Dualboot windows and Ubuntu but automatically boot in Ubuntu

I sometimes need Windows for some school projects. So I was thinking is there anyway to have both Windows and Ubuntu installed but automatically boot in Ubuntu but if i pressed F12 or just something when booting like when i'm going into the bios then i could choose between Windows and Ubuntu ?

EDIT: i installed windows now. And i wanna know how i wont see the grub loader when i boot and it just automatically boots into Ubuntu. And if i press and hold "Shift" i will see the grub loader and will be able to choose Windows


The way Ubuntu should be set up by default in dual boot mode is that you will see a menu for some seconds to choose the OS from.

enter image description here
Shown here for 10.04 LTS and Windows XP but similar in later releases

If you don't see it, make it visible by pressing and holding the left SHIFT key while booting.


  • In case you look for a way to reboot into Windows see this question.

  • For a way to reduce the time until Grub loads the default entry see this question

  • To change the default boot entry have a look at this answer


You can easily set up your Grub to launch into any OS you have on the HDD, install Windows first then resize the partition and install Ubuntu, you can use the GRUB GUI editor as below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

Don't know how to configure it, but you can configure grub to show the menu and accept a default after a few seconds timeout. It is also possible to automatically select the option during last boot.