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Have you seen the dark, chat-focused user interface for YouTube Gaming? Google’s answer to game streaming site Twitch has some interesting features all its own, and it’s a pretty slick-looking to boot. But the distinction between regular YouTube and YouTube Gaming is… well, less than distinct. Videos uploaded to YouTube that are “related to gaming” should automatically be available via gaming.youtube.com, but they’re also on the main YouTube website and visible from a standard YouTube search....

Chromebooks have a dedicated Search key in place of where most keyboards have the Caps Lock key. Pressing it brings up a search bar that can search through the apps and files on your device as well as the web. Caps Lock can be enabled by default by using the key combination ALT+Search. But if you use Caps Lock on your Chromebook often, you may want to make it easier....

Android battery life and the tools for monitoring usage have gotten better over the last few years, but the stock options are still sometimes not enough. But there are ways to gauge your battery usage, remaining time, and even hunt down apps that steal your precious juice. RELATED: Why You Shouldn’t Use a Task Killer On Android Before we get into the details, though, let’s talk about one thing you shouldn’t do to your battery....

Smart light options from Philips Hue are pretty expensive, but perhaps nothing is as pricey as the Hue LightStrips. The good news is that you can save quite a bit of cash by putting together some DIY Hue-compatible light strips. RELATED: How to Get the Most Out of Your Philips Hue Lights The Hue LightStrip kit costs a cool $90 and comes with two meters worth of light strips. You can add on one-meter extensions for $30 each....

In the BitTorrent scene, giving is just as important as receiving. If you have something you’d like to contribute to your tracker of choice, it’s easy to do if you’re using uTorrent. In today’s edition of our BitTorrent for Beginners series we’ll show you how to create and share a torrent using uTorrent—be sure to read the first part of the series, where we explain what BitTorrent is and how it all works....

Make no doubt about it, even if you’re reading all day and even downloading lots of books to your Kindle, it would be really difficult to totally drain the battery in a single day. Even careless users don’t have charge their Kindle ebook readers on a daily basis like they do with phones or tablets. After we started experiencing decreased battery life on our Kindle Paperwhite, we went on an all out bender to ferret out every single cause of decreased Kindle battery life....

Group chats can be a terrible experience for everyone, especially when you just need to send a single message—like an invitation—to a bunch of people at once. WhatsApp has a much better feature you can use instead: Broadcast Lists. A Broadcast List lets you send the same WhatsApp message to up to 256 recipients at once. Each recipient receives the message as a normal WhatsApp message from the sender, instead of being included in a huge group chat that will quickly get out of hand....

Glass is back, baby. And glass is back for backs. Most new high end phones this year—like the iPhone X and Galaxy S9, have glass screens and backs. This could mean expensive repairs, so let’s go back to basics, and look at how to not drop your phone. Use a Grippy Case Glass feels wonderful. So silky smooth. So beautiful…whoops, there goes my phone. Most highend smartphones are slightly too large to be held comfortably in one hand....

Spotlight Search on macOS has gotten a lot better over the last few years, but there’s still so much potential that’s missing. Enter Alfred, which is similar to Spotlight Search, but on some major steroids. What Can Alfred Do? In essence, Alfred is a Spotlight Search replacement. It’s not quite as smart as Spotlight Search at first (e.g. typing “Red Sox” wouldn’t show you sports scores in Alfred like it would in Spotlight Search), but with some customization and add-ons, you can make Alfred do so much more than Spotlight Search ever could....

Sometimes, you need to protect your iPhone or iPad photos from prying eyes that might also have access to your device. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t provide an obvious, secure way to do this. However, there’s a work-around thanks to the Notes app. How Does It Work? You probably already know about the “Hidden Photos” folder in the Photos app on iPhone and iPad. In iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, you can hide that folder, as well....

Chromebooks don’t normally run Windows software—that’s the best and worst thing about them. You don’t need antivirus or other Windows junk…but you also can’t install Photoshop, the full version of Microsoft Office, or other Windows desktop applications. Luckily, there are ways to use Windows desktop programs on a Chromebook: either running them remotely on an existing Windows system, through various Android workarounds, or getting your hands dirty in developer mode and running them on your Chromebook itself....

In the past, you could only send messages to other Alexa users (or you call any phone number). But now you can send text messages to anyone using your voice, and it’ll show up on their end as a regular text message sent from your phone number. The only downside is that it’s Android only right now, and it’s only available in the US. Also, it will include a link to an audio version of your spoken message—there’s currently no way to turn this feature off....

Valve’s Steam Link is a sleek, easy way to stream games from your PC to a TV elsewhere in your home. You connect the Steam Link to your PC via HDMI, connect a controller, and play. It uses Steam In-Home Streaming, which you can use with any PC, but the Steam Link offers a cheap, optimized streaming receiver you can connect to your TV. How to Set Up Your Steam Link The Steam Link is easy to set up....

There are plenty of smart plugs out on the market, but if you want a decently cheap option that’s reliable, Eufy’s Smart Plug and Smart Plug Mini are worth checking out. Here’s how to set them up. RELATED: Can You Plug Space Heaters Into Smart Outlets? If you’ve never heard of Eufy before, that’s not too surprising—they’re a fairly new sister company under the Anker brand, and if there’s one thing you probably know about Anker, it’s that they make some really great accessories for some really great prices....

While you can invite other users to share access to your home’s Abode security system during the initial setup process, here’s how to access that screen if you ever want to invite someone else. RELATED: How to Install and Set Up the Abode Home Security System There are two ways you can do this: either in the Abode mobile app on your smartphone or from the web interface on your computer’s web browser....

Creative Commons licenses make it easy for people to share their creative works so that other people can use them for their own projects. Here’s how to release your work under a CC license. RELATED: What Are Creative Commons Licenses? With traditional copyrights, if you want other people to be able to use your work, you’re often stuck with granting individual licenses for each request. That can get pretty time consuming....

Chromebooks can now download and install Android apps from Google Play, and it works pretty well. But not every Android app is available in Google Play. Some apps are available from outside Google Play as APK files, and you can install them on your Chromebook with a bit of extra work. This will only work if your Chromebook has Google Play and Android app support. At the time of this writing, that means you need an ASUS Chromebook Flip on the dev channel, with Android apps enabled....

Colloquially known as “military time,” the 24-hour clock format isn’t quite as popular, but it’s used in a few different industries—the military (hence the nickname), aviation, and hospitals. If you use this time format and have a display-based Echo, here’s how to switch over. Open the settings by swiping down from the top of the screen, and then tapping the little gear icon. On the Echo Show, there’s a “Settings” label underneath the icon....

How to Test a VPN’s Speed The easiest way to test your connection speed is by visiting a speed-test website like SpeedTest.net, which is run by analytics company Ookla. There are alternative sites, like Fast.com, but SpeedTest is generally considered to be the best. Many other speed tests just run an Ookla clone. On the site, you’ll see a big round button that says “Go.” Below that, you’ll see your IP address on the left and the server you’ll be using on the right....

Turning off in-app purchases is a great way to ensure you, or especially your kids, don’t end up buying costly items from your installed apps or games. When you disable the option, your phone will ask for your confirmation each time you attempt to buy an item from within an app or game on your device. Prevent Accidental In-App Purchases on Android On Android, you can get the Google Play Store to ask for authorization each time someone tries to buy an in-app item on your phone....