One fine morning you wake up to find that your mouse is not obeying your commands anymore. You tap it, rub it on the desk, shake it and may be even bang it. But that stubborn thing just refuses to make your cursor move on the screen. To make things worse, you need to send a very important mail, to your boss or client at that very moment. This is when keyboard shortcuts come to the rescue. This article lists a set of Google Chrome Keyboard Shortcuts that are made easy to remember….

Here are five essential online tasks:-

• Getting Started
• Accessing Mails
• Searching the web using Google
• Tab and Window Operations
• Other Operations

Getting Started

Start Browser – Start Chrome

First thing you need to do is – launch or start the Google Chrome browser. Here’s how you do it:-

• Hit the Windows key
• Use Up-Arrow key to navigate to Programs
• Use the Right-Arrow key for the sub-menu
• Use combination of the Arrow keys to navigate to Google Chrome, its sub-menu, and to the browser launcher.
• Hit Enter key

Address Bar Keyboard Shortcut (Edit or Clear address bar)

Now that Google Chrome is launched, you’ll need to access or edit or clear the address bar

• Ctrl+L or F6 or Alt+D for highlighting URL in address bar
• Alternatively, Ctrl+K or Ctrl+E places a question mark ‘?’ in the address bar

Accessing an internet page

Type the URL in the address bar and hit Enter key to open a particular internet page.

Accessing Mails

Keyboard Shortcut for Mail

• Open sign-in page using the procedure mentioned above.
• Use Tab key and/or Shift+Tab to move to the username and password fields. [Using the Tab key lets you move to the next field, while Shift+Tab lets you move to the previous field.]
• Once username and password are entered, hit Enter key to sign-in.

Once you’ve signed in…

• Use Enter key to open the first email conversation.
• Use Backspace to go back to Inbox.
• Use J to move to the next (older) conversation.
• Use K to move to the previous (newer) conversation.
• In case there are clubbed conversations (2 or more emails stacked together – refer image below), use N to move to the next conversation and use P to move to the previous one. Use Enter key to expand a conversation.
• Use the Tab key to move between various options, like Inbox or Compose Mail. Hit Enter key to open the particular choice or to perform an action. For example, when composing an email, use the Tab key or Shift+Tab keys to move between various fields. After composing the email, again use Tab key to move to the Send option. Hit Enter key to send the mail.

Note:- For keyboard shortcuts to work for a particular email account, take Gmail for example, you need to enable Keyboard shortcuts in the settings. In case you’ve not already done this, you can still do it using the keyboard itself. Use Tab key to move to Settings. Hit Enter key to open Settings. Use Tab key again to move to “Keyboard shortcuts" option. If "Keyboard shortcuts off" has been selected, use the Down Arrow key to switch to "Keyboard shortcuts on". Again use Tab key to move to “Save changes” and then hit Enter key.

Searching the web using Google

Google Search Keyboard Shortcut

• Start Chrome browser.
• Edit the address bar.
• Type a keyword in it, or whatever you want to look for (which you would have otherwise typed in the Google search box).
• Hit Enter key.
• Use Tab to navigate to various links and/or text boxes.
• Use Arrow keys for scrolling through the web page.

Tab and Window Operations

Opening web pages in new tabs or new windows

If you want to open a particular link use the following shortcuts:-

• Use Enter to open the link in the same tab.
• Use Backspace to go to the previous page.
• Ctrl+Enter opens the link in a new tab.
• Ctrl+Tab switches to the next tab in the browser window.
• Ctrl+Shift+Enter opens the link in a new tab and switches to this newly opened tab.
• Shift+Enter opens the link in a new window and switches to the newly opened window.
• Alt+Tab can be used to move to the previously opened window.

New Tab Keyboard Shortcut and New Window Keyboard Shortcut

• Ctrl+T opens a new blank tab in the window.
• Ctrl+N opens a new blank window.
• Ctrl+Shift+N opens a window in incognito mode (Windows opened in this mode will not appear in the browser history. Any cookies planted by the websites will automatically be deleted when the window is closed).
• Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+8 open the first to the eighth tab respectively, in a window.
• Ctrl+9 opens the last tab in the window.
• Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+PgDown shifts to the next tab in a window.
• Ctrl+Shift+Tab or Ctrl+PgUp shifts to the previous tab in a window.
• Alt+Tab shifts to the previously viewed window. Hit Alt+Tab and keep the Alt key pressed down. This will show a small panel with all open windows, docs, programs, apps etc. By using Tab key you can navigate through them.
• Alt+Esc shifts between each and every opened window/app/doc in the reverse order that it was previously viewed.

Closing and re-opening tabs and windows (Other Tab and Window Keyboard Shortcuts)

• Ctrl+F4 or Ctrl+W closes the present tab or pop-up.
• Alt+F4 closes the present window.
• Ctrl+Shift+T re-opens the tab that was last closed. This key-combination can be used to re-open the last 10 closed tabs.

Note:- Suppose you close all Chrome windows, and then open a fresh Chrome window again, then this key-combination (Ctrl+Shift+T) opens the Chrome window that was closed last (including all tabs that were opened in that window, even if they exceed 10 tabs).

Other Page related shortcuts

• F5 or Ctrl+R reloads the web page
• Shift+F5 or Ctrl+F5 reloads the web page, ignoring cached content.
• Esc stops the loading of the page.
• Ctrl+U opens the source code of the current web page.
• Ctrl+D bookmarks the current web page.
• F11 toggles between full screen and exiting full screen.
• Ctrl and + enlarge the screen.
• Ctrl and – reduce the screen.
• Ctrl+0 returns to original page size.
• Ctrl+P prints the page.
• Ctrl+S saves the page.
• Home goes to the start of the page.
• End goes to the end of the page.

