008 | Google Chrome Keyboard Shortcuts: Small Clicks for Big Wins!

Are you a teacher who feels like you're constantly juggling multiple tasks, switching between windows, and losing track of important information? What if I told you there's a way to streamline your digital workflow and save precious time throughout your day?

Welcome to a game-changing episode of the Productivity for Teachers podcast, where we're diving into the world of Google Chrome keyboard shortcuts. As an educator and productivity enthusiast, I'm here to share practical strategies that can revolutionize the way you navigate your browser and manage your online tasks.

Here's a list of all Google Chrome shortcuts:

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/157179?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop 

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Transcript

Hi teacher friends. Thank you for joining me today. I'm really excited that you're here. I hope you're doing well. Today we're going to talk about Google Chrome keyboard shortcuts, and some of you might be keyboard shortcuts experts and if so, more power to you. But you might learn a few new shortcuts today, and some of you might not use keyboard shortcuts at all if you don't. I highly encourage you to stick with it and learn just a few shortcuts after today's episode. And I think you'll be amazed at how much time it saves you and how much easier it is to get things done using the shortcuts. So let's jump in. In this episode, I'm going to list the Windows keyboard shortcuts first and then give the Mac equivalent. And I definitely have a few favorite keyboard shortcuts on Chrome, but I'm going to try to give you kind of a sampling of the different kinds of keyboard shortcuts that there are. I am going to put a link to all Google Chrome keyboard shortcuts in the Show Notes so you can explore other shortcuts that might be better suited to your workflow on your own. Today I'm just going to mention the top ones and then I'll let you jump in on your own and figure out what might work even better for your own personal workflow. So my favorite Chrome keyboard shortcut, the one that has saved my bacon several times, is opening up a tab that I closed. So to open a previously closed tab in Windows, you click Control shift and a lowercase t. So Control shift t On a Mac it would be Command shift t. And in this episode, unless I say uppercase, all the letters that I'll mention will be lowercase Control shift t and you can just keep doing that until you get to the tab that you closed. So this isn't just to the tab that you just closed. It will keep going back into all the tabs that you had open and closed until you get to the one that you want. This one is just so handy because how often have we closed a tab and then realized that we didn't mean to close it, and now we have to figure out how to get back to it. So that is my favorite one. My second favorite keyboard shortcut in Chrome is Control F and in Mac it would be Command f. That is the find function in the webpage where you are and I use this all the time when I am looking for a certain Gimkit game that I Want to play with the kids or a Kahoot or a Blooket and I just can't get to it quickly enough. I just do Control F or on a Mac Command F. That opens up a little Find window at the top of your screen. And if you're not used to looking for it, you'll just need to hunt around for it for a second. But it is at the top, it's not really obvious. And then just type in the name of the thing that you're trying to find and it will bring up all the results and you can scroll up and down through those results. That is just a super fast way to find things in a webpage. So let's talk about some basic Google Chrome keyboard shortcuts. Opening a new window would be Control N in Windows and Command N on a Mac. And when I'm talking about these keyboard shortcuts, make sure that you're holding down both of the keys or all three of the keys when you do this. So a keyboard shortcut only works if you hold everything down. To open a new window in incognito mode would be Control Shift n and on a Mac, Command Shift n. Sometimes you just can't get things to work right unless you go to an Incognito tab. So that is a helpful tip to know. To open a new tab and go to it, it's Control T on Windows and Command T on Mac. To jump back and forth between tabs that are open in Chrome, you would do on a Windows machine, Control tab or Control Shift tab. So Control tab will move you to the tab to the right, and Control Shift tab will move you to the tab on the left. And on a Mac machine it would be Command option right arrow to move to the tab to the right and Command option Left arrow to move to the tab to the left. To close a current tab in Windows, you would click Control and W. And on the Mac it would be Command and W. If you want to jump to the tab all the way on the right you would do Control nine and on a Mac Command nine. So those are some of the basic kind of moving around Chrome keyboard shortcuts. The ones that I use all the time are the one that opens up that previously closed tab. So that would be Control Shift t or Command Shift t on a Mac, and then Control N as in new to open a new window or Command N on a Mac. Okay, so let's do a few bookmarks shortcuts. So to show or hide the bookmarks bar on a Windows machine, it would be Control Shift