App switching made easy with Windows key + T

The keyboard shortcut Alt + Tab is the ancient Windows standby for switching between apps. And those of us immersed in Windows Vista (on a PC with the enhanced Aero interface active) have seen Aero Flip, Vista’s flashy means of task switching, in which the Windows key + Tab combination lets you cycle through three-dimensional planar renderings of your open windows.

Aero Flip and old-reliable Alt + Tab continue to work in Windows 7. But the new OS introduces yet another means of task switching, which stands apart because it lets you cycle in turn through not only all open apps but also see grouped windows within each app. It’s tied in, once again, with the taskbar rethink in Windows 7. It’s the shortcut Windows key + T.

Repeatedly hitting this combination will scroll you through the different apps that you have open, popping up thumbnail previews above each program’s icon in the taskbar. If you have multiple windows open for a given app, you’ll see all of the windows grouped as a set of thumbnails. Same behavior with Internet Explorer 8 (though, interestingly, not with Firefox): If you have multiple tabs open in a browser, you’ll see each tab displayed as a discrete window thumbnail. Releasing the keys with a particular app thumbnail active, interestingly, doesn’t launch the program but leaves the thumbnail suspended; you need to click it or hit Enter to bring up that program. (That’s unlike with Alt + Tab or Aero Flip; with those, releasing the keys brings the window to which you’ve cycled to the fore.)

And, as mentioned earlier in a previous tip, there’s a hidden new option with these thumbnails: You can close any window via its taskbar thumbnail by clicking on it with your middle mouse button. You don’t necessarily have to navigate to the little red “X” in the corner of the thumbnail.