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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[–] phonics@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Shift + del: skips the trash and actually deletes things

[–] Imhotep@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago

(Linux)

Add the same symbol at the beginning of most aliases. I use é

So when I type é+tab I get all my aliases

é+first letters of alias+tab and I'm sure autocomplete will select the alias and not another command

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago

when my computer pisses me off i like to smash it

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

First thing required on every new keyboard

collapsed inline media

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

Ctl shift t - reopen last closed tab in tour browser

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

Should be ctrl shift + t

Is there two shortcuts for this?

[–] xylogx@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago
[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day 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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[–] QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day 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".

[–] PillowD@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago

Linux. Windows is used for Russian oligarchs.

Since people are expecting windows shortcut keys, I nominate TAB navigation. Hitting tab will cycle the focus through all the buttons and edit boxes. Shift Tab to go backwards.

[–] BigPotato@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Control Backspace deletes whole words. Misspelled control? Faster to delete and retype than move my cursor around when I'm on a roll.

[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 3 points 21 hours ago

Not a computer hack, but some phone keyboards have backspace and whitespace drag, the former allowing to select a range form the cursor to delete and the latter moving the cursor. Way more usable than trying to fat finger cursor position and selection.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
  • Double clicking with the mouse on a word usually selects the whole word with the space after, very nice for copy-pasting.

  • Double clicking on the selected word will sometimes select the whole line(In some applications it actually selects up to the newline marker, so it will grab multiple lines if resized smaller).

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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

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

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

If they sleep

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Even 50W, 24/7, is 36 kWh/month. $3 where I live; $12 in CA.

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[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Yeah I do a lot of keyboard shortcuts. My computer career started before I even had a mouse, it was all keyboard editing. Doesn't bother me a bit to leave the mouse just sitting there. In fact after typing a comment here I just tab to the Post button and hit Enter.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm still on Windows, because I'm a lesser human, etc...

That said, PowerToys adds a lot of nice features to Windows (more like...Sindows, amirite), like being able to break your screen into zones, etc...

My biggest computer life hack of all time would probably be: piracy. Highly recommended. Saves you so much money, I'm surprised they don't advertise it more.

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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.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

My grub boot loader is pretty hacked together at this point. Really should probably do a fresh install at some point. Want to get a 4TB SSD at some point though.

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[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 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.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

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.

Win+Shift+S is the keyboard shortcut. You can even do screen recordings. I use that shit all the time at work, to send bug reports when the useless fucking software we’re forced to use has a repeatable crash that the dev team can’t replicate with text reports alone.

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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

[–] gurapo@lemmy.pt 3 points 1 day 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

[–] Monzcarro@feddit.uk 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago

Win+D show desktop!

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