Billions of people currently use WhatsApp to chat on mobile, and with good reasons. The app is packed with features, offers end-to-end encryption for users, and provides a rich experience on multiple platforms.

If you’ve invested a lot of your messaging time into WhatsApp, then you’re not going to want to leave behind those chats when you upgrade to a new handset. Thankfully, WhatsApp has you well covered here, and the migration process isn’t difficult.

There’s even provision for making the typically difficult jump from Android to iOS or vice versa. The process of moving chats is different in each case, but no matter which devices are involved, it won’t take more than a few minutes.

Android to Android

You shouldn’t have much trouble restoring your WhatsApp messages on a new Android phone if your old phone is an Android device too. On your old phone, first make sure everything is backed up to Google Drive: Tap the three dots (top right), then Settings and Chats, then Chat backup. Hopefully you won’t need this backup, but you’ll be glad to have it if something goes terribly wrong.

Then, install WhatsApp on your new phone. Once you’ve signed in with your existing phone number, the app should recognize you have chats on another device that you might want to move over. Tap Transfer from the old device when you see the prompt to do this, follow the instructions, and you’ll get a QR code on screen.

You then need to go back to WhatsApp on your old phone, which will be ready to scan the QR code on your new phone. Once you’ve scanned it, accept the invitation to link the devices together, and you’ll see a progress bar on screen.  When you see the confirmation that the transfer is complete, tap Done and you’re ready to go on your new phone.

You don’t have to use this direct transfer method, but it does mean your chats don’t need to go to Google Drive and back. You can also restore a WhatsApp backup from Google Drive: This option automatically appears if you install (or reinstall) WhatsApp on an Android device, and log in with a phone number associated with an existing backup. Just tap Restore to bring your chats back.

iOS to iOS

As with Android-to-Android transfers, you don’t necessarily need a chat backup if you’re jumping from one iPhone to another, but we’d recommend that you set one up anyway.  On your old iPhone, open WhatsApp and choose Settings, Chats, and Chat Backup. Backups on iOS make use of Apple’s iCloud storage service.

Go back to the Chats screen, then choose Transfer Chats to iPhone and Start, and a QR code is shown on screen. Now you can turn your attention to your new iPhone, where you should install the WhatsApp app and set it up using your existing phone number. When that number is recognized, you’ll be prompted to carry on with the chat transfer process you’ve already initiated, so tap Continue to accept.

Scan the QR code that pops up on your old iPhone using your new iPhone. That gives WhatsApp all the information it needs to beam your conversations between devices, and you’ll see a progress bar shown on screen while this happens. When the transfer is complete, tap Next to carry on using WhatsApp on your new iPhone.

Should that not work as intended, you can restore a WhatsApp backup on iOS instead. The restore option only appears when you first install WhatsApp though (so you might need to uninstall and reinstall it): When you’ve registered your existing phone number, select the Restore Chat History message that appears on screen.

Android to iOS

If you’re going from Android to iOS, then the only way to move your WhatsApp chats over is to use the Move to iOS app for Android. It takes care of transferring data across a whole range of apps, including WhatsApp—it can also move across all of your Google contacts and calendars as well, for example.

Load up the Move to iOS app and just follow the instructions on screen—you’ll need to enter the code displayed on your new iPhone to confirm that you want to link the devices. The important screen is the transfer data screen, where you want to make sure that the WhatsApp option is selected, alongside any other types of data you need to move across.

The Move to iOS app will take care of signing you out on Android, and when you get the confirmation that the data has been sent over, you can go ahead and install and open up WhatsApp for iOS. As long as you log in using the same phone number you’ve been using, you should see a prompt to finish the transfer of conversations.

There’s no way to restore WhatsApp messages from a Google Drive backup (on Android) to WhatsApp on an iPhone—the Move to iOS app is the only option. You can, if you want, export individual chats from Android to an email archive (via Chats, Chat history, and Export chat in Settings), and start fresh on the iPhone.

iOS to Android

If you’re heading the other way, from an iPhone to an Android device, compatibility issues still create hurdles. WhatsApp on Android can’t read WhatsApp backups in iCloud, so you can’t simply sign in on a new phone and restore a backup. You can export chats to email (Chats then Export Chat in Settings), but again these can’t be restored on an iPhone.

What you can do is use the more general iOS-to-Android transfer solution that Google has built into Android, which covers a host of apps, including WhatsApp. However, you must do this when you start up your new Android phone for the first time, during the initial setup—there’s no option to do it later.

As you go through the initial setup process, connecting to Wi-Fi and so on, you’ll see a prompt to copy data from another phone: Make sure you choose Next here and not Don’t copy. Follow the instructions on screen, making sure WhatsApp is selected as one of the entries in the Apps section (it should be by default).

You’ll then need to connect your two phones with a cable: USB-C to USB-C or USB-C to Lightning. The transfer utility will then take care of the process of moving all your apps and conversations over, though you’ll still need to log in using your existing phone number when you open WhatsApp on Android for the first time.

The post How to transfer your WhatsApp chats to a new phone appeared first on Popular Science.

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ChatGPT is rarely out of the news at the moment, and the engineers behind it are regularly pushing out new features and improvements to the generative AI chatbot—including, recently, new voice and image capabilities.

[ Related: ChatGPT can now see, hear, and talk to some users ]

In simple terms, as per the OpenAI blog post, these new capabilities mean ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak. You’re no longer restricted to text prompts when interacting with the bot, although it’s worth noting that these features remain exclusive to paying ChatGPT Plus users for the time being. At first, only a limited number of users got the features as they were rolled out, but now every ChatGPT Plus user should have access. (On November 21, ChatGPT’s voice chat feature has been rolled out to all free users.)

As well as changing how you interact with ChatGPT, these new features also widen the scope of what it can do—read you a bedtime story, for instance. Here’s what’s new, and how to make the best use of it.

Chatting with ChatGPT

If you’re a ChatGPT Plus user and you want to talk to ChatGPT, you need to use the mobile app for Android and iOS (this functionality hasn’t yet been added to ChatGPT on the web). Once you’ve signed into your account and reached the main prompt screen, tap the headphones icon (lower right) to start a voice conversation with the bot.

You’ll get a splash screen explaining what the feature does, then you can tap Choose a voice to do just that. There are five to pick from, and if you select any of them you’ll hear a short preview. Tap Confirm when you’ve decided which one you want to converse with, and you’re then ready to start talking.

Speaking with ChatGPT is as simple as just talking to your phone. When you stop talking, the app will process what you’ve said and generate a response. You’ll often find that when it’s speaking, ChatGPT will end its response with a related question, to keep the conversation going—but you can always ask to talk about something else, or tap the pause button in the lower left corner to start a new chat.

If ChatGPT isn’t quite catching what you’re saying or recognizing your pauses as you talk, you can manually give it voice inputs, walkie talkie style, by tapping and holding the screen. Say what you need to say, then release your finger and the chat will be processed—it’s a more deliberate way of talking that you might find easier.

Think about ways in which spoken responses are better: You can get ChatGPT to tell you a bedtime story, for example, or a poem on a topic of your choice. As with text prompts, you can be as specific as you like about subjects or the tone. When you’re ready to go back to the main ChatGPT interface, tap the red and white cross icon, and you’ll see the responses you’ve been given in text format. 

Image inputs and outputs

You can now prompt ChatGPT using images, whether it’s on the web or via the apps for Android or iOS. On the web, click the paperclip icon to the left of the input box, then pick the image from your computer; in the apps, tap the picture icon to choose an image from your gallery or the camera icon to take a new photo (if you can’t see these icons, tap the + button to the left of the input box).

You’ll be invited to add a prompt alongside your image, and your options here are virtually unlimited. You can ask ChatGPT about what’s inside the image, for example. You can also take a photo of a problem—like a leaky faucet—and ask about the best way to fix it, or show ChatGPT the contents of your fridge and ask for suggestions on what meal to cook.

If you’re in the mobile apps, you can tap on the image before you add the accompanying prompt, and scribble around a particular part of it—this focuses ChatGPT’s attention on a particular part of the image, which can be useful for troubleshooting problems or getting clarity about something specific.

The image generator DALL-E (also developed by OpenAI) is now integrated inside ChatGPT as well. That means you can ask for new images to be generated, as well as using your own as prompts: Ask it to produce a landscape of rolling hills, or a grimy street scene at night, or a cartoon-style rendering of an interior location. You can also ask it to modify or build on an image you provide.

As with text prompts, the more specific you can be, the better—you can be really precise about what’s in your picture, and what style is used, and how color and shade is applied. So, you might say you want to see a cartoon-style picture of fields with a well in the foreground. Or, you might want a photorealistic portrait of a CEO-type figure, rendered in black and white. If you’re not happy with the first attempt at something, you can ask ChatGPT to make changes with further prompts. To save your creations, click or tap on the generated images to find the download option.

The post How to use ChatGPT’s new image and voice options appeared first on Popular Science.

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If your hands are full with groceries or books, or hanging on to a subway car handrail or dog leash, then it’s not easy to operate your Apple Watch in the normal way—by reaching over to tap the screen or pressing the Digital Crown.

That’s the thinking behind Double Tap, a new gesture available with watchOS 10.1. As its name suggests, it lets you tap your forefinger and thumb together twice, with the same hand that your watch is on, to operate the wearable without touching it. It means you can answer calls and browse through screens with one hand rather than two, and it promises to be very helpful.

For Double Tap to work, you do need the latest Apple Watch 9 or Apple Watch Ultra 2, because the AI smarts of the S9 chipset inside these models is required to recognize the gesture you’re making. You also need watchOS 10.1 (tap My Watch > General > Software Update in the Watch app on your iPhone to look for updates).

Older Apple Watch devices can still make use of a similar feature called AssistiveTouch, which is a more comprehensive way of controlling everything that happens on an Apple Watch with one hand. AssistiveTouch is available on every Apple Watch since the Apple Watch 4, including the Apple Watch 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.

Using Double Tap

As soon as you’ve upgraded to watchOS 10.1, Double Tap should be enabled automatically and ready to go. You can turn it off, if you ever need to, by opening up the Settings app on your watch, then choosing Gestures and Double Tap, and turning off the Double Tap toggle switch.

To double tap, lift up your Apple Watch first, as you would do if you were checking the time. On the hand attached to the wrist where your Apple Watch is, bring your index finger and thumb together twice in quick succession. The only times Double Tap won’t work is when a Sleep Focus mode is active, or when the watch is in Low Power Mode.

What the gesture triggers will depend on what’s on screen. If there’s a call coming in, it’ll answer the call. If there’s a timer running, a double tap will pause it (and restart it). If a notification has come in, it will open the notification so you can read it. In general, a double tap will perform what Apple calls the “primary action” for the screen you’re on.

For a couple of functions, you can customise what a double tap does: When music is playing you can choose whether a double tap pauses playback or skips to the next track, and when Smart Stack widgets are on screen you can choose whether a double tap advances through the widgets or opens the first available one.

To change this functionality, open the Settings app on your watch, then tap Gestures and Double Tap. Select Playback and you can pick between Play/Pause and Skip, or select Smart Stack and you can choose between Advance or Select.

