today i want to show you seven quick ways to make windows 11 even better windows 11 has been out for a few months now and overall it’s pretty solid but just like with a performance review at work there are always things that you can do better we’ll look at how you can change your desktop background image every single day automatically how you can send text messages and make phone calls directly from your pc how you can pin websites to your taskbar for quicker access these are just a few of the examples that we’ll look at alright let’s check these out first we’re going to look at how you can change your desktop background picture because this is the first thing that you’ll see when you log into windows every single day right click on your desktop and select personalize within the settings screen at the very top let’s click on the option that says background here we have three different options you can just set an individual picture to be your background and down at the bottom you can set how you want it to fit you can also select a solid color as your background so if you don’t get any joy from looking at photos this may be a good option for you or maybe you just care about the performance of having a solid color lastly you can also set up a slideshow of photos so here you can select the folder that the photos are in you can also choose how often you want it to switch photos and you can even set it to shuffle your photos so this way when your kids go off to school you won’t miss them that much because you’ll be served with a steady stream of photos of your kids as much as you love your kids you might just prefer to look at something else back within the main personalization screen there’s another option titled themes if we click into that you can set a theme and that in turn also changes your background image you’ll see a few beautiful themes that come directly with windows 11 but there aren’t that many luckily if we look down just a little bit there’s the option to get even more themes from the microsoft store when i click into the microsoft store here you’ll see many many different beautiful themes that you can install now this reminds me the photos that i see here are far better than what i could personally take but that didn’t stop me from pulling together a video on how you can take better photos if you want to check that out you can click on the link up above or down below in the description if all of this sounds like just too much work you can also leave the heavy lifting to microsoft microsoft offers something called the bing image of the day and this will automatically refresh your background image every single day with a beautiful image head to the website up above or down below in the description once you land on the home page simply click on install now during the installation process there’s a check box that asks you if you want to change your home page to msn if you don’t want msn to be your home page simply uncheck that box once you finish installing you’ll have to restart your computer once you restart you’ll see a new beautiful image as your background down in the bottom right hand corner in your system tray you’ll also see an icon for the bing image of the day if you right click on this you’ll have a few different settings next up you can also personalize what your lock screen experience looks like here too on your desktop right click and then select personalize within this screen select the option that says lock screen here you can choose to show a picture you can also show a slideshow and there’s also an option for windows spotlight spotlight is very similar to the bing image of the day here every single day you’ll get a new beautiful image on your lock screen down below you can also show additional information on your lock screen you can show the weather your email or even the next calendar appointment coming up i’ll select calendar here now on my lock screen i can see that my next meeting is for a cookie tasting session that sounds really yummy with this next one are you tired of always having to type in a password to log into windows instead you can use your face to use this open up settings then click on accounts and then sign in options at the very top there’s the option to use facial recognition or what’s also known as windows hello this will use your face to sign into windows you can also toggle it on so it automatically dismisses the lock screen when it recognizes you the next one is also in sign in options and this one is called dynamic lock with this one you pair your phone to your pc so when you walk away from your pc it’ll automatically lock it if you combine this with the facial recognition to sign you in now you no longer have to sign into your computer or sign out of your computer your computer does all of this for you so let’s actually test this out i’m going to walk away and let’s see if it automatically locks my pc [Music] windows 11 has even more tricks related to pairing your phone with your pc and this one is an app called your phone if you go down to search on the taskbar you can search for your phone and then launch it if this is the first time using the app well first you’ll have to pair your phone to your pc once you pair your phone you’ll see an interface that looks like this you’ll be able to see all of the notifications from your phone you can send and receive text messages you can view all of your photos you can even make and receive phone calls and you can view all of your contacts now if you have an iphone unfortunately it does not work with your phone but don’t worry there’s another app that you can use and i’ve previously done a video on this you can find it up above or down below in the description and that’ll show you how you can get similar functionality for an iphone when we all use our pc we end up spending most of our time browsing the web the windows taskbar is primarily designed to help us launch apps on our computer but wouldn’t it be nice if you could also launch websites directly from your taskbar it turns out that it is possible but it just requires a few steps here i am in google chrome and i’m currently on my favorite website kevinstratfor.com if you want to follow along with pinning this to your taskbar feel free to in the top right hand corner click on the ellipsis then click on more tools and here i can create a shortcut when i click on this i’ll click on ok i now have a shortcut on my desktop i mean that’s nice but i want to get it onto my taskbar here i’ll right click on the shortcut on my desktop then i’ll go down to more options and here finally i see the option to pin it to my taskbar when i click on that you’ll now see a friendly face just one click away on your taskbar microsoft edge makes this even easier within microsoft edge head to your favorite website once again and i think i know which website you’re going to here too click on the ellipsis in the top right hand corner go down to more tools and here you’ll see the option to pin to your taskbar so you can just get it straight from the more tools menu windows 11 includes the snipping tool if you haven’t heard of that it allows you to take screenshots of an area or the entire desktop screen it’s a really nice tool to launch it you can go down a search and you can type in snipping tool or you could use the shortcut key windows shift and s but that shortcut key is truly a handful there’s another shortcut key print screen and most keyboards have a dedicated key for this when you press print screen it’ll simply take a screenshot of your entire desktop now wouldn’t it be nice if you could tie this to the snipping tool i mean the snipping tool offers more functionality than just printing your entire screen well luckily you can turn this on within settings on the left hand side click on accessibility then click on keyboards and right here we have the option to set it so the print screen key launches the snipping tool here when i turn it on i’ll now press print screen and here i now have access to the snipping tool alright well those are a few quick ways to make windows 11 even better if you have any other tips feel free to share them down below in the comments to watch more videos like this please consider subscribing i’ll see you next time [Music] you