20 Windows 7 Tips and Tricks You Will Love

May 5, 2009 (Click to Rate!) Loading ...

TIP: You can download Windows 7 RC for free.

Ok, you’ve been hearing the buzz about Windows 7, maybe you read our take on it (or saw the screenshot tour), and you want to give it a try. Let’s say you downloaded it, installed it and are now sitting there wondering “Wait, so what’s so cool about this?”.

This is the blog entry for you, we’re going to try and sum up every cool tip and trick for Windows 7 that we could find online (and from our own experience) and post it here for quick and easy consumption. So get ready to either memorize everything below, or just print the page out

We’d also recommend checking out Tim Sneath’s Bumper List of Windows 7 secrets for a great list as well. Thanks goes out to Chris Hunkele for sending that one in.

Aero Window Management Keyboard Shortcuts

Below is a list of the cooler keyboard shortcuts that you can now use in Windows 7 for quickly managing your windows.

Dragging any window against the LEFT, RIGHT or TOP edge of the screen will perform the following operation:
- LEFT: Anchor window against left side of screen, vertically maximize window and fill about half the screen horizontally
- RIGHT: Anchor window against right side of screen, vertically maximize window and fill about half the screen horizontally
- TOP: Maximize the window
WINDOWS-KEY + LEFT/RIGHT: Dock the current focused window against the LEFT or RIGHT side of the screen, maximizing it vertically.
- Add SHIFT to the keystrokes above to send windows across multiple monitors to other desktops.
WINDOWS-KEY + UP/DOWN: Maximize the current focused window to full screen (UP) or restore it’s original size (DOWN) or minimize it to the taskbar (DOWN again)
WINDOWS-KEY + HOME: Hide all windows except the current focused window. Pressing the keystroke again will un-hide all the hidden windows. This is a convenience keystroke for visually decluttering your monitor.
WINDOWS-KEY + SPACE: Momentarily make all windows transparent, allowing you to look at your desktop. Can we helpful if you are trying to double-check the name of something or possibly view a gadget.
Hold CTRL while clicking on a taskbar icon that has multiple instances of the app open will cycle through all the windows of that same kind. For example, having 5 Firefox windows open, I can hold CTRL and keep clicking the Firefox taskbar icon, and each window will popup focused until I see the one I want.
WINDOWS-KEY + T: This will focus the taskbar and allow you to use LEFT and RIGHT to cycle through the apps on the taskbar.

Tips, Tweaks and Launch Apps

Below is a list of some of the cooler tweaks or tips on using Windows 7 that you’ll love.

Hold SHIFT + RIGHT-CLICK on any folder in Windows Explorer to show the advanced items in the context menu such as Open command prompt here:

WINDOWS-KEY + 1/2/3/4/5: Will automatically launch 1-5 of the pinned icons from your Taskbar for you. For example, if Firefox is my first pinned icon on my taskbar, I can launch it with WINDOWS-KEY + 1.
Hold CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT-CLICK to automatically launch an application in Administrative mode. No need to right-click > Run as Administrator anymore.
Hold SHIFT + LEFT-CLICK on any application icon in the taskbar (pinned or unpinned) will start another instance of whatever app you clicked on.
- TIP: You can even just use a single MIDDLE-CLICK on the app to launch a second copy if your mouse has a 3rd middle mouse button.
Adding NAS folders to Windows 7 Libraries. By default Windows 7 doesn’t support adding NAS folder locations to your Libraries, Chris Hunkele tells us that the reason for this limitation is that the remote host serving up the folders must be running the new Indexing Service — which most 3rd party NAS’s (like the ReadyNAS series) won’t be running. You can work around this issue two different ways:
1. If you are just trying to replace your My Music, My Videos, etc. folders with NAS-located folders, bring up the properties for those folders, go to the Locations tab, and “Move” the location from the current hard-drive location to your NAS location:
2. If you are trying to add additional folders to the libraries that are on your NAS, you can use this tip using mklink (sort of like Unix’s symlinks) to link what Windows thought was a local dir, out to a NAS-located dir out from under it, allowing you to get NAS folders into your libraries.

