Keyboard Shortcuts To Shut down and Restart Windows 11 / 10 Computer

Shutting down and Restarting your PC is a daily routine and must be done easily. Windows provide numerous ways to do the task. The best way to turn off or reboot a Windows PC out of all these ways is through a keyboard shortcut. If you want to learn the straightforward ways to shut down or restart your Windows 10 or 11 PC then take a look at the following three ways.

Keyboard shortcut to Shutdown or Restart Windows 11/10 PC

1. Press Windows+X keyboard keys simultaneously to view the Start contaxt menu.
   
2. Now, press the U key from the keyboard to select the Shut down or sign out option.
   
3. From the keyboard press U key to Shut down or R key to Restart your computer. Notice the underlined letter for each option in the submenu, like the letter i in the Sign out and S in the Sleep options. Alternatively, you can use the up and down arrow keys to select the option and then hit the Enter key on the keyboard.
   

Use ALT + F4 to view Shut Down Windows Dialog

1. To use the Alt+F4 option, you need to minimize all the running applications to show the desktop as this option only works on the desktop because if the Alt+F4 is pressed while any app window is opened, it will close that app or window first. To minimize all the applications press Windows+M or Windows+D keyboard keys together. All applications will be minimized.
2. Press Alt+F4 together to open the Shut Down Windows dialog.
   
3. Select the desired option like Shut down, Restart, Switch user, Sleep, or Sign out from the drop-down by using the up and down arrow keys and hit Enter to perform the selected operation.

Create a Customized Keyboard Shortcut to Shut Down

shutdown.exe is the file responsible to turning off or rebooting the Windows 10 or 11 PC. This command is executed with some options in the command prompt for the desired tasks. To shut down it takes -s argument and to restart it takes -r argument. In the customized shortcut method, we are going to use this command. Let’s see how it will be done.

1. Press Windows+D to minimize all the open windows  right-click on the Desktop, select New the option, and then click on the Shortcut option in the sub-menu. The Create Shortcut window will appear.
   
2.  Type shutdown.exe -s in order to shut down the PC. If you want to create a shortcut to restart the PC then use the shutdown -r command. Click on the Next button. A field asking for the name of the shortcut will appear.
   
3. Provide the name of the shortcut according to the option you created the shortcut for e.g. shutdown in the case you provided  shutdown.exe -s in the previous window. Click on the Finish button and your desired shortcut will appear on the desktop.
   
4. Now, it’s time to assign keyboard keys to this shortcut. On your Desktop, Right-click on the icon of the shortcut you just created. Click on the Properties option.
   
5. Go to the Shortcut tab, click inside the Shortcut key text box and press the desired shortcut keys e.g. S. Windows will automatically prefix Ctrl + Alt and your key will look like Ctrl + Alt + S. Click on Apply button to save the changes you made and then click on OK button to close the dialog.
   

To verify the operation of the newly created shortcut, save all the files and close all the windows open. Press the shortcut key you provided for the shortcut and wait for the action to happen. If your PC shuts down or restarts then the shortcut is fully functional. Alternatively, to do the same you can double-click on the shortcut icon or just click on it and hit Enter key to execute.

Don’t delete the shortcut you created as this will disable the shortcut key as well.