You’re Going To Feel Stupid For Not Realizing These 30 Things Sooner

On Zoom meetings, you can mute yourself and just press and hold the space bar when you need to speak.

By

Ask Reddit has some advice you’re going to wish you learned earlier!

1. In most browsers, if you want to Google some text from a webpage you can highlight it and drag it up to the tabs area. No need to copy and paste or right click.

2. Does everyone know the toaster lever can be pulled up to raise the toast up to make it easier to grab? Because I was in my 30’s when I learned.

3. With many car key remotes, you can make all the windows go down at once by pushing the “unlock” button 3 times.

4. The ring pull on cans is easier to open if you push the front part down, which lifts up the back. This saves the awkward clawing at it to get it open.

5. You can mute many microwaves. To mute your microwave, Google the model and ‘how to mute’. Not ALL microwaves mute but many do. Good luck!

6. You can select an area to screenshot that you can simply copy-paste by pressing windows+shift+s. (Or Command+Shift+4 on Mac.)

7. YouTube hotkeys:

K – toggles pause/play on the video no matter where you last clicked on the page (except the URL bar).

The buttons to either side of it, J and L, skip forward or back by 10 seconds.

The arrow keys skip forward and back by 5 seconds.

The number keys skip you to whichever tenth of the video they correspond to (“0” to go to the start).

M is mute, and C toggles the captions.

8. Oven doors come off. Just open until the first stop and pull straight up. I don’t know how many people I’ve seen stretching to clean the back.

9. If you hold down the space bar on your iPhone, it allows you to move the cursor anywhere in the text.

10. On Zoom meetings, you can mute yourself and just press and hold the space bar when you need to speak.

11. Most electric toothbrushes have a built-in two-minute timer. Because that’s how long you’re meant to brush your teeth. For your health.

12. When you are writing in Microsoft Word or Outlook and accidentally leave caps lock on, select the text and press Shift F3. It will change the text between upper and lower case, and there’s a third option to make the first letter of each word upper case too.

13. If you press the volume button while someone’s calling (or even lock button for some phones) it will silence the ringer for that call. Really effective for when you don’t want to pick up but the ringer is annoying.

14. Happy Meal boxes from McDonald’s have pull tabs near the bottom so you can separate the top from the bottom. It makes a little tray/plate you can eat off of.

15. Drag a Google image to the search box to get a better quality picture.

16. The alignment of highway signs indicates which side the exit will be on.

17. Most ceiling fans have a switch to reverse the direction of the blades. Set to clockwise at low speed in winter for an updraft that redistributes warmed air at the ceiling downward, and then switch to counter-clockwise at higher speeds in summer to create a cooling downdraft.

18. You can click the three dots in the upper-right corner of a Facebook post and turn on notifications. You don’t need to comment “Commenting to follow!” (You can also turn off notifications for a post you’ve already commented on using the same menu.)

19. On most desktop browsers you can emulate web pages in different mobile and tablet sizes by going to developers tools. Tip: You can use this to upload photos to Instagram from your computer.

20. There a bit at the end of a stapler you can reverse so the staples bend out instead of in, for a less permanent stapling that is easier to remove by hand.

21. The toothpaste bottles have a little spike inside of the cap that’s meant to pierce the piece of foil on the top of the bottle. From what I’ve seen, not many people know about this.

22. Coffee cup lids have that small hole at the back to avoid you creating a vacuum when you take a sip. It allows the air to flow and stops you getting a big glug of hot coffee down your front. I always make sure the hole is open and not melted shut and people are often confused why I do it.

23. If you get kidnapped and stuffed in the trunk of a modern car, there is an emergency trunk release lever to help you escape.

24. There are push-in tabs on most aluminum foil and plastic wrap boxes to keep the roll from falling out.

25. Those little cardboard kids juice boxes with the attached straws, their tops have these little folded wings on them. You can pry them up for little kids to use as handles so they don’t squeeze juice everywhere.

26. Baby onesies have the overlap at the shoulders so you can pull it down the kids and off if they have a diaper blowout. So much better than trying to get a shit covered onesie over their head. I’m so annoyed that I found out about this after I was done with the baby stage.

27. Most Elf lipsticks have a base that pop off and it’s lip balm the same color as the lipstick

28. Most spaghetti forks (that funky utensil you use to pick up cooked spaghetti) have one large round hole in the center. Aside from helping it drain, it is also sized to be exactly one serving of uncooked spaghetti.

29. You can mute those obnoxious gas pump tv ads by pressing the button that’s second from the top on the right side.

30. You can turn off auto-correct on your phone. Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

January Nelson

January Nelson

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.