Hidden Cool Apps

“Hidden” in the sense that there are not Start Menu shortcuts for these apps, and the jobs they performance are pretty slick.

Problem Steps Recorder (psr.exe): A troubleshooting tool that will record mouse movement, keyboard input and screenshot every changed screen of a workflow and when done (”Stop Recording” is pressed), will ZIP everything up with screenshots into a nice ZIP file that can be shared with a technician.
- TIP: For any software companies out there, you can use this to make capturing documentation flows a lot easier!
Display Color Calibration (dccw.exe): Used to tweak the color and display calibration of your monitor. I found this wizard to be designed in a sub-optimal way, showing you the “target” display examples on one page, and then asking you to adjust your settings for “optimal viewing” on the next page — where the example of what you wanted was no longer visible. I can’t say I saw a huge improvement with this.
ClearType Text Tuner (cctune.exe): Used to tweak the hinting and way ClearType text is displayed on your LCD monitor. I didn’t end up needing this, but if you have a problem with how text is displaying, this can help.
Burn Disc Image (ISO burning support): You can double-click on any .ISO file now and be prompted with an application to burn it to a disc:

windows-7-iso-burn-image-to-disk-utility

Windows Movie Maker: You’ll notice in Windows 7 RC, Windows Movie Maker is missing. It’s now part of the Windows Life Essentials package and is currently being reworked inside Microsoft for inclusion in Windows 7 final release. In the mean time you will have to make due with Windows Movie Maker 2.6:

Update #1: Make that 20 tips, Aero’s snap-to-edge behavior TIP added above in the Window Management section.

Share and Enjoy:

Aero, hacks, keyboard shortcuts, Microsoft, taskbar, tips, tricks, utilities, window management, Windows 7

This post was written by:

Riyad Kalla - who has written 1727 posts on The “Break it Down” Blog.

"Ultimately I just want to provide a resource that folks find useful."

22 Comments For This Post

Jigsaw hc Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 9:12 am

Nice. I’ve got the RC burning right now to DVD so later today I plan to have it installed.

Riyad Kalla Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 9:47 am

Did you grab the 32-bit or the 64-bit? If you want to toss a ton of RAM into your machine and get the insane-o performance you’ll need to pickup the 64-bit one… I have been avoiding 64-bit OS’s like the plague since 2004 or 2005 when I tried Windows 2k3 64-bit, Ubuntu 64-bit and eventually Vista 64-bit recently and had nothing but trouble with driver support, app support, installers failing because they didn’t recognize the OS and so on… although on Windows 7 64-bit I honestly haven’t run into 1 hickup with apps or drivers or anything… I’m running a ton of standard stuff (ASUS on-board audio, NVIDIA 8800 GTS) and nothing terribly fancy, but so far I’m +1 on the 64-bit experience.

The performance boost alone is *totally* worth it.

Jigsaw hc Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 9:56 am

I grabbed the 32-bit because the system I’m installing on only has 2GB of RAM, but my next machine will have have 6+ GB so I’ll be moving to 64-bit when I built it. Hopefully I can get that done in the next month or two.
I’ve been using Vista 64-bit for work and it works beautifully for me. Just happens that the only system I have free right now is a bit older.

Riyad Kalla Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 10:33 am

Ahh, gotcha. I’d be curious to know how it feels once it’s on there, I know back when we did the screenshot tour of W7, we were seeing quite a bit less memory usage in a 1GB machine and I wonder if you’ll see performance boost over Vista just by virtue of it being tighter code.

devilslab Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 2:19 am

Nice post thanx buddy ! I am definitely subscribing your posts
Nice. I’ve got the RC burning right now to DVD so later today I plan to have it installed.

Jigsaw hc Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 6:38 am

I’m really liking Win 7 so far. I’ve still got a few things to tweak and some sound card drivers to dig out, but overall it seems quicker than what I had running before. I guess part of that could be bit rot though.

