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People love snarking at tech like smart fridges. While the price isn’t exactly affordable just yet, you can’t deny that smart fridges could actually be pretty useful. RELATED: How to Take Care of Your Home’s Appliances So They Last Longer During CES earlier this year, Samsung and LG doubled down on their smart appliances, with their new smart fridges being one of the biggest focal points. While many CES attendees spent time whispering quips to their peers (including my coworkers), I was sitting back dreaming about how useful something like this would be in a lot of homes....

Every file on your Mac has a folder path that starts all the way at the root directory, but it’s not always easy to see what it is. Here are three ways to see the current folder path on your Mac. See the Path Using Finder’s Status Bar Let’s start with the simplest and most visual way of viewing the current folder path: using Finder’s own Path Bar feature. Open a Finder window, and from the top menu bar, click the “View” button....

As you may already know, Microsoft PowerPoint offers a robust feature set for creating presentations. But what kind of tools are useful for actually presenting a slideshow? We’ll walk you through several features that can help you engage your audience. Presenter Coach for Practicing Before it’s time for your presentation, you can practice with help from PowerPoint itself. Using Presenter Coach, you can receive feedback as you walk through your slideshow....

If you have Internet access, you probably have a router — and your router has its own settings screens full of options. Everyone should know how to use their router’s web interface, if only to configure their Wi-Fi security settings. Some of the options you may find on your router include parental controls, Internet connection time limits, and status pages that show you who’s connected to your Wi-Fi networks. These options are useful for managing your home network....

Browser extensions are much more dangerous than most people realize. These small tools often have access to everything you do online, so they can capture your passwords, track your web browsing, insert advertisements into web pages you visit, and more. Popular browser extensions are often sold to shady companies or hijacked, and automatic updates can turn them into malware. We’ve written about how your browser extensions are spying on you in the past, but this problem hasn’t improved....

USB devices are apparently more dangerous than we’ve ever imagined. This isn’t about malware that uses the AutoPlay mechanism in Windows—this time, it’s a fundamental design flaw in USB itself. RELATED: How AutoRun Malware Became a Problem on Windows, and How It Was (Mostly) Fixed Now you really shouldn’t pick up and use suspicious USB flash drives you find lying around. Even if you ensured they were free of malicious software, they could have malicious firmware....

A hub for this and a hub for that. When you dive into the smarthome market, you’re inevitably going to end up with a handful of smarthome hubs taking over your house. It’s annoying, but it’s probably not going to get any better. RELATED: How to Put Together Your First Smarthome (Without Getting Overwhelmed) Don’t get me wrong; these hubs are an important component to any smart home and they have purpose....

If you want to open a file type not registered with Notepad, you have to click through several options to make it happen. This can be a hassle, so why not add an “Open with Notepad” option right on your context menu? The context menu you get when you right-click a file in Windows already provides a lot of value, but why not kick it up a notch? We’ve shown you how to add any application to the context menu to open apps quickly and how to customize the “Send To” menu....

You open your MacBook to take notes in class or during a meeting, and your music starts playing. Loudly. Not only did you disrupt everyone, you also revealed your passion for 90’s boy bands to a room full of people who once respected you. It’s too late to win back that respect, but you can stop this from happening again. Just install AutoVolume, a tiny open source program that automatically sets your volume to any level when your MacBook goes to sleep....

If you’ve bought a laptop within the past five years, it probably has a decent Wi-Fi card installed already. But if you’ve been experiencing a shoddy connection, spent too long waiting for Netflix to buffer, or missed that last fireball because of lag, then it might be time to consider adding on an external USB Wi-Fi adapter instead. RELATED: Why You Should Upgrade Your Router (Even If You Have Older Gadgets)...

Despite reports to the contrary, Internet Explorer is still very much alive. While it’s browser share has steadily eroded over time, it still commands a 15% share, which means there are quite a few people out there using it. To that end, it’s important that IE users know that not only does it store a history of your website comings and goings (as do all other browsers), but you can tweak your history settings....

How to Open the Control Center From your watch face, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the Control Center. You can then swipe or use the Digital Crown to scroll. If you’re on another screen, touch and hold on the bottom of the screen, and then swipe up. You can’t open the Control Center from the Home Screen (the one with all your apps). To close the Control Center, swipe down from the top of your screen....

First, click the drop down arrow next to “Manage history” to open a couple of helpful buttons. Now, you’ll see two new buttons. On the left, you can click “Remove all items” to clear your entire history. This can’t be undone, so we don’t recommend using it unless you want to go back to square one. On the right, you’ll see a toggle that reads “Turn Browsing History on/off.” If you want to stop keeping track of your browsing or search habits without losing your history, disable this toggle....

In 2017, TV watches you. At least, it does if you’re using a Roku device: that platform monitors everything you do on their devices. Data is shared with Neilson to supplement ratings, mostly it’s used for advertising purposes. RELATED: Which Roku Should I Buy? Express vs. Stick vs. Stick+ vs. Ultra That’s right: advertising. You probably think of Roku as a hardware company, and it’s true that their various streaming devices make up the majority of their revenue....

These ads were first spotted by Cord Cutters News. An advertisement promoting “Ghost Town” on the Roku Channel, a program sponsored by GEICO, appeared over a GEICO commercial while watching live TV. The ads appear to be part of the Roku OS 9.2 update. The good news is that these only appear during commercial breaks. If an advertiser has partnered with Roku, that advertiser can display an interactive pop-up advertisement over the normal commercial....

If you encrypt your Windows system drive with BitLocker, you can add a PIN for additional security. You’ll need to enter the PIN each time you turn on your PC, before Windows will even start. This is separate from a login PIN, which you enter after Windows boots up. RELATED: How to Use a USB Key to Unlock a BitLocker-Encrypted PC A pre-boot PIN prevents the encryption key from automatically being loaded into system memory during the boot process, which protects against direct memory access (DMA) attacks on systems with hardware vulnerable to them....

Night Shift is a new feature introduced in macOS Sierra 10.12.4, and you might already be familiar with it if you’re an iOS user. Here’s how to enable it and set it up on your Mac. RELATED: The Best New Features in macOS Sierra (and How to Use Them) Night Shift changes the color temperature of your screen so that it emits a warmer glow that’s easier on the eyes late at night, since that bright blue hue that a screen normally emits can be pretty harsh after the sun goes down....

Your PlayStation 4 offers parental controls that can limit access to games, Blu-ray movies, DVDs, and web browsing. Restrictions you set are protected with a four-digit numerical PIN so they can’t be easily bypassed. RELATED: How to Restrict Access to Your PlayStation 4 with a Passcode With the PlayStation 4 system software 5.00, Sony now offers a new “Family” feature that replaces the old “sub-account” and “master account” system. You can restrict individual child accounts, applying separate settings to each....

On some Windows 10 PCs, the “Service Host: Local System (Network Restricted)” process group in the Task Manager can use a high amount of CPU, disk, and memory resources. Here’s how to fix it. Superfetch Has Some Bugs on Windows 10 We recently noticed this problem on one of our Windows 10 PCs. We determined the Superfetch service was the problem, although the Windows Task Manager didn’t point that out....

The desktop is a convenient place to save files, but can quickly become messy. macOS Mojave solves this with the “Desktop Stacks” feature, which automatically organizes your files into stacks. You can get something similar on Windows, too. We’ll be using Stardock’s popular Fences software for this. Fences lets you arrange your desktop’s icons into different “fenced” areas. While you can manually drag and drop icons between fences, Fences also offers automatic organization rules–and you can roll up these fences to hide their included icons for a cleaner desktop look, just like how Stacks work on macOS Mojave....