You probably already know how to scan a QR code with your phone. It’s simple enough: just open the camera app, point your phone at the code, and tap the link. What if you’re on your computer, though? You could point your phone at the computer screen, but that inter-device dance isn’t necessary. You can open that code right from your laptop or desktop. 

Scan a QR code in Google Chrome

Google Chrome users have it the easiest, as the browser has a built-in feature specifically to handle this situation. Right-click the image containing the QR code and click Search Image with Google. 

This will open a Google Lens panel to the right of your browser window. At the top you’ll see your image. Below that you will see the words QR code: Text, along with the text contained in the QR code. If the text is a link you will also see a button for opening the link. 

Non-Chrome users can still access this feature, it just requires an extra step. Simply head to Google.com in your browser of choice and click the Search by image icon, which is in the right side of the search bar.

You can upload an image with a QR code, if you want, or provide a URL for the image. Either way Google Lens will open and let you know what’s in the QR code. 

Scan a QR code with your webcam

Sometimes you have a QR code on a sheet of paper but your phone isn’t handy. Your laptop has a camera, though, and you can use it instead. 

In Windows 10 and 11 you can use the Camera app, which is included with your operating system. You can find this application by opening the Start menu and searching for “Camera”. Scanning is simple: hold your QR code in front of your webcam and click the QR code button. 

Apple’s macOS does not have a built-in camera application capable of scanning QR codes. The good news: the free application QR Journal, which you can download in the Mac App Store, can use the webcam to scan QR codes. 

The post How to open a QR code on your computer appeared first on Popular Science.

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Watching one quick video during a workday isn’t too bad—the problem is that YouTube, like chip companies, go out of their way to make sure you can’t have just one. There’s autoplay, a sidebar full of video recommendations, and so many more features designed to get you to keep watching all day. 

We’ve talked about how to avoid falling down a YouTube rabbithole in the past, but if those tips don’t go far enough, you can customize or even entirely replace the YouTube interface. These actions not only make it possible to hide all of those tantalizing features, they can also keep that adblocking warning from showing up to pester you. 

[Related: 3 ways to avoid falling down a YouTube rabbit hole]

Untrapp: Remove clutter from YouTube

Untrapp is a free browser extension that lets you customize the YouTube user interface, allowing you to remove recommendations, comments, and more. To get started just install the extension—it’s free for Chrome and Firefox, while the Safari version costs $2. Install this extension and you can customize over 150 different things. For example: you can remove the recommended videos from showing up in the sidebar when you’re watching a video, or remove the comments from every video page. You can also set the YouTube homepage to be your subscriptions, instead of the algorithmic recommendations, allowing you to follow channels you want to watch instead of letting YouTube guess for you. You can blur thumbnails, you can disable UPPER CASE HEADLINES, and stop thumbnails from auto-playing when you hover your mouse over them. 

Untrapp even lets the truly hooked set up a schedule to block YouTube at a particular time every day or block particular channels altogether. If you’re not comfortable with your YouTube habit, Untrapp is well worth checking out. 

Invidious: Replace YouTube’s interface entirely

Invidious is an alternative user interface for YouTube. Basically, it’s a website you can visit to watch YouTube videos without having to spend any actual time on YouTube itself. The technology is open source and built to respect your privacy, meaning Google won’t be able to track which videos you’re watching. It also doesn’t have any ads.

There are a few downsides. Invidious is sometimes a little slower than YouTube, for example, and occasionally a video won’t work. You also can’t use Invidious with your YouTube account—it’s a completely different website. This means features like subscriptions, comments, and tracking watched videos won’t work. If you don’t care about that, though, Invidious could be a way to watch YouTube videos without letting YouTube get its hooks into you. 

Invidious is a free service hosted on multiple servers. It’s recommended that you try a few severs out and then bookmark one that works well for you—simply use that bookmark instead of heading to YouTube. You can use a browser extension like Privacy Redirect to open all YouTube links in Invidious instead of the YouTube URL with all its distracting, attention-grabbing functions. Either way, you’ll have a much less habit-forming way to use YouTube. 

Desktop players take things even further

VLC is one of the most popular video players on the planet, but did you know it can open YouTube videos? All you need to do is click File, then Open Network Stream, then paste the YouTube URL you want to play into the URL field and click Open. The YouTube video will play like any other video in VLC. You won’t see the sidebar, the comments, or any other feature of YouTube—just the video and the usual VLC playback controls. 

That method works, but takes quite a few extra steps. If you’d like a much simpler desktop application for watching YouTube videos check out MiniTube, which costs 10 euros (roughly $11 USD) for Windows or macOS and is free for Linux users. This application, which offers a demo you can try for free, lets you browse YouTube in a beautiful desktop client without any ads, tracking, comments, or recommendations.

This is probably the nicest YouTube interface you can get on a desktop computer, which is great, but I also find it much easier to use to watch one video without being pushed to immediately gobble up another. 

The post How to avoid binge-watching YouTube videos appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Mac menu bar is iconic. With the Apple logo in the top-left and the text menu for the current application to the right, this feature has been at the top of the screen of every Apple computer since 1981. The last big update came 10 years later when the Cupertino company added icons to the right side. The menu bar has more-or-less looked the same ever since. 

But just because Apple hasn’t really changed the menu bar in the last 40 years doesn’t mean you can’t change it now. There are all kinds of subtle ways you can take control of how the menu bar looks and functions, starting with the order of those icons in the top-right corner. Here’s how you can customize the Mac menu bar to work just the way you want. 

Organize your Icons

It’s definitely not obvious or intuitive, so it’s ok if you didn’t know that you can rearrange your menu bar icons: Just hold the Command key and drag your icons into whatever order you like. This works for every icon except three: the Control Center icon, Siri, and the clock. Those stay in the top-right corner no matter what, but everything else is fair game. 

Customize your system icons

By default, the Mac includes icons for Siri, Wi-Fi, and your battery in the menu bar. If you’d rather not see those icons all the time, don’t worry: just head to System Settings. You can get there by opening the dock icon with the gears, or clicking the Apple logo in the top-right corner and then choosing System Settings in the emerging menu. Head to Control Center on the sidebar to configure which system icons you want to show up in the menu bar. This can be a quick way to remove clutter or add relevant information. 

[Related: 4 tips and hidden settings that will speed up macOS]

You can also customize the clock from here, allowing you to add the date, day of the week, and even the seconds. You could also replace the text showing the time with an icon of an old-school analogue clock, if you like. 

What you can’t tweak here is icons for your applications.

Stop the transparency

The menu bar, by default, is slightly transparent, allowing a little bit of your desktop wallpaper to bleed through. If you don’t like this effect (and the other transparency in the macOS operating system) head to System Settings, Accessibility, and click Display. Check Reduce transparency and your menu bar will be solid white in light mode and solid black in dark mode. 

You can also customize the size a little bit—beside Menu bar size check Large and the text in the menu bar will be a slightly bigger. 

Hidden Bar is a free application for hiding the clutter

Way too many applications insist on putting something up in the menu bar, so the top-right corner of your screen can quickly look cluttered. The worst part is that there’s no native way to hide icons in macOS the way you can in Windows, for example, where you can move them to a secondary tray. On the Mac, meanwhile, the only way to hide an icon for a given application is to dig around in the app settings and hope it offers a solution—it’s a hit or miss sort of situation.

Fortunately, there’s a free application called Hidden Bar that brings this feature to the Mac. Download it from the App Store so you can hide icons by dragging them to the left while holding Command. You’ll be able to see all hidden icons by clicking the right-pointing arrow. 

It’s a very simple application that gets the job done. Why Apple hasn’t built something like this into the operating system, I will never understand. 

Bartender hides icons and changes how the menu bar looks

For many the free Hidden Bar will do the job, but Bartender ($16) offers customization options the former doesn’t have. 

Yes, you can hide icons by dragging them to the left, just like you can with Hidden Bar. But you can also create a custom rule for when to display certain icons. Want to see the battery icon, but only when you’re not plugged in? Bartender can do that, and also show you the Wi-Fi icon only when you’re not connected to a network.

You can also change the look of the menu bar with this application—apply a color tint or add a border. You can bring back the drop shadow that Apple recently removed, or even round the corners of the menu bar so it looks less like a block. 

[Related: Master your Mac by creating custom keyboard shortcuts]

Basically, if you want to tweak every aspect of how your menu bar works, Bartender is the application you’re looking for. 

Hide the menu bar altogether

Customizing the menu bar is all well and good, but what if you just wish it would go away? You can hide the menu bar in System Settings. Head to Control Center and scroll down to the bottom. In the dropdown menu next to Automatically hide and show the menu bar, select Always. From now on, the menu bar will only show up when you move your mouse to the top of the screen. The rest of the time, it’ll stay out of the way. This means you get a bit more screen real estate, allowing you to focus on the task at hand instead of whatever the icons the menu bar displays. 

The post 6 ways to customize your Mac’s Menu Bar, and another to make it disappear appeared first on Popular Science.

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I, like many people, prefer texting to calling. So why does Apple think I want to talk to Siri out loud? 

I understand that in some circumstances talking out loud is easier, but when I’m in a public place I’d rather type notes to my virtual assistant than look like I’m talking to myself. This approach is particularly easy on my Mac, where I have a big keyboard ready to be used. 

If you’d also like to keep your conversations with Siri private, you can dive into the Accessibility settings to enable the Type to Siri feature and stop Apple’s assistant from responding to you out loud. 

How to turn on Type to Siri

Turning on Type to Siri is easy and the same on iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. Keep in mind that the change only affects the gadget you’re using, so if you’re tweaking the settings on your Apple computer, it won’t affect your iPhone.

Start by opening the settings application for your device. On a Mac, you can find System Settings on the dock or by clicking the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your screen and clicking System Settings. On your iPhone or iPad you can find the Settings app either on your homescreen or in the app drawer. 

[Related: Simplify your life by creating routines for Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant]

Continue by scrolling down on the left-sidebar, going to Accessibility, and clicking Siri.

From here, toggle the switch next to the Type to Siri option to activate it. 

From now on, whenever you summon Siri, your system will show you a text box and allow you to type instead of waiting for you to talk. On the Mac, this happens in the top-right corner of the screen. On your iPhone or iPad, your on-screen keyboard will open along with a box prompting you to chat to Siri. Type a question or request and, as always, you’ll get a response. 

No matter what device you’re using, all Siri functionalities will stay the same, so you’ll still be able to ask follow-up questions like you can when using Siri out loud. 

Note that, on the Mac, you can set a keyboard shortcut for Siri, which is perfect considering you’re using the keyboard for the actual conversation. In Settings, head to Siri & Spotlight and click the dropdown menu next to Keyboard shortcut. You can choose between three default shortcuts or create your own by choosing Customize. 

How to prevent Siri from responding out loud

You’re not talking out loud to Siri but, by default, Siri will still respond by talking back to you out loud. To change this and have her reply with a written response instead, head back to the Settings application and go to the Siri and Spotlight (Mac) or Siri and Search (iPhone and iPad) section. 

[Related: Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant all have alternate voices. Here’s how to find them.]

Click Siri Responses and toggle off the switch next to Voice feedback. 

Note that on mobile you can’t prevent Siri from talking back at all times, and it’ll keep responding out loud whenever you’re driving. This will also happen when you’re using headphones and your iPhone’s screen is off. But the rest of the time Siri will communicate with you using text. 

The post How to text Siri instead of talking to it out loud appeared first on Popular Science.

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When you’re working on your PC, sometimes it’s handy to pin a window so that it’s always on top of the programs you’re using. Maybe you want to keep the calculator app or a text document visible at all times, or maybe your favorite team is playing and you want to make sure you don’t miss out on all the action.

Windows doesn’t offer this ability by default but you can add it through the Powertoys app. This tool brings with it a bunch of great features to Microsoft’s OS, including Always On Top, which can pin any window so that it stays right in front of everything else in your workspace. Here’s how to set it up.

How to set up Always On Top

1. Download the Powertoys app from the Microsoft Store. Once the program is installed, it should open automatically.

2. On the left sidebar, click Always on Top to configure it.  By default, you’ll be able to trigger the feature by using the keyboard shortcut Windows + Ctrl + T, but you can change it to something else—more on that later. 

[Related: 7 hidden Windows features you should be using]

3. That’s it—Always on top is ready to use. Now, open whatever app or window you want to keep in front and hit the keyboard shortcut to pin it in place. Use the same shortcut unpin it.  

How to customize Always On Top

By default, there will be a thick blue border around the window you pin, but you can change or remove it. 

1. Open Powertoys and head to the Always On Top section in the sidebar. 

• Pro tip: If you can’t find the app, click the Windows logo on the Start bar and use the search field at the top of the emerging window. 

2. Click Open Settings. Scroll down and under Appearance & Behavior, you’ll be able to remove the border entirely, if you like—just toggle the switch next to Show border around the pinned window. 

If you don’t want to get rid of the border, you can change its color. By default, the feature will use the current system color (Windows default), which is defined by your wallpaper, but you can switch it to any hue you want. Just open the drop down menu next to Color mode, and click Custom color. A new entry named Color will appear on the menu, and you can play around with the color picker on the right to choose whatever tone you like. 

You can also make the border transparent by dragging the slider next to Opacity to the left or right. Unfortunately, there’s no preview to guide you on how the different opacity levels will look, but you’ll see the changes in real time if you’ve got a window pinned to the top of your workspace already. Drag the slider all the way to the left, and the pinned window frame will become totally see-through. 

[Related: 10 new features to get you started with Windows 11]

Another element you can customize is the border thickness. Just play around with the slider next to Thickness. Again, you’ll need to have a window already pinned in place to see how the changes look in real time. 

Finally, by default there is a sound every time you pin and unpin a window—you can turn this on and off in the Sound section of the settings. 

Other options include the ability to exclude certain apps from being pinned and changing the keyboard shortcut to activate Always on Top. Click the pencil icon under Activation and type whatever shortcut you like. Just make sure the key combo you use is not taken by another action, or things can get pretty confusing and annoying pretty fast. 

The post This Windows feature lets you pin important apps to your screen appeared first on Popular Science.

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Video calls are a part of life now, but they can be a nightmare if your hardware is not up to par. You can upgrade your setup with a USB microphone (which can come in real handy if you’re putting up video calls on your TV) but if you’re a Mac user with an iPhone, you already have all you need. 

You can use your phone as a microphone when you make video calls from your Apple computer. This functionality is part of a feature called Continuity Camera, and it’s easy to set up. Any iPhone made after 2018 and running iOS 16 or newer will work, while all Macs running macOS Ventura or newer will fit the bill.  

How to set up Continuity Camera in macOS

To use your phone as a microphone on desktop video calls, you’ll need a Mac and an iPhone signed into the same iCloud account. 

Start by making your computer recognize your handheld device as an available sound source. On the Mac, click the Apple logo in the top-left corner of the screen and open System Settings. In the left-hand panel, go to Sound, and under Output and Input, click the Input tab. 

[Related: 7 tips and tricks to get more out of Apple’s newly updated Messages app]

You will see your iPhone as an audio source—select it. You’ll automatically see a full-screen pop-up on your phone with a couple of buttons. The Pause button on your phone to temporarily mute yourself when on a call, while Disconnect will completely remove your iPhone from your Mac’s audio inputs list. Don’t hit this button unless that’s what you want, otherwise you’ll have to go through the setup all over again. 

Once your computer recognizes your iPhone as a microphone, you can select it as the preferred audio source from most video call apps, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. 

• In Zoom, find the audio settings by clicking zoom.us in the upper left corner of your screen, then go to Preferences, and click the Audio tab. You can choose your iPhone under Microphone. 
• In Google Meet, click the three dots left of the hangup button in the bottom toolbar and go to Settings. You’ll be able to choose your iPhone in the Microphone options. 
• In Microsoft Teams, click the three-dot menu to the left of your name, click Settings, and head over to Devices. You can select your iPhone in the Microphone drop down menu. 

I’ve found using an iPhone as a microphone during video calls comes in very handy, particularly if I’m part of a group of people taking the call on a single device. I put the phone on the table, between everyone, while my laptop sits far enough so that we all fit into the camera frame. That usually means the microphone is too far away to pick up our voices, so the iPhone is extremely helpful—the speaker can even hold it while they talk and pass it along when they’re done, if necessary. 

[Related: 6 great features to try out in the iOS 17 public beta]

You can also use this feature to turn your laptop into a karaoke machine: your iPhone instantly becomes a wireless microphone. 

The post You can easily turn your iPhone into a Mac mic appeared first on Popular Science.

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Remember LiveJournal? There’s a good chance you left a lot of fanfiction and/or teenage angst on there, assuming you were a teenager in the 2000s. Since then, however, the trajectory of LiveJournal has been weird. 

LiveJournal stopped being relevant in the English-speaking world by the late 2000s, but remained popular in the Russian-speaking world. By the early 2010s, half of all traffic to LiveJournal was from Russia, where it became an important tool for the Russian opposition—Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption activist and former opposition leader, had a popular blog on LiveJournal before he became a political prisoner. Eventually, LiveJournal was acquired by a Russian company with rumored connections to that country’s security apparatus. By 2018 all servers were moved to Russia and the terms of service were updated to comply with Russian law. This basically means you can’t use the service to criticize the Russian government or discuss LGBTQ+ issues, among other things.

Like I said: things got weird. It’s understandable, given this context, if you don’t want to keep your teenage ramblings on that site. That’s why, after a friend asked, I looked into ways to back up LiveJournal posts. It wasn’t straightforward. At all. LiveJournal offers an official exporting tool, but it can only export one month’s worth of posts at a time, which is basically useless. I tried using Wget to scrape old entries, but this backfired hilariously: LiveJournal blocked my IP address. After a lot of research, I figured out that using WordPress is the best way to back up your old LiveJournal posts. Of course, if you have no interest in saving anything and just want to delete your LiveJournal account, you can skip straight to that section below.

Set up a WordPress blog

WordPress is the most popular blogging tool on the contemporary web. There are two versions of WordPress: WordPress.com, which is a blogging service you can sign up for and use; and WordPress.org, which is an open-source system you can use with any web hosting service. (I wrote an extensive breakdown of the two versions for a former employer, if you’re interested.) 

You can use either version of WordPress to back up your LiveJournal, and you can easily migrate from one to the other if you change your mind. If you’d rather not pay for web hosting, I recommend starting with WordPress.com. Just sign up for an account, choose a name for your blog, and you’re up and running.

It may also be worth making your WordPress blog private, so no one can read your ancient LiveJournal posts while you figure out what you want to do with them. To do so, go to your site’s dashboard, click Settings, then General, and find the Privacy section. There, click the bubble next to Private to ensure only you (and anyone you give login information to) can see what’s there.

Migrate your LiveJournal posts

1. After setting up WordPress, hover over Tools in the sidebar and click Import. 

2. You will see several options, none of which are LiveJournal. Click Choose from full list at the bottom. 

3. Now you’ll see the LiveJournal option; click Run Importer. 

4. You will be asked for your LiveJournal username and password. You can also optionally set a password for any posts that were private on LiveJournal—they will all be protected with the same password. 

