Windows 8 touch screen tricks

Enter the new semantic zoom feature. And the feature is also available to mouse and keyboard users: Simply hold down the Ctrl button, and use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

Your Start screen can become a cluttered mess if you collect too many apps and other elements that have been pinned to the screen as tiles, so take advantage of built-in organization tools that let you divide everything into labeled groups.

First, drag all the tiles you want to assign to a single group to the far right-hand side of your Start screen in vacant territory; the OS should sequester the tiles together. Type in the name, and enjoy your newly organized Start screen! Nonetheless, if you insist on being rebellious, you can close an app by dragging it with your mouse or finger from the top of the screen all the way down to the bottom.

As you drag, the app will miminize into a thumbnail, and when you reach the bottom, it will disappear from view. The Search function located on the Charms bar is packed with power, letting you search the directories of not only your Windows 8 machine, but also the greater Windows ecosystem. Simply choose the bucket of data you want to sift through—it could be all your installed apps, your system settings, your files, your mail messages, or even an external service like the Windows Store or Bing Maps—type in a keyword, and hit Enter.

Try it. It works! A lot of apps tap into very personal information by default. Indeed, your pictures, location, and name are liberally woven throughout the system, and like many users you may not be comfortable trusting your machine with that much sensitive data. Select the Privacy option, and personalize the settings for your personal data there. SmartScreen warns you before running an unrecognized app or file from the Internet.

From this area, you can adjust various security settings, including the Windows SmartScreen. Because the Windows 8 experience is split between new Windows 8 Store apps and old-school desktop apps, the operating system is prone to some strange behaviors.

Case in point: When running a multimonitor setup, Windows 8 apps will consume your main screen, leaving your secondary screen running the desktop. Indeed, as soon as you begin using the desktop on your secondary screen, the new-style Windows 8 app disappears, and your primary screen begins running the desktop. The desktop can take up the left-hand sliver, while the Windows 8 app consumes the majority of the screen. Now use your second display for a full desktop view. In this arrangement, you can fully multitask between new-style apps and desktop apps, and both windows will be large enough to be useful.

You no longer have to run the MSConfig program to change startup items. Startup items now show up in a tab on Task Manager. The Start screen apps are initially displayed in a fairly random order, but if you'd prefer a more organised life then it's easy to sort them into custom groups. You might drag People, Mail, Messaging and Calendar over to the left-hand side, for instance, to form a separate 'People' group.

Click the 'minus' icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to zoom out and you'll now find you can drag and drop the new group or any of the others around as a block. Right-click within the block while still zoomed out and you'll also be able to give the group a name, which - if you go on to add another 20 or 30 apps to your Start screen - will make it much easier to find the tools you need. Windows 8. Right-click an empty part of the Start screen, or swipe up, tap Customise, then drag and drop tiles or rename app groups to whatever you need.

Right-click in the bottom-left corner or hold down the Windows key and press X for a text-based menu that provides easy access to lots of useful applets and features: Device Manager, Control Panel, Explorer, the Search dialog and more. If you can't see what you need immediately, start typing an application name to search for it. Or, in Windows 8. If there's an application you use all the time then you don't have to access it via the search system.

Pin it to the Start screen and it'll be available at a click. Start by typing part of the name of your application. To access Control Panel, for instance, type 'Control'.

If you're using a touchscreen, press and hold the icon, then flick down and select 'Pin to Start'. Type Control Panel. Go to Hardware and Sound.

Click on Pen and touch. Click the touch tab. Enab le use your finger as an input. Was this reply helpful? Yes No. Sorry this didn't help. Thanks for your feedback.