Archive for month: August, 2022

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/best-office-365-features/

Microsoft Office 365 is truly an all-rounder solution from the tech giant. More than just an email app, it offers a whole gamut of tools, and within these tools, users can find many interesting features that can add a lot to their overall productivity.

You may be using Microsoft Office 365, but to help you in using it to its full potential, this post highlights some of the lesser-known but highly effective features.

From collaborating with your team on documents to sending instant messages within apps, there is so much you can do in MS Office 365. So then, let’s get started.

10 Microsoft 365 features you should know

Microsoft Office has been in the market since the advent of the computer itself. And one of the main key factors of its continued success is because the company kept improving its products according to the demands of the day.

Likewise, Microsoft Office 365 brings with it many cool features. However, most users keep using these tools the same way as ever without experiencing the new features.

In the list below, we are highlighting 10 of the best features that Microsoft Office 365 has to offer so you can turn yourself into a Microsoft Office power user and get the most out of the tool.

1. Collaborate with your team on any document

Microsoft Office 365 allows you to collaborate with your team on any document, or co-author shared document in real-time. Just upload your document on OneDrive or SharePoint, and your team will be able to access and work on it. Plus, you can share your document directly from MS Word and keep track of changes that different authors have made.

What’s more interesting is that you can have instant messaging with your team or collaborators through in-app Skype integration. Apart from IMs, you can have audio/video meetings and screen sharing with your team.

2. The ease of a single license fee

For both businesses and individual users, it is quite a hassle to buy the subscription of each app, not to mention it would be quite expensive as well. To address this, Microsoft Office 365 offers a single license fee that covers all its apps and software.

With this (monthly/annual) one-time payment for the whole suite, you can better manage your budget for software licensing. Plus, as a new version is launched, it automatically gets updated to all users under the same subscription, so no older/newer version issues.

3. Secure data storage on OneDrive

With remote working and virtual teams, one always needs reliable cloud storage for storing and sharing data. OneDrive is Microsoft Office 365’s answer to a secure cloud data storage that comes with the Office 365 package and allows you to store up to 1TB of data. Plus, you can collaborate on documents and files on Microsoft apps in real time.

In terms of cyber security, Microsoft Office 365 offers Microsoft Defender that protects your data against leaks and malware. You can also password-protect your documents, restrict copying/saving sensitive data, and wipe compromised files remotely.

4. Share links instead of files

The era of sending files and documents through attachments is bygone. With Microsoft Office 365, you can simply upload files on the OneDrive cloud and get a shareable link that you can send to anyone. Your receivers can edit these files and you’ll be able to track all changes in real-time.

This feature also addresses the file size limit that most email hosts have. So instead of attaching files, you can just add the shareable link to your email and send them to whoever you want.

5. Interesting presentation features

Microsoft PowerPoint is already a popular and most-used presentation app. What Microsoft Office 365 did is to add some interesting features to make it more productive.

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These include AI-powered presenter coach, adding 3D animations, text-to-speech tool, and turning your mouse into a laser pointer to make presentations more impressive.

If you want something more than PowerPoint, then you can try Microsoft Sway. It is a digital storytelling app by the platform that offers some unique and interactive ways to express your ideas, reports, and projects. And the drag-and-drop editor makes it easier for anyone to use.

6. Turn data into maps

Power Map is a cool feature by Microsoft Office 365 that enables you to turn your data into interactive visualizations in Excel.

You can create 3D interactive maps or visualize your data and insights through Lists, Range, or Advanced filters. This gives you an utterly impressive way to present data and findings to any audience.

7. Resume reading where you left off

Wouldn’t you love to start reading a document where you left it off? Well, in Microsoft Office 365, you can.

The Resume Reading features in MS Word let you pick up reading a document where you left off as the app bookmarks it.

What’s even better is that you can resume reading where you left off even if you open the document on another device linked to your Microsoft Office 365 account.

8. Cross-platform and across device

Microsoft Office 365 is available for computer and mobile operating systems. So you can use it on any device or platform that is connected to your Office 365 account

Not just that, even if you’re using a guest device, you can access the apps and tools on any web browser.

