Nowadays, browsing the internet is a part of our common lives. In 2021, the average person did 3 to 5 searches and spent 15 to 30 minutes browsing daily on the internet. Wouldn’t it be great to know the best browser tips and tricks so that you can easily search through the internet and move through the browser much efficiently and quickly. The following lists describes them:
1) Open Recently Closed Tabs
Have you ever accidently closed a tab and now you don’t know what its actual URL was? Search through your recent history is frustrating and takes time to find that desired address. Well just press CTRL + SHIFT + T and your recently closed tab will reopen again.
2) Use Browser as a Notepad
We can convert any browser into a quick edit notepad. This can help us to instantly write down anything and ease us from the struggle of finding a pen or the need of opening any other app.
Type the following in the search bar: data:text/html, <html contenteditable>
A simple text editor will open. We can bookmark the tab to easily access it later.
3) Change Font Size
Sometimes reading text from a website gets a bit hard due to small font size. Moreover, if the website is not optimized well, we also face problems to view the whole content properly forcing us to slightly zoom out the contents.
An easy way is to zoom out and in by pressing CTRL & Scrolling by your mouse. Moreover, you can also press CTRL + ( ctrl and plus button) to zoom in and CTRL – ( ctrl and minus button). You can reset the zoom of a webpage by pressing CTRL + 0.
4) Reverse Image Search
We can easily find visually similar pictures on the internet using reverse image search. On Google, you can go to images.google.com and search by an image. You can then press S and Right click on the images shown to automatically make Google Chrome search for similar images.
5) Close the Most Recently Opened Tab
You can easily close your most recently opened tab without even touching your mouse by just pressing CTRL + W. You can also just hold CTRL and press W multiple times until you have closed all the recent tabs you do not need anymore.
6) Responsive Design Mode
Ever wondered how a website will look on your desired mobile or tablet? Well you can easily check that on a PC by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + i which will open the inspection/developers window. Here you can select your desired device or put custom dimensions to see how a website will look like.
You can also modify the HTML and other front-end elements using this window.
7) Organize Browsing using Tab Groups
You can organize different tabs together in groups. This will help to keep all the relevant tabs together and make accessibly and visibility much better.
To make a group, Right click a Tab and select Add tab to new Group. You can give each group a name and distinct color to easily identify and find it.
Sometimes a person wants to find websites which are similar to some other website. Google allows us to easily search for these sites. In the search bar, type “related:” (without the quotation marks) and then type the address of the site.
For example, you can search related:wikipedia.com and you will be shown websites which are similar to wikipedia.
9) See Memory and CPU usage of the browser
You might have seen memes or jokes describing how Chrome uses a lot of memory. Well there is a way to see how much memory and CPU usage a browser is using at the moment.
On the Title bar, right click and select Task Manager or press SHIFT + ESC. The task manager will open up showing the memory, CPU, network and process id information.
10) See Content of only a Specific Website
If you are looking to see content from only a specific website in your search, then you can type “search:” (without the quotations) and then write the address of that site.
For example, typing search:tetrageek.com would make Google only show content from Tetra Geek.
11) Move Cursor to Address Bar
We normally have to select the search bar manually using the mouse to use it. But, by pressing CTRL + L or ALT + D, the cursor will move to the search bar and select the already present website link. This can come in handy if we need to copy addresses of multiple sites open in different tabs or search for something new quickly.
We can quickly jump from one tab to another just by using simple key shortcuts. Press SHIFT + TAB to move to the next tab and to move to the previous one, we can use CTRL + SHIFT + TAB.
Moreover, if we have multiple tabs open and we want to move to the one at a specific number then we can simply press CTRL + [tab number] to go directly to there. For example, pressing CTRL + 4 will open the tab at the 4th place from the left.
13) Directly Open Links in New Tab
Right clicking the link and selecting the open in new tab option is how usually people do. There are much faster ways to do the same thing which can help us to open multiple links easily without disturbing the original page.
One way is to middle click the link i.e., open it by pressing the button under the scroll wheel of the mouse. The other way is by pressing CTRL and clicking the link.
14) Pin Important Tabs
We can pin the important tabs by right clicking on the tab and selecting Pin. Pinning tabs help us to organize and makes it easier to manage multiple pages. Pinning a tab minimizes it and moves it to the left of the title bar and keeps it active.
15) Other Common Shortcuts
| ShortCut | Description |
|---|---|
CTRL+SHIFT+B | Show/Hide Bookmarks |
CTRL+D | Bookmark current tab |
CTRL+F | Find in the current page |
CTRL+R or F5 | Refresh the page |
CTRL+SHIFT+R | Force Reload + Clear page Caches |
CTRL+H | Open history window |
CTRL+N | Open new window |
CTRL+SHIFT+N | Open new incognito/private window |
CTRL+SHIFT+W | Close the current Window |
CTRL+T | Open new tab and switch to it |
CTRL+Tab | Move to the next tab |
CTRL+SHIFT+TAB | Move to the previous tab |
CTRL+W | Close the current tab |
CTRL+SHIFT+T | Reopen the recently closed tabs |
SPACE/PgDn | Move down in the page |
SHIFT+SPACE/PgUp | Move up in the page |
CTRL+P | Print the page |
CTRL+J | Open Downloads Tab |
