One of the things that sets Gmail apart is the number of features and available third party tools. We have seen Gmail gadgets, usercripts and all other kinds of software but how about a piece of hardware created just for Gmail?

Meet Gboard!

If you are a Gmail addict but think that keyboard shortcuts provided by Gmail are not enough, take a look at Gboard. It is a customized keypad specifically created for Gmail that provides users with 19 finger-friendly buttons, each assigned to a certain Gmail process.

Now you can perform all these tasks with a single key stroke:

• Forward
• Reply All
• Trash
• Archive
• Next
• Star
• Open/Close
• Select

and some other amazing time-saving functons.

The Gboard weighs 0.3 lbs and needs a USB port to connect to your computer. It works with Windows, Mac as well as Linux but requires a US keyboard layout. There is no software to install, all you need to do is connect the Gboard and enable keyboard shortcuts within Gmail.

The Gboard is currently being sold for $19.99 and can be bought here. The dimensions in inches are 4.88 X 3.5 X .38.

With Gmail already the best email service out there, would you spend money to make it more convenient for yourself? Do you think these extra keyboard shortcuts are worth $19.99 or are you satisfied with the current shortcuts that Gmail provides?

Most of us know shortcut key combinations like Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V and more common ones by heart, however, in addition to those commonly used shortcut keys. Many different applications register global hotkeys, which can be useful to launch applications and perform different tasks.

Also read: Put the Alt, Shift and Ctrl keys to good use

Windows hotkey explorer is a decent freeware, which displays all the globally registered hotkeys on Windows. With the help of this tool, you might come across some very useful hotkeys thanks to it.

Techie Buzz Verdict

This is a good portable software which you can use to find out the globally registered hotkeys on any computer. However, it would be good if it could also show shortcut keys registered by different applications.

I tested this on Windows 7 and it worked great. However, one annoying problem with the software is that, the Alt + Tab switch will stop working while this app is open, it starts working after you close it though.

Techie Buzz Ratings: 2.5/5 (Good)

Download Windows Hotkey Explorer

Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft made the Windows key more useful with some excellent shortcut keys. In Windows 7, you can use the Windows key in combination with numbers 1-9 to cycle between the applications in the taskbar.

Windows Vista did have a similar feature, but it was only limited to the applications in the quick launch bar. We had covered more such shortcut keys in our Ultimate List of Windows button shortcut keys.

ActivateByNum is a freeware, which will allow you to use the Windows key + number, task switching functionality from Windows 7 in Windows XP and Vista.

Techie Buzz Verdict

The Windows key + number task switching comes in pretty handy when you want to navigate or open applications without using the mouse or Alt + Tab key combination.

This should definitely come in handy on Windows XP, however it might disable the Quick launch hotkeys on Windows Vista.

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Download ActivateByNum

Alt+Tab is probably one of the most used shortcut keys to switch between multiple open applications. However the default behavior or Alt+Tab is not perfect.

SmartTab is a Alt+Tab replacement that has much better features than the regular ones built into Windows.

Instead of showing you larger icons, SmartTab shows you smaller icons and includes the titles of the Windows. This makes it effortless to find the application you want to switch to.

SmartTab Features

• All windows with small icons & full title at a glance.
• Activate a window either by using the regular alt-tab dance, or hit a key between 0 and 9 and A-Z, or by clicking it’s title, or by scrolling with your mouse wheel.
• Less resource hungry than the windows XP power toy alt-tab replacement.
• You can choose between different colors.
• Highlighting of windows flashing in task bar
• Works on Windows 2000 and XP.

SmartTab is a portable software and does not require any installation.

Download SmartTab

The browser’s address bar is not just for typing URLs, with new invention in browser it is definitely much more than that, for example we had told you how to use Google Chrome’s Omnibar as a calculator & unit converter recently.

Amit from Digital Inspiration has put up a list of things that you can do with the browser address bar, the first thing is the Ctrl + Enter trick to directly load a .com domain, however we have also covered how you can load a .net and .org domain using similar shortcut key.

Other than that Amit has shown how you can capture a screenshot using the address bar, download videos, shrink URLs, email a web page, share or bookmark, find information about a website, send notes to yourself, open mobile friendly webpage among other things.

Head over to Do more with your browser Address Bar to learn more.

The default Windows keyboard is full of keys which people seldom use, previously we had told users how to use Windows key to make you productive, it’s time to give you some hints on using the Alt, Shift and Ctrl key more often, believe us that using shortcut keys can make you more productive, that is why we always stress on shortcut keys in our posts.

Application Switcher

By far the most common use for the Alt Key is the use of Alt + Tab key combination, this shortcut allows you to switch between open applications with ease.

Menu Shortcut Key

So you are in a application and want to access the menu item, just press the Alt key and you can use another keyboard key to open up the menu item, the second keyboard key will be highlighted with a underline.

It will take you some time to adjust to using this feature, but once you start using it, you will be using shortcut keys without even thinking about them.

Some applications like Internet Explorer hide their menu from users by default, however you can still launch the menu by using a Alt + charactershortcut key, see hints for more info.

Hint: Alt + F will open the File menu in most of the applications, Alt + E will open the Edit menu. Follow the above tips and you will save yourself a lot of time for sure with more Alt shortcuts, it’s easy to master isn’t it ;-)

Select Entire Words, Sentences, Paragraphs or Documents

A problem many users see while selecting content in text or document editors while using the keyboard, is the ability to select a large set of data, that’s the reason a mouse is more efficient, however a little know secret is that you can put the Alt, Ctrl and Shift key to good use while copying entire words, sentences or paragraphs. How? Look below.

Selecting a Word

You can use the Shift + Alt shortcut to copy a full word.

Selecting A Sentence

Use the Ctrl + End key to select the entire sentence, if you are at end of the sentence, use Ctrl + Home to do it. Are you in between a sentence? Use the Home key to go to the start or use End key to go to the end, and then use the other shortcut keys to copy the entire sentence.

Selecting a Paragraph

You wrote a paragraph and want to delete it, what would you do use the mouse as usual? Well hold on there are some shortcut keys that will help you here.

If you want to copy a entire paragraph, place your cursor at the top of the paragraph and use the Ctrl + Shift + Down arrow key on your keyboard.

If you are at end of the paragraph, no problem use the Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow Key to select the paragraph above you.

Selecting the Entire Document

To select the entire document, file or browser window, you can use the shortcut key Ctrl + A, this works in almost everything you come across.

Go To The End Or Start Of The Screen In A Text/Document Editor or Webpage

If you want to go to the start or the end of a document or text file you can easily do it without having to scroll the page, just use Ctrl + End to go to the end of the document or Ctrl + Home to go to the top of the document.

This is also applicable while browsing webpages using a Internet browser.

Capitalizing Characters Without the Caps Lock Key

There are many times when you need to capitalize only certain characters, turning the Caps lock key on and off can waste a lot of time, if you just want to capitalize only certain characters, press and hold the Shift key and type the character you want to capitalize.

Opening Windows Task Manager

If you want to open the Windows Task Manager, you can easily do that by using the shortcut key Ctrl + Shift + Esc.

Closing Windows and Tabs

In many text editors the Ctrl + W keys will allow you to close individual tabs, if you are looking to close the entire application window you can use Alt + F4 shortcut key.

Permanently Deleting Files / Skipping Recycle Bin

If you want to permanently delete files without sending them to the recycle bin, hold the Shift key and press delete, this will delete the file permanently.

Selecting Files In Sequence or Selectively

If you want to select files in a sequence, you can hold the Shift key and use the up or down arrow keys to select files, using the right and left arrow keys will select files in the adjacent or previous rows when you are in list mode.

To selectively select files, press and hold the Ctrl key, use the up and down arrow key to move around, whenever you want to select a file just click on the spacebar button to select it.

A solution for Missing or Broken Keyboard keys

If any keys are not working on your keyboard you can still output them by using the Alt key, there are several character you can type out using the Alt key, for more details and reference visit our earlier post, useful shortcuts when your keyboard stop working.

Common Functions: Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo

The most common use of Ctrl key is to copy, cut and paste text and files. Use Ctrl + C to copy text, Ctrl + X to cut text, Ctrl + P to paste files and Ctrl + Z to undo things.

Navigating History in Your Browser [Previous/Next Page]

Every browser provides users with the previous and next page button to navigate the history, you can also do it with the keyboard, using the Alt + <- (left arrow key) to go the previous page and Alt + > (right arrow key) to go to the next page.

Refreshing Webpages from the Server

Pressing the F5 key usually does not refresh the webpage from the server, to force a server reload of the webpage, you can use the Ctrl + F5 shortcut key.

