Mine is using the arrow keys to navigate typed text while writing and editing. It helps speed things up, versus having to move your hand to the mouse to navigate.

Use the Up and Down Arrows to move/jump vertically.

Left and Right Arrows to move/jump horizontally.

Combine Left or Right Arrow with Shift to be able to select text. Use Up or Down Arrow with Shift to quickly select whole/nearly whole sections of text.

Combine Control with Left/Right Arrow to jump whole words to more quickly move to where you want to type.

    • shplane@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      If anyone left their computer unlocked at my old job, the entire office was getting an email about how much you love Justin Bieber

  • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Microsoft has never fixed the sticky keys replacement cheese to unlock a PC you have physical access to. Ive done it up to W10, never tested it on W11.

    1. Get a Windows recovery USB.

    2. Boot into the recovery menu and open the command prompt.

    3. Navagate to system32 and make a copy of the cmd.exe file (for a backup)

    4. Copy the sticky_keys.exe and have it overwrite cmd.exe, then reboot.

    5. On the login screen, smash the shift key until the command prompt appears and for some reason (because no user has logged in yet) it has admin permissions, so you can reset local passwords.

    6. Once your logged in as a local admin, copy the backup of cmd.exe back so noone is none the wiser (except the security software that knows you messed with something)

    • feannag@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      That… Seems like a pretty massive vulnerability. Like obviously that can be locked down by each user or administrator, but still…

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        2 months ago

        It is, we used the same just with the accessibility button in earlier Windows Versions to troll one another in school. Thing is, if encryption is enabled it won’t work.

        • Züri@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Not having the disk encrypted is the same as writing the password on the frame of the screen.

          • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Exactly, bitlocker or disk encryption prevents this from working and because you need some means of editing the file system outside of the user permissions, also physical access is required. At this point your are pretty much authorized to unplug the box and walk out of there with it (even if your not supposed to).

    • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      This seems like a lot of work to bypass a password on an unencrypted drive. You can access all the files using a bootable Linux drive.

    • Krudler@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I used to use a boot CD with a password eraser. I think the last time I used it was win 7 though

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    2 months ago

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

    • Psaldorn@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s well worth learning, you can use vim motions In lots of apps (or they have vim plugins) and even some websites will let you navigate with hjkl and search with / etc

      There used to be a web based vim game to help you learn, vim tutor maybe?

      Any time I’m forced to select text with a mouse it feels like a massive ball ache.

      Don’t get me started on editing text on an iPad, they have gone out of their way to make selection and editing, like changing a URL, a total nightmare.

  • JamonBear@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Using ublock origin picker to remove everything useless. Like, Youtube suggestions, everything but download button on ddl websites, useless footers/headers on news, etc…

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      2 months ago

      Just getting people to switch away from chrome to get ublock origin is a major hack all itself and completely changed the way you use the internet.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Why have I not been doing this?! Just removed the “2 years old” .world banner.

  • jaschen306@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Yay, nobody said my favorite hack.

    While browsing on the web and you want to “open link into a new tab”, click using the mouse wheel like it’s a regular left or right click.

    It’s great for researching.

  • mriswith@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Far from most used, but very handy: ctrl+win+shift+b

    It restarts the graphic subsystem, which can help recover from situations where game crashes or similar cause visual issues.

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    2 months ago

    Ctrl+r on bash and zsh (possibly others) for quickly recalling anything you’ve typed before

    • hornywarthogfart@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      This is a huge one for me. For those who don’t know, this brings up the rev-i-search utility which allows cycling from most recent to oldest commands executed. It also supports partial finds so if you did ‘cd’ it would cycle the most recent change directory commands.

      The forward search (in case you’re somewhere in the history stack) is ctrl+s and operates the same except crawls the command history forwards.

      I use these constantly in my normal workflow and they save a ton of time.

      • Mr. Satan@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        I use zsh autosuggestion and syntax highlighting plugins it gives me usable history search and completion functionality.

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    2 months ago

    Actually use Home and End keys to get to the start and end of text.

    Ctrl + F for searching text. Very useful.

    Alt + Tab for window switching.

    Linux + USB drive to switch away from Windows.

    • Mr. Satan@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      Combine home and end with ctrl to move to the start or end of the file. As a dev I use this a lot.

      I also have keyboard shortcuts for code folding and mouse shortcuts to navigate between usages, declarations and implementations. Onboarding people is a slog when they don’t have the same shortcuts.

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    2 months ago

    To be pedantic, keyboard shortcuts aren’t hacks. That’s the intended use of the thing, and long lists of keybaord shortcuts exist so that people can find the ones that work for them and use them. Just because most people don’t do it doesn’t make it a hack.

    My favorite keyboard shortcut is Super/Windows key and spacebar switches keyboard languages. That’s not a hack, though.

    Closer to a “hack” is going into an android phone with ADB and disabling bloatware manually.

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    2 months ago

    Recently had to help a relative who still uses windows, so here’s a freebie from Linux:

    You can use super + number to launch any pinned program on the taskbar. For example let’s say you have your browser right of the start button and file explorer on the next spot right, pressing super+1 launches the browser and super+2 the explorer

    Edit: super = windows logo key

  • Randomocity@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    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.

  • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.world
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    I’m still on Windows, because I’m a lesser human, etc…

    That said, PowerToys adds a lot of nice features to Windows (more like…Sindows, amirite), like being able to break your screen into zones, etc…

    My biggest computer life hack of all time would probably be: piracy. Highly recommended. Saves you so much money, I’m surprised they don’t advertise it more.

    • mysticpickle@lemmy.ca
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      Piracy is like an Eye of Sauron thing. You don’t get big and ubiquitous like Napster back in the day or you get pounced on like Aragorn clanging his pots and pans. You wanna stay small and quiet undermining the very power they desire like Sam and Frodo :>

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    2 months ago

    As a basic Linux user, I have a shell script to do all my updating, upgrading, removing of unneeded packages, etcetera. Under no circumstances is it all that advanced, just a string of simple enough apt and flatpak commands.

    I also recently figured out that god knows how long ago that I set an alias to run it that’s only 3 keyboard clicks instead of 5, saving basically less than a second. So not that useful, but still good to know… until I inevitably forget about it again.

      • AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        As someone who has only been using Linux for a few years ( >5 ), yeah I do.

        Definitely know what cron/cronning is, but I’ll definitely have to look up what yum-cronning is.

        Edit:

        I’m an idiot and correct in my thinking that yum was referring to the yum package management thing, which I don’t use on my system. Sounds cool, though. Might look into automating my setup, but it’s become such a routine for me to run the script I’m not sure if I could easily switch.