Posts

The switch from Android TV to Google TV brought a massive change to the home screen experience. The focus is on recommendations and surfacing content from your streaming services. We’ll show you how to customize the home screen on devices like the Chromecast with Google TV. There are three ways in which we can customize the Google TV home screen experience. First, you can rearrange the order of your apps and games to put your favorites front and center....

Trackr is a keychain-sized Bluetooth device you can use to find your keys, wallet, or anything else you frequently lose. If you need to replace your Trackr, troubleshoot its connection, or just get rid of it entirely, you can easily delete a Trackr from your account. RELATED: How to Use Trackr to Find Your Keys, Wallet, Phone, or Anything Else Once you’ve added a Trackr to your account, it’s easy to delete it....

iPhone and iPad apps have to get your permission to send notifications, but it’s still easy to end up with a noisy phone that won’t stop buzzing. Here’s how to get only the notifications you care about. How to Disable an App’s Notifications To disable an app’s notifications, open the Settings app and tap the “Notifications” category. In the “Notification Style” section, you’ll see a list of every single app currently installed that is capable of showing notifications....

Back in Android Marshmallow, Google introduced a feature that allowed apps to display on top of other apps. Things like Facebook Messenger and Twilight take advantage of this feature to be able to essentially run on-screen at the same time as other foreground applications. RELATED: How to Fix the “Screen Overlay Detected” Error on Android But that presented a problem in itself: some apps wouldn’t run when something was running on top of them—like Waze, for example....

Should You Use Cleaning Products or Not? Smartphone manufacturers from Samsung to Apple have instructions to help you safely clean your smartphone. These generally involve wiping it down with a damp lint-free cloth and avoiding harsh chemicals, abrasive cleaners, and pressurized air. Harsh cleaning products can accelerate the rate of wear on the oleophobic (oil repelling) coating on your screen. This coating will gradually degrade as you use your device over several years....

How Three-Finger Drag Works Once it’s enabled, three-finger drag is easy to use. All you have to do is move the cursor to the toolbar and gently tap the trackpad with three fingers, and you’ll “grab” the window. Then, move all three fingers to move the window. Once the window reaches the desired place, simply lift one finger from the trackpad, and you’ll release the window. Use this method as often as you like....

Sometimes you want to find out what’s within a certain number of miles of a specific location. Maybe you want to know what area a cell tower covers or what would happen if a nuclear bomb got dropped on your in-laws’ house. To find this information, we’re going to use FreeMapTools’ Radius Around Point tool. Finding the Radius Around a Specific Map Point Head to FreeMapTools’ Radius Around Point tool to get started....

Your computer stores the time in a hardware clock on its motherboard. The clock keeps track of time, even when the computer is off. By default, Windows assumes the time is stored in local time, while Linux assumes the time is stored in UTC time and applies an offset. This leads to one of your operating systems showing the wrong time in a dual boot situation. To fix this, you have two options: Make Linux use local time, or make Windows use UTC time....

In addition to removing old connections, forgetting a Wi-Fi network can help you troubleshoot connection issues. If a network has changed its password and your Mac doesn’t give you a password prompt (or if it’s just being flaky), you can try forgetting and rejoining the network. To do so, click the Wi-Fi icon in your Mac’s menu bar, and then select “Open Network Preferences.” Here, click “Advanced.” Under the “Wi-Fi” tab, scroll through and select the network you want your Mac to forget, and then click the minus sign (-)....

If you’ve ever attended a meeting where no one asked a question, you’re likely in the minority. Questions are common during Google Meet calls like any other meeting. So, make it easy for your participants with a Q&A session. When you enable the Q&A feature during a Google Meet, participants can ask written questions throughout the meeting. This allows you to handle questions at your own pace, when there’s a topic transition, or if a specific question applies at the time....

Living in the future with an on-call voice assistant is great—except when she doesn’t understands your requests. Here are five simple things you can do to ensure that you spend more time enjoying Alexa and less time yelling at her for misunderstanding you. When it comes to improving your Alexa experience, you should keep one big thing in mind: artificial intelligence is in its absolute infancy at the moment, and it helps to think of Alexa and similar voice assistants as literal infants....

JSON and jq JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. It’s a scheme that allows data to be encoded into plain text files, in a self-describing way. There are no comments in a JSON file—the contents should be self-explanatory. Each data value has a text string called a “name” or “key.” This tells you what the data value is. Together, they’re known as name:value pairs, or key:value pairs. A colon (:) separates a key from its value....

Word automatically formats items like quotes, bulleted and numbered lists, and horizontal lines. When you type at least three dashes, underscores, or equal signs in a paragraph by themselves and press “Enter”, the characters are automatically converted to a single, thick single, or double horizontal line, respectively. This feature can be a timesaver, except when you want the actual characters in your document and not have Word convert them into a horizontal line that extends the width of your document....

Minecraft Pocket Edition (PE) is every bit as popular as the PC edition. Today we’re taking a look at how to run a lightweight Minecraft PE server to keep your worlds preserved and available (even when the device they were built with isn’t online). Why Run a Minecraft PE Server If you’ve spent any time playing Minecraft PE or have a gaggle of Minecraft PE players in your household, you know the primary frustration is similar to the PC experience: if player X isn’t active then all the work the other players have done on player X’s shared world is unavailable....

In the seven years I’ve been using an iPhone, I’ve downloaded hundreds of apps. I’ve deleted the vast majority of them off my iPhone, but iOS has kept a record. There’s a way to see every app you’ve ever downloaded and re-download them. Here’s how. Open the App Store and tap the Profile icon in the top right then select Purchased. Now you’ll see a list of every app you’ve ever downloaded....

If you’re a Mac power user, you probably install a lot of software, only to delete it later. But how many of those applications, drivers, and customizations tools are still trying to do things when your Mac starts up? If you’re like me, you have no idea, which is why it’s good that KnockKnock exists. This free program gives you an overview of all persistent software on your Mac, basically everything that starts up when your Mac does....

Do Not Disturb mode on the Echo Show will turn off the screen entirely and blocking any notifications you might receive until you disable it. Right out of the box, you can enter Do Not Disturb mode by swiping down from the top of the screen and tapping Do Not Disturb. Once you turn it on, the screen will go dim and display the current time. To turn off Do Not Disturb mode after that, swipe down and tap the same button again....

Firefox has its own profiles system that works like Chrome’s user account switcher. Each profile has its own bookmarks, settings, add-ons, browser history, cookies, and other data. For example, you might want to create a profile for work and a separate profile for personal use, keeping them separate. Mozilla hides Firefox’s Profile Manager, not making it a highly visible part of the interface like Chrome does. But, if you’d like to use different browser profiles with their own settings and data, Firefox makes it possible....

Meeting up with your friends in an unfamiliar spot is a pain. Once you get away from rigid grids, finding a location becomes a challenge. The best thing to do, rather than sharing an address, is to actually share your exact GPS location. Here’s how to do it with WhatsApp. Open a WhatsApp chat with the person you want to share your location with, tap the + icon and select Location....

If you don’t intend to use your email account with Microsoft Outlook, it’s a good idea to log out of your account so others can’t see your data. You can do this in Outlook’s desktop, web, Android, iPhone, and iPad versions. We’ll show you how. If you use Outlook’s desktop app, know that logging out from your email account is different from logging out of the Microsoft account that you use for your Office subscription....