Additionally, for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneDrive, there are also Office Mobile apps that you can use on any smart mobile device. This is ideal for the growing remote working and virtual teams.

9. Efficient workflow management

More than a documentation platform, Microsoft Office 365 has some tools to help you manage your workflow. One such tool is Microsoft Planner – a project management tool to manage your workflow and that of your team’s.

You can assign tasks, create to-dos, set due dates, organize collaborations, and track the progress of the projects in real time. And you can do all this through an intuitive dashboard showing your team’s progress through colorful charts.

10. Useful email features

For the many things Microsoft Office is famous for, email is among the top ones. Microsoft Office 365 makes the email even more intelligent and feature-rich through the Outlook app.

These include Microsoft Clutter feature that lets you set inbox rules such as displaying high-priority messages on top.

Similarly, the Reading Pane in Outlook lets you replay emails without even opening them and the Conversation Pane can give you an outlook of all your correspondence within an email thread.

Plus, you get a 50GB inbox, custom domain name, and cloud-based management of your email data.

Migrating mailboxes from Exchange to Office 365

After reading about the many features of Microsoft Office 365, if you may want to migrate your Exchange mailbox to Office 365. Though it may sound a bit technical, it actually isn’t – especially when you have useful tools to help you out.

One such tool is the Stellar Converter for EDB (it’s free to download). From the many options of EDB (Exchange Database) to PST converters available in the market, this tool is among the best in terms of reliability and convenience.

The software allows you to migrate and convert single or multiple mailboxes without losing any data and affecting the server.

Moreover, you can preview the items like email, calendar, notes, and contacts etc. before migrating, save multiple mailboxes simultaneously, and save your mailboxes in multiple formats including PST, MSG, EML, RTF, PDF, or HTML.

So in the following, we are going to guide you through the process of migrating your Exchange mailbox to MS Office 365 using the Stellar Converter for EDB.

Prerequisites

Before we start the process of converting your mailbox to Microsoft Office 365, please make sure your system fulfills the following prerequisites:

Operating system should be Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11 or Windows Server 2008, 2012, or 2016.
Administrative user rights on the PC you are working on.
Obtain Microsoft Office 365 subscription with Outlook installed on the system.
Download and install Stellar Converter for EDB on your PC and activate it.

Migrating mailbox to Microsoft Office 365

Here is a step-by-step process of migrating your mailbox to Microsoft Office 365.

Launch Stellar Converter for EDB and you’ll see two options – ‘Hosted Exchange’ to export mailboxes from an online EDB file and ‘Offline EDB’ to convert mailboxes from an offline database.

From the Home menu, click on the ‘Select EDB file’ select the EDB file, then click ‘Next’.

The software will scan your file and then give you a preview of all the data in a three-pane window.

In the next Save As dialog box, choose ‘Export to Office 365’ and click ‘Next’.

You’ll be asked to enter your login credentials so enter the login and password of your Outlook profile and click ‘OK’.

Once again, you’ll see a Map Mailboxes window. You can apply filters to prioritize your mailbox export and rearrange the mapping. Now click ‘Export’ to proceed.

You’ll see a Save dialogue box that shows you the progress of your export from EDB to Office 365.

Once done, you’ll see a Saving Complete dialog box with information about saved, aborted, removed, and failed mailboxes. Click ‘OK’ to close it.

Conclusion

Microsoft Office 365 offers so many features to add efficiency and productivity to your daily workflow. Both individuals and businesses can benefit from its convenience of subscription and multiple apps that it offers. Especially for email, the Outlook app in MS Office 365 has so much to offer.

Owing to its popularity and ease-of-use, if you want to migrate Exchange mailboxes to Microsoft Office 365, then Stellar Converter for EDB gives you a convenient way to do that (as you can see in the aforementioned process).

If you successfully migrated your Exchange mailbox to MS Office 365, then do let us know about your experience or queries.

