Obscure and Valuable Keyboard Shortcuts

If there is one thing that many of us in the design and development fields love, it is shortcuts. Those lovely little timesavers and workflow improvers that quickly get us where we need to go in fewer motions. Effectively keeping us in stride, as we navigate our computers and various apps using the shortcuts that we have picked up along the way. But even the most alert of those among us will have numerous hotkeys go under our radar, as there are just so many out there.

So in this quest to find some useful and obscure hotkeys we turned, as we do from time to time, to the faithful followers and friends of the Smashing team. With days of amazing answers to sift and sort through, we have compiled a truly exciting list of keyboard shortcuts that may not be that widely known. So we hope that our readers find this post as helpful as we imagine that they will.

Mac

• ALT + CMD + SPACE to search in finder
• CMD + ALT + Left/Right to switch between tabs
• CMD + L to access the input field
• CMD + ` on a mac to tab through application windows
• CMD + OPT + ESC to Force Quit apps
• CMD + Tab to cycle through open apps on Mac
• CMD + H to hide the window
• CMD + ALT + H to hide other windows
• Shift + CMD + I when in safari opens a mail with the link of the current page in it
• CMD + T followed by CMD + K to perform a search in a new tab
• ALT + CMD + Eject put the mac to sleep
• CMD + Shift + A to autofill forms in Safari
• OPT/CMD + arrow keys - also hold Shift to select. Makes it easy to delete multiple words/lines quickly
• CMD + OPT + Shift and V to paste without coping the formatting of what you pasted
• CTRL + OPT + CMD + 8. Inverts Mac screen colors
• CMD + Shift + 4. Saves a snapshot of a selected area to the desktop (You can then press spacebar to cycle between a crosshair or window selection)
• CMD + CTRL + Shift + 4 = snap a screen a picture of a marquee area of the screen and copy it to clipboard
• CMD + SPACE to open spotlight
• CTRL + OPT + CMD + Eject Quits all applications and shuts the computer down
• CMD + E to eject selected volume on the Mac
• CTRL + Shift + CMD + 3 for clipboard - screenshot, compared to print-screen on PCs
• CMD + , on a Mac to access current app preferences
• CMD + OPT click and drag creates an alias of the file where you drag it
• CMD + Delete to move to trash
• CMD + Shift + Delete to empty the trash from Finder
• CTRL + OPT + CMD + . = increase contrast CTRL + OPT + CMD + , = decrease contrast
• CMD + OPT + D to hide/unhide the dock

Windows

• CTRL + INS to copy, Shift + INS to paste, Shift + Delete to cut. Such an underappreciated series of hotkeys.
• CTRL + 0 to return web page to 100% (default) zoom level
• CTRL + Shift + Eject to turn off monitor
• CTRL + Shift + ESC on windows to get to task manager directly
• Win7: WIN + M to minimize all opened windows
• WIN + Left/Right to put windows side by side. Nice live coding method.
• CTRL + K + D this hotkey indents html and c# code nicely
• WIN + D (return to desktop)
• ALT + BACK to backspace by the word rather than by the character
• win: Shift + Delete delete files without saving to trash bin

Linux

• CTRL + ALT + T to open Terminal on Ubuntu. I can't live without it now

Photoshop / Illustrator

• CMD + Shift + C in Photoshop to copy the merged selection (save's you the step of merging your file then undoing!)
• In Photoshop - CMD + ALT + 0 to resize the window to 100% is essential for web designers!
• Shift + ALT + CMD + S (win: CTRL + Shift + ALT + S)... Save for web in Photoshop
• CTRL + Shift + C flatten and copy with transparency, Photoshop
• Illustrator CTRL + 7 to crop image
• Photoshop: CTRL + Shift + ALT + E merges all visible layers to a new layer on top of the others without deleting them

Firefox / Chrome

• CTRL + Shift + E for Edit CSS (Firefox/Webmasters Toolbar)
• CMD + Shift + C Inspect Element // Firefox—Firebug // Chrome—Developer Tools
• CTRL + Shift + T to open closed tabs FF Chrome, and CTRL + Shift + N to open closed windows FF
• Firefox CTRL + L to enable retyping of a web address
• ESC hides the mousepointer (in browser). Great for Screenshots

Honorable Mention: Mouse Gestures

"I almost stopped using hot keys when started using mouse gestures, both in ff and chrome"

• Press Shift and scroll your mousewheel. Scrolls horizontally on the page
• Click on links using mousewheel in FF & Chrome and links open automatically in new tab