502 tips · new ones added continuously
Every tip is one concrete thing you will do better or faster. Filter by what you use and who you are — or just search.
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.
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
Open a document and Word dumps you at the start. Shift+F5 jumps exactly to where you last stopped writing.
Word and Google Docs can both compare two versions of a file and highlight every difference. No more reading contracts line by line.
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.
Teach Word that “dph” means “value added tax.” AutoCorrect can expand your own custom shortcuts across every Office app.
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.
A conversation with yourself in WhatsApp is a notebook and a bridge between phone and computer — links, photos, and files, no cable and no emailing yourself.
Long-press a message and pin it to the top of the chat — for 24 hours, a week, or a month. A meetup address or a door code never gets buried again.
Tapping 1× switches a voice message to 1.5× and 2× — a three-minute monologue takes half the time. And you can listen to your own recording before it sends.
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.
The “This site wants to show notifications” popup can be switched off globally with one toggle. Sites stop asking — and you stop dismissing them.
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.
Because of Fast Startup, shutting down Windows isn't a clean stop — the system tucks part of its state away. When the PC misbehaves, only Restart helps.
Zoom and Teams can filter out barking, keyboard clatter, and next-door drilling. Just switch noise suppression to high in your audio settings.
A banking-app alert for every charge catches a forgotten subscription or a compromised card in the minute it happens — not a month later on a statement.
A phone's camera puts the built-in webcam in its pocket. Windows 11 can connect it wirelessly as a regular camera for Teams and Meet alike.
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.
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.
Colleagues will forgive a grainy picture, but not a booming mic sound from across the room. A mic near your mouth is the cheapest meeting upgrade there is.
Slack and Teams can both send a message later — an arrow next to the send button, or a right-click. Write the idea down now, don't disturb your colleague.
Shift+Delete
Does your browser keep offering a typo or an old site? Select the suggestion with the arrow key and press Shift+Delete — it's gone for good.
One function pulls data from another spreadsheet into yours — and keeps it current. No more manually copying numbers between files.
Sharing your full desktop shows colleagues your notifications and half-typed messages too. Sharing one window shows only what you meant to show.
Space
Stay muted for the whole meeting. When you want to say something, hold the key, talk, release — and the microphone mutes itself again.
Holding an arrow key or Backspace repeats at a speed you can configure. Two sliders almost nobody ever touches — and typing instantly feels snappier.
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.
A work laptop and your own computer on one desk doesn't have to mean two keyboards. A USB switch flips between them with a single button.
Need to send three pages out of a fifty-page PDF? Print the range “12-14” to PDF and the new file is born. No installing anything.
A contract, an attachment, and a scanned addendum, all in one file: Preview handles it on a Mac, free PDF24 on Windows — just don't upload sensitive documents anywhere.