What computer life hacks are your most used?
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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. -
Not everyone knows the keyboard shortcut though. I bet you can find people hunting for it using the mouse every time.
How can people not use shortcuts? If that shortcut wouldn't exist, I would create it using Autohotkey
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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]Recently had to help a relative who still uses windows, so here's a freebie from Linux:
You can use super + number to launch any pinned program on the taskbar.
For example let's say you have your browser right of the start button and file explorer on the next spot right, pressing super+1 launches the browser and super+2 the explorerEdit: super = windows logo key
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pi-hole does the same thing for a whole network
Yeah I use AdGuard. It's so nice to not have ads!
I also saw that Netflix on my TV was constantly phoning home even though I don't use it on my TV.
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That's not even a life hack. That's literally policy, at least where I work at
None of these comments are life hacks. When did using a documented feature built into your software become a hack?
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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]My main one is to learn shortcuts on your most used programs. Using the mouse for everything is a waste of time, but that has been said multiple times.
My second is to create scripts to do a bunch of repetitive tasks. For example, I have a script I run on my work PC after I log on to the VPN that starts my "always on" programs (like notepad++), unlocks the hosts file, etc. I have some sendto scripts for converting files with pandoc, fetching multiple git repos in one go, etc. It just speeds up things and avoids errors versus me doing them manually.
On Windows I use PowerShell and on Linux I use bash, meaning they work without additional software installed.
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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.
Use a tiling window manager like sway.
Get some big HDDs and self host your own file storage on zfs. Same for media servers like jellyfin. You can also host qBitTorrent web client so it's accessible from anywhere.
Set up a VM in Hetzner cloud and host vaultwarden.
Expose your services over wireguard.
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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.
if you're concerned about how much you need to move your hand, then you'll probably love (neo)vim
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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)
I just boot in to a linux iso to use chntpw and reset passwords
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⌃⌘Q for those of us on MacBooks
wrote last edited by [email protected]No. What the fuck
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Vim takes your keyboard shortcuts to the extreme. If you can be bothered to learn it.
I opened vim and I've been stuck ever since. Send help
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Turn it off when you're not using it. Save on energy.
If you also disconnect the power, just remember that this drains the CMOS battery in the motherboard. That's okay, just know that it may help to replace it if your machine has issues booting, time resets, etc.
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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.
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Shift + Tab (also works on Linux)
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If you have a mouse with side buttons, you can use the side buttons to go back or go to the next page on browsers
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Pressing Alt + F4 on the desktop opens up a dialog asking if you want to shut down, restart, log out, etc. (I think this works on Linux as well)
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