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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[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Far from most used, but very handy: ctrl+win+shift+b

It restarts the graphic subsystem, which can help recover from situations where game crashes or similar cause visual issues.

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 1 points 23 hours ago

That's handy, my computer is struggling to run crusader kings 3 when I start it up sometimes and I have to restart the whole thing. Next time I'll try this.

Trying to save to buy a new pc but with a baby on the way most of our money is going to baby stuff at the moment

[–] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wait until you learn about vim keybindings. Instead of moving your hand to the arrow keys, you can stay on the homerow and movie up down left right from there.

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[–] momentary@lemmy.ml 1 points 22 hours ago

I'm a web dev and one "hack" I use all the time is bookmarklets. In Chrome @bookmarks let's you search your bookmarks, so I use this to fire off different scripts to do different things. Most are for debugging and the like. I have my hotkeys setup where ctrl + q puts focus on the omnibar so I can start typing, and then I use @books marks to search for whatever I need. A lot of the bookmarklets just append the current url to some other site like page speed insights or pure.md. I find this saves me a ton of time. Also the duplicate this tab hotkey, I use that all day every day.

[–] Drekaridill@feddit.is 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ctrl + shift + esc brings up the Windows task manager directly instead of the menu you get when you press ctrl + alt + del

[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Just remember that ctrl+alt+del is a system level interrupt that should always work as long as the kernel is running. Ctrl+shift+esc is not, and won't work in some situations like being used inside a fullscreen frozen program.

[–] Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Actually use Home and End keys to get to the start and end of text.

Ctrl + F for searching text. Very useful.

Alt + Tab for window switching.

Linux + USB drive to switch away from Windows.

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[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day 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.

[–] mapleseedfall@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I think youre missing the point

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Oh kid, I do this for over forty years now.

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm kinda mind blown that this is even considered a tip. isn't this just basic functionality of a text box???

it's shit like this that makes me think I do know tech a little bit, until i stumble on an actual tech community and feel like I know nothing

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

For real, I remember when Solitaire was added to Windows to teach people how to use a mouse. It wasn’t just some fun little thing they added on a whim. The goal was to provide an entertaining way for users to naturally learn mouse controls like clicking and dragging.

Before then, you had to use the keyboard to navigate text, because you literally didn’t have a mouse.

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[–] moe93@lemmy.dbzer0.com 63 points 2 days ago (6 children)

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 !$

[–] lucg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Not sure if you're aware that tac is not a typo but reverse cat, as in, it works like cat but prints the last line first. I use this semi-regularly

sl, now, that's a typo. Nobody wants a free choo choo

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[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 1 day 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.

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 1 points 23 hours ago

Best keyboard shortcut I know hahaha

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

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

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[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Cutting and pasting a folder is faster than copying and pasting.
OS just gotta add an inode in first case.

[–] Caffeinated_Sloth@lemmy.world 58 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Windows+L every time I leave my desk.

[–] spamspeicher@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

And so easy to remember: windows L, sicher und schnell!

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[–] Bahnd@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago (9 children)

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.

  1. Get a Windows recovery USB.

  2. Boot into the recovery menu and open the command prompt.

  3. Navagate to system32 and make a copy of the cmd.exe file (for a backup)

  4. Copy the sticky_keys.exe and have it overwrite cmd.exe, then reboot.

  5. 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.

  6. 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)

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I used to use a boot CD with a password eraser. I think the last time I used it was win 7 though

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[–] 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).

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