Using AssistiveTouch

Another way of using your Apple Watch with just one hand is to use AssistiveTouch, which is supported on every model back to the Apple Watch 4 from 2018 (including the Apple Watch 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 9). It’s designed for people who are physically unable to use their other hand to operate their watch, but anyone can activate it.

AssistiveTouch covers a wider range of gestures, including a double tap, and is more comprehensive in terms of helping you operate the smartwatch. Activating it is more deliberate though: It doesn’t have the fluidness and ease-of-use of Double Tap, which uses machine learning algorithms to recognize wrist and finger movements. You can’t use Double Tap when AssistiveTouch is active.

To enable AssistiveTouch, open the Settings screen on your Apple Watch, then choose Accessibility and AssistiveTouch, then tap AssistiveTouch. On the same screen you can select Hand Gestures to change which gestures do what on the watch. AssistiveTouch can also be enabled from the Watch app on your iPhone, via Accessibility, then AssistiveTouch on the My Watch tab.

With AssistiveTouch enabled, raising your wrist will show a blue ring around the screen. You then need to clench your fist twice quickly to actually activate the gestures and switch to AssistiveTouch mode, where a focus ring appears on the first item on the screen (the ring indicates that something can be selected by AssistiveTouch).

The default actions include a thumb-and-index-finger pinch to move to the next item, a double pinch to move to the previous item, a fist clench to tap an item, and a double clench to bring up the action menu (where you can pick from actions like scrolling and pressing the Digital Crown). See here for a full guide to getting around all of the watch’s features and functions using AssistiveTouch gestures.

The post How to use Double Tap to control your Apple Watch without touching it appeared first on Popular Science.

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There’s a new feature in the Google Bard AI assistant: connections to your other Google apps, primarily Gmail and Google Drive, called Bard Extensions. It means you can use Bard to look up and analyze the information you have stored in documents and emails, as well as data aggregated from the web at large.

Bard can access other Google services besides Gmail and Google Drive as well, including YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Flights. However, this access doesn’t extend to personal data yet, so you can look up driving directions to a place on Google Maps, but not get routes to the last five restaurants you went to.

If that sets alarm bells ringing in your head, Google promises that your data is “not seen by human reviewers, used by Bard to show you ads, or used to train the Bard model,” and you can disconnect the app connections at any time. In terms of exactly what is shared between Bard and other apps, Google isn’t specific.

[Related: The best apps and gadgets for a Google-free life]

Should you decide you’re happy with that trade-off, you’ll be able to do much more with Bard, from looking up flight times to hunting down emails in your Gmail archive.

How to set up Bard Extensions, and what Google can learn about you

If you decide you want to use Bard Extensions, open up Google Bard on the web, then click the new extensions icon in the top right corner (it looks like a jigsaw piece). The next screen shows all the currently available extensions—turn the toggle switches on for the ones you want to give Bard access to. To revoke access, turn the switches off.

Some prompts (asking about today’s weather, for instance) require access to your location. This is actually handled as a general Google search permission in your browser, and you can grant or revoke access in your privacy settings. In Chrome, though, you can open google.com, then click the site information button on the left end of the address bar (it looks like two small sliders—or a padlock if you haven’t updated your browser to Chrome 119).

From the popup dialog that appears, you can turn the Location toggle switch off. This means Google searches (for restaurants and bars, for example) won’t know where you are searching from, and nor will Bard.

As with other Google products, you can see activity that’s been logged with Bard. To do so, head to your Bard activity page in a web browser to review and delete specific prompts that you’ve sent to the AI. Click Choose an auto-delete option, and you can have this data automatically wiped after three, 18, or 36 months. You can also stop Bard from logging data in the first place by clicking Turn off.

There’s more information on the Bard Privacy Help Hub. Note that by using Bard at all, you’re accepting that human reviewers may see and check some of your prompts, so Google can improve the response accuracy of its AI. The company specifically warns against putting confidential information into Bard, and any reviewed prompts won’t have your Google Account details (like your name) attached to them.

Prompts reviewed by humans can be retained by Google for up to three years, even if you delete your Bard activity. Even with Bard activity-logging turned off, conversations are kept in Bard’s memory banks for 72 hours, in case you want to add related questions.

Tips for using Bard Extensions

Extensions are naturally integrated into Bard, and in a lot of cases, the AI bot will know which extension to look up. Ask about accommodation prices for the weekend, for example, and it’ll use Google Hotels. Whenever Bard calls upon an extension, you’ll see the extension’s name appear while the AI is working out the answer.

Sometimes, you need to be pretty specific. A prompt such as “what plans have I made over email with <contact name> about <event>?” will invoke a Gmail search, but only if you include the “over email” bit. At the end of the response, you’ll see the emails (or documents) that Bard has used to give you an answer. You can also ask Bard to use specific extensions by tagging them in your prompt with the @ symbol—so @Gmail or @Google Maps.

[Related: All the products Google has sent to the graveyard]

Bard can look up information from emails or documents, and can read inside PDFs in your Google Drive. For example, tell it to summarize the contents of the most recent PDF in your Google Drive, or the contents of recent emails from your kid’s school, and it will do just that. Again, the more specific you can be, the better.

In terms of YouTube, Google Maps, Google Flights, and Google Hotels, Bard works more like a regular search engine—though you can combine searches with other prompts. If you’re preparing a wedding speech, for example, you can ask Bard for an outline as well as some YouTube videos that will give you inspiration. If you’re heading off on a road trip, you could combine a prompt about ideas on what to pack with Google Maps driving directions.

We’ve found that some Bard Extensions answers are a bit hit or miss—but so are AI chatbots in general. At certain times, Bard will analyze the wrong emails or documents, or will miss information it should’ve found, so it’s not (yet) something you can fully rely on. In some situations, you’ll get better answers if you switch over to Google Drive or YouTube and run a normal search from there instead—file searches based on dates, for instance, or video searches limited to a certain channel.

At other times, Bard is surprisingly good at picking out information from stacks of messages or documents. You can ask Bard “what’s the most cheerful email I got yesterday?” for example, which is something you can’t do with a standard, or even an advanced Gmail search. It’s well worth trying Bard Extensions out, at least briefly, to see if they prove useful for the kinds of information retrieval you need.

The post How to use Bard AI for Gmail, YouTube, Google Flights, and more appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Android versus iPhone debate continues to rumble on. But one thing is certain: Google’s phone software is still more versatile and customizable than Apple’s offering. Dig into the settings and discover Android’s secret capabilities, including a host of hidden features and useful tools. We’ve collected 12 of them here.

A quick note before we begin: Android has a wide variety of makes, models, and versions, which makes it difficult to find features that will be consistent across all devices. We only verified the following tips on stock Android 14—they should also work on related systems, but some of the menus and procedures may vary slightly.

1. Enable flash notifications for silent updates

Loud notifications are annoying, but have you ever heard a phone vibrating on a glass table? Somehow, it’s even worse. So whether you want to stay up to date with your texts in a quieter way or you’re hard of hearing, Android now allows you to set flash notifications, where your phone’s screen or built-in flash will blink to let you know there’s something new requiring your attention. 

To set it up, go to Settings, Accessibility, and Flash notifications. You’ll get two options: toggle the switch next to Camera flash to have the light on the back of your phone flash three times when you get a notification; or toggle the switch next Screen flash so that your device lets you know of any new messages by flashing a yellow overlay on your screen. You can enable either or both of them to get an even more effective visual alert. 

To see how they work, make your preferences and hit Preview. 

2. Run apps side-by-side

This feature has been around since Android 7.0 Nougat, but it’s one of the few users tend to forget about. This side-by-side or top-and-bottom app view (depending on the orientation of your screen) comes in handy when you want to display photos, optimize your social networking, or multitask.

To set it up, make sure both apps you want to see are already open. Then, open the app carousel by doing a short swipe-up gesture from the bottom of your screen. Find the recent app you want to use and press on the circular icon at the top of its preview. On the emerging menu, you should see a Split top option. Keep in mind that not all apps support this feature (like Instagram, for example), so if you don’t see this option, it’s because you can’t use it like this. If you see it, tap Split top, and the app will automatically position itself at the top or left of your screen. On the other side, you’ll see the app carousel, from where you can open a second app. This time, just swipe your way to it and tap on the preview to open it.

You’ll notice a thick black line separating both apps—from the middle drag it up or down to re-distribute your screen. To exit Split Screen mode, just drag the black line all the way up or down.

3. Lock phone borrowers inside one app

This is one of those Android tricks you need to know if you find yourself constantly lending your phone to a friend or young family member. Because if you do, you probably know that sudden anxiety that comes with the possibility of them going through your private information or posting to your social media accounts. 

App pinning lets you be generous without giving up your privacy and will lock one app to the screen until someone unlocks your device. Essentially, the user won’t be able to access any other parts of your phone without your credentials.

[Related: How to safely share your phone with others]

Screen pinning is easy to set up. Open Settings, go to the Security & privacy menu, scroll down to choose More security settings, and tap App pinning. Once you’ve turned on the feature, launch the app your friend needs to use and open the app carousel by making a short upward swipe from the bottom of the screen. Swipe your way to the app you want to pin and tap on the circular icon at the top of the preview. On the emerging menu, tap Pin. To unpin the app, swipe from the bottom of your screen and hold. This will lock your phone and you’ll have to enter your pattern, password, PIN, or biometrics to use it.

4. Activate one-handed mode

As today’s phones continue to grow in size, they become harder and harder to operate one-handed. So Google’s custom keyboard, which is the default option on certain Android phones, has a solution: A special one-handed mode that you can switch to with a simple shortcut. If you own a Pixel phone, this keyboard will be your default typing option. If you’re on a Samsung or LG phone, you’ll have to first download Google’s version and set it as your default keyboard (as demonstrated in Tip 7).

Open up the keyboard as normal and tap and hold on the comma key. Drag up to the right-hand icon to enable one-handed mode. The arrow lets you switch this smaller keyboard from side to side, the bottom icon lets you reposition it, and the top icon restores the full-size keyboard. Other phone keyboards may also have one-handed modes, but they can be harder to access than Google’s. Try looking up your phone model and searching “one-handed keyboard” to learn more.

5. Customize your experience with regional preferences

If you live in a foreign country either permanently or temporarily, you might find it frustrating that all apps and services are built to work according to that area’s specifications—metric units, calendar settings, etc. Some apps allow you to change these settings one by one, but that takes a while and you’ll have to do it all over again if you change phones, for example. 

This is why Android 14 debuted Regional preferences, a menu where you can change these settings at a system level so you don’t have to dive deep into each individual app. Find this feature by going to Settings, System, and then Languages. Once you’re there, open Regional preferences—you’ll be able to pick temperature units, number preferences, and the first day of the week. These changes will apply wherever possible within your device.

6. Choose new default apps

One of the differences between Android and iOS is that Google’s mobile operating system lets you choose different default apps for web browsing, texting, viewing photos, etc. A default app is the one that opens automatically when you try to do something on your phone—so when you click a link, for example, your default web browser app will automatically open it.

