hi I'm James and in this video I'm
taking a look at the Windows 10 Action
Center this is basically the replacement
for the charm bars which were in Windows
8 and 8.1 so you'll see if we go to the
top right corner of the screen we no
longer get the charm bars appearing
instead we have this little sort of
speech bubble icon down the bottom here
when we mouse over it it says no new
notifications but if we click on this
this brings up the Action Center and
there's sort of two sections the Action
Center at the top we have notifications
here and towards the bottom we have a
bunch of shortcuts to various things you
might want to interact with quickly on
your system and the notifications here
we can see we have one from mail which
is telling us we have a new email which
I've sent myself it will also show Skype
notifications if you receive messages on
Skype mail is using the built-in mail
application here but no doubt other
applications like Outlook will support
this in time we can also see here now if
I plug in the USB stick it's finger so I
haven't rejected this properly so we get
a notification appears for that as well
as appearing on the screen and if we
there we go we can see plugging it in
again we get our notification here and
then it is in the Action Center as well
so if we miss it we can get it back up
by viewing it in the Action Center
rather than it just disappearing forever
we can clear those messages out of the
Action Center as we don't want to know
anything more on those for now the
buttons down the bottom we can collapse
that to only show the four main buttons
here or we can expand it see the full
range of options and so first of all we
have tablet mode this which is Windows
10 into its tablet view so we see we get
the full screen start menu with the live
tiles and if we select any of the
applications on the system they even go
into something like notepad it acts as a
full screen application and if we
minimize it it takes us back to the
tablet interface
if we leave tablet mode we get our
traditional start menu back and we can
see notepad is still running but now we
can window it so that's really nice
feature for if you've got a convertible
system like the Asus Transformer book
t100 or a one of the Lenovo yoga systems
being able to switch between those two
interfaces means Windows 10 makes a lot
more sense of those kind of devices next
up we have the connect button and this
is for connecting to wireless display
modules and wireless audio devices so
I've done a video looking at this with
my miracast device I will put an
annotation in here so we can go and take
a look at that video if you're
interested in working with miracast and
other devices such as this in Windows 10
the note option then brings up one note
which is a nice note-taking tool
traditionally it's been part of an
office but certainly in this
installation of Windows 10 Pro it's
included out of the box even with our
office being still installed so that's a
nice addition and we can also with some
of these we have the option of
right-clicking and we can go to the
settings so we can make adjustments say
how tablet mode works or some of the
other areas the all settings bit simply
brings up the sort of main control panel
for Windows 10 the traditional control
panel is also available but a lot of the
options have moved to this new modern UI
style interface again I will be covering
sort of how to use this in another video
and I'll put an annotation here if you
would like to link through to that to
find out more next up we have the
battery saver option screen brightness
has been kept at 100% we can still
adjust that separately but battery saver
has been turned on again if we
right-click this and go into the
settings we can see about shaver
settings so how to automatically turn it
on this specially just to save power
with your system when you're running it
on the battery and quite common feature
now on phones as well nice to see it
being put in as a single click rather
than having to mess about with power
profiles VPN has slightly weird level of
prominence in here and by clicking this
we can in this case because I have no
VPN connection setup we can it just
takes us into adding one or if you have
some set up then it will quickly go
through to use those and quite strange
putting it into sort the main icons
section because certainly home uses
relatively few people use VPN it's more
of a business feature and we also have
Bluetooth and so if we select this
button we simply turn bluetooth on or
off if we right-click it and say go to
settings then we can manage our
Bluetooth devices the screen brightness
option here changes the screen
brightness in 25 percent increments
obviously cuz I'm coming through to a
capture card you won't really be seeing
any change here but it's affecting the
brightness on the laptop that I'm
running on at the same time and again if
we say go to settings we get to have a
look at these set the settings for the
monitor we also have a button here for
the wireless again this just turns the
wireless on or off but if we say go to
settings then we get more settings on
our wireless so managing the networks
around this and you also have the
wireless button here if you want to just
quickly connect to a network then we
have quiet hours now quiet hours so we
can see as before if we plug in our USB
device we get a notification if I now
enable quiet hours and clear the Action
Center there
now this should suppress the
notifications so rather than getting
pop-ups on the screen we can see there
are the two notifications here for the
USB device but we did not get these
appearing on the screen if we disable
this again unplug the device plug the
USB stick back in and we get the on
screen notification so that simply
suppresses the on-screen notifications
which and leaves them just to appear in
Action Center the location button turns
on and off location services and again
if we go to settings we can tweak those
more precisely to change which apps are
allowed to use them but that acts just
as a sort of global on and off and the
airplane button which disables Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth pressing it again turns them
both back on in a couple seconds there
we go
and again we have a go to settings
option which just takes us to sort of
the global airplane mode I hope you
found this video useful be sure to check
out my channel for more Windows 10
guides and if you want to stay in touch
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button thanks for watching