tumblr @lemmy.world

6d ago

Shortcuts

152 comments

Since we're talking about Windows:
WinKey + .
to open up the secret emoji/symbols toolbox. 🫛
- It does the same thing on KDE Plasma!
- 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 usually don't use alt+tab, but alt+shift+tab is a new one for me, thanks!
  
  Fun thing about the switch apps forward/backwards keys is shifted tab is back tab, so alt+tab is switch forward and alt+back tab is switch backwards
  So useful when switching back and forth between two programs
  I feel like shortcut knowledge is more about willingness to explore the machine than generations. I'm gen X.
- Which annoyingly only has a small subset of the emojis, making me have to use seach anyway.
  Better than nothing I guess.
  
  Also it used to lag like crazy, idk if it still does.
- I discovered this at work when I fat fingered Winkey + L. No work was done that day.
  
  That's my most used shortcut at work.
- Typing (windows) in Teams helpfully replaces the word with a dinosaur 🦖 icon.
- 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.
  
  It's the same. The windows shortcuts page has
  Windows Key + Period (.) or Semicolon (;) - Open emoji panel.

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! 😩
- 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.
- 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.
- Man just wait till you see what you can do with Win+Tab.
  
  It’s like alt+tab but worse!
  
  And Win+V
- Same! And I’m a millennial.
- In highschool I blew my HTML teacher's mind when I showed her this. She had been manually resizing windows for years.
  
  To be fair, window snapping in Windows is a rather recent feature. I think it was introduced in Windows 7.
- This is what I do. Without looking it up, I have a whisper of a thought that win + arrow is used to, like, rotate the screen or switch monitors or something...
  
  CTRL + ALT + {ARROW} rotates the screen

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 ;)
- Haha I remember someone at a front desk grumbling about how they couldn't find the clock, and without looking at their screen I asked them to press F11. The way they looked at me when that solved it was priceless.

For the absolute longest time (at least from Windows 95 through Windows 7, perhaps even later version but I dunno on that), every now and then after you exit a game, you can't properly drag and drop nor double click anything on the desktop.
Eventually I found a particular game that would consistently cause this issue, which got me wondering what all the game was doing upon exit. I theorized that maybe it left the keyboard buffer in something of a goofy state.
So, I started with the thought that Windows must be thinking that a key is still being held down when it wasn't. And sure enough, just tapping the Esc key managed to refresh the keyboard buffer and resolve the issue.
You should easily be able to see the effects of this bug manually by holding down Esc and trying to use the mouse, stuff just ain't gonna work right. So if you ever happen to encounter this bug, just tap the Esc key to refresh the keyboard buffer.

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..
  
  cd..s nuts
  
  Its cd .. Not cd..

Windows users: Press ctrl + alt + shift + windows key + L. Go on, try it.
You're welcome. You can never unlearn this knowledge now.
- I'm on linux, please just say what this does.
  
  If you're on Linux, you really should be knowledgeable enough to use a search engine.
- Oh awesome another thing to be mad about
- I haven't ever uses D LinkedIn, and I never will.

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.

Just enabling Dark Mode in MS Office apps makes me god emperor of technology at work.

vim enters the chat
- We don't negotiate with terrorists here
- I've been stuck in vim for 10 years, it WONT LET ME LEAVE!!
- Surprised top comment isn’t “just install linux”

Millennials trying to act like Gen Xers don’t know shortcuts? Whatever.
- More that Gen X doesn't exist; it seems to go Boomers, Millenials, Gen Z
  
  Gen X, the real Silent Generation. So silent that nobody notices us sneaking past, ensuring a smooth transition from the analog age to digital.
- Ikr? We were learning keyboard based commands because mice weren't a thing at the time. Even filthy casuals picked up some over the decades
  
  I remember those WordPerfect paper templates you'd put over the keyboard to list all the shortcuts.
- no it's the normal erasure of gen x from the timeline
  The timeline goes
  Old dead boomers
  Dying wealthy boomers
  Young poor boomers
  Gen y
  Millennials
  Gen z
  Gen alpha
  
  Gen Y = millennials
  
  Blame boomers. Millennials is their catchall term for whatever generation they're complaining about regardless if it's Millennials, Gen X, Z, Alpha, etc.
- There are users from all generations who don't know shortcuts. There are also users from all generations who do know shortcuts. In my experience, gen X/Y are more likely than other generations to know shortcuts. With that said, I still come across far more gen X who don't know any than gen Y.
  Though this all may be culture/region dependent.
- Em... Well...

Ctrl + v, ctrl + z, shift + ctrl + v

The fact that Windows still doesn't have a shortcut to move windows between Virtual Desktops is mind boggling to me. I had to download an AHK script just to replicate basic features included in KDE, Gnome and probably most of the tiling WMs.
- Ctrl+Win+[Left or Right Arrow]
  (Edit: misread the comment, shortcut is still valid for moving focus between virtual desktops)
  
  That seems to move your focus to the separate group of open programs rather than moving your focused program to the separate group which is how I read the request, but that's one I've been offhandedly wondering about but too lazy to look up, so thank you.
  
