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.
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.
It's
one of those really nice stories that definitely deserves to be told
again, and again.
