Although awesome, keyboard shortcuts will only get you so far. If you truly want to harness the real power of your computer you need to take it to the command line. This week, learn to use it like a master.

Have you ever gone to type the degree symbol (i.e. - °) only to realise it's not actually on your keyboard? How about the up arrow, division sign or British pound?

It turns out all of these symbols are just a quick keyboard shortcut away. Here are 23 to commit to memory - plus letters with accents!

“How fast can you work in Excel?” asks a viral video that’s been bouncing around the internet for over a year. The animation demonstrates some quality Excel shortcuts.

Doing stuff with your mouse is cool. Doing stuff with your keyboard is cooler. These are the most important keyboard shortcuts, ranked from best to worst. (Unless noted, we've listed the Windows shortcuts; Mac users substitute Cmd for Ctrl.) With one exception, despite any flaws, all the shortcuts below are fundamentally good.

God I love content-aware fill. At Lifehacker I frequently want to illustrate a post with an image that’s not wide enough (like above). So I throw it into Photoshop, I expand the canvas size, I select the new blank parts on the sides, and I hit cmd+option+F.

Few things are more frustrating than having your browser freeze while you’re streaming or surfing or having your messenger app lock up mid-rant. So what to do if you’re confronted with the spinning beach ball of death on your Mac and the application you’re using isn’t responding?

This simple thing never clicked for me before I saw it on Reddit: In many keyboard shortcuts on Windows and MacOS, adding the shift key makes the shortcut do the opposite of what it normally does.

Since the late 1980s, when the mouse became the main way people invoked actions from the applications they use, the art of the keyboard shortcut has slowly disappeared. I started using a PC in the time when a pointing device was an expensive option on laptops.

So, I became pretty adept at using keyboard shortcuts. But it turns out the creators of our software still include them even though we are more likely to use a touchpad, mouse or touchscreen these days. What are some of the lesser known keyboard shortcuts you can use with Windows?

Gmail has over 80 keyboard shortcuts. You don’t need them all. You do need these 19. Not only are they faster than clicking buttons, they’ll encourage other good habits to help you plow through your inbox.

If you work on an iPad with an external keyboard, you can take advantage of some of the same keyboard shortcuts that come on a Mac. The Sweet Setup lists good keyboard shortcuts that particularly matter to iPad users, including these less obvious ones...

Of course, you may not need all 60 of these, but knowing them will make you flexible, fast, and ready to work with whatever tool you're presented with, whether it's a Windows PC, a Mac, an Excel spreadsheet, or a Powerpoint slideshow. Plus, there are extras in here for Gmail and Chrome to boot.

Mac: If you frequently access the same System Preferences pane on your Mac, you can add a shortcut directly to your Dock. Here’s how.

Mac: Here’s a silly shortcut that will come in handy some day. In some apps, ⌘-. does the same thing as the escape key. So if that key is broken, or your stupid Touch Bar is hiding your stupid virtual escape key, or your hands can’t reach the corner of your keyboard, or you just like the ergonomics better, then go for it.

Mac: Sometimes you want to Google (or Bing? up to you...) something, but opening up another browser tab feels like a touch too much effort. If you use macOS, try this handy keyboard command that makes search queries from Spotlight automatically open in your default browser’s search engine.

We wrote about Vimium, the Chrome extension that adds customisable keyboard shortcuts, back in 2010 and 2012. But I think we buried the lede: If you install Vimium, you can open links without using your mouse, and without hitting the tab key over and over.

Even if you use Microsoft Excel regularly, there's a fair chance you might not be getting as much out of it as you can. Improve your Excel efficiency and proficiency with these basic shortcuts and functions that absolutely everyone needs to know.

Whether you're doing some Spanish homework or exchanging jokes with your French-speaking amoureux, nailing spelling in a foreign language is pretty important if you're trying to get your point across without looking like a dunce. Adding accents is easy now, thanks to improved keyboard controls on nearly every device. No matter what phone, laptop, or desktop you're on, you can add accented characters pretty easily, as long as you know where to look.

Looking up directions on Google Maps is a little clunky on the desktop. You have to select your starting location, your destination and your method of transport. But if you're on Chrome, you can build three shortcuts to get directions right from the address bar, without a single click.

Many of us spend a great deal of time on YouTube. Sure, there's a lot of educational content on the video sharing website but time is mainly wasted watching viral videos. You might as well make the most of it by learning some shortcuts that will save you time (so you can watch even more useless videos).