Atlanta Private Investigator Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 7:53 am

This is a great post. Excited to see your next review of 7. Thank you

Riyad Kalla Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 9:42 am

Jigsaw,

Good deal! You hit a barrier with any drivers yet? I noticed that even games are running just fine for me that were never intended to run on 64-bit… like the old Jade Empire PC game… works fine.

I get the feeling there is some serious compatibility stuff going on, cause so far I haven’t run into 1 road block.

I also noticed that UAC prompts have stopped and you can just click “Privileged” buttons now to get them to authorize and do the operation without an additional confirmation popup. I’m digging that.

Jigsaw hc Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 9:53 am

I had to hunt down the diver for my sound card, but I told it to use the Vista driver version and it is working fine.

I’m liking everything with the UAC changes too. A lot less pop-ups when I am installing.

Racecar 56 Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 5:03 pm

I’m REALLY not going to touch Windows 7 with a 10-foot pole.

zanpakurosaki Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 4:07 am

i like windows7 beta and now i upgrade to RC
i really love it

Racecar 56 Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 9:00 am

I don’t trust Microsoft anymore.
I have 2 semi-old computers, and 2 historical ones that work to this day, so I am not upgrading. The semi-old computers (one from early ‘07, other from late ‘07) shipped with Vista, but they ran bad. I wiped Vista and put XP MCE on both, as well with an Ubuntu install, and now they work great. One of my historical PCs (COMPAQ Presario SR1010Z) still works now, and also dualboots Ubuntu 9.04 + Windows XP, but Home edition, exact one it came with. It was probably made in early/mid 2005. The other historical one (COMPAQ Presario SR1020NX), which is quite old (early-mid 2004) even has a 3.5″ floppy drive, also shipped with XP Home but it is so old it really dosen’t handle Ubuntu that well. Xubuntu works but it seems ACPI isn’t working.

And I’m not using 7 no matter what it takes. I’m glad that I still have my XP MCE CD around to use on any future computer that may ship with 7. I may build my own computer, next time.

No 7 for me.

Racecar 56 Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 9:01 am

Oh, and don’t forget.
I think the Windows logo is STUPID.

Zoabi Says:
May 25th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

I have win 7 , and there’s a magnificent little trick that U can do whenever there are 2 or more folders or windows are opened:
- when 2 or more folders (any type) are opened or used hold with the left mouse button on the top of the marked folder window and move from left to right or right to left rapidly and the other opened windows will amazingly get minimized and if U do the same they will be restored hope it works. (note : the windows have to be restored down and not maximized ) :d

windows 7 Evaluation copy. Build 7057

Racecar 56 Says:
May 30th, 2009 at 9:19 am

If Micro$oft will do these things with Windows, I might hate it a little less:

Think of a decent logo.
Stop with the ‘every release requires better hardware’ thing.
Stop enticing the user to have automatic updates, and _EXPECT_ them to use Internet (even though the majority of computer users actually do use Internet, there are still some people who don’t).
Stop the idiotic DRM.
Stop spying on users.
Don’t say to join the customer experience quote-on-quote “improvement” thing, it’s just a trap so they will know all about you.
Don’t force people to use a certain software by Micro$oft in order to do certain things (e.g. you must use WMP to play a xxx file).

And most of all…

STOP BEING STUPID.

I think that Windows is a real big trap made just for them to get nothing but money. They want it, they got it.
I will stick with XP if I ever will be using windows at all.
That is what I have to say.

number1pete Says:
June 5th, 2009 at 5:32 am

dude, i struggle with the direction on how to add non indexed folder to your libraries. There was not enough instructions.

I feel like this is a huge problem since most people are running NAS systems that dont support indexing. Maybe repost about that issue with a well written detailed instructions on how to do the workaround. I have lots on non indexed folders i would like to add to the libraries.

thanks

GA Says:
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:26 pm

racecar, chill out. If you are worried about all that bs, just get ubuntu and shut up…..

