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We’ve come a long way with technology. These days, you can stream almost any song in seconds, get food or groceries delivered without talking to a single person, and even use AI to help you learn a new language. It’s kind of overwhelming when you stop to think about it.
But even with all these digital conveniences, many of us still aren’t using them to their full potential. That’s why Redditors decided to share some of their favorite internet hacks that make everyday life a little easier. From shortcuts that instantly reopen that tab you accidentally closed to underrated websites you’ll want to bookmark, check them out below—they might just come in handy.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
There's a Chrome extension that turns all pictures of Trump into kittens.
it's called Make America Kittens Again and it has made my viewing experience a little less insufferable.
Tucker Cahooter 8 months ago
Is there any chance that a real life version of this can be done?
Earonn - 8 months ago
It would probably require a Luigi-action and exposing a poor kitten to the likes of the couchfucker, but other than that there shouldn't be a problem.
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Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
This is the most important and useful thing I heave learned so far this year.
Lila Allen 8 months ago
I fully agree. I sent it to my friend whose anxiety is over the top right now
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Lila Allen 8 months ago
I feel like this improves the quality of my news experience.
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Bryn 8 months ago
Google it. Each browser has it's own instructions on how to install an extension
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R Ferreira 8 months ago
But with it you make the Orange Man a better person than he is and the kittens worse animals than they are.
RELATED:
#2
I always complete my emails and look over them before I put the destination email addresses in. Prevents me from accidentally sending something I don’t want to send.
Hippopotamuses 8 months ago
Good idea. Also, never send an email when you're angry with someone.
Brian Droste 8 months ago
Save it and wait 12 to 24 hours before you send it. After you calm down and see if you really want to send it then.
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Scott Rackley 8 months ago
Here's a tip. Write your emails in wordpad or notepad, then copy/paste when you're satisfied. Why? Neither of those programs have a send button.
SirWriteALot 8 months ago
how many times have I send an incomplete email by pressing ctrl-enter instead of shift-enter ...
#3
If you put swear words in your search, you won't get the AI generated answer.
Another Panda 8 months ago
I hate AI everywhere. And it’s search answers are almost always wrong.
#4
Delete your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. it will help your mental health and save you time. Also, unsub from any political subreddit.
Hippopotamuses 8 months ago (edited)
So pleased that I don't have these. Mind you. Facebook occasionally reminds me that I have 'forgotten' to complete my registration by failing to accept the Terms and Conditions. I didn't forget. I found them unacceptable!
Lila Allen 8 months ago
Ok I am really sorry, but I have to do this. I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do.....
Load More Replies... Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
Killing off the Metaverse was an incredible help to my mental health. (Never had Twitter.) Killing off SmartNews was almost as good. No news app = no doomscrolling.
Lady Eowyn 8 months ago
I only use facebook, and not all the time. I just went on for easier communication with an old friend.
Patricia Steward 8 months ago
If you don't know what's going on, you can't do anything about it.
Earonn - 8 months ago
So, then where do you get your information about what is going on politically? BBC (don't!). Fox (OMG!). Nobody says you have to be active, or that one cannot take a break, but shouldn't adult citizens with the right to vote put up the effort to try and understand what's going on in their country?
Jaya 8 months ago
Using social media for news is a horrible idea. You'll get bombarded with fake and overexaggerated news. I'd say if you wanna know what's going on politically, get OFF social media.
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Science Nerd 8 months ago (edited)
One concerning thing is that I get emails from Facebook suggesting that I should either follow a specific group or friend a specific person. The problem is that I’ve never had a Facebook account, yet these suggestions were actually accurate. Meta knows enough about me to make suggestions, even though I’ve never knowingly given it any personal information. Big Brother is watching, but he is not necessarily the government, although I don’t have high expectations there either.
TotallyNOTAFox 8 months ago
I'm a professional, I never had an account on any of these websites to begin with
Science Nerd 8 months ago (edited)
Doesn’t always help. I’ve never had a social media account anywhere other than indeed, which I deleted a while back, but Meta still has a lot of information about me. Being a professional something doesn’t help.
Load More Replies... #5
Tired of looking up photos and getting AI images? Add “before:2022” to the end of your Google searches.
Similarly you can specify exact dates “before:YYYY-MM-DD” or search for anything “after:YYYY-MM-DD” as well.
Lila Allen 8 months ago
Good to know... Thank you. I often have to put images in assignments for students to clarify and this helps.