The post 10 Best Microsoft Office 365 Features appeared first on Hongkiat.

Original Source: https://tympanus.net/codrops/collective/collective-726/

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Original Source: https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/richpanel-review

Are you considering adding a customer support module to your online store? That’s not a bad idea, considering consumers are becoming more and more reliant on chat boxes. But why stop there? Platforms like Richpanel include more than a chat box; with features for multichannel communications, customer portals, and workforce management, you’re able to improve upon several areas of your business with one app.

In this Richpanel review, we explore the features, interface, pricing, and customer support from Richpanel. 

This way, you’ll know if it’s the right customer support app to manage your customer base and workforce. Keep reading our in-depth Richpanel review for all the details!

Richpanel Review: The Features

Richpanel may look like a simple chat box on the frontend, but it expands into a powerful end-to-end customer service platform that extends beyond serving users on the website, by offering a combination of tools for both online sellers and the customers who land on their websites. 

In this section of our Richpanel review, we outline the standout features to ensure you gain a full understanding of what’s available as a Richpanel user. 

Multichannel Support

One of the core features that helps Richpanel stand out from the competition is how it allows store owners to handle customer support from multiple sales channels in one place. Not only can you add the Richpanel customer support widget on your website (and on any Amazon stores you have), but it fields conversations with customers through:

SMSEmailFacebook and InstagramAircallWhatsappAttentive

Store owners can connect however many of these they want; after which, messages from all of those channels get sent to the Richpanel message center for processing. 

In addition, Richpanel boasts integrations with top ecommerce platforms like:

ShopifyMagentoWooCommerce

You can also add Richpanel support to any website or online store using their custom integration module. 

These integrations allow you to use Richpanel regardless of the ecommerce platform, and without having experience with API development. 

In addition, there are several ecommerce apps that integrate with Richpanel, ranging from subscription apps to sales and retention tools. This way, your business stack remains connected and shares information between all apps.

Here are some of the Richpanel app integrations:

AftershipLoop ReturnsReturnlySmile (sales and retention app)ReCharge SubscriptionsSegmentHubspot

Customer Self-Service Portal

The idea behind the customer portal is to give customers the chance to look up information and resolve queries themselves, instead of reaching out to your customer support reps every time a question pops up. 

It’s an automated solution that provides multiple links for customers to look up their account and order details, from order statuses, return details, warranty information, subscription status and what not.

It works by asking the customer to log into their account on your website. Thereafter, they’re given topics and questions to click, such as:

Where is my order?I want to return an itemI want to cancel an orderItems are damaged in my orderI want to make a warranty claim

With this type of setup, the customer manages their account without having to use your customer support resources. It’s all automated and linked to their accounts. So, for instance, they can actually cancel an order with the click of a button.

The customer self-service portal even gives out product recommendations based on customer questions. 

Workforce Management

Workforce management doesn’t come with every customer support app you find for ecommerce platforms like Shopify. Instead, you have to go out and find a separate app to complete two tasks. With Richpanel, your customer communications are tied into the workforce management, and that makes sense, considering each chat with a customer requires fast actions instead of slow thinking and typing. 

The workforce management module provides a system for internal communications and sending conversations to other people. There’s a tool to assign messages to a specific team or teammate, all available from the Richpanel dashboard.

What’s also interesting about the workforce management functionality is that it allows for automations between agents. Instead of selecting an agent to send a conversation, store owners have the option to configure automations that trigger whenever something occurs. Let’s say that a customer starts a new conversation talking about how they didn’t receive an item. Instead of sending it to the general inbox, you’d rather it goes directly to someone in your organization who handles missing items. Therefore, you’d set an if/then automation that marks the message as “high priority” and sends it to the inbox of whomever handles missing items. 

Agent Console

The Agent Console is the heart and soul of the Richpanel operation. It’s where your customer support agents manage online conversations, mark information about customers, and initiate actions when required. 

At its simplest, the agent console lets reps chat with customers, from multiple channels at one time. That means you can chat with a customer from Amazon, while also talking to people who come in through SMS, email, or the chat box. 