Racecar 56 Says:
July 5th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

I already have it…

JockSE Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

Racecar 56,
Why are you getting so agrovated over windows?
ither you have a serious hate complex over people with more money than you or your just plain stupid.
Do you hate everyone who is better than you?
is it such a problem that windows make functional operating systems? (excluding vista)<— Epic fail OS….

on another subject…. did you know that in Latvian Vista means Chicken

JockSE Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 3:20 pm

Sorry but im now going to continue my rant at racecar 56….Cant help myself =]

Think of a decent logo. – Nothing wrong with the one they have

Stop with the ‘every release requires better hardware’ thing. – unfortunatly it does otherwise we’ll just have TONS of vertions of the same OS, Just a little different

Stop enticing the user to have automatic updates, and _EXPECT_ them to use Internet (even though the majority of computer users actually do use Internet, there are still some people who don’t). – Automatic updates fix bugs, help speed up you PC and get you the latest software…whats the problem

Stop the idiotic DRM. – What?… you do realise there is more than 20 things that DRM can stand for, right?

Stop spying on users. – Stop smoking weed…..(paranoid much…)

Don’t say to join the customer experience quote-on-quote “improvement” thing, it’s just a trap so they will know all about you. – If you puchase any software using a card or have to register it they’ll know you anyway….*raises eyebrow*

Don’t force people to use a certain software by Micro$oft in order to do certain things (e.g. you must use WMP to play a xxx file). – Well thats just stupid there is a variety of programs that handle different file markers (i.e a .WMP can be played by WMP ,WinAmp and Sonic player ect. you can handle a .PNG with a multitude of software programs i.e. Paint, Dreamweaver, Macromedia, Photo shop and MANY Digital camereas come with a software disc which gives you thair very own brand of photo editing programs……

I suggest you actually get you facts straight before you even attemt ranting over an OS, otherwise people like me make people like you look like an idiot who has jumped the gun and put absolutly NO THOUGHT WHATSOEVER into ANY of the HALF BAKED points you try to make…

(for the record i also use Ubuntu Win NT, XP, Vista, and 7)

‘Oh’ and one other thing i have
MCP
MCSE
MCNE
Network plus
3 Alevels and NVQ Level 3 qualifications in IT and computing
so i also suggest you think about your next argument VERY carefully…

(Racecar 56 – Has a classic case of ErrorID: ID-10-T)

dirk Says:
November 4th, 2009 at 12:58 am

Here is the deal, My son just purchased a Mac Pro, wow what a computer. Yes I understand that a lot of people don’t like Mac’s, I was very much against him purchasing one as my first computer in 1990 was a apple,and you know the rest….I have 4 computers in my house all on diffrenct opporating systems (window) XP being the one I like and used the most. I also have windows vista, and windows 7, and window 7 and all of them are on DELLS. What I have to say is there has never been a day, week, month, year that I didn’t have some kind of problem that I have had to learn about and deal with. I can say I will miss my PC, but just ordered a Mac, I think I will like not having to deal with the PC head ackessssss, so long pc, hello mac, with a smile…..

dirk Says:
November 4th, 2009 at 1:00 am

Oh, I forgot the pain in the ass viruses, malware etc. I am done dealing with them, its over, by, by…..

Jigsaw hc Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Nice. I’ve got the RC burning right now to DVD so later today I plan to have it installed.
Riyad Kalla Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Did you grab the 32-bit or the 64-bit? If you want to toss a ton of RAM into your machine and get the insane-o performance you’ll need to pickup the 64-bit one… I have been avoiding 64-bit OS’s like the plague since 2004 or 2005 when I tried Windows 2k3 64-bit, Ubuntu 64-bit and eventually Vista 64-bit recently and had nothing but trouble with driver support, app support, installers failing because they didn’t recognize the OS and so on… although on Windows 7 64-bit I honestly haven’t run into 1 hickup with apps or drivers or anything… I’m running a ton of standard stuff (ASUS on-board audio, NVIDIA 8800 GTS) and nothing terribly fancy, but so far I’m +1 on the 64-bit experience.

