Open Forum: What’s your most-used keyboard shortcut?

Some keyboard shortcuts are so ingrained that we barely think about using them anymore. Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, Ctrl + Z, and Alt + Tab probably account for an absurd number of keystrokes on any given workday. But it’s the less universal ones that tend to reveal how someone actually uses their computer.

For me, Ctrl + Shift + V for pasting without formatting is probably near the top. I also use Ctrl + T constantly for new browser tabs, while Ctrl + Shift + T has rescued more accidentally closed tabs than I’d care to admit. Another favorite is Ctrl + Shift + S, which I’ve mapped to a third-party screenshot app for quickly grabbing and annotating part of the screen.

Not all of my most-used shortcuts even involve a keyboard. On my MacBook, the three-finger trackpad swipe between virtual desktops has become just as automatic.

There are plenty of other favorites among power users: Win + V for clipboard history, Ctrl + Shift + Esc for Task Manager, Win + E for File Explorer, and Ctrl + Backspace to delete an entire word at once. We even put together a massive shortcut compilation years ago, and quite a few of them still hold up today.

So here’s this weekend’s question: excluding copy, paste, undo, and Alt + Tab, what’s the keyboard shortcut you use the most? And better yet, what’s one you think everyone else should know?