Being able to navigate and control your computer without moving your hands from the keyboard is a beautiful thing. In the beginning I was under the impression that learning a bunch of short cuts and installing an app or two was overkill. Yet, believe me, once you start, you won't be able to stop. So, let me convert you by sharing some of the things I learned over the last couple of years.
The Basics
Top of the list must be cmd + tab. This gets rid of the pain of moving your mouse to the dock in order to find a running app to pull up. Instead, this allows you to quickly switch through all your open applications by holding down cmd and pressing tab until the right app is in focus. Next up is cmd + q to quit an app. Finally, cmd + ~ to switch between windows of the same application.
The Basics - Browser
This is going to be a larger set of commands. Most other apps luckily also use the same short cuts, so you'll be able to apply them in a variety of scenarios.
Controlling tabs: cmd + t to open a new tab, cmd + w to close a tab, control + tab to go to the next tab, and control + shift + tab to go to the previous one.
cmd + l can be used to instantly go to the search bar. This also works in the Spotify app, by the way. cmd + n opens a new window. Instead of hitting the back button, use cmd + [.
<a name="learn-more" />
Learning More With CheatSheet
Technichally, you can look up all the short cuts by scrolling through the menu bar of each app. To help you discover new short cuts in a more user friendly way, download CheatSheet. This little app allows you to pull up a list of all available commands by holding down cmd.
Raycast
Now, this is what you're really here for. Raycast is a supercharged spotlight alternative. It's quite similar to Alfred, but provides slighlty more functionality with a nicer user interface. This app will allow you to hit cmd + space and control your entire computer by typing in the corresponding command. Community-built extensions provide great integration with countless apps. In fact, I have written my own two extensions for Raycast. It's so engrained into my workflow by now that I would always install this first on a new computer.
Let's go through the setup. I recommend you set up an alias, e.g. f, for file search. This way, you'll be able to type cmd + space and f + space, which will immediately launch file search. Next, I would enable key bindings for the window management extension. This way Raycast will be able to do what Rectangle does without any additional installations. Lastly, I would recommend installing my Google Maps Search extension. This will let you pull up directions from your current location to your home with one command.