If your Windows 10 laptop has a touchscreen, here are the useful Windows 10 touchscreen gestures you should know for better usability.
Windows 10 has built-in support for touchscreen displays. In fact, that is one of the main driving forces behind the ever-evolving user interface of the operating system. When you are using a laptop or even a desktop monitor that has touchscreen functionality, you can use the built-in gesture support to enhance your user experience and navigation. To use the touch screen you don’t have to go through any additional configuration. It just works right out of the box.
To get you started, here are some of the most useful Windows 10 touchscreen gestures every user should know.
The list of touch gestures shown below will work both in regular desktop mode and tablet mode. When there are tablet-mode specific gestures, I will label them as such.
List of Windows 10 Touchscreen Gestures
A quick guide to Windows 10 touchscreen gestures
- Single tap — Select file or folder
- Double tab — Open file or folder
- Tap and hold — Show the context menu
- Tap and drag — Select and move
- Pinch or stretch — Zoom out & Zoom in
- Rotate — Rotate onscreen object
- Tap, hold and swipe — Show context commands
- Swipe from right edge — Show action center
- Swipe from the left edge — Show task view
- Swipe from top edge — Show title bar on fullscreen
- Swipe from bottom edge — Show taskbar on fullscreen
Detailed explanation:
1. Single tap — Select file or folder
To select a file or folder, just do a single tap on that object. Doing so will select that file or folder instantly. This is very similar to how you can select using the mouse pointer.
2. Double tab — Open file or folder
To open a file or folder, just double-click on the file or folder. As you can guess, this is very similar to the mouse pointer double-click.
3. Tap and hold — Show the context menu
To show the context menu or right-click menu, tap and hold on the file or folder and then release. You can think of it as long-press and release.
As you can guess, you can use this gesture to show the right-click menu anywhere. Being a context menu, you will see relevant right-click options depending on the object you do the gesture on.
4. Tap and drag — Select and move
To move a file or folder, simply tap and drag it. To drop the object, release the gesture.
When you do the same gesture on an empty space like on the desktop, you will see the selection box which lets you select multiple files or folders at once.
This gesture is very similar to how you use the mouse pointer to move the files or folders or select multiple folders with the selection box.
5. Pinch or stretch — Zoom out & Zoom in
This is one of the most well-known gestures. To zoom in, simply use the two-finger pinch gesture. i.e, place two fingers apart from each other on the screen and contract them to one another.
To zoom out, use the stretch gesture with two-figures. i.e, place your two fingers in a pinch position and spread them apart.
These gestures are very useful to zoom in and out of web pages, photos, etc.
6. Rotate — Rotate onscreen object
To rotate a photo or image, simply place two fingers on the screen and turn them clockwise or anti-clockwise. Depending on which way you turn, the photo or image will rotate in that way.
In general, this gesture is only used for photos, images, and other creative applications. This gesture might not work with regular files.
7. Tap, hold and swipe — Show context commands
Windows has a second type of context menu that has fewer options like copy here, move here, create a shortcut, etc. To open that context menu, tap and hold on the file or folder for a brief second and do a quick swipe in any direction.
8. Swipe from right edge — Show action center
This gesture is pretty simple. Just swipe from the right edge to open the Notification Center or also known as the action center. From there, you can access all notifications and additional controls buttons.
9. Swipe from the left edge — Show task view
To open the Task View, swipe from the left edge. Once the task view has been opened, you can access activity history, select open apps, or create virtual desktops.
10. Swipe from top edge — Show title bar on fullscreen
To show the title bar of a full-screen application, swipe from the top edge of the screen. This gesture is only applicable when you are in tablet mode.
11. Swipe from bottom edge — Show taskbar on fullscreen
To show the taskbar when a full-screen application is active, swipe from the bottom edge of the screen. This gesture is only applicable when you are in tablet mode.
That is all. These are all the touchscreen gestures in Windows 10. If you think I missed any, comment below and share them with me. If you are facing problems with the touch screen, follow how to fix touchscreen problems in Windows 10.