The performance boost alone is *totally* worth it.
Jigsaw hc Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 9:56 am
I grabbed the 32-bit because the system I’m installing on only has 2GB of RAM, but my next machine will have have 6+ GB so I’ll be moving to 64-bit when I built it. Hopefully I can get that done in the next month or two.
I’ve been using Vista 64-bit for work and it works beautifully for me. Just happens that the only system I have free right now is a bit older.
Riyad Kalla Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Ahh, gotcha. I’d be curious to know how it feels once it’s on there, I know back when we did the screenshot tour of W7, we were seeing quite a bit less memory usage in a 1GB machine and I wonder if you’ll see performance boost over Vista just by virtue of it being tighter code.
devilslab Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Nice post thanx buddy ! I am definitely subscribing your posts
Nice. I’ve got the RC burning right now to DVD so later today I plan to have it installed.
Jigsaw hc Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 6:38 am
I’m really liking Win 7 so far. I’ve still got a few things to tweak and some sound card drivers to dig out, but overall it seems quicker than what I had running before. I guess part of that could be bit rot though.
Atlanta Private Investigator Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 7:53 am
This is a great post. Excited to see your next review of 7. Thank you
Riyad Kalla Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Jigsaw,

Good deal! You hit a barrier with any drivers yet? I noticed that even games are running just fine for me that were never intended to run on 64-bit… like the old Jade Empire PC game… works fine.

I get the feeling there is some serious compatibility stuff going on, cause so far I haven’t run into 1 road block.

I also noticed that UAC prompts have stopped and you can just click “Privileged” buttons now to get them to authorize and do the operation without an additional confirmation popup. I’m digging that.
Jigsaw hc Says:
May 6th, 2009 at 9:53 am
I had to hunt down the diver for my sound card, but I told it to use the Vista driver version and it is working fine.

I’m liking everything with the UAC changes too. A lot less pop-ups when I am installing.
Racecar 56 Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I’m REALLY not going to touch Windows 7 with a 10-foot pole.
zanpakurosaki Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 4:07 am
i like windows7 beta and now i upgrade to RC
i really love it
Racecar 56 Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 9:00 am
I don’t trust Microsoft anymore.
I have 2 semi-old computers, and 2 historical ones that work to this day, so I am not upgrading. The semi-old computers (one from early ‘07, other from late ‘07) shipped with Vista, but they ran bad. I wiped Vista and put XP MCE on both, as well with an Ubuntu install, and now they work great. One of my historical PCs (COMPAQ Presario SR1010Z) still works now, and also dualboots Ubuntu 9.04 + Windows XP, but Home edition, exact one it came with. It was probably made in early/mid 2005. The other historical one (COMPAQ Presario SR1020NX), which is quite old (early-mid 2004) even has a 3.5″ floppy drive, also shipped with XP Home but it is so old it really dosen’t handle Ubuntu that well. Xubuntu works but it seems ACPI isn’t working.

And I’m not using 7 no matter what it takes. I’m glad that I still have my XP MCE CD around to use on any future computer that may ship with 7. I may build my own computer, next time.

No 7 for me.
Racecar 56 Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Oh, and don’t forget.
I think the Windows logo is STUPID.
Zoabi Says:
May 25th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I have win 7 , and there’s a magnificent little trick that U can do whenever there are 2 or more folders or windows are opened:
- when 2 or more folders (any type) are opened or used hold with the left mouse button on the top of the marked folder window and move from left to right or right to left rapidly and the other opened windows will amazingly get minimized and if U do the same they will be restored hope it works. (note : the windows have to be restored down and not maximized ) :d

windows 7 Evaluation copy. Build 7057
Racecar 56 Says:
May 30th, 2009 at 9:19 am
If Micro$oft will do these things with Windows, I might hate it a little less:

Think of a decent logo.
Stop with the ‘every release requires better hardware’ thing.
Stop enticing the user to have automatic updates, and _EXPECT_ them to use Internet (even though the majority of computer users actually do use Internet, there are still some people who don’t).
Stop the idiotic DRM.
Stop spying on users.
Don’t say to join the customer experience quote-on-quote “improvement” thing, it’s just a trap so they will know all about you.
Don’t force people to use a certain software by Micro$oft in order to do certain things (e.g. you must use WMP to play a xxx file).

