Keyboard shortcuts are a way of life for many Windows 11 users, and they help you get things done a whole lot faster. Windows itself already has a never-ending list of shortcuts you can use to speed things up in your daily workflow, but what if you could make things even easier for yourself?

Thanks to third-party apps and some Windows settings, you can use custom keyboard shortcuts to do a lot more than what they do by default. Here are a few things for which you might want to enable shortcuts to make your life easier.

5 Reassign the Copilot key

If you have a 2024 laptop

One of the big things you should consider doing if you have a laptop launched in 2024 is assign the Copilot key to launch any modern app you want. The Copilot key isn't all that useful today, but the latest version of Windows 11 lets you quickly launch any packaged MSIX app on your PC by pressing that key.

This won't work for a lot of classic programs, but if you want to quickly open something like the Camera app, this lets you do that. And it's always possible Microsoft will expand what you can do with the Copilot key in the future.

4 Launch your favorite browser

How often do you use it?

The web browser is arguably the app we use the most on our computers, so being able to open it at a moment's notice is probably a good idea. This is a keyboard shortcut that can thankfully be set within Windows itself, as long as you know what you're doing.

All You need is to have a shortcut already created on the PC, and that can be on the desktop or even the Start menu, as those shortcuts are kept in a folder within File Explorer. You can right-click a File Explorer shortcut and choose Properties, and then use the Shortcut key field to create a key combination that launches the app.

You can apply these steps to basically any classic desktop app on your PC, but the browser is a very important one, so I recommend starting there.

3 Rotate your screen

When they can't do it themselves

If you have a desktop PC and want to use your monitor in vertical orientation, it can be a bit cumbersome, especially if you plan to switch back and forth frequently. Windows PCs used to come with some keyboard shortcuts for changing the orientation of your screen, but those no longer work.

Thankfully, an app called Screen Rotate on the Microsoft Store can restore this functionality. Once you install and launch it, screen rotate will enable a few shortcuts:

1. Ctrl + Alt + R - Rotates the screen 90 degrees to the left. Keep pressing the shortcut to keep rotating all around.
2. Ctrl + Alt + A - Rotates the screen 90 degrees to the left from the default position.
3. Ctrl + Alt + D - Rotates the screen 90 degrees to the right from the default position.
4. Ctrl + Alt + S - Rotates the screen 180 degrees so it's upside down (compared to the default position).
5. Ctrl + Alt + W - Restores the screen to the default position.

Of course, you can remap these shortcuts if you want to make things easier for yourself, but these should work pretty well.

• Screen Rotate

  See at Microsoft Store

2 Adjust monitor brightness and volume

Ideal for desktop setups

On a laptop, changing the brightness of your display or the volume of your speakers is a trivial task since there are usually dedicated keys for it, and many desktop keyboards also include media keys for changing the volume in Windows itself.

But when it comes to using an external monitor, things get a bit more complicated. Windows doesn't play nice with external monitors, so changing the brightness on those can be a hassle. And if it has built-in speakers, the volume for the monitor and for Windows itself are also separate.

Thankfully, an app like Twinkle Tray or Click MonitorDDC can be used to create shortcuts that let you change the brightness and volume of an external monitor much more easily. These are fully customizable to your liking, so I'd recommend just installing either of the apps using the links below and diving into the settings yourself. Twinkle Tray is probably the easier one to get acquainted with.

• Twinkle Tray

  See at Microsoft Store See at Twinkle Tray

• ClickMonitorDDC

  See at Github

1 Mute your microphone and camera

Avoid disasters by muting instantly

Ever since hybrid work exploded in popularity in 2020 and 2021, I'm sure almost everyone has had an embarrassing situation where they end up either showing or saying things that aren't supposed to be shared during a work meeting. And when things start going south, you may find yourself fumbling with your computer to mute your microphone before things get even more embarrassing.

All of this can be avoided if you have a keyboard shortcut you can use to immediately turn your camera and/or microphone off no matter what app you're using. Microsoft knows this, and that's why the PowerToys suite comes with a Video Conference Mute tool that lets you instantly mute yourself with a keyboard shortcut.

The main downside with this tool is that it requires administrator permissions to be set up, but if you can use it, then you can enable the global hotkeys for muting:

• Windows + Shift + A — Mutes the microphone
• Windows + Shift + O — Turns off the camera
• Windows + Shift + Q — Turns off microphone and camera

Of course, you can change these to fit your preferences, but either way, it should make things much easier for yourself.

• Microsoft PowerToys

  OS

  Windows 10/11

  See at Github See at Microsoft Store

Make things work even faster

Since you can configure shortcuts to do almost anything, you can probably come up with a lot more options for things you might want to set up to speed up your workflow. However, the shortcuts we've listed here are some of the essential ones I'd say everyone would want to set up. They can speed up your workflow, improve your comfort, or prevent embarrassing accidents, so it's worth being prepared.