Here are 10 Chromebook keyboard shortcuts you need to know

Most people have grown up using and learning keyboard shortcuts for Windows or MacOS. But with Chromebooks becoming evermore popular, it’s time to learn some handy keyboard shortcuts for Chrome OS. Here are 10 to get you started…

Here are 10 Chromebook keyboard shortcuts you need to know

1. Caps lock
2. Delete key
3. Lock your Chromebook
4. Log out of your Chromebook
5. Quick launch pinned apps
6. Pin a window to the left or right
7. Minimize a window
8. Maximize a window
9. Switch between windows
10. Task manager

1. Caps lock

If you’ve ever used a Chromebook, you know Google removed the caps lock keyboard from its keyboard. In its place, you will either find a search or launcher key depending on how new your computer is. Thankfully, Google has a keyboard shortcut to activate the handy tool.

To activate caps lock, just hit Alt+Search/Launcher. After, everything you type will be in CAPITALIZED LETTERS. To turn it off, merely press Alt+Search/Launcher again.

2. Delete key

Just like with the caps key, Chromebooks don’t offer a delete button. While you can usually get around any deletion of words with the backspace, you can grain the delete key’s power by pressing Alt+Backspace.    

3. Lock your Chromebook

If you’re ever stepping away from your computer, it’s a good idea to lock your account so no one can walk up and use it. While you can go through the settings to do this, just hitting the Search/Launcher key+L will quickly lock your Chromebook and take you to your lockscreen. To get back into your machine, you’ll have to enter your password or PIN.

4. Log out of your Chromebook

Alternatively to locking your Chromebook, you can also log out of your account. This is handy when you might want to hand over the device for someone else to use with their own account. To do this, hold down on Ctrl+Shift and then double press on Q.

5. Quickly launch pinned apps

If you’re like more Chromebook users, you probably have a handful of different applications pinned to your computer’s taskbar for quick access. Instead of moving your cursor to each item and clicking on it, you can actually use Alt+1-9 to quickly open each app. The most significant slow down for this shortcut is that you’ll have to remember the number position for each item.

6. Pin a window to the left or right

With Chrome OS just like other major operating systems, you can pin windows to the left and right side of the screen. If you don’t want to drag each item to the left or right side, you can quickly do this by press Alt+[ or ].

7. Minimize a window

Very similar to the option for pinning a window to either side of your screen, there’s a keyboard shortcut for minimizing windows. To do this, just press Alt+ – and the window you had open will be shrunk into the taskbar.

8. Maximize a window

Now if you want to make a window take up your Chromebook’s entire display, you can press Alt+=.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work if the window is completely minimized. You have to have it showing on-screen in a smaller form factor.

9. Switch between windows

If you have multiple windows open, it can sometimes be a pain to quickly switch between them. Thankfully, you can press Alt+Tab to pull up the window switcher tool and immediately have it highly the next open window. If the next window isn’t the one you want brought forward, just tap on tab again until you highlight it. Letting go of the keys will swap the open windows.

10. Task manager

Just like with Windows, you can open up a task manager to see what programs and applets are running in the background and using your Chromebook’s resources. To open this, press Shift+Esc. From there, you can click on any running task and end it.

Extra: Learn more keyboard shortcuts

If these aren’t enough keyboard shortcuts for you, Chrome OS has a tool built-in to help teach you different keyboard shortcuts. You can launch this by press Ctrl+Alt+/. Once open, you can press on any single key or a combination of keys to learn what else you can do on your Chromebook.

Additional Chromebook keyboard shortcuts:

• How to take screenshots on a Chromebook
• How to adjust the keyboard backlighting on Chromebooks
• How to delete specific autosearch suggestions in Google Chrome

If you have any questions, make sure to leave them in the comment section below or hit me up on Twitter.

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