5. Click Connect to LiveJournal and Import, and the process will begin. This will take a while, and it might not look like anything is happening. Be patient and leave the tab open, but don’t panic if you accidentally close it: you can restart the importer and it will pick up where it left off. Eventually you will be told that the process is complete. You now have a backup of your LiveJournal posts and comments—check that everything is there. 

Delete your LiveJournal account if you want

Once you’ve confirmed that your posts are all on WordPress, you might want to delete your LiveJournal entirely, which you can do from your “account status” page. Just check the two boxes for deleting your comments and entries, then click the Delete my account and journal button. Note that you can’t undo this.

The post Patch a potential privacy risk by deleting your ancient LiveJournal appeared first on Popular Science.

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I’ve been wanting to ditch Google Maps for a while but one thing held me back: offline maps. Apple Maps was, until recently, basically useless without an internet connection, and since I like to hike (which involves traveling to places without a cell signal) I was stuck with Google. 

No longer. One of the best new iOS 17 features is offline maps for Apple Maps. You can now select areas to download to your phone, allowing you to use turn-by-turn navigation and even search without an internet connection. 

Note that iOS 17 is currently a public beta. You can sign up for it to test the latest features, but you should know that signing up for any beta program is not without risk. If having a sneak peek at Apple’s new operating system version is not worth running into the occasional bug or error, then maybe you should wait until the official release in October 2023. But if you’re already using iOS 17, let’s dive in. 

How to download maps on Apple Maps

To get started, open Apple Maps, tap the circle with your photo or initials to the right of the search box and  choose Offline Maps in the menu. On the next screen, go to Download New Map. 

[Related: 5 uses for Google Maps beyond navigation]

Apple Maps will ask you to type the name of the city, region or general area you want to download. The app will show you a preview of the map you looked for and a cropping box which you can resize to select how much of it you want to download—just pinch to zoom in or out and select a bigger or smaller area. 

Bigger maps will take up more storage space, and you’ll be able to see how much at the bottom of the screen. If you’ll be covering a large area, be sure to free up space on your iPhone. When you’re satisfied, tap Download and your device will do its thing.

[Related: How to hide your house on every map app]

By default, your iPhone will only download offline maps while you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network, but if you need to, you can change that by tapping the Downloads option in the offline maps settings. To make sure you always have the latest possible information, Apple Maps will periodically and automatically update your offline maps, though the company doesn’t say how often the app will do this. If you’re not planning on using your downloaded map again, you can turn these automatic updates off in the settings. Finally, if you’re the sort of person who forgets to delete offline maps after a vacation and then wonders why their phone never has any available storage, you can turn on an optional Optimize Storage toggle switch, which will delete maps that you’re not using anymore after a certain period of time. 

The offline maps feature makes Apple Maps a true competitor to Google Maps, especially after you transfer your pinned items over. I’m not sure if I’ll ever install Google Maps on my iPhone again. 

The post How to use Apple Maps offline and finally ditch Google appeared first on Popular Science.

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Sonoma, the upcoming version of macOS, has some really cool features, including the ability to put widgets on the desktop. But the OS update also has one confounding change: clicking the desktop, by default, now hides all of your windows.

This is very annoying, but there’s a certain logic to it: if your desktop is full of widgets and files, you might want a quick way to access everything on it. But just because something makes sense from a design point of view, doesn’t mean you’re going to get used to it or even like it. Sonoma spares you of the windows’ exodus when you click a file or a widget, but I still found this feature disorienting, and I’m sure I’m not alone. The good news is that you can turn it off. 

[Related: 4 tips and hidden settings that will speed up macOS]

1. Head to System Settings, which you can open by clicking the Apple logo in the top left corner of your screen and clicking System Settings, or by opening the app with the cog icon in the dock. 

2. Go to Desktop & Dock in the left sidebar. 

3. Scroll down to find the Click wallpaper to reveal desktop option. Set this to Only in Stage Manager. 

4. Turn off Stage Manager. 

Stage Manager is one of the features Apple added to macOS Ventura back in 2022 and it’s an alternative way to manage the open windows on your Mac. When you enable this feature, only one window shows up on the screen at a time, while the rest are thumbnails you can see to the left. But clicking the desktop when Stage Manager is enabled means the desktop hides every time you click it no matter what, so you’re going to want to disable this feature to get your old desktop back.

[Related: Master your Mac by creating custom keyboard shortcuts]

After you’ve tweaked these settings, your desktop should work the way you’re used to, meaning you can get back to using your computer just like you’ve always had. That is until the next weirdness Apple decides to add. 

The post Stop macOS Sonoma from hiding your windows when you click the desktop appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Hosting a karaoke party at your place is easy, but you’ll need some preparation and equipment. You could spend money on one of the best karaoke systems on the market, but that’s definitely a splurge if you don’t plan on singing along with your friends regularly. 

You might be wondering, then, if you can somehow plug a microphone into your computer and use that instead. The good news is that you can, but it’s going to take a little bit of setup. Let’s get started. 

Choose a microphone

You can’t use the microphone built into your laptop or phone for karaoke because of feedback—the mic will pick up your voice but also the music, creating an awful sound that will pierce your eardrums. And even if that worked, a karaoke party where you and your guests yell into a laptop isn’t any fun at all.

You’ll need an external microphone.

If you have a good USB microphone for online work meetings or recording podcasts, you can use that. But if you’re buying a new one, know that the occasional karaoke party doesn’t require an expensive mic. If you played Rock Band or Guitar Hero back in the day, dig through your closet and pull out your old console microphone—they’re pretty much designed for karaoke already and they’re usually plug-and-play, meaning you connect them to your computer and you’re ready to rock. 

[Related: The psychology of karaoke, explained]

But if you have nothing at home that will work, you can always search for a handheld USB microphone online—you can find a decent one for around $20. 

Set up your microphone

Plug your microphone into your computer and try singing—you most likely won’t hear anything. This is because you’ll need to set up your mic first. To do so, go to the Settings menu on your computer. 

On Windows, head to System and choose Sound. There, click More sound settings, select your microphone, and click Properties.  

Head to the Listen tab and check the Listen to this device checkbox. 

You should now be able to hear yourself when talking into your microphone—finish the setup by heading to the Levels tab and adjusting the volume of the device. Your computer will remember your settings, meaning the next time you plug in your microphone it should work automatically to your liking. 

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy to amplify your voice with a microphone and a Mac computer, but there’s an easy workaround. Open QuickTime player, go to File in the menu bar, and click on New Audio Recording. 

This will open a simple recorder. Turn up the volume on the slider at the bottom and you should be able to hear yourself through your computer speakers when singing into the microphone. Feel free to minimize the window, but you will need to have this app open during your entire karaoke session. 

Find karaoke tracks to sing over

Now that you have a microphone and you can hear yourself sing through it, it’s time to find some actual songs. I tested several apps for this and I’ve found that, for most people, YouTube is the best option. You can search for any song, add the word “karaoke”, and you’ll find it there. 

I recommend you do some testing before the party, though—you might need to turn the volume down on the YouTube video to hear the microphone over the music, for example. It’s also a good idea to put together a playlist, but if you want to change things up on the go, searching for karaoke videos on YouTube doesn’t take long, so feel free to search for songs as requests come in. 

Optional: connect your computer to your TV

Your home karaoke setup doesn’t need much more than a computer, especially if you connect it to some decent speakers. But things can get a lot more fun if you hook up your laptop to your TV using an HDMI cable.

[Related: Five rad and romantic ways to turn your home into a karaoke bar]

The bigger screen makes it easy for everyone to see the lyrics and sing along with whoever is performing, but it also means the audio will come through your TV’s stereo system. As an added bonus, hooking up your TV to your laptop also makes it easy for one person to DJ the karaoke session without getting in the performers’ way. 

Try a dedicated karaoke app

If you can’t be bothered to find karaoke videos on YouTube, you can use a dedicated app to get the party going. 

Karafun

Karafun has an extensive song catalog and even if some of the tunes on the app sound a little cheesy, they’re synced up well with the lyrics and you can browse everything in one interface. It’s also easy to make a queue so your guests don’t get into a fight every time you ask who’s next. 

Karafun has a limited free version that allows you to play 30-second previews of all the songs in the catalog—not exactly enough to get to the bridge. So if you want to use this app for your karaoke party, you’re better off paying $9.99 per month to get unlimited access to all the tunes on the platform.

Karafun is available for Mac and Windows. Get full access to its song catalog for $9.99 a month. 

Singa

If you want to skip YouTube, Singa is another option you can use in your browser. The platform offers multiple versions of most songs and the quality is generally pretty good. Singa is also the only service on this list that lets you adjust the pitch on any song, making it possible for any singer to finish even the most difficult Mariah Carey tunes. 

You can get five free songs every day, which isn’t a bad deal but it’s not enough for your karaoke party. For $5.99 you can purchase a 2-day pass for full access to Singa’s catalog, and if karaoke becomes a hobby, you can splurge on a yearly subscription.

Singa is available on the web. Full access to its catalog starts at $5.99. 

Karaoke Mugen

Karaoke Mugen is an open-source option built by anime enthusiasts. As you’d imagine, its catalog includes mainly songs from anime shows and video games, lots of them available in multiple languages. Maybe this sounds like a party to you, but it has one major drawback—it’s annoying to set up. To use Karaoke Mugen, you’ll need to create an account and set up a web server working on your host computer. But if you go through all that trouble, you’ll get one stand-out feature: the ability for anyone in the room to add songs to the queue using their phones. 

Karaoke Mugen is available on the web for free.

The post Host an epic karaoke night with just a laptop and a mic appeared first on Popular Science.

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Apple Maps was, to put it lightly, a disaster at launch. A decade later, though, it’s surprisingly good: the app now has much better map data and can do all kinds of tricks. Even better: iOS 17 is adding offline maps, which until now was one of the biggest roadblocks preventing some people from switching. 

The problem, if you’re a longtime Google Maps user, is all of the places you’ve saved in Google Maps over the years. These pinned locations come in handy, and switching to another map program often means starting over. Jumping from Google to Apple Maps would be a lot easier if there were a way to grab all your pinned places and take them with you. There is, it turns out, but it’s not exactly straightforward. The process will technically work on an iPhone or iPad, but I recommend you do it on a Mac, if possible. 

Export your Google Maps data

To get started, you’ll need to export your saved locations from Google Maps, which you can do at takeout.google.com. First click the Deselect all button at the top—we’re only interested in Google Maps data today. Next, scroll down until you find the Maps (your places) option. Check the box next to this entry, then click OK. 

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Next step, then choose Export once and proceed with the export. You can leave the tab open and download when ready or you can close the tab and wait for an email (though the process shouldn’t take long—I had my download within a couple of minutes.)

The download will arrive in the form of a ZIP file, which you can unarchive on your Mac by clicking it. Now it’s time for the import.

Import to Apple Maps

Apple doesn’t have a dedicated feature for importing Google Maps data, which is a shame. The good news is that you can use Apple Shortcuts instead. There’s a thread on Reddit where people discuss a few different custom-built shortcuts for the job. You’ll find a few options there, but the one I found easiest to get working is called Tweaks to Apple Map Transfer. Download the shortcut by opening that link, clicking Get Shortcut, then clicking Add Shortcut in the window that appears.

Now open the files you downloaded from Google and find the Saved Places.json file. Right-click it, then click Share, followed by Shortcuts. You will see the shortcut you just installed as an option.

Click that shortcut, then hit the Done button. You will be asked for a starting point, which is a little confusing—just say 1 to start with (this will make sense later).

[Related: How to fix errors on Google and Apple Maps]

A text box will open showing you the number of the first item you’re seeing. Close that and another box will appear containing the name of the item. Close that, and the item in question will open in Apple Maps, allowing you to save it to your favorite places in Apple Maps (or to a custom list, if you prefer).

That’s right: you’ll have to manually save each object. This is a bit of a bummer—it’s time consuming!—but it also gives you a chance to organize things just the way you want to. You could, for example, create separate “Guides” for different kinds of pins—I, for example, put all of my pinned trailheads into a dedicated “Hikes” guide. I’m sure you can think of other ways to use this.

As you’re working on this, the window for the next item will load in the background—it will just say a number. Close the window and another window will open, showing you the name of the next location. From here you can repeat the process until all your pinned Google Maps locations are sitting pretty in Apple Maps.

The shortcut isn’t perfect—some locations will cause it to crash. This is where the Starting point option we talked about earlier is helpful: just restart the shortcut and enter the item number you’d like to skip to. Instead of entering “1”, plug in the number of the item you planned to import before the crash. It’s annoying, sure, but at least there’s a fallback.

This process obviously isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing. Hopefully Apple, at some point, adds an official method.

The post Switch from Google Maps to Apple Maps without losing your favorite pinned places appeared first on Popular Science.

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Social media is splintering. Where once sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram dominated, now there are a bunch of smaller networks. One that’s growing at the moment is Mastodon. 

The decentralized nature of this platform makes it a bit harder to navigate than most, which is why plenty of people are not on there. Still, there might be a lot of interesting content you’re missing out on just because you don’t want to sign up for yet another social network. 

So what if you want to follow a single account on Mastodon but can’t be bothered with understanding how the fediverse actually works? It sounds counterintuitive, but it is possible thanks to Mastodon’s ability to generate an RSS feed for every account. The option is not exactly easy to find, but once you pin it down you can add it to your favorite RSS reader. 

Find the RSS feed for any Mastodon account

To get started, head to the page for any Mastodon account, like mine or PopSci‘s. You’ll notice that the RSS feed isn’t exactly advertised—there’s no link to it anywhere on the page, search as you might. But it’s there all the same: just add “.rss” (no quotes) to the end of the address in your browser’s navigation bar. 

So, in our example, “https://mastodon.social/@jhpot” and “https://mstdn.social/@popsci” become “https://mastodon.social/@jhpot.rss” and “https://mstdn.social/@popsci.rss“. 

Hit enter and you’ll see the raw feed. It’ll look something like this:

Ignore this code—it’s not important right now. Just copy the URL for the feed from the address bar and paste it into your preferred RSS reader. Once that’s done, you’ll be able to open your reader on any device and see the content of every post, and even media when appropriate. 

Wait, what’s RSS?

I’m glad you asked! RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s an easy way to keep up with any webpage and a lot of news sites and blogs offer them. For example, I use them to stay on top of local news and what’s happening in the tech world without having to check my social media feeds. 

To keep up with your favorite Mastodon accounts, you’ll first need a feed reader. If you don’t know what these are, we have a helpful guide to RSS apps you can use, which include Feedly, NewsBlur, and Reeder. Set up one of these apps on your device of choice and follow the instructions to add the feeds you’re interested in. You will see every new post in a single place. 

For now, RSS is likely the simplest way to follow a Mastodon account without creating your own, but it’s not the only one. Because Mastodon is decentralized, you can use other social networks that can connect to it, like Pixelfed, Friendica, and Gnu Social. In the future, it might get even easier, as eventually Tumblr and Instagram’s Threads will connect to the same protocol. That means you’ll be able to follow Mastodon users from those apps. 

The post How to see what’s happening on Mastodon without creating an account appeared first on Popular Science.

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Have you ever looked—and I mean, really looked—at YouTube thumbnails? They are surreal.

Someone, at some point, noticed that videos get more clicks if the thumbnail included a human face and even more if that face is making an intense facial expression. Armed with this knowledge, people started doing it more… and more… and more. This earned them those coveted clicks, which prompted other people to do it. Over time, the facial expression evolved until it settled into “Youtube Face.” You’ve seen it, even if you don’t know what it is. The current master of this sort of thumbnail is MrBeast:

Imagine, if you will, someone making this facial expression on public transit or in the grocery store. You would be afraid (and you should be.) Joel Veix, writing for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, called YouTube Face a kind of “clickbait attaining human form,” which I think puts it best. Humans are subconsciously attuned to human faces and these sorts of thumbnails take advantage of that, luring you to click videos you otherwise wouldn’t.

If all this makes you feel exhausted, don’t worry: a free browser extension can replace every thumbnail on YouTube with a frame from the actual video. This tool also removes all CAPITAL LETTERS and other clickbait tactics from the video’s headline. The result: a much calmer YouTube experience. For example, here are the same three MrBeast videos I showed you above:

To get started, download DeArrow, which works on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera (or any browser that supports Chrome extensions). The extension works immediately: open YouTube and you’ll see the calmer thumbnails right away.

You don’t have to configure anything, but you can. Head to the extension’s settings by right-clicking its icon and clicking Settings.

There, you can turn off the title or thumbnail replacement features. You can also choose how capitalization should work in video titles—the default is Title Case but there’s also Sentence Case, where only the first letter is capitalized. I recommend sentence case—I find it the calmest. There is also a Channel Allowlist, which is useful if there are a few channels you’d actually like to see the original thumbnails and titles for.

I’ve been using the extension for a couple weeks, and I find myself wasting a lot less time on YouTube. Thumbnails capture my eyes less frequently, meaning I’m more likely to leave after I watch the video I opened the site for. This is probably not good for YouTube’s bottom line, but it’s very good for my personal productivity.

[Related: 3 ways to avoid falling down a YouTube rabbit hole]

YouTube face is a reminder of how algorithms, over time, warp human behavior. It happened slowly, starting a decade ago, but over time Lovecraftian forces took hold. The weirdest thing is that many just accept it. The almighty algorithm demands contorted facial expressions and crowds go along with it. As the DeArrow website puts it: “It’s no one’s fault. It’s a system that creates a race to the bottom.” Well, we’re at the bottom, and it’s time to fix things. DeArrow helps.

The post The extension that will banish ‘YouTube face’ from your browser appeared first on Popular Science.

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Have you ever, while reading an article online, found yourself wishing for a table of contents? Sometimes you know what you’re looking for and just want to jump to the relevant section, but not every site gives you a quick way to do that.

There are a few browser extensions that can fill this gap. These offer a table of contents, basically just a list of all the headers on the page. You can click any of the headers to jump to that part of the page. I tried as many of these extensions as I could find—here are the three best ones.

Simple Outliner (Chrome, Edge, Firefox)

Simple Outliner is a free extension for most browsers that can open a table of contents every time you click the extension’s icon. There’s also an experimental feature that will automatically show the table of contents for every website you open: just check the Auto enable Smart TOC option in the settings. The table appears as an overlay in the top right corner of your current window.

[Related: How to run a security audit on your Chrome extensions]

The free version works well enough for most people. Three dollars more gives you a dark mode, the ability to expand and fold nested levels of headlines, and a resizable panel, among other features. If you’d rather not constantly be reminded about these paid features, which show up in the interface by default, you can hide them entirely in the settings: just check the Hide Pro Features option.

Smart TOC (Chrome, Edge)

Smart TOC is a completely free and open-source extension for Chrome that puts an overlay in the bottom right corner of your screen, complete with a table of contents. You can move this box, and the extension will remember where you like it. You can trigger the extension by clicking its icon or, optionally, you can enable a feature that will show the table for every site you open. This extension, uniquely, works in Feedly and IOReader—two of the best RSS readers—meaning you can get a table of contents for the articles you’re reading in those apps.

