Superhuman Cheat Sheet
This is an unofficial reference cheat sheet for other Superhuman users as Superhuman doesn’t offer a reference user guide yet. Excited for when they do have one as it’ll help me be an even better user and save more time.
My Superhuman coach Rebecca said there’s three things to be a good intermediate user of Superhuman:
- Using the Keyboard Shortcuts
- Having Splits
- Using Snippets
Let’s learn them!
Keyboard Shortcuts
This is the easiest and fastest way that Superhuman provides value to new users. Using your keyboard alone you can quickly navigate, read, and manage email. To see all the shortcuts, press ‘?’ on your keyboard.
The joy this brings is similar to the first time you realize you can make pivot tables in Excel using just your keyboard. In many ways, Superhuman is for hardcore email users the same way Excel functions & macros are for hardcore financial modelers.
The must haves:
- ‘j’ to navigate to next
- ‘k’ to navigate prior
- ‘e’ to archive
- ‘shift’ + up arrow or down arrow to multi-select emails in inbox
- ‘/’ to search
- G and then I to get back to your inbox
- ‘CMD’ + ‘K’ opens Superhumman command to do cool stuff like create splits
Request to Superhuman: Have gamer mode! WASD to navigate up/down and next/prior.
Splits
Create different inboxes for your different needs. It helps email become less of a catch-all and takes the Gmail’s category inbox feature to the next level. Highly recommend a VIP Split as well as a split for specific priorities. I have a split for hiring for example.
To create a split, do a search for a specific set of emails by pressing ‘/’ and typing out your search. Once that search list comes up, hit ‘CMD’ + ‘K’ and then type in ‘split’, and then select to create a new split.
Pro-tip: You can use Boolean syntax to customize your splits. ‘From:sender AND subj:important’ is a possible example. The tips panel on right hand side of search results are helpful for this.
Snippets
Snippets are shortcuts for things you write over and over and over again. If you’ve used a text expander, it’s that but built into your e-mail client.
For example, I introduce myself a lot. So I have a Snippet for ‘I’m Preet, the Product Lead for Insurance and Safety. Making Lyft even safer so we have fewer car accidents, incidents, and ensuring we handle them extremely well if they happen.’ I can add this to an email I’m composing by simply pressing ‘CMD’ + ‘;’ and select that snippet. 30+ seconds saved.
In addition to phrases, snippets can also be longer paragraphs or even entire emails. You can customize the to, subject, cc, and bcc fields, and add attachments! (Example use cases could be intro emails, copying an EA, or sending out hiring documents.)
To create a new snippet, use the trusted CMD + K and then select snippets. Create a new snippet there.
Pro-tip: Create snippets for saying thank you, declining a meeting or solicitation, introducing yourself, important links, and anything else you find yourself repeating a lot. Any founder that’s fundraising should have one for their “blurb” and link to executive summary.
Superhuman can be really, really powerful but it takes time to learn all of its functions and change your workflow. Hope this is a helpful start in your journey to save more time. If you’ve got more must-know tips, please comment and also email our friends at Superhuman (hello@superhuman.com)
