Storage Sense can automatically free up drive space for you by getting rid of items that you don’t need, like temporary files and items in your Recycle Bin.
Storage Sense is off by default. If your PC runs into low disk space and you have not interacted with Storage Sense in the past, Windows may turn on Storage Sense to manage select temporary files, then notify you. If you prefer, you can choose to turn Storage Sense off right away or after the low disk state is resolved.
If Storage Sense is turned on with the default settings, it will run when your device is low on disk space and will clean up unnecessary temporary files. Content from the Recycle Bin will be deleted by default after some time, but items in your Downloads folder and OneDrive (or any other cloud provider) will not be touched unless you set up Storage Sense to do so.
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off Storage Sense to automatically free up system drive space for your account in Windows 11.
This tutorial will show you how to add Take Ownership to the context menu of all files, folders, and drives for all users in Windows 11.
This will allow you to be able to instantly take ownership of a file, folder (and all contents), or drive (and all contents) by changing the owner to the current user and grant the Owner_Rights SID (for current owner) full access permission.
When you right click or press and hold on a file, folder, or drive, click/tap on Show more options, and click/tap on Take Ownership, you will be prompted by UAC for approval first.
If a user is signed in as an administrator, then the user would just click/tap on Yes to approve and take ownership. The owner of the file, folder, or drive would be changed to the current user account. Permissions would be set to allow this current owner (Owner_Rights SID) full control of the file, folder, or drive.
If a user is signed in as a standard user, then the user would need to enter a selected administrator’s password to approve and take ownership. The owner of the file, folder, or drive would be changed to the selected administrator account and not the standard user. Permissions would be set to allow this current owner (Owner_Rights SID) full control of the file, folder, or drive.
The Take Ownership context menu will not be available when you right click or press and hold only on the specific C: drive, C:\Program Files folder, C:\Program Files (x86) folder, C:\ProgramData folder, C:\Users folder, and C:\Windows folder. This was done by design since taking ownership of the Windows “C:” drive and these specific system folders can make Windows unstable as it would also take ownership of all their content at the same time.
You will still be able to use the Take Ownership context menu on files and folders inside the locations above, and on all drives other than the C drive and FAT32 drives.
Application files (ex: EXE, CMD, MSI) will have the Take Ownership context menu without replacing Run as administrator.
Windows 11 makes it easy to add the Microsoft accounts or Work or school accounts you use for your apps in one place so you can sign in to your favorite apps easier and faster.
When you add an account in this central location in Settings, that account will be a listed account available to select to sign in to an app with. This can be handy so you no longer have to manually add the account for each individual app you want to sign in to with it.
This tutorial will show you how to add and remove accounts used by other apps to sign in with for your account in Windows 11.
You can sign in to Windows 11 with a local account or a Microsoft account. However, you can easily switch between using a local account or a Microsoft account to sign in to Windows 11.
Signing in to Windows 11 with a Microsoft account lets you:
Signing in to Windows 11 with a local account means:
This tutorial will show you how to switch to a Microsoft account from a local account to sign in to Windows 11 with instead.
You can sign in to Windows 11 with a local account or a Microsoft account. However, you can easily switch between using a local account or a Microsoft account to sign in to Windows 11.
Signing in to Windows 11 with a Microsoft account lets you:
Signing in to Windows 11 with a local account means:
This tutorial will show you how to switch to a local account from a Microsoft account to sign in to Windows 11 with instead.
There are three startup modes in Windows:
Starting with Windows 8.x, the default shutdown and restart scenario has been updated and named fast startup. Fast startup begins with the shutdown process and includes writing data to disk similar to the hibernate process. A key difference is that all user sessions (Session 1) are logged off and the remaining information is written to the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys). When you boot the PC from this state, Windows loads the previously initialized state by reading from the hiberfile, instead of running the full cold boot process in which Windows, drivers, devices, and services are initialized. This method speeds up the process of initializing the lock or Start screen.
In addition, the use of hibernate technology has been expanded to create a new default startup and shutdown experience that is much faster than a full boot.
The faster startup and shutdown sequence uses the hibernate infrastructure to place the PC in hibernate. Unlike a full shutdown and boot, the user session is closed and a hibernate is performed. As a result, the hibernate file is much smaller, ensuring that the hibernate and resume process is faster. This sequence also takes advantage of the parallelization optimizations.