Table of Contents (Safari)

Table of Contents is a free Mac app that adds a button to the Safari toolbar. You can click this icon, or use the keyboard shortcut Control+G, to see a table of contents in an overlay. There’s not a lot else to this extension—sadly, you can’t customize it at all. It’s the only such tool I could find for Safari, though, and that alone makes it worth mentioning.

The post 3 ways to generate a table of contents for virtually any website appeared first on Popular Science.

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Apple users are getting confusing emails about something called “My Photo Stream” and its impending shutdown. The email says uploads to this service stopped on June 26 and that all photos in it will be deleted on July 26. Should you be worried about losing your pics?

No. Your photos will still exist on the device you used to take them. They’re also likely syncing with iCloud, either via your paid plan or your 5GB of free cloud storage. With that out of the way, what is actually changing? Let’s unpack this a little.

Put simply, My Photo Stream was a free Apple service that synced every photo you took in the past month, up to 1,000 of them, between all of your devices, without taking up any storage space in your iCloud account. This was ideal for iPhone users who don’t have a subscription: you could access recent pics on your iPhone, iPad, Macbook, whatever, without using any of your free iCloud storage space. This feature also made it possible to download these recent photos to your other devices, so long as you did so within the 30-day limit.

[Related: All the ways iOS 16 lets you edit your lock screen]

You can find your Photo Stream in the Photos app. Head to Albums and it will be there, for now. Apple stopped syncing new photos to the folder on June 26. Photos added before then are still there, but by July 26 they will all disappear from this album.

The photos in My Photo Stream are already stored on at least one of your devices, so as long as you have the device with your originals, you won’t lose any photos as part of this process.

Basically, your photos will stay on whatever device you used to take them. You can also sync your photos using iCloud. The only thing that will change is there will no longer be a “My Photo Stream” album.

What can you use instead?

As I’ve said a few times, you can subscribe to iCloud to easily sync photos between all of your Apple devices. It’s not the cheapest cloud storage space on the market, but it’s not outrageously priced and is by far the easiest service to use if you’re primarily an Apple user. Having said that, there are other options. All of the best cloud storage applications can back up photos from your Apple devices. Or, if you prefer, you can sync files without the cloud, including your photos. Failing that, you could go truly old school and plug your iPhone into your computer and grab the photos the old fashioned way.

The post Apple is killing ‘My Photo Stream.’ Should you care? appeared first on Popular Science.

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The internet is a confusing place and some of that is on purpose. Dark patterns, sometimes called deceptive patterns, are tricks designers use to make you do something you didn’t want to, like signing up for a newsletter or visiting another website. 

This practice also includes “disguising ads to look like independent content, making it difficult for consumers to cancel subscriptions or charges, burying key terms or junk fees, and tricking consumers into sharing their data,” says the Federal Trade Comission.

A lot of websites and apps—including otherwise reputable ones like Amazon or The New York Times —use dark patterns in their platforms. Learning how they work and how to spot them can help you protect your money and data online.

Only one button

While going through the setup process for a new application, it’s easy to just click “Next” or “Continue” without reading anything. The people who make software know this and take advantage of your dislike for installation wizards. For example, while setting up Dropbox on a new device, the app will ask if you want to keep your computer backed up:

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to back up your computer files, and some people might sincerely find this feature useful. But if you look closely you’ll notice every folder is checked by default, and even if you uncheck them or click Modify folder selection, a lot of people won’t do that and will end up just clicking the Set up button. Dropbox developers know this: they want you to click the button probably because backing up your Documents folder will quickly fill up your cloud space, which means you’ll need to upgrade to a premium account sooner. 

[Related: When you should and shouldn’t accept a website’s cookies]

And yes, you can click the Not right now option, but you’ll notice that it’s not as prominent as the Set up button. In fact, it is intentionally much less emphasized: It’s smaller and off to the right, displayed as a link, not a button, and it doesn’t feature that bright, inviting blue the other links in the wizard have.

Pay attention and you’ll see this same dark pattern everywhere. Most newsletter popups on websites, for example, use a similar combination.

The only real way to outsmart this particular trick is to actually read what’s on the screen while setting up software. I know—that sounds exhausting, but it’s better than getting bamboozled into using features you don’t want.

Suspicious subscriptions

Companies would much rather have subscribers paying a fee every month than one-time customers. Most of the time they are transparent about this and will clearly emphasize that you’re, indeed, signing up for a subscription. But every once and a while you might end up signing up for a monthly service without realizing it. 

You’ll usually find this dark pattern when signing up for a free trial that requires you to provide your credit card information. The catch is that once your free trial is over, the platform will immediately charge you for the subscription and probably set it up for auto-renewal. Politicians have also been known to do this, for example, by pre-checking a box that turns what seems like a one-time donation into a monthly one.

The main way you can identify this dark pattern is to actually read the text next to any checkmarks before you buy something. This will help you make sure it’s not a recurring payment. And if you’ve already made a mistake, this is your chance to manage those subscriptions draining your bank account.

Ads that look like content

Some online advertisements will usually disguise themselves in the hopes of tricking you to click them. The most infamous look like download buttons and are often situated on sites offering software. But sometimes they look like links or previews to news articles.

[Related: How to block pop-ups and annoying auto-play videos]

The main way to recognize this tricky design is to hover your mouse pointer over a link or photo and look at the address it wants to take you to—you can see it in the bottom-left corner of your browser. Generally, if it’s a legitimate link, it will live on the site you expect, which is either the publication you’re reading or the page for the software in question. If, instead, you see something like “googleads” or “doubleclick” in the URL it’s probably just an ad.

Keep an eye out for dark patterns

These are just a few of the deceptive designs you’ll run into. The main lesson is to never assume that design choices are neutral or those default settings are the ones that will work best for you. Every company has an agenda, which may or may not be aligned with your best interests.

If you want to learn more about other dark patterns and how to spot them the website deceptive.design has a more tricks you’ll find around the web. Stay safe out there. 

The post ‘Dark patterns’ can ruin your online experience. Here’s how to avoid them. appeared first on Popular Science.

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The number of sold CDs is rising for the first time in a generation, in part because buying them is a great way to support the bands you love. But there’s a problem: you can’t listen to CDs on your digital devices unless you rip them first. 

In ancient times—back in 2001—people knew how to do this, but much that should have been remembered has been forgotten.

No worries: we’re here to remind you (or maybe even teach you for the very first time in your life) how to rip CDs on your computer.

Get an optical drive

You’ll notice that CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays are all the same shape, and any drive that can play a Blu-ray or a DVD can also read CDs. You might already have a CD drive on your computer, especially if you own a desktop. Laptop computers, however, almost never come with optical drives anymore. This is because, in their quest to make modern laptops thinner and lighter, manufacturers had to eliminate bulky optical drives. This would’ve been a huge problem in the late 90s, but with the arrival of speedier internet connections and digital alternatives to enjoying music and movies, most people started to leave optical drivers behind.

[Related: A modern guide to cassette tape players]

Luckily, you don’t need an internal optical drive to rip a CD: External DVD drives that connect to your computer via USB, go for as little as $23, and will easily do the job without you having to dive into your parent’s basement for an old computer. If you want to rip Blu-rays you’ll need a special drive which will likely set you back around $70—you can find them online or at your local computer shop. Whatever type of drive you get, make sure to buy one compatible with the USB ports on your computer so you don’t need to spend extra money on an adapter or a USB hub.

How to rip CDs in Windows

The simplest tool for ripping a CD in Windows 11 is Windows Media Player. If you’re old enough, you probably have terrible memories of this program and you might prefer other alternatives for playing your favorite tunes. But for ripping music, the new version of Windows Media Player makes things extremely straightforward.

Insert a disk into your optical drive and the software will automatically identify it, complete with album art. You might be tempted to go straight ahead and click the Rip CD button to copy the music to your computer. But before you do that, be sure to check the program’s Rip settings, which you can find by clicking the three-dot button to the right of the interface. From here you can decide which format you want to save your music as.

Under the Format heading, you’ll find a dropdown menu where you can choose between five different audio formats: AAC, MP3, WMA, FLAC, and Apple Lossless. If you don’t care for file size as long as you get the highest sound quality, you might want to change it to FLAC. But if you’re OK with standard quality and want to optimize space, there’s no need to change this setting: The default, AAC at 256kbps, is a perfectly reasonable balance between file size and audio quality. 

Now that you’ve chosen the output format, you can hit that Rip CD button. Once the process is done after approximately 10 minutes, the contents of the CD will show up in the Music folder for your Windows account. You can leave it all there, if you want, or move it to whatever folder you like.

[Related: How to digitize all your VHS and cassette tapes]

How to rip CDs on a Mac

Back in the day, Apple users ripped music using the company’s version of Windows Media Player—the way better reputed iTunes. That program is now gone, but the Music app took its place.

To use Apple’s Music app to rip a CD, insert the disk and the tool will open.

The app will automatically find the artist, album, and track information, but to get the album art you will have to right-click the empty album icon and choose Get album art. After that, click Import CD to copy the disk’s content. Unlike Windows Media Player, you don’t have to manually set the output format, as the Music app will ask you every time before starting the ripping process.

The platform supports AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP3, or WAV. The default option, AAC, is a great balance between file size and audio quality, so only change this option if you want something specific or want audiophile-level sound quality.

Once the process is complete, audio files will show up in the Music folder in your home directory. You can listen using the Music app if you want, or any other application. 

The post CDs are cool again. Here’s how to rip them. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Google Chrome’s new tab page is a bit cluttered. Not so long ago, it featured only the search bar and a few rows of icons, but now you can see cards suggesting recipes alongside advertisements for Google products. And this is all happening below a search box you don’t actually need since you’re likely using the address bar for that anyway.

The good news is that Chrome gives you some flexibility to customize the new tab page, so you can have it looking a lot cleaner within seconds. And if you find that doesn’t cut it for you, there are a few third-party extensions that can replace the new tab page entirely.

Start by clicking Change theme to select a new background. There are a few built-in options, most of which are image collections accompanied by matching colors that change every day. Chrome currently offers 14 photo themes to choose from, including some featuring Black, Latinx, or LGBTQ artists, geometric forms, or pictures of the Earth. If you can’t find anything you like, you can scroll down to access the Chrome Web Store, where you’ll find more themes to download for free. If you get bored easily, this is a simple way to rotate different and beautiful images without having to think about it much. 

[Related: You should add more search engines to Google Chrome]

If you don’t want to apply an entirely new theme, you can use a photo saved to your computer—including an animated GIF. Just click Upload image from the Change theme menu, and find the file you’d like to use as the background of the new tab page. If you want to add more pizzaz to your browser, you can replace Chrome’s light gray color theme by using the color swatches back in the Appearance menu. You have 15 shades to choose from, but if nothing is to your liking, you can use the eye drop tool (it’s the last swatch) to choose the perfect hue—just move the slider along the chromatic spectrum and have your pick, or type the RGB code if you know it. If you don’t like the changes, you can always go back and start again by clicking Reset to Classic Chrome.

Now, let’s get rid of some clutter. Under Shortcuts, you can decide what to make of the two rows of icons you see right below the search bar. You can use them to show your own customized set of webpage shortcuts (select My shortcuts), or automatically display the sites you visit most often (select Most visited sites). If neither of those options works and you just want a cleaner look, Chrome also gives you the ability to remove these icons entirely—just turn off the toggle switch next to Show shortcuts. 

You can do the same with the cards that show up at the bottom of the new tab page—click the toggle switch next to Show cards to stop seeing them altogether. But if you like getting random recipe ideas, reminders of abandoned online shopping carts, or quick links to recently accessed files on your Google Drive, you can check the boxes next to all or some of the items on this list. 

If simplicity is the name of the game for you, turn these two features off and you’ll have a much tidier new tab page. You won’t be able to get rid of the Google logo, the search bar, or the ads for Google products that occasionally show up at the bottom of the page. Fortunately, this is where browser extensions come in. 

By default, Tabliss will show you beautiful landscapes from stock photo repository Unsplash, but you can also replace the background with animated GIFs of calming textures from Giphy or a solid image of your choosing.

Whenever you open a new tab, Tabliss will greet you with the current time, but you can remove the clock and replace the text with things like a to-do list, a place to leave notes, and even NBA scores. 

Tabliss is free for Google Chrome.

And if you’re ever curious about what you’re looking at, you can click the globe icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to jump directly to the exact location the photo was taken in Google Maps.

Earth View from Google Earth is free for Google Chrome.

New Tab Override

If there is a website you wish you could use as a new tab page, New Tab Override lets you do just that. Choose any URL, and Chrome will display it every time you open a new tab. 

[Related: Google Chrome’s new search function will help you keep tabs on your tabs]

New Tab Override opens up the space in the new tab page so you can use it in all sorts of ways. Productivity enthusiasts could change their new tab pages to display their to-do list app of choice, while sports fans could use a scoreboard. But if you’re overwhelmed and want some ideas, check out the Startpage Emporium’s collection of pages built for exactly this purpose. 

The post 4 ways to customize Google Chrome’s new tab page appeared first on Popular Science.

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Discord is great for gamers and non-gamers alike, but it’s still not for everyone. Some people find the interface confusing, while others think navigating the platform’s channels is overwhelming. And then there are those who would prefer not to trust Discord with all of their private conversations.

Whatever reason you have for not loving this platform, don’t worry: there are alternatives. We’ve talked about the best apps for group chats in the past, but this is not the same. Here we’re specifically focusing on services you can use instead of Discord, meaning they offer similar features, like text-based chats sorted into channels, and the option for multiple always-on audio channels for gaming.

To get started just open Steam and click the Friends & Chat button in the bottom right corner of the app. If you’ve added friends to the platform, you’ll see a list of them there along with a group chat feature. You can add as many text or voice channels as you want to individual group chats, allowing you to have several ongoing conversations with the same group of friends.

Steam’s chat service is not as feature-packed as Discord, so you don’t get a bot feature, for example, and all your text messages will disappear after only two weeks. On the other hand, Friends & Chat is free and fully integrated into Steam, so if you already use the platform to connect with your friends in multiplayer games, it’s probably easier to do your chatting there.

Where Discord and Slack differ greatly is the price. There’s a free version of Slack, but archives are limited to the most recent three months, and the audio-only voice chat feature only works between two people. Large communities usually grow out of Slack’s free features fairly quickly, which means that at some point, they’ll need the service’s more advanced perks. These come at the monthly price of $7.25 per person. 

Discord, meanwhile, offers unlimited logs and audio chat for free, which is basically all you need to stay in touch with your friends. The paid tier of the service mostly unlocks nice-to-have perks like extra emoji and larger file uploads, and you can decide to pay or not regardless of the size of the community you belong to.

But if you don’t care about the paid features, Slack is a great place to hang out with friends online, and a great Discord alternative, especially if you’re already used the platform for work.

Element/Matrix: the open-source Discord alternative

Element is a lot nerdier than the other apps on this list because it’s built on Matrix, a decentralized and open-source chat protocol. Anyone can set up their own Matrix server, which they will own and operate independently of any company. (This is different than the misleadingly named “Discord servers”, which are owned and operated by the platform’s parent company.)

But you don’t have to set up your own server: you can create a free account on Matrix.org and use that to sign into Element. Once there, you can create encrypted group chats supporting text, video, and audio conversations, all in an interface that will feel familiar to Discord users. 

Element as a Discord alternative faces a conundrum similar to that of Mastodon as a Twitter alternative. Both platforms offer total freedom if you’re willing to pay for web hosting. The problem is that most people won’t, so they never truly enjoy the full benefits of either service. 

Mumble: the audio-only Discord alternative

Mumble is an open-source application and like Discord only in that it offers some of the same simple chat functionalities. Where Mumble truly goes above and beyond is in supporting high-quality, low-latency audio conversations, which will almost feel like you’re talking to your friends in the same room. 

[Related: The best podcast microphones of 2023]

Like Element, you’ll need a server to use Mumble. You can use one of the many public servers you’ll find all over the web (including at Mumble.com) but if you want to create your own, you’ll have to put in some effort—You’ll need to set up a server to host the conversation and have everyone involved in it connect to that server. 

Once that’s all done you’ll have a reliable and free tool for high-quality audio conversations, which is ideal for gaming, podcasting, and more. Mumble may not be as user-friendly as Discord, but it’s arguably easier to use than Element, mainly because you can use a standard computer to host a server. 

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In ancient times (i.e. the early 2000s) scammy websites would automatically open multiple windows with ads, which you then had to close one by one. It was obnoxious, which is why now every major browser stops sites from opening new windows by default. But websites found a workaround to show you ads or get you to sign to their newsletter: the overlay.

You’ve surely seen them, even if you never had a word for it before. Overlays cover up what you’re trying to read, watch, or access, generally asking you for an email address or some other piece of personal information. Most times their purpose is relatively harmless, but sometimes these boxes have dark patterns: deliberately confusing design that manipulates users to collect their personal information.

Fortunately, you can remove overlays by editing the HTML code of a webpage. You can do this manually in your browser if you want, but it’s a lot easier to use an extension especially designed for the job.

If you prefer, you can also use the app’s keyboard shortcut to trigger the extension: Ctrl + Shift + X on Windows, or Cmd + Shift + X on MacOS. If you’re a Chrome user, you can ditch the default key combo and set up your own. Head over to the extension settings page by clicking on the puzzle piece icon in the top right corner of the interface and choosing Manage extensions, or by typing Chrome://Extensions into the address bar. Click the three-line menu in the top-left corner of the screen and in the emerging sidebar, choose Keyboard shortcuts. Find the BehindTheOverlay extension and click the pen icon under it to edit the shortcut. 

This is a minimalistic tool but this level of simplicity has its downsides. There’s no way to automatically remove overlays, and if the extension doesn’t work on a particular site there’s not a lot you can do. Still, BehindTheOverlay works in most cases, which is why it’s worth trying out first.

The Aggressive mode will remove basically anything that follows you as you scroll. In some cases, this could even remove page elements such as headers, which is why there’s also a Moderate option. This is the extension’s default and tries to only remove the annoying layovers. Finally, there’s Dormant mode, which does nothing and it’s useful when the extension seems to be breaking the website you’re looking at.

PopUpOff is certainly the kind of tool you’ll need to spend some time tweaking, but once you’re done overlays will be a thing of the past and you won’t even think about them anymore.

Google, an advertising company, does not offer a reader mode in Chrome—at least, not without doing some digging through hidden settings. If you use the Big G’s browser, the Postlight Reader extension can add a reader mode to Chrome and even allow you to configure the font and text size of the article you’re reading.

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When you get used to multiple monitors it feels impossible to work without them. But these devices are not as portable as your trusty MacBook, so you should probably learn how to use your iPad as a second screen.

Thanks to a feature called Sidecar, iPads can mirror your laptop’s screen or act as an extension of it. And even if they’re not as big as your desktop monitor, Apple’s tablets are a lot easier to pack, so you can seamlessly take your work wherever you go.

