Every time you run a program in Windows, it’s run in a localised user mode. However, you must have seen a UAC prompt pop-up time to time asking a particular program requires higher privileges, that’s when the program is trying to run with administrator privileges.

If you want, you can manually run a program as an administrator in Windows 10. There are a number of ways you can do this and we’ve listed four of them — some simpler than others but all have their own use cases.

Method #1: Using the keyboard shortcut

Windows has a built-in keyboard shortcut to run programs with admin privileges.

Double click on any program, or shortcut while holding down Ctrl+Shift on your keyboard and the program will open with elevated permissions.  

Also read: How to find stored passwords in Windows 10?

Method #2: Using the ‘Run as’ utility

Step 1: Right-click on the executable file or shortcut icon of the program you’re trying to run.

Step 2: Select the Run as administrator option from the context menu.

Alternatively, you can also press Shift and right-click to run the program as a different user altogether. 

Also read: How to use Multiple Desktops in Windows 10?

Method #3: Running programs with administrator permissions using Run

Ever since Windows 10 update 1803, you can open programs directly from the run prompt with admin privileges. It’s a pretty handy way of opening a number of Windows utilities with more control over the system.

Step 1: Press Ctrl+R to open the Run prompt.

Step 2: Type in the command and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

Also read: How to enable Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) in Windows 10?

Method #4: Running all programs as administrator by default

If explicitly having to run each program as an admin every time you launch is too much work, you just set all your programs to run with administrator privileges by default. Here’s how

Step 1: Head over to the Start menu and search for UAC.

Step 2: The User Account Control Settings window will open. Bring the slider all the way down to where it says Never notify and click on OK. 

Now all your programs will be run with admin privileges and you won’t be alerted anytime it happens. 

Also read: How to change your account name in Windows 10?