40 Fun Facts About Keyboard Shortcuts

Pressing the Shift key five times in a row turns on which Windows accessibility feature?

Sticky Keys lets you press the parts of a shortcut one at a time instead of holding them together, which helps people who cannot press two keys at once.

The Ctrl+Alt+Delete reboot shortcut was written in 1981 by an engineer at which computer company?

IBM engineer David Bradley wrote the reset code in a matter of minutes while building the original PC. He meant it only for developers, not for the public.

Which Windows shortcut pastes text, using a letter that sits beside the cut and copy keys?

Ctrl+V keeps paste next to cut and copy: X, C and V sit side by side at the left end of the keyboard's bottom row, all under one hand.

Which Microsoft figure said in 2013 that using Ctrl+Alt+Delete to log in to Windows was a mistake?

Bill Gates said he had wanted a single dedicated button, but the keyboard's designers would not add one, so users were left holding three keys at once.

Pressing the Windows key and the period key together opens which pop-up tool in Windows 10 and 11?

The emoji panel appears wherever you are typing, so there is no need to copy symbols from a web page. The Windows key plus the semicolon opens it too.

Which shortcut, in Windows since version 1.0, switches between open windows without the mouse?

Alt+Tab opens the Task Switcher: hold Alt and keep tapping Tab to step through your windows, then let go to jump to the one highlighted.

Which PC key, often sharing its keycap with SysRq, traditionally captures the whole Windows display?

Print Screen once did what its name says: under MS-DOS it sent whatever text was on the display straight to the printer.

Which command is run by pressing Ctrl+Z in most Windows programs, or Cmd+Z on a Mac?

Undo reverses your last action, and in many programs pressing the shortcut again and again steps back through earlier changes as well.

Pressing Alt+F4 with no windows open offers to shut down the PC, but what does it do to an open app?

Alt+F4 closes it, shutting the active window and usually the whole program with it. With nothing open, Windows asks whether to shut down instead.

Cut, copy and paste were pioneered in the 1970s by Larry Tesler's team at which company?

Xerox ran the PARC lab in Palo Alto, where Tesler named the commands and built them into text editors from 1974. Apple made them famous a decade later.

Which three-key Windows shortcut opens Task Manager directly, skipping the menu of security options?

Ctrl+Shift+Esc jumps straight to Task Manager, handy when a frozen program needs ending fast. The better-known three-key salute only reaches it through a menu of options.

Which function key reloads the current page in Chrome and refreshes the active window in Windows?

F5 is the refresh key across Windows, and in Chrome adding Shift makes the reload ignore cached files and fetch the whole page again.

On a Mac, which shortcut shows or hides the Spotlight search field for locating apps and files?

Cmd+Space opens Spotlight, which doubles as a calculator: type a calculation into the search field and the answer appears without opening another app.

On a Mac, which shortcut quits the current app rather than just shutting its front window?

Cmd+Q quits the current app outright, whereas the W version shuts only the front window and the H version merely hides the app from view.

In Chrome on Windows, which shortcut reopens a tab you just shut, adding a key to the new-tab one?

Ctrl+Shift+T is the new-tab shortcut plus Shift, and pressing it repeatedly keeps bringing back earlier tabs that were shut.

In Windows, which shortcut erases a file for good instead of moving it to the Recycle Bin?

Shift+Delete removes the file without the Recycle Bin's safety net, so there is nothing to restore if you change your mind.

Pressing the Windows key and the letter L together does what to a PC that is signed in?

Windows key plus L locks it instantly, so nobody can use the PC until you sign back in, which makes it the shortcut to hit when leaving a desk.

In Chrome on Windows, pressing either Ctrl+F or the F3 key opens which part of the browser?

The Find Bar hunts for a word on the page you are viewing, and pressing Ctrl+G afterwards hops to the next match.

Pressing the Windows key and the letter E together opens which program on a Windows 11 PC?

File Explorer opens, not the Edge browser: the shortcut goes back to Windows 95, when the same file manager was called Windows Explorer.

In Chrome, Ctrl plus Shift plus N opens which browsing mode, known in Microsoft Edge as InPrivate?

