“Keyboard fast, mouse slow” is one of my personal mantras. Using keyboard shortcuts is always faster than moving a mouse to click on buttons. If you followed all of the shortcuts I recommend here, you’d save yourself an average of five minutes every day, even with casual web use.
These keyboard shortcuts work for both Firefox and Chrome; most of them will also work for Safari, Opera and IE. If you’re a Windows or Linux user, simply substitute CTRL for ⌘. I’ve also made a PDF of the keyboard shortcuts for you to download.
The shortcuts above, plus a dozen more, some of them browser-specific:
| Keyboard shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘ + T | New tab |
| ⌘ + L | Focus URL bar |
| ⌘ + W | Close tab |
| ⌘ + shift + T | Reopen last closed tab |
| ⌘ + left click on link | Open link in new tab |
| ⌘ + Shift + left click on link | Open link in new focussed tab |
| ⌘ + R | Refresh |
| ⌘ + shift + R | Hard refresh (ignore browser cache) |
| ⌘ + 1 | Go to first tab |
| ⌘ + 2 | Go to second tab (also works for 3 - 8) |
| ⌘ + 9 | Go to last tab |
| ⌘ + plus | Zoom in |
| ⌘ + minus | Zoom out |
| ⌘ + [ | Go back |
| ⌘ + ] | Go forward |
| Home | Go to top of page |
| End | Go to bottom of page |
| Esc | Stop |
| Return | Start Google search for term(s) entered in the search bar |
| ⌘ + Shift + Return | Converts word entered in URL bar to a .com address. (For example, converts ford to www.ford.com) |
| ⌘ + U | View Page source (Firefox) |
| ⌘ + opt + U | View page source (Chrome) |
| ⌘ + F | Find on page (works when viewing source code of a web page too!) |
| ⌘ + Shift + I | While signed into Google in Chrome: take the current URL, placing it in a new gMail document as a fwd |
| ⌘ + Shift + J | Open Error Console in Firefox (useful for simple debugging of JavaScript) |
| ⌘ + D | Bookmark current page |
| ⌘ + opt + left cursor | Focus on the tab to the left |
| ⌘ + opt + right cursor | Focus on the tab to the right |
| Page Down | Scroll down to next visible section of page |
| Page Up | Scroll up to previous visible section of page |
| ⌘ + ` | Switch between open browser windows |
Enjoy this piece? I invite you to follow me at twitter.com/dudleystorey to learn more.