There’s also an app for your reps to download for communicating with customers on the go. This is particularly helpful for smaller operations where one or two people need to keep an eye on customer chats at all times.

We particularly enjoy the actions and automation tools available for customer support reps, all of which come together for a faster, more efficient work area. 

Some of these tools include:

MacrosA 360-degree customer context moduleOrder actionsPower replies

As an example, an agent could quickly reply to a customer that they have refunded the order; the macro sends a complete report of the refund and when they should expect money to return to their account. There are macros for things like cancelling orders, finding orders, and changing shipping addresses.

Other actions and automations we enjoy include the Insta Actions and Tokens. 

Insta Actions provide quick tools for actually completing tasks like cancelling orders and refunding customers. 

While Tokens are more for filling information into the chat box, like the customer name, agent email, or order details. This essentially eliminates the need to type in lengthy information. 

Support Performance

The Team Performance report gives you an overarching view of your entire team, with metrics for:

Conversation createdMessages receivedMultichannel conversationsFirst response timeResolution time

Furthermore, you can break it down into agent views to see which customer support reps perform the best. 

An analysis like this empowers your workforce to spend as much time as possible making customers happy, while also giving you a view of what’s happening with your employees. 

Other elements that come with the support performance module include:

Revenue reports that show how much revenue comes in from customer support interactionsSelf-service performance, or how well the customers can answer questions on their ownCustomer surveys

In fact, the Richpanel survey tool has an incredible number of settings, allowing you to ask for a rating after every chain with a customer. You can choose the rating style, select channels for which to collect surveys, and even completely disable the survey center if needed. 

Richpanel Review: The Interface

The Richpanel interface starts off impressively, with its simple “getting started” guide, where it asks for you to design your customer support widget with a brand logo and colors.

Once designed, the Richpanel chat module appears for all customers, but it’s not too intrusive. Visitors have access to the module whenever they want, and you can even add it to your Amazon store. 

The customer interface functions by trying to get them to solve their own questions first, with smart actions and responses, along with automated replies that provide detailed information, not just a canned response that sounds like a robot.

Once a conversation starts, your customer service reps receive notifications to reply. The agent portal features a clean inbox, an area to focus in on one conversation, and a section on the side for a complete view of the customer you’re talking to. 

That section provides information like:

Custom tagsPersonal information like name, email address, and phonePast orders, current items, and an option to make an orderConversations (past and current)Product interactionsSummary dataScores for that customer, like customer lifetime value, total orders, and average order valueNotes, subscriptions, and topics

There’s also a customer timeline for a full view of what has happened with that customer in the past, starting with the first interaction and including everything from orders to chats with other agents. 

As for the admin interface, Richpanel excels in its ability to break down somewhat complex features into simple tasks. For example, it already sets up automation rules for you, which you can customize, add to, and delete if needed. 

You can also access the Settings area for customizing:

The Helpdesk widgetYour satisfaction surveyAutomation rulesTask botsSpam filtering botsWorkload mamagementYour organizations (with settings for teams, users, and brands)Billing

After our Richpanel review and interface testing, we found the interface for customers to be intuitive, clean, and inviting. Too often, we see popup windows and annoying chat boxes masquerading as customer support modules. Richpanel makes their customer interface appealing, and you can customize it just enough to make it fit the style of your website. 

When looking at the backend interface, we applaud Richpanel for their compilation of tools on the backend, particularly the Inbox section, where agents have full control over what happens with each conversation. To begin, they receive conversations from multiple channels. After that, they can move the conversations to other departments, create quick actions, macros, and tokens, while also analyzing whether this is a good customer to spend a lot of time on based on their past conversations and purchases. 

Richpanel Review: Pricing

Richpanel has four main pricing plans and an Enterprise plan for brands handling over 5,000 conversations. 