#6
Use duck duck go for your searches. Seriously.
CF 8 months ago
Been using DDG for BP for months now and zero ads. It's amazing, since the BP app sensed any ad blockers I downloaded.
Scarlett O'Hara's Ghost 8 months ago
Me too! Since the whole subscription thing started bp had been unbearable! Now I'm using ddg in other places... It's addicting
Load More Replies... Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
DuckDuckGo is VERY stubborn about not letting you entirely exclude things from searches. That is exactly as infuriating as you think it's going to be.
Ace 8 months ago
Been using this for years, but a lot of the things that used to better than google have now ceased to work a they used to. Recently started use Brave, browser and search engine. It's a little different, can't say yet if it's better or not.
Lame Llama 8 months ago
Duckduckgo has really bad search results 15 years ago and still do. I've tried to use them many times, I really did, but no thanks. As long as I'm online, my privacy is somewhat compromised anyway.
Pencil 8 months ago
What do you mean "bad search results?" I've used DDG for years and can always find what I'm looking for. [This isn't a dig, I'm genuinely asking.] The only time I use Google is for maps.
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#7
Before submitting a lot of text in an online form, copy it with CTRL/CMD+C in case your login timed out or the page crashes when you submit. At least you won’t have to type it again.
Hippopotamuses 8 months ago
This is a great idea. The number of times I've written a good question, complaint, etc. and wiped it out by brushing against the wrong key on my laptop.
Silberwolf 8 months ago
And you can also copy/paste your text in a word-processing-program in case your computer crashes.
Bacon Tentacles 8 months ago (edited)
I recommend doing this for Bored Panda comments as well, since they apparently get annoyed if you post them too quickly and yell at you (instead of, ya know, acknowledging that if there is a thread with 25 posts, there is a good chance you're gonna comment on all of them). Seriously, BP, stop f*****g complaining.
#8
I use -ai at the end of a Google search to get rid of that stupid ai overview thing.
Earonn - 8 months ago
Swearing would be the more fun way, though. But -ai is SFW :p
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Bartlet for world domination 8 months ago
https://udm14.com/ and the udm14 extensions do the same.
#9
Block people more liberally. If someone's saying things that make me uncomfortable or upset? Boom, blocked. It's so much better than getting into arguments or having my mood lowered when I'm trying to do something fun..
Earonn - 8 months ago
This. There are opinions I don't need to listen to. Ukraine started the war? Block. Tate is sooo innocent? Block. Their only argument is calling the other a 'r****d'? Block. Doesn't mean living in a bubble - you just filter out the nasties and trolls. And they aren't providing anything of worth anyway.
Hoi-Polloi 8 months ago
Too many people have forgotten the art of Letting People Be Wrong On The Internet.
Vinny DaPooh 8 months ago
On the off chance it is someone that you can't block, many social media platforms give you the option of unfollowing them or not giving you their content. Semantically it has the same effect but you don't have to spend time explaining to the family why you blocked mom.
Richienotsorich 8 months ago
Yes - this. Those trolls in your family/friend group...just have them as acquaintances only.
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#10
Use https://cooked.wiki/ to view just recipes -- skip the long, meandering essay that leads up to what you really want. It's like a super-power.
2donuts4elephants:
In a similar vein to save time, justwatch.com has a comprehensive list of where you can find a movie or TV show on streaming services without having to look up each one individually. It's immensely helpful.
Rosie 8 months ago
My fav is letterboxd. You can also keep track of what you want to watch. [deleted by mistake]
Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
...and they link to JustWatch to show you where it's available. Double utility! (Unless you're an idiot like me who has a 10k+ movie watchlist, sigh.)
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Mel in Georgia 8 months ago
I know a lot of people complain about the fluff in online recipes, but that's how they make enough money to make them available. Most have "jump to recipe" at the top, and I'm fine with that.
#11
Ctrl+Shift+t
Reopens the last browser tab that was closed. Really handy when you accidentally close the wrong tab.
poop_pants_pee:
Ctrl+shift+K
Duplicates whatever tab you have open. I use it when I don't want to lose my place but want to search elsewhere on the page.
Lame Llama 8 months ago (edited)
You can also look into your browser history and reopen any tab that you had opened. Even the whole browser with multiple tabs if you have accidentally closed the browser.
Neb 8 months ago
Eh, this might be an issue if the tab was opened not today and difficult to recognize (e.g. multiple tabs with similar emails, tickets, requests, comments...)
