Avoiding the Mouse Trap: Tips to Navigate Your Computer with Only Your Keyboard
The mouse–keyboard combination is clearly a winning one, having dominated the way we interface with our computers since the boxy Apple Lisa and Macintosh in the early days of personal computing. Before the mouse became a standard partner to the keyboard, however, personal computing functions had to be accessed exclusively with a keyboard, and this ability to work your software with only keystrokes has been preserved.
I want to claim that since its introduction, the mouse — despite its many virtues — has become an oft-unnecessary crutch that computer users lean on for its point-and-click simplicity. It is superior to the keyboard in accessing certain functions and in doing certain things, but not nearly in all the cases for which it’s typically preferred.
In some cases, the crutch only perpetuates the limp.
For example, as an ergonomics expert recently pointed out in an information session at the company for which I work (Scribbr), the positioning of a mouse to one side of the keyboard can aggravate the tendon issues that harry so many desk jockeys. That’s one reason to get off the mouse. Secondly, while it may seem like only a few seconds are used moving hand to mouse and back, efficiency suffers when the mouse is used for things the keyboard can better accomplish. Each shift from keyboard to mouse and back accrues wasted moments, becoming minutes and hours.
The casual user might neglect their keyboard without consequence, but workers for whom the keyboard is a central tool are differently positioned. If you’re a typical example of such a worker, you’ve probably got nothing to lose and some functionality to gain by moving to a more keyboard-oriented approach to navigate your computer. Happily, using the keyboard to do more is quite easy.
Below are 3 basic tips for keyboard navigation and 10 basic keyboard commands whose functions you probably access instead with your mouse. I list the few tips and commands you need to go from a mouse-heavy computer user, laden with the weight of the point-and-click, to a mouse-light computer cruiser, skipping gaily through your digital playground. My sense is that the most common (ab)uses of the mouse involve switching between windows, adjusting their size or placement, and selecting functions from menus, so I’ve looked primarily at these.
This list is not nearly exhaustive, but it puts a range of central functions literally at your fingertips, moving them in from arm’s length. I should say that these are PC-specific shortcuts — sorry Mac users; being not of your tribe, I’m of limited use to you here. While I’m sure that equivalent functions can be accessed on Macs, I am wholly ignorant of these.
3 basic tips for keyboard navigation
1. Alt rules. Truly. The Alt key is essential to access all sorts of keyboard functions. There are too many to list here, but in many programs, Alt + F will bring you to the File menu, for example, where you’ll typically be able to select functions to Save your document or to Open a new document, among others. MS Word has a particularly helpful system by which Alt can be stroked to overlay MS Word functions with letters, which can then be stroked to access those functions. For example, open an MS Word document and hit alt, then observe the H over the “Home” tab.
2. Try hitting the keys for the underlined letters in the words of your menus. You might notice that many of the descriptions of features in your menus use words with one underlined letter. With your menu open, you can usually simply hit that letter to trigger the desired function. For example, in a Google Doc, Alt + F will open the File menu, and then O will trigger the “Open” function.
3. Tab to cycle forward, and Shift into reverse. In any number of keyboard-command contexts, the Tab key will allow you to cycle forward to select various options. To get a basic sense of how this works, open a web page and start spamming your Tab key. You’ll notice that you’re cycling through different links and such, which you can select with Enter, if you like. Use Shift + Tab, and you’ll notice that you’re cycling in the opposite direction. Although I would not advise you normally navigate web pages in this way, since your mouse probably is faster here, the same cycle-forward and cycle-backward principles apply widely in digital life.
10 specific keyboard commands that will save you time and keep your hand out of the mouse trap
1. Alt + Tab. Cycle through different programs. Switch between text documents, into your dictionary to find an unfamiliar word, or to your music player to wind back that final, ferocious chorus from Alanis Morrissette’s “You Oughta Know.” Use Ctrl +Alt + Tab to have your overview of your different programs linger after you’ve released your modifier keys (i.e., after you’ve released Ctrl + Alt). Add Shift to your Alt +Tab to cycle backwards.
2. Ctrl + Tab. Cycle through tabs in your web browser. Move from a search page to a dictionary to a thesaurus. Add Shift to cycle backwards.
3. Ctrl + T. Open a new tab in your web browser.
4. Ctrl + L. Open the text box for your web browser’s address bar; type the address of a new website.
5. Ctrl + F. Access the text-search function in almost any program that allows you to search for text.
6. Windows + Arrow keys. With ← and →, move your windows from left to right, even between screens. With ↑ and ↓, minimize or maximize windows. (The Windows key can be elusive, and some keyboards may not have it; it’s usually between Alt and Ctrl on either the left or the right of your space bar, and it has the Windows symbol on it.)
7. Windows + D. Minimize all windows and return your view to your desktop. This option is great if you want to quickly open a note or file you’ve left yourself on your desktop. Use this command again to return all windows you’ve just closed, or pair it with Alt + Tab to return quickly to only the window in which you were working before you went to your desktop view.
8. Windows + E. Open File Explorer. Depending on whether and how you use Windows Explorer, this command may seem either a groundbreaking shortcut or a useless one. If you primarily manage and select your stored files through File Explorer, this shortcut is great.
9. F2. Rename any file or folder you have selected.
10. The classics. I’ve smuggled four shortcuts into this one list item because I suspect most readers will know these already:
· Alt + F4. Close any program.
· Ctrl + Alt + Delete. Open the Task Manager.
· Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y. Undo and redo, respectively.
· Ctrl + X and (Shift +) Ctrl + V. Cut and paste, respectively; add Shift to your paste to paste only the text and not its formatting.