Take advantage of this flexibility by setting up the defaults as you want them. Head to Settings, go to Apps and choose Default apps. Select any of the categories on screen to see a list of installed apps that can take over default duties. For example, if you’d prefer to chat with friends via Facebook Messenger, rather than your phone’s built-in SMS app, you can make Facebook’s product your default messaging app.

7. Cast your Android screen

For a number of years, you’ve been able to broadcast your Android phone or tablet’s display to the larger screen of a television using a Chromecast. In addition to beaming video from all the usual movie and TV apps, this streaming device can mirror your phone. Take advantage of a shortcut in the Quick Settings pane especially made for this feature, which you can access by dragging down from the top of the screen with two fingers. You should find a Screen Cast option in this menu. If it doesn’t show up, swipe left on the Quick Settings menu for more options, or tap the pencil icon at the bottom to add the shortcut.

[Related: How to put video calls on your TV]

There’s also another way to set up mirroring. First, check to make sure you’ve installed the Google Home app for Android—you probably already used this program to set up your Chromecast. Open the app and choose your Chromecast and your device’s display should appear on the big screen. On your phone, tap Media and choose from Music, Video, Podcasts, or Radio and select a service to start streaming.

8. Make text and images more visible

If you’re struggling to see what’s on the screen—or, alternatively, if you want to cram as much content as possible onto the display and don’t mind doing a bit of squinting along the way—you can zoom in or out on text and objects. Not all apps will respond to these adjustments, but most of them will.

To change size settings, open Settings and go to the Display heading. From there, tap the Display size and text and drag the slider under Font size to make text larger or smaller as needed. Android 13 introduced a new slider on this menu—Display size. You can play around with it to make icons and the Google search bar chunkier.

9. Disable the lock screen at home

To keep your device safe, you need to set up a PIN code or biometrics scan to unlock your phone. But this makes it more inconvenient to access your apps. Google’s Smart Lock feature lets you remove this obstacle, giving you instant access to your phone—but only when you’re safely at home.

From Settings, tap Security & privacy, go to More security settings and choose Smart Lock. As well as disabling the lock screen when you’re at home (that’s the Trusted Places option), you can also disable the screen when your phone’s Bluetooth is connected to a trusted device, such as your car stereo unit, or when it detects you have it on you.

10. Change volume settings independently

Your device plays several different types of audio—including ringtones, notifications, alarms, phone calls, and media. If you’ve ever gone to the Settings menu and opened Sound & vibration, you’ll have seen that you can use individual sliders to adjust these audio types individually.

However, Android gives you a quick-and-easy shortcut. Tap the physical volume buttons on the side of your device to make whatever’s currently playing quieter or louder (if no media is playing, this action will adjust your ringtone volume). When you do, a small box will pop up on the screen, showing which volume setting is changing and how. At the bottom of that box, you should see three dots. Tap them, and the box will expand to show multiple volume sliders at once. This can save you a trip to Settings.

11. Bring back lost notifications

So you accidentally swiped away one of the notifications that you wanted to read fully and now you have a nagging sense someone emailed you, but are not sure. It happens. If you want to review all of your recent notifications on Android, you’re in luck. This ability is possible—though the option isn’t easy to find.

[Related: Switching from iPhone to Android has never been easier]

Tap and hold on an empty part of the home screen, and a screen-adjusting mode will pop up. Choose Widgets, and find the Settings shortcut. Drag this icon to an empty space on one of your home screens, drop it in place, and a list will automatically pop up. Choose Notification log from the list and tap the icon to open up Android’s notification history.

12. Get an always-handy magnifying glass

Other than changing display options and making icons and text bigger, Android 14 introduced a new feature that lets you magnify specific parts of your screen. To enable it, go to Settings, Accessibility, and Magnification. Start by toggling on the switch next to Magnification shortcut, which will introduce a red magnifying glass button to the right of your screen.

Whenever you need a little help looking at text, pictures, or animations, you can summon the Magnification tool by tapping the red icon. An orange frame will appear on screen, zooming into the display portion underneath it (just like a magnifying glass), and you’ll be able to move it wherever you need it. If the default zoom is not enough, use your thumb and index fingers to expand the view even more. Tap the red icon again to disable the tool.  

This story has been updated. It was first published in 2017.

The post 12 hidden Android features you should be using appeared first on Popular Science.

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One of the new iPhone functionalities ushered in with the arrival of iOS 17—like offline Apple Maps support—is StandBy mode. This feature turns your iPhone into a small smart display that will show you everything from calendar appointments to your favorite photo albums.

Perhaps the obvious use of StandBy mode is to turn an iPhone into a bedside clock, displaying the current time and even dimming the display once the lights go out. But there are plenty of other ways to use it.

StandBy mode is available on iPhones running iOS 17—that’s the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max launched in 2018, and every handset that’s appeared since.

If you have a Pro or Pro Max version of the iPhone 14 or 15, your device can display StandBy permanently on screen. On other models, you’ll need to wake the display to see it: You can do this by tapping the display or waving your hand in front of it.

How StandBy mode works

You can enable StandBy mode by going to StandBy on the Settings screen and turning on the StandBy toggle switch. If you’re using an iPhone with an always-on display, use the Always On toggle switch to determine whether StandBy mode stays permanently on the screen.

[Related: 6 great features to try out on iOS 17]

To have StandBy mode activate automatically, charge your iPhone and prop it up on its side and at an angle (so not flat on a surface). Once your device meets all of these conditions, StandBy mode turns on—the first time that happens you’ll see a message explaining what StandBy mode is. By default, you’ll see clock and calendar widgets appear first. To quit StandBy mode, simply pick up your phone, lay it down flat, or remove it from the charger.

The feature works with both wired and wireless charging, but MagSafe chargers have a bonus functionality: StandBy mode remembers how you’ve configured it on each separate charger, so you can have different setups for different rooms (the bedroom and the kitchen, for example).

Customizing StandBy mode

Swiping left or right on the StandBy mode screen cycles through the different views available to you. There’s a widgets screen, a photos screen, and a clock screen, and on each one you can swipe up and down for different configurations.

On the widgets screen, the display is split in two so you can swipe up and down on them separately to scroll through the available widgets. You can pick from the weather forecast, your upcoming calendar appointments, and any active reminders.

Long press on the widgets screen to remove add-ons from the list (via the minus button) or add new ones (via the plus button). The widgets you see will depend on the apps installed on your phone, but there are a bunch of native ones built into iOS to get you started.

Other than the widgets available to you, you’ll see other options similar to the ones you have for widgets on the home screen. Smart Rotate will intelligently change the available widgets based on the time of day and your usual habits, and Widget Suggestions will add in widgets based on the apps you already use a lot.

A long press also unlocks options on the photos screen, allowing you to choose a particular album in your gallery that’s different to the images StandBy mode chose for you.

A long press on the clock screen brings up the available options of that particular view, but as of yet, there’s no option to add a new clock face.

Back on the StandBy screen in iOS Settings, you can customize the StandBy feature in a few more ways. The Show Notifications toggle switch determines whether incoming notifications appear in StandBy mode—enable the Show Preview on Tap Only option underneath if you’d rather not have previews (like the first lines of messages) appear on screen.

[Related: Hand gesture reactions are one of macOS Sonoma’s coolest new features]

You can also tap Night Mode and enable the Night Mode toggle switch. This feature dims the display and turns everything on it red whenever your iPhone detects it’s in a dark environment. That way, StandBy doesn’t stop you from getting to sleep. The same screen has a Motion To Wake toggle switch: Keep it on if you want to be able to wake the screen with a wave, or turn it off if you find your nightly tossing and turning is constantly lighting up the display while you’re in bed.

The post Turn your iPhone into a bedside clock with StandBy mode appeared first on Popular Science.

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Whether it’s to save messages for posterity, troubleshoot problems, capture memorable gaming moments, or run tutorials, the ability to take screenshots is so essential that it’s built into Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS.

ChromeOS, Google’s operating system for their Chromebook laptops, is no different and has easy-to-use tools to grab screenshots and screen recordings. The OS also provides some basic integrated editing tools for your captured content if you need them.

Start by launching the screenshot toolbar

Taking screenshots on a Chromebook will require you to summon the screenshot toolbar. There are several ways to do this, so pick the one that works best for you. 

Newer Chromebooks come with a dedicated screenshot key—it looks like a circle inside a rectangle and you’ll find it up on the top row of the keyboard. As you might have suspected, pressing this button brings up the screenshot toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

[Related: The best cheap Chromebooks in 2023]

If your Chromebook doesn’t offer this option, you can try the overview key: This is also on the top row of the keyboard, and looks like a rectangle with two vertical lines next to it. This key brings up an overview of all your open windows, but if you hold down Ctrl+Shift and then press it, the screenshot toolbar will appear.

Finally, you can get to the screenshot toolbar by bringing up the Quick Settings panel. Click the clock in the lower right corner of the screen and on the emerging menu, click the Screen capture button.

Customize how you take screenshots on ChromeOS

No matter how you brought up the screenshot toolbar, once it’s open, your options are then the same. On the far left of it you can click either the camera icon or the video camera icon to switch between the ability to take screenshots and screen recordings.

The next three icons to the right let you grab different portions of the screen. Choose the first one to capture the whole screen, the second one to select part of it, or the third one to grab an image of a specific open window. Further to the right is a cog icon that opens the screenshot settings—most of them relate to videos, but you can also choose where in your Chromebook you save your screengrabs.

If you’re making a recording, you’ll be able to include audio from the Chromebook microphone, the feed from your webcam, along with clicks and presses from your mouse and keyboard. These are all useful options if you’re recording a tutorial or a gaming session, for example.

With everything set up the way you want, it’s time to take a screenshot or start a screen recording: For full screen captures, click anywhere on screen; to grab a specific part of the screen, use the crosshair tool to select a portion of it, or if you want to capture a single app window, just click it.  Your Chromebook will snap screenshots instantly, but for videos, you’ll see  a countdown before recording  starts. You can stop them whenever you want by clicking the red button on the shelf at the bottom of the screen.

Editing your screenshots on Chromebook

When you finish capturing a screenshot or screen recording, a small pop up appears in the lower right corner of the screen—click it to see the image or video stored on your Chromebook.

[Related: Revive your old computer by turning it into a Chromebook]

The pop up for screenshots also has an Edit button on it, though you don’t get this with screen recordings. When you click it, the image will open in the basic screenshot editor included with ChromeOS: Hover over the icons at the top to crop and rotate the picture, resize it, add annotations, or change the exposure, contrast, and saturation. 

It’s the annotation tool labeled Draw that’s perhaps most useful for screenshots. A new pane pops out on the right, showing different pen types and colors. Once you’ve made your choices here, you can start scribbling on the image. Click Done when you’re happy with the changes, or Cancel if you don’t want to save them. There’s also a link to launch the image in Google Photos on the web, where you’ll find more editing options.

The post You should learn how to take screenshots on a Chromebook (and edit them) appeared first on Popular Science.

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Spam’s everywhere: even when you’ve dealt with the junk mail coming through the post and the unsolicited messages clogging up your email inbox, you’ve still got to deal with the spam you get through SMS and other messaging services.

