Windows is ubiquitous

Windows is ubiquitous, but there are quite a number of features that are quite unknown to a majority of users. Here are some of them. They’re pretty unpopular, and if you find anything new here, do share the article on Twitter or Facebook!

1. Double click the top-left corner to close a window

The Alt+F4 keyboard shortcut closes the active window. Some of you might right click on the window title to do the accomplish the same thing, but you can use this super cool trick to get rid of a window quickly: just double click on the top-left corner of any window and it’ll close itself. Thanks Mayur!

2. Ctrl+C to copy error messages

If you ever encounter a dialog box with an error message in Windows, you probably do a Google search for the error message by typing it in manually. This is cumbersome and you might miss some important information while retyping the message.

The next time you do this, just hit Ctrl+C when the dialog box is in focus. This copies the text in the dialog box to your Windows clipboard. You can then paste it in the Google Search box, or a forum post pretty easily.

3. Shift+Click for No To All

If you’re still using Windows XP for some reason, make sure you know this. If you get a file copy dialog like the one above, you might probably be wondering why they totally forgot about a ‘No to all’ button. Don’t worry though. Holding Shift while clicking on the No button is the equivalent of ‘No to all’, as Amit assures.

4. See which programs are occupying a lot of space

Checking out apps that are occupying the most space in Android is a piece of cake. A similar option is available in Windows, but it’s overlooked. All you need to do is right click some empty space in the ‘Add or remove programs’ window and choose Sorty by > Size.

You can quickly check the biggest disk space hogs by using this window, instead of using a third-party disk space analyzer app. In addition, you can also sort programs by the date they were installed on. Just right click and choose Sort by > Installed on.

Related: Check out how you can free up space in your primary C:\ partition.

5. Ctrl+Shift+N For New Folder

Previously mentioned Ctrl+Shift+N shortcut can be used to create a new folder anywhere in Windows Explorer. This shortcut works in Windows 7 without a hitch. You needn’t necessarily fiddle with the menu bar or the right click menu to create a new directory. To get the same feature in Windows XP, install bxNewFolder.