Other Operations

Toolbar and Menu Keyboard Shortcut

• Alt+Shift+T takes the cursor-focus to the first icon on the Chrome toolbar.
• Use the Left and Right Arrow keys to navigate to the rest of the icons on the toolbar.
• Use Up and Down Arrow keys for accessing and navigating through drop-down menus. To open sub-menus use the Right Arrow key. To close sub-menus use Left Arrow key.

• When the "Click to go back" arrow icon on the left-hand side of the toolbar is in focus, use Shift+F10 to see a list of pages viewed previously. Similarly, when the "Click to go forward" arrow icon is in focus, use Shift+F10 to see a list of pages viewed after the current page was viewed.
• Use Esc to close a drop-down/sub menu, or to move focus back to the current page.

Options Keyboard Shortcut – Accessing and Setting Options

In order to access and set Google Chrome Options, use the following shortcuts:-

• Use Alt+Shift+T to move focus to toolbar.
• Use Right Arrow key to move to Tools icon.
• Use Down Arrow key to drop down the tools menu and to move to Options.
• Hit Enter key to open it.
• Use Tab once to select any of the heading tabs (Basics, Personal Stuff, Under the Bonnet).
• Navigate through them using the Left and Right Arrow keys.
• To access the various options under a particular heading tab, select it and then use Tab to navigate between the options.
• To check or uncheck a box, use Space bar.

Once all settings are done, use the Tab key again to reach "Close" and then hit Enter key.

Other similar windows can be accessed and set in a similar manner.

Direct Menu Keyboard Shortcuts

Instead of following the above mentioned long path to access each and every icon in the Google Chrome Toolbar, there are direct shortcuts for each of them as well. Here we go…

• Browsing History Keyboard Shortcut

  • Backspace or Alt+Left-Arrow goes to the previous web-page in the browsing history.
  • Shift+Backspace or Alt+Right-Arrow goes to the next web-page in the browsing history.
  • Ctrl+H opens the browser history page in a new tab.
• Refresh Keyboard Shortcut
  • Shift+F5 or Ctrl+F5 reloads the current web-page.
• Home page – Home Keyboard Shortcut
  • Alt+Home opens the home page in the current window/tab.
• Bookmark Keyboard Shortcut
  • Ctrl+D bookmarks the current web-page.
  • Ctrl+B Toggles the Bookmark bar. (reveals and hides)
  • Ctrl+Shift+B opens the Bookmark Manager page in a new tab.
• Download Keyboard Shortcut
  • Ctrl+J opens the Downloads page in a new tab.
• Pages and Tools Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Alt+E drops down the Pages menu.
  • Alt+F drops down the Tools menu.
• Task Manager Keyboard Shortcut
  
  • Shift+Esc launches the Chrome specific Task Manager. This Task Manager will show only the Google Chrome related tabs and windows. If any particular window is hung, it can be closed without having to disturb other windows.
  • Use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to see the general Task Manager. This one too will show separate entries for each window.

When you open the Google Chrome specific Task Manager (first option),

• Use Tab key to shift between the main window area and the “Stats for nerds” option.
• When the main window area is selected, you can use the Up-Down Arrow keys to move between various open Chrome windows entries.
• Use Enter key to open a particular selected window.
• In case you want to close a particular window, select it, then use Tab key to move to the “End Process” button and then hit Enter key.
• To close Task Manager, use Esc.

Help Center Keyboard Shortcut

F1 opens Help Center in a new tab.

Right Click Keyboard Shortcut

Shift+F10

Copy Paste Keyboard Shortcuts

With Google Chrome, you can only copy links and content in text boxes. Web page content cannot be copied, unlike Mozilla Firefox.

In Firefox, there is an option under Tools > Options > Advanced > General tab, called “Always use the cursor keys to navigate within pages”. When this option is enabled, the arrow or cursor keys can be used to navigate through the content in the web page, just like in a Word document or textpad or notepad. Hence, if you wish to copy some text, you just need to place the cursor at the start of the text and then holding down the Shift key, use the arrow keys to select the required text and then copy the text using Ctrl+C.

However, with Google Chrome, this is not possible (or we haven’t come across a way to do it). If you want to copy a link use Shift+F10 to right click on it. Use the Down Arrow key to move to the “Copy Link” option. Then hit Enter key. You can copy-paste content in a text field (Ex:- username field) using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V in Chrome.

Search Keyboard Shortcut

• Ctrl+F shows the search bar on the top right hand corner of the page. Type the text to search and hit Enter. All matching texts in the page will be highlighted. Using Enter repeatedly takes the cursor to the next matching location.
• F3 or Ctrl+G as well opens the search bar on the top right hand corner of the page. You can use either of these to move to the next matching location for the text that you are searching for.
• Shift+F3 or Ctrl+Shift+G or Shift+Enter shows the previous matching location.

Some simple things to remember:-

• Enter key – generally used to open or launch something. It is equivalent to the left mouse button.
• Tab key – used for jumping from option to option, or field to field, or link to link. In other words, it will jump to every location in an order, on the webpage where some action can be performed.
• Arrow keys – used for scrolling. They can as well be used to switch between toggle options.
• Spacebar – generally performs the same funtion as Page-Down key on a web page. Works as a regular spacebar in text fields. Can as well be used to check or un-check tick-boxes.
• Esc – generally used to close a menu, or a sub-window, or to move focus back to the main window.