  That shortcut simply switches which virtual desktop is currently active and showing onscreen. What they mean is there is no shortcut to take the active window (in the active virtual desktop) and move that window into the next virtual desktop.
- To be fair, windows literally didn't have virtual desktops until a version or two ago. Which is mind boggling given Linux had it in the 90s
  
  It also didn't have tabs in the file explorer for the longest time. I remember having to download some random exe from a dodgy site just to have them in W7
- MS software also doesn't play nice with virtual desktops. Opening excel files or answering teams calls yanks you all over your workflow.
  Alas, working an Excel job in a non-tech field, I fear I will suffer Windows the rest of my working life ☠️

I showed an extension that lets you do the same on a Mac to a non-technical friend of mine who works in marketing and he was like "wow I can't believe it works" like it was the second coming or something, one day I'll have to tell him about i3wm and tmux and vim...
- This is actually built-in on macos now
  https://www.theverge.com/24273664/apple-macos-sequoia-windows-snap-how-to

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.
- Who art thou prometheus that steals this knowledge from the gods to deliver it on to us mortals?

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!

Hyprland/sway or any other WM-user: Pathetic
- I've made a couple abortive attempts at sway and others, but can't seem to find anything that "just works" like i3. Is it really worth switching?
  
  Sway to i3 is near the same, difference is Xorg vs. Wayland.
  Hyprland is worth switching but that's just my opinion.

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
- 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.
- 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.

Using Autohotkey, fancy zones, and Greenshots makes you look like an actual wizard
- I've never felt so seen

Shit, it even works on Plasma…
TIL…
- Many Plasma default shortcuts mirror Windows

I very rarely use that feature so I forget the windows+arrow shortcut. My favorite shortcuts are shift+arrow when inputting text to highlight text, ctrl+arrow to skip text by word (left and right, but ctrl with up and down mimic home and end keys) and the combination ctrl+shift+arrow to highlight one word at a time. I also like ctrl+shift+esc to pop open task manager directly instead of using ctrl+alt+delete and then selecting task manager.
Oh yeah, and taking a screenshot with windows+shift+s. I think Windows 11 added windows+shift+r to record video.

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).
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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

Mac not having this hot key is criminal.
- Download an app called rectangle
  
  I have it, but is there a way to make it so repeatedly pressing the hot key makes it go to the next monitor like on Windows?
- Mac integrated it into gestures back when 10.7 came out I believe. Believe it was four finger slide up... Haven't used it in years so I may be wrong. Don't own any apple products.
  
  I don't think so, but I'll look into it. I say that because when I started using a Mac for work in 2019 I was trying to find this feature and it wasn't there. But maybe it is? idk. I downloaded Rectangle.

<unnecessarily generational>
- Love it. I think we need a new community.
  
  No boomers allowed

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.

Knew about this one, but in an experimenting mood after reading it, looks like WIN+ALT+(Left or right) does the same thing, but for thirds rather than halves which could be useful. Up/down seems to have the same impact of only doing halves the same way just WIN+Direction does
- Shift + WIN + L/R for swapping monitors is always great in a pinch
- This is amazing. I have an ultra wide monitor at work and I've always wished I could break it into thirds
  
  My friend with an ultra wide swears by fancy zones (part of windows power toys) to partition his screen for him.

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...
  
  I like Emacs' kill shortcuts. Kill a line, kill a word, kill a paragraph
  Though I don't do much in Emacs other than code

How OP felt:
https://youtu.be/33Raqx9sFbo

Y'all should see me charting in front of boomer nurses.
- Was in a long line at the pharmacy the other day. Supervisor told one of the older techs to open another line. Tech complained that her "computer had crashed".
  Younger tech walks over and asked her if it had simply gone into sleep mode, and did she try wiggling the mouse?
  That fixed the "problem". Older tech cackled. Younger tech rolled his eyes and muttered something to himself.
  How do people make it to 2024, hold down a job, and still can't do basic computer shit.

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.

I somehow always manage to fuck this up and flip my screen orientation, because I am a dumb.
- You're pressing Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Keys

I worked with this kid born in the year 2000 for about 11 months. He was in very loose terms "IT", when he was typing ont he keyboard hed always hit the caps lock to type something in upper case, and when I questioned him on why he did that he responded "what do you do? Hold shift?" In a tome that implied I was somehow the weird one. He also had trouble typinh any symbols on the number row and had to be told to hold shift.
Believe it or not this incompetent IT guy was fired for his incompetence in IT (and shitty people skills)
- He also had trouble typinh any symbols on the number row and had to be told to hold shift.
  But... how else would you do it?
  
  His caps lock toggling didn't work on numbers

What's a windows key? Proper keyboards have modifier keys named shift, ctrl, meta, super and hyper.
- Lol stop, y'all lost years ago. I press the Windows™️ key on my Linux machine all the time.
  
  ಠ_ಠ
  
  I've set up my windows key to handle all window-related shortcuts. 🙃

I use Win+X, Win+E, and Win+R literally everyday.

152 comments