Want The Reverse Of A Keyboard Shortcut? Use The Shift Key

Tab and Space are common keyboard shortcuts if you want to move to the next field in a form and scroll down a page in a browser. But how about doing the opposite? That’s when the Shift key comes to the rescue.

Image by bfishadow / Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0

Yes, the Shift key acts as a reverse modifier for many of these shortcuts, with Shift + Tab taking you back a field, and Shift + Space scrolling up a page. Going through search results in a text editor works the same — F3 goes to the next result, while Shift + F3 will go back to the last one.

This even works for undo, so Shift + Ctrl + Z will redo an undo… so to speak.

Keep in mind this isn’t always the case. For example, Visual Studio (and many other text editors) use Ctrl + Y for redo, while Photoshop sticks with the Shift option. So best to consult the individual keyboard shortcuts for each program you use and consider this tip more of a rule of thumb.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments