What's the most obscure keyboard shortcut or setting that quietly changed how you actually use your computer

[Voyager43]

Everyone knows the basic copy paste and undo shortcuts, but there always seems to be one genuinely obscure setting or shortcut combo that nobody teaches you, that once discovered completely changes daily habits without you ever going looking for it in the first place. Curious what people's personal discovery like that has been.

Mine was learning that most browsers let you reopen a closed tab with a specific shortcut. Which sounds almost too obvious to even mention now, but I spent literal years manually retyping URLs before someone casually mentioned it existed in passing conversation.

These discoveries always seem to happen completely by accident too. Either from watching someone else work over their shoulder or stumbling into a setting menu while looking for something else entirely unrelated to what you actually found.

Would love to hear the genuinely obscure ones specifically. Not just the basic shortcuts every tutorial already covers, but the ones that feel like they were hiding in plain sight the entire time until someone actually pointed them out directly.
Bonus points if anyone has a tip specific to an operating system feature most people never bother turning on despite it being built in and available the entire time without any extra installation required

[BrayWyatt_WCW]

Split screen window snapping was a genuine game changer for me once I actually discovered the shortcut existed. Spent years manually dragging window edges around before realizing there was a much faster built in way to do the exact same thing

[DarkEnergy]

Clipboard history was mine.

Most operating systems now keep a running history of everything you have copied recently, and discovering that shortcut single handedly ended years of constantly retyping something I had copied over five minutes earlier by accident

[MJF_Fan]

The clipboard history point genuinely blew my mind the first time someone showed it to me in person. Felt like discovering a secret feature that had actually been sitting there the entire time completely unused

[Mick88]

Discovering that most file managers let you rename multiple files in a batch with a pattern was huge for me. Used to manually rename dozens of files one at a time before stumbling across that specific feature entirely by accident. Still think about it now. Small detail but it stuck with me

[Memory Jaguar]

Text expansion snippets for repeated phrases changed my typing speed enormously once I actually set them up properly. Wish someone had shown me that specific feature literal years earlier than they actually did

[RedKnight]

Lock function keys so I can just hit printscreen on my laptop keyboard

[Dank15]

Mine is learning to pin frequently used folders directly to a quick access sidebar rather than digging through the same nested folder structure manually every single day for years. Funny how these things stick with you. Worth keeping in mind honestly

[RayOfLight87]

Mine is a screenshot tool built directly into the operating system that lets you capture and instantly annotate in one single motion. Had been using three separate apps stitched together for that exact same task for years before finding it

[ArcMage57]

The reopen closed tab shortcut is such a classic. Feels like almost everyone has that exact same story of manually retyping URLs for years before someone finally mentioned the shortcut existed to them casually. That part genuinely surprised me. Small detail but it stuck with me

[PhaseShift]

Genuinely love threads like this, half the actual productivity gains in computing come from these tiny undiscovered settings rather than any major new piece of software or expensive upgrade. Would do it again without much hesitation. Small detail but it matters

[Oscar]

Learning to use find and replace with regex properly changed how I edit large documents completely. Took actual effort to learn the syntax at first, but the raw time saved on repetitive edits has been genuinely enormous since then