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Ace 8 months ago
The second one is browser-specific. My quick sample shows that it works in Edge but not Firefox or Brave.
Anony Mouse 8 months ago
And nobody in their right mind would choose Edge.
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Don't listen to me 8 months ago (edited)
Nonsense. Not a software hack! It's a Windows thing.
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Bacon Tentacles 8 months ago
Not sure what browser you're using, but Ctrl+Shift+K does not appear to work on Chromium based browsers. At least not out of the box, anyway - guessing there is a keyboard shortcut setting page somewhere...maybe. Of course, you can just right-click on the tab and pick Duplicate, but that's, like, eww, work. I'm a keyboard shortcut guy. Don't make me go to the mouse.
nottheactualphoto 8 months ago
Keyboard shortcuts from MS Windows don't work on other platforms.
Load More Replies... Brian Droste 8 months ago
I mostly use my tablet. There are three parallel bars on the bottom of my tablet. If I accidentally back out of my browser page, most times if I hit those three bars it will bring my page back up.
Stephen Gross 8 months ago
FYI: I installed Duplicate Chrome Tab extension to get ctrl-shift-K to work.
#12
Don't engage with a******s, just block and move on, it'll save you a load of stress.
Pencil 8 months ago
Don't even bother downvoting trolls. You're just giving them the attention they want. If everyone just completely ignored them all the time, they'd stop.
Lee451 Henderson 8 months ago
I have realized that nost trolls are offering an opinion that one does not approve of.
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Gordon Guitar 7 months ago
awesome laptop balancing skills. It's why they used to be called laptops.
Lila Allen 8 months ago
But slowly trolling tolls is my best stress reliever. I'm not trying to convince them. I'm just enjoying watching them invent better and better mental gymnastics to maintain their world view. It's hilarious.
#13
Get off the internet every now and then.
#14
Regarding troubleshooting when it comes to software based issues, at the end of your query, type [solved] and you'll get a bunch of topics with proven fixes.
For eg: resident evil 3 pc frame drops [solved].
#15
Get a good password manager and use it as a browser extension. In itself a great way to create unique and strong passwords.
A really good benefit however, is that if you ever accidentally click on a phishing link to a service you use, the password manager won't auto fill your credentials. This should immediately indicate to you that you are not are the site you thought you were.
Robert Beveridge 8 months ago (edited)
ProTip: Opera has one built in. [edit: And Opera's ability to sync between devices means your passwords are on all your devices.]
chris Cannon 8 months ago
I use Keepass; it's a standalone app that works pretty well. There's a version for phones and computers of all kinds.
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Kris 8 months ago
sure, its....***********************************************
Load More Replies... Bacon Tentacles 8 months ago
I hear BitWarden is excellent. Hard part is getting all of my devices to use the same manager.
#16
If you need to see a saved password, but the site doesn't have an "eye" option to reveal it
highlight the dots that are your password, right click, select "inspect element" or similar, go to the "type" field and change the "password" word to anything and press enter, your password will be revealed.
marcelo D. 8 months ago
if a password is saved in your browser you can see them all in the settings by going into passwords. Saving passwords in a browser is extremely unsafe, and they aren't hidden in any way or encrypted. Use a password manager
Neb 8 months ago
Not sure where are you getting your info from. I tried looking up "Is passwords encrypted" for the main browsers, and all of them said they store passwords encrypted.
Load More Replies... SirWriteALot 8 months ago
Heh heh ... I use the inspector ALL the time but this never ocurred to me.
#17
Press Alt-D to go directly to the URL bar.
#18
I pay for an email and domain service with the catchall redirected to my own email address - when I sign up for a service I set my email for that service to be [servicename]@mydomain.com, this way when I see spam coming in I know which b*****d service sold my details, I then never use them again.
Boris Long-Johnson 8 months ago
You can do something similar with gmail and other providers by using + in your address. https://www.streak.com/post/gmail-plus-addressing-trick OR just use iCloud emails.
Mook The Mediocre 8 months ago
And, when filling out forms, stick some text identifying the recipient into one of the fields, e.g. FIRSTNAME? John-BOREDPANDA
Vinny DaPooh 8 months ago
Under no circumstances should you ever opt out from a spam message or reply to remove you from their list. All that does is confirm that you take the time to open spam, read its content and reply to it. This guarantees your info will get resold and reused as a quality lead. Instead just delete and ignore it. Exception to this is if the junk mail is coming from a company you know to be legitimate, you signed up for their emails and no longer wish to receive them.
