How To Get The Most Of Your Windows 8 Experience

So it's been a while since you've got your shining new Windows 8 OS installed but are still feel­ing like you're not getting the best out of it? Fear not, we're here to help you out! With a few short tips you can really start enjoying your time on Windows 8, even though you might not like how much learn­ing is required initially.

How to get the most of your Windows 8 experience

Set your OS in god mode

One of the more interesting bits of function­ality hidden in Windows 8 is "God Mode," a hidden menu that allows power users access to a massive selection of adminis­trative, maintenance, and troubleshooting utilities and features. To reveal God Mode, first bring up File Explorer and then click on the View tab. Make sure that "Hidden items" and "File name extensions" are both checked. Then, on your desktop, create a new folder, and change that folder's name to "GodMode. {ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" (omitting the quotes). The folder's icon should change. Double-click on it, and Explorer will present you with a ton of little system tools to tweak your machine.

Windows 8 God Mode

Tile groupings

To create a more manageable Start Screen space, you can drag tiles all the way to the right of the start screen to create a tile group. As you drag and drop apps, you'll notice that they snap to each other in rough groupings. Once you've clustered related tiles together, you can then zoom out of tile view into a more macro group view by either pinching the touchscreen, or pressing CTRL and using your scroll wheel. In this zoomed out mode, you can right click on groups of app tiles and then give them an appropriate name, such as say, "News Readers" or "Games", etc. You can then drag and drop your app groups into a much more organized and presentable ar­rangement from here.

Tile interface

The quick access menu

Another of our favorite little features is the Quick Access Menu, sometimes referred to as the admin menu or the power user menu, which you can get to through the Windows key + X, or by right clicking in the bottom left corner of the screen, whether in Desktop or Start Screen mode. The Quick Access Menu allows you to get to such system staples as the Programs and Features menu, the Device Manager, Command Prompt, Task Manager, and others. You can even customize it man­ually, or with helpful apps such as the Win+X Menu Editor featured in this previous article.

The Quick Access Menu allows you to get to such system staples as the Programs and Features menu, the Device Manager, Command Prompt, Task Manager, and others.