Before exploring the plans, here are some observations on what to expect with Richpanel pricing: 

There’s a 14-day free trial available for testing out the interface.You can’t access the Free plan with ecommerce platforms outside of Shopify.There are no long-term commitments unless you sign up for a yearly plan.Merchants can upgrade or downgrade their plans at any time.Pricing plans are sold as monthly subscriptions, but you can also sign up to pay yearly, which gets you 2 months for free. You can pay extra each month to obtain more conversations. Each plan has its own “extra conversation fee,” ranging from $20 to $30 for 100 more conversations. 

Now let’s take a look at the pricing plans from our Richpanel review: 

Free: 100 conversations included, along with a multichannel inbox, mobile app, email + live chat, a self-service portal with 15 scenarios, and the Shopify integration. $300 per month: Support for 1000 conversations, email + live chat, a multichannel inbox, self-service portal with 15 scenarios, team performance reports, Facebook/Instagram integrations, and support for both Shopify and WooCommerce. ($250 per month for yearly pricing)$600 per month: Up to 2000 conversations, everything from the previous plans, plus SMS and WhatsApp integrations, a Magento integration, phone support (through Aircall), CSAT survey, and a revenue analytics report. ($500 per month with yearly pricing)$900 per month: Up to 5000 conversations per month, everything from the previous plans, plus multi-store and multi-brand support, a dedicated CSM (customer service management) tool, custom connectors, API access, onboarding, and migration support. ($750 per month with yearly pricing)Richpanel Enterprise: You must contact the Richpanel sales team for an Enterprise plan quote. It includes everything from the previous plans, onboarding, a full migration, API endpoints, custom connectors, and support for over 5000 conversations. 

Overall, Richpanel pricing seems fair for growing ecommerce stores. Many smaller stores will be fine with the Free plan, while growing brands benefit from a myriad of features that should bring in more business to outweigh the costs. 

We should mention that your billing depends on how you sign up for the Richpanel app in the first place. For instance, adding the Richpanel app through Shopify means your bill comes through Shopify. Signing up through the Richpanel site, however, pulls payments from the method you add to your Richpanel dashboard. You can find invoices in the area where you sign up. 

Richpanel Review: Customer Support

Do you get customer support for your customer support app? You bet. 

First off, Richpanel uses its own online chat widget inside the Richpanel dashboard, allowing you to reach out to the Richpanel support team at any time. You can start a conversation, browse help articles, and figure out certain parts of the app that may not make sense to you.

That’s the main solution for reaching out to a real person from Richpanel. It’s all tied into their email ticketing system so, whether you send in a direct email or start a chat, Richpanel replies within a few minutes with assistance. You’ll also get a message in your email inbox if desired. 

As for online resources, we like to see a collection of documentation for merchants who want to learn about the app and complete their own research when solving problems. 

Richpanel is no slouch in the documentation game, seeing as how it has a strong selection of articles in its knowledge base. Read about how to manage your inbox, using ecommerce data, and performing order actions, all with documentation that’s rich with visual examples. 

Other than that, Richpanel provides a Developer section for those interested in using the API. You can also tap into the Richpanel blog for less technical topics when compared to the knowledge base. Here, you’ll find content on improving the custom experience, why you should automate your customer service, and how to reduce ecommerce return rates. 

In addition to the primary online resources options, and the online resources, Richpanel maintains social pages on:

FacebookLinkedInTwitterInstagram

You are welcome to reach out to Richpanel on their social pages, and use them as additional online resources to keep up with the company and find tutorials and tips. 

Overall, Richpanel touches on all facets of customer support that help merchants feel comfortable with their choice for an ecommerce customer support app. From a live chat module to in-depth online documentation, you can’t go wrong with Richpanel customer support. 

Is Richpanel Right for Your Online Store? 

With far more than a simple chat module, Richpanel has developed the ideal customer support module for ecommerce stores of all sizes. There are pricing plans for every business, and you can take advantage of the mobile app interface for keeping in touch with customers on the go. We also like how Richpanel has:

Multichannel supportA powerful agent console with quick actions and rulesA workforce management section to assign conversationsSupport performance reports and surveys

Although the pricing can get expensive, we still recommend Richpanel to most online store owners, since you can sign up for the free plan and upgrade whenever you start growing your business. 

