Hi everyone. Kevin here. Today I want to show you the best hidden features and tricks in Windows 11. We’re going to start with features that are brand new to Windows 11 and then we’ll continue on to features that have been around for a while but just aren’t that well known. All right, let’s check these out. First up Windows 11 has some new shortcut keys. When you press the Windows logo key together with the W key, W as in widget, that opens up the new widgets pane over on the left-hand side. You also have Windows logo key plus A. A is in action and on Windows 10 that opened up the action sensor but that is no more. Now that opens up quick settings. That’s where you can adjust your monitor brightness and also your volume levels. Windows logo key together with the N key, N as in notifications, opens up the notification pane and also your calendar. And lastly, the Windows logo key together with the Z key, Z as in Zulu, opens up Snap layouts so you can easily position your windows around your screen. The alternative is you hover over the maximize button to access Snap layouts, but hey, shortcut keys are just easier, and they’ll help you save time. Next up, Windows 11 comes with some beautiful themes directly out of the box but they’re only about let’s say seven or eight of them. If you want even more themes to personalize the experience, simply open up settings, then click on personalization, then select themes, and then select browse themes. You’ll have access to hundreds of different themes that you can click on and install and then you can personalize your experience to whatever you want it to be. Next up we have the task manager, the place where we all go to close apps that are just being somewhat uncooperative. To launch the task manager, a really nice shortcut key to know, you simply press control, shift, and escape, and there you go, you have the task manager. You no longer have to press control, alt, delete, and then click on task manager. That just takes too many clicks. Hidden feature number four is the night light and unfortunately the computer doesn’t include a physical night light although that would be really cool. You can turn on warmer colors as it gets later at night. This makes it easier to fall asleep. To turn it on simply right click on your desktop and select display settings. Within display settings, you can turn the night light on or off and you can even set up a schedule for when it starts and when it turns off again. Feature number five, you can make it easier for your audience to see your mouse cursor. Also within settings, click on accessibility and then mouse pointer options. There you can change the size of your mouse pointer and you could also adjust the color. If you use Microsoft Teams or Zoom or maybe you’re recording your screen using OBS, all of those will pick up those changes and that wasn’t possible in Windows 10. Hidden feature number six and this is a really nice one when you’re presenting and people are going to see your desktop. You can hide all of your desktop icons. That way, no one’s going to think you’re a hoarder. To use this, simply right click on your desktop go to view and then toggle off show desktop icons, and look at that, it’s now completely clean. Hidden feature number seven and this is a fun one. You can press the Windows logo key together with the semi-colon key and that’ll launch the emoji picker and it’s been redesigned in Windows 11. Not only can you choose emojis but you could also pick from GIFs, kamojis, and even symbols. Hidden feature number eight, we all know the standard copy and paste shortcut keys, ctrl C and ctrl V, but did you know that you can copy and paste multiple items? Simply copy an item like you normally would. Press ctrl C, but instead of pressing ctrl V to paste, press Windows logo key and the V key and that’ll allow you to choose all of the different items that you’ve copied onto your clipboard and you can decide which item you want to paste. Hidden feature number nine, when you click into the start menu and you click on all apps, you just have a massive list of all of the different apps. You can click on the different headers and that’ll allow you to quickly navigate to a letter of the alphabet. So let’s say that I’m looking for the Snip and Sketch tool, I simply click on S and then I could see all the different apps on my computer that start with an S. Hidden feature number 10, Windows 11 includes an awesome screenshot tool called Snip and Sketch. To launch it, simply search for Snip and Sketch and then you can take a screenshot of whatever area of your screen that you want. Now to launch it, you could search for it or you could press Windows, shift, and S, but that’s kind of complicated. One thing you can do is when you go into settings, click on accessibility, click on keyboard, and then you can toggle on so when you press the print screen button on your keyboard, which traditionally takes a screenshot of your entire desktop, you can set that key so it launches the Snip and Sketch app, so that way it’s even easier to access. Hidden feature number 11 on Windows 11 and it’s the Steps Recorder. Let’s say you’re trying to pull together