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.

.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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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+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.

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.

Speed up key repeat: the cursor flies, so does deleting

Holding an arrow key or Backspace repeats at a speed you can configure. Two sliders almost nobody ever touches — and typing instantly feels snappier.

Reader mode: an article without ads or popup banners

F9

One click strips ads, menus, and recommended articles off the page. What's left is text and images — like in a book.

python -m http.server: share a folder over the network with one command

Need to get files onto another device on the same network? Python turns any folder into a downloadable web page.

Exam registration: a reminder for the exact minute it opens

Exam slots fill up within minutes. A reminder set to the exact moment registration opens decides whether you plan your exam period, or take whatever's left.

Free trial? Cancel it right away — it runs the full course anyway

For subscriptions through the App Store or Google Play, you can cancel the trial a minute after activating it: it still runs to the end, and nothing gets charged. Elsewhere, a reminder does the job.

The 20-20-20 rule: your eyes need a break before you feel it

After 20 minutes at a screen, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. The eye muscles relax and you skip the dry, burning eyes come evening.

Hold the back button — jump five pages at once

Alt+←

A long press on the back arrow unfolds the tab's history. Instead of clicking back five times, jump straight to the page where you started.

The parking file: unfinished work survives every interruption

Before a meeting or a coworker pulls you away, write one sentence: what you're doing and what the next step is. Coming back then takes seconds, not a quarter hour.

A link that jumps straight to one sentence on the page

Select text, right-click, “Copy link to highlight” — the recipient lands exactly on that sentence, highlighted in yellow.

Your monitor can do 120 Hz but runs at 60: turn on the full refresh rate

Plenty of monitors and laptops run at 60 Hz even though the hardware can do more. One setting, and scrolling suddenly feels buttery smooth.

Rotate your second monitor to portrait: a whole page at once

A monitor rotated 90° shows a full document page, a long email, or code without endless scrolling. Windows and Mac both handle it right in settings.

Cap charging at 80%: your battery lasts years longer

A laptop permanently docked at 100% is wrecking its battery. Almost every manufacturer has a hidden option that stops charging earlier — and multiplies the battery's lifespan.

Close Twenty Tabs With Three Clicks

Right-click a tab for “Close other tabs” or “Close tabs to the right.” And Ctrl+click selects multiple tabs at once.

Edge Will Read an Article — or a PDF — Out Loud: Ctrl+Shift+U

Ctrl+Shift+U

Built-in read-aloud with surprisingly natural voices. Listen to an article while cooking or on the way home from work.

Group Work Without Overwriting Each Other: Suggesting Mode in Docs

When everyone in a shared document just rewrites directly, changes get lost and nobody knows who deleted what. Suggesting mode turns edits into proposals to approve.

Cornell Notes, Stripped Down: A Folded Margin and a Summary Line

The most effective note-taking format doesn't need a template: fold a margin for questions and leave a line at the bottom for a summary. Your notes turn themselves into a practice test.

Citations in a Minute: ZoteroBib and Google Scholar's Cite Button

You don't have to build a bibliography by hand, and you shouldn't leave it to AI either. ZoteroBib generates a citation from a URL, DOI, or ISBN, and Google Scholar offers one for every result.

Stop Correcting AI Forever: Edit Your Original Message Instead

Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini can all edit a message you've already sent and answer again from a clean slate. A lesser-known button that rescues tangled conversations.