<p style="text-align: justify;">You might know your way around a computer, but are you fully computer literate?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Life hacks for your day-to-day computer activities can help you get things done faster, while also making you feel a bit like Neo from the Matrix.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">From <a href="https://newsforpublic.com/take-screenshot-chromebook/">capturing a perfectly-shaded screenshot</a> to using your computer&#8217;s Terminal program, here are some cool computer tricks to make your life a little bit easier—and trust us, these are the kind of computer hacks you&#8217;ll be glad to welcome into your life.</p>
<h2>One of the More Basic Computer Hacks: Screenshots</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Whether you need to show something on your screen to someone else or you&#8217;re trying to save an image that won&#8217;t download, screenshots are an excellent way to save exactly what you see in front of you. There are a few possible computer tricks you could use, and we&#8217;ll walk you through the different options.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">On Windows</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">On a Windows computer, you can use the PrintScreen key to take screenshots. Hit the Windows key and PrintScreen at the same time to automatically save your screenshot.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Or if you want to copy without saving (meaning you&#8217;ll still &#8220;save&#8221; the image temporarily to your clipboard), you can hit the Control key and PrintScreen. Then just paste wherever you want, like a Word document or image editor.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">On a Mac</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">For a Mac computer, you can hold the Command key, Shift key, and the number &#8220;3&#8221; at the same time to take a snapshot of your whole screen and automatically save it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If you want a screenshot of a certain section, use &#8220;4&#8221; instead of &#8220;3&#8221; to turn your mouse into a rectangular selection tool that you can drag over what you want to capture. And if you change your mind, you can just do a single click to turn your mouse back to normal.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A really great feature here is the ability to take a screenshot of an individual window. To do this, go ahead and hold Command, Shift, and &#8220;4&#8221; again, but this time, hit the spacebar. You&#8217;ll be able to hover over different windows and choose the one you want to screenshot.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Then, your resulting screenshot will include the rounded edges of the window and even its subtle shadow! Super cool for a presentation.</p>
<h2>Saving a Webpage</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If you&#8217;re reading a cool article or interesting website homepage and want to save what you see on the screen, there&#8217;s a better way than just taking a bunch of screenshots.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Especially when you&#8217;re trying to save a long page, it&#8217;s a good idea to <a href="https://setapp.com/how-to/how-to-save-webpage-as-pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">save a webpage as PDF</a>. On many computers and browsers, you can do this by using the Print function and selecting &#8220;Save as PDF&#8221; in the destination.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">From there, though, you might want to edit the PDF or play around with it. You&#8217;ll need special programs for this part.</p>
<h2>Secret Mode</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Depending on the browser you&#8217;re using, this could be called private mode, incognito mode, or something similar. When you want to browse websites without recording your activity history, this is a great way to be secret about it—shh!</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Opening up one of these secret modes will mean you need to open a new window on your browser. From there, you can use the internet like you normally would. But it won&#8217;t save your activity to use as helpers later on, like search suggestions.</p>
<h2>See What Your Computer&#8217;s Up To</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Again, the exact method for this will be different on every computer, but there should be a way to track the activity of all your computer&#8217;s applications. This can help you know what&#8217;s going on when your computer overheats or otherwise seems to be doing more work than intended.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Using Terminal</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If you&#8217;re running a Linux or Mac computer, you can open Terminal and <a href="https://www.howtogeek.com/668986/how-to-use-the-linux-top-command-and-understand-its-output/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">type &#8220;top,&#8221;</a> which is a command that shows you all the active processes on your computer. Remember to hit &#8220;enter&#8221; after typing this command.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">What&#8217;s useful here is that this command shows you these processes in order of how much of your CPU (or Central Processing Unit) time and memory they&#8217;re using. Pay attention to the columns that say &#8220;%CPU&#8221; and &#8220;%MEM.&#8221;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If the total CPU percentage for all of your processes is high or even <a href="https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fix-high-cpu-usage-windows/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exceeds 100%</a>, this means your computer is trying to do more than it&#8217;s built for. It&#8217;ll slow down, and you&#8217;ll notice the fans going full blast. Use the list of processes to figure out which programs are using up your CPU, and exit them if you can.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Activity Monitor and Resource Monitor</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Another way to check your active processes on a Mac is through an app called Activity Monitor. From here, you can sort processes by CPU, memory, and energy. You can also cancel processes directly from here.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This might be a little more user-friendly for those unfamiliar with Terminal. It also includes icons and easy-to-recognize names for your apps, which you might not find in Terminal.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">And on a Windows computer, you can open a program called Resource Monitor for your computer&#8217;s Activity Monitor counterpart.</p>
<h2>Be a Special Characters Expert</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">What&#8217;s your go-to method for typing special characters? For example, if you have a collaborator whose last name has an &#8220;ñ&#8221; in it, you might find yourself needing that key a lot. Do you go to the &#8220;special characters&#8221; section of your word processor, or find the letter online and copy and paste?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Well, there&#8217;s a better way—a few, in fact. If you&#8217;re using a Mac keyboard, you can hold down certain letter keys for an array of options with accents, tildes, and other marks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">And whether you&#8217;re on Windows or Mac, you can look up your keyboard&#8217;s Alt key shortcuts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">For example, on a Mac, the <strong>Alt+N</strong> combination will give you a tilde. Then you can type an &#8220;n&#8221; (or whatever letter you need) to get the &#8220;ñ.&#8221;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">And on Windows, you can type the Alt key combination Alt+0241. This might seem like more to remember, but if it&#8217;s a character you use a lot, you&#8217;ll build up the muscle memory.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Try These For Yourself!</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The best way to work your way through these nifty computer hacks is to try them on your own computer. The codes and methods might have a bit of a learning curve to them, but if you keep at it, you&#8217;ll be running them smoothly in no time.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">And for more articles that will improve your digital life, check out the rest of our tech section!</p>

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