Windows 10 comes bundled with tens of apps, like Mail, Calendar, Edge, Photos, Skype, Groove Music, Calculator, and others. Most of these apps are pinned to the Start menu by default, and one can access with a click or two.
If you have had Windows 10 for a long time, you likely have found some of these default apps handy and might be using very often. While you can pin your favorite apps to the taskbar or create app shortcuts on the desktop for quick access, some of you might want to launch apps with keyboard shortcuts.
Like the classic desktop programs, default apps, as well as apps installed from the Store, can also be configured to run using keyboard shortcuts. You just need to create a shortcut of an app on the desktop and then assign a keyboard shortcut to the same to begin launching your favorite apps via keyboard shortcuts.
If, in case, you are not sure how to create desktop shortcuts to apps and set keyboard shortcuts to them, follow given below directions.
Launch apps using keyboard shortcuts in Windows 10
Step 1: The first step is to create a desktop shortcut for the app that you want to launch using the keyboard shortcut. To do so, search for the app in the Start/taskbar search, right-click on its entry and then click the Pin to Start option.
Step 2: Now, drag and drop the pinned app from the Start to the Desktop area. Before you begin dragging and dropping, make sure that you can see the desktop!
In this article, we are creating a keyboard shortcut to open the Mail app.
Step 3: Once the app shortcut is on desktop, right-click on it, and then click Properties.
Step 4: Under the Shortcut tab, select the field next to the Shortcut key.
Step 5: Press a key that you want to use to launch the app. As you can see in the above picture, Windows automatically prefixes Ctrl + Alt keys to the keyboard shortcut. For instance, if you press the M key, Windows will automatically make it Ctrl + Alt + M.
Once done, click the Apply button. You may now try the newly created keyboard shortcut.
Our how-to create custom keyboard shortcuts for programs guide might also interest you.