View Source Code In Browsers

If you want to view source code in browsers, the Ctrl + U shortcut key can be used in Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari for Internet Explorer use Alt + V + C

Are there any other uses of these keys we missed? Drop a comment to let us know and we will include it here, also don’t forget to give us your feedback.

Keyboard Shortcuts are real time savers, they are pretty hand and help to keep you productive to perform time consuming tasks quickly. If you are a Gmail user, you can make use of keyboard shortcuts to quickly compose emails, iterate between messages, open current messages, archive messages, star them and more.

You can find a extensive list of Gmail keyboard shortcuts at the help page for keyboard shortcuts, if you would like to print the keyboard shortcuts, you can use the printer friendly keyboard shortcuts.

You will have to enable the keyboard shortcuts in your Gmail account before you can use them, to do that go to Settings > General and turn keyboard shortcuts on.

Looking for more tips for Gmail, checkout the Gmail Tips section to get handy tips and tools for Gmail.

Application launchers are a real time saver, as they allow you to launch applications quickly without having to go through several menus.

However Windows has several hidden features which are least exploited by users. Those hidden features can definitely save users a lot of time keeping them productive, for example many users may not have known that they could open Quick Launch applications by using the Windows key, however we had talked about it earlier in our Windows Button Hotkeys guide.

Recommended Read: Free Dock Applications for Windows

Another feature many users are not aware about is the inbuilt feature in Windows to launch applications using Hotkeys, this feature can definitely be useful and can be used to quickly launch frequently used applications.

Guide On Setting Up Hotkeys To Quickly Launch Applications In Windows

Step 1: Right click on a application shortcut on the desktop or in the programs menu and click on the Properties option.

Step 2: Select the shortcut tab in the properties window.

Step 3: In the shortcut tab click on the Shortcut key box and enter any key combination you want to use to launch this application.

Step 4: Click on the Ok button.

The next time you want to launch the application, simply press the hotkey you created for it, for example, in this tutorial we created the hotkey Ctrl + Shit + C for launching the calculator. This trick works in both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Hope this tip helps you to save some time, do visit the Windows Tips section to learn about several other tricks. Also don’t forget to give us your feedback.

With every release of Windows there have been several changes to the control panel, where Microsoft has tried to group tasks and make navigation easier, however many users find it hard to use the new control panel options and prefer using the default control panel.

If you want to make it a bit more easier to use the control panel applets, here are some handy shortcut keys for windows control panel applets.

You will need to use run prompt to open up the control panel applets. The hot key for the run prompt key from your keyboard Windows Key + R. Once you have opened run prompt, enter the shortcut and click on enter to launch the applet. Learn more about other Windows Hot Keys.

• Accessibility Options – access.cpl
• Add or remove programs – appwiz.cpl
• Add Hardware Wizard – hdwwiz.cpl
• Date and time properties – timedate.cpl
• Display Properties – desk.cpl
• Mouse Settings – main.cpl
• Keyboard Settings main.cpl keyboard
• Sound Properties – mmsys.cpl
• Open Fonts Panel - fonts
• Change User Settings – nusrmgr.cpl
• Firewall Settings – firewall.cpl
• Open Internet Properties – inetcpl.cpl
• Regional and Language Settings – intl.cpl
• View Network Connections – ncpa.cpl
• Network Setup wizard – netsetup.cpl
• Power Management Options – powercfg.cpl
• System Properties – sysdm.cpl
• Phone and Modem Options telephon.cpl
• Joystick Properties joy.cpl

To launch the control panel itself type controlin the run prompt. Do you use any other shortcut keys with Windows? Do let us know through your comments.

I have been using Remote desktop for quite some time now, but always had to use the mouse to navigate between my laptop and the remote computer. Today I came across a excellent resource from Windows Guides which listed the shortcut keys that can be used on a remote desktop.

Alt+Home > This works as a windows key replacement on the remote desktop, displaying the Windows Start menu.

Alt + Page Up > Works as a Alt+Tab replacement on the remote desktop, allowing you to switch between open application to the left.

Alt + Page Down > Works as a Alt+Tab replacement on the remote desktop, allowing you to switch between open application to the right.

Alt + Insert > Switches between programs in the most recently used order.

Alt + Del > Shows you the windows context menu on the remote desktop.

Ctrl + Alt + End > A Ctrl+Alt+Del replacement for the remote desktop.

You can view the entire list of shortcuts at Windows Guides: Keyboard Shortcuts to Use with Remote Desktop.