keyboard shortcuts - Windows 8.1 Search selection highlighting not working properly

07
2014-07
  • Xaser

    I have a rather peculiar issue after doing a fresh win8.1 reinstall on my vaio sa3 notebook. Basically whats bothering me that if I use the windows search, i.e. Windows Key+typing or Windows Key+S, you expect the current selected item in the list to have a different background to highlight its selected. However this highlighting doesn't work at all anymore.

    Any ideas what might cause this?

    Regards, Xaser

    • Answers
  • Xaser

    Actually found the solution by myself (not by googling just by checking everything that came to my mind).

    Actually the solution was very simple and I already wanted to delete this question but then I thought, maybe there are other people like me that just can't figure it out, so here's my solution:

    Start Page -> Charms Bar -> Settings -> Personalize: Select a different accent color than the background color, otherwise the "highlight selection" background will look exactly like the normal background and thus cannot be seen.

    Regards, Xaser


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  • AngryHacker

    Apparently there is a trick to changing the default shortcut for Windows Search. However, I'd like to change it to Ctrl+Ctrl (e.g. pressing Ctrl key twice, like Google Desktop does). Is there a way to pull this off?


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  • Nick B

    I don't think it's possible using the registry key because the control key is a modifier, not an ASCII character.

    I'd use something like AutoHotKey to do this. The following script would do this in AutoHotKey (assuming the default key combo is Control+Shift+f):

    ~ctrl::
if(a_PriorHotKey <> "~ctrl" or A_TimeSincePriorHotkey > 400)
{
    KeyWait, ctrl
    return
}
WinActivate, Program Manager
send, #+f
return