Keyboard Shortcuts That Will Save You Hours Every Week

Most "keyboard shortcuts" lists are too long to actually memorize, so nothing sticks. Here's a shorter list, specifically the shortcuts with the best return on the effort of learning them.

Window and app management

The app-switcher shortcuts alone eliminate a huge amount of mouse-reaching over a normal working day — internalizing them is worth doing before anything else on this list.

Browser

Reopen last closed tab is the one people don't know exists and wish they'd learned years earlier — closed the wrong tab? One shortcut, not a scramble through browser history.

Text editing (works almost everywhere, not just code editors)

These work in nearly every text field on the system — browser address bars, chat apps, code editors — because they're OS-level text editing conventions, not app-specific features. Learn them once, use them everywhere.

Code editor (VS Code, but similar across most editors)

Multi-cursor (Cmd/Ctrl+D) is the one with the highest "wish I'd learned this sooner" factor — select a word, hit it repeatedly to select the next occurrences, and edit all of them simultaneously instead of a find-and-replace for simple renames.

The actual learning strategy

Trying to memorize twenty shortcuts at once doesn't work — pick two or three from this list you don't already use, and deliberately force yourself to use them (even when the mouse feels faster) for a week. Muscle memory forms from repetition under real use, not from reading a list once. Once those two are automatic, add two more.