this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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The Windows key as part of a combination is great. It's an extra modifier key.
The Windows key by itself is terrible because it immediately steals focus from the current application and can't be disabled without something like AutoHotkey.
And it was even worse back in the day when computers barely had any RAM and basically relied completely on the swap file to do multitasking. You'd be in a game, accidentally hit the windows key, then you'd have to wait like a full minute or more for it to swap your game memory out so it could swap your other desktop apps back in, only to then have to wait again for it to swap that stuff back out to get back into the game. And all of this was happening on a hard drive.
And during this whole process, there was a moderate chance that individual applications or your entire system would crash.
Even the mode change for the display would take more time.
Its stupid that it can't be easily disabled in the OS but it's intended usage is not terrible I think.
I think it's extremely badly designed. A single keypress – especially if the key is in such an easily reachable position – shouldn't steal focus. It doesn't matter if I'm in a game or in Visual Studio, it's disruptive.
This behavior would make sense as a media key somewhere near the F-keys. But as the default action on a modifier key it's just bad design.
I can't believe that launching the start menu is an action on par with opening an application menu or typing a capital letter.
The start menu is definitely one of the most used things in my OS, personally, so I think it should be easily reachable. Opening the start menu and just typing the beginning of the name of a software, and hitting enter to launch it is pretty handy, imo. It also makes sense to me that it steals focus, especially in office programs, or visual studio, otherwise the shortcut wouldn't make much sense in the first place. In that context, all it takes to return focus to the window you last used, is to press the same key again.
The only reason I understand why it's disruptive is fullscreen games or other apps that take a while to unfocus, which is not really much of an issue anymore with modern hardware and borderless windowed "fullscreen" apps. I think a good solution would be to just disable that shortcut while a true fullscreen app is focused.
Maybe I have a different view on this because I barely ever accidentally press it in the first place.
I agree that it should be easily reachable. Just not through one single keypress. macOS's Spotlight serves a similar purpose and is reachable via Cmd + Space (with the Cmd key being right next to the space bar). That's just as easy to do as hitting one button but is extremely unlikely to happen by accident.
I personally use the start menu mainly for shutting down the computer as all commonly used programs are pinned to the task bar. A shortcut that opens it has no value to me as opposed to e.g. one that shows or hides a terminal window or one that mutes/unmutes me in Teams even when it's in the background.
And I do consider it disruptive because having the start menu unexpectedly pop open and swallow several keypresses (and in the worst case launching some application I didn't want to run) takes my attention away from what I was doing and forces it into something completely irrelevant. If this pulls me out of deep focus I can lose the equivalent of ten minutes of work due to one keypress.
The core of the problem is that this behavior is very annoying for people who don't use the start menu all the time and there's no way to change it. If it was just a default for a rebindable shortcut then it'd be a minor hassle once and nobody would complain. But the way it is it feels like Microsoft is trying to force-feed me the start menu, workflow be damned.
I'm not sure about the "losing 10 minutes of work" part but I have to agree it's stupid that users are unable to configure the shortcut in any way, and this workflow is kinda forced. I guess I don't mind as much because I like that workflow.
If it was configurable, the default setting would be somewhat irrelevant but I also have to agree that a single key press stealing focus is maybe not the best design choice. I can also see how it's more accessible and easier for new users but I guess it's probably more annoying than helpful overall.
I think a good way to handle this – as well as the wildly unpopular accessibility functions the post is about – would be to have it configurable and simply ask about it during initial user setup (aka OOBE).
That way people who didn't need it can turn it off and won't stumble over it after accidentally pressing the Windows key or holding down Shift a bit too long. People who need it can have it enabled right from the get-go without having to trigger some dialog first. Everyone's happy and having one extra step during initial setup isn't that much of a hassle.
Bonus points if Windows had configurable global hotkeys and I could make the Windows key do whatever I want. But the OOBE thing would be a good solution already.
Good point, I actually forgot windows does that.