When I used to sell tickets on the railway, I noticed that the ticketing programme had underlined letters, so I tried doing alt + those letters and it worked. I spent an evening shift at a remote outstation getting to grips with the shortcuts, then when it came to doing the morning rush at a busier station, it was talk of the town.
I worked at a call centre for a shopping channel years ago, at a time when they were trying to get everyone to ditch this DOS-based ordering programme where you mainly use the F keys for operations in favour of this user-friendly GUI where you could do everything with the mouse, and would you believe, people were routinely faster with the keyboard. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to them that anyone can get used to doing keyboard controls if they’re sat at a computer eight hours a day.
Oh shit there’s a shortcut to do that? I’ve just been dragging one window to the side and then clicking the other when the thingy pops up, like some kind of caveman! 😩
That’s a reverse keyboard shortcut.
Here’s another one: When you have multiple windows open, grab one by the title bar with a click-and-hold and shake it around with your mouse. This will cause all your open windows except the one you grabbed to minimize.
I don’t know how the fuck anyone is meant to discover that naturally, or what would possess anyone to even try. I think someone at Microsoft just put it in there as a joke, so people can incessantly post this exact same “did you know this thing about Windows???” thing on the internet constantly.
In other news, double clicking the window menu (in the upper left, aka the “staple box”, which later became the mini-icon in Windows 95 and later) to this very day is a shortcut to close a window that nobody who isn’t old enough to remember what 5.25" floppy disks looked like will know about. This is a holdover from, I believe, Windows 2.0. But it still works in modern Windows to this very day.
I have to disable the shake gesture on machines that I regularly use because I often trigger it by accident. I don’t even know how, but it happens often enough to be annoying.
I don’t feel like that method is inferior, it’s just different. Especially depending on the kind of work you’re doing, keyboard or mouse may feel more efficient.
Man just wait till you see what you can do with Win+Tab.
It’s like alt+tab but worse!
vim enters the chat
We don’t negotiate with terrorists here
Surprised top comment isn’t “just install linux”
I’ve been stuck in vim for 10 years, it WONT LET ME LEAVE!!
Since we’re talking about Windows:
WinKey+.to open up the secret emoji/symbols toolbox. 🫛
It does the same thing on KDE Plasma!
I discovered this at work when I fat fingered Winkey + L. No work was done that day.
Yes! Someone saw me add 😎 to a document I was grading once and it blew their mind. “Wait! What did you just do? How did you get that menu?” I try to teach people, but they almost never remember. They praise me for my navigation skills, but they don’t care to learn basic stuff like alt+tab/shift+alt+tab/win+tab.
I’ll have to try that, but I’ve been using
Win+;. It opens an emoji picker and puts the focus in a search field so you can type “shrug” or something and often just hit Enter to choose the single result.It’s ; as in ;)
At least, thats how I like to think of it.
Win - Tab for the overview, you can then add virtual desktops in the top row. switching between them with Ctrl-Win-L/R-Arrow.
Works the same on the current KDE :-)
I have bound the switching to modifierkey (on the mouse)-Mousewheel L/R, so i can switch desktops with the mouse only :-)
Now if Windows and KDE would just remember which programs belong on which desktop, that would be nice.Ctrl+backspace deletes the previous word. Now if I could just form the muscle memory.
Yes, but it is also sometimes something different. I have it in muscle memory, and sometimes have to retype everything because I accidentally navigate the browser back one step…
Just enabling Dark Mode in MS Office apps makes me god emperor of technology at work.
Sometimes it’s something simple like CTRL-C, then CTRL-V and the person watching you is like: wait how did you do that?!
You joke.
I had a hardcore boomer who worked mainframes - he was a mainframe wizard - refuse a redundancy payment (at age 60 - would have been a year plus wages). He was told if he didn’t take it, he would be moved to a team elsewhere. He shows up in my team and I had to teach him how to do copy paste. Then the shortcuts blew his mind.
He still used a pen and paper to change passwords (kept a small pile of them on his desk, and none were labeled but that’s another story).
You joke.
I highly doubt that was a joke. It is unsettlingly common among even those who use computers daily.
And then you absolutely blow their fucking mins with WIN+V
I’ve been a Linux user for so long. Clipboard history was a thing almost two decades before Windows got it. I don’t think it is coded to Win+V though – CTRL-ALT-V is what my muscle memory is telling me…
Middle mouse button paste is the bees knees though ;)
Well, depends on the clipboard manager or desktop environment what the default shortcut is. On KDE, it is Win+V.
I read every comment and I’m pretty sure I’ve got something most of you don’t know. control and left or right will move by one word at a time in text. if you hold shift with this, you can highlight.
