Q. I did something in my Windows 10 laptop’s settings and now my apps are all over the desktop and every program opens in full-screen mode. What is this and how do I fix it?

A. Because the system can run on touchscreen devices as well as traditional mouse-and-keyboard desktop systems, Windows 10 has a “Tablet mode” that shifts the user interface from a “point and click” to a “tap and drag” method of input. This makes it easier to take advantage of touch on some laptops and tablet-laptop hybrid models, but it can also be awkward if you did not intend to use Windows 10 that way.

It is possible that Tablet mode got turned on accidentally in the Windows 10 Action Centre, the panel of shortcuts to system settings and controls that opens when you click the dialogue box icon on the bottom-right corner of the screen. You can also open the Action Centre when you press the Windows and A keys, tap four fingers on the laptop’s trackpad or swipe left from the right edge of the touch screen.

When the Action Centre panel is open, it can be easy to inadvertently tap the Tablet mode square in the grid of other controls and turn on the feature. To switch back to the regular Windows 10 desktop interface, open the Action Centre again and tap the Tablet mode square again to turn it off.

You can change the way Tablet mode behaves in the main Windows 10 settings. Go to the Start menu, open Settings and select System.

On the next screen, choose Tablet mode. Here, you can set the computer to always open in desktop mode when you log in, ask before switching between modes or hide the taskbar and its icons if you are using the computer like a tablet.

The Tweet, and the do-over

Q. Do apps like TweetDeck let you edit tweets?

A. TweetDeck, a dashboard program for Twitter power users, can do a lot of things, but it cannot edit tweets once they are posted. Twitter’s guide for new users states that you cannot edit a tweet after posting, so you should delete it from your timeline and post a new version with corrected information. (Twitter itself has not ruled out the possibility of the feature being added in the future, despite technical hurdles to overcome.)

The TweetDeck app does let you schedule tweets in advance, as do similar social media management programs like Hootsuite. If you have composed your posts ahead of time, you can go back and edit them before they are scheduled to publish.

With an app like TweetDeck, you can manage multiple accounts at once, set up alerts and searches, display several timelines across the screen at the same time and more. TweetDeck is free to use and available at http://tweetdeck.twitter.com, or as a Mac desktop app or Chrome browser extension. A Windows version of TweetDeck was discontinued earlier this year, but the work-in-progress Tweeten app has a Windows edition available in the Windows Store, and a version for Microsoft Edge is under construction.

Iconfactory’s Twitterific 5 for iOS is one app that attempts to make fixing an errant tweet a little easier (a $5 Mac desktop version of the app is also available, though development stopped in 2013 with version 4.5.1). The iOS app has a “Delete and Edit Tweet” command that deletes your original post and that copies the text into a new pending tweet that you can quickly edit. Once you have finished editing, you can post the new version, but it will carry a new time stamp; favourites and retweets from the original post will be lost.

New York Times News Service