#19
On YouTube you can skip almost any ad by clicking the info button and hitting “stop seeing this ad” and it’ll skip the ad even if it doesn’t have a skip button. Doesn’t work for official ads tho like Walmart or Pepsi
Pale_Angry_Dot:
If you have a VPN there's certain countries in which YouTube has no ads, like Monaco or I think Albania.
Ace 8 months ago
Just stopped working in the last couple of weeks - youtube now detects the ad-blocker and after four or five warnings no loner allows access. I've switched from FireFox to Brave now, gets rid of that and most other adverts without even needing the ad-blocker. (Although I've installed Ublock anyway for some specific preferences, like blocking off the title pages on sites I visit often).
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the sixthgirl 8 months ago
If it's a charitable organization or a person with a great point of view that I follow, I let the ads run because I want them to get the revenue.
Jeremy Klaxon 8 months ago
...or - unpopular opinion - pay for the service you use? Youtube Premium?
person (i think) 8 months ago
This shouldn’t be downvoted. Just because it is an annoying/expensive option, doesn’t mean it’s not true
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#20
* Get a great music recommendation each day and don't rely on your streaming services algorithm loop: https://1001albumsgenerator.com
* Don't support Google -> Stop using Chrome. Try **Firefox** with the uBlock (ad-blocker) extension, it's awesome!
* Don't support Google -> Use https://duckduckgo.com/ or try another one, they're in general pretty good these days.
#21
Learn to paste stuff using ctrl+shift+v
It strips away any bold, italics, or colors and some other formatting options.
Besides being usefull removing c**p from the clipboard and making your life easier when pasting for example data to excel it might be helpfull when pasting data that came from an a.i. that could be detected and get you in trouble.
Upstaged75 8 months ago
I use this about 50 times a day at least. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, and Ctrl-V are the most useful ones for me.
oktopus 8 months ago
Now that's a useful tip I had no idea about. I often need to paste text without formatting into an application which uses formatting, and end up pasting it into a search box or something first.
Neb 8 months ago
I usually paste to the notepad, it strips all symbols. And I don't even close it, I keep it open through the day
Load More Replies... #22
F12 & right click the refresh button > do hard refresh & clear cache.
I worked briefly in IT and this solved most problems.
Ace 8 months ago
No idea what browser/OS this refers to, or even what they're trying to achieve.
Bartlet for world domination 8 months ago
Retrieve the page, instead of giving the cached version again.
Load More Replies... #23
Windows key + V
It opens up a clipboard of all your recently copied items including images. Really useful.
Daniela Lavanza 8 months ago
This is a true game changer for me. How many times have we accidentally copied when we wanted to paste?
Ace 8 months ago
You can pin regularly used text as well. I have "&all_submissions=true" pinned as the bottom-most item, so I can paste it with just a couple of clicks, Win-V, Left arrow, Enter.
Bacon Tentacles 8 months ago
Also, Ditto is an excellent clipboard tool that predates Win+V (and honestly is more reliable).
#24
Not really a "hack" but still something I do every day. When on a typical online shopping site, if there is a dropdown to change the number of items displayed per page, take a look at the URL when you click on one of the options. You'll usually notice part of the URL has changed to reflect the number of items you've chosen. Simply change that number to anything you want to display more items than the dropdown allows you to.
Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
Also a great way to skip a large number of search result pages. Change "?page=2" to "?page=57" and you save a lot of clicking page numbers and waiting for page loads.
#25
In chats with customer service bots, I just write 'human' or 'speak to agent' a few times and it connects me to a human most of the time.
Vinny DaPooh 8 months ago
This comment is definitely something a bot would write.
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#26
Wordhippo.com is my favorite site for anything word and sentence related. Can’t find a word? Wordhippo. Need a rhyme? Wordhippo. Anything you need really.
#27
Use temp mail services (like temp-mail.org) when you need to sign up for something sketchy. Keeps your real inbox clean.
Ace 8 months ago
But surely everybody has at least one email account that's dedicated to sign-ups you never want to read emails from?
Vinny DaPooh 8 months ago
Or just create an email you use solely for those dodgy internet things. When it gets overloaded with spam walk away from it and start with a new email.
Beth Wheeler 8 months ago
I have an anonymous email that I use when I don't want to use my real name.
