5 Windows settings most people don't know about

Windows is a massive operating system and you can go years or even decades without interacting with most of the features. There are over 100 native system-wide hotkeys in Windows 11 and it’s a pretty safe bet that most people don’t know much beyond Select All, Copy, and Paste. 

It would take a year to list everything, so instead we’re going to focus on Windows settings that you may not know about. These settings can increase functionality, add some nifty options, or just make your life easier. Every feature below is available on Windows 11 Home and Pro, and they should also be available on Windows 10 in case you’re one of the many people who held out after official support ended last year.

Clipboard history

People copy and paste stuff all the time, and sometimes, they have to go back and find something they’d copied before. Windows has a built-in feature to handle that. To use it, simply hit Windows Key + V together. This opens up the Clipboard History box. The feature is off by default, so you have to turn it on, but after that, it’ll store up to 25 of the most recent things you copied, provided they are HTML (links), text, or images up to 4MB. 

You can also pin items to keep them in the clipboard history forever. The rest are deleted when you shut down or reboot your PC. You can also access Windows’ native emoji selector from this Window, which works in any app where you can enter text. 

End task from the Taskbar

It’s pretty common knowledge that closing an app from the Windows Taskbar doesn’t necessarily fully close it down. Sometimes it sits in the System Tray and has to be closed again there, or a process continues to run unseen in the background until you go into the Task Manager to turn it off manually. You don’t have to do it this way. 

Go to Settings > System > Advanced to find a setting called End task. Click this option on. Now when you right-click an app in the Taskbar, you have the option to end the task directly, shutting down the app and all of its background tasks from there without taking a second trip to the Task Manager or the System Tray. 

Realign your Start button

Prior versions of Windows tucked the Start menu in the lower left corner and then moved it to the center in modern versions of Windows. You can actually move it back over if you want to. Right click a blank spot on your Taskbar and select Taskbar Settings. Find the Taskbar icon alignment option. You keep everything in the center or move it to the left. 

There are some really interesting settings in here, like hiding the Taskbar on your extra monitors, turning Widgets off, putting your Taskbar on a different edge of your screen, and more. It’s worth rooting around in there to customize your Taskbar experience further. 

Create, apply, and tune your Windows theme

Windows has themes, not unlike Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Go into Settings > Personalization > Themes to locate their settings. You have three main options. You can download a theme from the Microsoft Store, edit an existing theme on your machine, or create a custom theme. Each theme saves your background, including a slideshow if you want one, the accent color scheme, your mouse appearance, and sounds. 

Install Microsoft PowerToys

The Settings menu is pretty big, but there’s a whole other settings menu you can unlock with one simple install of Microsoft PowerToys. This powerful software adds several other features that you can tick on and off, along with many other things that you can adjust. For example, you can use the Keyboard Manager to create new hotkeys and then bind them to your keyboard. 

This sounds more like a feature than a settings option, but it’s actually both. PowerToys plugs into Windows in a way the stock Settings menu doesn’t and there are plenty of previously inaccessible settings options there. Root around and have fun, there’s a lot of extra stuff to check out.