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.
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.
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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.
I’ll have to upload it here when I get back into work on Tuesday, but I wrote a PDF guide for the most common Windows and Mac shortcuts that I consider to be the essentials.
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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.
Turn it off when you're not using it. Save on energy.
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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.
Windows+L every time I leave my desk.
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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.
Find a Linux distro you like and install it instead of Windows.
Use LibreOffice, not MSOffice
Ditch Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Tech walled gardens are insane asylums. Leave them.
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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.
Pretty much anything has a free alternative. Often times, with a better UI or more features with far less bloat than the top commercial product.
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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.
On Windows you can open up a WSL shell or PowerShell session directly to the folder path you want.
Hold 'Shift' then right click anywhere inside of a directory and you will get an option to "Open PowerShell window here" as well as to "Open Linux shell here".
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Turn it off when you're not using it. Save on energy.
Even 50W, 24/7, is 36 kWh/month. $3 where I live; $12 in CA.
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Keyboard shortcuts in general.
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Alt + left right (previous/next page in browsers)
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Windows + 1 (2, 3, ...) on Windows and KDE focuses the window at that position in the taskbar
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Alt + Tab to switch windows (hold shift to go backwards)
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Windows + Tab to switch windows within the same application (like, all browser windows if you're in a browser)
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Alt + 1 (2, 3, ...) on Windows/Linux usually selects the corresponding tab
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Ctrl + Tab to cycle through tabs like Alt-Tab does for windows (hold shift to go backwards)
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In most browsers or things with a URL/go to bar, Ctrl+L will focus that. No need to click the address bar, Ctrl+L, example.com, Enter.
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In Discord and Slack, you can press Ctrl+K to open a box to quickly type a channel/DM name to go to it quickly
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If you have them, the Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys are actually pretty useful. Press Home instead of scrolling all the way back up.
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F1 is usually help
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F2 is usually rename
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F3 is usually search
wrote last edited by [email protected]F6 - goto and highlight the URL bar in a browser
ctrl + F5 - clear cache and reload the tab
F11 - super full screen browser
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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.
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.
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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.
Notepad++
Ctrl click to place to type the same things once on those spots.
Ctrl and alt together will allow vertical highlights so if you have to modify the middle of several lines.
Edit menu -> line operations to sort by several pre determined methods. -
Turn it off when you're not using it. Save on energy.
Modern computers don’t use much energy when 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.
Keyboard shortcuts for everything. Mousing to a menu is a waste of time in any app you use daily.
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Windows+L every time I leave my desk.
That's not even a life hack. That's literally policy, at least where I work at
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Vim takes your keyboard shortcuts to the extreme. If you can be bothered to learn it.
And for those who can't be bothered, opening vim is like the digital version of a finger trap.
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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.
Add Home/End buttons into your work flow to jump to the start or end of lines. Works with holding Shift as well.
For me, one of the biggest things was removing all the visual noise from my desktop. Disable notifications, disable or hide unused taskbar elements, and on Windows, get rid of the patently awful ticker thing that lives on the taskbar. Disable window animations.
I did the same thing on my phone, too, including disabling pop-up notifications, toasts, floating bubbles, and animations. My brain is much happier for it.
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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.
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 !$
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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.
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)
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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 !$
Oh dang, I never knew about the
!!shortcut. I especially like it for the sudo example, because when it complains I don't have permission, I can basically yell at it. -
Vim takes your keyboard shortcuts to the extreme. If you can be bothered to learn it.
It's well worth learning, you can use vim motions In lots of apps (or they have vim plugins) and even some websites will let you navigate with hjkl and search with / etc
There used to be a web based vim game to help you learn, vim tutor maybe?
Any time I'm forced to select text with a mouse it feels like a massive ball ache.
Don't get me started on editing text on an iPad, they have gone out of their way to make selection and editing, like changing a URL, a total nightmare.