If you need any clarification about our Richpanel review, or if you’d like to share your experience with Richpanel, leave us a comment in the section below.

The post Richpanel Review: Multi-Channel Customer Support for Shopify and More appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/windows-11-tips-tricks/

Windows 11 got updated recently! After the developer release of Windows 11 22H2 got published in early 2022, Microsoft introduced a bunch of new features targeting its user community. That is, Windows 11 22H2 packs in a whole list of features, fixes, and improvements everyone was waiting for — including me.

Surprisingly, there is a proliferation of features targeted towards home users like us. You can access some of these features via Windows Settings, but some features require additional applications or configuration.

I’ve compiled this post to share with you some hidden gems – trips, tricks, and hacks – to help you make the most out of Windows 11 experience. So, let’s get on.

Table of content:

Installing Windows 11 without Microsoft account.
How to create a local account.
Utilize ‘Do Not Disturb’.
Configuring DND and Focus in Windows 11.
Configuring the Start menu in Windows 11.
How to disable the Widgets panel in Windows 11.
Enabling Voice Access in Windows 11.
Enabling Live Captions in Windows 11.
Enabling the game optimizations in Windows 11.
Enable Efficiency mode for apps.
Remove bloatware or unwanted apps in Windows 11.

1. Skip using a Microsoft account

Microsoft has joined the club with Apple and Google to push online accounts on its operating system. That means you must create and log in with a Microsoft account to use Windows 11, and Microsoft is slowly curbing all the hacks you could have utilized to bypass the online account requirement until now.

Thankfully, Neowin reported a simple hack that involves you using a blacklisted email address like no@thankyou.com to register for the online account. Windows Setup gives an error and skips creating an online account as an extra bonus.

If the above hack fails, or you are installing Windows 11 22H2, Rufus is another hack you can try. Create a bootable drive using Rufus, and you will be able to install Windows 11 22H2 without creating a Microsoft account. As simple as that!

2. Create a local account

If the above hacks get curbed by Microsoft in the future, there is another bypass trick for you. You can create an online temporary account using a temporary email provider. After logging in with the temporary online account in Windows 11, you can create a local administrator account by following these steps:

Open Settings and go to Accounts > Other users.

Click Add account > I don’t have this person’s sign-in information.

Click Add a user without a Microsoft account and follow instructions.
Click the new user under Other users and click Change account type.

Select Administrator under Account type and click OK.

Finally, log in to the new account and delete the old one by going to Settings > Accounts > Other users, expanding the old user, and clicking Remove.

3. Utilize ‘Do Not Disturb’

Do Not Disturb and Focus (previously known as “Focus Mode”) got improved in Windows 11. You can set up rules to auto-enable the ‘Do not Disturb’ mode. For example, you can enable it during work hours to better focus on your work.

Moreover, you can configure priority notifications to enable specific apps, calls, and reminders to bypass do not disturb mode and send you notifications, like Android and iOS. You can access both upon clicking the clock icon in the Taskbar.

4. Configure DND and Focus

Here’s how you can configure Do Not Disturb, priority notifications, and Focus:

Open Settings and go to System > Notifications.
On this screen, you can click on individual options to configure them:

Expand Turn on do not disturb automatically and configure options to auto-enable DND.

Click Set priority notifications and configure options for priority notifications.

Click Focus and configure options for Focus (aka Focus Mode).

5. Configure the Start menu

Microsoft is trying hard at bringing an intuitive Start menu, however, without much luck. Most people, including me, have a love-hate relationship with the Start menu (and the Start screen) starting from Windows 8.

Nevertheless, Windows does offer some customization options for the Start menu, which got better with Windows 11 22H2. Here’s how to tweak it:

Open Settings and go to Personalization > Start.
Configure its layout and the apps and items visible in the Start menu.

Click Folders on this screen to customize the folders shown alongside the Power button in the bottom-right corner of the Start menu.

