Switch Between Apps with Alt+Tab and Alt+Shift+Tab

by | Jul 1, 2026 | Keyboard shortcuts, Tips | 0 comments

Picture of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

Picture this: it is the night of April 18, 1775, and Paul Revere needs to warn the countryside that the British are marching. Now imagine if, instead of riding from house to house, he could have instantly jumped between every household in the colony with the press of a single key. He'd have been done by 8pm and home in time for supper.

That is essentially what Alt+Tab does for you on a modern Windows computer. When you have multiple applications or documents open—your email, a spreadsheet, a browser, a Word doc—you no longer need to hunt through the taskbar or minimize windows to find what you need. Two keystrokes and you are there.

Switch forward through open windows

1. Hold down the Alt key on your keyboard.
2. While holding Alt, press the Tab key once. A thumbnail panel appears showing all your open applications and windows.
3. Keep holding Alt and press Tab again to move forward, or Shift+Alt+Tab to move backward, through each open window, one at a time.
4. When the window you want is highlighted, release the Alt key. Windows will bring that application to the front immediately.

Outcome: You can cycle forward through all open apps in under a second—no mouse required.

Patrick Henry famously declared, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" With Alt+Tab, you can declare something a little more practical: "Give me the right window—right now." Once this shortcut becomes second nature, you will wonder how you ever survived without it.
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