Undocumented Shortcuts & Tricks

I want to experiment with shorter, more link-rich blog posts. I also love tips and tricks that are based on nifty little things not really documented anywhere that work reliably. So, without further ado:

Skip DVD Trailers and Copyright Warnings

Credit to Lifehacker for this find: you can often skip the trailers, copyright warnings, and other crap at the front of DVDs by pressing Stop, Stop, Play on your remote. If that doesn’t work, pressing Stop three times instead of two, and still following it by Play, can work. The comments suggest that this is hit-or-miss, and that in some cases it may start over from the very beginning of the disk, sending you backwards, not forwards. But worth a try next time you’re stuck watching several minutes of unwanted previews, for sure.

Learn the Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts

This isn’t actually undocumented, since I’m linking to the documentation for the list. Firefox has a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for things that normally take a bit of mouse use. For example:

  • Cmd+K will jump to the search bar.
  • Cmd+L will jump to the location bar.
  • Cmd+1 will jump to the first tab. (This works for 1-8, actually, not just 1, but counting tabs is probably more work than just clicking on the right one.)
  • Cmd+9 will always jump to the last tab, regardless of how many you have open.
  • Cmd+Shift+T will undo closing the most recent tab. Wish I’d known about this one sooner!
  • Cmd+Shift+P will enable private browsing, which has a lot of non-sketchy uses as the linked article mentions
  • Cmd+Shift+F will toggle full-screen mode. If you’re only browsing the web, this is handy.
  • Cmd+F to search on page is easy and well-known, but did you know that Cmd+G will jump to the next match?

Adjust the Volume and Brightness on a Mac Like a Pro

The Mac has dedicated keys to turn the volume and screen brightness up or down, but Lifehacker has two neat tricks I’ve never seen before, both of which are first-rate:

  • Holding Option+Shift while adjusting volume or brightness will allow “fine-tuning” the volume by moving in much smaller steps, rather than going a whole “block” at a time. Not always useful, but if you ever need it, there it is. (Of course, if you have the buttons set up so you need to press Function while adjusting them, so that your F-keys are available to applications, Option+Shift+Function is an extremely hard key combination to pull off.)
  • Holding Shift while adjusting volume suppresses the irritating volume-change noise.

2 thoughts on “Undocumented Shortcuts & Tricks

  1. I watch a ton of movies, and I didn’t know about skipping the legal warnings. Honestly, I feel that the movie industry is kind of preaching to the choir when they include those. Seriously guys? I just spent $30 on a DvD, and now you are going to lecture me on pirating?

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