13 Keyboard shortcuts you should be using to increase your productivity

When programming, or even just using my computer, I try to avoid using mouse as much as possible and do everything I can with just keyboard. It is just so much faster and convenient to keep your hands on the keyboard and not have to switch between keyboard and mouse. I'm sure I'm not alone with this. This is where keyboard shortcuts come in.

Many common tasks that I do every day and many times a day can be handled with keyboard shortcuts instead of using the mouse. Knowing your way around the keyboard will also increase your text / code editing speed. After all, using keyboard efficiently will boost your overall productivity.

Here are some of the keyboard shortcuts that I use almost every day. I am personally using Mac so these will be for Mac. Most of them should work also on Windows. You just replace the Command key with Ctrl and Option with Alt. Also note that the tab related hotkeys for browsers also work in other programs that have tabs e.g. Visual Studio Code, Atom, Sublime Text etc.


Command + T

Opens a new tab in the browser.


Command + ShiftT

Reopens previously closed tab in browser.


CommandW

Closes current tab in browser.


Control + Tab

Move to next tab in a browser.


Control + Shift + Tab

Move to previous tab in browser.


CommandL

Focus cursor to the address bar in browser.


Option + Arrow right / Arrow left

Move the cursor word by word in text editor.


Option + Backspace

Remove previous word.


Command + Backspace

Remove everything before the cursor on the line.


fnBackspace

Remove next character on the row.


fn + Option + Backspace

Remove the next word on the line.


CommandR

Refresh current webpage.


CommandShiftR

Perform a "hard" refresh on a current webpage. This refresh is different from a normal refresh by the fact that it will download all the page assets (javascript, images, styles...) from the server even if they are cached.


Wrapping up

These were some basic keyboard shortcuts that I use. Hopefully you learned something new from them. If you think I missed some great shortcut go ahead and tell me about it in the comments!


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