What happened to Aero Flip 3D in Windows 8 & 10? / Windows 7

In Windows Vista, Microsoft released a new feature called Aero Flip 3D to display hardware acceleration capabilities. To use it you must have the right hardware and also be using an Aero theme.

This feature is also stuck in Windows 7 and it can be enabled using Windows Key + TAB combination contrary to the standard ALT + TAB combine. If you liked this feature a lot, it was removed in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

The keystroke still works, but it does something different in Windows 8 and something else in Windows 10! Well, thanks to Microsoft for changing the feature in every version of Windows!

Anyway, in this article, I will explain to you how Aero Flip 3D works in Windows 7 and how Windows Key and ALT combinations now work in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Aviation Flip 3D

In Windows 7, if you press the ALT + TAB key combination, you will get the following screen for your programs:

Basically, you get small thumbnails for each program or window on the taskbar. If you use the Windows Key + TAB combination, you get a cool looking 3D flip stack interface:

By the way, if your computer does not support hardware acceleration, then when you press ALT + TAB you will see small icons instead of preview as shown below:

If Aero Flip 3D doesn’t work in Windows 7, it’s also possible that you’re not using the Aero theme. Right click on the desktop and select Personalized. Then choose one of the themes in Aviation theme.

Windows 8 Switch between apps

So what happened in Windows 8? Well, first, the 3D flip has been removed in favor of new sliders appearing from all sides in Windows 8. Remember the Charms bar on the right hand side?

In Windows 8, if you press ALT + TAB, you get the same thumbnail view of all open programs, including desktop apps and newly opened Windows Store apps. introduced in Windows 8.

This makes sense and makes sense, right? However, if you press Windows Key + TAB, you will eventually get this slider from the left side of the screen:

First, I don’t use many Windows apps to justify this annoying slider on the left side of the screen. I love the 3D flip of Windows 7. Best of all, it doesn’t list desktop apps, but instead has a tile called Desktop. This is one of the many reasons why people simply hate Windows 8.

Windows 10 Switch between apps

Thankfully, Windows 10 has fixed some of those problems. You still won’t get any 3D flip action in Windows 10, but I don’t mind that much anymore.

First, when you press ALT + TAB in Windows 10, you get the same thumbnail previews as in older versions of Windows, but the thumbnails are huge compared to preview versions of Windows, so it looks very nice.

As with Windows 8, ALT + TAB will show you desktop apps and Windows Store apps. Thankfully, in Windows 10, Store apps stay in windows and can be used like desktop apps, instead of going to full screen and being really annoying.

So what does Window Key + TAB do in Windows 10? Well, now that Windows 10 supports multiple desktops, just like OS X had for a while, this key combination will let you switch between desktops. The great thing about this key combination is that you can also let go of all the keys and it doesn’t go away.

This is where things get a little interesting. When you’re in this mode, pressing tab won’t switch you between apps in a particular desktop. Instead, it takes you from the bottom part of the screen, where it lists out all the desktops, and the top part of the screen, where it lists all the apps and programs on one. specific desktop.

If you press the left or right arrow keys, it will allow you to switch between different programs on that screen as shown below.

You should see a small white box around the currently selected app. You can then press Enter to select that application. While in this mode, if you press NAVIGATION, then you will activate the lower section and now you can move through the desktops by pressing the left and right arrow keys. As you can see below, the two desktops are showing brighter because one is active when I press Windows Key + TAB and the other one I used the arrow key to highlight.

Now if you just press Enter when another desktop is selected, it will simply load that desktop and show you whatever windows were previously active for that desktop.

However, to show all active windows to other desktops, you have to press SPATIAL Key. Then you can press NAVIGATION again to go back to the top of the screen and the arrow around the app you want to select. Then press Enter and you will load that application from that desktop.

Since I use multiple desktops quite a bit, these new keystrokes are quite useful and everything makes a lot more sense. The SPACEebar trick isn’t intuitive, but once you learn it, it makes a world of difference navigating between desktops and apps. Hopefully, that gives you a bit of an idea of ​​how these shortcuts have changed over time. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!