First, make sure both devices are signed into the same iCloud account. Then, open the System Settings app on your Mac, which you can find by clicking the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your screen and then clicking System Settings. On the sidebar on the left, head to Displays, and if your iPad is nearby and turned on, it should show up here automatically. If it doesn’t, click the + (plus) button to the right of the display icons.

On the drop-down menu, under Mirror or extend to, choose your iPad’s name and then Extended display. This will effectively turn your tablet into an extension of your Mac’s screen, meaning you can just drag your windows on your computer over to your iPad.

Physically position your iPad where it’s most comfortable for you and click the Arrange button in the settings menu to make sure your virtual space reflects the device’s physical location in relation to your computer. Drag and drop the icons representing your devices into position if you need to make changes.

By default there will be a bar on the side and at the bottom of your iPad screen. The bar on the left that make it easier to control Mac apps using the touchscreen, while the bar at the bottom is a recreation of the interactive touch bar as seen on the MacBook Pro. If you prefer, you can turn both off by disabling the Show sidebar and Show Touch Bar options—you’ll get fewer on-screen functionalities, but gain more workspace, which is what it’s all about.

Among the free ones, our favorite is Splashtop Wired XDisplay, but as you’d imagine, setting things up is not as simple as on a Mac computer. First, download the app both on your iPad and your Windows device and open them. Continue by plugging your iPad into your computer and on your iPad, tap Trust to tell your tablet it’s OK to let Windows access your data.

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We’ve all got messy, unlabeled music files cluttering up our collections. You might have gotten them from questionable sources in the early 2000s, ripped them yourself but were too lazy to tag them, or just didn’t care for a neat library at the time. 

This gives MusicBrainz Picard a vast pool of information to draw from, but also some limitations, as its database mostly only includes music that’s seen a wide commercial release. As a result, the software won’t be able to properly identify a recording of your high school band performing songs from Les Misérables, or a CD of your mom singing reggae versions of Bob Dylan songs (but please send me that CD, it sounds amazing).

Your tracks will automatically show up in the left panel. Click the Scan button at the top of the interface and Picard will attempt to identify your music and download the appropriate metadata for it. After a few seconds, your files will appear on the right panel with the right labels indicating the track’s name and number, and the name of the album they belong to.

By default, this feature will replace file names with the track number of each song followed by its title, but you can customize this setting by choosing a different File naming script in the menu. This will allow you to include details such as the artist’s name and album if you like. If none of the scripts work quite the way you like, you can always write your own—just click Open file naming script editor.

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If nothing else, take some time to save any home videos you only have on Blu-ray or DVD—a wedding recording, say, or anything else you wouldn’t be able to replace. But even things you can replace, like movies, are frustrating to buy again just because a disk got scratched. This is why I like to back up my discs to a computer hard drive—so I have a redundant copy.

How to rip Blu-ray to video files

The simplest tool for copying Blu-rays is MakeMKV, which is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It’s relatively simple to use, and it’s free. OK, it’s only free while it’s in beta, but it’s been in beta for over a decade and there’s no reason to think that’s going to change anytime soon. The company posts working license keys on the forum every month. Just copy this code, click Help, hit Register, and paste the code to register the application. Keep that link handy: the beta codes expire every couple of months.

With MakeMKV open, insert your DVD or Blu-ray and click the big button that looks like a disc drive. The program will scan the disc and give you a list of video files. Check the boxes next to the videos you want to rip. You sadly can’t preview the files, but you can see how long they are—this should help you determine which video is which. For a movie, the longest video will generally be the feature presentation, while shorter ones tend to be special features. For discs containing TV shows, the episodes will generally be in order. This can all vary, though, so be sure to check your videos afterward just to make sure.

[Related: How to back up and protect all your precious data]

Note that you can select which audio tracks you want to rip—commentary tracks, for example, or dubbed audio for other languages. By default, the program grabs all of them, but you can uncheck any track you don’t want.

Finally, pick a folder where you’d like your ripped files to end up. After everything looks right, click the large MakeMKV button. Note that, in some cases, a disc that plays fine may fail to rip—this is fairly standard. A Blu-ray or DVD player simply skips over dirt or scratches; ripping software can’t do that for various reasons. If this happens, clean the disc with a microfiber cloth and try again—in most cases that should work.

A note on UHD (4K) Blu-rays

For DVDs and most Blu-rays, the above is all you need to know. For newer, ultra-HD Blu-rays, however, things get more complicated because of the copy protection. To oversimplify, only certain drives will work for actually ripping the files, and you may need to install custom firmware. You can find a list of supported drives on the MakeMKV forum. The post also includes instructions for flashing your drive (replacing its firmware), if necessary.

How to play MKV files

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There have always been applications like this, but Little Snitch Mini is different because of how comprehensible it is. The interface is entirely free of jargon and technical terms, meaning anyone can use it and learn about what their computer is doing.

Snitches get detailed information

When you open Little Snitch Mini, you’ll see a panel on the left-hand side of the window with the list of programs running on your Mac. Beside each app is a bar graph highlighting recent network activity. The taller the bar, the more bandwidth the app is currently using. Click any app, and the map to the right of the panel will show you where, on Earth, the services that app is connecting to are physically located.

How many locations an application connects to can vary wildly, and can give you a good idea of how companies end up with your data. Your web browser, for example, is probably connected to not only the websites you’re looking at, but also to the companies serving ads on those websites, a few tracking services, and possibly more. If you have multiple tabs open, there’s probably going to be ongoing connections related to each of those tabs.

[Related: Small, game-changing utilities for macOS and Windows]

For single-purpose applications, though, what you see should be a lot more straightforward. Dropbox, for example, only connects to Dropbox.com and Dropboxapi.com on my device, as well as to a few devices on my network. This makes sense. Plexamp, my music player, mostly just connects to my Plex server with occasional callbacks to the Plex service.

Little Snitch Mini also offers a menu bar icon, which will show you your device’s network usage in real time. Click this icon (it’s a row of seven bars) to see current network usage along with a list of any apps that have recently used your network.

You don’t need to check it obsessively, but it’s a nice way to passively monitor which apps are using your network.

Block apps from connecting with Premium

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Mac users sometimes need to use Windows software. Windows users might want to see what Linux is like. You might think, in both cases, that the only choice is to buy another computer (expensive) or set up dual-booting (complicated). There’s a third choice: virtual machines.

A virtual machine is exactly what it sounds like: an entire computer running virtually on your laptop or desktop. You can install whatever operating system you want and run it inside its own window, which really comes in handy. For example: my main computer is a Mac, but I have a Windows 11 machine set up on it to test software for reviews and tutorials. Others might use a virtual machine to access older software that can’t otherwise run on modern computers. There are all kinds of uses.

Your computer has several components inside it: the CPU, the motherboard, the memory, the hard drive, and so on. Virtual machine software creates software versions of these, all of which borrow resources from your actual computer. You can configure how much of your device’s resources these virtual computers have access to, like what percentage of your CPU they can use and how much hard drive space they can take up. These programs typically refer to your actual computer as the “host” and any virtual machines as “guests.” You can create as many guests as you want, depending on how much hard drive space you have.

Note that this is not an emulator, like the ones you’d use to load up retro games. Those programs are attempting to reverse-engineer the environment that a particular piece of software would run in. A virtual machine isn’t that—it’s a full system, complete with an operating system.

This can be Windows 11, though you’ll have to pay for a copy of Windows in order to do that. Those start at $139. 

Linux is free to run, and some virtual machine software for Mac systems can also create virtual versions of macOS. Just know that it’s not legal to run a macOS virtual machine on a Windows computer—the macOS software license agreement clearly states the software can only be run on Apple hardware. Some people do it anyway, but it’s not simple.

How to set up a virtual machine

To get a virtual machine on your computer, you’ll need to install virtualization software. VirtualBox, maintained by Oracle, is completely free and open source. You can download this application, install it on your Windows, macOS, or Linux computer, and start creating virtual machines. It helps to be relatively tech savvy—you’ll need to make a few choices, including how much memory and storage to dedicate to the machine—though there’s an in-depth manual available online if you get confused. This is the DIY route.

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If you’re of an age to remember the launch of Windows 95 almost 30 years ago, you may also remember Microsoft PowerToys—add-ons the company built for its operating system and aimed at power users (hence the name). Guess what: they’re still around, and arguably cooler than ever.

After their launch, these utilities gained a cult following among a nerdier, geekier subset of Windows users—those who wanted to tinker and explore beyond the Windows wall. The original PowerToys let you, for example, play CDs from the taskbar, edit right-click context menus, and access the command prompt from anywhere.

The popularity of the add-ons continued with the arrival of Windows XP and a second version of PowerToys in 2001, which included a new set of utilities for creating custom keyboard layouts, and adding different time zones to the system clock. They also expanded the core Windows functionality with extras that were actually useful, such as live previews for switching applications with Alt+Tab, and the option to open a command prompt window from any folder.

With all that history behind them, it’s not surprising that the return of PowerToys caused such excitement—the past few years have been like the revival of a much-loved movie franchise from decades past.

The latest breed of PowerToys for Windows 10 and 11 will also be rolling out as open source projects, so users can pick them up and customize them. Just visit the official download site in your browser, open the ZIP file, and follow the instructions on the screen to add the utilities. Once installed, you’ll see a little PowerToys icon down in the Windows notification area in the lower right-hand corner.

Load up PowerToys with a click on the notification area icon (or via the Start menu). You’ll see all kinds of goodies. Here are a few highlights.

PowerToys Run

Mac users are familiar with Spotlight, a fast search tool that can quickly open any application or file on an Apple computer. PowerToys Run brings this basic idea to Windows. Use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Space to open a search bar (you can customize the keyboard shortcut if you want), then type the name of any application or file on your computer to quickly open it.

It gets better. There’s a built in calculator: type any equation to see the answer and hit Enter to copy it to the clipboard. You can type “shutdown” and hit Enter to turn off your computer; other commands include “restart”, “lock”, “sleep”, and “empty recycle bin”. There’s support for searching your OneNote notebooks, if you use that program, and even for launching Shell commands. You can also launch any website—type the URL and hit Enter—and run web searches—type out your search terms and, you guessed it: hit Enter.

PowerToys Run can really change the way you use your computer: you can do almost anything without touching your mouse. Everything is faster with this tool—don’t overlook it.

Shortcut Guide

Speaking of not touching your mouse, take a look at Shortcut Guide. This is admittedly not a utility that will change your life, but it’s still one you may find useful if you want to learn how to get around Windows faster and boost your productivity along the way.

For example, Win+A opens up the Action Center, while Win+M minimizes all the currently open Windows so you can get a look at the desktop. Over on the left you’ll notice shortcuts for snapping windows to either side of the screen, which can be useful for getting two windows up alongside each other.

If you spend a lot of time in Windows, you may be able to memorize these keyboard shortcuts fairly quickly, but it’s always good to have a cheat sheet so you can see how many options are available. Using the Windows key plus a number key is a useful way to jump  between different applications, for instance.

From the main PowerToys window, you can click Shortcut Guide to configure how long (in milliseconds) you’ll need to hold down the Windows key to get the shortcut overlay up, as well as the opacity of the background of the Shortcut Guide window overlay.

FancyZones

FancyZones was one of the earliest PowerToys available when the tools returned in 2019, and it lets you split your open windows into zones to keep your windows better organized. You can create themed zones for websites, office apps, browsing your computer, and so on.

Hit the Win+~ (tilde key) keyboard shortcut to launch FancyZones, or get the PowerToys Settings panel up on screen, switch to the FancyZones tab, and click Edit zones to customize the layout. A new dialog will appear, letting you choose how many zones you want and how they’re positioned. If you think you can do better than the templates provided, open the Custom tab on the right to make your own, or edit existing layouts by clicking Edit selected layout.

Back in the main tab, you can tweak a few details of the add-on: You can use the Shift key to drag windows into different zones (recommended), override the Windows Snap hotkeys (for fixing windows to the side of the screen), have zones flash when the layout changes (also recommended), and more.

With open windows on screen, hold down Shift, then drag a window into a zone to organize it. If you don’t enable the Shift key shortcut in settings, as described above, the zones will be enabled every time you move a window on screen.

Use the Focus layout, for example, to put together a tiered stack of windows, one on top of the other, all neatly arranged; or use the Priority Grid layout as a way to keep important programs front and center, with other apps down the sides of the screen. Once you get used to how it works, FancyZones can add a real boost to your productivity.

Paste as plain text

Anyone who writes on the internet for a living knows how annoying it is to remove formatting from text you copied. At least, it used to be—Paste as Plain Text seems to have saved the day.

When you copy text from a website—this one, for example—and paste it into another application, all the formatting choices tend to come with. This means that if you’re adding a quote from a website to a Word document, you don’t just paste the quote—you paste the quote in the exact font of the website you copied it from. This gets messy fast, and it happens everywhere: in emails, spreadsheets, and even design projects.

Paste as Plain Text lets you paste any text without the formatting, meaning it will match the formatting of whatever you’re working on. The default keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Alt+Windows+V, is a little unwieldy, though you can change the keyboard shortcut in the PowerToys launcher, if you prefer. Anything you paste with this shortcut will be completely free of formatting. It’s simple but life-changing: no more spending time adjusting the font and size of text after you drop it into its new home.

More Microsoft PowerToys you should check out

Microsoft brought back PowerToys in 2019 with just a couple of tools. The collection has grown massively since then, and also works on Windows 11, meaning there are a bunch more PowerToys that are extremely useful and worth a quick mention.

• Text Extractor allows you to copy text from any image. Use a keyboard shortcut to select text inside an image, and it’ll be copied to your clipboard.
• Image Resizer can resize any picture in just a couple of clicks—right-click any image file, or multiple image files, in Windows Explorer, then click Resize pictures. You can customize the sizes, if you want, as well as what file format images are resized to.
• Awake can temporarily keep your computer from falling asleep. Just click the handy coffee cup icon in your tray and you can choose whether to keep your computer awake indefinitely or for a set amount of time.
• Screen Ruler allows you to quickly measure how many pixels a given area of the screen takes up.
• Quick Accent makes it easier for Windows users to add accents to any letter, which is great for typing in languages like French and Spanish. Just hold the key you want to add an accent to until you see a popup, then use the arrow keys to choose which accent you want to add to the character.

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The average social media timeline is full of memes, infographics, and screenshots from other platforms. As a result, a lot of the text you read on the web is not actually text, but images.

That’s fine for casually scrolling, but you’ll run into a problem if you want to paste those words into a document, email, or message. But there’s more than one way around it, as every major operating system lets you copy text from images.

Copy text from an image on Windows

Microsoft’s operating system does not offer the ability to copy text from images—at least not by default—but you can add it with Text Extractor. The feature is part of PowerToys, a handy collection of extra tools for Windows that every power user should check out. To get started, all you have to do is download and install PowerToys. 

Copy text from an image on an iPhone or iPad

Apple also offers the same Live Text feature on iPhone and iPad, and it works the same way. Open any image in Safari, Photos, or using the Files app and select the text just as you would in a document or website.

[Related: 5 ways to translate websites on your phone]

You can also do this while using your device’s camera. To start, point the lens to some real-life text and tap the Live Text icon that automatically pops up in the top-right corner of your screen—it looks like three lines of text inside four square corners. This is perfect for copying paragraphs from a book you’re reading or quickly opening the URL on a poster.

Copy text from an image on Android

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Windows transplants new to the Mac world might notice something weird: there’s nowhere to go in System Settings if you want to uninstall an app. So how do you do it? By finding the application in the Finder and dragging it to the trash.

No, really—it’s that easy. Open the Finder, head to Applications, and drag any program you don’t want anymore to the Trash icon in your dock. The system may ask you to enter your password or touch the fingerprint scanner, but that’s essentially it—the application is uninstalled. And if you’d rather use your keyboard, just use the shortcut Command + Delete.

That’s all you need to do: It’s one of those things that is so simple it’s complicated for new users. But once you adjust to macOS, it makes perfect sense.

You could, in theory, open that folder, search for any files related to a given application, and then manually delete them. But it’s easier to opt for a tool like AppCleaner: it’s free, easy to use, and widely recommended among Mac professionals. I’ve used this application for years and never had any problem with it. After installing the software you can drag an app to it or click the icon in the top-right to see a list of applications on your Mac.

Select any item on the list and you’ll see a pop-up menu with the app and all of the files in your Library folder related to it.

To delete them, just click Remove. If you want to bulk uninstall software, you can hold the Command button while clicking application names.

[Related: How to reset glitchy Mac apps]

This is a fast and easy way to bulk uninstall apps on a Mac, and it does a very thorough job. App Cleaner will even add up the total heft of the items you’re deleting so that you know exactly the amount of hard drive space you’re liberating. Unfortunately, even with the help of a tool like AppCleaner, you cannot delete the applications that come built into your Mac. This frustrates many people, who would like to remove the Chess app, for example, or prefer software from other manufacturers, but there’s no real way to do this without turning off security features that are best not messed with. 

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Whether you’re running out of space in your hard drive or just want to tidy things up, it’s a good idea to uninstall apps and games you’re not using anymore.

Removing applications from your PC—either in bulk or one-by-one—is easy, but there are different ways to do it depending on what OS version you’re using. There are specific steps you’ll need to follow if your machine is running Windows 11 or 10, and for older computers, there’s also a method that will work with any version of Microsoft’s operating system. 

But built-in options are not always the most convenient approach, especially if there’s a lot in your hard drive you want to get rid of in one fell swoop. If that’s the case, there are useful tools that will allow you to uninstall multiple applications without having to babysit your computer.

How to uninstall apps on Windows 11 and 10

To remove apps from a Windows 11 computer, start by opening the Settings app. You can find it pinned to the top of the start menu, where it’s located by default. But if for whatever reason you don’t see it there, you can also look for it in the search bar. Once the app is open, click Apps in the left panel and choose Apps and Features to see a list of every program on your computer.

[Related: The Chocolatey solution to faster, safer Windows software installation]

To uninstall an app click the three dots to the right of its name, choose Uninstall on the drop-down menu, and follow the instructions on the screen. It’s going to be a little different for every application but generally, you just need to click Next a bunch of times. Repeat the process for every app you want to remove.

Uninstalling programs on Windows 10 is similar. In this version of the OS, you’ll find the Settings app in the shape of a gear icon in the left panel of the start menu, but if you can’t find it, you can always use the search bar. Open the utility and go to Apps to find a list of every program on your computer. Click on an item on the list and you’ll see an Uninstall button—click it to launch the app’s uninstaller and just follow the instructions. 

Just like you would any other Windows utility, you can look for Control Panel in the start menu search bar. Once you’re there, click Uninstall a program and you’ll see a list of applications—double-click any of them to launch the uninstaller. As before, you’ll need to follow the on-screen instructions, which will be different depending on the program you’re hoping to get rid of.

How to uninstall Windows applications in bulk

All of the above options have one major downside: you have to run the uninstallers yourself. And to make matters worse, you can’t run multiple uninstallers at the same time, meaning if there’s a bunch of software you want to remove, you’re going to be sitting at your computer for a while.