Fortunately, today’s smartphones and messaging apps come with built-in tools for limiting the amount of spam you see. This means that with a little work, you can keep your conversation lists clean and free from junk.

But before technology can do the heavy lifting for you, help it help you by being more careful with your mobile number. To prevent it from ending up in sketchy marketing lists, don’t put it on forms or in any kind of communication if you can help it, and keep it away from your social media profiles on the web.

How to fight spam on iOS’s Messages

The default Messages app on iOS, covering both basic SMS texts and Apple’s iMessage service, lets you block specific numbers: Tap the name or number at the top of any conversation, choose Info and Block this Caller. Blocked texts won’t show up for you at all, but the sender won’t know they can’t reach you. To manage the numbers you’ve blocked, go to Messages and Blocked Contacts from the iOS Settings screen.

[Related: Why it’s still so tricky to track spam calls and texts]

You can also have Messages filter out spam automatically, though this ability only works on texts you receive through Apple’s own iMessage service. From iOS Settings, go to Messages and enable Filter Unknown Senders. This will create a new Filters link at the top of the conversation list in Messages: Tap it to see messages from known senders, unknown senders, or all messages together. This might include new numbers that are not yet in your contact list, so it’s a good idea to check the unknown senders folder from time to time in case you miss anything.

You can also report junk messages to Apple, which doesn’t stop the sender from texting you, but it gives their information to both Apple and your carrier. The company doesn’t explicitly say what good this does, but we’re assuming repeat scammers end up on some kind of blacklist. To report junk, swipe left on a conversation in Messages, tap the red and white trash button, then pick Delete and Report Junk.

How to fight spam on Android’s Messages

For Android users, Google’s Messages should be their default platform for both SMS and RCS texts. This app has built-in anti-spam protections that will automatically detect spam and move it out of your way, but it’s not on by default. To turn on this feature, open Messages, tap your profile picture (top right), go to Messages settings and tap Spam protection.

To see messages that have been filtered out in the app, tap your profile picture, then Spam and blocked. From here, you can tap the three dots (top right), then Blocked numbers to see the current blacklist. While Messages often deals with spam automatically, if the platform isn’t sure about a text, you’ll see a “suspected spam” dialog appear at the top of the message when you open it. If this is indeed an unwanted message, tap Report spam on the dialog to get rid of it.

If the Messages app hasn’t picked up on a spam message, press and hold on it in the main conversation list, then tap the block icon at the top (it looks like a crossed-out circle). Finish by choosing OK on the emerging dialog box to block the number and move the message to spam. The emerging box also gives you the option of reporting the sender’s details to Google, which helps it better detect spam messages in the future.

Fighting spam on WhatsApp

If WhatsApp for Android or iOS is your messaging app of choice, you can deal with spam messages without much fuss. On an iPhone, press and hold on a message in your conversation list to find the Block option. On an Android phone, press and hold on a message on the list, then tap the three dots (top right) and hit  Block.

This will prevent the person behind this number from sending you any more messages. On both Android and iOS, you’ll also see an option to report the sender to WhatsApp as well as blocking them. This means they’ll be known to WhatsApp as a potential spammer, and the platform might ultimately take action against them.

To see the numbers that you’ve blocked, and reinstate them if necessary, tap Settings, Privacy, and Blocked on iOS, or the three dots (top right), Settings, Privacy, and Blocked contacts on Android. WhatsApp won’t identify or filter out spam on your behalf, so it’s up to you to manage this list of contacts.

How to fight spam on Facebook Messenger

Unlike WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger for Android and iOS does attempt to do some kind of spam filtering. Tap the three horizontal lines in the top right of the interface and choose Message requests—you’ll see the messages from people who you aren’t currently friends with or that Facebook Messenger thinks might be spam. Occasionally, you might find genuine messages in here, so it’s worth checking every now and again.

Messages in your main chats list are from people you’re friends with on Facebook, so in theory there shouldn’t be any spam here. But there are exceptions—maybe a spambot has been impersonating a friend of yours, or a scammer has gained access to their account. In that case, verify their identity through other forms of contact and let them know of the situation.

If you go into a conversation with someone, then tap their name at the top, you’ve got three options for dealing with spam or unwanted messages. The first one is Restrict, which won’t result in you blocking the person, but Facebook will auto-archive their messages and won’t send you notifications about them. The others are Block, where the person will no longer be able to message you, and Report, where you’re reporting the account to Facebook for spam messages or something else.

Fighting spam on other messaging apps

We don’t have the space to cover every single messaging app here, but if you dig around you’ll find similar options to these in other platforms. You’ll at least get the ability to block and report spammers, even if your messaging client of choice doesn’t have its own spam filter installed.

[Related: Scammers busted in India for impersonating Amazon and Microsoft tech support]

If you use Instagram for Android or iOS to message people, you’ll see a Requests link at the top of your direct messages inbox—this is where the platform puts messages from people you’re not following. Meanwhile, you can block and report spammers whose messages get through from inside individual conversations: Just tap the sender name at the top of the chat to find the options.

Over on Signal for Android or iOS, messages from senders who are not in your contacts are flagged up as requests, though they still appear in the main chat list. When you open them, you can accept the message or block the sender. To block someone not flagged up in this way, tap the sender name or number at the top of a conversation and choose Block on the next screen.

The post Stop spam texts with some help from your favorite messaging app appeared first on Popular Science.

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Everything that makes email so convenient—free messages, quick delivery—also makes it susceptible to spam. With only a list of addresses (widely available online), professional spammers can merrily bombard their victims with as many messages as they like, and they have a host of automated tools to help them expand their volume and slip past filters.

It’s time to fight back against the deluge. Here are five strategies for banishing junk email and learning how to stop spam emails for good.

1. Train your spam filter

These days, most email clients include some form of spam detection. Your provider will automatically red-flag messages that seem worthless or fraudulent and move them to a special folder where you can review them later. However, these filters will work a lot better if you tell them when they chose well or made a mistake. In other words, the spam filter isn’t an end-all solution for getting rid of spam emails—you can configure its settings and actions to improve its performance. If you’re trying to figure out why you’re getting junk mail in your inbox despite having a spam filter enabled, you probably need to train it a little more.

For instance, every time you open an email in the Gmail web app, you’ll see a Report Spam button (it looks like a stop sign with an exclamation mark inside it) at the top of the page. Click this when you encounter any message that managed to sneak past Google’s spam filters. On the other hand, if you check your Spam folder and find a genuinely useful email, open it and click the Not spam button at the top of the page or the Report not spam banner in the email itself.

[Related: Why you should use whitelists to manage your email]

In Outlook, you mark a message as spam by selecting it in your inbox, selecting Report from the toolbar at the top, and clicking on Report Junk. When you’re browsing the Junk Email folder, restore a flagged message to your inbox by selecting it, clicking Report, and choosing Not Junk.

Just about every email client will include options like these. Simply dig into the settings or review the buttons that appear on the page.

2. Unsubscribe from unwanted messages

Many items that we think of as spam—such as newsletters and emails about deals—do aim to make your life better. However, these well-intentioned messages add up, cluttering up your inbox until they become stressful. Rather than deleting them en masse, look for unsubscribe links to stop receiving emails from that source.

These links usually appear at the bottom of an email—because most of the time, the sender doesn’t really want you to unsubscribe. If you do take time to hunt down these links, they often direct you to a page that asks you to confirm your decision. Once you do so, most sources will respect your wishes and remove you from their mailing lists. For Gmail users, this process is even easier, because if Gmail detects an unsubscribe link in the body text, it displays that link prominently at the top of the email. You can enjoy the same automated action in the Mail app on iOS—it will copy any unsubscribe link in the body text and display it at the top of the email, near the toolbar.

Another option is Unroll.me, a third-party service that scours your inbox for messages from mailing lists and gives you the option to unsubscribe in one click. If you’d like to keep receiving updates, but would prefer to see fewer of them, Unroll.me can condense all of those emails into a single daily message that’s easier to digest. The extension works with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, AOL mail, iCloud, Hotmail, MSN, and Live Mail. Although it’s free and it will help you stop unwanted emails, it makes money by collecting anonymized email data on shopping trends, so be aware of that if you plan to sign up.

3. Use an alternative email address

A lot of unwanted messages make their way into your inbox when you order a product or subscribe to a mailing list—and then the company automatically signs you up to receive unwanted marketing updates or shares your contact information with an advertiser. One workaround for this problem is to create an email alias or a secondary address that you can use for some of these web activities, such as online shopping or hotel booking.

While another email address won’t stop spam from arriving, those unwanted messages will appear in a secondary email account rather than your primary one, keeping your main inbox free from clutter. If you already use Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, or Mail.com, you can set up a decoy account for free, following the same process you used to establish your original account.

[Related: 4 tips to help you achieve “Inbox Zero” in Gmail]

Depending on your email client, you may not need an entirely new account. Many clients will accept variations of your existing email address. For example, Gmail addresses ignore dots, so emails sent to “johnsmith@gmail.com” and “j.ohnsm.ith@gmail.com” will both arrive at the same inbox. Your emails will also come through if someone sends a message to your email address followed by a plus sign and extra words—so messages addressed to “johnsmith@gmail.com” and “johnsmith+extra@gmail.com” will both land in your inbox.

Why is this helpful? It means you can enter a variation on your current email address whenever you sign up for or buy something, and then create a filter to corral anything sent to that address in its own folder. To create a filter in Gmail, click the settings button (cog icon) on the top right, followed by See all settings and then Filters and Blocked Addresses. Click Create a new filter, enter your tweaked address in the To field, and then decide what you want to do with these types of emails. You could mark them as read immediately, archive them, slap a shared label on them, or some combination of these actions.

4. Download third-party extensions to stop spam emails

If a lot of junk mail slips through your email client’s spam filter, try adding a third-party app to supplement it. This type of service nabs messages as they travel between an email server (the cloud where messages are stored) and an email client (the display where you actually see your messages).

For a free option, we like the effective, easy-to-use Mailwasher. You just plug in your email login details, and this service applies a series of intelligent filters to identify unwanted messages. You can review the captured emails online before they show up in your inbox. For more features, including access to the app version of Mailwasher and support for more than one email address, you’ll need a Pro account, which costs $50 per year.

On macOS, users recommend SpamSieve ($40 with a free trial available). Like Mailwasher, it relies on an intelligent filtering system that gets smarter over time by recognizing the messages you agree are spam or mark as safe. As it adjusts to your preferences, it will only let genuine messages through.

The free SpamCop service works slightly differently. It allows you to report bad actors to internet service providers (ISPs) so they can block these messages at the source. While it requires more effort—you’ll need to report the unsolicited mass emails you receive—you can find help on the SpamCop website. You also get the pleasure of knowing that your efforts are helping others.

5. Protect your email address

We’ve already spoken about setting up a second email address to take the brunt of the spam you receive. In addition, you should aim to keep your primary address as secret as you can. That means hiding it from public pages, such as your personal website or your Twitter profile, where bots and scammers can collect it.

