Today, we are going to dive back into keyboard shortcuts and also hit on some url shortcuts you can use in and out of your classroom. Some of these shortcuts are specific to Chromebooks, but most are universal, especially the url shortcuts. So first, let’s dive back into keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts are a vital part of my productivity. Even if they are just shaving off a few seconds, that time adds up.
The first shortcut we are going to talk about is one that opens a new tab. To open a new tab, simply press CTRL + T to open a New Tab. To go with that, to close your current tab, press CTRL + W. If you accidentally closed a tab you did not want to close, press CTRL + SHIFT + T to open last closed tab.
If you want to open a new Chrome window, press CTRL + N to open a New Window. If you want to open a new incognito window, press CTRL + SHIFT + N to open a New Incognito Window. If you want to view all of your open windows, simply press ALT + TAB to see all open windows. If you want to view all of you downloads, press CTRL + J. If you are wanting to share the link of either the current site you are on or a link to a document, press CTRL + L. This will highlight the link. From there, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + C to copy the link and then CTRL + V to paste it wherever you wanted to paste it. If you want to find text on a doc, sheet, slide, press CTRL + F to Find text on a document. Have you ever had to copy text from one doc and pasting to another but both docs are using different fonts and sizes? Then you paste in that text and have to highlight the text and change it to the font and size of the current doc. What a pain right? Well, I have some good news for you. If you press CTRL + SHIFT + V, it will paste the text in the doc but keep the formatting of the current doc. That one is one that I use all the time and is a game changer for me!
Okay, now let’s dive into some keyboard shortcuts that are specific to the Chromebook. If you have multiple windows open and you want to set them up side-by-side, press ALT + open bracket([) to Dock the window to the left. To go with that, to dock a window to the right, press ALT + closed bracket(]) to Dock a window to the right. Did you know you can pin apps and websites to the Chromebook shelf? To open these, you can simply click on the icon at the bottom of your screen. If you wanted to use a keyboard shortcut, all you have to do is press ALT + 1-8 to Launch apps located in Chromebook Shelf. ALT + 1 would launch the first app, ALT + @ would launch the second, and so on. To rotate your Chromebook screen, press CTRL + SHIFT + ↶: to rotate Screen 90 degrees. CTRL + App Switcher will allow you to take a Full Screen Screenshot. CTRL + SHIFT + App Switcher will allow you to take a partial screen screenshot.
To create a new document/slides/Sheets, simply type in slides.new, docs.new, sheets.new into the url bar. In URL, replace edit with copy to force a “make a copy”. Also in URL, replace edit with template/preview to allow visitors to view your temperament document and then if they want to make a copy, they can click on “Use Template”.