Tips & tricks

Which tab is that playing from? Find it and mute it

The tab that's making sound gives itself away with a little speaker icon — and in Edge and Firefox, one click on it mutes it.

An external drive and File History: a backup that runs itself

Windows and Mac both have automatic backup built in — all they need is a drive. Hourly file versions, and a deleted file back in two clicks.

.new addresses: a blank document in one second

Type docs.new or sheets.new into your browser — and a new document opens right away. word.new and excel.new from Microsoft work too.

Shift+F5 in Word: jump to your last edit

Shift+F5

Open a document and Word dumps you at the start. Shift+F5 jumps exactly to where you last stopped writing.

Comparing two versions of a document: see the changes in color

Word and Google Docs can both compare two versions of a file and highlight every difference. No more reading contracts line by line.

Hidden formatting marks: why a document behaves strangely

Ctrl+Shift+8

The ¶ button reveals spaces, tabs, and page breaks. Suddenly you can see exactly why text jumps where it shouldn't — and what to delete.

Ctrl+Enter: a new page without hammering Enter

Ctrl+Enter

Paginating with twenty presses of Enter falls apart at the first edit. Ctrl+Enter inserts a real page break that stays put.

AutoCorrect as a shortcut dictionary: long names from three letters

Teach Word that “dph” means “value added tax.” AutoCorrect can expand your own custom shortcuts across every Office app.

Alt+drag in Word: a vertical text selection

Hold Alt and drag with the mouse — Word selects a rectangle of text across lines. Perfect for deleting a column of characters that a normal selection can't grab.

Bold, italics, and lists: WhatsApp can format text

Asterisks around a word make it bold, underscores make it italic, a dash makes a bullet. A longer work message suddenly looks like a document.

Stop sites from asking about notifications

The “This site wants to show notifications” popup can be switched off globally with one toggle. Sites stop asking — and you stop dismissing them.

Install a website as an app

Gmail, your calendar, or Teams can run in their own window with an icon on the taskbar — no address bar and no risk of an accidentally closed tab.

F2 renames a function across the whole project — no searching, no replacing

F2

Renaming a symbol with F2 changes a function or variable everywhere it's used, across files. Smarter than find and replace.

Alt+arrows: move lines of code instead of cutting and pasting

Alt+↓

Alt+up/down arrow moves a line or block to a new spot, Shift+Alt+arrow duplicates it. No more juggling Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V.

Turn on captions during a meeting — they work in Czech too

Teams, Zoom, and Meet can all show live speech captions, and Czech is among the supported languages. A lifesaver in noise, with bad audio, or a quiet speaker.

Noise suppression: the mower outside your window stays yours alone

Zoom and Teams can filter out barking, keyboard clatter, and next-door drilling. Just switch noise suppression to high in your audio settings.

Vertical tabs: on a wide monitor, read names, not icons

Edge and Firefox can move your tabs into a column on the side. Twenty tabs with readable titles instead of a row of nameless little teeth.

Ctrl+Shift+D saves every tab into a single bookmarks folder

Ctrl+Shift+D

Have to close your browser right now but you're mid-research with twenty tabs open? One shortcut saves them all as a bookmarks folder.

Page behaving strangely? Try a hard refresh with Ctrl+F5

Ctrl+F5

Broken layout, an old version, a button that doesn't respond — Ctrl+F5 forces the browser to download the page again, from scratch.

Two exclamation marks repeat your last command — even with sudo in front

Forgot sudo? Don't retype the command: “sudo !!” reruns it with admin rights. And “!$” inserts the last argument from the previous line.

Stop retyping file paths: drag the file into the terminal

Dragging a file from File Explorer or Finder into a terminal window inserts its full path — correctly quoted, without a single typo.

From the terminal to File Explorer or Finder: open . and explorer.exe .

Open the current folder from the terminal in your graphical file manager with one command: “open .” on a Mac, “explorer.exe .” on Windows and in WSL.

Ctrl+W and Ctrl+U: delete by word and by line in the terminal

Ctrl+W

A typo at the start of a long command isn't a reason to hold down Backspace. Ctrl+W deletes a word, Ctrl+U a line, Ctrl+A jumps to the start.

Ctrl+R in the terminal: type a piece of a command, history finds it

Ctrl+R

You don't have to fish a long command from last week out with the up arrow. Ctrl+R searches history for any fragment and autocompletes the whole thing.

cd - takes you back to the folder you came from

Jumping between two directories? You don't have to type the full paths back and forth — “cd -” always jumps to the previous folder.

Pinning in Teams: important chats stay on top, key messages above the conversation

Right-click pins a chat to the top of the list, and a key message above the whole conversation — visible to everyone. No more hunting for a link from last week.

A page from computer to phone: QR code or send-to-device

You don't have to email links to yourself. Chrome generates a QR code for a page, and Chrome and Firefox can both send a tab straight to your phone.

ssh-copy-id: log in to a server without typing a password

One command uploads your public key to a server — from then on you log in without a password, faster and more securely.

SSH config: type “ssh prod” instead of an IP address and flags

The file ~/.ssh/config remembers addresses, usernames, ports, and keys for you. Connecting to a server shrinks down to two words.

Wipe cookies for one site only — and stay logged in everywhere else

A site won't log you in, or it's stuck in a loop? Don't clear your whole history. Cookies can be wiped for just that one troublesome site.