If your job requires that you make your contact information available, try writing out your email address longhand—something like “John Smith at Google’s email service”—whenever you need to display it on the web. This format makes sense to a human, but an automated bot won’t recognize it as an email address it can collect. You’ll often see this tactic on online contact forms.

In addition to collecting email addresses with bots, some email marketers will use what’s called a tracking pixel, or related technology, to figure out which email addresses are valid. This means they’ll send messages to a variety of addresses, and as soon as a real person opens one of these pieces of bait, the sender will receive a confirmation that the address is in use. To keep your contact information private, avoid opening messages you know are spam—just trash them directly.

Another way to fight tracking pixels is to turn off images—if images won’t load, neither will tracking pixels. Gmail users can also lean on the Ugly Email extension, which highlights emails that contain trackers.

Because marketing methods evolve constantly, neither of these options are 100 percent foolproof, but they can still reduce the number of bad actors who get their hands on your email address.

The post How to stop spam emails from destroying your inbox appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Meta Quest 3 could lay claim to being the best VR headset around right now, but it actually combines both virtual reality (completely enclosed digital worlds) with mixed reality (where digital elements are mixed with the real world).

With so many types of experiences available on the latest headset from Meta, there are a lot of features and settings to dig into if you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your wearable gadget. Let’s get you started.

You can cast to a phone or a computer, as long as all the devices are on the same WiFi network. On a phone, you’ll need to be logged into the Meta Quest app for Android or iOS: Tap Menu, then Casting to start the show. On a computer, head to oculus.com/casting in a web browser, log into your Meta account, and follow the instructions.

Casts can be initiated from inside the headset as well. Press the Meta button (the Meta logo, a warped infinity symbol) on the Touch Plus controller, then choose Camera and Cast. You can then pick from Computer or Meta Quest mobile phone app.

2. Enter passthrough mode

Beyond the apps and games that make use of the Meta Quest 3’s mixed reality capabilities, you can also let the real world in when you’re browsing through menus and apps in the Horizon Home environment.

Tap the Meta button on the Touch Plus controller, then select the button to the right of the notification bell icon to switch between immersive (VR) mode and passthrough (MR) mode—the button you want looks like a pair of goggles and will be outlined or filled in depending on which view you’re using.

3. Customize your avatar

Your avatar represents you in a variety of places on the Meta Quest 3, so make sure it looks like you and not some generic gray blob of a person (the default). When you’re in your Horizon Home environment, select the mirror to get started.

[Related: Make a Memoji that actually looks like you]

You’ll need to choose an avatar template to get started, but don’t worry if it doesn’t look too much like you—you can customize your facial hair, your outfit, your body shape, and a number of other attributes to get the right VR representation of yourself.

4. Record photos and videos

Capturing screenshots and videos on the Meta Quest 3 is a good way to share what you’re up to. If you press the Meta button on the Touch Plus controller, then choose Camera, you can find Take photo and Record video options, but they’re really just for the Horizon Home environment.

When you’re inside games and apps, you can take a screenshot by holding down the Meta button, tapping the right trigger button, and then releasing both buttons. To take a video, hold down the Meta button, hold down the right trigger button until you see the video recording message, then release both buttons—repeat the action to stop the video.

5. Boost the refresh rate

The Meta Quest 3 comes with a significant boost in graphical capabilities over the Oculus Quest 2, including the ability to hit a 120Hz refresh rate if games and apps demand it. This means motion will look smoother and more fluid, though it also means the headset might get warmer, and the mode is more of a drain on battery life.

If you want to make sure games and apps are looking as good as they can be, tap the Meta button on the Touch Plus controller, then choose Settings, System, Display, and enable the 120Hz refresh rate option. If you’d rather have the extra battery life, turn it off.

6. Reset the view

You might sometimes find yourself a little lost in the VR (or MR) world, with the menu or dialog box you want to look at above or below or behind you. To reset the view so everything is in front of you again, press and hold the Meta button on the Touch Plus controller.

After a few moments, you’ll see a circle on screen—keep holding to complete the circle and reset the view. This works in games and apps as well as the Horizon Home environment, so you can use it whenever you’re disoriented.

7. Use hand tracking

The cameras on the front of the Meta Quest 3 can track the actions of your hands and fingers, so you can ditch the Touch Plus Controllers if you want to. The tracking isn’t perfect, but it’s a more natural way of getting around in VR or MR.

Press the Meta button on the Touch Plus controller, then select Settings, Movement tracking, and Hand tracking. Here you can enable the feature (via the top toggle switch) and customize how it works.

Use the options on this screen to choose how you want to switch between using controllers and using hand tracking: You can simply just put the controllers down, for example, or double-tap the controllers together to switch.

The post 7 hands-on (and off) tips for the new Meta Quest 3 mixed reality VR headset appeared first on Popular Science.

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Spotify has a wealth of options for music lovers: Mixes, new releases, genre picks, recommended tracks, albums you’re already obsessed with, and plenty more.

However, you can also take more control over your listening by making your own Spotify playlists. You can keep these compilations to yourself or share them with others—and you can even work on collaborative playlists with other people.

Putting together a curated list of songs takes longer than just diving into whatever Spotify’s algorithm offers you, but it means you’ll only listen to exactly what you want. It’s a more personalized and deliberate way of enjoying your tunes.

There are several ways to make a playlist on Spotify, and we’ll go over a couple of them plus other features to improve your listening experience.  We’ve focused on instructions for the Android and iOS mobile apps, but the process is similar if you’re using the desktop or web apps.

How to make a playlist on Spotify

You can create a playlist in the Spotify mobile app by tapping on Your Library, in the bottom right corner of your screen, followed by the + (plus) button in the top right, and then Playlist. Give your compilation a name and tap Create—the app will take you straight to your new, empty playlist.

New playlists are public by default, which means everybody will be able to find them, play them, and even access them with a shared link. But even though they’re public, your playlists don’t appear on your profile by default. To change this, open the playlist and tap the three dots: on the emerging menu, tap Add to profile to flaunt your compilation skills or Make private to hide your collection of tunes, remove it from search results, and disable its public link.

[Related: How to listen to Spotify’s huge library of audiobooks]

Straight away on your empty playlist page, you’ll find recommended songs based on your listening history. You can add any of these tunes to the playlist by tapping the musical note icon on the right. You can also tap Add to this playlist to start searching for specific tracks on Spotify.

You can add more tracks by browsing the Spotify catalog. Tap the three dots next to any song, album, or playlist to find the Add to playlist option. From there, you can pick a playlist you’ve previously created or start a brand new one for the songs that you’ve just selected.

You can make, edit, and share playlists whether you pay for Spotify or not, but only Premium subscribers can listen to them in the specific order given by the playlist creator—free users are stuck with shuffle play. To change the order of a compilation’s tracks, as well as its name, tap the three dots on the playlist page and Edit playlist.

Finally, there’s another playlist option worth mentioning. Spotify uses your listening history and machine learning to figure out your music taste and recommend artists, albums and playlists that you’ll like. But the service also acknowledges that there are a lot of reasons to make a playlist, and maybe you don’t want a particular compilation to affect your Spotify suggestions—maybe you created a playlist of kiddy songs to keep your nephews entertained when you babysit them, or a collection of epic tunes for your Dungeons & Dragons games that you don’t want to inform your daily mixes. If this is the case, create your playlist and before you add any songs, open the three-dot menu and choose Exclude from my taste profile.

How to share a Spotify playlist

You can share any public Spotify playlist via a link—just tap the three dots on the playlist page and go to Share and Copy link. You’ll get a unique URL you can paste anywhere you want,  like an email or chat conversation. Instead of choosing Copy link, you can share the link directly  through one of the suggested apps on your phone. To do that, just pick the app you want and follow the steps.

You could even paste this link on your website or in your social media bio to give visitors an idea of your taste in music. The playlist will open on the web, in the desktop app, or the mobile app, depending on the device the person is using when opening the link, and how it’s configured.

[Related: Spotify wants to understand your body on music]

You’ll find the same options for private playlists, but the generated link has a limited lifespan of seven days—if the person you shared your playlist with opens the link within that time frame, they’ll be able to access the compilation indefinitely. But that doesn’t mean they can share it with more people—only you, as the creator of a private playlist, have the power to share it.

On mobile, shared private playlists differ from shared public playlists in that you can see who has access to the compilation. Just below the playlist name, you’ll see the little profile pictures of the people you’ve invited and you can click or tap it to get a full and detailed list. If you want to revoke access from someone there, do it by tapping the three dots next to their name and choosing Remove from playlist.

Another option for sharing playlists is to use a Spotify code, which works a bit like a QR code. Tap the three dots on the playlist, then Show Spotify Code. You’ll see a series of lines that you can share by posting anywhere online or even printing it. People can then scan it using the Spotify app by tapping Search and then the camera icon in the top right corner.

How to make a collaborative playlist on Spotify

Creating collaborative playlists on Spotify can be extremely useful for everything from weddings to road trips. This feature allows you to invite your friends to the creation process and give them permission to add and remove songs on the playlist, as well as changing the order of the tunes.

On each public and private playlist page there’s an invite button—a portrait silhouette with a plus symbol. Tap it to generate a link to pass on to the people you want to give editorial access to your playlist. Just like the sharing link on private playlists, collaborators have to click or tap the URL within seven days. After that, there are no time restrictions on how long they can stick around for.

Pictures of collaborators will show up in small bubbles at the top of the playlist, the same way that people who’ve been invited to shared private playlists do. Tap these bubbles for more details and select the three dots next to any name to choose whether people can collaborate on the playlist or are simply allowed to look at it. From the same menu, you can also remove access completely, if you want.

And if at some point you’re done with your compilation, know that it’s easy to delete your Spotify playlist. Open the collection you want to get rid of, click or tap on the three-dot menu and select Delete. It’s that simple.

Two Spotify features to make your playlists even better 

If you thought those were the only ways to customize and create playlists on Spotify, think again. The streaming service has two more options you can play around with to create the perfect musical compilation. 

Blend

If you tap Your Library, then the + (plus) icon, you’ll see a Blend option next to Playlist. Blend lets you invite up to 10 people to a shared playlist, and then Spotify will automatically build a compilation that mixes the musical tastes and listening history of all the users you’ve invited. It also refreshes with a new mix every day.

Jam 

This feature facilitates collaborations at parties. It lets you invite friends to add tracks to a playlist in real time while still keeping veto power and control over the track order. Spotify will also help by offering up recommendations based on who’s accepted your invitation.

To start a jam you’ll need to be a Premium subscriber, but free users can help out as collaborators. On your phone, tap the devices icon on the Now Playing bar (it looks like a small speaker), then Start a Jam. You can find the same option by tapping on the three dots on a public playlist page. From there, you can invite people to the jam by sharing a link, or by opening the Spotify app and either tapping your phones together or scanning a QR code. 

The post How to make hit Spotify playlists, alone or with your friends appeared first on Popular Science.

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As television shows become available online, there’s less of a need to watch your favorites on a set schedule. But if you choose to cut the cord entirely, you’ll miss out on live channels, such as news and sports. Luckily, you can still watch live TV on your computer. You have two options: Plug a TV tuner device—which catches broadcasts like an antenna does—into a USB port, or stream shows through your web browser.

