The Best New Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

1:30PM January 16, 2009 | Adam Pash

No matter what OS you use, keyboard shortcuts are a one-way ticket to enhanced productivity (plus you look awesome to friends and colleagues); Windows 7 has more cool new shortcuts than you can shake a stick at.

Windows 7 boasts a lot of great new shortcuts, but I’m focusing on several of my favourites. Check out the video above for a closer look. For those of you who prefer text to video, here are all of the shortcuts I highlighted:

Win+Home: Clear all but the active window
Win+Space: All windows become transparent so you can see through to the desktop
Win+Up arrow: Maximise the active window
Win+Down arrow: Minimise the window/Restore the window if it’s maximised
Win+Left/Right arrows: Dock the window to each side of the monitor (If you’ve got dual monitors, adding Shift to the mix (e.g., Win+Shift+Right arrow) will move the window to the adjacent monitor.)
Win+T: Focus and scroll through items on the taskbar.
Win+P: Adjust presentation settings for your display
Win+(+/-): Zoom in/out
Shift+Click a taskbar item: Open a new instance of that application

Got a favourite shortcut of your own now that you’ve installed the Windows 7 Beta? Let’s hear about it in the comments. (Apologies for the poor video quality… tried something new, but clearly it didn’t work out.)

Comments

Jordn

January 17, 2009 at 10:24 AM

Like Win+T does with the taskband, Win+B moves focus to the notification area.

midago

January 18, 2009 at 11:44 AM

About time they made more use of that damn windows key.

Still will disable its start menu function its should just be a function key only.

But now what do all the people do that have ripped off their windows key and banished them.

betard

January 20, 2009 at 5:53 AM

They need a stinking keyboard shortcut for creating new folders!

Louis St-Amour

February 2, 2009 at 4:48 PM

I absolutely LOVE the Windows+Arrow key shortcuts. It reminds me of a button-version of the new MacBook multi-touch shortcuts for minimizing and maximizing application windows. (Swiping fingers up and down.) However, I think they broke the Windows+down functionality. As far as I’m concerned, just as you can go Windows+Left, Windows+Right, Windows+Right, Windows+Left to move the window from anywhere to left, back to anywhere, then to right and back — you should also be able to go Windows+Up, Windows+Down, Windows+Down, Windows+Up. But you can’t. Once minimized, the only way to “Restore” the window is to physically move the mouse and click the icon, or try other commands. That’s plain silly. Fix it, Microsoft!

Having said all that, where’s my Expose shortcut? Add that, and make the action center flag less annoying by its constant presence and I might just switch from Leopard to Seven full time …

(You have to give Microsoft credit for the minimize animations — in Mac, the woosh animation annoys the crap out of me, but I don’t want to disable it entirely, I merely want it to be less look-at-me, as in Seven.)

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