Windows Key-Shift-S: Take Screenshots

Pressing Windows Key-Shift-S opens the Snipping Tool screen capture interface. It takes a screenshot of a rectangle or freeform shape you draw, a full window, or the entire screen.

Windows Key-V: Paste History

The Clipboard History lets you copy several things from one document or webpage and then paste them into another, without you having to go back and forth for each item. It works with both text and images you’ve copied to the clipboard.

Windows Key-H: Voice Typing

Pressing Windows Key-H opens Voice Typing; it saves you from having to type with your fingers and instead lets you enter text with your voice. Voice Typing works any place where you’d normally type. If you haven’t used speech recognition in a while, you’re likely to be blown away by how good it’s become.

Ctrl-Shift-Esc: Task Manager

This keyboard shortcut, which has been around since the early days of Windows, opens the Task Manager. It’s handy when your PC seems sluggish, and you want to find out which application is hogging the CPU cycles or memory. When you need to kill an unruly application or process, Task Manager is your friend.

Windows Key-E: File Explorer

Windows Key-E opens the File Explorer and is another key command that I plan to use more often since I need to open that utility many times per day.

Windows Key-W: Widgets

A new keyboard shortcut for Windows 11, Windows Key-W opens the Widgets panel. After it opens you can use Tab to move from section to section and the Arrow keys to move from one item to another within a section.

Windows Key-A: Quick Settings

This shortcut opens the new Quick Settings panel (which replaces some functions of Windows 10’s Action Center, hence the A). Once the panel’s open, you can toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode, Battery Saver, Focus Assist, and Accessibility features.

Windows Key-N: Notifications

A counterpart to the previous shortcut, Windows Key-N opens the Notification panel, which used to be in the Action Center in Windows 10. As you might suspect, you see any notifications that have arrived along with your calendar on the bottom.

Windows Key-Alt-Up Arrow: Resize to Half Screen

This key combination resizes the current application to exactly the top half of the screen. Similarly, you can use Windows Key-Alt-Down Arrow, Windows Key-Alt-Left Arrow, and Windows Key-Alt-Right Arrow to fill exactly half the screen with the app in those directions.