#28
‘Ctrl + enter’ wraps whatever your typed in the url bar with ‘www.*.com”
Pencil 8 months ago
I never type the 'www.' Every browser I've used has always filled it in. Like the '1' before phone numbers. I assumed this was automatic for everyone. I'm not a tech-y person so maybe I'm just misunderstanding this.
Lady Eowyn 8 months ago
The 1 before a phone number is the country code, it's the code for the US. You only need a country code if you're calling outside your own country.
Load More Replies... #29
No-one should go near the internet without adblock.
If you can't have adblock on your device you can use something like NextDNS to do adblocking on your (ISP's) router and it will work for all devices on your network. This also makes it a great option for less tech savvy family and friends.
You can also set it up as the default DNS for your phone so you have adblocking in all apps without little to no extra battery or cpu usage.
Important note: If you use NextDNS, go to Settings > Logs and set the storage location to Switzerland.
The standard is in the US which is a big ick.
Tucker Cahooter 8 months ago
I find ublock origin works great. I can't remember the last time I saw an ad on a web page.
nottheactualphoto 8 months ago
No ads for me on BP, since I started using ublock origin. Well, except for the "shopping" lists, which amount to product placement.
Load More Replies... #30
Proper search techniques.
Use "blue car" quote marks to search for exact matches for the words blue car side by side on the page if you just use blue car it would find pages with the word blue and/or the word car anywhere on the page. It could just bring something with blue, without car.
Use - to remove words. ie.
"Blue car" -Tesla and will bring up every page with the words blue car except any that contain Tesla.
Using + will look for pages that contain ALL words included +blue +car will show pages with both blue AND car on the same page.
If you are trying to search for a thing ONLY on one particular website, you add
Site:sitename.com and it will search ONLY that website. If you drop it down to site:.gov it will ONLY search US government websites.
Site:reddit.com will search only reddit for answers.
Breaking it down by country or top level domain, using site:.nz will search ALL New Zealand websites.
If you use site:.co.nz it will search all commercial sites in New Zealand.
There are also search tools so you can filter the results. Ie search by time to find answer to your query. Ie search for the last hour day, weeks or custom.
I member this thing in the internet in August 2018.
Use search tools to search the internet for answers from August 2018 search tools too middle of the results window.
Ace 8 months ago
Many of these no longer work as they used to in google, duckduckgo and other search engines. Trying to get exact matches only, excluding certain results, is now much more difficult.
marcelo D. 8 months ago
yeah, but there are still ways about it, just search for a list of "google dorks" (that is the word for this type of search engine features, not an insult btw)
Load More Replies... Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
This is engine-dependent. DuckDuckGo, specifically, weasels a lot of these to make them seem like they're kind of doing the same thing when they aren't.
#31
If you run out of "free articles" or anything behind a soft paywall that doesn't require making an account, you can just go into your browser history, select the site, select "forget this site", and you're good to go.
Bryn 8 months ago
Doesn't always work. Doesn't work on WashingtonPost or The New Yorker
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#33
The ultimate typing hacks:
Ctrl + backspace to delete an entire word at a time, rather than spamming backspace to delete one letter at a time. You can also do the same with the arrow keys to go back a forward a whole word, and hold shift at the same time to highlight without using the mouse!
#34
I email links to myself with notes so I never lose stuff I find randomly.
#35
**Web Archive Wayback Machine** - Access deleted posts or old site versions by pasting URLs.
#36
IDK how widely known this is, but if you klick on a link with the mouse wheel it opens that link in a new tab instead the current one.
#37
I use brave browser for websites that have a lot of pop ups and ads. Some sites aren't even readable with all the ads.
Brave browser turns it into a clean site.
#38
To watch Youtube without ads: put a - between the t and u in youtube: like this yout-ube. For example: https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=pTzF84a9j_I. Sometimes you need to refresh the page to have it work.
#39
I started self hosting things: websites, databases, media server, torrents etc
Dropped my cloud costs by a lot, all runs in a little 1000 dollar mini computer with 64gb ram sitting on top of my fridge.
Marito1256:
My server is literally a thrice handed down old budget gaming PC, gtx1050 with 16gb of ram and 2 shucked 10TB drives I bought on western digital sales. It's a beast and I got it for free from a friend. Self hosting is super fun and useful. Def recommend it to anyone willing to maintain it, and not everyone needs $1000 setup or 64gb.
SirWriteALot 8 months ago
Aw yes, but then you need dynDNS or something similar, plus security etc. Not sure how much you actually save but it is definitely a lot more work.
