Here is a random list of little technical tips & tricks which might help you be more efficient on your computers - especially in an online-learning situation.
Easy window management
You’ll quite often have to look at two (or more) different application windows at the same time. Instead of using your mouse or touchpad to resize your windows and arrange them on your screen, you can use convenient keyboard shortcuts:
On Windows 10:
Use the Windows key ⊞ together with the left-arrow to make the current window take up the left half of your screen. Similarly, you can do the same with the right-arrow for another window.
- ⊞ Win+←: left-half of the screen
- ⊞ Win+→: right-half of the screen
- ⊞ Win+↑: full screen
On Mac OS:
There are (to my knowledge) no built-in keyboard shortcuts for this, but you can download a free program to enable this. There are several options, but I’ve had good success with Rectangle, which is free and open-source.
The default keybindings use the ^ CTRL and ⌥ Option keys held together, and then an arrow key, for example:
- ^ CTRL+⌥ Option+←: left-half of the screen
- ^ CTRL+⌥ Option+→: right-half of the screen
- ^ CTRL+⌥ Option+Enter: full screen
By default, repeating the same shortcut actually cycles through a few more options, like “left third” of the screen, then “left two thirds”, and so on!
You can also change the shortcuts if you don’t like the ^ CTRL+⌥ Option combination.
On Linux:
This greatly depends on the window manager you use. KDE and Gnome have similar shortcuts already preconfigured. In XFCE (or other window managers), you might have to configure the shortcuts yourself. Chances are that if you’re using Linux, all this will be quite easy for you, otherwise googling for “window management keyboard shortcuts XFCE” (or whatever you use) should get you the needed information.
