Keyboard Shortcuts Are Making My Day Better

I absolutely love keyboard shortcuts. The quicker I can get to something without navigating a menu tree, the better. Recently I discovered a few keyboard shortcuts that are making my life simpler and my day better.

Hide Dock

I know the dock can autohide, but most of the time I prefer to have it out in the open. Occasionally, though, it simply gets in the way. Turns out you can dynamically hide and unhide the dock with [Command]+[option]+D.

Tab Browsing

I am a tab junky. Seriously. I just closed a bunch of tabs in Firefox and I still have 39 tabs open in 7 windows. What I really need is self control, but a way to navigate all those tabs would be nice instead.

[Command]+1 will bring you to the first tab in a given window (Windows users can use [Ctrl]+1). This works for the numbers 1-8 in the format [Command]+#. [Command]+9 will bring you to the last tab in that window, no matter how many tabs you have open.

But if you just want to scroll from tab to tab, [Ctrl]+[Page Down] (or page up) does just the trick.

With these two combined, you can move about your tabs fairly quickly. Of course, 39 tabs in 7 windows might be a bit much for your system resources, no matter how quickly you can move between them.

{This works in Firefox, so if there is a similar Safari feature, please comment below.}

Changing Programs/Windows

I love Expose and have been using it more now that I am hooked up to my 19″ widescreen LCD, but it still involves using a mouse to choose which window I want to switch to. [Command]+[Tab] will allow you to switch between programs quickly using only your keyboard. [Command]+` (right above tab) will let you switch between windows inside of the active program.

But Wait… There’s More

The Mac OS, along with a ton of popular programs, are filled with keyboard shortcuts that can save you time and wrist movement. These are the ones that are making my day better today. Which one’s are helping you out? Let us know below in the comments.

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