Tips & tricks

Win + 1 through 9: apps at a single keypress

Win+1

Open apps pinned to the taskbar by their position number. No more hunting with the mouse.

Select an entire line with a single press

Shift+End

Shift + End selects text from the cursor to the end of the line, Shift + Home to the start. No dragging with the mouse.

Win + L: lock your computer every time you step away

Win+L

The fastest security habit there is. One keypress and nobody can see what you're working on.

Your mouse wheel can click too — and it saves more time than you'd think

mouse wheel

Clicking the wheel opens a link in a new tab and closes a tab without hunting for the little X.

Smart home scene: Deep Work Mode in one tap

Lights, do-not-disturb, a timer, and music with a single command. A ritual that tells your brain “it's work time now.”

A height-adjustable desk: alternate, don't just stand

The trick isn't standing all day — it's alternating positions, plus a bit of movement that fits into your work without interrupting it.

Noise-cancelling headphones: focus and a signal, both at once

ANC headphones solve two problems at once: ambient noise, and coworkers who can't tell you don't want to be disturbed.

Top edge of your monitor at eye level

A neck that hurts from a monitor set too low. A stand or arm for a few dollars fixes years of discomfort.

A docking station: one cable and you're working

Monitor, keyboard, network, charging — all through a single USB-C cable. Connecting your laptop stops being a five-minute ritual.

Commit messages for future you: why, not what

“Fix bug” tells you nothing six months later. One sentence about the reason for a change saves an hour of git blame archaeology.

Aliases and scripts: automate what you type three times

Long commands, build sequences, switching environments — all of it belongs in aliases and scripts. Ten characters instead of eighty.

Multi-cursor editing: edit ten lines at once

Ctrl+D

Ctrl+D in VS Code selects the next occurrence of a word — and you type in all of them at once. Small refactors without find and replace.

A developer's calendar: mornings with no meetings

Coding needs 2+ uninterrupted hours — one meeting in the middle kills the whole morning. Protect your blocks as a team.

iPhone Shortcuts: your phone switches into work mode by itself

The Shortcuts app can do automations: arriving at the office turns on Do Not Disturb, opening Instagram starts a timer.

In-depth guide · 21 min

AI right in your editor: Copilot and friends for developers

A complete guide with prompts: three levels of assistance and when to use each, tests and refactoring, unfamiliar codebases, and agent-mode guardrails.

Almost every app has a quick switcher: try Ctrl+P or Ctrl+K

Ctrl+K

VS Code, Figma, Slack, Notion, browsers — they all open a “jump to anything” box. Learn it once and use it in every app you touch daily.

Raycast: a launcher that replaces half a dozen apps on the Mac

A faster Spotlight with clipboard history, window management, text snippets, and thousands of extensions. Free at its core.

Obsidian: the command palette controls everything from the keyboard

Ctrl+P

Ctrl+P finds every command — switching modes, inserting a template, exporting. No need to memorize shortcuts.

Obsidian: [[links]] weave your notes into a network

Double square brackets create a link to another note — and backlinks show you where it's referenced from.

Obsidian: the daily note as a safety net for your day

One place where you dump notes, ideas, and links all day long. Sort it out in the evening — or don't; search will still find it.

Set working hours for notifications in Slack

A notification schedule automatically quiets Slack outside working hours. It leaves you alone in the evening — and shows colleagues when you're reachable.

Slack search: from:, in:, before:

Operators narrow a search to a specific person, channel, and time period — instead of scrolling through history.

Formatting in Slack: code, quotes, lists

Backticks turn text into code, three of them make a code block. A readable message saves time on both ends.

Slack: Ctrl+K jumps to any channel or teammate

Ctrl+K

The quick switcher finds a channel, a message, or a person in a few keystrokes. Slack's single most important shortcut.

The middle mouse button: opens and closes tabs too

Middle-clicking a link opens it in a new background tab. Middle-clicking a tab closes it — no need to hit the tiny X.

Browser profiles: work and personal, kept apart

Two profiles means two sets of bookmarks, logins, history, and extensions. No more signing out and mixing work with personal.

A floating video window over everything else

Picture-in-picture keeps a video (a call, a tutorial) in the corner of your screen while you work elsewhere.

Custom search shortcuts: “w query” searches Wikipedia

Teach your address bar to search specific sites directly — Wikipedia, Maps, your internal wiki. One letter, a space, your query.

Incognito window: a clean browser for testing and logins

Ctrl+Shift+N

Incognito mode is useful well beyond privacy — a second account, testing a site without cache, lending your computer to a coworker.

Search tabs, history, and bookmarks with @

Type @tabs, @history, or @bookmarks into Chrome's address bar — and you're searching only open tabs, history, or bookmarks.