
Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using Windows? - machocam
I just moved to windows from MacOS - don&#x27;t know many neat tricks yet.
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yyyk
I can't recall when I found it about it, and OSX already has it - one of
Windows' neatest tricks is being able to do some regular file operations in
the standard open/save dialogs. It saved me countless clicks over the years at
$WORK.

Was Windows the first to allow this, or was there some antecedent? There are
'modern' Linux GUI toolkits which still do not allow this, like GTK's
GtkFileChooser which apparently lives in the dark ages (no thumbnail support
there either).

~~~
machocam
To be clear is this feature being able to move or rename files from the
save/open dialog?

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yyyk
Yes, also copy and clipboard integration. So many little uses. I can rename a
file in the open dialog to ensure correct program behaviour, or forget where I
saved something, open the save dialog again, and copy the file without needing
to navigate with another program to the path. Note that the path is copyable
in explorer dialogs, so I can copy it and navigate more easily with another
program if that is still required.

I'm running KDE and it gets the open/save dialog just right, but every GTK
program I run shows that barebones picker.

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fjcp
Explorer: If you type cmd and press enter in the path bar it opens a cmd
prompt at the current directory. Other way to open it is to hold shift when
opening the folder context menu to expose this option.

Holding Shift while opening context menus usually show more advanced options,
like the possibility to run as another user when right-clicking something
executable.

Firefox: If you try to drag the mouse to select part of a link it you drag the
link (so you can place it on the bookmarks toolbar/etc), to prevent this
behavior you can hold Alt and now it'll let you select the text without
dragging the link (this one is not windows specific, it works on Linux too).

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72deluxe
Loads of shortcuts: F2: rename

F3: find

Alt F4: close window, ctrl-w seems to do this a lot these days too

Alt minus: show child document window menu

Alt space: show window menu, useful if you remember the X for
maximize/minimize, z for resize, m for move, r for restore immediately
afterwards.

F4 go to address bar in Explorer

F5 refresh

Ctrl F6 switch windows in MDI interface

Ctrl escape: show start menu

Shift-F10: right click menu

Windows E: explorer

Alt-up in explorer: go to directory above; backspace/alt-left: go to previous
history item

Windows W windows ink for annotation

Windows R for run

Windows U for narrator

Windows F used to do find but now shows the feedback tool, which I think is a
loss

Any command after the word control will open control panel to the right place,
eg control display

Windows D show desktop toggle

Windows M minimise all windows, windows shift M restore windows

Ctrl-shift-escape: show task manager

Ctrl tab/ctrl-shift-tab move to next/previous UI item so you can use the UI
with a keyboard; this is why web apps that pretend to be native are so useless
and annoying because this doesn't work

Also system items normally end with .msc to open the management console, eg.
Compmgmt.msc. There's a load of these that help you get to the nitty gritty of
the system.

Turn on "show accelerators" in accessibility and menu entries and buttons will
have their accelerator underlined, eg the O in OK or F in File. You can then
use alt-(letter) to go to it, eg alt-f to open the file menu, s for save.

Honestly I don't know how I would have got through using Windows for decades
without these shortcuts. I always find the Mac relies on mouse usage a lot
more and the ctrl-F2 and ctrl-F3 shortcut to get to the menu bar and dock on
Mac doesn't compare.

~~~
akadruid1
Windows G: "game bar" \- includes built in screen recorder, which launches
quickly and captures audio etc along with screen

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machocam
A couple of good surprises coming from MacOs:

\- The window snapping shortcuts win + left or win + right are great. \- Alt-
tab rolls through all open windows, not open programs (avoids the tab + ` in
mac) \- Win + e to open explorer that one comes in handy often

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amlida_james
I found them: Access a Start Menu for power users. ... Sniff out disk space-
hoarding apps. ... Quickly minimize all windows except the active one. ...
Stop background apps from running. ... Become a Start Menu power user. ...
Print to PDF. ... Know these new useful keyboard shortcuts. ... New trackpad
gestures.

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72deluxe
I also find that people forget about the tricks on macos:

You can drag the icon from any title of a window into a finder window or
dialog to go to that directory.

You can right-click on the title bar of any window and see the path to that
window's document.

But enjoy Windows!

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QuadrupleA
Recently discovered the Snipping Tool (start menu) - crop a screenshot
rectangle, annotate with pen / highlighter, and save as JPG/PNG. Handy.

~~~
machocam
I discovered that one too: win + shift + s The only frustrating thing is that
with that hotkey it just copies it to the clipboard (usefult often) but
sometimes I want to do what you mentioned (save it). For that I don't know a
hotkey...

~~~
utf_8x
There's no hotkey for that but boy do I have a solution for you. The dumbest
thing I've ever made but it might actually help someone's workflow so here you
go: [https://gitlab.com/utf_8x/pastesave](https://gitlab.com/utf_8x/pastesave)

~~~
athriren
Some of the dumbest things I have made have been the most useful. Thanks for
posting this, appreciated that the first commit was when you made this comment
so you got it online specifically for people in the thread in case they would
find it useful.

~~~
utf_8x
Cheers :) I do a lot of reactive programming, that is I react to people's
problems and hack up quick and dirty solutions :D

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knopkop_
That you can click and drag a file to the command line window and it'll
populate the path and filename.

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brianush1
Winkey + . to open the emoji picker

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loco5niner
Ctrl + Shift + T : Reopens a browser tab that you just accidentally closed.

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sjilo
F2 to rename things

~~~
machocam
ooo that's a good one :)

