109 BRILLIANT TECH HACKS

109 BRILLIANT TECH LIFE HACKS FOR SMART USERS (YOU NEVER USED BEFORE). 

 

Technology has made our lives much easier, and knowing how to use it in our favor is an excellent way to increase productivity.

A life hack is a strategy, technique, trick, or shortcut that can help make life easier – by speeding up efficiency, enhancing productivity, and sometimes minimizing a source of annoyance with a quick trick. That’s as close to a dictionary definition as you can get.

Love them or hate them, life hacks have become so ingrained in our online lives that there are sites and videos dedicated to sharing these hacks (or debunking them).

In this compilation, we want to share with you 109 of my favorite tech life hacks. You might have heard of some of them, especially when it comes to keyboard shortcuts and handy online tools and websites

#1
To quickly change the case (upper vs. lower) of text in Microsoft Word, highlight the phrase, then hit Shift + F3. Changes cycle through all lowercase, first letter capitalized, and all in uppercase.

#2
To get quick summaries of articles online, get and use the Chrome extension TLDR 35. The plugin shows you the gist of the article so you can figure out if you want to read the whole thing.

#3
To re-open an accidentally closed browser tab, use Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + T.

#4
To get a tough-to-crack password, use non-English characters on your keyboard.

#5
To proofread a long essay, paste your article in Google Translate 8 and listen to it. This makes it easier to pick up mistakes, and the tool itself can help you pick up minor typos.

#6
Run your writing or document past AfterTheDeadline 31 to clear typos, grammar mistakes and get help with writing styles.

#7
If you save your Powerpoint presentation in .PPS instead of .PPT, your file goes into slideshow mode when you open it.

#8
Want to charge your phone faster? Put it in Airplane Mode. (Editor’s note: We did a small experiment on this and found the difference to be only 3 minutes, but technically, it’s still “faster”.)

#9
Search for a domain name across multiple TLDs and how much they cost via iwantmyname.com 18.

#10
Hanging a picture but don’t have a level? Well, your iPhone can help. Open Measure app, tap Level and lay your phone flat against the surface to achieve a well-balanced hang.

#11
Want a quick way to unfreeze a frozen phone? Plug it into its charger.

#12
Hitting the Spacebar scrolls down a web page; hitting the Spacebar + Shift lets you scroll back up.

#13
Attach bread clips to each cable or power cord, then label the clips with a pen or marker to reflect which cable is which.

#14
Keep a list of numbers of your credit card companies or hotlines to cancel your cards quickly, in case you lose your wallet or phone. You can do this on paper on in an email.

#15
Store some emergency cash in between the small space of your phone and its phone case, just in case.

#16
Someone needs to use your iPhone to make a call? Use Siri from the lock screen to make the call. The person has no access to any other app on your phone this way.

#17
Got yet another call from a telemarketer? Press the volume down button to quickly mute the ringer.

#18
Your best search mate for college assignments is not google.com. Use scholar.google.com 14 instead. Try adding “PDF” to find downloadable copies.

#19
Laptop batteries can last longer if you charge them up to only 80% instead of the full 100%.

#20
If you can’t remember the title of a song but you know the melody or lyrics to it, hum/sing it on Midomi 9 to get the title.

#21
When booking flights or hotels online, clear cookies before you start looking, or shop in Incognito mode, for lower prices.

#22
The best background music to work to with minimal disruption is video game soundtracks.

#23
Want to play Tetris on Mac? On Terminal, type Emacs then press Enter. Press Esc + X, type tetris and Enter. Use the arrow keys to move and rotate your Tetris blocks.

#24
To find the solution to one of your many computer troubleshooting issues, add “Solved” to sift through the results.

#25
Use SelfControl 13 to block social network sites for a period of time. Cool app, ironic name.

#26
For an equal split of sound of your tunes when sharing your headphones with a friend, turn on the Mono audio option on your phone.

#27
Shave a few bucks off your groceries, by using Lozo 5 to find discount coupons for the stuff you need.

#28
Saving an Excel file as an .XLSB will shrink the size by half or 75%.

#29
Someone’s incessant morning alarm is going off but the owner is refusing to get up and turn it off? Call the phone to turn it off for them.

#30
If you buy a product on Amazon, and there is a price drop within 7 days, you can get a refund on the price difference.

#31
To prevent sending emails to the wrong person, write your email first, and write your recipient last.

#32
If your printer is out of black ink, change the font color to #010101 for 99% grey.

