Windows 7 Beta hotkey cheat sheet

by Brandon on January 10th, 2009

Got yourself a shiny new Windows 7 Beta install? Here’s a little cheat sheet I made up for some of the handy new hotkey combinations, many of which I’ve become quite dependent on!

General

Win+Up	Maximize
Win+Down	Restore / Minimize
Win+Left	Snap to left
Win+Right	Snap to right
Win+Shift+Left	Jump to left monitor
Win+Shift+Right	Jump to right monitor
Win+Home	Minimize / Restore all other windows
Win+T	Focus the first taskbar entry Pressing again will cycle through them, you can can arrow around. Win+Shift+T cycles backwards.
Win+Space	Peek at the desktop
Win+G	Bring gadgets to the top of the Z-order
Win+P	External display options (mirror, extend desktop, etc)
Win+X	Mobility Center (same as Vista, but still handy!)
Win+# (# = a number key)	Launches a new instance of the application in the Nth slot on the taskbar. Example: Win+1 launches first pinned app, Win+2 launches second, etc.
Win + + Win + – (plus or minus key)	Zoom in or out.

Windows Explorer

Alt+P

Show/hide Preview Pane

Taskbar modifiers

Shift + Click on icon	Open a new instance
Middle click on icon	Open a new instance
Ctrl + Shift + Click on icon	Open a new instance with Admin privileges
Shift + Right-click on icon	Show window menu (Restore / Minimize / Move / etc) Note: Normally you can just right-click on the window thumbnail to get this menu
Shift + Right-click on grouped icon	Menu with Restore All / Minimize All / Close All, etc.
Ctrl + Click on grouped icon	Cycle between the windows (or tabs) in the group

Note that this list focuses on stuff that’s specific to Windows 7. For a complete list of Windows Vista hotkeys (which should be largely unchanged except where noted above), visit this page on Microsoft.com or look in the Windows Help file.

If there’s something you think I should add, post a comment!

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201 Comments

Sankeerth permalink

Very nice useful tips. Thanks a lot for these.
MaxPs permalink

Hey what about an hotkey to shortcut for “new folder” ? 🙂
Mikey permalink

If you work on Explorer can you tell me why it doesnt release ram after closing windows?? This is extremely annoying if i go to open any other ram heavy application, I would like to know if you are applying any compile time optimisations as far as i know the MS compiler doesnt let you do this (compile optimisations = faster and less memory usage)
Brandon Paddock permalink

@Mikey –

Haha, of course the MS compiler performs optimizations =P You must be joking about that right?

Explorer memory usage should be very well managed. Of course the Win7 Beta, being a beta, may yet have some bugs and leaks here and there. That is, after all, why it’s called a beta.

The most common cause of increased Explorer memory usage is due to buggy shell extensions. A typical machine has dozens of shell extensions installed (context menu handlers, thumbnail and icon handlers, property handlers, and so on), so it can sometimes be difficult to track down the problematic ones. In fact, if this happens when you view media files, problematic video and audio codecs are well known to cause memory usage issues (among other problems). These get particularly bad if you use any of those awful “codec pack” downloads.
Andomar permalink

Middle clicking the Explorer icon doesn’t open a new explorer for me?

Works for command prompts and IE tho.
Andomar permalink

Is there a way too see or disable explorer extensions?

(I use regedit, but hoping to find a better way:)
Mikey permalink

Cheers for clearing that up, otherwise the beta is looking very polished as well as explorer, Great work. How often is garbage collection checking for free pointers in the ram?
Mikey permalink

Oh and your table (website) is broken in firefox, it spreads past the white center
Hi2009 permalink

snap left … snap right….beauty!! thanks you Brandon!
Soum permalink

Looks like there is no easy way to launch a new instance of an app just from the mouse (right click -> move to the app name in jump list -> click is a lot of work). How about double click?

On the other hand, I dont see a way to invoke the per-app thumbnails (the ones that pop up by hovering the pointer over a taskbar button) from only the kbd. How about Win+Ctrl+t to invoke that, right/left to select the window and esc to close it?
Soum permalink

Win+Ctrl+n (n = number) to invoke the per-app thumbnails.
penguin permalink

I just don’t get it, Microsoft keeps trying to do improvements but they end up missing the mark. While these are cool, does nobody at Redmond ever run Linux?

I know that can’t be the case, so I’m assuming that the people who make decisions on the direction don’t listen to their geeks. How about a configurable shortcut menu? Make these the defaults, but allow the user to change them if they want.

Oh well, I guess as long as they have the masses convinced this is something cool and groundbreaking, they can keep providing a sub-par operating system. Enjoy.

ps – people actually use IE by choice? really? huh…
Arto permalink

Win+space doesn’t work on my PC. All other win+ shortcuts work without problems. Anyone have any idea why it might be?
Syscata permalink

Thank you for new tips. Very useful.
Deep Sukhwani permalink

Now this is a great one.. very useful..
Thanks Brandon!!

Regards
Deep S