Ask Lemmy

1. Shift + Tab (also works on Linux)

2. If you have a mouse with side buttons, you can use the side buttons to go back or go to the next page on browsers

3. Pressing Alt + F4 on the desktop opens up a dialog asking if you want to shut down, restart, log out, etc. (I think this works on Linux as well)

My favorite windows shortcut is 'Windows+shift+left/right' to move an application between monitors. Very helpful for moving games around or snapping without have to use a mouse.

Set up three WireGuard network interfaces on a VPS then accept traffic from your end devices to route through the three double hop VPN tunnels to a country with better privacy laws. Install an ad and tracking blocking DNS server to block all nefarious hostnames as well as more granular blockers for your browsers.

My main one is to learn shortcuts on your most used programs. Using the mouse for everything is a waste of time, but that has been said multiple times.

My second is to create scripts to do a bunch of repetitive tasks. For example, I have a script I run on my work PC after I log on to the VPN that starts my "always on" programs (like notepad++), unlocks the hosts file, etc. I have some sendto scripts for converting files with pandoc, fetching multiple git repos in one go, etc. It just speeds up things and avoids errors versus me doing them manually.

On Windows I use PowerShell and on Linux I use bash, meaning they work without additional software installed.

Find a Linux distro you like and install it instead of Windows.

Use LibreOffice, not MSOffice

Ditch Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

Tech walled gardens are insane asylums. Leave them.

Vim takes your keyboard shortcuts to the extreme. If you can be bothered to learn it.

Win + E to open a file browser window

Keyboard shortcuts for everything. Mousing to a menu is a waste of time in any app you use daily.

Shift + del: skips the trash and actually deletes things

Custom autocompletes/corrects. Just figure out a non-word (i.e. something that you wouldn't want to use without autocorrecting) that's easy to remember and set it up frequently used snippets of text. Some examples:

• meetnow - my zoom meeting link
• booktime - a link to my calendly
• frequent sentences or blurbs I use in emails (e.g. thanks so much, let me know if i can help with anything else sorta stuff)
• nicknames for different frequently used hex codes
• galert/yalert/redalert populate a styled HTML snippet to make a green, yellow, or red div that I can then just pop my content into
• lots of other little HTML snippets like that
• group nicknames to populate a list of email addresses (like an Outlook contacts group but you can use it outside of Outlook)

Anyway there are a ton of things I use it for, those are just a few examples. Saves me a lot of time.

You can do this on Macs at a system level, on Windows you can do it on some programs but it seems to have to be set up on each one which is worthless.

Ctl shift t - reopen last closed tab in tour browser

hosts file block twitter/reddit/facebook/etc on all my computers. i guess i haven't done it on my phone because i can't be bothered [and regardless of how much i need a hit, i'm not gonna sit there on my phone browser for hours anyway]

Add Home/End buttons into your work flow to jump to the start or end of lines. Works with holding Shift as well.

For me, one of the biggest things was removing all the visual noise from my desktop. Disable notifications, disable or hide unused taskbar elements, and on Windows, get rid of the patently awful ticker thing that lives on the taskbar. Disable window animations.

I did the same thing on my phone, too, including disabling pop-up notifications, toasts, floating bubbles, and animations. My brain is much happier for it.

I've discovered over the years that these 2 commands can fix a lot of problems for a windows computer. And there’s no practical downside unless you're running pirated software or exotic OS mods.

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

sfc /scannow

As with any advice online, its critical to research and understand what you're doing. :D

Use a tiling window manager like sway.

Get some big HDDs and self host your own file storage on zfs. Same for media servers like jellyfin. You can also host qBitTorrent web client so it's accessible from anywhere.

Set up a VM in Hetzner cloud and host vaultwarden.

Expose your services over wireguard.

Pretty much anything has a free alternative. Often times, with a better UI or more features with far less bloat than the top commercial product.

The Multiple desktops feature is critical for me. It allows you to use one computer for multiple functional concepts simultaneously without visually interfering with each other or constantly needing to close and re-open things. It's available in both windows and linux (which had it first) for a long time now.

I keep my personal stuff on one desktop, I keep my work stuff on a second desktop, and I keep my gaming stuff on a third desktop. Then I just flip between them based on what I'm currently doing.

That way I'm not getting things confused with each other, or distracted by something personal while I'm working.

Ctrl+Windows+Left/Right for Windows is the shortcut to flip back and forth between them. Or you can also see it on the Windows+Tab menu as well (along the bottom below the apps)

The only downside to this is that you need more RAM than normal, because it's not uncommon for me to have dozens (sometimes north of 100) of browser tabs, and a half dozen applications from office to video games open simultaneously between the different desktops. I would suggest running 32gb at a minimum, and 64gb is a lot better.

Not most used, but I recently discovered a lot of new options in COSMIC's launcher, and I use them all the time.

Just type ? and you'll see what I mean.

I’ll have to upload it here when I get back into work on Tuesday, but I wrote a PDF guide for the most common Windows and Mac shortcuts that I consider to be the essentials.

Dunno if Emacs Lisp counts as a life hack, but I've been slowly learning it, and it's very nice to be able to setup custom workflows with such a high degree of customization (and a substantial amount of flycheck yelling at me)

On Windows you can open up a WSL shell or PowerShell session directly to the folder path you want.

Hold 'Shift' then right click anywhere inside of a directory and you will get an option to "Open PowerShell window here" as well as to "Open Linux shell here".

In a browser I right click on a bookmark folder to open all the bookmarks in separate tabs. I usually do this with my social sites.

To update Fedora "sudo dnf upgrade". I used to use the software store but that often requires a reboot.

Windows+L to lock the computer.

I always have my vpn, terminal window, and qbittorrent start at boot.