#33
The best type of music to work to is a video game soundtrack because they are designed to not mess with your focus.

#34
Find yourself in a hotel without your charger? Check the TV for a USB plugin.

#35
The Bohemian Rhapsody 9 is the perfect music piece to test headphones and speakers to because of the range of highs and lows.

#36
Have an old cassette case lying around? Don’t chuck it out, use it as a holder or stand for your mobile phone.

#37
Want a quick way to turn part of a YouTube video into a GIF? Add “GIF” after “www.” and before “youtube” in the URL of the video .

#38
To paste copied text without the formatting, use Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + V.

#39
In Chrome, click Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + Del to quickly access the “Clear Browsing Data” Window.

#40
To find sample tests for a looming exam, search “site:edu [subject] exam”.

#41
Can’t watch YouTube videos that have been age restricted but don’t want to sign in to do so? In the URL, delete the “watch?v=” and replace it with “v/”.

#42
To bypass a website block by your school or office, use Google Translate 8 as a proxy by pasting the url of the site into it.

#43
Make a small knot at either side of the earphone to identify left or right side of the earphones.

#44
In the iPhone Calculator app, swipe left or right to delete the last number.

#45
If you live near a stadium or a hall that hosts public venues, set Google Alerts for the location to avoid being “surprised” by sudden traffic congestion.

#46
Take pictures of important notices, receipts, invitations, business cards, shopping lists for easy access. Never lose your paper trail again.

#47
If you need to remember the time for something, make a miss call to any number to get a (very precise) timestamp.

#48
Want to surprise someone at the airport but don’t know their arrival time or flight number? Google where they’re flying from and to, and the airline they are on e.g. Singapore Airlines Singapore to London. You’ll get all the info you need.

#49
Set important lists e.g. schedule, events, shopping list, errands, as the wallpaper for your phone.

#50
If you hit Shift + Volume up / down on Mac, a sound is emitted indicating the intensity of the volume.

#51
The easiest way to crank up your smartphone’s speaker volume is using an empty cup.

#52
Take a picture of business cards people hand you, just in case you lose it.

#53
Bounce batteries to see if their are good or bad. The higher they bounce, the lower the charge they have in them. Here’s a cool video 7 illustrating that.

#54
This one’s for developers who wonder what technologies and services are running under the hood in websites. Dissect a site with BuiltWith.com 5.

#55
Send notes that will self-destruct after it is read or after a specific number of days, via privnote.com 7.

#56
Need sound clips? Check out freesound.org 8 for very specific sound bits.

#57
To delete files or folders quickly without dragging it to the trash bin, just use Shift + Del .

#58
Smallpdf 4 is a fun place where PDFs go to be converted to and from other formats such as JPG, PPT, Word and Excel. They also unlock, split and merge PDFs.

#59
Have a lot of tabs open on Chrome? Use Cmd + 1, 2, 3 to go to specific tabs based on their position, or use Cmd + Tab to just cycle through the tabs.

#60
Tap on K to pause a Youtube video, no matter where you click last in the same page.

#61
To scroll sideways or horizontally on a web page, press down on Shift then scroll on your mouse.

#62
Pressing down on Cmd then scrolling on your mouse, zooms in or out of the web page you’re on.

#63
Click on a link with your mouse’s scroll button to open it in another browser tab.

#64
Have a lot of tabs open? Click on a browser tab with your mouse’s scroll button to quickly close tabs you don’t need.

#65
Install multiple applications at once with the help of Ninite 5. It’s the ultimate time-saver.

#66
On Mac, Ctrl + Click works the same way as a right-click on the mouse.

#67
Don’t want your searches on Google to be location-based? Then go to google.com/ncr 8. NCR stands for “no country redirect”.

#68
Turn your handwriting into a font with MyScriptFont 9.

#69
In Excel, to highlight the whole row (horizontal) use Shift + Spacebar, and to highlight the whole column (vertical), use Control + Spacebar.

#70
Many tech companies have a status page that lets you know of their services are down. For instance, here are the links to go to for the status pages for Apple and Facebook 1.

#71
The Youtube Audio Library 8 has music you can download and put into any of your YouTube videos. it’s copyright free.

#72
Stay ahead of important dates like game, movie and album releases, major events and more with the help of Forekast 5.

#73
Need a mirror fast? Turn on your smartphone’s front-facing camera, like you would when you take a selfie.

#74
Don’t know which smartphone to buy? Use this ProductChart 11 to help you narrow down your choices based on your preferences.

