so decide to go back to the light theme just change it back to 1 or delete the entry.

For More Tips click here…

Ninja’s Windows Tips and Tricks

Bypass the Login Screen

Start Menu