I was thinking about the "preview Windows key shortcuts" just yesterday! So glad to see it's getting made. I'm been a Windows power user since 3.1, and I just discovered this week that the programs on my task bar could be launched with Win+number. I also just started using Win+Tab over Alt+Tab because of the nice Expose feature. I wonder how many other nice to haves there are that simply aren't visible.
> I wonder how many other nice to haves there are that simply aren't visible.
You might be aware of this already, but if anyone isn't this aware, this picture from the article has a number of Windows-/Super- key shortcuts that works already:
That is a horrible set of shortcuts. Who uses the Game bar or dictation bar? Who needs a shortcut for Settings? Are you really opening your settings screen so often that a shortcut actually improves your efficiency? If so, do you do actual work on your machine or do you just play with Windows on it. How many seconds in a day are you going to save with the Settings shortcut, and isn't that number going negative when counting the time it takes to learn and remember the short cut?
Who needs a shortcut to Ease of Access settings, or to the narrator? Who needs Start+, if you already have Start+D?
Start+Ctrl+D opens a new virtual desktop? Despite me never using virtual desktops? And now I have to learn all about virtual desktops (while I don't need them) to correct my accidentally pressing the Start button too when I was typing Ctrl+D. Thanks guys, for making every key-combo some or the other shortcut for stuff I don't need. My windows experience is quite good but for the growing fear of accidentally hitting some unknown shortcut and screwing things up.
Microsoft, please start removing shortcuts that no one needs, you surely must have all the telemetry data to support my point by now.
You might consider that your needs are not representative of the overall Windows population. For example, one reason some of these key combinations are important is for accessibility.
> Microsoft, please start removing shortcuts that no one needs, you surely must have all the telemetry data to support my point by now.
Happy to see you aren't working at Microsoft.
This constant push to remove everything that someone doesn't see the value of is really annoying for me.
Most of these shortcuts has been there for years.
The fact that you weren't even aware probably shows that this isn't a problem at all.
So please Microsoft: continue to "just work".
I far prefer Linux, but there is something to be said for "just working" for a very long time. (Feels crazy to say and I have a fair number of annoyances with Windows, but even if Windows never made me happy like a good KDE 3 or 5 setup, even Vista and 8 was kind of usable for me after some configuration, this is something I cannot say certain alternatives at that time)
(Now, there is one really crazy shortcut IMO, and that is alt + shift + space; enabled by default at least until Windows 8. Will change you keyboard layout with next to no visual feedback. Why this needs to be there by default on machines that will never be used for more than one language is beyond me, but I'll leave that to the experts, I'd rather have too many options than to few.)
> Who needs a shortcut to Ease of Access settings, or to the narrator?
Seriously? Those are probably the most important shortcuts on there. Having a way to immediately jump to accessibility settings is critical for all of the people who need those tools when they sit down at an unfamiliar computer, or even their own computer.
As for all of the others, yes, they should all be there. If you use it, dictation is something that's done frequently, as is use of the Game Bar (how else would you call it up during a full screen game?) and virtual desktops.
> Microsoft, please start removing shortcuts that no one needs, you surely must have all the telemetry data to support my point by now.
The fact that they haven't removed them should be enough evidence that they are, in fact, used.
Echoing the part that if you use Game Bar, you probably use it frequently. It's the easiest way to pull up a clock in a fullscreen game without losing focus from the game. There's also useful things there like screenshot capture, multi-window volume control, and game mode control (prioritize the game's threads over background work on the PC; sometimes you do want to enable/disable it based on if you need a compile to happen in the background sometime soon or if you want to focus on the best gaming experience you can get).
(Furthermore, the updates to the Game Bar currently in Xbox Insider Preview right now add a ton of new useful widgets including things like direct access to your Xbox Friends list without needing to jump to the Xbox App. It's becoming an even better PC-world equivalent to the Xbox Guide blades on an Xbox One. Bringing things closer to what you can do with the Discord or Steam overlays, but universal across all your games rather than developer or launcher specific. [Hopefully the widgets will be extensible in the future and maybe help us move to a world where it can eat those other two overlays; one overlay to rule them all.])
Funny story, there was actually a security vulnerability in that Win+Number feature!
