Select an entire line with a single press

Selecting text with the mouse takes a steady hand — and you still usually end up grabbing one character too many or too few. Yet you can keep your hands on the keyboard and let two shortcuts make the selection exactly the way you need it, without a single cursor drag. They work anywhere text gets typed — in email, in Word, in a browser, and in code. These are two of the oldest keyboard shortcuts there are, and yet most people never really worked them into their daily routine, because they seem too small to bother learning.

A typical scenario

You're dashing off a quick reply to a client and realize at the last second that the first sentence is unnecessary and has to go. Without the shortcuts: you move the mouse to the start of the sentence, click, drag the selection past the period, overshoot by a word, correct it, and only then delete. Ten seconds wasted dragging over a single sentence.

With the shortcuts: click anywhere on the line, press Shift + Home, the sentence is selected from the cursor to the start of the line, and one press of Delete and it's gone. No dragging, no overshooting, no fixing your own fix. It works the same way in reverse — when you need to delete the rest of a long sentence after the cursor, just Shift + End and Delete.

How to do it

1. Place the cursor anywhere on the line — by clicking or with the arrow keys.
2. Press Shift + End to select everything from the cursor to the end of the line.
3. Press Shift + Home to select everything from the cursor to the start of the line.
4. If you need the selection to continue onto the next line, hold Shift and add an up or down arrow — the selection extends by a whole additional line.
5. The shortcut works in most text fields, editors, and forms, so you don't have to switch it up depending on whether you're in a browser, an email, or a document.
6. On a Mac, Cmd + left or right arrow has the same effect in single-line fields; in multi-line text the behavior can vary slightly by app — if you're not sure, try it once in the program you write in most.

The best tools

• The operating system's built-in keyboard shortcut — works in Windows, macOS, and Linux with nothing to install, right in whatever field you're typing in.
• Text and code editors (Word, Notepad, VS Code) — this is where line-based selection comes in handiest, for example when deleting or moving whole lines.
• Email clients (Gmail, Outlook) — a quick edit to a half-written message without dragging the mouse across several lines.
• Your browser's address bar — the same shortcut selects the whole address, or just the part from the cursor onward.

What you get out of it

• Time: a small thing, but it repeats dozens to hundreds of times a day — add it up over a year and it's hours saved compared to dragging with the mouse.
• Precision: no more “one character too many or too few” — the selection always lands exactly on the line boundary.
• Smoother workflow: your hands stay on the keyboard, no need to switch to the mouse and back mid-sentence.
• Less strain on your wrist: less mouse dragging during routine editing is a relief for anyone who types all day.
• A portable habit: once learned, the shortcut works the same in any app, so the investment in learning it keeps paying off, not just in one particular program.

Pro tip

Combine it with deleting to the end: Shift + End and Delete wipes the rest of the line in one move. And Ctrl + Shift + End selects everything from the cursor to the very end of the document — handy when you need to delete the remainder of a long text in one go.