Working with the registry is scary. If you're an inexperienced computer user, the thought of jumping between keys to make system-level changes to your machine can leave you shaking in your boots.

Even when you get comfortable working with it, navigating to the wrong registry key can be a serious pain in the butt and a huge waste of time. You drill down all these hive levels only to realize you wanted to be in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but you're deep in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

Sure, you can go all the back out and dig in again, but you don't have to, as Windows 10 has made it easier to jump to the place you want to be.

Registry Editor 2016-05-22 15.43.23

If you're in a hive and there's a path matching it in another hive, you can right-click it and click go to "Hive name".

It sounds complicated, but it's easier to understand with an example. Let's say you're in...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft

...but you want to be in...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft

If you right-click HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft, you'll see an option on the bottom of the menu labeled Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

Clicking that will jump you the matching path in that hive. Because messing with the registry can take a while, this little shortcut can be a huge time saver!

Do you have any registry editing shortcuts you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: www.BillionPhotos.com via ShutterStock