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off fast startup in Windows 11.
The Search button on the taskbar allows you to quickly use Windows Search (Win+S) to search for apps, documents, email, files, folders, music, people, photos, settings, and videos on your device, and to search the web.
The Search button on the taskbar also allows you to quickly open your Top apps and Recent apps, and to perform Quick searches to web search for today in history, new movies, translate, markets today.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the Search button on the taskbar for your account in Windows 11.
Widgets bring you closer to information you both want and need. Just click on the widgets icon on the Taskbar, swipe from the left using touch, or hit Win + W on your keyboard, and your widgets slide out from the left over your desktop. You can personalize your experience by adding or removing widgets, re-arranging, resizing, and customizing the content. The set of widgets we provide currently focus on your calendar, weather, local traffic, your Microsoft To Do lists, your photos from OneDrive, sports and esports, your stock watchlist, and tips.
In addition to your Widgets, you can stay up to date with an integrated feed of personalized news with the latest content from over 4,500 global brands like, The New York Times or BBC. The news feed will adapt to show stories of interest to you, and you can tune it to see more of the content you care about.
Widgets opens on the left side of the display, and cannot be moved around or resized. Widgets appear at the top above stories.
This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable the widgets feature for all users in Windows 11.
If you have a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app (ex: Settings or Microsoft Store app) not working right, crashing, or not opening, you can reset it.
The Reset feature allows you to either try to Repair an app (if supported), or Reset the app to default if a repair didn’t help.
This tutorial will show you how to reset a UWP app to default for your account in Windows 11.
Your recently opened items will show in Start, Jump Lists, and File Explorer by default in Windows 11.
Recently opened items are stored in the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent Items folder for the current user.
This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable showing recently opened items for your account or all users in Windows 11.
The Start menu is comprised of three sections: Pinned, All apps, and Recommended.
The Start menu contains shortcuts of all your apps, settings, and files.
The Recommended section on the Start menu shows a list of your recently installed apps (aka: “Recently added”) and recently opened items.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove recently added apps on the Start menu for your account in Windows 11.
Windows 11 gives you the option to personalize the color and accent color of a variety of surfaces you see when you use Windows.
You can personalize the colors that appear in Windows and your apps by setting the mode to Dark, Light, or Custom.
The Dark mode has a darker set of colors and is designed to work well in a low-lit environment.
The Light mode setting has a lighter color scheme across the Start menu, taskbar, Quick Settings, and notification center. It works well during daylight hours. If you choose the Light mode, you’ll be able to show an accent color for window title bars and borders. You won’t have the option to personalize the color of the Start menu and taskbar (that option is only available for Dark and Custom modes).
The Custom mode gives you more options somewhere in between light and dark. You can choose an accent color or have Windows select one (the accent color will provide a contrast with or match your wallpaper and Windows color). You can also show an accent color for window title bars (the horizontal bar at the top of a window) and borders. Play around with the colors and modes to see which ones work best for you.
You can select to show or not show the accent color on the title bars and windows borders of active windows.
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off show accent color on title bars and windows borders for your account in Windows 11.
Windows 11 gives you the option to personalize the color and accent color of a variety of surfaces you see when you use Windows.
You can personalize the colors that appear in Windows and your apps by setting the mode to Dark, Light, or Custom.
The Dark mode has a darker set of colors and is designed to work well in a low-lit environment.
The Light mode setting has a lighter color scheme across the Start menu, taskbar, Quick Settings, and notification center. It works well during daylight hours. If you choose the Light mode, you’ll be able to show an accent color for window title bars and borders. You won’t have the option to personalize the color of the Start menu and taskbar (that option is only available for Dark and Custom modes).
The Custom mode gives you more options somewhere in between light and dark. You can choose an accent color or have Windows select one (the accent color will provide a contrast with or match your wallpaper and Windows color). You can also show an accent color for window title bars (the horizontal bar at the top of a window) and borders. Play around with the colors and modes to see which ones work best for you.
You can select to show or not show the accent color on the Start menu and taskbar.
