WhatsApp has a neat feature where you can pin certain people to the top of the app. This means you can keep the important people in your life in the same place, above the rest of your chats. Here’s how to do it. Open WhatsApp and go to the Chats screen. On the iPhone, swipe to the right on the chat you want to pin to the top and then tap Pin....
The SmartThings smart home platform is making some big changes in 2020. If you previously added SmartThings devices to the Google Assistant or Home app, you need to reconnect the service to keep using it. We’ll show you how to do just that. Starting on September 8, 2020, the original SmartThings integration with Google Home will stop working. You’ll no longer be able to control devices from a Google Assistant-enabled device, such as Nest smart speakers and smart displays....
If your taskbar, system tray, or Start menu acts up, you might be tempted to restart your PC. Instead, you can usually just restart Windows Explorer. Windows makes it pretty easy whether you’re using Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, or Windows 7. Windows Explorer (Explorer.exe) is a program manager process that provides the graphical interface you use to interact with most of Windows—the Start menu, taskbar, notification area, and File Explorer....
Right-clicking, as a physical action, originated with the first multi-button mice created in the 1960s. But the idea of clicking the right button to open a context menu originated in the Smalltalk environment on the Xerox Alto in the mid-1970s, and then later made its way to the Windows operating system with Windows 95. Right-clicking came natively to macOS with Mac OS X Beta in the year 2000, although OS 8 and 9 included a context menu accessible by holding down Control on the keyboard while clicking....
For a long time, if you wanted to make a screen recording of your Android device you needed to use a third-party app. However, Android 11 introduced a native screen recorder tool. This is a much better solution. RELATED: The Best Screen Recording and Broadcasting Software First, we’ll need to move the “Screen Record” tile into the Quick Settings—if it’s not already. Swipe down twice from the top of your device’s screen and tap the pencil icon to edit the tile layout....
By default, Facebook doesn’t show you everything. Instead, it decides what it thinks you want to see based on the things you like, comment on, and what kind of media Facebook wants to promote. If you’d rather see everything, in chronological order, the way Facebook used to be, here’s how to do that. On the Facebook Website RELATED: How Facebook’s News Feed Sorting Algorithm Works Open Facebook in your browser and click the three little dots next to where it says News Feed....
When you take a picture on your iPhone, your phone plays a shutter sound to indicate the photo was captured. You don’t really need this sound to take photos, and disabling it is easy. RELATED: How to Take Better Photos with Your iPhone Mute the Camera Shutter Sound on iPhone The simplest way to disable your iPhone’s camera shutter sound is to put your phone in silent mode. When you do this, your iPhone turns off all its sounds, including the camera one....
When it comes to smartwatches on iOS, many people think the Apple Watch is the only option. However, Android Wear also works with iOS, and Android 2.0 works almost as a standalone watch, making it much more useful than it used to be with Apple’s mobile operating system. RELATED: How to Set Up, Tweak, and Use Your Android Wear Watch Basically, what you know of Android Wear with iOS—if anything at all—was likely based off of the first versions of Android Wear....
This feature works not only amongst your own Echo devices in your house, but you can also use it with friends and family if they have it set up as well. However, that means that those contacts can talk to you on your Echo without you having to “pick up” the phone—which can definitely be off putting for some. Thankfully, you have to allow certain contacts to Drop In before they can use the feature....
RELATED: How to Set Up Sleep Tracking on Apple Watch Apple currently doesn’t provide a sleep tracker for the Apple Watch. Even though there’s a “Sleep” category in Apple’s Health app, that information comes from third-party sleep tracking apps that are already installed on your iPhone. To track your sleep, you have to use a third-party solution, like AutoSleep or Pillow. The Apple Watch also doesn’t include hardware specifically designed to track sleep....
Everyone who regularly uses the command line has at least one long string they type regularly. Instead of entering all that again and again, quickly search your history to find the complete command. RELATED: How to Use Your Bash History in the Linux or macOS Terminal Even if you know use your Bash history in the Linux or macOS Terminal, you might not know about the built-in search functionality, which lets you quickly find the latest command you typed using any series of characters....