Tim Douglass 8 months ago
Given the insane amount of hacks that try to get on my utterly worthless web site I want someone else to be managing security. I don't have the time, knowledge, or patience to mess with all of that.
#41
**Ctrl + F is your best friend.** When you're doom-scrolling through a 300-page PDF or an endless Reddit thread, just hit Ctrl + F (or Command + F on Mac) and type what you’re looking for. It's like having a personal assistant in the wild west of the internet.
Pro tip: If you're on a webpage and Ctrl + F isn’t cutting it (thanks to lazy loading or pop-ups), slap 'site:[website] [keyword]' into Google. It’s like Ctrl + F, but on steroids.
Huddo's sister 8 months ago
I use it on BP to go back to the last article I read on the home page and scroll up for the next latest one.
#42
The Ctrl+I shortcut in Firefox.
It opens a pop-up that has a Media Tab that makes it easy to download lots of videos, audio files, and pictures when a website is making it difficult.
For example, if you are listening to a podcast on a site and there is no download button. Just Ctrl+I, click on the mp3 file in the Media Tab, and click Save As.
It doesn't always work (some big sites like Youtube and Spotify put their media files behind an extra "blob" layer) but it works more often than not.
#43
For a while, I used a Chrome extension called UnPinterested. It automatically adds "-Pinterest" to any searches on Google's image search.
This was extremely necessary in the last 5-6 years or so because I might be trying to search for a picture for a quick meme/joke response to something, but all the results were from that website. Meaning trying to get just the image from the search page got you a tiny thumbnail, but opening the link either hit you with an account-wall or a massive wall of pictures you had to search through with no guarantee the picture in question was even accessible or bigger than the thumbnail. It was an absolute plague on search results.
Huddo's sister 8 months ago
This would be good for me at work, because the school internet won't load Pinterest anyway
#44
ChatGPT can find coupon codes to almost any website. Saved $150 on a shinola watch this way.
#45
Using https://cofyt.app to explore long YouTube videos and podcasts. Saves you time and does not make stuff up like ChatGPT. It stays grounded in the transcript and if the video is complicated in any way you can ask for explanations or help in different levels of understanding to help you understand difficult concepts.
#46
Use ‘site:’ in Google searches to find stuff only on a specific website. Like ‘site:reddit.com budget travel tips’—makes Google 100x more useful.
#47
I feel like read receipts are the root of all evil in this world. Creates so many problems. Who asked for that, really? I would prefer no-one sees when I've read something.
Messenger lets me turn off read receipts from my end for everyone at Settings -> Privacy and Safety -> Read receipts.
Mark Alexander 8 months ago
It also lets spammers know they got a live target. Turn them off and learn patience.
#48
Soulseek is still around and excellent for downloading full mp3 albums reliably, properly encoded and tagged. Torrents have gone to s**t.
Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
Soulseek is good. Nicotine+, which was originally a Linux-developed program that worked off SS' servers, is better. (There's now SS for Linux and Nic+ for Windows, so Nic+ is now clearly superior on multiple platforms!)
#49
Win+D takes you to the desktop in case someone comes unannounced and your on the "wrong" website.
Surly Scot 8 months ago
or keep something else open, hit Alt+Tab, it switches between whatever you've got open.
#50
I turn off image loading in my browser when I need to focus on reading the text. Pages load really fast and I don't get ads.
Yes there is reading mode which works most of the time, and yes ad blockers work, but sometimes I need the site to think I'm not using an ad blocker and sometimes reading mode doesn't render the content very well.
#51
The currency in the net is your attention and time, so manage where you spend it.
There are good addons for firefox like leechblock, where you can filter sites out for yourself or set a maximum amount of time you are allowed to spend (so like only 10 minutes doomscolling per day), ublock (filters ads, even on youtube).
Windows and android has a black and white/greyscale mode under acessibility settings (in windows you can activqte it via key shortcut).
Having a boring looking Internet without stimulating colour helps me focus.
You can filter ads from smart devices via pihole (so no ads on your washing machine).
#52
Myemail[at]gmail.com is the same as myemail[at]googlemail.com
Most sites don't consider them identical, for mutliple registrations/accounts and such. Everything goes to your inbox tho. You can also add a dot anywhere you want, so [my.email](http://my.email) is the same as mye.mail is the same as [myema.il](http://myema.il).
