How to launch program in Windows 8 via keyboard shortcut directly from taskbar as admin

October 02, 2012

If you pin a program to taskbar in Windows 7 or 8 and want to run it directly without clicking on the icon, you can use Win key + number of the icon from the left. So if would you have icon like this :

taskbar windows 8 icons

To run Visual Studio 2010 I would have to press Win + number 7. But picture a situation that you want to run the program with Admin rights, then you have two possibilities :

  • Right click the icon then right click the name of the app and click choose Run as administrator option. Like this : taskbar windows 8 icons run as admin
  • Press CTRL + SHIFT + Win key + number of icon and you will be directly asked by UAC if you want to run the app with Admin rights.

Hope this helps.


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Written by Dušan Roštár - the "mr edge case" guy
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