Selecting a layout.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
If you do this, all of your other open apps will display inside a brand new window. Click any of those apps to fill in spots in the remainder of the layout. The grouping is saved as a Snap Group that you may to return to when you’ve opened other apps or minimized any of the group’s app windows. To return to the group, hover your mouse over the taskbar icon of any of the applications in a Snap Group. You’ll see thumbnails of all of the apps within the group. Click the thumbnail to return to the group.
For more details about Snap Layouts and related features, see “Make multitasking a Snap in your Windows PC.”
8. Use the key Start menu
Hidden within the bowels of Windows 11 are many powerful tools that could make you more productive, akin to Network Connections for viewing and managing your web connections; Device Manager for managing your devices; Terminal, an interface for powerful command-line tools, especially for IT pros; Task Manager for helping make your PC more efficient; and plenty of others.
That’s all well and good, but unless you employ them on a regular basis, it’s easy to forget that they exist. And even when you do remember they exist, it’s often challenging to search out them. Some are buried deep within the Settings app. Others require that you simply launch them from a command line. And yet others could also be squirrelled away in a spot you’ll never find.
There’s a trick for attending to them quickly — use what some people call the key Start menu. To launch it, right-click the Start icon to the left of the search box on the taskbar, or press the Windows key + X. A menu appears with a protracted list of those tools. Click whatever tool you desire to use and get going with it.
Here’s what some people call the “secret Start menu” for getting quick access to productivity-boosters.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
This story was originally published in July 2023 and most recently updated in April 2026.