#53
There's a bunch of keyboard shortcuts on YouTube. For example:
K = play/pause
J = 10 sec back
L = 10 sec forward
< = frame back
> = frame forward
And there's a bunch more too. They're not secret, but they're not exactly common knowledge.
#54
If you're trying to get a PNG, you'll get more reliable results if you select the transparent option under tools>colours. Less fake PNG's!
#55
Organizing my bookmarks in a way that makes it super easy to access my most used sites.
Rosie 8 months ago
I've (mostly) given up on bookmarks & only use a Chrome extension called Tabs Outliner. It's a godsend, especially for organizing things you are doing research about but don't want to save forever. It works as a bookmark manager too. You can open/close groups of tabs, add notes, separate sections (in the same window or not), copy the whole thing to keep a backup. Indispensable! Now that I've sung their praises, here's a caveat: It doesn't go w/the Chrome feature to reopen previous tabs after a crash. They will open as new links in new windows. Your old organization remains, even has a little green tag saying "crashed" & a date, but you'll have to reopen them from there & ignore (or close) the tabs Chrome reopened.
Tucker Cahooter 8 months ago
What I now do is use my own handcrafted start page stored locally as a HTML file, with sites that I visit regularly listed with their URLs. I also add a title attribute to the links so that if I hover over the link it displays additional information I might need (such as what userid I have used for that site)
Ace 8 months ago
Sounds too complicated. I just leave the dozen-or-so regularly used sites open in separate tabs, and have my browser set to reopen previous tabs on startup, for those rare occasions it actually gets closed.
Load More Replies... #56
I type URLs directly into the search bar.
I thought that was obvious but on 99% of tech support calls I take the user will type the company name into the omnibar, go to google, read all the results, get confused and ask "which one do I click?"
It always takes me a second to realise they didn't go straight to amazon.co.uk - they googled it instead.
Ace 8 months ago (edited)
But you know, it's actually quicker to just type amazon, hit enter, then select the link, than it is to type the whole URL Lin the address bar, so... (Anyway, Amazon is different, so I actually have shortcuts for each of the four national sites that I may want to use at any given time.)
#58
Fire foxes containers are amazing to keep everything separate whilst still being one browser.
#59
You can make a Discord Group just for yourself, and post things in there for your own personal use. Photos, files, any notes you want to keep. Easy to use on the phone and PC.
#60
For extensions: blocktube, which completely blocks any channel you want to never show up in your life ever again (fantastic for ridding youtube of clickbait channels. my personal list currently sits at 3500 blocked channels).
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also, uBlacklist is great for removing websites from google search. you can easily block the content-farm or engadgement-bait sites from showing up on google, as well as all those websites which CLAIM to have a cooking recipe but is actually complete nonsense. you can block the site with just 2clicks.
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sponsorblock is fantastic at skipping all mid-roll sponsored content that you find is basically all large youtube channels these days, and it saves you literal days of watching ads.
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for amazon, you get a few different price tracker extensions which show you the price history of an item, so that you know if the item you're thinking of purchasing is ACTUALLY on sale right now or not. i personally use Keepa, but there are several out there that work on most of the amazon regional sites too.
Jeremy Klaxon 8 months ago
An extension to block Youtube channels? Why not simply "don't recommend this channel" in the video's menu, directly in Youtube?
#61
I use bookmarklets to visit the grocers website and insta-clip all the coupons to my digital card rather than use their site or app to load them one at a time.
#62
When watching YouTube on the computer press the 1 button to skip the intro. Most videos have worthless intro screens.
#63
Slightly different but airplane mode cuts wireless background activity so helps your phone charge faster.
#64
Www.virustotal.com is a free file/URL scanning tool and i use it anytime i have to click a link I'm unsure of.
#65
Cobalt.tools, i found it from tiktok and have never looked back. it's an video/music downloader with support for loads for types and websites.
#66
8.8.8.8 usually opens the sign in for public WiFi portals. Handy if you’re using hotel WiFi and your console won’t load the authentication page.
#67
I use a [Pi-Hole](https://pi-hole.net/) to remove adverts from websites on any device in my house.
#68
I save long articles as audio using text-to-speech tools and listen while commuting. Turns info overload into a podcast vibe.
Ace 8 months ago
I'm more likely to do the exact opposite - if someone posts a youtube instruction video, for example, I'll look for the closed captions if they have them and simply download the text. Much easier to just scroll down to the bit you want rather than continually going back, play, pause, back, play pause...