Plug in a TV tuner

Network channels, including NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, PBS, and local stations, air for free. All you need to watch them is an antenna to snag the broadcasts and a device to share them with your computer. The latter, called a TV tuner, can come in the form of a dongle or a larger box that plugs into any spare USB port.

Tuners come with bundled software that helps you navigate. When you’re getting started, these built-in applications will install the necessary drivers, scan for available channels, and display them on your computer screen. Then you can click through your options.

Once you’ve finished installation, the bundled software will help you receive channels, browse program guides, and make recordings. However, you can also download alternative applications, such as Kodi and Plex, to do the same tasks. Kodi is free but has a slightly more complicated setup, while Plex has a simpler process but requires a Plex Pass subscription that costs $5 per month, $40 a year, or $120 for lifetime access. Plex also has a handy “discover” feature that lets you track down anything you want to watch.

Buying a tuner

When you go shopping for tuner hardware, first look for compatibility with your computer’s operating system. Also consider whether the device includes extras like a bundled remote control. If you choose a model that comes with two or more integrated tuners, you’ll be able to record one channel while watching another, record two shows at once, or create a picture-in-picture effect with two channels.

We’d recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-DualHD ($80 on Amazon), though it only works with Windows machines. It includes two tuners, which lets you view or record two shows at once. Once you plug it into a spare USB port, the supplied software will take over, which makes the setup process extremely easy.

Buying an antenna

If you’ve already wired your home with a TV antenna, you can connect it to your new tuner and be good to go. If not, you’ll need to purchase an antenna to catch the TV signals flying through the air. Unfortunately there’s no easy way to figure out how many channels an antenna will catch—many factors make a difference, including the presence of surrounding buildings and nearby hills, and the distance between your home and the closest tower. You’ll just have to buy the hardware and try it out, so make sure the seller has a good returns policy, in case the reception is poor. If you live in a place where structures are few and far between, you may also want to check out our review team’s roundup of the best TV antennas for rural areas.

One of our favorite options is the Mohu Leaf Supreme Pro ($70 on Amazon), which boasts a sleek-looking design and a 65-mile range. Because it’s multi-directional, you don’t need to point it in a specific direction, so you can lay it flat or mount it to a wall. It’s meant to be used indoors, but it works great wherever you put it.

[Related: The best TV antennas]

Another choice we’d recommend is the 1byone Digital Amplified Indoor HDTV Antenna ($18 on Amazon), which is cheaper than the Mohu but has a smaller range—it only connects to transmission towers within 50 miles.

Once you’ve purchased your new gear, connect the antenna to the tuner, then the tuner to your laptop. Finally, download the free installer software (if necessary) and launch the application. It will walk you through the process of bringing up live TV channels on your laptop.

Stream channels online

Don’t want to buy new hardware? You can still watch live TV through your web browser. While services like Netflix focus on on-demand programs, other services include a live component so you can watch broadcasts—such as sports—as they happen.

If you’re only interested in watching a few channels in particular, head to the websites for those companies. Many of them—including ABC, Fox, and NBC—let you stream directly from their sites. However, there’s a catch: Different channels have different rules, and some require that you already have a TV provider or similar subscription (you have to sign in to confirm those credentials before watching). For example, you can watch CBS shows live only if you have a Paramount Plus subscription, which costs $6 per month and still includes ads.

Monthly online TV services

To get more than one channel at once, including premium options, you’ll need to subscribe to a monthly service like Hulu Live TV, YouTube TV, or Sling TV. All of these options provide a strong connection and easy setup, but they differ in the channels they offer. For example, YouTube TV doesn’t have a great spread of sports channels, while Sling TV has two plans that contain different stations but doesn’t focus on local ones. Before you invest in any subscription, test out that service’s free trial (they all offer one) to get a feel for the experience and make sure it includes the TV channels you want to watch. Here’s some more information that should help you choose.

Hulu offers four plans that include live TV, and the cheapest is $75.99 a month, but it does not allow you to access Hulu’s regular on-demand library—it’s live stuff only. You can spend $1 more ($76.99 per month) to add access to Hulu’s streaming library, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus, all with ads. You can also pay more for additional features, such as premium channels like Showtime and Max (formerly HBO).

[Related: Watch anything you want without signing up for every streaming service]

With a slightly lower price of of $72.99 a month, YouTube TV offers access to more than 100 live channels, but you will need to enter your ZIP code to see what’s available in your area. For an additional $2 to $30 a month, you can bolt on extra ones, including NFL RedZone and Showtime. It also gives you an unlimited amount of free cloud DVR storage, so you can record as much content as you want and store it on YouTube’s servers.

Sling TV focuses on premium cable channels rather than local networks like ABC, CBS, and Fox, although you may be able to get some local channels, depending on your area. Prices start at $40 a month for a pack of 32 channels, and you can increase your subscription fee to add more. You can watch on a variety of devices besides your computer, including a smartphone or an Apple TV. Sling also offers a cloud DVR service, but you’ll have to pay an additional $5 a month to save recordings in the cloud.

Cable subscriptions

If you already pay for a cable subscription, this may be the easiest way to tune into live television on your computer. All you need are your username and password.

Take Comcast’s Xfinity Stream service. It gives subscribers access to more than 250 channels. Just navigate to the Xfinity Stream site, log in with your credentials, and start watching. DirecTV offers similar services, and you can access it through a web browser.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2019.

The post How to watch TV on a computer, even if it’s live appeared first on Popular Science.

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

No one likes slow WiFi—it’s right up there with creaking doors and leaking taps as one of the most frustrating household problems. To increase your WiFi speed back to where it should be, try making these tweaks to your router and other devices.

We’ve already covered some of the hardware upgrades you can invest in to remove dead spots and boost your home upload and download speeds. So in this guide, we’ll focus on software fixes and changes you can make to your existing gear. If those adjustments don’t work, switching to a mesh network or buying a WiFi extender can also improve your wireless internet speed.

Upgrade your router software

Just like your laptop and cell phone, routers run their own software. In this case, it’s called firmware because it’s so tightly tied to the hardware—the manufacturer installs and configures it before shipping the device. Companies don’t often issue updates for their routers’ firmware, but many do make new versions of their software available for download. These updates fix bugs and may also include performance upgrades, as well as extra support for newer devices on the market.

The best way to find new firmware for your router is to head to the manufacturer’s website or the internet service provider that gave you the router. If you can’t find a download link, run a web search using “firmware” followed by your router’s make and model.

The exact process for installing firmware varies from router to router. Typically, you open the device settings on your computer and look for the option that lets you install an update from a downloaded file (often a ZIP archive) on your hard drive. The downloaded package usually includes installation instructions, but if you’re still not sure how to do it, consult the router instruction manual or look up the instructions online.

Change the wireless channel

Here’s another trick to try with a slow router: change the wireless channel it uses. This means slightly adjusting the wireless frequency that your WiFi signal is broadcast on. Your router should have a setting that lets you modify the channel, likely listed under a heading like Wireless or Advanced. If you can’t find it immediately, look up instructions online or in the router manual.

Most routers use channel 6 by default. Change this to 1 or 11 (to minimize interference with channel 6), and you might notice better WiFi performance. All of your connected devices will also need to connect to this new channel, but the majority of your gear will do so automatically, with no need to adjust the WiFi name or password. You might have to play around a bit before you arrive at the best channel, but stick to 1, 6, or 11 for the best chance of getting the fastest speeds.

[Related: 6 router settings you should change right now]

In a related trick, some more advanced routers offer two frequency bands: the standard 2.4GHz band and the faster 5GHz band. These bands follow the same principle as the channels mentioned above, but when you switch bands, you’re shifting the frequency much further. That means WiFi-enabled devices you connect to different bands won’t interfere with each other.

If your router supports dual bands (check your model’s documentation for details), you’ll usually see two different WiFi networks you can connect to. Divide your devices across both networks, depending on the speed and range each piece of hardware needs from your WiFi. For example, the 5GHz band typically offers faster speeds but shorter range, so devices closer to your router should use that one. It’ll stream your Spotify tunes more reliably to your gaming console, but it’s not as good at blasting through walls and doors as the older 2.4GHz standard. Use the latter for devices you move around your home, such as phones, or those located farther away from the router, and you should see increased WiFi speeds on all your devices.

Not every router can handle both bands, but most manufactured in recent years support these standards. On either band, if you’re getting sub-optimal WiFi speeds and seeing buffering wheels more often than you’d like, you can still change the wireless channel used in the 5GHz range or the 2.4GHz one. Check out your router’s help pages for more information on your options.

Control the bandwidth

Internet use can quickly eat up your available bandwidth, especially on slow connections or those shared among multiple people. So if you’re struggling to get a decent speed, try investigating what else is happening on your network. For example, running Netflix alongside Hulu while you take multiple video calls probably isn’t the best way to maximize your streaming speed.

As you work, visit a site like Speedtest.net to check your internet speed and see what you’re currently getting. But taking steps to increase those speeds means you’ll have to patrol the specific use of your home WiFi network—which is up to you and the people you live with. The easiest solution for maximum speeds is turning off devices not currently in use. This will not only save you money on your energy bill, but will also make sure that those computers, televisions, and tablets can’t possibly be wasting the bandwidth you need for another application. You can also dig into individual device settings to see which apps are using up the most WiFi.

[Related: Find the perfect internet speed for you]

At the same time, you’ll want to make sure no unwelcome visitors or invasive neighbors are lurking on your home network. Your router should have come with WiFi password protection already enabled. Changing this password on a regular basis—not to mention keeping it secret—will help you keep your network to yourself and your invited guests.

Another option is to specify which internet uses you value most. Some routers include a feature called Quality of Service, or QoS, which lets you prioritize certain applications (like Netflix) or types of content (like video) over others. You could use it to make sure your video calls stay stable even if that makes the Spotify stream spotty. Some routers also let you prioritize certain devices (maybe your computer) over others (maybe your roommate’s). If your router has a QoS feature, look on the manufacturer’s website or in the supplied manual for instructions on setting it up and telling the router what you’d like to prioritize.

Avoid the fish tank (and other large, dense objects)

Plenty of innocuous household objects will slow down your WiFi—including the water inside fish tanks. Now you know why your laptop never gets a signal when it’s behind the aquarium in your study. Even if you keep a fish-free home, try moving your furniture to put as few objects as possible (including walls) between your devices and your router.

In addition to bulky objects, anything that emits a wireless signal can interfere with the WiFi your router broadcasts. That includes wireless baby monitors, wireless landline phones, microwaves, Bluetooth keyboards and mice, and even string lights. All of these generate electromagnetic interference that can reduce your upload and download speeds. In most cases, the disruption should be minimal, but it’s worth bearing in mind if you’re experiencing problems. Rearranging the aforementioned items can help boost WiFi speed throughout your home, but if that solution is inconvenient, just switch your router to its 5GHz channel: Most microwaves and other wireless gear use the 2.4GHz frequency, so the higher band should be less congested.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2017.

The post How to increase your WiFi speed appeared first on Popular Science.

