this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025

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146

What computer life hacks are your most used? (lemmy.world)

submitted 23 hours ago by TehBamski@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

111 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 56 minutes ago* (last edited 54 minutes ago)

Are you serious? arrow keys instead of clicking? let's take it further:

shift+arrow highlights letters
ctrl+arrow skips entire words
ctrl+shift+arrow highlights entire words
home/end jumps to start/end of line
ctrl+home/end jumps to start/end of text box
ctrl+shift+home/end jumps to start/end of textbox and highlights it
um, do you need me to explain what ctrl+xcv do? or ctrl+zy? or ctrl+asdwerfgop?

isn't this just basic typing? didnt yall learn this in the 90s??? how are you all on the internet right now

wait til you hear about how i swipe texted all this

[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 1 points 27 minutes ago* (last edited 16 minutes ago)

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.

[–] Monzcarro@feddit.uk 1 points 52 minutes ago

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

[–] JamonBear@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Using ublock origin picker to remove everything useless. Like, Youtube suggestions, everything but download button on ddl websites, useless footers/headers on news, etc...

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Why have I not been doing this?! Just removed the "2 years old" .world banner.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Just getting people to switch away from chrome to get ublock origin is a major hack all itself and completely changed the way you use the internet.

[–] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours 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.

[–] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 hours ago

I had to read the post twice, is the arrow keys the life hack? zu the fold, }} two paragraph and 3) to jump three sentences is. And we haven't mentioned macros yet

[–] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 hours ago (4 children)

Yay, nobody said my favorite hack.

While browsing on the web and you want to "open link into a new tab", click using the mouse wheel like it's a regular left or right click.

It's great for researching.

[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 3 points 54 minutes ago

Unless the page uses shitty "link" implementation where buttons are use instead of actual anchor tags. Fucking SPAs…

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago

Showed a coworker that while he was training me.

"OK, right-click on that and..."

puzzled

"OK, right-click...

[–] laurathepluralized@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Or ctrl-/command-click!

[–] spidermonkey23@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

there's a extension to do this with the right click button instead too

[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

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.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours 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).

[–] Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours 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.

[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 1 points 50 minutes ago

Combine home and end with ctrl to move to the start or end of the file. As a dev I use this a lot.

I also have keyboard shortcuts for code folding and mouse shortcuts to navigate between usages, declarations and implementations. Onboarding people is a slog when they don't have the same shortcuts.

[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 hours ago

I can't live without my home, end, pagedown and pageup keys

[–] BigPotato@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours 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 2 points 46 minutes 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.

[–] endeavor@sopuli.xyz 9 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

Linux is the easier to install, less headache to run, less configuration needed, better to game on platform compared to windows.

That's my life hack. Get over the Stockholm syndrome.

[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

less configuration needed

Would say that GNU/Linux is actually *more * customizable than Windows which then requires more config. For a techie like me, not a downside as I can figure it out.... but wouldn't say this is true for all distros even with vanilla Gnome compared to Windows or something like ZorinOS. IMO, GNU/Linux still takes the cake on this one unfortunately.

[–] endeavor@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 hours ago

Yes if you install gentoo or something. I run arch btw(endeavour) and there was no customization needed other than installing an app store of my choice.

[–] LyingCake@feddit.org 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

What distribution do you use?

[–] endeavor@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 hours ago

Currently am on endeavour os but honestly, I started on fedora. You can get mint or ubuntu or whatever cause honestly they differences are basically about as noticable in day to day use than different editions of windows.

[–] LyingCake@feddit.org 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

What distribution do you use?

[–] ConstantPain@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Recommend CachyOS, not US centered and pretty stable.

[–] Drekaridill@feddit.is 8 points 8 hours 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 8 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours 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.

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 hours ago

when my computer pisses me off i like to smash it

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 10 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone 3 points 10 hours ago

I'm sitting up on the upper balcony tabbing between two two plebs.

[–] gurapo@lemmy.pt 2 points 7 hours 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

[–] KokusnussRitter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 8 hours ago

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

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 14 hours ago

if you're concerned about how much you need to move your hand, then you'll probably love (neo)vim

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