You can select to show or not show the accent color on the Start menu and taskbar (also includes “Quick Settings”, and “Notification Center”).
Windows 11 gives you the option to personalize the color and accent color of a variety of surfaces you see when you use Windows.
You can personalize the colors that appear in Windows and your apps by setting the mode to Dark, Light, or Custom.
The Dark mode has a darker set of colors and is designed to work well in a low-lit environment.
The Light mode setting has a lighter color scheme across the Start menu, taskbar, Quick Settings, and notification center. It works well during daylight hours. If you choose the Light mode, you’ll be able to show an accent color for window title bars and borders. You won’t have the option to personalize the color of the Start menu and taskbar (that option is only available for Dark and Custom modes).
The Custom mode gives you more options somewhere in between light and dark. You can choose an accent color or have Windows select one (the accent color will provide a contrast with or match your wallpaper and Windows color). You can also show an accent color for window title bars (the horizontal bar at the top of a window) and borders. Play around with the colors and modes to see which ones work best for you.
You can select to let Windows automatically select an accent color from your background, or choose your own custom accent color.
This tutorial will show you how to change the accent color used on a variety of surfaces in Windows 11 for your account.
Toggle Keys causes a tone to sound when you press the Caps Lock, Num Lock, or Scroll Lock keys.
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off Toggle Keys for your account in Windows 11.
Microsoft Defender Application Guard opens Microsoft Edge in a Hyper-V isolated browsing environment to better protect your device and data from malware.
This tutorial will show you how to install or uninstall Microsoft Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge in Windows 11 Pro, Education, and Enterprise editions.
The Attachment Manager is included in Windows to help protect your PC from unsafe attachments that you might receive with an e-mail message and from unsafe files that you might save from the Internet. If the Attachment Manager identifies an attachment that might be unsafe, the Attachment Manager prevents (blocks) you from opening the file, or it warns you before you open the file.
It uses the IAttachmentExecute application programming interface (API) to find the file type, to find the file association. When one of these applications saves a downloaded file on a disk formatted with NTFS, then it updates the metadata for the file with the zone it was downloaded from. The metadata is saved as an Alternate Data Stream (ADS). If you wish to unblock a downloaded file, you can do so by right-clicking it, selecting Properties and clicking on Unblock.
The Attachment Manager classifies files that you receive or that you download based on the file type and the file name extension. Attachment Manager classifies files types as high risk, medium risk, and low risk.
If you like, there is a Do not preserve zone information in file attachments policy that allows you to manage whether Windows marks file attachments with information about their zone of origin (such as restricted, Internet, intranet, local). If this policy is enabled, it will effectively disable downloaded files from being blocked.
This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable blocking files downloaded from the Internet for all or specific users in Windows 11.
When you download files from the Internet, Windows 11 shows you a security warning every time you try to open it by default. Some file types are blocked from opening.
The Attachment Manager is included in Windows to help protect your PC from unsafe attachments that you might receive with an e-mail message and from unsafe files that you might save from the Internet. If the Attachment Manager identifies an attachment that might be unsafe, the Attachment Manager prevents (blocks) you from opening the file, or it warns you before you open the file.
It uses the IAttachmentExecute application programming interface (API) to find the file type, to find the file association. When one of these applications saves a downloaded file on a disk formatted with NTFS, then it updates the metadata for the file with the zone it was downloaded from. The metadata is saved as an Alternate Data Stream (ADS). If you wish to unblock a downloaded file, you can do so by right-clicking it, selecting Properties and clicking on Unblock.
The Attachment Manager classifies files that you receive or that you download based on the file type and the file name extension. Attachment Manager classifies files types as high risk, medium risk, and low risk.
This tutorial will show you different ways on how to unblock files downloaded from the Internet depending on how they were blocked in Windows 11.
The lock screen is the screen you see at startup and when you lock (Win+L) the PC. You will need to dismiss the lock screen to to see the sign-in screen and sign in to Windows.
By default, the sign-in screen background image has an acrylic blur effect as part of Windows 11 transparency effects.
If you would prefer to have a clear sign-in screen background image without affecting other transparency effects for users, you can enable the Show clear logon background group policy.
This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable the acrylic blur effect on the sign-in screen background image for all users in Windows 11.