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The rear camera on your iPhone 15 (also present on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max) is more powerful and versatile than you might have realized. It features a 48-megapixel sensor but default settings only allow it to take 24MP snaps.

The good news is that you can delve into your iPhone’s settings to switch your camera to full capacity and get more detail in your photos. There are some trade-offs you should know about, and the exact options vary depending on the iPhone you’re using. But if you’re serious about your smartphone photography, you should learn about the modes available to you and how they work.

How the iPhone 15 cameras work

When you take a photo on your iPhone 15 without the ultrawide or zoom sensors, iOS uses  the main 48MP sensor to create a 24MP shot. There are two reasons for that—first, it keeps file size down, and second, it allows pixel binning, which means the camera combines multiple pixels to capture more light and produce a better image.

However, if you have the room on your iPhone to store the resulting snaps, you can switch to 48MP photos. Professional photographers often make the switch because capturing more pixels provides more flexibility over the final shot by letting you take control over how those pixels are processed. 

[Related: Check out some of the winners of the latest iPhone Photography Awards]

But you should know there are differences depending on the iPhone you’re using.  The dual-lens on the iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Plus, has a slightly inferior 48MP sensor than the triple-lens on the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max—the number of pixels is the same, but the pixel-capturing tech isn’t quite as good.

The other key difference is that the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max can capture RAW images, which Apple calls ProRAW photos. This format provides all the raw data from a digital image, providing photographers even more control and options over their work. RAW snaps take a little longer to process, use up a lot more storage space, and need some photo know-how to optimize, which is why the average smartphone photographer doesn’t bother with them.

The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus don’t have the processing grunt to manage RAW snaps, but they can still capture 48MP images in either HEIF or JPEG format. The result is still 48MP-size pictures but they’ll be slightly compressed, which takes away some of the manual post-processing control you get with RAW images. In certain ways, using a HEIF or JPEG format (which you can also do on the Pro models) goes halfway between shooting 24MP snaps and 48MP ProRAW, with the added benefit of significantly cutting down file sizes.

If you’re considering making the switch to 48MP photos, bear in mind that means a slightly longer time between tapping the shutter button and seeing your image on screen. What’s more, the dynamic range (the spread between the darkest blacks and the whitest whites) won’t be quite as good without pixel binning. 

How to change the iPhone 15 camera settings

Having absorbed all of that information about photo formats, you’re ready to start making changes. Head to Settings in iOS, then tap on Camera. Unless you’re already shooting in RAW, your first choice will be between High Efficiency (HEIF) or Most Compatible (JPEG) for the image format.

Which one you pick is really up to you and will depend on what you’re doing with your snaps after you’ve taken them. HEIF tends to result in smaller file sizes, but JPEG is generally compatible with a broader range of software on desktop and the web. There’s plenty of information about both online.

[Related: The easiest ways to back up iPhone photos without iCloud]

To unlock the 48MP photos, turn on Resolution Control (on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus) or ProRAW & Resolution Control (on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max). On the latter models you can also tap Pro Default to pick your preferred format: The list includes HEIF Max (up to 48MP), JPEG Max (up to 48MP), ProRAW 12MP, and ProRAW Max (up to 48MP). Underneath these options, Apple lists the average file size for each format, so you have an idea of how much space each picture will take up—10MB for a 48MP JPEG, for example, and 75MB for a 48MP ProRAW.

Launch the camera on your iPhone, and the new 48MP option will appear in the corner. It’ll be crossed out to begin with, so tap the icon to turn it on and choose which format you want to shoot—HEIF Max, JPEG Max, or RAW Max. On the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, press and hold on the icon to switch between HEIF/JPEG and ProRAW. Note that you won’t get the option to switch to ProRAW on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.

By default, the Camera app will forget that you enabled 48MP photos when you switch to another app, so the option will be crossed out again when you come back to it. To tell the camera to keep the 48MP enabled, open the iOS Settings screen, tap Camera, Preserve Settings, and then either Resolution Control or Apple ProRAW & Resolution Control, depending on your iPhone model.

Note that because of the way the iPhone 15 produces photos, it will default back to 24MP whenever you’re taking Live Photos or macro shots, or using Night mode or the flash. This will happen no matter what settings you’ve changed simply because those different modes require different types of image processing.

The post How to unlock the hidden, more powerful camera on the iPhone 15 appeared first on Popular Science.

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If you’re splurging on a foldable phone like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, make sure you’re getting your money’s worth by exploring all the options and features the handset has to offer.

When you’ve got twice as many screens as normal, you get a lot more functionalities and flexibility: From quickly getting apps running side by side, to dragging and dropping texts and images between them.

1. Customize full screen apps

Unfortunately, not every Android app is developed to run on a screen as large as the main display of the Galaxy Z Fold 5. You might see black bars at the side of certain apps, as well as other odd behavior.

But you can fix this by going to Settings, then Display and Full screen apps. Pick an tool, and choose how you’d like it to show up. Full screen is the option to go for if you don’t want any black bars, though it may cause some distortion on certain apps.

2. Drag and drop between apps

With two apps open on screen, the Z Fold 5 is very adept at transferring content between them. Try tapping and holding an image in your web browser, for example, then dragging it across to an email you’re composing on the other side of the screen. The system will drop the picture right into the message—no copying, pasting, or saving required.

[Related: 7 Samsung phone hacks you need to try right now]

Note that this feature doesn’t work in every single app, but it will run smoothly in a lot them: Google’s Gmail and Chrome, Samsung’s Gallery and Notes, and Microsoft’s PowerPoint and Outlook, are some of the apps that support dragging and dropping.

3. Bring up the Flex panel

Flex mode is when you make a 90-degree angle with the Z Fold 5, so you have one half laying flat on a surface while the other is propped up straight. This allows certain apps to display different content on each side. Try opening the Camera app to see what we mean— you’ll see the shutter window at the top and the camera controls underneath.

There’s also the Flex panel, which will work with any app that supports multi-window use (most now do). Open Settings and then go to Advanced features > Labs > Flex mode panel, and enable the feature.

Now, when you turn your phone to landscape mode, you’ll get a little Flex panel icon (a gray diamond shape) in the lower left hand corner. Tap the icon to make the panel pop up: you’ll get a little touchpad to use with the app that’s on the top half of the screen, as well as quick access to certain features and the screenshot tool.

Try using the Flex panel with a web browser to see how useful it can be: You’ll be able to select links and elements on screen just as you would on a desktop operating system.

4. Get more content on screen

Make your way to Settings and go to Display and Screen layout and zoom. This page lets you change the size of the fonts and other elements on screen, which means you can get more content on your Z Fold 5 display at the same time—whether you’re working with one or multiple apps on the screen.

5. Switch seamlessly to the cover screen

By default, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 treats the larger main screen and the smaller cover screen separately, so apps that you’re using on the big display won’t automatically switch over to the outer display when you close the phone.

But if you would like to transfer apps seamlessly, open up Display from Settings, then tap on Continue apps on cover screen. You’ll be able to have this happen with all apps, or only with specific ones.

6. Change how multi window works

One of the key advantages of a foldable device like the Z Fold 5 is how easily you can get multiple apps and windows up alongside each other. Most of the time the Z Fold 5 handles this perfectly well on its own, but you can make some tweaks by heading to Settings, and then going to Advanced features and Multi window.

For example, you can enable Swipe for split screen. This feature will let you swipe in with two fingers from the left-hand edge of the main display to go from full screen mode to split screen mode. When you do, the Z Fold 5 will prompt you to choose another app to go alongside the one you’re already looking at.

7. Customize the taskbar

The taskbar at the bottom of the screen is crucial for getting around your foldable phone and the apps on it, so make sure it’s set up the way you want it. From Settings, pick Display and Taskbar, and choose how many recent apps you want to see at the bottom of the screen. You can also completely hide the taskbar, if you prefer.

[Related: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 review: Powerful vibes]

From the Display screen you can also select Navigation bar and choose whether you want to navigate your phone using gestures or the traditional back, home and recent buttons. If you’re not sure about the differences between these two options, you’ll see explanations for them on screen. Just keep in mind that using gestures will free up more space on the taskbar for you.

Note that the apps on the left of the taskbar are the same as those in the dock on the home screen. You can drag apps in and out of the dock if you want to change this selection.

The post 7 tips to get the most out of your Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 appeared first on Popular Science.

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If you’re an Apple user, you probably have an iCloud account and several devices filled with your personal information. Whenever high-profile data leaks and hacks hit the headlines, you may think that Apple’s known dedication to security will keep you safe, but that’s no reason to get complacent. There’s plenty you can do on your own to ensure it’s extra-hard for people to snatch up your data.

Once you’ve taken some time to enable two-factor authentication, strengthen your passwords, and work through the security tips listed below, you may want to stay in the same headspace and continue with other important accounts. For starters, check out our guides to locking down your Facebook and Google accounts.

Apple security basics

You should be putting up strong barriers at every door into your Apple world. That means a long, unique password on your MacBook, a lengthy PIN on your iPhone, and a long, unique password for your iCloud account. Passwords should contain a mix of lowercase and uppercase letters, plus special characters and numbers, to make them as difficult to crack as possible. (And no, “Passw0rd!” isn’t good enough.) Don’t base your passwords on your address, birthday, or pet’s name, either—a savvy attacker might research this information in order to get past your defenses. Finally, avoid using the same password for both your Mac and iCloud. That way, even if one gets cracked, the other still has some protection.

[Related: All the ways you can customize your iPhone lock screen]

One of your best defenses will be your common sense. Hackers often trick people into revealing their login details, rather than running a sophisticated brute force attack. Be wary of phishing links in emails and on social media, and be suspicious of any that immediately ask you to log in with your Apple ID credentials.

When it comes to Apple device security, Apple is your best ally. Its operating systems (macOS, iOS, and iPadOS) all encrypt data by default. This means nothing can be pulled from your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook without the right password or PIN code.

Enable Apple’s two-factor authentication feature

Apple accounts can be better protected with two-factor authentication (TFA). This feature is available for most major online accounts and means that entering your account will require an extra code beyond your username and password.

In the case of Apple’s two-factor authentication, attempting to log in will trigger a message sent to your phone number or a code that displays on another device associated with your Apple ID. For example, if you’re setting up a new iPhone, you’ll see the code on your existing MacBook.

To turn on two-factor authentication on iOS or iPadOS, open the Settings app and tap your name at the top of the screen. Then choose Password & Security to find the two-factor authentication option. On macOS Ventura or later, click the Apple menu, head to System Settings, and click your name. Then click Sign-In & Security and hit Turn On next to Two-Factor Authentication. Follow the instructions to set everything up.

[Related: 7 sweet new features in macOS Ventura]

If you’re using macOS Monterey or an older version of Apple’s operating system, you’ll find the TFA settings by opening the Apple menu, choosing System Preferences, selecting Apple ID followed by Password & Security, and turning the feature on from that screen.

Once you’ve logged into a device with your Apple ID, password, and TFA code, that device will be marked as trusted, which means you won’t need to log in using TFA again. It’s therefore important that you do have passwords, PIN codes, and other types of protection on your computers and phones to prevent unauthorized access.