This is where BCU (which stands for Bulk Crap Uninstaller) comes in handy. This app is free and open source, meaning it’s maintained by a community and is broadly considered trustworthy. The BCU program can scan your computer for applications you can remove, and uninstall them for you in bulk. This means you can set a number of processes and walk away while the software does the heavy lifting for you.

Once BCU shows you a list of the apps on your computer, you can check which ones you want to delete. If you don’t see checkboxes next to each item, just click the Select using checkboxes in the left panel. Once you’ve made your selection, click Uninstall quietly at the top. The software will ask you if you’re sure—take this as an opportunity to double-check you haven’t accidentally added an app you want to keep to the list. If everything looks good, confirm your choices and sit back while BCU does the work.

[Related: There’s a better way to install software on your Mac]

Deleting programs in bulk may be scary, but rest assured that before this software starts uninstalling the applications you marked, it will create a restore point. This will allow you to roll back any changes in case something goes wrong.

Downloading an external app to uninstall programs in bulk is a great approach to getting rid of the bloatware that tends to come with a new computer. It’s also helpful to remove applications you’ve tried out but decided were not good enough to keep. Just about any person could use a tool like BCU from time to time to do a thorough system cleaning. 

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Once upon a time, you could open the Windows Start menu, type the name of the program or file you wanted to open, and hit enter. It was the fastest way to open an app. You can bring those days back.

First edit the registry

To get started, you will need to open the Registry Editor, which you can find in the Windows Start menu. Generally, it’s not a good idea to make changes in the Registry Editor unless you fully understand what will happen. Ill-conceived registry edits could break features or even prevent Windows from booting. Here, though, you will be making a single policy that only does one thing: removes Bing from the Start menu.

Browse to the folder Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer in the left pane,  right-click the empty space in the right panel, and select DWORD (32-bit) Value.

Name the value “DisableSearchBoxSuggestions”, without the quotation marks, and set the Value data to “1”.

Click OK, then close the Registry Editor. You can undo the change later by setting this value to “0”.

[Related: Microsoft is betting ChatGPT will make Bing useful]

I, personally, found my searches were noticeably faster after making this change, especially on my older Windows 10 device. I wish Microsoft had made this change a little easier to make, but I’m glad it’s at least possible.

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Evernote used to be great, but now it’s less so. In 2020 the company overhauled the Windows and macOS apps, replacing them with a clumsy web-based one that users really didn’t like. This only came to make matters worse, as Evernote had already made the controversial decision of constraining syncing capabilities to only two devices and limiting monthly uploads to 60 MB for free tier users. It got so bad that the company, once valued at $1 billion, was sold off in 2022 to a lesser-known Italian company. 

If you refuse to pay for a premium Evernote account then it’s understandable that you might want to find a replacement. The good news is that you won’t have to start fresh. Exporting all of your notes and moving them to apps like Joplin, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Zoho Notes, or Notion, is easy. 

If you want to move loose notes over to another app, you can also select them in bulk and repeat the process. Just press Command (on Mac) or Control (on Windows) and click on the notes you want to export. When you’re done, right-click on one of them, choose Export, and save the items as an ENEX file.

To start go to File and choose Import. There are two options that can work with Evernote: Markdown and HTML. We recommend using the Markdown option as it will make editing easier. But if you’ve clipped a lot of websites or otherwise have a lot of notes that are heavily formatted, the HTML option might be a better fit. The process should complete within seconds depending on how many notes you’re importing.

It’s worth noting that Joplin stores all your notes right on your computer inside text documents. This means that just by importing your notes to this app you’re actually archiving them, which is useful even if you don’t intend to use Joplin itself.

Migrating notes from Evernote to Apple Notes

The Notes app on every Mac, iPhone, and iPad supports importing content from Evernote. On a Mac computer, you can do this by going to File, clicking on Import to Note, and browsing to the ENEX files you exported earlier. On your mobile device just open the ENEX using the Notes app.

All of your notes will show up in a couple of minutes in their own folder, but any attached file or feature that Notes doesn’t support won’t show up. That is the case with task lists, for example, where neither the name of the note nor its contents were imported properly. Scroll through your notes and make sure everything is there. Repeat the process if necessary.

After clicking Start Migration Zoho Notes will ask you to log into your Evernote account to grant the necessary permissions, and then you’ll have to select which notebooks you’d like to import. Eventually, you’ll get an email notifying you that the process is complete and your Evernote notebooks will show up as such in Zoho Notes.

Migrating notes From Evernote to Obsidian

Obsidian is possibly the ultimate power user note-taking app. The application is built around simple text documents in folders, but you can also link to other notes, creating a personal wiki on your computer. Even better, there are hundreds of plugins you can install allowing you to use the app however you want, too. 

[Related: 7 smart Google Keep features you’re missing out on]

The bad news is that there’s no direct way to import notes from Evernote to Obsidian—but that’s why Yarle (which stands for Yet Another Rope Ladder from Evernote), exists. This third-party app can convert any ENEX file into a folder that you can then drag into Obsidian’s vault. To keep things in order, the app also allows you to configure all kinds of things before you drop your files in, from the date format to how Evernote’s tags show on the app.

When the process is done you will have a folder of properly formatted Markdown files, which you can then use in Obsidian or with any application that can edit such files, including Joplin.

To use it, click the Import button in the left-hand sidebar and go to the Evernote option. You will need to log into your Evernote account and then decide which notebooks you want to move. Your Evernote notebooks will soon show up in the sidebar as pages, and every note will be an item on that page. 

The post Evernote is getting more expensive—here’s how to move to another app appeared first on Popular Science.

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Of all the annoying things that can happen on a lazy Sunday afternoon watching TV, running out of AA batteries for your remote might easily be in the top 10. Luckily, there’s a hack for that: you can use AAA batteries instead. 

Just wad up some aluminum foil and place it between the battery and the spring so that it fits snugly. It’s a perfect solution if your gamepad dies or you cannot be bothered to go to the store to get some AAs. 

This trick has been around for a while and it’s currently making the rounds on TikTok again. But you can’t trust everything you see on your For You page, and some of those viral lifehacks are duds or even just straight-out dangerous. We wanted to know if this is one of them, so we turned to the experts.

Alkaline batteries from AAAA size up to D cells have the same operating voltage, Shi explains. This means non-rechargeable batteries like these all offer 1.5 volts of power, so there’s no electrical reason you can’t use them interchangeably—they just won’t physically fit right into the battery slot in your device. That’s where the tinfoil comes in: it allows the battery to fit snugly in place while still conducting electricity.

“Aluminum foil isn’t the best conductor,” says Shi. “But for low-power devices such as those powered by AA batteries, it works just fine.”

If you don’t mind spending a little money, you can also opt for buying a dedicated product for the job. You can buy battery adapters that turn AAA batteries into AAs, or even D cells. Shi says these are better than aluminum foil as they facilitate more stable physical contact.

Maybe buying one of these adapters means you’ll never have to purchase any battery bigger than AAA for the rest of your life. Technically, you could, but that’s far from a perfect solution.

But it’s not just a matter of size. Shi says that as a rule of thumb, cheap D-cell batteries, for example, have less power than a good AA, and the heavier the battery is, the more energy it will pack.

So consider tin foil as the perfect way to avoid a trip to the store on a lazy day. But don’t be surprised if a week later you find you’ve drained all the AAAs you had at home. It’ll buy you some time, but it’s not the end-all solution.  

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The latest versions of Windows and macOS have a long list of system requirements, resulting in many devices not being able to keep up. Over time, old iterations of software stop getting updates, which in this case means your computer will be useless.

But before you abandon your old laptop, consider giving it new life by turning it into a dedicated Chrome device. Google’s free operating system makes it possible and it’s fairly easy to set up.

ChromeOS Flex can turn any old PC or Mac into a Chromebook—even ones you’d consider too slow and outdated to use. This is a great solution if you can’t or won’t upgrade your machine, or just need a general-purpose computer for the family. 

Finally, a warning—installing this version of ChromeOS will completely delete everything on your computer, so before you start, make sure you back up any data you don’t want to lose. 

What you will need to install ChromeOS Flex

First of all, you will need an older laptop or desktop computer. Google offers a list of certified devices—if your machine is on that list, you are good to go. But even if it’s not, there’s a chance you’ll be able to make it work. I installed the OS on my Macbook and an old desktop computer that doesn’t support Windows 11, and both worked well for me.

You’ll also need a USB flash drive or SD card, with at least 8GB of storage space. Note that this process will also completely erase everything on the drive, so make sure there’s nothing important there either.

Finally, you will need access to Google Chrome. This can be the same computer you intend to install ChromeOS Flex on, or it can be another machine entirely.

Click Continue and select your flash drive from the drop-down menu. Make sure you choose the right drive—otherwise, you might end up overwriting something completely different. When you’re ready, click Create Now. 

The tool will download the operating system and turn your flash drive or SD card into a bootable drive. This will take a while—for me, it was about 15 minutes but your experience will vary depending on your internet speed and other factors. You will eventually see a message telling you the drive is ready.

In most cases, your machine will boot right from the drive, but if that doesn’t happen, you will need to press a certain key right after turning on the computer—most likely, F2 or F12 on PCs. Right after that, just follow the directions. 

[Related: Best Chromebooks of 2023]

On a Mac it’s a little easier: just hold the Option key after turning the computer on and the system will ask you which device you want to boot from.

Eventually, you will see a screen welcoming you to ChromeOS Flex—click Try it first to give the software a spin. You can sign in using your Google account, if you like, or try things out as a guest. If you find everything is working well and you’re happy to completely delete your computer’s drive, it’s time to install.

The post Revive your old computer by turning it into a Chromebook appeared first on Popular Science.

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Remember Winamp? It was, for many people, the original music player. You could drag a folder full of MP3 files onto the application and it would play them all in order (a relatively new feature in the late ‘90s.) Even if you aren’t nostalgic for this little app, it—or something like it—may still have a place on the computer you use today.

What most people remember about this program, though, are the skins. These changed every aspect of how the player looked and people created thousands of them. You can explore this absolutely unhinged era of design over at the Winamp skin museum, which offers a giant collection of these internet relics. Anyone who used Winamp back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s will, no doubt, be able to find a couple of themes they recognize. Even better: you can click any skin to see it actually function, playing some music and seeing all of the little animations.

It might leave you wondering, however, if you can use these classic Winamp themes on your desktop or laptop for all your music-playing needs. It turns out you can.

For Windows and Linux: Audacious

Audacious is a free and open-source music player. The default interface isn’t like Winamp at all, but you can change that by clicking File > Settings and changing the Interface option inside the Appearance tab to Winamp Classic Interface. This transports you to the three-window interface Winamp was famous for: one for the player, one for the equalizer, and another for the current playlist. You can drag files or folders of music to the playlist, just like back in the day.

[Related: How to stream music all around your house]

The program also offers you a choice of a few Winamp-inspired skins, or you can add any classic skin by downloading it from the Winamp skin museum and dragging it to the player. You’ll have the classic Winamp feel in no time.

At least, you can install skins easily on Linux. As of this writing, Audacious’ Windows version can’t automatically install Winamp skins, which is disappointing, but there’s a workaround. Download the skin, then rename the file so the extension is .ZIP instead of .WSZ. Unzip the file and drag the folder to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\audacious\Skins, replacing “USERNAME” with your Windows username. The skin will show up in the Audacious settings, though you may need to restart the application first.

For macOS: reAMP

Built from the ground up to re-create the classic Winamp experience on macOS, reAMP uses a variation on Winamp’s original look, complete with the famous three-window user interface. There’s a simple tool for importing skins in the settings, too, so you can download anything from the Winamp skin museum and use it in seconds.

Webamp: Classic Winamp In Your Browser

If you’d rather not go through the trouble of installing an application, good news: you can use Webamp instead. This website offers a working version of Winamp complete with a few tracks, or you can drag your own music over. There are a few Winamp Classic skins available, or you can drag any skin you’ve downloaded over to see it in action. This is great if you want a quick nostalgia trip.

[Related: Best speakers for music of 2023]

A few people have put the code behind Webamp to good use, too. Winampify, for example, lets you use this interface to play music from your Spotify library if you have a Spotify Premium subscription. Or, if you want to go full weird, Try Andy’s Desk offers an entire fake vintage Windows setup complete with Winamp alongside recreations of Minesweeper, SkiFree, and even the vintage MSPaint.

Not Recommended: Actual Winamp

Windows users have one other choice: the actual Winamp. I tested this, however, and found it lacking on a modern computer. For one thing the user interface was really small on my 4K display. I could get around this by doubling the interface, but even then things felt buggy. The application is receiving updates but most of these are related to NFTs, which doesn’t inspire confidence. Having said that, though, it’s cool that Winamp still exists in some form, and there’s still support for classic themes built in there. But ultimately, if you just want a quick feeling of nostalgia (or to see what you missed out on) it’s probably best to stick with the third-party recreations.

The post 3 ways to recreate the Winamp look and feel on your favorite devices appeared first on Popular Science.

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Browsing through an app store can be frustrating. Whenever you’re looking for a simple tool to tune your guitar or remind yourself to water the plants, the results immediately ask you for money or are entirely cluttered with ads. 

Now, let’s not begrudge developers for wanting to make money—most of us don’t do our jobs for charity—but the scales have tipped to the point where your phone can be actively hard to use. This is why if you have an Android device, you may enjoy F-Droid. 

This app store is an alternative to Google Play and only includes open-source applications which may ask for donations, but are generally free of both ads and in-app purchases. The fact that the applications are open source also makes them generally trustworthy—anyone on Earth can read through the code, making it highly likely for somebody to find out if there’s an apparent security vulnerability or privacy invasion. 

Sideloading apps, meaning installing software from sources other than Google Play, is much easier on Android than iOS, as there’s no need for jailbreaking. And F-Droid makes it even easier by providing a vetted collection of open-source apps with no tracking and no ads. 

You’ll need to go through similar steps to allow F-Droid to operate. The first time you try to install software from it, you will see the same message you saw in the browser. Tap Settings and then Allow from this source to give F-Droid permission to install apps. Hit the back button to install whatever application you want. 

That’s certainly a valid concern, but F-Droid currently has extensive security practices and has been examined meticulously during multiple security third-party audits. The platform also has a strict policy of not allowing any apps with tracking features, which is part of why researchers at the Yale Privacy Lab have stated that F-Droid is even more secure than Google Play. 

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exercise healthy skepticism while installing apps. You should still take control of your apps’ permissions and check your Android security settings constantly, as you would with any other app. But other than that, you can install software from F-Droid without much worry.

If you don’t know where to start, here are some of our favorite apps on there. Tuner is a great app for tuning a guitar or any stringed instrument, while Tusky is a very good client for Mastodon. Unciv is a free version of the popular Civilization game series, stripped down graphically to run well on a phone but with all of the addictive gameplay. DNS66 makes it easy to block malware and other intrusive code, and Turmux lets you run a full-blown Linux command line on your phone, which opens up all kinds of possibilities.

We could go on, but the best way to find something relevant to you is to just dive in. 

The post How to set up F-Droid, the open-source alternative to the Google Play Store appeared first on Popular Science.

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One of the most noticeable changes in Windows 11, Microsoft’s latest iteration of its computer operating system, is the absence of the classic taskbar. And some people hate it. To make matters worse, this change is not optional, so you’re stuck with the less functional macOS-looking app dock. 

Or not—because this is where ExplorerPatcher comes in. This free open-source application was designed to customize the Windows interface and can bring back the old taskbar to Windows 11, as well as replace the new widget bar with a dedicated weather tool. 

When the download is complete, open the new file and install ExplorerPatcher. If you can’t find it, search the start menu—you should see an application called Properties (ExplorerPatcher). 

Congratulations—you now have the Windows 10 taskbar back. You can also move the taskbar to the top, left, or right of the screen, which is something users were missing from the new update. To do that, go back to ExplorerPatcher, click the Primary taskbar location on screen and choose a new location for your taskbar. 

You can also add folders to the taskbar—an ability that Windows 11 took away. Right-click a blank space on the taskbar and choose Toolbars. Continue by clicking New Toolbar to add a shortcut to any folder on your computer. 

If all you want is the weather, ExplorerPatcher can help you. Just head to the Weather section and enable Show Weather on the taskbar to get a really attractive weather widget. You can customize the layout, temperature units, and even color scheme in the settings. 

ExplorerPatcher can handle more customizations, including bringing back old versions of the start menu, the ability to hide the taskbar, and even switching back to the old version of the window switcher. Most people won’t care about those things, but if you recognize them and are curious, we highly recommend digging through the settings and seeing what you can find. 

The post Get the Windows 10 taskbar back on Windows 11 appeared first on Popular Science.

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You don’t have to have manually converted the format of hundreds of files to know it’s annoying. And if you ever have to, we’re here to tell you your computer can actually do it for you. 

Folder actions is a little-known Mac feature that dates back to the 90s. You can use it to set any folder on your computer to automatically do tasks like converting a file from one format to another or even extracting all the text from a PDF. All you have to do is drag documents to the automated folder. It’s called working smarter, not harder.

Pick a script and set your choice by clicking Attach. Back on the main Folder Actions Setup window, make sure to check the box next to Enable Folder Actions. And that’s pretty much it. You can close the setup window and your folder will start performing the assigned task as soon as you drop a file into it.

[Related: 7 tricks for making files easier to find on your Mac]

For example, if you choose Duplicate as PNG, whenever you drag a picture into the folder, a PNG version of that image will immediately show up. So there’s no confusion, macOS will automatically create two subfolders as well—one to save the original photos you drag in, and one to save the reformatted versions. 

Most of these, as you can tell, are related to images. It’s a useful collection but very much only a starting point. The good news is that if you want to go beyond these automations, it’s not hard to build your own scripts. 

There are dozens of different automations you could quickly build this way, including compressing any file into a ZIP archive, scaling any image to a given size, or converting video or audio to a specific format. These are just a few ideas, so you’ll need to dig in to get a feel for what’s really possible. If you are not sure about what one or more of these actions do, look at the bottom left corner of the Automator window. There you’ll find a specialized panel that will show you the details of each script as you select them on the sidebar above it.  

The post This macOS feature will streamline the way you manage and reformat files appeared first on Popular Science.

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There are two kinds of writers: those who hate transcribing interviews, and liars. Most writers I know will do almost anything to avoid listening to their own voice, making fact-checking interviews a tedious and uncomfortable process. 

How to transcribe recordings in Microsoft Word

To get started, head to Office.com in Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome. This is important: Microsoft says other browsers are not currently supported, and I couldn’t find the feature in Safari. Log into your Microsoft 365 account and create a new Word document. Click the three dots at the end of the Home row. Hover over Dictate, then click Transcribe.

This will bring up the transcription sidebar. You can record an interview in real time, if you like, or you can upload a recording you made earlier. The feature supports WAV, MP4, M4A, and MP3 files. 

Uploading will take a few minutes, as will analyzing the recording. I uploaded a one-hour conversation and it took around 10 minutes, but your experience might vary. When it’s done, however, you’ll have a media player in the sidebar with a full transcript of the recording. 

