Browse nothing, we’re working here.
This is a list of my favorite productivity-boosting browser shortcuts, wrapped up in a tight little package and delivered to you with a special bonus at the end. And trust me, the bonus is well worth it.
The List
Alt+Left/Right Arrow – Navigate Back/Forward, respectively.
Ctrl+Tab – Move through open browser tabs left-to-right
Ctrl+Shift+Tab – Move through open tabs right-to-left
Ctrl + T – Opens a new tab
Ctrl+Shift+T – Opens most recently closed tab (I LOVE this one, so much)
Ctrl+W – Closes active tab
Ctrl+Shift+N – Opens new incognito window
Right-click Tab + Close all tabs to the right (Chrome) – Closes all open tabs to the right of the selected tab
Ctrl + D – Bookmark active tab
Ctrl+Shift+D – Bookmark all open tabs in active tab’s window
Ctrl+F5 – Force page reload, eliminates need to clear cached data for specific page (most times), easy way to solve on-load problems on pages you frequent.
The Bonus
And now, for the main event.
Manage Search Engines (Chrome) – This is the best thing ever. With this, you can open a new tab with Ctrl+T, type in “w”, hit “Space”, and automatically be searching Wikipedia. Same goes for other sites, like YouTube (‘yt’ on mine).
Head to your settings in Google Chrome and select “Manage Search Engines.”
Any site you navigate to that has a search function powered by Google will automatically show up in this area, and several other sites with general search functions sometimes make an appearance.
Once you reach this point, you can simply change that center column to whatever shortcut you find most convenient. I chose “yt” for YouTube, “w” for Wikipedia, “ose” for Open Site Explorer, and so on.
If the website of your choice doesn’t show up here, just take a look at the resulting URL for that site, and replace the search query you typed in with “%s”. Ta-da! Instant custom search engine.
This has been a short post to get you out of here and back to work! Have a shortcut you think everyone should know about? Share it in the comments!
