Hello nice people!

The idea

Chrome and other modern web browsers have default keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + PageUp and Ctrl + PageDown to switch between tabs left and right. It’s well and good, but it’s absolutely uncomfortable to use!

What I believe you should do — is change these shortcuts to Alt + Z and Alt + X so that it’s very easy to use with your left hand only. This will make you so much more productive!

Technical details

If you use Opera Browser — you are in luck, it seems to be the only popular modern web browser with keyboard shortcut customization. Other browsers — you are a joke! Go to Settings -> type “configure shortcuts” into the search field there -> click “Configure shortcuts” item -> find “Switch left through tabs” and “Switch right through tabs” and add there Alt + Z and Alt + X respectively.

If you use Chrome, Firefox or Edge — use PowerToys -> Keyboard Manager to remap the keyboard shortcuts, like in the screenshot below.

For Safari — there are instructions online for changing the Safari shortcuts on the OS level, I can’t test it because I don’t have macOS. Something like this may work: https://medium.com/@standingdreams/changing-safari-keyboard-shortcut-to-change-tabs-or-any-mac-application-e06730faead2

Using Alt+Tab shortcut on Windows?

Check out my utility for an alternative behavior for Alt + Tab and Alt + Shift + Tab on Windows 10/11: https://medium.com/@dimich1993/small-guide-to-switchapps-utility-fc688f04cb12

Honorable mentions

• Alt + D is the default shortcut to focus on the address bar.
• Ctrl + T is the default shortcut to open a new tab, I suggest you replace it with Alt + N.
• Ctrl + N is the default shortcut to open a new window.
• Ctrl + W is the default shortcut to close the current tab, I suggest you replace it with Alt + W.
• Ctrl + Shift + T is the default shortcut to reopen a closed tab, I suggest you replace it with Alt + Shift + W.
• Ctrl + 1…9 is the default shortcut to jump to a specific tab, I suggest you replace it with Alt + 1…9. However it would be a lot of work to write a rule for every number, so do it last.

I have figured out my current approach to pain levels may be useful to some other people too. Especially since some people think it’s useless to rate their pain levels. 🙄

It starts with asking the other person:

how would you rate the kidney stone pain on a scale from 1 to 10?

If they or you don’t have the context — it’s widely considered as an extreme pain or the worst possible kind of pain, people call an ambulance with this level of pain.

• I personally was biting my blanket when I needed to scream at night for 9 hours, before I called an ambulance. I also had a nausea after 4 hours because of this pain. I only fell asleep after some infusions at the hospital.
• I had the same kind of pain for 1.5 hours a year earlier, that time it just went away with no consequences — I had described this pain to my family, for which I had no explanation back then, as a kind of thing dividing your life into before and after.

So… After I get an answer from the person, I tell them for me it’s level 8.

Level 8 is such a pain, that after 1–1.5 hours of it you become really disoriented, you barely know who you are, where you are or how much time had passed.

Now let’s go from the bottom up:

Level 1 is like a leg pain that you feel when you make a particular movement, but generally during a day you don’t remember about this pain, unless you do this movement again.

Level 2 is a pain that you are aware of all throughout the day, but you can do a full 8 hour workday without any compromises.

Level 4 is such a pain that after it starts during a workday, you would be able to push through the pain for 1–3 hours to finish the tasks, but it’s not sustainable any more after that, you would just collapse after that.

Level 6 — I make quiet sounds.

Level 7 — I make loud sounds.

Level 8 — I would be very disoriented after 1–1.5 hours of it.

I know I’m at level 6 or 7 after I notice that I’m making some sounds. Luckily at this level of pain you don’t have to think much, just notice you’re making sounds!

Levels 3 and 5 are somewhere between their neighbours.

Levels 9 and 10 I probably haven’t experienced, so I reserve them for the future.

In short, pain puts you out of this world.

Little humor

Hello nice people!

SwitchApps utility for Windows 10/11 changes the behavior of ‘Alt + Tab’ and ‘Alt + Shift + Tab’ keyboard shortcuts, to a behavior based on the order of apps on the Taskbar.

This means you finally have a predictable order of switching between apps!

If you’re familiar with switching between the tabs in your web browser with keyboard shortcuts ‘Ctrl + PageUp’ and ‘Ctrl + PageDown’ — this is a very similar idea. Under the hood it utilizes the ‘Win + T’ keyboard shortcut behavior.

Open the project’s GitHub repo

Download from the Releases page

Recommendations

1. Unpin the apps from the Taskbar for the best user experience.
2. I believe it’s best to disable the app grouping behavior on the Taskbar with:

• 7+ Taskbar Tweaker for Windows 10,
• Windhawk Mods for Windows 11.

However you can try it out without any of these changes.

More information and everything else related to the project development are available at the GitHub repo.

If you encounter any problems or have questions, please contact me on LinkedIn or create an Issue/Discussion on GitHub.

Technical details

The keyboard shortcut behaviors are implemented with an AutoHotKey script.

Then this script is packaged into an executable by AutoHotKey tool.

The installed is created with Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects, with custom C# .NET Framework 4.7 code for additional steps during install and uninstall.

During install:

• a Task Scheduler task for autostart is created,
• a couple of Registry keys are backed up and edited for the best user experience,
• a couple Start Menu shortcuts created to give a user the best control of the utility.

During uninstall:

• the Task Scheduler task will be removed,
• the Registry keys will be restored to the original (backed-up) values,
• the Start Menu shortcuts will be removed.

The installer logs into a file in the installation directory.

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\SwitchApps

The installer requires admin privileges for the best user experience, therefore you may not be able to install the app in some environments due to security concerns.

Open the project’s GitHub repo

Download from the Releases page

Hello nice people!

PourOverPotato app allows you to keep track of your various coffee beans and your pour over recipes. This is a much better solution than the paper notes, in my experience.

Open the app

If the user would close or reload the “Add recipe” page, the contents of the form fields will be remembered, to make it the most comfortable experience for the users.

When you edit a recipe or a coffee beans, the changed fields will have a green highlighted borders, so it’s easy to see every field that has unsaved changes.

The coffee beans name will be checked:

• to be a unique name,
• to contain at least 3 characters, not counting a possible whitespaces at both ends.

After deleting a recipe or coffee beans, the user will have 10 seconds to undo the deletion.

All user’s data is only saved inside the browser, it’s using the IndexedDB and LocalStorage APIs.

Probably the greatest feature is the ability to export and import your data into a file. When you import a file, the imported coffee beans and recipes will be deduplicated with the already present ones — it’s not perfect, but it works quite well. This way you can backup your data and transfer it to another device or to another browser on the current device.

And a word of caution — the browser may evict your saved data to free up the space on the device. So it’s recommended to enable persistent storage on the “other” page and to backup your data from time to time into a file.

The app was developed using SvelteKit and Svelte 4. It would be great to migrate to Svelte 5 once it’s released.

Open the app