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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[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As a basic Linux user, I have a shell script to do all my updating, upgrading, removing of unneeded packages, etcetera. Under no circumstances is it all that advanced, just a string of simple enough apt and flatpak commands.

I also recently figured out that god knows how long ago that I set an alias to run it that's only 3 keyboard clicks instead of 5, saving basically less than a second. So not that useful, but still good to know... until I inevitably forget about it again.

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[–] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week 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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[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week 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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[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week 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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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 1 week 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.

[–] PillowD@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week 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.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week 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.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] mysticpickle@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Piracy is like an Eye of Sauron thing. You don't get big and ubiquitous like Napster back in the day or you get pounced on like Aragorn clanging his pots and pans. You wanna stay small and quiet undermining the very power they desire like Sam and Frodo :>

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

Shift + del: skips the trash and actually deletes things

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (5 children)

First thing required on every new keyboard

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[–] folekaule@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My main one is to learn shortcuts on your most used programs. Using the mouse for everything is a waste of time, but that has been said multiple times.

My second is to create scripts to do a bunch of repetitive tasks. For example, I have a script I run on my work PC after I log on to the VPN that starts my "always on" programs (like notepad++), unlocks the hosts file, etc. I have some sendto scripts for converting files with pandoc, fetching multiple git repos in one go, etc. It just speeds up things and avoids errors versus me doing them manually.

On Windows I use PowerShell and on Linux I use bash, meaning they work without additional software installed.

[–] Imhotep@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week 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

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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

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

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

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[–] BigPotato@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week 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.

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

Ctl shift t - reopen last closed tab in tour browser

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

Should be ctrl shift + t

Is there two shortcuts for this?

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

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

when my computer pisses me off i like to smash it

[–] N00b22@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week 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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[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week 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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[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Learn vim keybindings.

Learn hotkeys for every program you have and learn to navigate between programs without the mouse.

Stop using the computer and go outside sometimes

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week 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.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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).

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

The Escape Key closes most popups, dialogs, modals. It’s also non-destructive, so it won’t close a program; any “save changes” dialog will be cancelled.

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

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