Bartlet for world domination 8 months ago
The few times I had a newspaper article read to me, I got so distracted by the moments weird emphasis proved the ai lady does not, in fact, understand what she's saying (and my own attempts at reconstructing both the actual intention and what went wrong), that the meaning of the article went right past me :)
#69
I use Pinterest boards like ADHD-friendly bookmarks. Recipes, outfits, dream life inspo, way less stressful than 50 open tabs and I actually remember what I saved.
#70
I set my home router up so that only packets with DSCP markings can go through, and then I can selectively control in Windows which applications actually have internet access with QOS (DSCP marking)
Second layer firewall, because who fully trusts any OS (Looking at you, Windows) to adhere to the firewall ruleset that you've created.
I bet with full confidence that no-one does this.
Very handy when installing a new system with Windows as well which is hooked on a LAN, as it is not able to phone home until I set up my post-install scripts to realise internet access in the first place. And poor mans pull cable whilst installing is also a thing of the past.
It makes life easier by not being worried about unsolicited connections.
Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
I saw a setting to allow only DSCP marking packets somewhere recently, but as I've no idea what it does I didn't do anything with it. Thanks for illuminating that for me! :/
Ali Murray 8 months ago
Maybe put this in simple language instead of techno babble to show how clever you are.
What do you think ?
Lost Panda 8 months ago
Just used the Ctrl+Shift+K to do this, but www.archive.org There is an abundance of media of all types here that can help when you can't find something you want to watch, or just want to go to yesteryear. Currently using it to watch one of my shows that I couldn't find on any streaming service or shop.
Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
Do we all know about Snipping Tool at this point? One of the only things I miss about Windows. Can't remember if it's Ctrl+Shift+S or Win+Shift+S, but it's one of the two. Best screen grabber ever.
person (i think) 8 months ago
My laptop even has a dedicated button to screenshots
Load More Replies... Forrest Grump 8 months ago
Can't you get any more insulting with your post titles? Perhaps try something like "25 Tips to Help You Struggle Through Your Life as a Total Loser".
nottheactualphoto 8 months ago
Most of these are not "internet hacks," so much as MS Windows keyboard shortcuts.
Scott Rackley 8 months ago
If you come across something on the internet that is offensive, hit Alt + F4, this opens up a page where you can report it to Google.
Anony Mouse 8 months ago
Okay I can’t see or use this site because the popup ads are too large, fully 1/4 the page is covered. If I manage to hit the tiny x to close it, it pops back up 5 seconds later. Please don’t recommend Adblock programs - they don’t work on mobile. Bored Panda just hates their readers.
person (i think) 8 months ago
Use the DuckDuckGo Browser app. I had to do so because all the ads were actually overheating my phone. Seriously, download it from the app site and try it
Load More Replies...
Lost Panda 8 months ago
Just used the Ctrl+Shift+K to do this, but www.archive.org There is an abundance of media of all types here that can help when you can't find something you want to watch, or just want to go to yesteryear. Currently using it to watch one of my shows that I couldn't find on any streaming service or shop.
Robert Beveridge 8 months ago
Do we all know about Snipping Tool at this point? One of the only things I miss about Windows. Can't remember if it's Ctrl+Shift+S or Win+Shift+S, but it's one of the two. Best screen grabber ever.
person (i think) 8 months ago
My laptop even has a dedicated button to screenshots
Load More Replies... Forrest Grump 8 months ago
Can't you get any more insulting with your post titles? Perhaps try something like "25 Tips to Help You Struggle Through Your Life as a Total Loser".
nottheactualphoto 8 months ago
Most of these are not "internet hacks," so much as MS Windows keyboard shortcuts.
Scott Rackley 8 months ago
If you come across something on the internet that is offensive, hit Alt + F4, this opens up a page where you can report it to Google.
Anony Mouse 8 months ago
Okay I can’t see or use this site because the popup ads are too large, fully 1/4 the page is covered. If I manage to hit the tiny x to close it, it pops back up 5 seconds later. Please don’t recommend Adblock programs - they don’t work on mobile. Bored Panda just hates their readers.
person (i think) 8 months ago
Use the DuckDuckGo Browser app. I had to do so because all the ads were actually overheating my phone. Seriously, download it from the app site and try it
Load More Replies... You May Like “I Can’t Believe Other People Don’t Do This”: 43 People Share Their Best Life Hacks Simple Life Hacks You Might Wish You Always Knew People Are Sharing The Things They'd Learned Too Late In Life, And These 51 Ones Are Eye-Opening
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