For instance, I have the Default layout and default settings along with a bunch of folders enabled, so the Start menu on my test system looks like below:

6. Disable the Widgets panel

Windows 11 introduced Widgets panel that shows web-based widgets such as weather, stock market updates, sports news, etc. However, it only works if are you logged in to a Microsoft account on Windows 11. As I told above, Microsoft is trying its best to push you to use an online account, and this is one evidence.

If you are a fan of using a local account in Windows due to any reason, you will not be happy with the Widgets. For instance, I do not need or use an online account benefits on my system though I’d have enjoyed Widgets. That said, I disabled the Widgets panel as disabling it minimized memory usage on my system.

Whatever be the reason, you can disable the Widgets panel using these steps:

Press Win + R to see the Run dialog box.
Type gpedit.msc, and press Enter to open the Group Policy Editor.
Under Computer Configuration, go to Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Widgets to check policies for Widgets.
Double-click Allow widgets on the right, click Disable, then click OK.

7. Enable Voice Access

Voice Access is a super handy feature — like Microsoft Cortana — that allows you to control your Windows PC using your voice. You can open and switch between apps, dictate emails, browse the Internet, etc. Voice Access “leverages modern, on-device speech recognition to recognize speech accurately and is supported without an internet connection,” according to Microsoft.

That means Voice Access uses offline machine learning. Here’s how to use it:

Open Settings and go to Accessibility > Speech.
Toggle on the option named Voice access. If you are planning to use this feature frequently, click Start voice access after you sign in to your PC.

Follow the instructions on the Set up your mic for voice access screen.

8. Enable Live Captions

Live Captions is an accessibility feature inspired from a same-named feature in Android OS for Google Pixels. Captions are auto-generated from all
audio content including the incoming audio from your microphone, interestingly.

This last feature can help during in-person conversations or meetings. However, Live Captions is only supported for content in English (U.S.) for the moment.

Below are the steps to enable Live Captions. You need to download its language files, so you must continue when asked to download them by Windows 11.

Open Settings and go to Accessibility > Captions.
Toggle on the option named Live captions.

Thereafter, you can click Win + Ctrl + L to use Live Captions.

9. Enable the game optimizations

Windows 11 22H2 introduced some under-the-hood optimizations for games. This feature improves latency and unlocks other gaming features like Auto High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR). Here’s how to enable it:

Open Settings and go to Display > Graphics > Default graphics settings.
Toggle on the option named Optimizations for windowed games.

10. Enable Efficiency mode for apps

Microsoft redesigned the Task Manager and enhanced some of its less-known but handy features, making it more helpful than ever. One of these features is Efficiency mode (previously known as “Eco mode”) that lets you limit an app’s resources if you find it be consuming more than average or necessary resources.

Here’s how you can put an app into the Efficiency mode on Windows 11:

Press Win + X and select Task Manager from the context menu.
Select Processes option from the left menu to see the running processes.
Right-click any process and click Efficiency mode to put it into the same.

11. Remove bloatware or unwanted apps

Last but important, you may wish to remove bloatware or unwanted apps from your system. The reason being Microsoft has been pushing more default apps (aka bloatware) with Windows starting with Windows 8 than ever before in the history of Windows OSs. Thankfully, O&O AppBuster can remove them.

Follow these steps to remove apps like Windows Clock, Windows Maps, etc.:

Go to https://www.oo-software.com/en/ooappbuster in a web browser.
Click Download near right-top corner of the page and open the file.

Select apps you want to remove and click Remove near top-right corner. For example, I selected 3D Viewer and Groove Music in this screenshot.

Though Windows 11 is relatively new, Microsoft is already introducing a variety of ground-breaking changes including the mandatory use of online accounts in Windows 11. Though it makes sense for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, many people still prefer a local account on their home computers.

Nevertheless, Windows 11 brings many exciting features. The most notable is the new design system dubbed “Fluent Design” though there are new apps and more features as well. And I hope the tips and tricks in this guide will help you make most out of everything in Windows 11 22H2. How is your experience?

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