Chromebook's NEW Top 10 Tips & Tricks

Chromebook's Hidden Features 

The Chrome OS/Browser has some simple, and yet really amazing, really cool built-in functionality that will make your computing experience easier than you might otherwise have thought. Below, you'll find listed is a few of the more essential tips and tricks you need to know in order for you to get the best of your Chrome experience.

Here's wishing you much success with using your Chromebook and hopefully these few tips and tricks will help you out.

1.To capture your screen press, ctrl+switch window. To capture only a portion of your screen, press ctrl+alt+switch window, then you can click and select an area to capture.

2. Zooming any page or web app is easy to do, just press ctrl+ to zoom up in 10% increments, and zooming backwards, reducing the screen image is as simple as ctrl-.

Pages always display at the last zoom setting when revisited so different pages can have different zoom settings.

3. To view your keyboard shortcuts, press, ctrl+alt+?. Then press the key combinations listed below to see your options. To close the on screen keyboard, just press the escape key.

• ctrl
• alt
• shift
• ctrl+shift
• ctrl+alt
• alt+shift

4. Turn CAPS LOCK on = alt+search. To turn this function off, from the settings pane on the shelf of your screen, click the arrow up and click where it says Caps Lock On to turn it off.

5. If you want to multitask like a pro, then you'll love what you can do with the split screen capability. When you open Chrome you only need to click and hold on an open tab and drag it off. This will put it in a separate browser window. This way you can be reading or working on a document or researching something in one window and watch a football game in another or possibly something else. In fact, if you have two windows open, when you split them, they usually split the screen in half.

If you have a larger screen Chromebook or even a Chromebase I would also tell you that you can split the screen further and have more windows open simultaneously. This is great for watching video in a smaller window while typing in another and being able to do research easily from another all at the same time. For this, you'll have to manually adjust the open windows.

6. To change the launcher/taskbar position, press alt+right-click on the taskbar and go to Shelf position menu, and select left or bottom or right. Sorry, no option there for selecting top.

7. Turn your favorite web page into a Web App, just go to your system menu settings finder and click more tools and then click add to shelf and then add. This puts an icon on your task bar. This is a good option if you use web apps quite regularly. It is simpler than scrolling through bookmarks.

Give it a try, if you don't care for it, just press alt and right-click the icon on your shelf and select unpin.

8. To launch a web app from your shelf, just press alt+the number of the app. The Chrome app is by default number one. The rest are from left to right wherever they are, they are that number. Gmail is 2, and Docs is 3. You can change these around any way you wish. This is a good idea for apps you use regularly. If you want to change these at any time just press alt+right click and select unpin. The downside of this, is that you can only go from 1-9. This is a system limitation that I hope Chrome developers will fix in the future.

9. Another way to create shortcut app or web launch icons, is to use your Chrome Bookmarks Bar, and just show only website icons. This is easy enough to do, just follow the steps below.

• Right-click on a bookmark bar item
• Select ‘edit’
• Delete the text in the ‘name’ box
• Hit ‘save’

10. From the App launcher bar at the bottom of your screen, with the first icon being the search icon, select this and with it you can easily do math calculations and this is also a convenient unit converter.

These are the 10 best things you can do, that you may not already be aware of with your Chromebook. Give these a try, and let me know what you think. If you know of something cool and important that is not listed, feel free to mention them in the comments below.

Bonus: Hard Reboot = Press Reload+Power on.

You may never need to force a reboot  and this is not the ideal way to reboot, but is still something important to know in the event that you are in a boot loop or facing a frozen screen. Depending on live status before encountering a freeze you may lose unsaved work, and or data.

Bonus: Powerwash does not eliminate your settings or passwords. If you ever need to do a Powerwash, have no fear, you will not lose any of your Chrome browser settings or any of your passwords. A Powerwash will only clean your system and return it back to your last use.