#75
Shop with Honey 2 to get the best coupons collected and applied to every online purchase you make.

#76
Want to insert a new key into your keyring? Use a coin to keep the ring apart and slot in your new key.

#77
Don’t throw away the box your smartphone came in. They are great, sturdy storage spaces to store charging cables and earphones you want to keep with you while travelling.

#78
To make sure someone isn’t giving you a fake number, read the number back to them incorrectly and see if they correct you. If they do correct you, then it’s the right number.

#79
Stumped by a math problem? Get the PhotoMath 5 app and scan the math problem with your phone and the app will solve it for you.

#80
Put an emergency contact number and a name on your lock screen, in case you lose your phone.

#81
Use crocodile clips to organize, separate and keep your cables within reach.

#82
For quick dictionary meanings, google “define: [your search term]”.

#83
Learned a new word but not sure how to use it? Google the word then refine the search results to “News” to see the word in practical use.

#84
If you see an attire on TV and want to own the same attire, this site WornOnTV.net 6 helps you to easily find the clothes they were wearing.

#85
To download a Youtube video, insert “ss”, after www. and before youtube.com 1.

#86
When playing a mobile game, the easiest way to stop ads is to play it in Airplane Mode.

#87
For smarter search results, use WolframAlpha.com 9.

#88
View, Edit or annotate PDF documents online via PDFEscape.com. 3. there are few more nowadays.

#89
With Marker.to 3 you can highlight parts of a webpage with “yellow marker”, then share the annotated page with friends with a link.

#90
Write, edit, print and share complete music sheets with Noteflight. It’s also a great collaborative tool used in music classes.

#91
Darker wallpaper or themes can help save 6%-8% of battery life for smartphones with AMOLED screens.

#92
To runs searches in Gmail more accurately, use quote marks “” with your keyword for example “invoice“.

#93
Use has:attachment in Gmail search to list all emails that have attachments.

#94
To get the time and weather of a city, just google “[location] time” or “[location] weather”. Example “LA time” or “LA Weather“.

#95
Do Nothing for 2 Minutes 10is a website that wants you to do nothing except stay calm, and listen to their wave music for 2 minutes.

#96
With TextExpander’s bit.ly script 3, you can shorten any URL in practically less than 1 second.

#97
By using Dropbox’s Carousel 1 media gallery, you will be rewarded with 3GB additional storage space in Dropbox. (Note: This has been discontinued March 31, 2016).

#98
To shoot Panorama photos on iOS in a different direction, simply tap on the arrow to switch from left to right, or right to left.

#99
You can take a snapshot of video you are watching via VLC Media Player. Hit Shift + S on Windows, or Cmd + Alt + S on macOS.

#100
Your headphones double as a mic - Need a microphone but don’t want to spend money on one? Easy.

Grab any pair of headphones lying around, then plug them into the microphone jack, and start talking. This isn’t exactly secret knowledge, but if you don’t know about it, we think it’ll blow your mind. Of course, the quality isn’t amazing, but you can’t have it all.

#101
Find the cheapest place to stream a movie from - For those of you who are cable-cutters, you’ll love this site: CanIStream.It 3 tells you where any movie is available to stream - and at the lowest price too.

#102
Quickly dial back your last caller - Want to call back the last number you dialed or received a call from? The quickest way is to hit the call button on your phone. It’ll dial back their number. There’s no need to access your contacts or call lists.

#103
Determine how long a book will take to read - Those of you who are super-efficient would probably like to know how long it’ll take you to get through a specific book before you sit down to start reading it.

Well, a website called HowLongToReadThis.com 10 actually estimates the time required to read any book. And it’s very accurate too, in our tests anyway.

#104
Use Google to set a timer - If you need to keep track of the timer or have an alarm go off in a while to remind you to do something, Google’s there to help. Simply type “start a timer” into the search engine to do just that.

#105
On calculator, the C (clear) button is to clear all entries, whereas the CE (clear entry) button is to clear the most recent entry only.

#106
Are you looking for software similar to Photoshop? SumoPaint.com 7 is the closest online free version of Photoshop.

#107
To extend the laptop’s battery lifespan, try to keep the battery meter between 40% and 80%.

#108
Want to edit an online image in Paint? Paste the image URL directly into Paint to open it.

#109
Set “@@” as the keyboard shortcut for your email address. Now you don’t have to type your email again and again.

 I found these brilliant life hax from one of my resources and sharing with you guyz now. The credits goes to the respected actual owner.

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