you don't see Personalize when you right-click the desktop, that means you didn't right-click the desktop. You right-clicked something that's covering the desktop. You learn to close and hide things that are covering the desktop a little later in this chapter.
A dialog box named Desktop Icon Settings appears (see Figure 3.5). It's called a “dialog” box because you carry on a sort of dialog with it. It shows you options from which you can pick and choose. You make your choices and click OK. You'll see menu dialog boxes throughout this book.
Figure 3.5 The Desktop Icon Settings dialog box.
To make an icon visible on your desktop, select (click to put a check mark in) the check box next to the icon's name. To prevent an icon from appearing on the desktop, click the check box to the left of its name to deselect it (remove the check mark). In the figure, we've opted to show just the Recycle Bin.
You can choose a different picture for any icon you've opted to show on the desktop. Click the icon's picture in the middle of the dialog box. Then click the Change Icon button. Click the icon you want to show and then click OK. If you change your mind after the fact, click Restore Default.
Click OK after making your selections. The dialog box closes, and the icons you choose appear on the desktop. However, you might not see them if that part of the desktop is covered by something that's open. Don't worry about that. You learn about how to open, close, move, and size things on the desktop a little later in this chapter.
If nothing is covering the desktop, but you still don't see any desktop icons, they might just be switched off. We cover this topic in the next section.
As you discover in Chapter 10, you have many ways to customize the Windows 10 desktop. But if you only want to make some quick, minor changes to your desktop icons, right-click the desktop to view its shortcut menu. Items on the menu that have a little arrow to the right show submenus. For example, if you right-click the desktop and point to View on the menu, you see the View menu, as shown in Figure 3.6.
Figure 3.6 Right-click the desktop.
The last item on the View menu, Show Desktop Icons, needs to be selected (checked) for the icons to show at all. If no check mark appears next to that item, click the item. The menu closes, and the icons appear on the desktop. When you need to see the menu again, just right-click the desktop again.
The top three items on the menu – Large Icons, Medium Icons, and Small Icons – control the size of the icons. Click any option to see its effect. If you don't like the result, right-click the desktop again, choose View, and choose a different size.
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If your mouse has a wheel, another way to size icons is to hold down the Ctrl key as you spin the mouse wheel. This technique gives you an almost endless range of icon sizes. Use one of the three items in the View menu to get them back to one of the three default sizes.
The Sort By option on the desktop shortcut menu enables you to arrange desktop icons alphabetically by Name, Size, Item Type, or Date Modified. However, no matter how you choose to sort icons, the built-in icons are sorted separately from those you create.
You learn more about personalizing your desktop in Chapter 10.
Using Jump Lists
Jump lists were a new feature of Windows 7 that enhance the usefulness of the icons and pin items on the taskbar. Windows 10 continues to use Jump Lists. Jump Lists add the most recently used objects from the application to a pop-up menu. Right-click the icon to view the Jump List (see Figure 3.7).
Figure 3.7 A Jump list for File Explorer.
You don't need to do anything to set up Jump Lists – they happen automatically. Whenever you want to use a Jump List, right-click a taskbar icon and choose the item you want to open.
Running Programs and Apps
You can start any program or app that's installed on your computer by finding the program's icon on the Start menu or by searching for it using Cortana, and then clicking that icon. There are other ways to start programs as well. For example, if an icon for the program is pinned to the taskbar, you can click that icon. If a shortcut icon to the program exists on the desktop, you can click (or double-click) that icon to start the program.
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“Pinning” an app to the taskbar adds a shortcut icon for that object on the taskbar. You can open the associated app or object using that shortcut icon. You can also pin items to the Start menu and use those shortcuts in the same way as shortcuts on the taskbar.
Cortana and search are covered in detail in Chapter 22.
Whether you need to single-click or double-click a desktop icon to open it depends on how you've configured Windows 10. See Chapter 20 for details.
Every time you start a program or app, that program opens in a program window. No rule exists that says you can have only one program open at a time. Some programs even enable you to open multiple copies of the same program. (Modern Windows apps, however, limit you to running only one copy of that app at a time.) You can have as many programs open simultaneously as you can cram into your available memory (RAM). Most programs allow you to run multiple copies. The more memory your system has, the more stuff you can have open without much slowdown in performance. Windows can also create a special page file on disk to mimic RAM, enabling you to actually use more memory than is physically present in the device.
NOTE
When it comes to using programs, or apps, the terms start, run, launch, and open all mean the same thing – to load a copy of the program into memory (RAM) so that it's visible on your screen. You can't use a program or app until it's running.
Most programs you open show their own names somewhere near the top of the program window. You see its name in the title bar at the top of the window, appearing either by itself or as part of a string of items. Figure 3.8 shows the Map app open on the desktop.
Figure 3.8 Sample title bar and taskbar button.
Most items that you open also appear on the taskbar. By default, Windows 10 shows only an icon on the taskbar for open items, with no label. However, you can configure the taskbar to show labels. The name in the taskbar button matches the name of the item.
When you have multiple program windows open, they stack up on the desktop the way multiple sheets of paper on your real desktop stack up. When you have multiple sheets of paper in a pile, you can't see what's on every page. You can see only what's on the top page because