And most of all…

STOP BEING STUPID.

I think that Windows is a real big trap made just for them to get nothing but money. They want it, they got it.
I will stick with XP if I ever will be using windows at all.
That is what I have to say.
number1pete Says:
June 5th, 2009 at 5:32 am
dude, i struggle with the direction on how to add non indexed folder to your libraries. There was not enough instructions.

I feel like this is a huge problem since most people are running NAS systems that dont support indexing. Maybe repost about that issue with a well written detailed instructions on how to do the workaround. I have lots on non indexed folders i would like to add to the libraries.

thanks
GA Says:
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
racecar, chill out. If you are worried about all that bs, just get ubuntu and shut up…..
Racecar 56 Says:
July 5th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I already have it…
JockSE Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Racecar 56,
Why are you getting so agrovated over windows?
ither you have a serious hate complex over people with more money than you or your just plain stupid.
Do you hate everyone who is better than you?
is it such a problem that windows make functional operating systems? (excluding vista)<— Epic fail OS….

on another subject…. did you know that in Latvian Vista means Chicken
JockSE Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Sorry but im now going to continue my rant at racecar 56….Cant help myself =]

Think of a decent logo. – Nothing wrong with the one they have

Stop with the ‘every release requires better hardware’ thing. – unfortunatly it does otherwise we’ll just have TONS of vertions of the same OS, Just a little different

Stop enticing the user to have automatic updates, and _EXPECT_ them to use Internet (even though the majority of computer users actually do use Internet, there are still some people who don’t). – Automatic updates fix bugs, help speed up you PC and get you the latest software…whats the problem

Stop the idiotic DRM. – What?… you do realise there is more than 20 things that DRM can stand for, right?

Stop spying on users. – Stop smoking weed…..(paranoid much…)

Don’t say to join the customer experience quote-on-quote “improvement” thing, it’s just a trap so they will know all about you. – If you puchase any software using a card or have to register it they’ll know you anyway….*raises eyebrow*

Don’t force people to use a certain software by Micro$oft in order to do certain things (e.g. you must use WMP to play a xxx file). – Well thats just stupid there is a variety of programs that handle different file markers (i.e a .WMP can be played by WMP ,WinAmp and Sonic player ect. you can handle a .PNG with a multitude of software programs i.e. Paint, Dreamweaver, Macromedia, Photo shop and MANY Digital camereas come with a software disc which gives you thair very own brand of photo editing programs……

I suggest you actually get you facts straight before you even attemt ranting over an OS, otherwise people like me make people like you look like an idiot who has jumped the gun and put absolutly NO THOUGHT WHATSOEVER into ANY of the HALF BAKED points you try to make…

(for the record i also use Ubuntu Win NT, XP, Vista, and 7)

‘Oh’ and one other thing i have
MCP
MCSE
MCNE
Network plus
3 Alevels and NVQ Level 3 qualifications in IT and computing
so i also suggest you think about your next argument VERY carefully…

(Racecar 56 – Has a classic case of ErrorID: ID-10-T)
dirk Says:
November 4th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Here is the deal, My son just purchased a Mac Pro, wow what a computer. Yes I understand that a lot of people don’t like Mac’s, I was very much against him purchasing one as my first computer in 1990 was a apple,and you know the rest….I have 4 computers in my house all on diffrenct opporating systems (window) XP being the one I like and used the most. I also have windows vista, and windows 7, and window 7 and all of them are on DELLS. What I have to say is there has never been a day, week, month, year that I didn’t have some kind of problem that I have had to learn about and deal with. I can say I will miss my PC, but just ordered a Mac, I think I will like not having to deal with the PC head ackessssss, so long pc, hello mac, with a smile…..
dirk Says:
November 4th, 2009 at 1:00 am
Oh, I forgot the pain in the ass viruses, malware etc. I am done dealing with them, its over, by, by…..

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