6 Hidden Windows 11 Features Every User Should Know About By Now
With every update and upgrade, Windows keeps adding nifty features that improve the user experience. Windows 11 alone comes with a bunch of features designed not only to boost productivity but also to be helpful for those with different needs. There’s the Focus assist for distractionless work sessions, the Snipping tool for recording specific parts of the display or taking a screenshot, and the Visual notifications for alerting hearing-impaired users, to name a few.
However, on top of the most frequently usedWindows 11 features, there lies a treasure trove of lesser-known gems — hidden functionalities you’re probably still missing out on but can enhance how you navigate, manage, and use your digital space. These include shake to minimize, natural voices for the Windows Narrator, clipboard history, Game Bar, built-in troubleshooters, and voice typing. We’ll go through what each of these do and how to use them to their full potential.
Shake to minimize
If you use your laptop for work or school, you rarely have only one active window on your computer at a time. Usually, there’s a minimum of two of them up and running, and sometimes, if you’re multitasking like crazy, that number can shoot up to 20 and even 50! Having all these windows open is great for increasing your productivity, but let’s be honest; they can also be a headache to manage. There will be times when you want to focus on a single window, so you have to go through the tedious process of minimizing all the other ones one at a time. Fortunately, Windows 11 has a nifty feature called the Title Bar Window Shake that makes minimizing multiple windows quick and easy.Thirty-seven percent of Windows usersdon’t even know this feature exists, but it can come in handy.
To enable the Title Bar Window Shake feature, open Settings and navigate to System > Multitasking. Alternatively, you can type “shake” in the search bar and select the first result that comes up. On the Multitasking page, turn on the option for “Title bar window shake.” You can now give it a whirl. Just grab and hold the title bar of the window you want to stay open and give it a little shake. All your other opened windows will automatically swoop down to the taskbar and out of your way. If you shake your active window again, they’ll pop back up.
Natural-sounding voices for Narrator
If you didn’t already know, Windows 11 includes a Narrator that reads and interacts with whatever you have displayed on your computer. This accessibility feature can come in handy for visually impaired users and in situations when you prefer to listen instead of read the content on, say, an email, document, or blog post. By default, the Narrator uses a robotic voice. However, you can switch it up to sound more human-like. Here’s how to set it up:
Clipboard history
Maximize your copy-paste routine with the Windows clipboard history. True to its name, the clipboard history is essentially a log that keeps track of the things you’ve copied since turning on your computer until you restart or shut it down. It can store plain text and the images you’ve copied and screencaptured. The great thing about the clipboard history is that you may paste the same item repeatedly, even after copying new content—no need to return to the source and copy it again.
To use the clipboard history, here’s what you need to do:
The Game Bar is an overlayed toolbar featuring utilities gamers typically use. It comes complete with the following widgets:
All of the widgets, except for the Xbox-related ones, can be used without any additional setup. For the Xbox-related widgets, you first need to sign in to the Xbox app on your computer to enable them. Apart from the built-in widgets, Game Bar lets you install and use third-party ones, too. Just go to the Widget Store and download your favorite widgets. Some of the available Game Bar widgets include Spotify, Game Bar Calculator, and Microsoft Teams Play Together.
To show the Game Bar, simply press Win + G. Customize the widgets displayed by clicking on the Widget Menu icon on the right of the main toolbar and marking the widgets you want to show up on the screen. You can also rearrange and resize the widgets.
Troubleshooters
You’ll inevitably run into some minor issue with your computer, whether it’s the Wi-Fi disconnecting or the camera refusing to open. Instead of jumping right to Google to look for a quick fix, you may use the built-in troubleshooters first. Windows troubleshooters can help you diagnose different hardware and software issues and get recommended solutions.
Here are the available troubleshooters you can find under Settings > System > Troubleshoot > Other troubleshooters:
To use the troubleshooters, follow these steps:
Voice typing
Typing with your keyboard is all fun and games until you’re faced with a very long document, and it quickly becomes a boring chore you prefer to skip out on. Lucky for you, Windows offers a quicker and more convenient way to type on your computer: using your voice. Driven by Azure Speech services, the Windows speech dictation feature converts spoken words to text, so you may write reports, emails, and other documents all hands-free. Voice typing supports over 40 languages, including Thai, Irish, Czech, and Bulgarian.
