There is a feature of Windows 10 that some people might find useful. It is called Task View, and it has the ability to create multiple desktops.

To activate Task View, click its icon — a large rectangle with two smaller rectangles flanking it — in the Windows Taskbar just to the right of the Search box. When you do, Task View (and its associated feature Timeline) opens.

At the very top of the screen you’ll see a “New desktop” button, and beneath that, thumbnails of all of your currently running applications arrayed against the desktop so you can quickly see what you’ve got running. You can click any thumbnail to switch to that application or press the Esc key to leave Task View and return to where you were.

Beneath that you’ll see Timeline, with thumbnails of documents you’ve worked on over the last thirty days. For all businesses and most home users, I have disabled this feature to afford you more privacy. Microsoft tracks this information, and I do not feel comfortable providing them with more telemetry than necessary. However, if you think this could be useful, let me know and I can tell you how to reactivate it.

Now, if you were used to using the Alt-Tab key combination to cycle through open applications in Windows 7, you can still do that as well, but Task View adds a couple of extra twists. If you hover your mouse over any thumbnail, a small X appears in its upper-right corner. You can click the X to close that application.

Task View also lets you create multiple virtual desktops, each with different Windows applications running on them. To create a new desktop, open Task View and click “New desktop” at the upper left of the screen. You can run a different set of Windows applications inside the new desktop. For instance, you could dedicate one desktop to your Microsoft Office applications, like Word, Outlook, and Excel, and another desktop to handle your various browser applications, and another for your accounting software.

To switch among these virtual desktops, click the Task View icon and click the desktop to which you want to switch. You can keep creating new desktops this way and switch among them.

Let me know your reactions to using this new Windows 10 feature by posting a Comment.

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