What computer life hacks are your most used?
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
In a browser I right click on a bookmark folder to open all the bookmarks in separate tabs. I usually do this with my social sites.
To update Fedora "sudo dnf upgrade". I used to use the software store but that often requires a reboot.
Windows+L to lock the computer.
I always have my vpn, terminal window, and qbittorrent start at boot.
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
Set up three WireGuard network interfaces on a VPS then accept traffic from your end devices to route through the three double hop VPN tunnels to a country with better privacy laws. Install an ad and tracking blocking DNS server to block all nefarious hostnames as well as more granular blockers for your browsers.
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
hosts file block twitter/reddit/facebook/etc on all my computers. i guess i haven't done it on my phone because i can't be bothered [and regardless of how much i need a hit, i'm not gonna sit there on my phone browser for hours anyway]
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To navigate to the previous folder
cd -
To reissue the previous command with a prefix. For example:
cat /root/.ssh/authorized_keys # Will fail without privilege
sudo !!
To use the argument of the previous command. For example:
tac ~/.ssh/authorized_keys # oops, misspelled cat
cat !$
cd -... Wow, I can't believe I never knew about this. I should read more man pages.
!! Is useful too, never knew. Thanks!
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Custom autocompletes/corrects. Just figure out a non-word (i.e. something that you wouldn't want to use without autocorrecting) that's easy to remember and set it up frequently used snippets of text. Some examples:
- meetnow - my zoom meeting link
- booktime - a link to my calendly
- frequent sentences or blurbs I use in emails (e.g. thanks so much, let me know if i can help with anything else sorta stuff)
- nicknames for different frequently used hex codes
- galert/yalert/redalert populate a styled HTML snippet to make a green, yellow, or red div that I can then just pop my content into
- lots of other little HTML snippets like that
- group nicknames to populate a list of email addresses (like an Outlook contacts group but you can use it outside of Outlook)
Anyway there are a ton of things I use it for, those are just a few examples. Saves me a lot of time.
You can do this on Macs at a system level, on Windows you can do it on some programs but it seems to have to be set up on each one which is worthless.
That's so smart!
I set up autocompletes for my phone number (and a few other personal links) but these are amazing.. thanks for sharing
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
My computer gets hacked all the time, I'm pretty used to it now.
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
Ctrl+r on bash and zsh (possibly others) for quickly recalling anything you've typed before
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
My favorite windows shortcut is 'Windows+shift+left/right' to move an application between monitors. Very helpful for moving games around or snapping without have to use a mouse.
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The Multiple desktops feature is critical for me. It allows you to use one computer for multiple functional concepts simultaneously without visually interfering with each other or constantly needing to close and re-open things. It's available in both windows and linux (which had it first) for a long time now.
I keep my personal stuff on one desktop, I keep my work stuff on a second desktop, and I keep my gaming stuff on a third desktop. Then I just flip between them based on what I'm currently doing.
That way I'm not getting things confused with each other, or distracted by something personal while I'm working.
Ctrl+Windows+Left/Right for Windows is the shortcut to flip back and forth between them. Or you can also see it on the Windows+Tab menu as well (along the bottom below the apps)
The only downside to this is that you need more RAM than normal, because it's not uncommon for me to have dozens (sometimes north of 100) of browser tabs, and a half dozen applications from office to video games open simultaneously between the different desktops. I would suggest running 32gb at a minimum, and 64gb is a lot better.
I've found the windows one sorely lacking. As I recall all windows of a specific program have to be on a single desktop. This causes issues if you are working on multiple word docs, browser windows, or even just want access to email in both desktops. AFAIK there isn't a work around to this. Am I out of the loop on a nice windows feature?
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
Shift + del: skips the trash and actually deletes things
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I've found the windows one sorely lacking. As I recall all windows of a specific program have to be on a single desktop. This causes issues if you are working on multiple word docs, browser windows, or even just want access to email in both desktops. AFAIK there isn't a work around to this. Am I out of the loop on a nice windows feature?
You must be out of the loop, I have different browser tabs and excel files up on different desktops right now.
Sometimes if you need to start a new file it will swap you around, but you can always immediately move it wherever you want.
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Ctl shift t - reopen last closed tab in tour browser
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hosts file block twitter/reddit/facebook/etc on all my computers. i guess i haven't done it on my phone because i can't be bothered [and regardless of how much i need a hit, i'm not gonna sit there on my phone browser for hours anyway]
pi-hole does the same thing for a whole network
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Modern computers don’t use much energy when they sleep.
If they sleep
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Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.
Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.
Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.
Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.
Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.
Win + E to open a file browser window
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Ctl shift t - reopen last closed tab in tour browser
Should be ctrl shift + t
Is there two shortcuts for this?
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Microsoft has never fixed the sticky keys replacement cheese to unlock a PC you have physical access to. Ive done it up to W10, never tested it on W11.
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Get a Windows recovery USB.
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Boot into the recovery menu and open the command prompt.
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Navagate to system32 and make a copy of the cmd.exe file (for a backup)
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Copy the sticky_keys.exe and have it overwrite cmd.exe, then reboot.
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On the login screen, smash the shift key until the command prompt appears and for some reason (because no user has logged in yet) it has admin permissions, so you can reset local passwords.
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Once your logged in as a local admin, copy the backup of cmd.exe back so noone is none the wiser (except the security software that knows you messed with something)
That.... Seems like a pretty massive vulnerability. Like obviously that can be locked down by each user or administrator, but still....
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Ctrl+r on bash and zsh (possibly others) for quickly recalling anything you've typed before
This is a huge one for me. For those who don't know, this brings up the rev-i-search utility which allows cycling from most recent to oldest commands executed. It also supports partial finds so if you did 'cd' it would cycle the most recent change directory commands.
The forward search (in case you're somewhere in the history stack) is ctrl+s and operates the same except crawls the command history forwards.
I use these constantly in my normal workflow and they save a ton of time.
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To navigate to the previous folder
cd -
To reissue the previous command with a prefix. For example:
cat /root/.ssh/authorized_keys # Will fail without privilege
sudo !!
To use the argument of the previous command. For example:
tac ~/.ssh/authorized_keys # oops, misspelled cat
cat !$
wrote last edited by [email protected]The - works with git branching as well for those who didn't know.
git checkout -will switch to the previously checked out branch so it effectively toggles between your two most recent branches. -
That.... Seems like a pretty massive vulnerability. Like obviously that can be locked down by each user or administrator, but still....
wrote last edited by [email protected]It is, we used the same just with the accessibility button in earlier Windows Versions to troll one another in school.
Thing is, if encryption is enabled it won't work.
