Open your favorite programs instantly with this shortcut trick

By Ed Bott

We all have our favorite programs, and of course the easiest way to get to any of them is to pin its shortcut to the taskbar. In Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to your 10 favorite programs just by dragging them to one of the first 10 positions on the taskbar.

Pressing the keyboard shortcut Windows key + # (where # is a single digit 0-9) opens the program associated with the corresponding taskbar button (or switches to it, if it's already open). By default, Internet Explorer is in the first spot and File Explorer is in the second spot, so you can always open File Explorer with Windows key + 2. Drag a pinned shortcut to one of those first 10 spots and then memorize its position to open it quickly. (Windows key + 0 opens the 10th pinned shortcut.)

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