Having used tiling window managers and live the no mouse lifestyle, so I’m writing down the tips and tricks I used with tiling windows managers and vim while living off my laptop for a while.

Text Navigation:

  • Tab: Naviagtes you through a lot of apps interface objects and areas. Sometimes space works in place of enter, saving your pinky (and using your likley tougher thumb)
  • + Shift: Usally goes backwards
  • Ctl + Left/Right arrow: Naviage over ‘objects’. In text this is often words with a common demiliting character (space, comma, slahses). But it holds in other applications also (Excel cells that are grouped)
  • Up/Down in a single line input box to move to the begining or end: This works well when inputting text into forms.
  • Ctl + Alt + Up/Down for collumn mode: I first ran into this in VSCode, but most any text editor now days has it enabled.
  • Hold Shift to select text: Combied with other commands, it makes editing text a lot easier
  • Ctl + Shift + Home/End: An example combination to highlight to the beginning or end of a field/doc, not just the line

Web Browser:

  • Alt + D: Focus address bar
  • Ctl + t/w: Open a new tab, close the current tab
  • Ctl + Shift t/n: Restore last closed tab/window
  • DuckDuckGo bangs: Makes it a lot easier to just use the sites you want. Also pseudo bookmarks if the site you’re using is specific i.e. “! local credit union” to get straight there.
  • Ctl+ Tab: Cycle tabs, combine with shift to go back
  • Ctl + Number: Got to a tab number, zero goes to the last tab.
  • Ctl + Shift + Page Up/Down: Move the current tab

Windows Specific:

  • Win + Shift + S: Screenshot mode
  • Win + E: Opens Windows Explorer
  • Win + R: Run window
  • Win + Left/Right: Snap the window to the screen to title
  • Win + Alt + Left/Right: Move a window to the isplay in that diraction
  • Win + Up/Down: Minimize or maximize a window

Command Line:

  • alt-f: right one word
  • alt-b: left one word
  • ctl a: begging of the line
  • ctl e: end of the line
  • ctl k: delete to end of line
  • ctl r: reverse history
  • ctl x: open command in editor
  • ctl e