Let me tell you why. All the Content, All the Time And you know what sits right beside it? YouTube. Plus an absolute slew of other content: Sling, Netflix, HBO Now, Twitch, Showtime, PlayStation Vue, YouTube TV, Hulu…and so many others. Easy Access to Kodi, and a Built-in Plex Server Kodi and Plex are the ultimate media platforms if you have lots of locally stored movies, shows, and music. I’ve seen more people recommending the Fire TV or Fire TV stick as the best option because it can be “jailbroken” to install Kodi....
Today we’re taking a look at the home networking hardware: what the individual pieces do, when you need them, and how best to deploy them. Read on to get a clearer picture of what you need to optimize your home network. When do you need a switch? A hub? What exactly does a router do? Do you need a router if you have a single computer? Network technology can be quite an arcane area of study but armed with the right terms and a general overview of how devices function on your home network you can deploy your network with confidence....
Verizon announced today that it has started deploying 100 MHz of C-Band spectrum “in many markets across the US.” The upgrade is significant because, until now, Verizon’s C-Band 5G has been limited to 60 MHz — limiting how much data could be transmitted. Verizon says the upgrade “allows us to support more network traffic, deliver even better performance to our customers and add new products and services on top of the mobile and fixed wireless access solutions we provide today....
Some process called “dasd” is running on your Mac. Don’t worry: it’s part of macOS. But what is it? This article is part of our ongoing series explaining various processes found in Activity Monitor, like kernel_task, hidd, mdsworker, installd, WindowServer, blued, launchd, backup, opendirectoryd, and many others. Don’t know what those services are? Better start reading! RELATED: What Is This Process and Why Is It Running on My Mac?...
Despite its vulgar name, YouTube Poop is a staple of the YouTube platform and an immensely interesting form of self-expression. Often abbreviated YTP, it’s an important part of web culture, and you’ve probably seen it without realizing it. What Does YouTube Poop Mean? YouTube Poop videos, also called YouTube Poops or simply YTP, are hard to describe, and there are many subgenres. In general, YTPs are absurdist remixes of existing footage posted on sites like YouTube to entertain, confound, and serve as joke links you can share to “troll” other people....
A solid-state drive, or “SSD”, is much faster than a traditional hard disk drive (or “HDD”). SSDs have been around for awhile, but a new breed of SSD, called PCIe SSDs, are slowly starting to rise. But how are they different than normal SSDs? SSDs use internal flash chips to house your files, while HDDs use a physical, spinning disk to keep everything contained. The benefits of SSDs over their older HDD counterparts are numerous, including a more compact size, lower power requirements, and much faster speeds across the board–which means your computer will boot and launch programs faster....
Timeline is part of Windows 10’s Task View. It shows a history of activities you’ve performed and can even synchronize activities across your PCs. You can then easily pick up where you left off. This feature is part of Windows 10’s April 2018 Update. It can also work with mobile apps if you sign into them with your Microsoft account, so you might see a Word document you opened on your iPhone or Android phone appear in the Timeline on your PC....
If you’ve noticed that your phone’s screen is turning on without you touching the phone—or whenever you pick it up—it’s thanks to a (somewhat) new feature in Android called “Ambient Display”. Here’s what it is, and how to turn it off. What Is Ambient Display? Ambient Display was introduced back in Android 5.x Lollipop, though it’s kind of a modification of an old Moto X feature (back when Google owned Motorola)....
As its feature set expanded, Windows became something of an omnibus. It now includes not one, but two built-in browsers, a defragmentation tool, and even Candy Crush. But like most do-it-all tools, just because Windows can do almost everything doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do anything. So it is with the default photo viewer. The Need For Speed(y Image Processing and Display) An image viewer might seem like a somewhat mundane portion of your operating system to upgrade, and of course most people don’t think to do so....
