15 Helpful Computing Tips
Some things are easy for most techies when navigating around browsers or interfaces. That doesn't mean one can't seriously enhance their user experience and save time with some handy shortcuts and hints. Check out some below:
- Chrome Only: Reverse Image Search the quick way. Hold "S" and right click on an image in Chrome to automatically do a reverse image search. Cool right?
- Reopening that closed browser tab you just closed accidentally. Press ctrl+shift+t (In Windows) to restore the last tab you closed.
- For Windows: Move cursor by full words instead of letter by letter. Works for deleting as well. For example, hold Ctrl and press right or left arrow key, and the cursor will go to the back, or the front of that word.
For Mac: Similar deal, except using Option. Additionally, you can hold Cmd + backspace and it will delete entire lines of text, instead of just a word. - For Windows: Pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete is annoying now, as it simply takes you to a separate screen which gives you the option of opening the Task Manager (which is what you really wanted) and a few other options. To skip that, Control+Shift+Escape goes directly to the Task Manager.
- Stop a GIF: Hover the mouse over the gif animation and press escape.
- If you don't already know about Alt+Tab you're a little out of touch. But did you know you can also use ctrl+shift+tab to quickly switch between browser tabs. Also, if you use Shift+Alt+Tab, the selector of which app to switch to moves in the opposite direction of just Alt+Tab
- Ever wanted to save a pic, but the website has disabled that feature? Save the following line of code as a shortcut on the toolbar and click it anytime to disable that feature. Save away!
- If you need to refresh your screen but the bug or change you are trying to get rid of hasn't disappeared, try pressing Ctrl+Shift+R. This will force clear the cache, then force refresh the page. Works more than you think.
- Remove a word from a Google Search that you don't want showing up in results. Use the "-" suffix to do so. For Example - you're trying to look up Manchester United, but you get a lot of Manchester City results mixed in. Type Manchester United -City and it will automatically delete the word city from the main results.
- Google -> Atari Breakout. Images. Enjoy.
- If you're looking for a changed version of a website - archive.org often has archives of old versions of webpages saved from crawlers indexing. Pretty Brilliant.
- Skip the first 30 seconds of YouTube tutorials/videos: add ?wadsworth=1 to the end of a YouTube URL to skip.
- On a Mac: Press Shift + option + 4, then space to take a screenshot of the menu of screen item you are hovering over. Super useful for tutorial creation or trying to demonstrate something to parents. Or for just screenshotting a pic itself and not wanting everything around it.
- Opening a link or pic in a new tab: Pressing "Mouse 3" or the middle mouse button when hovering over a link will open said link in a new tab, as opposed to navigating away from the website you were currently reading. Super useful if stuck in a wikipedia vortex (which I often am).
There are so many more handy tips and tricks, especially for Mac, Android or iOS that I haven't mentioned here. Please share your most useful tips in the comments below!