When it comes to improving our productivity, saving time is essential. From acquiring an SSD or solid state drive to improve loading times, through a computer with powerful hardware. But we forget something very important: we are always opening files or folders. How can we save time in this section? Luckily it’s very easy open a folder with a keyboard shortcut in Windows 11 and 10.
In this way we will save a lot of time, especially if we have to open several folders throughout the day. In my particular case, I notice that I save a lot of time, especially since I spend a long time in front of the computer working with several folders and files at the same time.
Best of all, these methods are not only for folders, we can also configure them for different applications. This is great!
Open folder with keyboard shortcut in Windows
The simplest and most integrated option in Windows 11 and 10 to be able to open a folder with a keyboard shortcut is to create a shortcut. The process is too simple:
- We right click on the folder we want to open.
- We will access the Send to menu. If we are in Windows 11, we will first have to click on Show more options.
- Then we will choose Desktop (create shortcut). This will add a shortcut to the folder on the desktop.
- Next, we right click on the newly created shortcut.
- We choose Properties.
- A new window opens and we will choose the Shortcut tab.
- Here we can see a shortcut key field. Simply, we will enter the combination of keys that we want to use to open that folder and click OK.
From now on, every time we press the key combination we specified above, the folder will open. Something to keep in mind is that it will only work as long as the shortcut is available on the desktop. If we remove it, the keyboard shortcut will stop working.
With the WinHotKey tool
In the case of the WinHotKey tool, it does not require us to create a shortcut on the desktop. This is a good thing because if we have to work with several folders, it could be chaos. Luckily, WinHotKey is free and we can open folders using key combinations, whatever we want.
Obviously, the app also works to open basically anything we have on our computer with keyboard shortcuts. So we can experiment quite a bit with it.
- Obviously, the first will be to download the tool. Then we will install it like any other app and run.
- A Settings window opens and we will click on New to create the shortcut.
- In this new window we will enter a description for the hotkey. It’s not something too important, but it will help us to describe what the access in WinHotKey is for, important to stay organized.
- We will choose the key combination using the available options.
- We will choose the Open a folder option in the drop-down menu in the I Want WinHotKey to section.
- Then we will click on Browse to choose the folder and when we do, we end up clicking OK.
That would be all we have to do, the shortcut or keyboard shortcut will be available all the time while the app is in the background. We can also view it in the configuration window in case we want to modify it, so it is important to have a good description. Especially, if we are going to have several created.
