I used to assume I knew Home windows fairly properly—till I stumbled upon some options hidden in plain sight, which may make a giant distinction in how you employ your machine. Even if you happen to’ve been utilizing Home windows for years, there is a good probability you’ve got missed just a few of those. Listed here are some options value testing.

5

Make Use of Dynamic Lock

Think about your PC locking itself while you stroll away—no additional effort required. That’s exactly what Home windows’ Dynamic Lock characteristic gives. It permits you to pair your smartphone along with your pc by way of Bluetooth, and while you step away along with your cellphone, the weakened or misplaced Bluetooth connection tells Home windows you are not close by—so it locks the machine.

To set it up, enable Bluetooth on your device and smartphone and pair them such as you often would for file sharing. After that, open the Settings app, go to Accounts > Signal-In Choices, scroll right down to the “Dynamic Lock” part, and test the field that claims “Enable Home windows to lock your machine mechanically while you’re away.”

As soon as enabled, your PC will mechanically lock itself when your cellphone strikes out of vary—often about 30 ft—serving to hold prying eyes away out of your information.

4

Schedule the Do Not Disturb Mode

Do fixed system and app notifications pull you out of focus whereas working in your laptop computer? In that case, you seemingly use Do Not Disturb mode to silence them. However right here’s one thing much more useful—you’ll be able to schedule this mode to activate mechanically throughout sure hours, like your work schedule or assembly instances, and switch off when you’re achieved.

This manner, you received’t have to recollect to toggle it on and off each time. To set it up, open the Settings app and go to System > Notifications > Do Not Disturb. Develop the “Activate don’t disturb mechanically” part, test “Throughout These Instances,” and outline your most well-liked begin and finish instances together with the repeat schedule.

Just under that, you will discover “Set Precedence Notifications.” Use it to pick which apps or contacts can nonetheless ship notifications, even when Do Not Disturb is energetic.

3

Customise the Sound of Notifications

Home windows has a default set of sounds for numerous system occasions—like a special ping when your battery hits a vital degree, a brand new e mail arrives, otherwise you put your laptop computer to sleep. Whereas these default tones are simply recognizable, they may really feel generic or not fairly your model. The excellent news? You possibly can simply customise them and use tones of your liking.

To change the sound for a specific event, open the Settings app, go to the “System” tab, and navigate to the “Sound” settings. Right here, scroll down and click on on “Extra Sound Settings.” Within the Sound properties window, change to the “Sounds” tab. From there, choose the occasion you’d wish to customise and select a brand new sound from the dropdown listing.

You possibly can click on the “Check” button to preview the sound. You may also use a downloaded sound file by clicking “Browse.” When you’re pleased with the choice, click on “Apply” and “OK.”

2

Pressure Apps to Use Your Devoted GPU

Have you ever ever observed that some video games and apps run easily whereas others—regardless of being much less resource-intensive—battle with efficiency? That occurs as a result of Home windows usually defaults to utilizing the built-in graphics card for some apps as a substitute of your extra highly effective devoted GPU, which causes lag and slower efficiency for graphics-intensive duties.

Happily, you’ll be able to manually assign the devoted GPU to particular apps that want higher efficiency. Merely open Settings, go to System > Show > Graphics, click on “Browse,” and select the app for which you need to modify the graphics choice. As soon as added, click on the app, choose “Choices,” and select “Excessive Efficiency” to make it use the devoted GPU.

You possibly can repeat this for different apps and video games, too. Keep in mind that if you happen to’re on a laptop computer, utilizing the devoted GPU extra usually can drain your battery rapidly.

1

Shake a Window to Decrease Others

One behavior I dislike about myself is consistently opening new app home windows with out closing the outdated ones. It clutters my desktop, switching between home windows turns into a chore, and makes it tougher to deal with a single window. Fortunately, Home windows has a nifty characteristic known as Shake to Decrease that helps clear up the mess.

It’s not a flawless repair, but it surely does the job—seize the window you need to hold, give it a fast shake, and all different open home windows will mechanically decrease. This implies I don’t must manually decrease each different window to deal with one. Even higher, shaking the identical window once more restores all of the minimized ones.

To activate this characteristic, open the Settings app, go to System > Mult-tasking, and make sure the toggle subsequent to “Title Bar Window Shake” is turned on.

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These underrated, lesser-known Home windows options can critically enhance your total expertise. Should you haven’t explored them but, attempt them—they can assist defend your privateness, enhance app efficiency, mechanically silence notifications throughout busy instances, and allow you to fine-tune notification sounds to match your preferences.