B as in bookmark. And on a Mac it would be Command Shift B. To set your current web page as a bookmark, it would be Control D as in dog on a Windows machine and Command D on a Mac. And I love this next one. It's really handy if you're doing a lot of research or have a lot of things open and you just want to save them all at once and come back to them later. So to save all open tabs as bookmarks in a new bookmark folder, it would be Control Shift D as in dog on Windows and Command Shift D on a Mac. Really handy, Very helpful. How often have you downloaded something and now you gotta hunt around for it. So in Google Chrome, to open your downloads page in a new tab, click Control J. And on a Mac it would be Command Shift j. And that brings up in a new tab all of your downloads from Chrome. Here's another really handy one, because it can take a while to hunt around for this with your mouse. Opening the print dialog page would be Control P as in print on a Windows machine, and Command option P as in print on a Mac. Really handy to quickly open that print dialog. And this one I love as I get older and things might be a little bit hard to see to zoom in on a webpage, in other words, make everything bigger, control and then the plus button. So on a Windows machine, some of you might need to do Control shift and then to get to the plus button. And on a Mac machine, it would be command and then the plus buttons. So depending on how your keyboard is set up, you might have to involve the shift button there. And then to make everything smaller. So to kind of zoom out on a web page, it would be the opposite. So Control minus on Windows and Command minus on a Mac. And to turn everything back to the default size, it would be Control zero on Windows and Command zero on a Mac. Now this next one is one that I've just recently started using, and I absolutely love it because it saves me from having to scroll on my mouse. So to scroll down a webpage one screen at a time is just the space bar on both Windows and Mac. Try it out. I think you'll love it. It is so handy. And you can quickly scroll through a webpage without having to involve your trackpad or your mouse. To scroll up the webpage then would be shift space on both Windows and Mac. So to reverse that without having to scroll would be shift space. So, my friends, there are many, many more keyboard shortcuts. Than the ones that I've mentioned today, but those are ones that I find to be the most useful for me. Again, I encourage you to go to the Show Notes and click on the link to access all Chrome keyboard shortcuts to find the ones that would work even better for your own style. So let's talk a little bit about keyboard shortcuts and how we can train ourselves to use them, because it doesn't come naturally to you if you've never used one before. And as you know, here at the Productivity for Teachers podcast, we recommend starting small, not overwhelming yourself, and not falling in that perfectionist trap. And that mantra is perhaps more applicable to keyboard shortcuts than any other thing we're gonna talk about in this podcast series. Because keyboard shortcuts are all about muscle memory and remembering to use them and then learning them to where they become second nature. So you wanna start small and you wanna start with a couple of keyboard shortcuts that you know you will use a lot so that you can build that muscle memory. And it's kind of a two step memory process. The first one is remembering that keyboard shortcuts exist and that you should use them and then the actual keyboard shortcut. So I would definitely pick one or two in the beginning that you know you're going to use a lot. So maybe it is Ctrl N for a new window, or Control T for opening a new tab and jumping to it. Those are the windows shortcuts. So on the Mac, you know by now it's Command N or Command T to open that new tab. Those are ones that you're going to use a lot. I suspect maybe the tab one more than the Windows one. So maybe you decide to start with Control T or Command T, pick another one that's similar to that. So maybe Control W to close the tab or Command W on a Mac. So I would pick one or two that you know you're going to use a lot and find one of those little tiny post it notes, Write them down and post them right on your laptop screen in a corner where you will not only be reminded to use the keyboard shortcut, but you'll also remember what it is and force yourself to use that shortcut as often as you can to train not only your brain to remember that there are keyboard shortcuts, but also what they are. And then after a week or two, once you've really gotten used to using those two, then you can up your ante and add one more a week. Maybe that's how I did it. I started with two, and then I started adding one a week after that. And I do have a little cheat sheet on my desk of keyboard shortcuts that are really handy, but I don't use very often. Those are the ones that I kind of tend to forget exactly how they work, but I do know that they're very helpful. So I do have a little cheat sheet on my desk that I made just with ones that are handy for that reason. But in the beginning, a little post it note on your screen in the corner will do just fine. And I hope this was useful for you. Again, remember to start small, and I look forward to seeing you again next Tuesday. Have a great week. Teacher friends.