documentation or you want to help a friend with a computer problem and you want to document the steps that they should follow. The Steps Recorder will help with that. Simply search for steps recorder and click on the best match. When the Steps Recorder opens, click on record run through all of your steps. It’ll take screenshots as well as describe every single step that you took and then you can share that out. Number 12, you can add additional clocks to Windows. Maybe you have friends or family who live in different time zones and it’s hard to remember what the time difference is. You could simply add another clock. In the bottom right-hand corner, right click on the time and click on adjust date and time. On the next screen, once again, click on date and time, and at the very bottom there’s the option to add additional clocks. You can add two more clocks and have a total of three different clocks visible. And the next one. You can turn on dark theme in Windows. Within settings, click on personalization, and then select colors, and here you can set a dark theme. You can set it for Windows as well as all of the different apps. The neat thing is a lot of apps will inherit this setting. So if you use say Microsoft Office or you use a web browser, they will all start to display in dark mode. So finally your eyes can get a break. Trick number 14, you can configure what apps start up when your computer starts up. If you find that maybe your computer is starting up a little slow, chances are it’s because lots of apps are trying to start up. Within settings on the left-hand side, click on apps and within apps at the very bottom, click on startup. Then you’ll see all the apps that are currently starting up with your computer. You can turn them on or off. Hidden feature number 15 is the Windows Sandbox. What happens in the Windows Sandbox stays in the Windows Sandbox. Let’s say maybe you have an application that you want to run or maybe you want to open a file that might be a little bit sketchy, and you don’t trust opening it on your computer. You can open it within the Sandbox and if it screws things up, you just close the Sandbox, and it won’t affect your computer at all. To turn it on using search, search for turn Windows features on or off. Make sure that Windows Sandbox is checked on. To launch Windows Sandbox, simply search for Windows Sandbox and then you can launch it. It’s a virtual computer on your computer and once again it’s separate from your actual computer. Next up you can create sticky notes on Windows. Within search simply search for Sticky Notes and you can add post-it notes directly to your screen. One of the neat things is these notes are also synced in the cloud so you can access them on your iPhone or on your Android phone using the OneNote app. You could also get to them on the web through the OneNote website and you can also view all of your notes in Outlook desktop by clicking into notes, so your notes are synced everywhere. Number 17, you can dictate to your computer, and it’ll write down everything that you’re saying. Simply press the Windows logo key together with the H key, H as in hotel. On Windows 11, one of the new neat features is it’ll automatically add punctuation. Hidden feature number 18, Windows includes a video editor and it’s buried within the Photos app. Simply search for video editor and you can start a new project. You can drag in video files, you could pull them down onto your storyboard, and you can start pulling together your video. Now it works well for just casual video editing. If you’re serious about video editing, this probably isn’t a tool for you. It only renders at 1080p and you can’t add any transitions, but otherwise it’s not bad. Next up, you can screen record using an app that comes for free with Windows 11 and it’s called the Xbox Game Bar. You can press the Windows logo key together with the G key, G as in game, and that’ll launch the game bar. So let’s say you want to record a game or maybe you want to record a PowerPoint presentation, you can do all of that. All in all, it’s a decent screen recorder. The only thing that it can’t record is your desktop and File Explorer, but otherwise everything is fair game. And the last hidden feature of today, I know, so sad that we’re almost done. It’s the Quick Assist tool. If you’ve ever had a friend or a family member who’s needed help with the computer, you know that walking through it on the phone can be a pretty miserable experience. Instead with Quick Assist, you can generate a code. You can provide that code to the other person and then you can access their computer, so you can take control. You can see what they’re seeing. It makes it a lot easier just to do it than to try to explain what they need to do to solve a computer issue. All right, well that wraps up the best hidden features. Let me know down below in the comments, are there any other hidden features that you would include? To see more videos like this, please consider subscribing. And I don’t know, maybe there’ll be another hidden features video and I’ll incorporate all of the suggestions from the comments down below. All right, I’ll see you next time.