Recently I had a lightbulb moment. I have a Toshiba AT300 tablet and the GPU overheated one day and now register every singular touch on the screen in four different places, rendering it virtually (and rather effectively) unusable in the traditional sense. I was left with a rather flat, expensive brick which was a gift from my family. I was not pleased.

The Lightbulb Moment

A friend had a similar problem though with her phone which had been cracked by her darling daughter (who to be fair is only 2 and isn’t au fais with delicate technology) and I was given the idea of an OTG cable. Problem solved. Plug in the cable, plug in a mouse and you can use the phone or tablet like a mini laptop! The the second lightbulb went on, throw a bluetooth keyboard into the mix and BAM! I could save my tablet from obscurity!

So I’m happily using it when needed but got to thinking there must be some handy keyboard shortcuts since essentially Android is (however many times removed) a cousin of Linux. Here for you are the keyboard shortcuts for Android.

Android Keyboard Shortcuts: Scrolling

• Spacebar: Page down in any Web page/document view

• Shift + Spacebar: Page up in any Web page/document view

Android Keyboard Shortcuts: Typing

• Alt + Spacebar: Insert a special character

• Shift + Del: Delete the character to the right of the cursor

• Alt + Del: Delete an entire line

• Shift + Shift (press it twice): Activate caps-lock; press shift once more to exit

• Alt + Trackball-Left: Move cursor to beginning of line

• Alt + Trackball-Right: Move cursor to end of line

• Alt + Trackball-Up: Move cursor to top of page

• Alt + Trackball-Down: Move cursor to bottom of page

• Shift + Trackball-Left/Right: Highlight text for cutting or copying

• Menu + X: Cut text (will cut all text on-screen unless specific characters are highlighted)

• Menu + C: Copy text to clipboard (will copy all text on-screen unless specific characters are highlighted)

• Menu + V: Paste text from clipboard

• Menu + A: Select all text in the current field

Android Keyboard Shortcuts: Browsing

• Menu + I: Zoom in

• Menu + O: Zoom out

• Menu + J: Go back a page

• Menu + K: Go forward a page

• Menu + R: Refresh current page

• Menu + F: Find on page

• Menu + B: Open bookmarks

• Menu + S: Open social network sharing menu

• Menu + H: View browsing history

• Menu + S: Open browser settings

Android Keyboard Shortcuts: Gmail

• F: Forward current message (works only while inside the message)

• R: Reply to current message (works only while inside the message)

• A: Reply-all to current message (works only while inside the message)

• Y: Archive message (works from within message or while on main inbox list)

• Menu + U: Refresh inbox

• Menu + C: Compose new e-mail

• Enter: Open an e-mail (from the main inbox list)

• Alt + Trackball-Up: Jump to top of inbox

• Alt + Trackball-Down: Jump to bottom of inbox

Android Keyboard Shortcuts: Apps

• Search + B: Open browser

• Search + C: Open contacts

• Search + E: Open e-mail

• Search + G: Open Gmail

• Search + I: Open calendar

• Search + M: Open maps

• Search + P: Open music

• Search + S: Open text messaging

• Search + Y: Open YouTube