[Related: 7 of the best voice recorder apps for your phone]

How accurate the transcription is will depend on the quality of your recording. Hit the play button, and you can follow along with the transcription—words will be highlighted as they’re spoken. The tool recognizes multiple speakers and splits dialogue between them. By default, they’re named “Speaker 1,” “Speaker 2,” and so on, but you can rename them. Just be sure to check the box next to Change all Speaker.

You should now have a pretty clean transcription. You can scroll through, find the interesting bits, and add them to your document. Or, if you prefer, you can add the entire transcript. 

Choose whatever works best, and Word will add the entire transcript to your document, along with a link to the audio file (it will be added to a Transcribed Files folder in your OneDrive). 

You can now save this document and open it in the desktop or mobile version of Word, if you like. Just note that the transcription panel is not available in those versions of the app, so you won’t be able to listen to the recording and see where you are in the transcription. 

These transcriptions aren’t perfect, in my testing, but they’re pretty good. You should, at the very least, be able to scan through and find the key points you remember. It’s well worth logging into Microsoft 365 on the web, even if you (like me) basically never use Word otherwise. 

The post Where to find the hidden transcription tool in Microsoft Word appeared first on Popular Science.

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Like most Mac users, you have probably never opened the Shortcuts app. If that’s the case, there’s a lot you’ve been missing out on. This tool makes it fairly easy for anyone to make their own mini-applications or set of automations. You can design these to do a wide range of actions, and you can even add rules and exceptions to make your everyday tasks simpler. 

If you don’t know where to begin, here are 5 mini-applications to get you going. I use them regularly to block distractions, get my news, and even make memes. To get started open the Shortcuts app on your Mac—you can find it by searching with Spotlight or in the Applications folder. Then, start a new shortcut by hitting the plus sign to the left of the search bar. 

Shortcut your way to some focus time

I use this particular shortcut all the time—it turns off all notifications and closes every app except the ones you need for work, so you can avoid all distractions. The result: no distracting popups, just me and my blank document to fill. Also, it’s really easy to make. 

First, add the Quit app action. If you don’t find it in the Suggestions tab the app opens by default in the right sidebar, use the search bar to find it—double-click on it to select it. It’ll automatically go to the main screen of the app, where the rest of the actions you add will accumulate. In the action, click on App, and in the pop-up menu choose All apps. If you want to add exceptions, you can click on Choose and pick the apps you want to keep running from the dropdown menu. I included the programs that back up my files, play my music, and the tool I write in. Next, use the search bar to find the Set Focus action and set it to Do Not Disturb. 

[Related: 20 essential Windows keyboard shortcuts that will make you forget your mouse]

That’s it—you don’t need to hit Save or anything like that. You can choose a keyboard shortcut to launch it by clicking the Shortcut Details icon in the right panel: it looks like an “i” with a circle around it. You’ll find the keyboard shortcut option under Details—simply click on Add Keyboard Shortcut to choose the key combo that best suits your needs. 

If this is good enough for you, you can keep it like this, but you can also keep building and adding more actions to make it more sophisticated. A timer, for example, can help remind you when to take a break.

To get started, make a new shortcut and open the Shortcut Details tab. Under Details, check the Services menu box. This option will enable you to trigger the shortcut from the menu bar later and will add the Recieve action box. Click Any and on the pop-up menu choose URLs as your input. Then, click Continue to set Get Clipboard as the action the shortcut takes in case there’s no input:

Now, back at the actions menu (click the icon that looks like a series of boxes with sparks on top), use the search bar to find and select the Get RSS feeds from action. This will go and find the RSS feed on whatever URL you input. Typically it will find more than one, so you should add the Choose from action to prompt you to choose the RSS feed you want. Next, add the Copy Clipboard action. 

You can now trigger your shortcut by highlighting and right-clicking any URL in Safari. You’ll see a Services option, which you should hover over to then select your shortcut. You will see a list of RSS feeds and if there are any you like, the shortcut will copy it to your clipboard so you can later add it to your feed reader of choice.

Build a shortcut to read the latest news

You can also build a shortcut to open the latest stories from your favorite website in different tabs on your browser. Just start with the Get items from RSS action—find it using the search bar. Next, choose how many articles you’d like to open by clicking on 10 items and using the arrows to increase or decrease the default 10. On the URL in the action box, you’ll be able to paste any RSS feed you like. Finally, search and add the Open URLs action. 

As always, you can even add a keyboard shortcut to trigger this action and stay on top of the daily news. 

In a new shortcut, click on the Shortcut details icon and check the box next to Services menu. Then, click Any to set it to Images only. By default, the menu will have all types of media selected, so click on Deselect all in the bottom right corner, and then manually select Images.  Lastly, set the last line of the action to ask for files in case there’s no input. To do this, click Continue and swap it for Ask for—the Files option should appear automatically.

Back on the sidebar, use the search bar to find and select the Overlay text action. You can customize the location of the text by clicking on Center, and change the look of the text however you like by clicking on Show more. I chose a traditional meme format. 

[Related: 38 advanced Mac keyboard shortcuts to supercharge your workflow]

Finish by adding a Quick Look action so you can preview how your image looks before saving it. Assign a keyboard shortcut to this action and you can add any text to an image at any time. 

Here you’ll find much longer shortcuts doing everything from moving your windows around to downloading photos from NASA every day. I highly recommend checking out a few to get a better feel for how powerful the Shortcuts app can be. 

The post 5 tasks you can easily automate using MacOS’ Shortcuts app appeared first on Popular Science.

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I love playing games on my Mac, but can’t stand sitting at my keyboard after a long day of writing internet articles. I’d rather plug my laptop into my TV and play from my couch.

And the good news is that the latest macOS, 13.0 Ventura, makes this a lot easier. For the first time, there’s a dedicated gamepad section in the System Settings, complete with the ability to remap buttons and even create profiles for different games. You can connect the controllers that pair with every current gaming console (XBox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch), and most other Bluetooth and USB controllers should also work. This setup lets you game without the keyboard, whether you’re playing retro titles with the ultimate emulation app, you’ve downloaded a few favorites from Steam, or you’ve bought games from the App Store. 

You will need to pair your controller, a process that will work a little differently depending on which controller you have. It’s particularly confusing if you’re using a console controller, so here’s how to connect the ones you’re most likely to have:

• Nintendo Switch Pro controller: There’s a tiny, unlabeled connect button on the top of the controller, to the left of the USB-C charging port. Press and hold this button until you see it in the “Nearby Devices” list on your Mac. 
• Nintendo Switch Joy-Con: You’ll find the minuscule sync button on the side of each controller, between the SR and SL buttons and below the indicator lights. Press and hold this until you see the Joy-Con on the “Nearby Devices” list on your Mac. You’ll need to connect both controllers—they will be used as a single controller system-wide, and can’t be used separately. 
• PlayStation 4 and 5 DualShock controllers: Press and hold the PS and Share button at the same time, then look for your controller in the “Nearby Devices” list on your Mac. 
• XBox Series X/S controllers: Press and hold the connect button, which has three radio waves next to it, then look for your controller in the “Nearby Devices” list on your Mac.

Note that to use the controller with your console again, you will need to re-pair it with the console. If you choose to go back to gaming on your Mac after that, you’ll have to re-pair it with your computer. It’s tedious, so keep this in mind. 

After connecting, you should be good to go. Any game that supports gamepads should work with the device you connected, or at the very least offer the controller as an option in its settings. I tried this with a few indie games and was delighted. 

And the nice thing is that the “home” button, which most gamepads offer, will open up the Games folder on your Mac’s Launchpad. From there, you can pick a game without touching your mouse or keyboard. It’s a nice touch. 

You can customize your controllers on MacOS

If you want to customize your gamepad by, say, changing which buttons do what, you can. Head to the Game Controllers section in System Settings, where you’ll see every game controller you’ve connected and whether or not they’re currently hooked up.

Click Identify, and that specific controller will vibrate. Click the controller to reconfigure which buttons do what. You could, for example, switch the “A” and “B” buttons, if you prefer playing games that way.

You can make these changes system-wide, if you like, or you can create individual profiles for any games you play regularly that you want to create specific configurations for. This makes it possible for you to customize your layout for a specific game—useful when a game doesn’t organize the buttons in a way that makes sense to you. 

All this means you have a lot of power to configure your controllers to work just the way you want them to, which should make for much more relaxed Mac gaming sessions. Maybe I’ll finally manage to finish the last level of Celeste. 

The post It’s surprisingly easy to connect your favorite video game controllers to your Mac appeared first on Popular Science.

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When’s the last time you looked away from your computer? If you’re anything like me, it’s been a while, which might be slowing both of us down. 

Taking regular breaks can vastly improve your focus, according to a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study published in March 2011, and that means you and I should really be stepping away from our screens more than we are. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working or in the middle of a gaming session—breaks will help you perform better. The problem: it’s hard to remember to take some time to regroup, so you may have to force the issue.

This advice will be even easier to follow if you make a habit out of it. You could take a walk every day at 10 a.m., or make yourself a cup of tea every afternoon at 2 p.m., and those are just two of countless examples I could list here. Build these breaks into a routine and you’ll find it’s easier to stick to. 

Try the Pomodoro Technique

Pomodoro, as you might know, is the Italian word for tomato. The Pomodoro Technique gets its name from the tomato-shaped kitchen timer used by its creator Francesco Cirillo when he started scheduling breaks into his day. The method is simple: decide on a task you want to accomplish, set a timer for 25 minutes, and get to work. When time’s up, take a five-minute break. After four such sessions, take a longer break, generally a half-hour or so. Then start over. A lot of people swear by this technique, which combines periods of intense focus with regular breaks—exactly why we mentioned it in our guide to overcoming procrastination.

You can use a regular kitchen timer for this, if you want, but most people today rely on apps. I recommend Pomodor for anyone who is curious. This simple application runs entirely within a web browser, meaning you won’t need to install anything. Hit the play button to start focusing on a task, then take a break when you get a notification to stop.

The reason I like Stretchly is that it pops up over whatever you’re doing, effectively forcing you to stop. Each time, the application also offers a suggestion for how to spend your break, like turning your head toward natural light or doing some basic stretching. 

The post Improve your focus by taking more breaks every day appeared first on Popular Science.

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I love YouTube. I hate how quickly my time disappears when I browse it. Once upon a time, I could open the site, find something to watch during my break, then leave. That’s harder now, which is the result of deliberate choices by the YouTube design team. They want people to stick around, so they’ve added all kinds of features to increase the odds I’ll keep watching videos (instead of, like, doing my job). These include automatically playing some other video after I watch one, a sidebar full of compelling links, comments that I can’t resist scrolling through, and so much more.

It makes sense that YouTube does this—it’s in their interest that I stay on the site. But it’s not in my interest that I do that. So, I took some steps to make those tempting pages less addictive—consider making these changes yourself. 

You’ll find the autoplay button to the left of the closed captioning button at the bottom of whatever video you’re watching online. In the app, you may need to tap the video to bring it up, but you’ll see it in the upper right corner. In either case, simply hit the toggle switch to turn it off. It will stay off on your device, though you may need to repeat the process if you use a new device. 

Go straight to subscriptions or your video library

The YouTube homepage uses its infamous algorithm to show you the videos you’re most likely to watch—a category that may, or may not, be the videos you actually want to watch. Who among us hasn’t, after clicking an eye-catching link on the homepage, felt the need to shower immediately after watching, only to watch more of the same? It’s not a great feeling. 

This is why I recommend skipping the YouTube homepage entirely and heading straight to the subscriptions page instead—there’s a link to Subscriptions in the left sidebar of the YouTube homepage (click the three lines in the top left corner if you don’t see it), and at the bottom of the screen in the app. Here you’ll see a list of all videos uploaded by the channels you’ve decided to follow. It’s a much cleaner experience, and one that’s far less likely to send you down a rabbit hole. Just watch a video that you’re interested in, from someone you know you like, and move on with your day. The simplest thing to do is make a bookmark for the subscriptions page, which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions, and to use that when you want to watch YouTube videos. 

[Related: How to navigate through YouTube videos like a pro]

Another page worth knowing about is the Library, which will show you all the videos you’ve watched recently. The link should be right near Subscriptions. This is a great way to find the long video you started on one device and want to finish on another. It’s also a good way to review the kinds of videos you’ve watched recently, just to get a feel for how much time you’re spending watching stuff. 

Block the distracting elements

The tips above will help a little, but the YouTube interface is still crammed full of potential distractions. Enter ZenTube, a free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. It’s open-source and maintained by volunteers, meaning you can trust it to be free of scams and ads. The extension can block all of the things that make YouTube such a distracting place. 

By default, it hides all comments, thumbnails, video recommendations, and avatars. The result looks empty, which is the point—if there are no compelling visuals on the page, there’s nothing to reflexively click. If you’d rather not disable everything, don’t worry—you can toggle any of the features back on if that’s your preference. Play with it—it will reduce the amount of accidental time you spend on the website. 

YouTube, at its most useful, is a place you can go for a specific purpose. That might be to watch instructions, or it might be for some quick entertainment. Taking the measures I’ve outlined here makes it more likely that you’ll use YouTube only for the specific thing you opened it for, without plunging down a rabbit hole of distraction. 

The post 3 ways to avoid falling down a YouTube rabbit hole appeared first on Popular Science.

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Transferring files directly between your computer and your Android phone is annoying. Whether you want to add custom ringtones, organize your photos, or quickly delete files taking up too much space, the process involves connecting both devices through a cable, changing security settings on your phone, and more likely than not, being confused when the phone doesn’t show up in the file browser for some reason. And then, inevitably, the cable disconnects and you have to go through the entire setup process all over again. 

The next screen will show you all of the information you need to log in from another device. We’ll break it down for you: Server URL is the local address of your server, which you can think of as similar to a website URL. You’ll need this to tell your computer where to go fetch files. Userid and password are the credentials you chose earlier—you’ll need them to transfer files from another gadget. If turned on, Anonymous access allows users to access your phone through the network with no credentials. Enabling it is simpler but certainly less secure, so do it at your own risk. Finally, Root folder is the folder on your Android phone you’ll be able to access through other devices in your network. By default, this is set to the entire internal memory of the gadget, but you can change it so that you’re only sharing a particular folder while keeping the rest of your phone off-limits. 

There are many great FTP clients out there but we recommend Cyberduck (available for macOS and Windows), as it’s beginner-friendly. This program is open source, which generally means it’s known to be secure, and also very easy to use. Download, install, and open Cyberduck, and on the main menu click on Open Connection. Use the emerging window to enter the information you see on your phone.

[Related: How to share huge files online]

For Server, type the numbers and decimal points under Server URL on your phone—but only up to the colon. Type the numbers after it in the Port field instead. It’s a little confusing but take the screenshot above as a reference. Continue by entering your username and password and click Connect. You can now explore your phone files from your computer. 

You can now click and drag files from and to your handheld device and easily delete whatever documents you want. When you’re done, turn off the FTP server—just open the app again and tap Stop. This will also prevent the server from draining your battery. 

The post How to create a file transfer hub between your computer and your Android phone appeared first on Popular Science.

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Numi

Numi is one of the first notepad calculators I noticed and my personal favorite. You can do straightforward number crunching by using the app as a normal calculator—just type out the operation and you’ll see the result. But Numi also supports natural language, so when you type “6k divided by 12,” you’ll also get a correct answer. 

[Related: 19 free online tools you’ll want to bookmark right now]

According to the developers, Numi supports every unit of distance, length, area, and volume you can think of, percentages, time zones, currencies and cryptocurrencies, and various trigonometry functions. So, for example, the platform can figure out what is 3 inches in centimeters, what’s 5 percent of 123, how much is $20 in Euros, or what’s the price of one Bitcoin. There’s a lot more to dig into here, too, including the ability to set variables early in the document and use them later. 

Numi is free to download for macOS. The full version, including unlimited notes and iCloud syncing, is available for a one-time payment of $20. 

According to the Parsify docs this application supports unit conversions, currencies and cryptocurrencies, and time zones. As with Numi, you can use “prev” to pull in the solution to the previous line and set variables early in the document to pull in later. 

Parsify is free to download for Windows, macOS, and Linux, but limits files to only five lines. The full, unlimited version will set you back $29. 

Evaluator

Evaluator is different from the other apps on this list. You can have it running in the background, and summon it by hitting the keyboard shortcut, Alt+Space. A small window will pop up in the middle of the screen ready for you to crunch up some numbers. 

You can type out whatever mathematical operations you want to solve and you’ll see the answers in real-time. If you hit Enter, Evaluator will copy the latest answer to your clipboard, so you can paste it into any other applications, which comes in handy if you’re working with a spreadsheet. 

The post Your computer’s calculator app stinks. Here are 4 better alternatives. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Google TV (until recently known as Android TV), used to be pretty clean—there was a row of apps, a few video suggestions, and not much else. But not anymore. 

The home screen of the platform now has a large featured section advertising shows on services you may not subscribe to, along with algorithmically curated recommendations and trailers. There’s also a smaller row of apps in the midst of everything, which can make it hard to find what you’re actually looking for. 

If you’ve been a victim of Google TV’s redesign, know that you can get rid of the clutter by downloading a launcher. These apps act like a coat of paint on an operating system, changing its appearance while leaving the actual functioning intact.

You can also create custom categories to organize your apps. For example, you can keep your sports services in one list, your TV and movie services in another, and your system utilities at the bottom. 

There are a few other nice features, like a shortcut to the system settings and the ability to choose a  wallpaper from the built-in gallery, or set one up from a USB drive. FLauncher really doesn’t look like much, but it does everything you need, meaning you’ll never need to see the default home screen ever again. 

The main customization you get with Launchy Launcher is the ability to add wallpaper, either by choosing one of your own photos using a USB drive or by browsing a free collection of images. This app may seem like it’s way too basic, but you can really make it look great with just a few button presses. 

Sure, Launchy Launcher is not going to provide enough customization options for all users, but for some, it’s going to be just right. All some people need is a list of apps, after all. 

Basically, you hold down the Home button and have Dashboard show up above whatever you’re watching. That way, you’ll be able to browse your apps without stopping playback. Your most recent apps are at the top and below you’ll see a grid of apps you can re-order however you like. 

There’s also quick access to your HDMI ports and other inputs, your TV’s display settings, and a button for launching your TV’s screensaver. Finally, and more interestingly, you’ll be able to see the IP address for your device, which is useful if you’re troubleshooting network issues. 

This makes Kodi a pretty good, unconventional launcher, especially if you’re already using it to watch TV shows and movies you’ve got saved locally in a hard drive, for example. 

It helps that Kodi is also highly customizable. For example, there’s no end to the list of skins you can download and fidget with, and you can obsessively tweak everything about how the application works— color scheme, which features do and don’t show up, and even the user interface sounds.

The post How to ditch the default Google TV home screen and build something better appeared first on Popular Science.

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OpenEmu is an emulation program, and it’s by far the easiest way to organize and play a retro game or ROM collection. Also, OpenEmu is only available for Mac. This application solves just about every frustration a novice would have with emulation software, and allows users to just drag their ROM collections, connect a supported controller, and start playing. 

