Use Windows 8 Search and Apps Function

Hello you are watching VisiHow, and today we are going to show you a video that demonstrates the 'search and apps' function in Windows 8.

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   To get started we're going to press the 'Windows key', which is the button next to your space bar

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   That's going to open up our Windows 'tile screen'

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   Where we are going to scroll down and click on the 'PC settings': the little purple gear icon.

   

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   That's going to open up our 'PC settings' window

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   If you see on the left we have a list of options and there is 'search and apps'. Let's click on that.

   

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   Once we click on that we can see that there is a selection of five available sub-menus for us

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   We've got 'search','share', 'notifications', 'app sizes', and defaults.

   

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   So, let's start with search

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   'Search history'

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   this is the history of all searches that you have. You can clear this. It clears out everything that you've searched for. Very simple and easy to clear out if you want to get rid of your search information.

   

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   'Use Bing to search online'

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   this let's you get your search results and other information from Bing. You can also use your Bing account. When you set up your account it will give you bonus points every time you search. You get enough bonus points and you can get a five-dollar or ten-dollar Amazon gift card. It's not the best thing in the world, but realistically if you search a fair amount it's an extra 20-50 dollars a year in Amazon cards and that's not bad.

   

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   'Your search experience'

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   You can get personalized results from Bing. This is based on your location. If you search for 'flower store' there may be a flower store right down the street from you. You can get personalized results from Bing that do not use your location. In this case, if you regularly search for flowers, or for roses in particular, and you search for flowers roses may come up because that's something Bing knows you've searched for regularly. Alternatively, you can choose to get no personalized results from Bing. For me I like to see the search results where I am and what I'm doing.

   

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   'SafeSearch'

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   You can have strict safe search with filters out any adult related content. Moderate, which means that images and videos are out but text isn't. Or off, which doesn't filter anything. In my case I have young children so I have my system set to moderate, because you never know when they are going to come climb in my lap or sit down and I maybe searching for a particular term that has a genuinely pleasant meaning, but you never know when a bad image might pop-up. The text is not that much of an issue, because my children don't read as quickly as me yet. Anyway that's another article entirely.

   

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    'Metered connections'

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    This is interesting. Metered connections are for those of you on mobile devices. If your connection is metered or you are roaming then this either let's you turn that on or off.

    

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    We have the privacy statement which is standard

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    We've seen that earlier. If you are interested in reading the privacy statement, which honestly I've never read, you are more than welcome to read it. It's not terribly long. Which is actually unusually pleasant, but I'm not interested in reading it.

    

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    Next, we have 'Share'

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    Share shows the apps that you use and shows the list of how you share. Here's a list of items and these are the apps that you share things from. For me, I don't use a whole bunch of apps so I just have four instead of five in my list. You can turn these off individually though if you only wanted 'mail' you could turn off 'people', 'music', and 'reading list'.

    

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    Following that we have 'Notifications'

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    Notifications is going to show you on-screen notices of when something happens. So, you have 'app notifications' these are going to show up on the lock screen. This is particularly good if you are on a mobile or a touch screen device. There will be sounds if you have the volume turned on, and when you get a phone call your screen will light up. This is assuming you are on a phone. Now, you'll notice that some of these things are not particularly specific to the actual PC their phone and tablet related. This is because Windows 8 is transitioning towards a unified operating system which they are skipping Windows 9 and they are going to call it Windows 10. That Windows 10 upgrade is actually free for everyone who has Windows 8. If you have Windows 8 these things will be a little less confusing as things go on.

    

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    'Quiet hours' is a fantastic thing

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    It is especially great if you have a phone, but it is nice if you have a PC too. You turn quiet hours on and in my case I have it set from 12 AM to 6 AM. Now what this means is that if I am sitting up after midnight and I might be watching a movie or talking or doing whatever I'm not going to be disturbed by app notifications. I'm not going to have anything pop-up on my screen. Which I personally find nice. The other thing is receiving calls, since this is a PC I don't really worry about those, but if it was my phone I would probably turn that off. Because I don't want to be woke-up by a cellphone call at 5 o'clock in the morning or 5:30 in the morning. I have children to do that for me.

    

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    Finally, we have 'Show notifications from these apps'

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    These are all the apps that will show us notifications. I'm happy to get notifications from everything so this is not an issue for me.

    

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    'App sizes'

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    now this is an interesting one here, this shows you how big the various apps you have installed are. You can see most of the stock applications are very, very small. Then 'health and fitness' jumps up it is significantly larger. 'Games' is larger too.

    

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    Let's click on games

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    You can uninstall it if you want to. Health and fitness, you can uninstall it. Being an American I kind of need the health and fitness thing and games, I do love my games. The rest of these any one of them that you don't want, you don't use, you don't like, you can uninstall. I'm not a huge sports fan, that's an uninstall potential for me. Health and tips I write my own-- uninstall. It depends on you and what you have that you may specifically want.

    

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    Finally, we have 'Defaults'

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    Now these are the default applications that you may use. Web browser, my default is Internet Explorer. I could download something else. I could download Firefox, I could download Google Chrome, I could download Opera. But I am happy with Internet Explorer on Windows. Mail applications the default, music player, video player, photo viewer where I can choose a default photo viewer, calendar and all of these.

    

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    You can choose application defaults by file type

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    It lets you know 3ga,3pp 7z, each of these is chosen for example I have Windows media player and VLC player. Because Windows media player lacks quite a few codex and VLC player is a nice player.

    

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    Let's go back here

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    You can also choose apps by protocol. All your call messenger these go through Skype. 'Bing finance' goes through money.

    

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    That is it for our review of the search and apps on Microsoft Windows 8

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    Thanks for choosing VisiHow, and if you have any questions or comments just let us know and we'll make sure to get you a new video or answer your comments. Thanks and have a great day.

    

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