Different keyboard shortcut for Windows 8 start screen

08
2014-07
  • Anshul

    By default, the Windows key will go to the start screen on Windows 8. But I'm using this program called Pokki that adds a classic Windows-like (pre-Win 8) start menu to Windows 8. And I've enabled the option to invoke Pokki when the Windows key is pressed. The problem now is that I have no way to get to the Windows start screen using a keyboard shortcut. I know in another start menu replacement app (Classic Shell, I believe), there is the option to have Ctrl+Windows bring up the Windows 8 start screen.

    My question is: Is there a way to assign Ctrl+Windows as the keystroke that will bring up the Windows 8 start screen? Thanks.

    • Answers
  • QMechanic73

    Ctrl + Esc is what you are looking for. It's an alternative key to launch start menu.

  • Kard Nails

    A possible workaround would be to create a desktop shortcut and assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Unfortunately, you can only use Crtl+Alt+ or F keys.

    • Download this zip and extract it anywhere.
    • Create a desktop shortcut of the exe.
    • Right click on the shortcut, select properties and change the shortcut in the Shortcut tab.

    Source: Eightforums


    • Related Question

    windows - How to get list of defined shortcut keys in the Start menu?
  • Peter Mortensen

    How can I find out which keyboard shortcuts are defined inside the Start menu? And what shortcuts they are assigned to?

    Platform: Windows XP SP2 64 bit.

    Example:

    I open my main Visual Studio solution with a shortcut key, Ctrl+Alt+M. This is setup by having a shortcut inside the Start menu with:

    Target: "D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" D:\dproj\MSQall\MSQuant\MSQuant.sln

Shortcut key: Ctrl+ALT+M

    If a new shortcut is added and its shortcut key is also set to Ctrl+Alt+M then there are now two shortcuts with the same shortcut key (conflict). To prevent this it would be nice to know which shortcut keys are already assigned and to which shortcuts.


    • Related Answers
  • sblair

    There is a utility that helps you see which programs have grabbed which shortcut. It is called Shortcuts Map from Zealsoft.

  • DragonLord

    http://hkcmdr.anymania.com/help.html

    To the left, there should be a link that says "Download Windows Hotkey Explorer Free!". This did the trick for me. It showed that "Cisco IP Communicator" was using Ctrl+Shift+A as a global hotkey when I needed it to work as "Add New Item" in Visual Studio.

  • 8088

    It looks like ActiveHotkeys might be what you want:

    On several occasions there have been requests for a program that displays what global keyboard shortcuts are registered by various applications. ActiveHotkeys does just that: it will show a list of all active (registered) or inactive (available) global hotkeys.

    Updated to version 1.1 - the Play/Pause edition. Totally free for all; please let me know if you encounter a problem. No installation necessary - just unpack and run. See the included readme file for details (or click the About tab in the program).

    Download links are at the bottom of this post. Please be sure to download the latest version.

    Please note that Windows does not allow for detecting which application has registered a particular shortcut, so that feaure is not included. (If you think you know how to achieve that, using message hooks or what-not, please post here or earn some karma at StackOverflow)

    Main Screen of ActiveHotkeys