There are other tools out there you could install that will do the job, like RetroArch for Windows or Linux. But you could probably get a PhD in computer science in roughly the same amount of time it takes to set that application up. OpenEmu is the ultimate app for computer retro gaming, and the race is not particularly close. 

If you’ve already got a collection of ROMs on your computer, then I’ve got good news: all you need to do is drag the files onto the OpenEmu window. The software will sort them according to the system they belong to, and even automatically download the cover art for all of them. 

[Related: Turn your old Wii into the ultimate retro gaming system]

Alternatively, if cover art doesn’t show up, you can look for the right image yourself and drag it to the corresponding game. That way there will be no games without cover and they’ll be easier to find. 

This is not only aesthetically pleasing but also necessary, as OpenEmu supports so many different systems that you’re going to have a lot of games to scroll through. Just about every retro console, you can think of (and several that you couldn’t) are here, including classics like every Nintendo console up to the Gamecube, most Atari systems, various Sega systems, and the original Playstation. If there’s a particular system you want to play, you can check out a full list on the OpenEmu website.  

Keep in mind that OpenEmu won’t work if you were hoping to emulate any system released within the past 15 years. But those are not exactly retro, and this is definitely a setup for the classics. 

This is great if you’re planning on playing games with your keyboard, but it’s also nice if you’re configuring a Bluetooth or USB controller. Speaking of—OpenEmu supports a bunch of controllers right out of the box, and you’ll find they even come pre-mapped to great layouts without you having to do anything but connect them. The list includes peripherals for PlayStation 3 and 4, the Nintendo Switch Pro, 8Bitdo, and the Xbox One and 360, as well as Wiimotes. You can also check out a full list here.  

[Related: How to run Android apps and games on your computer]

If you’re a gamer, there’s a good chance that you have at least one of these devices around the house, and if that’s the case, you can start gaming in no time. If you have other controllers, you can also use them, but you’ll need to configure them yourself, which you can forgo if you just use your keyboard. 

If OpenEmu is not pre-loaded with what you’re looking for, you can always find codes for almost any game on GameHacking.org, and add them yourself. 

The post Macs are better at video gaming (emulators) than PCs. Here’s how to set up yours. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Here’s a secret: you don’t need the cloud to sync files between your devices. Services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Apple’s iCloud are all free until you use up a certain amount of space, which is how they get you. Hit that cap, and you’ll either need to start paying for a subscription or start deleting files. Maybe you’re fine shelling out cash, but if you’re more of a do-it-yourself kind of person, you’re probably wondering if there’s an alternative.

Whether you have a server or not, however, it’s not hard to set up direct syncing between your devices. I’ve spent years trying to find the perfect system for this, and these are the best apps I’ve found for the job. 

Resilio Sync’s personal version is simplest

If you want the simplest direct syncing between multiple devices, start with Resilio Sync, which was once known as Bittorrent Sync. With this application, you can choose any folder on your computer or mobile device and set them up to sync directly with each other. There’s a free version for personal use, but anyone using this for work needs to pay (plans start at $7 per user per month.) 

Setting up is easy. Just download the free version for your computer and install it—there are versions for Windows, macOS, Linux, and most NAS devices. Once you’ve launched Resilio Sync, you can click the plus button to sync any folder. By default, the program will sync a read-only version of your folder, so make sure to check Read & Write if you want two-way syncing. Then you can copy or email a link for accessing your folder on other devices.

[Related: Wireless sharing with Apple, Android, and Windows devices made easy]

You will need to install Resilio Sync on every computer you want to sync files to. You can also put the iOS or Android app on your phone or tablet, then access files on those devices. (The Android version can sync entire folders directly to your device, but the iOS and iPadOS versions cannot, because of limits imposed by Apple.) You can also sync files from mobile to your computers, making this a useful tool for backing up photos. 

I, personally, have used Resilio Sync for around a decade, and it has served me well. It’s an application that you can easily forget about after you set it up, but will keep doing its job. To me, that is the best kind of application. 

Syncthing is slightly more complicated, but completely free

Resilio Sync works well, sure, but it’s proprietary software. That means some features are behind a paywall, and it also means the open-source community can’t look at the code and suggest improvements. Syncthing exists, in part, to provide an open-source alternative to Resilio Sync, which—in theory—makes it a more secure choice while also meaning you don’t have to pay for it. This is free software, in all meanings of the word. Syncthing also encrypts files during transfer, so they can’t be intercepted. The downside is that it’s a little more complicated to set up than Resilio Sync, but it works well when it’s cruising along.

To get started, head to the Syncthing download page. Linux users can find the application in their package manager. There are easy-to-install versions for Windows and macOS that run in the taskbar, and an Android app you can install from Google Play. There’s no official version for iOS or iPadOS, though Möbius Sync is a compatible option. 

Click the Add Folder button, then point the software toward the folder you want to sync to other devices. Next, you will need to add those devices by installing Syncthing and clicking Add Remote Device. Then add devices to the individual folders you’ve decided to sync. Once set up, Syncthing will run in the background and sync files directly between your devices—you won’t have to think about it.

Have a NAS device or a server? Try NextCloud.

Both of the options above should work for most people, especially if you have some kind of always-on computer for your other devices to sync to. If you want to take your DIY cloud storage project to the next level, though, you could try installing Nextcloud. 

The post With the right software, you can build your own cloud storage service appeared first on Popular Science.

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At this point, most TV remotes have buttons for specific streaming services, which is annoying if you don’t subscribe to all of them specifically. The good news is that if your device runs Google TV, or if you use a Chromecast with Google TV, you can remap those buttons to launch something else. 

My TV, built by Sony and running the Google TV operating system, has four streaming buttons as well as a row of colored buttons that I don’t use. Instead of having them sit there doing nothing, I remapped them to do launch services I do use, and take screenshots, for example. To have them do that (or anything else), all you need is a remapper app, which you can find on the Google Play store on your TV. The most popular and our favorite is Button Mapper because it’s free and easy to use.

Notice that you won’t find any streaming buttons by default, so you’ll have to add them by going to Add Buttons. From there, you can add any button on your remote and assign it to launch any app you like. For example, I remapped the Netflix button to launch Plex, since I use that service far more often than I use the red N.

[Related: Seven pro tips for the new Chromecast with Google TV]

If you have more apps than you have buttons, you can also assign other services or functions to single taps, double taps, and long presses of a single button, if you want. 

Note that, in my tests, remapping these buttons doesn’t always work seamlessly. For example, when the TV is off if I press the Netflix button, said service will launch instead of Plex. This happens because Button Mapper isn’t running in the background until the TV turns on, so my remote goes back to its original mapping. But when the TV is on, it launches Plex just fine.

A lot of the features you can assign are specific to phones because this is an app designed primarily for Androids phones, not television sets. Still, there are some functions you’ll find useful on these devices, including launching the Quick Settings menu, changing brightness, and controlling media playback. 

[Related: Outsmart your Chromecast and stream anything you want]

You can also assign any button to launch your app list. By default, Google TV shows you movie and TV recommendations from various apps on the home screen, which I personally find to be unnecessary clutter. If you are with me on this one, you can just remap the Home button to launch a custom launcher, like Kodi. 

The post Remap the streaming service buttons on your Google TV remote appeared first on Popular Science.

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In the two years since my wife and I started making our own beer, we learned that brewing is mostly about keeping your equipment clean, but it also involves doing a lot of math. 

That’s where brewing apps come in handy: they do a lot of the calculations so you can focus on designing and scaling your recipes. These tools will also guide you through all of the timing on brew day, making them especially helpful if you’re a beginner. 

Creating a recipe is easy—just add the ingredients (fermantables, hops, and any other additions), and the size of your batch. The app will automatically make all the calculations for you, including the amount of water you have to add, for example. When it’s time to brew, Brewfather will create all of the timers you’ll need, complete with a schedule of when you’ll need to add in all of your components. 

[Related: BeerSci: The art and science of beer brewing, on video]

To save you some time, the platform is also constantly updating its extensive library of ingredients, which includes all the relevant statistics for each one, like yield percentages and IBUs. Just search for your ingredients and the platform will take them into account automatically. 

The post 5 essential apps for brewing your own beer appeared first on Popular Science.

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It’s 2022 and installing software on Windows still looks more or less the same as always. You find the app you want online, download the installer, and spend the next minute or two clicking through dialog boxes,  hoping you didn’t accidentally install malware. 

But the process can be faster than that. Enter Chocolatey, a Windows app that allows you to install nearly 10,000 tools with just a few commands on PowerShell, Windows’ configuration management program. And if that sounds a bit intimidating, Chocolatey also has a friendlier desktop version.

Why you should use Chocolatey

If you ever turned on a PC in the 90s you certainly saw Windows’ disk operating system or DOS in all its glory—it was that dark screen with blocky white letters performing command after command to get your computer up and running. PowerShell is a modern version of that—you can access it from Windows itself as any other tool, and power users love it for its power to streamline tasks with written commands. 

[Related: 10 new features to get you started with Windows 11]

Most PC users have never opened PowerShell, but Chocolatey may be the perfect excuse to start exploring. The program is a script you can use in PowerShell to easily install and manage software, making the process much faster than the traditional way. Chocolatey automates all of the searching, downloading, and installing, so you can just type a command and walk away while your computer does all the work. The program also makes the process safer by using only official download links, preventing you from clicking on a fake one. 

Finally, Chocolatey can manage important updates, so you don’t have to check and download new patches for every single piece of software on your machine. All you have to do is automate the entire process with a quick command. 

Next, head to the Chocolatey install page. There’s a single line of code under Install Chocolatey for individual use that you’ll need to copy and paste into PowerShell. Hit Enter and follow the instructions. Chocolatey will warn you about all the changes this will make to your system, and ask you to confirm if you want to proceed with the installation. Type Y for yes and hit Enter again. 

Just like that Chocolatey will then proceed to download and install the program you want, which will show up in your start menu, ready for you to open when the process is finished. 

You can install multiple applications this way, and there are thousands of packages, which you can search for or browse on Chocolatey’s website. Advanced users can read up on all supported commands, but everyone else can get started by learning the basics.

The more intuitive version of Chocolatey

If you’d rather not use PowerShell to install software, we’ve got good news—there’s a graphical version or GUI you can use instead. 

You can install this more user-friendly interface using Chocolatey—just run the choco install chocolateygui command. As a result, you’ll get an app store with all the program packages you can get using the platform. 

[Related: Run Windows on your Mac and get the best of both worlds]

Chocolatey makes installing and updating software on Windows a breeze. If you’re setting up a new PC, equipping your machine with everything you need will be a lot easier. 

The post The Chocolatey solution to faster, safer Windows software installation appeared first on Popular Science.

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In the past, Safari used to be underpowered, which is why a lot of Mac users install Google Chrome without even thinking about it. But you might want to re-think that habit because Safari is not underpowered anymore. 

In fact, there are all kinds of features Apple’s browser offers that you won’t find in Chrome—from copying text in images to hiding your IP address from trackers. 

Live Text is a macOS feature built into Safari that uses optical character recognition to identify text in images, allowing you to highlight and copy it. To use it, just open a photo on Safari and start selecting the text you see in it. It’s that easy. 

According to Apple, websites use Like and Share buttons, and other social widgets like comment fields, to track us even if we don’t use them. Safari automatically blocks this tracking, giving users more control over their data. 

You can get similar functionalities on Chrome by using add-ons, but in Safari it’s all built-in and enabled by default.

From here you can set a universal rule for auto-playing audio, which can be Never Auto-Play. You can also configure exceptions for currently open sites. For example, you might want YouTube to be able to start playing videos immediately. 

A reader mode cleans the website you’re on, allowing you to concentrate on reading an article without the distraction of sidebars, pop-ups, ads, and other annoyances. They’re essential for browsing the modern web. 

Safari not only allows you to easily convert websites using reader mode, but it also allows you to open articles on a given website in reader mode by default. We can all think of a few websites that go way over the top when it comes to clutter—this is a way to avoid it entirely. 

To use it, go to View and Show Reader, or click on the Reader icon to the left of the address bar—it looks like a page. 

This is a Continuity feature for Apple devices and it notably works even if you’re using Chrome as your browser. But the integrations go deeper if you use Safari. For example, when you open a new tab you’ll see a list of currently open tabs on other devices, and your bookmarks and reading pages will all sync over without any effort on your end. 

Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that, since modern computers have more than enough power to run Chrome smoothly. But it can be more of an issue when your Mac is not plugged in. More system resources means more power usage, draining your battery faster. I’ve personally noticed I can get an extra couple hours out of my laptop by using Safari instead of Chrome, and I’m not the first person to notice this. Try it out for yourself. 

The post 7 things Safari can do that Google Chrome can’t appeared first on Popular Science.

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Remember video stores? They were annoying because you had to leave your house and potentially talk to a human, but they had a big advantage over the streaming services of today: everything was in one place. You didn’t need to know which video stores had the rights to which movies; you could just hear about a movie, go to the store, and grab it off the shelf. 

You can install Plex on basically any device—whether it’s a smart TV, a computer, a tablet, or a phone—and use it to track down which services are offering which TV shows and movies. Even better, because Plex lets anyone set up their own streaming service, you can also search your personal media collection while you’re at it, as well as the collections of any friends who happen to share theirs with you. This simplifies finding specific shows or movies to the point where it’s trivial. 

How to find any show or movie on Plex

A little background: until recently, Plex was, primarily, a service for watching your own media collection—a way to turn a computer or NAS device in your house into your own personal Netflix. You could rip your DVD collection, record live TV, and then stream everything from anywhere. You could even share that collection with friends (I won’t discuss how legal this may or may not be). 

Within the past couple of years, Plex has started offering a few free movies and TV shows on top of this service, which have started showing up in its search results. Now the company has added Discover, which extends this search to include results from basically every streaming service on the market. To get started, sign up for Plex if you haven’t already. Part of the setup will ask you which streaming services you prefer.

[Related: 7 tools to make streaming simpler, smarter, and more fun]

With that done, search for whatever show or movie you want to to watch and scroll down to the More Ways to Watch section.

Click the result, and you’ll see all the streaming services currently offering that show. 

You can click any of the listed icons to open the show or movie in that streaming service—including any Plex servers you might have access to (yours or any of your friends’). Plex servers will be listed first, followed by any streaming services you’ve indicated you have access to. Or, if you’d rather purchase, you’ll find out where you can buy the entire show. 

It’s also a great place to do some comparison shopping, if a little buggy (Microsoft isn’t offering the entire run of The Office for $12.)

You can do the same thing for movies, and the results can surprise you. I, for example, just discovered a film I wanted to see is available for free on Kanopy, a service my local library offers. 

That’s really nice to know! You can add such movies to your watchlist, allowing you to create a list of movies you want to see across all your streaming services that you can access on all your devices. You could, for example, add a bunch of movies to your watchlist from your computer and then pull that list up on your TV when you’re ready to settle in. 

We’re not getting the video store back anytime soon, sadly, but with a service like this it’s at least easier to figure out what’s streaming where—and keep track of the things you want to watch, regardless of which service they live in.

The post Plex’s new Discover feature can help you track down everything you want to watch—anywhere appeared first on Popular Science.

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To reset an app, all you need to do is select all the files related to it and wipe them all out of your computer. Sounds easy, but the problem is that the Library folder is anything but user-friendly, so there will be nothing remotely straightforward about the process. 

[Related: There’s a better way to install software on your Mac]

If you don’t know what you’re doing, one look at the directory is enough to realize that there seems to be no easy logic behind the way files are organized. So, instead of finding a single folder for each app containing everything related to it, you’ll find files containing cache and settings for a specific app scattered around in the depths of different folders within folders. Unless you have a background in Mac software development, finding all the files you need to remove is definitely a daunting task, and missing one could be enough to keep the faulty app failing, rendering your efforts useless. 

But don’t panic: that’s nothing that a little help won’t fix. 

How to find and delete settings instantly

AppCleaner is a free application we’ve called a game-changing utility capable of completely deleting an application—including the hidden settings in your computer’s inscrutable Library folder. 

The trick is that you don’t have to use this application to completely delete an app: You could just use it to delete its settings, saving you from having to download and install the program all over again.

To start, download and install AppCleaner. Open the tool and type the name of the app you want to reset into the search bar to find it. 

As you type, AppCleaner will show you all of the files in the Library folder related to the faulty app, including the tool itself—you’ll recognize it by the icon and the .app extension in the filename. To delete the files while still keeping the application, simply uncheck the entry for it and finish by clicking Remove. 

[Related: Run Windows on your Mac and get the best of both worlds]

After that, load the program and it will be as good as new—all settings and changes you made will be gone and you’ll see welcome messages as if you were opening the app for the first time. 

I can’t tell you how many times this little trick has brought a seemingly broken application back from the dead. It can also help when a program is too slow, though if that remains an issue be sure to read up on how you can fix a slow Mac.

The post How to reset glitchy Mac apps appeared first on Popular Science.

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Copying and pasting are such an essential part of our daily computing that most of us just do it automatically. But sometimes we get it wrong—we copy something, forget to paste it, and accidentally copy over it. It feels like you’ve lost something forever. 

How to turn on the Windows clipboard history

First, open the Settings app on your computer. Under System, you’ll find a section called Clipboard. Toggle the switch on to turn on the clipboard history.

When this function is on, a pop-up window will emerge every time you hit Win+V—there, you’ll be able to view your 25 most recently clipped items.

You can scroll through recent clippings using your mouse or the up and down arrow keys. Select something by clicking it (or by hitting enter if you’re navigating with the keyboard) to immediately paste that snippet in whatever application you currently have open.

Note that you can also pin things by clicking on the pin icon in the bottom right corner of every item. This is useful if you find yourself repeating the same message constantly, for example.

To get started, head back to the Clipboard section in Settings and turn on Sync across your devices. Windows will ask you to sign into your Microsoft account, after which everything you copy will show up on all the devices you’ve logged into with the same Microsoft account. Note that you’ll have to enable the setting on each device.

[Related: Make your life easier by syncing up all your Windows 11 devices]

I tested this between two computers: one running Windows 10 and another running Windows 11. It worked perfectly, though I did need to restart one of the computers after turning on syncing before clippings started showing up. 

Note that if you’re running Windows 10 on your computer, you won’t be able to use clipboard syncing unless you’ve installed the October 2018 update, or any later one. 

Clipboard syncing with Android phones

If you’re constantly switching between your computer and your phone, having one clipboard that works simultaneously on both can be a game-changer. Windows 10 and 11 can sync their clipboard with an Android device running 5.0 or newer, but only if you’re willing to replace your phone’s default keyboard with Microsoft’s Swiftkey. And that’s OK because Swiftkey is one of the best keyboard apps you can find.

The post Windows has a hidden clipboard manager—here’s how to find it appeared first on Popular Science.

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I’m a simple man—all I want from Twitter is to see recent posts from the people I follow in reverse chronological order so I can scroll until I stop seeing new tweets. And after that, I just want to close the app. 

