1% Smarter #12 – 5 cool Google Chrome keyboard shortcuts I wish I knew when I first started using it

What is 1% Smarter?

I use these almost daily to increase my productivity and speed.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Try these out and be amazed!

Note: if you are a Mac user, you will generally use the Command key (⌘) instead of Ctrl.

1. Ctrl + Tab – (this shortcut is the same for both Mac and Windows) – switches to the next tab to the right. You can move in the opposite direction by using Ctrl+Shift+Tab. Note: this is an exception to the general rule of swapping Ctrl for Command if you use a Mac.

1. Ctrl + Shift + N – quickly open a new window in Incognito mode – this is especially useful if you are on a public computer and don’t want any of your personal data or cookies saved beyond your current session. Another useful use case for this is if you need to be signed in to two different Gmail accounts at the same time for example. Chrome treats an Incognito session as a separate “browser container” than your main Chrome window so you can sign into a website using two separate accounts!

1. Ctrl + N – similar to the above except you are opening a new Chrome window (but not in Incognito mode).
2. Ctrl + W – lets you close the tab that you are currently on and will send you to the last tab you were on before you closed that last tab.
3. Ctrl + Shift + T – probably my personal favorite. Have you ever accidentally closed a tab, or closed it and thought “crap I still need it” – well this shortcut is for you. It will immediately restore the last tab you closed allowing you to continue right where you left off!

Enjoy 🙂

Bonus tip

I just learned this recently and have been using it liberally ever since. Did you know that if you typed in youtube.com into Chrome and instead of hitting the Enter/Return key as you would normally do, you instead hit Tab – voila! Now you can directly type in a search query and when you hit enter you will immediately be taken to the search results page on YouTube saving you a bit of time.

This feature is called Tab to Search. It doesn’t just work with YouTube. In fact it works with anything that is set in your Chrome settings as “Search Engines”.

1. Go to chrome://settings/
2. Click on Manage Search Engines
3. You will see what is in your list of “search engines” currently. Now go ahead and type in any URL you see there and instead of hitting Enter/Return at the end hit Tab, now you will be able to get the same behavior you got with youtube.com!

Note: you can add new websites that don’t necessarily have to be search engines in the traditional sense (think Google, Bing or Yahoo!)

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