If you’re a Windows user, you may have noticed the F key icons at the top of the keyboard. You’re probably familiar with the F keys themselves. These keys are shortcuts for functions in various programs. The F1 key is generally reserved as the “Help!’ shortcut. But, what are the symbols often found on the F keys? Let’s look at some of them.

Airplane, Print Screen and Delete

Let’s look at the three keys in the picture above. The icon with the airplane symbol will take your computer in and out of airplane mode. Be careful of this key since you often can’t get online if you accidentally put your device into this mode.

The “prt sc” key is short for Print Screen and it’s use is pretty obvious. In Windows 10, hitting this key will copy whatever is on the screen onto the clipboard. You can then paste it into a program such as Microsoft Publisher.

I probably don’t have to explain the Delete key, do I?

Reverse, Start/Pause and Forward

If you use any kind of music player, you’re already familiar with these keys. If you’re playing music on your computer, these are shortcuts to control the direction and stopping and starting. I’m going to leave it at that!

Mute, Volume Down and Volume Up

This set of F key icons contains Joyce’s favorite shortcut on the keyboard – mute! Nothing aggravates her more than having music or something else play without her consent. She’ll be reaching for the Mute shortcut faster than you can say “The Flash.”

Surprise!

The two keys above might surprise you. Pressing the f4 key icon is the same as using the Windows key and the letter P. It will open up the projection window so you can control multiple screen output, if you have more than display. (You can read about other keyboard shortcuts in my other posts by clicking HERE.)

The second key – the f5 key in this case, is one you might not be familiar with. Pressing this key on my laptop turns on and off the keyboard back lighting. That way, when I’m up at 4:00 a.m. I can light up my keyboard to see what I’m typing!

Escape, Help, Decrease Brightness and Increase Brightness

The final four F key icons I’m covering in this post are pretty common and well-known. The ESC (Escape) key can get you out of full screen mode, close a window or, sometimes, even close an app.

The key with the question mark is, as I mentioned above, the Help shortcut. Of course, the two F key icons to the right of the Help button either dim or brighten the screen. Again, this is pretty self-explanatory.

Summing Up The F Key Icons

There are more F key icons than I’m showing in this post. I’ll show more in the future. One thing you should know about these icons: one some occasions, you have to use the FN (Function) key to activate the shortcut. On other keyboards, they work without the FN key but that key is needed to make the F1-F12 keys work.

One other thing: not all keyboards have the F key icons. Some have them other places, some don’t have any at all. Have I confused you yet? LOL If so, leave a comment, please.