10 Google Search Hacks

22

You can use Google search as a timer by typing in “set timer for” followed by the amount of minutes or hours you’d like Google to start counting down from.

23

Do you remember everything in your search term except for one word? Use an asterisk (*) in its place and Google search will fill in the blank for you.

24

Rather than sift through your local airport’s website, simply type in the airline and flight number into Google search to get all the important information you need.

25

Turn the Google search page into pirate slang by typing in “Google pirate” and clicking the “I’m feeling lucky” button. “Settings” will now be referred to as “Me likes an’ dislikes.”

26

Want search results from one specific website? Type in your search term followed by “site:” and then the site you want the results from.

27

Don’t bother getting out your calculator—you can simply type what you want converted like “20 euros to dollars” or “8 meters to feet” right into Google for an instant answer.

28

You can narrow your search to specific date ranges by typing in your search term and using “..” between the dates you want. For example, if you were searching for popular music during the mid-to-late 2000s, you could type in “Best albums 2004..2010.”

29

Want to play Pac-Man? Go straight into the game by typing “Google Pac-Man” and clicking the “I’m feeling lucky” button.

30

Having something shipped to you? Don’t bother going to a confusing shipping website! Simply type your package number into Google to take you straight to the tracking page.

31

Instantly translate between any language by typing in “translate” then your search term, followed by the language you want it translated to.

32

When sharing headphones with friends, turn on the mono audio feature, so that your phone splits the sound equally.

33

Want to save on your phone bill? Gmail offers free calling to anywhere in the United States as long as you have Internet and a microphone.

34

If you’re in an area where you should have cell phone service but don’t, put your phone on airplane mode and then switch back. This will cause your phone to register and find all the towers in your vicinity.

35

Tie a small knot around your left ear bud so you can easily tell them apart.

36

If you want to access Pandora, Hulu, or Netflix outside the United States, download the Chrome or Firefox extension called Media Hint.

37

Your headphones can be used as microphones if you plug them into the mic jack on your computer. This is helpful when recording lectures.

38

Go to www.youtube.com/disco and enter in an artist’s name. YouTube will auto arrange an awesome playlist based on uploads of that artist.

39

Before you throw away a Post-it note, run it between the keys on your keyboard to collect dust, crumbs, and other things that might get trapped in there.

40

You can go on NameChk.com to see every website where your username has been used.

41

Did your phone freeze? Plug it into a charger to free it up again.

42

Open an incognito tab in your browser and sign into Pandora to get unlimited skips for free.

43

Forget slow double clicks! Press “F2” on a PC and “Enter/Return” on a Mac to immediately rename a file.

44

Don’t want the person you’re calling to know that it’s you? Dial “*67” before the number and he/she won’t have a clue.

45

An iPad charger will charge your iPhone much faster.

46

The Chromoji extension for Google Chrome allows you to see emojis when you’re on your computer.

47

You can press “1,” “2,” “3,” etc. to jump 10%, 20%, 30% into the video you’re watching on YouTube.

48

When letting someone use your iPhone to call someone, use Siri from the lock screen. They can call, but they can’t look at your texts and photos.

49

Make an autocorrect shortcut on your iPhone or iPad to easily enter your e-mail address.

50

If you play YouTube videos through Safari on your iPhone, you can still listen to them with your screen turned off.

51

Can’t afford Microsoft Word? Get OpenOffice; it’s the same thing except it’s free and has a lot more features.

52

If your camera ever gets stolen, go to StolenCameraFinder.com. You can upload an old photo from your camera and it will show you if someone has been posting images with the same serial number on the Internet.

53

If you lost an Android phone in your house and it’s on vibrate, you can find it by logging in to Android Device Manager online and clicking ring.

54

To move frame by frame on a YouTube video, pause it and then use J or L to go backward or forward.

55

Ever wonder why phone cords are so short? Using your phone while it’s charging can damage the battery.

56

Drop a battery from six inches off the ground. If it bounces once and falls over it’s still good. If it bounces around more than that, it’s dead or on its way out.

57

ProTuber is a free YouTube app on the iPhone that allows you to multitask while playing a video.

58

Hold down Alt and click on any Google image to have it automatically saved to your computer.

59

A quick and easy iPhone speaker using a toilet paper roll.

60

When streaming Netflix on a computer, if the stream quality is sub-par, press “Control + Alt (Opt) + Shift + S” in order to change the buffering rates. Changing it to 3000 will give you HD video.

61

If you don’t like a song on Pandora you can press the dislike button to automatically skip it and not use any of your skips.

62

If YouTube is forcing you to sign in, delete everything after the last “v=” and then change “v=” to “v/”.

63

Confused by a Wikipedia article? Click “Simple English” on the left list of languages and it’ll whisk you to a simplified version.

64

Cleaning out your Windows computer? Search “size:gigantic” and it’ll display all the files on your computer greater than 128mb.

65

Tired of getting bombarded with spam? Keep two e-mail accounts with different passwords, so that one of these can be used exclusively for registering online accounts. This will prevent a ton of spam from hitting your inbox and your main account from being hacked.

66

Before going to a suspicious site, Google “safebrowsing:(website)” to see a ninety-day history of malware attempts on its visitors.

67

If your phone battery is really low and you need it for later, don’t turn it off. Instead, put it on airplane mode. Turning it off and on will actually waste more battery than keeping it on airplane mode.

68

You can search “[month][year]” in Wikipedia to give you all the major world news for that month.