Incognito mode discards the session's history and cookies when the window shuts, so nothing is left behind for the next person who uses the device.

Pressing the Windows key and D reveals what, then brings your open windows back when pressed again?

The desktop appears because every open window is hidden at once, a quick way to reach a file or icon buried behind them.

On YouTube, which letter key pauses the video, sitting between the keys that skip 10 seconds?

K sits between J and L, which jump back and forward ten seconds, so three neighboring keys run the player without touching the mouse.

In Chrome, adding Shift does it for every open tab, but what does Ctrl+D do with the current page?

Ctrl+D bookmarks it so the page can be found again later, and with Shift added Chrome files every open tab into a new bookmarks folder.

In Chrome on Windows, pressing F11 turns on which view, which holding down Esc turns off again?

Full screen hides the browser's tabs and toolbars so the page fills the whole display, and pressing F11 a second time brings them back.

In Windows, pressing F2 with a file highlighted lets you do what without opening a menu?

Rename it: F2 turns the file's name into an editable box, and in Excel the same key lets you edit the contents of the active cell.

In Windows, the Home key jumps to the beginning of a line, but where does Ctrl+Home move the cursor?

Start of the document: adding Ctrl stretches the Home key's jump from one line to the whole file, and Ctrl+End does the same for the very end.

Which command is run by pressing Ctrl+S in Windows programs, or Cmd+S on a Mac?

Save kept its floppy disk icon long after the disks themselves vanished, because they were once so common that everyone recognized the picture.

In a Windows folder, Ctrl+A does what to the files inside, as it also does to the text on a page?

Ctrl+A selects them all in one go, whether that means every file in a folder or every word in an essay, ready to copy or move.

On a Mac, which three-key shortcut opens the Force Quit window, the Mac's answer to Ctrl+Alt+Delete?

Cmd+Option+Esc lists every running app so a frozen one can be shut down on its own, without restarting the whole Mac.

In Chrome, pressing the space bar on a website does what, with Shift reversing the direction?

Space scrolls down the page a screenful at a time, the same job as Page Down, so a long article can be read with one thumb on the biggest key.

The looped square on a Mac's Command key was borrowed from signs marking what in Nordic countries?

Places of interest carry the symbol on Nordic signs; artist Susan Kare picked it after Steve Jobs complained that Apple logos were cluttering the Mac's menus.

In Excel on Windows, pressing Alt and the equals sign together drops which function into a cell?

SUM is typed in for you along with the numbers to add up, exactly as the AutoSum button on the ribbon does.

In Excel, pressing Ctrl and semicolon enters what into a cell, with Shift added for the time?

Today's date goes in as a fixed snapshot, so unlike a formula it will not change when the workbook is reopened tomorrow.

Which 1983 computer popularized cut, copy and paste, a year before the same company's Macintosh?

Apple Lisa software tied the commands to a cluster of neighboring letter keys held with a special modifier, the same layout every Mac still uses.

Which older Windows paste shortcut, from the 1987 Common User Access standard, was never retired?

Shift+Insert was the paste command in the Common User Access rules, which gave early Windows and OS/2 programs one shared set of keys.

In a Linux terminal, Ctrl+C does not copy text, so what does it do to the running program?

Ctrl+C interrupts it by firing a signal called SIGINT, which usually makes the program quit, a convention Unix borrowed from Digital Equipment's operating systems.

In a PowerPoint slide show, pressing B does what to the display, with W as a paler alternative?

Pressing B turns it black until the key is pressed again, while W swaps the slide for a blank white one instead.

Which key is named after a code-switching idea that Bob Bemer brought to ASCII around 1960?

Escape began as a signal that the next character should be read in a special way; now the key mostly dismisses a pop-up box or stops the current task.

On Windows, Shift+F10 does the job of which mouse action, a trick for keyboards with no Menu key?

Right-click menus open at the highlighted item when Shift+F10 is pressed, a lifeline when the mouse fails or a laptop lacks the dedicated Menu key.

On old teleprinters, typing Ctrl+G sent a control code that made the receiving machine do what?

Ring a bell was the literal order, alerting the operator to an incoming message, and modern terminals still answer the same code with a warning sound.