Since we’re talking about Windows:

WinKey + .

to open up the secret emoji/symbols toolbox. 🫛

For the absolute longest time (at least from Windows 95 through Windows 7, perhaps even later version but I dunno on that), every now and then after you exit a game, you can’t properly drag and drop nor double click anything on the desktop.

Eventually I found a particular game that would consistently cause this issue, which got me wondering what all the game was doing upon exit. I theorized that maybe it left the keyboard buffer in something of a goofy state.

So, I started with the thought that Windows must be thinking that a key is still being held down when it wasn’t. And sure enough, just tapping the Esc key managed to refresh the keyboard buffer and resolve the issue.

You should easily be able to see the effects of this bug manually by holding down Esc and trying to use the mouse, stuff just ain’t gonna work right. So if you ever happen to encounter this bug, just tap the Esc key to refresh the keyboard buffer.

When I used to sell tickets on the railway, I noticed that the ticketing programme had underlined letters, so I tried doing alt + those letters and it worked. I spent an evening shift at a remote outstation getting to grips with the shortcuts, then when it came to doing the morning rush at a busier station, it was talk of the town.

I worked at a call centre for a shopping channel years ago, at a time when they were trying to get everyone to ditch this DOS-based ordering programme where you mainly use the F keys for operations in favour of this user-friendly GUI where you could do everything with the mouse, and would you believe, people were routinely faster with the keyboard. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to them that anyone can get used to doing keyboard controls if they’re sat at a computer eight hours a day.

Windows users: Press ctrl + alt + shift + windows key + L. Go on, try it.

You’re welcome. You can never unlearn this knowledge now.

Hyprland/sway or any other WM-user: Pathetic

Is this generational? I’m a millennial, 38 years old. I don’t know about most of these short cuts. I’m a mechanic, I use computers at work but mostly proprietary programs. I don’t use my computer at home except for bill paying or something else the necessitates using it.

I somehow always manage to fuck this up and flip my screen orientation, because I am a dumb.

fun fact: old school command-line users know all about keyboard shortcuts and we love them. We just never became managers, because fuck that.

I read every comment and I’m pretty sure I’ve got something most of you don’t know. control and left or right will move by one word at a time in text. if you hold shift with this, you can highlight.

I find this is incredibly useful after I use Alt d or Control-L. in most browsers including most file browsers, this will take you to your address bar. then you can chop up your URL.

I did see somebody mention shift insert. I don’t know if they mentioned shift delete which cuts.

edit:

win+e to open file explorer. win+d to show desktop.

Just enabling Dark Mode in MS Office apps makes me god emperor of technology at work.

deleted by creator

Ctrl+backspace deletes the previous word. Now if I could just form the muscle memory.

Ctrl + v, ctrl + z, shift + ctrl + v

The fact that Windows still doesn’t have a shortcut to move windows between Virtual Desktops is mind boggling to me. I had to download an AHK script just to replicate basic features included in KDE, Gnome and probably most of the tiling WMs.

Millennials trying to act like Gen Xers don’t know shortcuts? Whatever.