I find this is incredibly useful after I use Alt d or Control-L. in most browsers including most file browsers, this will take you to your address bar. then you can chop up your URL.
I did see somebody mention shift insert. I don’t know if they mentioned shift delete which cuts.
edit:
win+e to open file explorer. win+d to show desktop.
I had to write an essay in an exam setting once and all the keyboard controls like that were disabled. Worst 20 minutes ever
I would be so frustrated I might try to smoke a cigarette in the test
Long IT nerd here, I’ve known about those shortcuts for a long time. Its interesting as I left the IT industry about 12 years ago and work in an unrelated field. Half the time I talk to our tech support guys, I know more than them. My fellow colleaugues think I’m like Merlin the magician.
Even better:
Win + Space (Win or Super + Space in Linux also) changes keyboard languages. I’m not seeing that anywhere in here either.
I hate tripping that one. I actively remove my “alternate” keyboards so I never trip it. on windows, one of my emacs binds trips it. so frustrating.
You can delete keyboard languages you don’t want, and that won’t happen anymore (because you narrow the choice)
I write in portuguese and english mostly, when keys fall out of place it’s because I accidentally pressed win+space (rare) but just do it again
Is this generational? I’m a millennial, 38 years old. I don’t know about most of these short cuts. I’m a mechanic, I use computers at work but mostly proprietary programs. I don’t use my computer at home except for bill paying or something else the necessitates using it.
Sort of, but of certainly not universal. I use common keyboard shortcuts all the time, but don’t know what the one OP was taking about was before just now.
But, older folks seem to never, ever use things like Ctrl+C or Ctrl+P, which drives me crazy. But I’ve also seen people in the last few years who double click links on websites, and aren’t retired yet.
Ultimately, YMMV.
Using Autohotkey, fancy zones, and Greenshots makes you look like an actual wizard
I’ve never felt so seen
fun fact: old school command-line users know all about keyboard shortcuts and we love them. We just never became managers, because fuck that.
Shift insert
Cd…
Its cd … Not cd…
I’m on mobile and am sure I wrote it like that but android tends to try to take away the spaces. Like. This. Yeah
When’s I hit cd SPACE period period it takes away the space.
So yeah thanks for noting kids would’ve got misinfo
cd…s nuts
I use tab to fill out forms and people think I’m hackerman.
You pull out shift-tab and they will think you’re some Jedi that has jumped through time. I just go with it and tell them it’s beautiful and peaceful where I’m from, but I needed to show them the ways of the forms. May the forms be with you!
Win + shift + S brings up the new version of the snipping tool, win + shift + arrow key moves your window (left and right to change displays, up to fit the window vertically, down to minimize).
For the snipping tool, can’t you also use the “prt scr” key to bring it on? I saw my coworker doing that some time ago but never explored the subject
Yes, that also works, but I prefer having it close to my left hand, which is usually untrue for printscreen keys
TIL about super + shift + arrow. Thank you kind stranger, and it works on KDE very well.
Glad it works on KDE too :) it’s a great tool for looking like a hackerman in front of coworkers.
I’ve done super + arrow keys as well. But on kde specifically, you can’t return it to full screen.
Edit: my IT coworkers already thing I’m hackerman because of my usage of ctrl+arrows, ctrl+shift+arrows, shift+arrows
Ctrl T most know for opening a new tab. Ctrl shift T a lot don’t know, opens previous tabs. Aka all those times you closed a tab and then realized you needed it 10 mins later… You can reopen those. (Also if you close edge/chrome and lost your tabs somehow, when launching fresh often Ctrl shift T will relaunch all of them on one press if needed). Work environments usually push Edge and chrome use a lot.
Also many don’t use Windows V. Instead of Ctrl V which pastes the last item copied, windows V opens the clip board so you can paste one of the last few things you copied. Aka all those times you paste and didn’t realize you copied a link or something after and now lost what you were trying to paste, you can turn it on using win v and it will stay on for future use.
I’m the Hackerman of my workplace by using shift+tab to jump one cell to the left in Excel.
tab --> cell to the right ist selected (next cell)
shift+tab --> cell to the left is selected (previous cell)
This is a standard shortcut and works most places where Tab works. Forms, buttons, etc.
Web browsers.
I did not know that. I thought it was Excel exclusively. But many people who use Excel don’t seem to know of this shortcut.
Mate… a ton of people think Excel is the “Checkered Word” and use it to write letters.
Others send me tables in a Word document… Dunno which I hate more.
Who art thou prometheus that steals this knowledge from the gods to deliver it on to us mortals?
