Computer use efficiency tools! These are fun. (My workplace and especially my team are quite into these.) Here’s a few of my favorite (I use Mac+Chrome).
1. Custom search engines in Chrome: not only does typing some search terms in the URL bar by default do a Google search, but also you can make it so, say, you type “mw word” and it’ll open up the definition of “word” on Merriam-Webster’s website, and/or you type “w word” and it’ll open up the Wikipedia page for “word”. (This works for any kind of URL where there’s a predictable pattern that you just need to slot a thing into. I use it most frequently for opening up specific cases in a certain system, given a case number.) Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines.
2. Chrome bookmark bar, more efficient: if you delete all text from a bookmark title, the bookmark will appear as just the logo, and you can fit tons of sites you often visit into just a bit of the bar.
(I have: Google Play Music, Workflowy, new Google doc, new Google spreadsheet, a particular Discord channel, Feedly, Evernote, Google Drive, Riot (messaging app), WordReference (multi-language dictionary), Journey (journaling app), LW; this takes up about 3 inches of bookmark bar space.)
If you have lots of bookmarks and they lend themselves to categorization, you can put a bunch of folders in the bookmarks bar and access everything from there.
3. New Google doc/spreadsheet in one click by bookmarking these:
(side note: I’d known for a while that this can be done but didn’t know how, and this Yoda timer spurred me to finally go find the answer, so thanks!)
4. TextExpander is a program that lets you make custom shortcuts for text strings—useful if there are things you find yourself typing very often. It’s extremely useful to me in my job and moderately useful in my personal computer use. However, it’s not free; my employer pays for me to have it, so I don’t know if there’s a decent free alternative.
Computer use efficiency tools! These are fun. (My workplace and especially my team are quite into these.) Here’s a few of my favorite (I use Mac+Chrome).
1. Custom search engines in Chrome: not only does typing some search terms in the URL bar by default do a Google search, but also you can make it so, say, you type “mw word” and it’ll open up the definition of “word” on Merriam-Webster’s website, and/or you type “w word” and it’ll open up the Wikipedia page for “word”. (This works for any kind of URL where there’s a predictable pattern that you just need to slot a thing into. I use it most frequently for opening up specific cases in a certain system, given a case number.) Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines.
2. Chrome bookmark bar, more efficient: if you delete all text from a bookmark title, the bookmark will appear as just the logo, and you can fit tons of sites you often visit into just a bit of the bar.
(I have: Google Play Music, Workflowy, new Google doc, new Google spreadsheet, a particular Discord channel, Feedly, Evernote, Google Drive, Riot (messaging app), WordReference (multi-language dictionary), Journey (journaling app), LW; this takes up about 3 inches of bookmark bar space.)
If you have lots of bookmarks and they lend themselves to categorization, you can put a bunch of folders in the bookmarks bar and access everything from there.
3. New Google doc/spreadsheet in one click by bookmarking these:
Docs: docs.google.com/create
Sheets: sheets.google.com/create
(side note: I’d known for a while that this can be done but didn’t know how, and this Yoda timer spurred me to finally go find the answer, so thanks!)
4. TextExpander is a program that lets you make custom shortcuts for text strings—useful if there are things you find yourself typing very often. It’s extremely useful to me in my job and moderately useful in my personal computer use. However, it’s not free; my employer pays for me to have it, so I don’t know if there’s a decent free alternative.