Here's how it worked, there's a Windows security feature called UIPI (User Interface Privilege Isolation) that prevents processes from sending messages to more privileged processes. That's critical, otherwise an unprivileged process can just send input to explorer and make it delete all your files or whatever. This was used to keep Internet Explorer sandboxed, so that if IE got compromised, it couldn't take over your computer.
UIPI didn't prevent processes from triggering key combinations registered with RegisterHotKey() though, which is what explorer uses for things like Alt+Tab and so on. Turns out, there was a way to send input to cmd.exe windows, but it literally only worked on cmd.exe. That sounds bad, but an unprivileged process can't spawn a highly privileged cmd.exe, when you create a new process it just inherits your privilege level. That means you can't make it do anything you couldn't already do on your own.
But.... you can spawn a low privileged cmd.exe, which gets added to the taskbar... then use the Win+Shift+Number shortcut registered with RegisterHotKey() to tell explorer to create a new window (Try it!). Explorer is already privileged, so the new window is spawned with privileges (technically, medium integrity) and then you can take it over!
Really hope that the "full window manager" item leads to good things. Having proper tiling window management with extensive keyboard control would be so awesome.
I got a UHD monitor and when I did, the normal Windows keyboard shortcuts we're quickly rendered useless. So, with the help of an Internet Guy I have an AutoHotKey script that makes window management dead easy.
Back in the days I remember using something I guess from the donationcoder website, that would allow me to drag windows into "placeholders" on the screen. I used it to get consistent setups when recording screencasts when I was a teacher.
(And if anyone needs something to setup widows for screenrecording on Linux this is the best I've found, thanks to Robert Gamble on stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/a/288537/9987)
I can't understand what's so amazing about tiling window management/managers. Reddit's r/unixporn seems to be so much dominated by posts featuring that kind of WM, they should already change name of the sub, I believe.
So again, are there any specific advantages in everyday work for ordinary user or it's more convenient for people who need to idk, monitor lots of things at the same time without overlapping windows?
It's just a different way of thinking about windows. Why is a stacked layout better? Because users are more familiar with them. Why is tiling ‘better’? Because it gives more control to the user so they can work faster.
In my experience with tiling, almost everything is faster. It boils down to vim vs a mouse based editor. People prefer it because your hands already on the keyboard, why move them to do arbitrary things like window switching?
Example: your web browser is always accessible with Win+2, the window to the left is Win+h, your terminal is Win+Enter, etc. It's trivial to create a binding for something you do often, for example press Win+q to create a QR code from your clipboard. If you don’t like any of those, it's easy to change them to fit your style.
Also it seems like you aren't consnidering workspaces, which are key with tiling window managers. If you had only one workspace then yeah, just having 4 windows would already cut your window size. Workspaces allow you to have multiple desktops of tiling windows. So you could have just one window in workspace 2 and 4 windows in workspace 1, ...
You also have tabs on top of workspaces so not everything has to be visible, but the layout is always under control and a few keystrokes away from navigating to your window of choice
also no more window title bars meaning more screen state and a cleaner interface
I was going to say I fondly remember PowerToys on Windows XP, but it looks like it actually goes back to 95. They were always one of the first things I installed after a regular reinstallation of Windows.
Later I switched to Linux and realised most of it was already built in or unnecessary and, needless to say, regular reinstallations are no longer a thing for me.
29 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 70.6 ms ] threadYou might be aware of this already, but if anyone isn't this aware, this picture from the article has a number of Windows-/Super- key shortcuts that works already:
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/master/WindowsKe...
Who needs a shortcut to Ease of Access settings, or to the narrator? Who needs Start+, if you already have Start+D?
Start+Ctrl+D opens a new virtual desktop? Despite me never using virtual desktops? And now I have to learn all about virtual desktops (while I don't need them) to correct my accidentally pressing the Start button too when I was typing Ctrl+D. Thanks guys, for making every key-combo some or the other shortcut for stuff I don't need. My windows experience is quite good but for the growing fear of accidentally hitting some unknown shortcut and screwing things up.
Microsoft, please start removing shortcuts that no one needs, you surely must have all the telemetry data to support my point by now.
Happy to see you aren't working at Microsoft.
This constant push to remove everything that someone doesn't see the value of is really annoying for me.
Most of these shortcuts has been there for years.
The fact that you weren't even aware probably shows that this isn't a problem at all.
So please Microsoft: continue to "just work".
