Sometimes, even clicking the ‘X’ button feels like a long way to close the tab, especially when you’re frequently browsing through the internet. Just like in the previous post, I can’t just imagine myself literally clicking everything with my mouse after finding out these hotkeys myself by accident. I’m quite sure it’s going to be very useful and you would absolutely love using these very often soon enough.

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TOP 10 ‘CTRL + [Key]’ COMBINATIONS WHILE ON A BROWSER:

All of these hotkeys are quite shareable with various browsers including chrome(e.g., Firefox, Microsoft edge, Opera etc).

#1: ‘CTRL + T’ – OPENS A NEW TAB

Literally. It opens up a new tab while on a browsing session. Simple but very useful. Probably this is the most used hotkeys while browsing.

#2: ‘CTRL + N’  – OPENS A NEW TAB, BUT ON A NEW WINDOW

This also opens up a new tab, but on a new window. You’ll see a new browsing window coming up with a new tab when you press these keys. If you got too many tabs on a single browsing window that probably lags the whole browsing session as well, then this is the way. I mean, only if you can’t close the tabs that are lagging because you have some important stuffs to look at. Of course, if you can close them all and open a new one, then that’s the best way to do it.

#3: ‘CTRL + F’ – FIND ON PAGE

Whenever you want to quickly look up for a specific word to find the exact information that you need, simply press these and don’t ever waste your time and workflow by heading over to the options and clicking on ‘Find on Page’ with your mouse.

#4: ‘CTRL + D’ – ADDS CURRENT PAGE AS FAVORITES

Found something useful and want to save that specific page by adding it to the favorites? Simple, just go and hit this combo and you’ll save it in a second without interrupting your workflow and without spending few more seconds on clicking settings, adding to favorites then saving with your mouse!

#5: ‘CTRL + SHIFT + N’ – OPENS INCOGNITO MODE

Doesn’t leave your browsing history. Although the cookies and cache are not saved and makes your preferences on specific websites you visit often to not be saved as well, it is great when you want to have a fresh look or search on those particular websites. You might get a ‘new-login detection’ notification when you try to log in while on incognito mode, simply because your login gets recognized as a new attempt from somebody else. It is also great when you don’t want those websites to collect lots of information from you, although it still collects necessary stuffs needed. It allows them to collect much lesser though.

#6: ‘CTRL + SHIFT + T’ – BRINGS BACK THE RECENTLY CLOSED TABS

Ever had an experience of accidentally closing all the tabs at once? Or your computer crashed all of a sudden and those tabs disappeared as well? No problem, just open your browser, then hit this combination. It’ll bring back all those closed tabs one at a time, from the most recently closed tabs to the oldest closed tabs. Don’t waste your time on clicking the settings, finding the history then opening them one by one. In Chrome, it would show a pop-up notification asking you whether you want to recover all the tabs that were unexpectedly closed, which allows you to reopen them all at once. But in incognito mode, since it doesn’t save and clears out all cookies, cache and browsing history once you leave the browsing session, this hotkey won’t work. No matter how many times you hit these keys, it would never show up again.

#7: ‘CTRL + R’ – REFRESHING

You might already know that you can either click the rewinding circle on your browser or just simply hit ‘F5’ on your keyboard to refresh the tab. But there’s actually one more way of doing this! While clicking on the circle with your mouse would feel kind of lazy to do or pressing ‘F5’ might feel a bit far away from your normal hand position, hitting these two keys that are relatively closer could be the better solution.

#8: ‘CTRL + F5’ – FULL REFRESHING(CLEARS OUT THE CACHE)

When your browser is lagging but you don’t want to clear the cookies, cache and browsing history altogether because you want to keep them for a while, then this is for you. I call this “Full Refreshing” because it dumps out the cache unlike the normal refreshing do. This will work almost all the time when your browser starts to lag. It would also slightly take a little more time to refresh as it clears the cache.

#9: ‘CTRL + [NUMBER KEYS 1~9]’ – SWITCHES TO THE TAB IN RESPECTIVE ORDER

When you have lots of tabs opened at once, there would be times where you want to switch to the other tabs to work on it. Instead of clicking on every single tab with your mouse(again), hit on these keys to easily switch to the other tabs while possibly saving yourself from mis-clicking the ‘X’ button. ‘Number Keys’ literally mean the number keys on your keyboard from 1 to 9, except for 0. Let’s say you got 5 tabs opened in your browser as A, B, C, D, E and you got them stacked up as A, C, B, E ,D, based on the time sequence you opened them. Pressing ‘CTRL + 1’ would open tab A, tab C for ‘CTRL + 2’, tab B for ‘CTRL + 3’, tab E for ‘CTRL + 4’ and tab D for ‘CTRL + 5’. No matter when you first opened the specific tab, it would follow the current order of tabs and be switched respectively. Just like how ‘CTRL + 2’ opens tab C although you opened tab B first.

#10: ‘CTRL + S’ – SAVES THE CURRENT PAGE/LINK AS A WEBSITE SHORTCUT

Personally, I don’t use this very often as I just feel more comfortable to save the page as a favorite, but having a page saved as a shortcut on your desktop is essentially one of the ways to easily access the page without unnecessary steps. Just press these keys whenever you’re ready, save it on wherever you feel comfortable, and your html file will be there. This also works the best for those who are not familiar with browsing or with computer at all but have to use that page to work. Could be our parents, or our kids for instance. But be aware that this is not the same as ‘Saved Page’ where you can access it even if you’re offline. This is more like a ‘Saved Link’ that you can access whenever you’re online.

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Even a bit of memorizing these hotkeys could be a burden, especially when things are going hard. But I can assure you that you would be using them without a single thought, like a muscle memory, once you’re used to them. And this would absolutely increase your work efficiency and keep your workflow as well.