Unfortunately, it seems like that’s too much to ask. Twitter keeps adding more and more stuff, both to the timeline itself and to the sidebar. The result is a platform that used to be simple, turned into a bloated mess. 

So I decided to find a way to bring the old Twitter back.

Turn off the algorithmic timeline

In your quest to bring old Twitter back, the first and most important thing you need to do is turn off the algorithm. 

In days of yore, Twitter would show you all of the most recent tweets from the people you follow in the order they posted them. This changed a few years ago, and now the default is to show you an algorithmically curated Home screen. Engagement, or how many times people have seen, liked, or interacted with a tweet in any way, is what determines what you see. Most of the time, these tweets are the ones that upset the most people at any given time, resulting in your timeline feeling angrier than it needs to be.

[Related: Let’s catch up on all the buzziest Twitter news]

Happily, there’s a simple fix. Click or tap the sparkle icon at the top of your timeline—On the emerging pop-up, click or tap See latest Tweets instead. 

Congratulations—you’ve turned off the algorithmic timeline. This setting should stay this way, but note that you might need to change it again on your other devices. 

Remove the sidebars entirely

Twitter’s right-hand sidebar includes the platform’s infamous trending topics. These typically include politicians or celebrities saying terrible things (click to see people giving them attention), the name of an older famous person (click on it to see people asking if the person died), and some random hashtag (click on it to see the chaotic side of the internet at its finest).

But if you don’t want to see any of this, you can install Simplified Twitter. This browser extension works on Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox, and it strips the sidebars out of Twitter, turning this…

…into this. 

Now, your focus is entirely where it needs to be—Kirby eating a cat. Enjoy. 

Use an alternative Twitter client

Twitter’s default experience is constantly changing, sometimes in the most annoying ways possible. But this isn’t true of third-party clients, the best of which give you access to a cleaner version of Twitter. 

TweetDeck

TweetDeck isn’t a third-party client, as it’s owned by Twitter, but it focuses more on actual tweets than Twitter does. Download it to add columns for lists or searches, and generally just enjoy a better version of Twitter. 

Tweeten

Tweeten is an app for Windows, macOS, and Chrome that gives you a cleaner user interface than TweetDeck, and more advanced features, like the ability to download videos or customize notifications. 

[Related: 3 Twitter alternatives, in case you’re looking]

Tweetz

Tweetz is a lightweight client for Windows that shows you your tweets and stays out of the way. That’s it—that’s the tweet.

Tweetbot

Tweetbot is the best blend of elegance and power I’ve found for Mac and iOS. You can browse your timeline, mentions, lists, and messages in a single-column interface. I especially love the keyboard shortcuts on the macOS version, which I constantly use to share tweets with friends. 

Fenix 2

Fenix 2 is a widely respected alternative to the official Android Twitter app with a very clean user interface. It also adds support for viewing YouTube and Instagram posts in your timeline, something the official Twitter client doesn’t offer. 

Keep in mind these recommendations are not the only ones you’ll find in the market—a quick search and you’ll see there’s a lot more for you to explore. Also, none of these third-party clients is necessarily better than the other. Try one and see what you like. All of these apps will make it a lot easier to focus on what matters—scrolling through tweets while ignoring all of the stuff that makes Twitter so needlessly noisy.

The post Give in to nostalgia and go back to a simpler version of Twitter appeared first on Popular Science.

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I listened to a lot of sad music during the pandemic, which taught Spotify’s algorithm that I like sad music. The result: a never-ending stream of depressing indie songs. I was stuck in an algorithmic rut. That changed when I started searching for online radio stations DJed by actual human people.

Why online radio is the answer to an algorithmic rut

Algorithmic playlists aren’t all bad—we’ve talked about finding the best Spotify playlists, for example, and the results can be great. But there’s something about a good radio station that even the best automated playlist can’t give you. A few things stand out: 

• Discovering music algorithms won’t show you. This is the key point for me. Radio stations play stuff I wouldn’t choose, and that Spotify wouldn’t choose for me. It’s refreshing. 
• The little human touches. The best DJs talk between segments, introducing an artist and giving you background. They’ll also just talk about… whatever. I work from home, alone, and it’s nice when a little bit of spontaneous conversation breaks up a killer playlist.
• A better connection to your local community. If you find a local radio station you’ll learn about up-and-coming artists in your area and possibly hear them talk about their music. You’ll also hear about upcoming concerts. 
• Learning more about other places. I’ve taken road trips abroad multiple times, and a small pleasure is scanning the local radio stations. I learned about The Great British Bake Off because rock DJs on three different stations were talking about cakes while I was driving from Liverpool to Glasgow—I was confused at the time, but I wouldn’t trade this memory for the world. Listening to radio stations from other places can bring this small part of travel to your life, even when you’re sitting at home. 

Once you find a station, you can stream it in your browser or, if you prefer, ask your smart speaker to stream it for you. Some stations offer apps you can install on your phone—I tend to prefer just using the browser.

How to find great online stations

By now, you’re probably wondering how to even find radio stations online. There are all kinds of services for this, but I can recommend five that worked for me.

• TuneIn has a handy local station feature that lists a bunch of radio stations near you—try out any that sound interesting. Make sure you scroll to the bottom to find any online-only stations you might miss. The TuneIn app (free for Android and iOS) is a pretty good way to listen to such stations on your phone, too.
• The website Public Radio Fan is basically a massive database of public radio stations all over the world, including community stations that play music. You can filter by location or the kind of music you want to hear. The site provides links to the station’s website and, in most cases, direct streaming links.
• InternetRadio.com is another site that makes finding online radio stations easy. Browse by genre or try a search. 
• NPR Music offers quick access to hundreds of local stations from all over the US—just scroll down to the Listen Live section. 
• Apple Music stands out from Spotify and Pandora by offering a bunch of radio stations with actual human DJs, a few of which you can listen to without a subscription. It also offers a directory of local radio stations, if you’re subscribed, which is an underappreciated reason to consider Apple Music over Spotify. 

There are other sites you could use as starting points, but these are my favorites. While I’m here, though, there are a few specific stations I want to highlight: 

The post How to find online radio stations run by real human DJs appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

I install most software from my Mac’s Terminal. I think you should do the same on yours. Yeah, I know, I know—that sounds hard. But, in many ways, it’s actually easier than the traditional way of installing software on your Mac. A lot of great free programs—open-source ones in particular—aren’t available in the Mac App Store. The usual installation process involves:

• Finding the app’s website
• Finding the download for Mac
• Downloading the app, typically in a DMG archive
• Opening the DMG archive after the download finishes
• Dragging the app icon from the mounted archive to the applications folder

Nothing about this is difficult, but it is time-consuming. Imagine if instead you could type three words, hit enter, and let your computer do everything for you. This is possible, thanks to Homebrew, a program that will let you install almost any application you can think of by typing “brew install” followed by the name of the app. 

There’s a real joy in simply telling your computer to do something and watching it happen, but the Terminal doesn’t explain itself the way other software does. I think Homebrew is the best tool for Mac users to get started with, because it’s so much better than installing software the old-fashioned way. 

• It’s faster: As outlined above, for most applications you can type three words and watch an app install itself. 
• It’s safer: Googling the name of an application and installing it isn’t necessarily secure. Downloading a free application from the wrong website is risky, and could result in you installing malware directly onto your computer. Installing from Homebrew removes some of this risk because a team of volunteers are finding the exact package you need. 
• Easier updates: Updating software is important, but sometimes it’s harder than it needs to be. Take Calibre, a free e-book manager which can do all sorts of e-reader tricks. This tool has frequent updates but no quick way to install them, meaning you have to download and install the update yourself every time. If you installed Calibre via Homebrew, though, you only need to type “brew update” to update every app you’ve installed using Homebrew

How to set up Homebrew

The simplest way to get started is to head to brew.sh, the Homebrew homepage, and follow the instructions. There’s a single line of code you will need to copy and then paste into the Terminal on your Mac. 

Hit enter and follow the instructions. 

You will be told about every change Homebrew will make to your system and asked to hit enter again. You might need to install Apple’s Command Line Tools, if you haven’t already. If so, this process will also be automated for you—just follow the instructions. 

Then hit enter and watch as Firefox installs.

You’ll find the application just where you expect it: in the Applications folder.

Neat, right? And this works for thousands of applications. There are a few more tricks you can learn, too: 

The post There’s a better way to install software on your Mac appeared first on Popular Science.

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Nintendo recently announced they will shut down the Wii U eShop and, with it, the last place fans could legally purchase retro games on any Nintendo system. Sure, you can subscribe to Nintendo Online for access to a few dozen older games, but those could disappear at any moment. 

How to play Wii and GameCube games without emulators

But before we get into that, let’s talk about the easiest way to play retro titles on the Wii. The Wii can, of course, launch Wii games, which are solidly in the “classic” category at this point. As of 2022, the console is 16 years old—the same age the Super Nintendo was when the Wii launched in 2006. Time sure flies.

Almost every Wii can also play GameCube games, provided you have a GameCube controller and a memory card. This gives you access to classic games such as Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. 

This isn’t emulation, and you don’t need mods: there’s basically an entire GameCube built into the Wii, meaning it can play these games natively. Now, there are advantages to playing Wii and GameCube games using an emulator on a powerful modern PC. You can upscale the graphics, for example, and save your game without using in-game save points. But there’s something satisfying about playing games on the hardware they were designed for, and with the Wii you can do that for the complete catalog of the two classic 2000s systems. 

Just note that Wii U can’t play GameCube games from a disk. Neither can the Wii Mini or Wii Family Edition, which don’t have plugs for GameCube controllers. The quickest way to tell if your Wii can load GameCube games is to look for the controller plugs on the top of the device—they’re hidden under a flap. 

Those games aren’t for sale anymore, but it’s pretty easy to get them thanks to the still-active Wii homebrew scene. This is a community of people who have gotten all kinds of software working on the Wii, including emulators for just about any system you can think of. Emulators, of course, only work if you have digital copies of the games (ROMs), and those are legally questionable if you don’t own the original game. Keep that in mind. And please note that these steps are for the Wii, not the Wii U. The best guide for running homebrew on the Wii U is at wiiuhacks.guide.

[Related: How to run Android apps and games on your computer]

With your Wii at the ready, the easiest way to get started is by heading to Wii.guide and clicking the Start Here link at the top. That is the best guide on the internet at this point, and (crucially) is kept up to date. But here’s a quick overview of the LetterBomb hack, which is by far the most common way to set up homebrew and install an emulator on your Wii:

• Head to please.hackmii.com on your computer and enter the MAC address for your Wii, which you can find by opening the Wii settings under Internet > Console Information. You’ll end up with a ZIP file.
• Extract the ZIP file onto an SD card.
• Put that SD card in your Wii. Open the Wii message board by clicking the envelope in the bottom-right corner. You’ll see an envelope with a bomb icon. Click that envelope. Note that if the date on your Wii is wrong, you might have trouble finding the bomb. If that happens, fix the date on your Wii in the settings.
• Follow the on-screen instructions to install the Homebrew Channel and BootMii.

It’s a good idea to back up your Wii at this point—Wii.guide has excellent instructions. Once that’s done, you can install some emulators. Again, here’s a quick overview: 

• Load the Homebrew Channel, just to make sure it’s working. Take the SD card out of your Wii and plug it into your computer.
• Download the Homebrew Browser to your computer. Extract the ZIP and copy the folder homebrew_browser to the /apps directory on your SD card, then unmount it.
• Plug the SD card into your Wii and load the Homebrew Channel. You should see the Homebrew Browser, which you can use to install software.

You now have everything you need to grab some emulators. Here’s a few you’ll want to pick up from the Homebrew Channel:

• FCE Ultra GX for NES
• SNES 9x GX for SNES
• VBA GX for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance
• Genesis Plus GX for Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Sega Master System, and Sega Game Gear
• Not64 for N64
• DOSbox for old PC games (but make sure you plug in a USB keyboard or you won’t get far)

That’s a lot of retro gaming capability built into a system you probably forgot about!

• The Wii Classic Controller works well for most games you can emulate and is fairly easy to find on the used market.
• The WiiMote works quite well for NES games—just hold it sideways.
• GameCube controllers work with most emulators and are a great layout for the N64 in particular.
• The controllers that came with the NES and SNES Classic work on the Wii—just plug them into a WiiMote.

With all these options, you should have a controller that works for just about any game you can load, and most emulators make it easy to customize the button mapping. 

The Wii easily connects to CRT TVs

Old games just look better on old cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions, because they’re designed with those displays in mind. The Wii uses an RGB connection that is easy to plug into those TVs. It also supports the 4:3 aspect ratio, meaning you don’t need a widescreen TV to play games. This is crucial if you’re looking to fully re-create the retro experience. 

Emulators are only the beginning

Correction, April 13, 2022: A previous version of this story said the Wii Mini does not have a disk drive and that many of the same steps listed here could be applied to the Wii U. The Wii Mini does have a disk drive and you will need to use a different process to install emulators on a Wii U.

The post Turn your old Wii into the ultimate retro gaming system appeared first on Popular Science.

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Apps, once upon a time, were something you paid for once and then used until you wanted a newer version. (They also used to come in a box with, like, a CD and paper manuals—remember that?)

Most software doesn’t work that way anymore. From large bundles like Adobe Creative Suite to simple to-do list apps, online subscriptions have become increasingly common. Subscribing means you’ll always have the most recent version of an app, and usually some kind of cloud or syncing support. On the other hand, you’ll have to keep paying, and the software’s owners can bump up the price at any time. These increases can add up quickly: $5 more per month is $60 a year. It’s worth keeping track of these price hikes and taking action when necessary.

You have two main options when the cost jumps: pay the new price, or unsubscribe. If you decide to stop paying, you’ll need to determine which app—if any—you want to replace it with. (You could, I suppose, email the company that increased the price and ask if you can keep paying the old rate, but that’s unlikely to get you anywhere.) 

I’ve been writing about software since 2007 and spent some of that time working for a software company. I’ve learned a few tricks along the way, and I’d like to pass them on to you. 

Figure out if you still need the app

So, are you actually using this app that suddenly wants to charge you more? It might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how easy this point is to overlook. 

The most profitable customer for a gym is one who pays the fee but never actually works out. The entire industry, in fact, is built around those people, who pay for an annual membership in January but stop visiting by February. Many gyms might not make a profit without them.

[Related: How to manage subscriptions that are silently draining your bank account]

Software subscriptions are similar. It’s easy to sign up for a service, use it for a bit, then forget about it entirely until the subscription automatically renews a year later. A price increase is an opportunity for you to think about whether you’re getting any value out of that app subscription. A few other questions you can ask yourself:

• If you’re paying for the premium version of an app that has a free version, are you still using the premium features?
• If you’re paying for an online gaming subscription or streaming service, have you used it recently?
• Is there a free and/or open-source tool you could be using instead?

You get the idea: Take the time to actually think through whether you’re currently using the service. If you’re not, unsubscribe. You can always re-subscribe later. 

It’s also worth familiarizing yourself with any software bundles you’re paying for. If you pay for Google Workspace, for example, you’re probably mostly using the email and calendar, but you’re getting more than that. Google Meet, for example, is a nice Zoom alternative, and the full-featured version comes with your Workspace subscription. There are all kinds of bundles like this out there, and you’re probably paying for at least one. Amazon Prime comes with a streaming service, which for some people might be a decent replacement for Netflix (assuming you just want to watch something, not a specific show.) Microsoft 365 comes with OneNote, which is a great alternative to Evernote. Don’t pay for the same kind of tool twice if you don’t have to.

See what else is out there

Maybe you’ve decided that you still need an app but would prefer not to pay the new rate. That’s when it’s time to look into alternatives.

Getting started is simple: search for other apps in the same category. If you’re not sure what category an app is in, you can always search for the name of your current app with the word “alternative” and see what comes up. Then you’ll need to determine which ones will work for you and whether they can do so at a lower price. Here’s a rough workflow I use while evaluating software: 

• Figure out which features are most important to you. Make a list.
• Compare which programs do and do not offer these features. Only write down apps that offer them.
• Figure out what rate apps charge for the specific features you care about. You can usually find this on the app’s pricing page—there’s almost always a link that says “pricing” at the top of the main informational page, or you can search the name of the app with the word “pricing” using a search engine. There will be a breakdown of which features come with which plan.

When you’re done, you’ll have a rough list of apps that offer the features you want and what they will charge you for them. Now it’s time to try out the apps that are cheaper.

Try before you buy

Most subscription apps offer some kind of free trial, typically 14 days. This is the best way to figure out if an app will work for you. 

I recommend starting by creating an account and exploring the features. Click every button, dig through the settings, and see if you can imagine using it. Next, give yourself some kind of fake goal to test things. If I’m testing accounting software, for example, I might create a fake budget for a company run by my cat Mira, just to get a sense of how things work. I’ll take note of what I do and don’t like. 

[Related: Questions to ask yourself when you’re trying to decide on a new app or service]

Reminder: you can usually take your data with you

If you do switch, you’ll probably have to migrate your data. I recommend learning how to do this before you start paying for a new application. Figure out how to export information from your current app and also how to import it to the new one you’re considering. 

You could even try migrating data during the free trial period, if you want. If nothing else, it would give you a sense of how your workflow would fit with the new tool, which will make deciding whether you want to switch a lot easier. Just don’t delete your data from the old application until you’re sure you want to switch (this probably won’t happen, but read every checkbox carefully). 

This might all sound like a lot of extra work, but it’s faster than you might think. And considering how quickly monthly charges can add up, it’s well worth your time. You’ll save money, and you might even find an app you like better.

The post How to avoid overpaying when an app’s subscription price goes up appeared first on Popular Science.

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This is because Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, has a passion for your eyeballs. The longer you spend scrolling and interacting—sharing, commenting, liking, watching a video to the end or, better yet, buying something directly from the platform—means more money for them. To get you to do this, they need to engage you, so apps that start as clean and simple, commonly get cluttered with more types of content, bright-red notification icons, and various widgets. All to trap your eyeballs for as long as possible. 

If you like Instagram’s new features, I’m not here to take them away from you. But if you, like me, find it all a bit exhausting, I come with a solution: the web version.

Your friends’ photos are all there, and you’ll soon notice Instagram’s algorithmic sorting hasn’t made it here yet, so you can scroll in reverse chronological order like in the good ol’ days. Even better—there are no ads or Suggested Posts on the web version of Instagram. Videos do not autoplay, but you can watch any of them by tapping the play button. You’ll just see photos, clips, and Stories from the people you follow and nothing else. 

But not everything is perfect. At times, scrolling on Instagram for the web can feel clunky, the way mobile interfaces that have been adapted for browsers often do. And, if you forgo the app completely, you won’t get any notifications. Some will see the latter as a plus, but others will understandably consider it a dealbreaker. 

This is where the web version comes in to save the day. Instagram for the web is optimized for your browser of choice, so iPad users will be able to scroll through the platform while enjoying large, high-resolution images. It’s just a better way to scroll. 

The post Why the web version of Instagram is better than the app appeared first on Popular Science.

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