I far prefer Linux, but there is something to be said for "just working" for a very long time. (Feels crazy to say and I have a fair number of annoyances with Windows, but even if Windows never made me happy like a good KDE 3 or 5 setup, even Vista and 8 was kind of usable for me after some configuration, this is something I cannot say certain alternatives at that time)
(Now, there is one really crazy shortcut IMO, and that is alt + shift + space; enabled by default at least until Windows 8. Will change you keyboard layout with next to no visual feedback. Why this needs to be there by default on machines that will never be used for more than one language is beyond me, but I'll leave that to the experts, I'd rather have too many options than to few.)
Seriously? Those are probably the most important shortcuts on there. Having a way to immediately jump to accessibility settings is critical for all of the people who need those tools when they sit down at an unfamiliar computer, or even their own computer.
As for all of the others, yes, they should all be there. If you use it, dictation is something that's done frequently, as is use of the Game Bar (how else would you call it up during a full screen game?) and virtual desktops.
> Microsoft, please start removing shortcuts that no one needs, you surely must have all the telemetry data to support my point by now.
The fact that they haven't removed them should be enough evidence that they are, in fact, used.
(Furthermore, the updates to the Game Bar currently in Xbox Insider Preview right now add a ton of new useful widgets including things like direct access to your Xbox Friends list without needing to jump to the Xbox App. It's becoming an even better PC-world equivalent to the Xbox Guide blades on an Xbox One. Bringing things closer to what you can do with the Discord or Steam overlays, but universal across all your games rather than developer or launcher specific. [Hopefully the widgets will be extensible in the future and maybe help us move to a world where it can eat those other two overlays; one overlay to rule them all.])
Here's how it worked, there's a Windows security feature called UIPI (User Interface Privilege Isolation) that prevents processes from sending messages to more privileged processes. That's critical, otherwise an unprivileged process can just send input to explorer and make it delete all your files or whatever. This was used to keep Internet Explorer sandboxed, so that if IE got compromised, it couldn't take over your computer.
UIPI didn't prevent processes from triggering key combinations registered with RegisterHotKey() though, which is what explorer uses for things like Alt+Tab and so on. Turns out, there was a way to send input to cmd.exe windows, but it literally only worked on cmd.exe. That sounds bad, but an unprivileged process can't spawn a highly privileged cmd.exe, when you create a new process it just inherits your privilege level. That means you can't make it do anything you couldn't already do on your own.
But.... you can spawn a low privileged cmd.exe, which gets added to the taskbar... then use the Win+Shift+Number shortcut registered with RegisterHotKey() to tell explorer to create a new window (Try it!). Explorer is already privileged, so the new window is spawned with privileges (technically, medium integrity) and then you can take it over!
It's crazy, but that was a real bug.
Here's a video of it working: https://twitter.com/Meatballs__/status/365233323406143489
And it's really in Metasploit: https://www.rapid7.com/db/modules/exploit/windows/local/ms13...
I'll share it if anyone wants it.
Back in the days I remember using something I guess from the donationcoder website, that would allow me to drag windows into "placeholders" on the screen. I used it to get consistent setups when recording screencasts when I was a teacher.
(And if anyone needs something to setup widows for screenrecording on Linux this is the best I've found, thanks to Robert Gamble on stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/a/288537/9987)
So again, are there any specific advantages in everyday work for ordinary user or it's more convenient for people who need to idk, monitor lots of things at the same time without overlapping windows?
In my experience with tiling, almost everything is faster. It boils down to vim vs a mouse based editor. People prefer it because your hands already on the keyboard, why move them to do arbitrary things like window switching?
Example: your web browser is always accessible with Win+2, the window to the left is Win+h, your terminal is Win+Enter, etc. It's trivial to create a binding for something you do often, for example press Win+q to create a QR code from your clipboard. If you don’t like any of those, it's easy to change them to fit your style.
Also it seems like you aren't consnidering workspaces, which are key with tiling window managers. If you had only one workspace then yeah, just having 4 windows would already cut your window size. Workspaces allow you to have multiple desktops of tiling windows. So you could have just one window in workspace 2 and 4 windows in workspace 1, ...
also no more window title bars meaning more screen state and a cleaner interface
Later I switched to Linux and realised most of it was already built in or unnecessary and, needless to say, regular reinstallations are no longer a thing for me.