In Microsoft’s Windows operating system we find an enormous number of functions that it offers us to improve our user experience. One of these elements, and which is also more important than we imagined at first, is the lock screen.
As a general rule, we tend to customize the desktop that this software presents us to the maximum, since from here we can access all kinds of content and programs. In fact, on most occasions here we anchor all kinds of shortcuts to documents, applications and websites to always have everything at hand. Something similar happens with the taskbar that we always have in view in Windows. Together with the Start menu, surely these components are more than familiar to you and are used practically daily.
However, there is another element that could be much more useful to us than we could initially imagine, and that we barely take into consideration. We refer to the lock screen that the operating system offers us as soon as we turn on the PC. This is the screen where we enter our system access credentials when we are going to start a new session. Basically this is a screen that we use for what we are talking about, authenticate ourselves in Windows and little else.
That is precisely why many users consider that it is a nuisance on most occasions, but as we told you, it is much more useful than we imagine. What’s more, as we will see below, this is a screen that we can even use to avoid the aforementioned authentication and not open Windows.
Customize the Windows lock screen
We tell you all this because we will have the possibility of adding certain functions and content to this screen that we are talking about. These will often allow us to save having to open Windows. Directly from it we will obtain the information we need without having to enter our username and password. This is something that is not active by default in the Microsoft system, but that we can customize ourselves.
To achieve this that we are telling you about and improve the functionality of the Windows lock screen, first of all, we only have to open the Settings application. We access this, for example, through the Win + I key combination, to later go to the Personalization section. In the left panel of the new window we find different sections to adapt the Microsoft system to our needs. In the case at hand, click on Lock screen.
Here we will already have the opportunity to select those tools and applications that we want to be shown as shortcuts on this screen. This change will allow us to give this element a change to give it other additional uses to which we were used to.
- Check our mail: here we have the possibility to activate the use of the Windows Mail application. So we can read our messages from the lock screen itself.
- See the appointments of the day: thanks to the option to view the Windows Calendar, from this section and without authenticating ourselves we can see our appointments of the day.
- See the weather in the area: we can also activate the Weather app, today, which will allow us to view the weather in our area from here.
- Use the translator: Microsoft’s operating system has its own translation application, we can activate it to use it directly on the lock screen.
In this way we will get much more out of this lock screen than what Microsoft offers us in Windows by default.
