this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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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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[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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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[–] phonics@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

Shift + del: skips the trash and actually deletes things

[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (5 children)

Ok, windows "hacks" I use at work.

There's a setting in windows that opens snipping tool when print screen is pressed. This allows to select a screen, window or a rectangle. More than that, it also has screen recording functionality. Very good for quick screen grabs with no additional software required.

Useful for multilinguals out there. Windows (and some linux distros) have an option to bind keyboard layout selection to open windows, meaning alt+tab'ing no longer requires switching between languages.

EDIT:
A phone thing. Some keyboards have whitespace and backspace drag functionality, that allows to move the cursor or highlight and delete text without blocking your view with your fat fingrers.

ANOTHER EDIT:
Having a mouse with at least two thumb buttons is a god send. Moving backwards and forwards between application pages is very useful.

Also, for devs. Go through you IDE shortcut settings and configure (ctrl|shift|alt)+click shortcuts. Having mouse controls to navigate between declarations, usages and implementations of different code elements with intention is awesome.
In the same vein: ctrl+(f|r) and ctrl+shift+(f|r) for find or replace in file or whole project respectively is really common use case.
Have multicarret shortcuts that allow edits in multiple lines at once. Don't forget to add shortcuts like alt+(up|down) to move selected lines up and down.
Configure shortcuts for code folding like ctrl+numpad+ and ctlr+numpad- to expand and hide current block or combine with shift to manipulate the whole file.
And for gods sake use home and end keys, combined with ctrl and shift it allows for efficient navigation and selection within a file. Combine it with multicarret support and ctrl+side_arrow_keys and you have a way to sync multiple carrets and efficiently edit multiple lines.

Finnaly: f1 – help, f2 – rename, f5 – refresh / run, optionally with ctrl, f11 – fullscreen, f12 – devtools.

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[–] N00b22@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)
  1. Shift + Tab (also works on Linux)

  2. 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

  3. 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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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] Monzcarro@feddit.uk 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not sure if this has been said already, but win + m collapses all open windows.

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[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 days ago (4 children)

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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[–] 0xD@infosec.pub 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

With Shift + Pos1 or End you can mark text from cursor until beginning or end of line! I use that often.

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[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Ctrl+Shift+Reset returns your document to the last saved state.

[–] xylogx@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Ctl shift t - reopen last closed tab in tour browser

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Should be ctrl shift + t

Is there two shortcuts for this?

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[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (2 children)

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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[–] gurapo@lemmy.pt 3 points 5 days ago

Not too sure if you can do this in windows, but I've enjoyed mapping alt+tab and alt+shift+tab to windows+mouse scroll

Linux Mint stand-in for Ctrl+Alt+Del on Windows, for when you can't open system monitor:

Get an interactive top you like > When PC freezes go to tty, open top, works like a task manager

[–] QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

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".

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Turn it off when you're not using it. Save on energy.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Modern computers don’t use much energy when they sleep.

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