Manage Apple security in your web browser

To configure other parts of your security setup, open your Apple ID account page in a web browser. Make sure your registered email addresses and trusted phone numbers are up to date and secure, because you might need them if you ever lose access to your account.

Under the Devices heading (in the menu on the left), you can see the iPhones, iPads, and computers associated with your account. Use this opportunity to remove any devices you no longer use or don’t recognize. It’s a good idea to check this list fairly regularly, just in case your account has been compromised or you’re signed in somewhere you shouldn’t be.

Any web browser on any computer will also let you access the iCloud suite of web apps and services. If you’re on a public computer or a machine you share with others, be sure to sign out after you’ve finished. Some browsers may ask to remember your password. You can allow this on your personal computer, but make sure that something else will prevent a guest from accessing the browser. For example, set up a user account password for getting into the operating system.

When you’re on iCloud.com, you can also sign out of all browsers where you’re currently signed in. To do this, click your Apple ID avatar in the top right corner, hit iCloud Settings, select Sign Out Of All Browsers, and click Sign Out. This way, you’ll ensure no one’s using your iCloud account with any other browser except the one you have open.

Other Apple security tips

The app stores Apple has built into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS do a very good job of keeping you safe from dangerous software and viruses. On your phone or tablet, you shouldn’t have to install anything from outside the iOS App Store. On your computer, however, you may need to venture outside the walls of the macOS App Store every now and again. If you do, read user reviews and web write-ups to double-check the safety of any program you install.

As for your devices’ physical security, you definitely want to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. So take the time now to consider what you’ll do if, despite all your precautions, your iPhone, iPad, or computer are compromised. We recommend turning on the Find My feature on your devices. This will let you locate and remotely wipe your device via the web if it falls into the wrong hands, but if you’ve simply lost your tech inside your own home, you can use Find My to get it to play a sound.

On iOS or iPadOS, tap your name in the settings to find the Find My app, and on macOS Ventura or later navigate through Apple menu > System Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Find My. If you’re using macOS Monterey or earlier, you’ll need Apple menu > System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud > Find My Mac > Allow.

[Related: How to turn off your location on an iPhone]

Meanwhile, if you’ve gone all-in with your Apple products and got yourself an Apple Watch, you can use the wearable gadget as a secure way to unlock macOS, saving you the trouble of typing out a password each time. To set up the feature on macOS Ventura or later, open the Apple menu, click System Settings, hit Login Password, and choose Use Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac. On macOS Monterey or older, work through Apple menu > System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General to find the same Apple Watch unlock setting.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2017.

The post It’s a great day to secure your Apple and iCloud accounts appeared first on Popular Science.

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

Internet access, whether wired or wireless, has become one of the most precious commodities of our time. But that leaves us singularly unprepared when we lose that access—such as when we travel to the signal-free middle of nowhere or a storm knocks out power to our home router. There are plenty of ways you can avoid being completely cut off from your work and entertainment, though, and using Google Chrome offline is one of them.

The catch, however, is that you’ll have to set up offline access before your internet connection dies. We recommend activating the settings below as you read this article, so you don’t forget and regret it later. When you’re done, consider poking around the settings within your other most-used programs to see what offline features they offer, or download some of the best offline apps. Then, no matter what type of computer you’re on, Chromebook or not, you won’t have to completely give up when those WiFi bars disappear.

Access Gmail offline

If you use Gmail in your browser, you can get into your inbox without a web connection. While you’re still online, simply click the cog icon in the top right, select See all settings, open the Offline tab, and check the box next to Enable offline mail. Doing so will sync recent emails to your computer’s hard drive. Unfortunately, this function can’t make new emails magically appear when your internet is down. But it will let you browse through messages you’ve already cached, and compose new replies that Gmail will automatically send when you get back online.

Keep working

Google Drive and the three online apps within it—Docs, Sheets, and Slides—have an offline mode you can activate when there’s no internet available. You’ll need to set it up before you lose your web connection: From the main Google Drive interface, click the cog icon in the top right, followed by Settings, and finally tick the box under Offline.

This will sync your recent documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to the local storage on your hard drive. It will let you create new documents and edit existing ones in your Drive account, although you won’t be able to access big files like videos and music (unless you download them separately first). Offline Chrome will save all your changes to disk, just as they would normally be saved to the web. Once your browser detects an internet connection again, it will sync everything to bring your files back up to date.

Check your schedule

Beyond Gmail and Google Drive, Google has made most of its web apps work offline—including Google Calendar. You can’t create new events when you’re offline, but you can browse your schedule and respond to invitations. Google Calendar will send those responses when you’re back online.

Stay entertained

It doesn’t matter whether your favorite music or video streaming service works offline—Chrome can play downloaded files in many popular formats, including MP3 tracks and MP4 movies. So as long as you saved your preferred entertainment options to your device ahead of time, you can rock out or kick back no matter what your internet connection looks like. Just drag a file from your hard drive into an empty Chrome window, and it will start to play.

If you’re looking for a place to start, the platforms you use want to keep you engaged and are more than willing to help. Both Spotify and Netflix, for example, have detailed instructions for how you can access their content without internet access. Once you’re all stocked up, you can enjoy accessing the files via Chrome.

Catch up on your reading

Losing your internet connection gives you a great opportunity to catch up on all that reading you’ve been meaning to get around to. But if all that reading happens to be on the web, you’re stuck. The free Pocket Chrome extension can help. Open an article that you’d like to read in Chrome, and Pocket will let you save it for later perusal, when you have more time to do so.

Play games

You can even enjoy certain online games while Chrome’s offline. From the physics-based puzzler Cut the Rope to the all-time classic FreeCell Solitaire, you should be able to find something to while away the time until the internet returns. As long as install your favorite games while you still have internet access, you’ll be good to go.

The post 6 ways you can use Google Chrome offline appeared first on Popular Science.

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

How many of the apps on your phone are you actually using on a regular basis? It’s not uncommon to have a bunch of apps you installed and eventually forgot about, each of them taking up precious space on your device and making it more difficult to find the tools you actually want to use.

Apple and Google know about their users’ struggles with unused apps, and they’ve built features into iOS and Android to try and handle it. You should know how your phone’s operating system handles forgotten apps behind the scenes, how these features benefit you, and how you can disable them if you want to.

How to offload unused apps on iOS

Apple’s iPhones have a feature called Offload Unused Apps that can help you with your app-hoarding problem, and it’s been around since iOS 11 launched in 2017. It’s sort of a middle ground between having an app installed and uninstalled: The bulk of the app is gone, but data and documents relating to it—like your settings and any files you’ve created in it—remain on your phone. The app icon will also stay on your home screen, with a small arrow next to its name, and you can fully reinstall it by tapping this icon.

This feature is off by default, but you can enable it by opening the Settings app and selecting General, iPhone Storage, and Enable next to the Offload Unused Apps heading. It will then run automatically, so you might notice apps you haven’t opened in a while being offloaded in the background without any input from you. You can follow the same steps to turn the feature off.

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

On the iPhone storage screen, you’ll see how much space you can free up by offloading apps, but Apple doesn’t offer a whole lot of detail about how this works—how long an app has to remain unused for to qualify, for example, or whether your iPhone starts offloading apps once you reach a threshold of remaining storage. You’ll have to try it to see if you like it, but remember that you can easily restore offloaded apps if it isn’t for you.

If you don’t want iOS to automatically offload apps, you can do so manually and individually whenever you want. From the same iPhone Storage screen in Settings, scroll down to the app you want to offload and tap on it. Then choose Offload App on the next screen to partially remove it from your phone. The same screen will let you reinstall the app if and when you need to, or delete it entirely.

Offloading unused apps on Android

Android’s built-in feature for managing unused apps is called Auto Archive. It’s still relatively new, and it works a lot like the offloading iOS does: Auto Archive will free up to nearly 60 percent of an app’s storage space, without removing the app itself or your data from the device, Google says. After being archived, the app will still be there, but a lot of its data and files will have been removed until you need it.

Auto Archive isn’t enabled by default, but Android will prompt you to turn the feature on if you try to install an app and there’s not enough room left on your phone. If this happens, tap Turn on to enable Auto Archive and install the app, or No thanks if you want to try to clear some space manually.

[Related: 9 hidden Android features you’re missing out on]

You can also enable Auto Archive from the Play Store app on your phone: Tap your Google account avatar (top right), then choose Settings and General to find the Automatically archive apps toggle switch. Even when this is on, the process only kicks in when your device starts to run low on available storage.

Google isn’t specific about which apps it archives first, but “infrequently used apps” are apparently first in line. There’s no option to manually archive individual apps, as there is on iOS, but you can wipe all the data stored by an app. To do so, open Settings and head to Apps, tap on an app, choose Storage and cache, and hit Clear storage. Depending on the app, the data you remove could include messages, emails, or playlists that have been synced to your phone.

The post One quick way to automatically save space on your phone appeared first on Popular Science.

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Most modern homes have quite a few WiFi-connected gadgets trying to access the web at the same time. This usually results in strained broadband connections, especially when it comes to demanding activities like online gaming or video streaming. 

To help you manage the load, some routers (like those manufactured by Google, Netgear, Eero, and many others) offer a feature called Quality of Service (QoS). In simple terms, it lets you prioritize certain devices and types of traffic on your WiFi network, so they’re first in line for a high-speed connection whenever bandwidth becomes limited. 

Your router manufacturer may give it a different name, but a quick dig into the manual or an online search should tell you whether or not your particular device offers QoS. If it does, it’s worth getting familiar with the feature and what it can do, as prioritizing devices on your WiFi network can help reduce buffering times and avoid dropped connections when it’s most important.

What is Quality of Service, and how does it work?

The term “quality of service” has been around for decades, and it applies to all kinds of networks. When used in relation to your home’s WiFi, it means marking certain devices or types of activity as being more important than others. Whenever your router is chopping up your WiFi into individual slices, these marked gadgets and apps get first dibs.

Imagining pie slices is one way to think about QoS. Without it, everything connected to your router gets a similarly sized slice: Your PlayStation 5, the laptop the kids are using, the smart TV in the living room, and so on. When you enable QoS, you can give out bigger slices to that important Zoom call. Consequently, less important tasks, like those Windows updates downloading in the background, get smaller slices.

That said, using QoS to prioritize devices on your WiFi network doesn’t necessarily guarantee that those gadgets will always get a healthy, robust internet connection. It also doesn’t mean that the less important hardware on your network will slow to a crawl. A lot of what actually happens depends on the internet speed in your home.

[Related: 6 router settings you should change right now]

Video calls, online gaming, and streaming video tend to be first in line when you enable QoS. Other online tasks, from checking email to downloading updates, usually get reduced priority. 

Ultimately, how you use QoS is up to you, but your router will determine what type of control you get and how much. Some routers let you prioritize certain devices, such as gaming consoles, while others let you prioritize types of internet traffic, such as video calls. Some let you do both. If you’re shopping for a router upgrade, this is definitely a spec you should look out for.

If you have a Google Nest Wi-Fi mesh networking setup at home, for example, you can open up the Google Home app on your phone, tap Favorites, then Wifi, and choose Devices to see a list of the gadgets using your network. Select the device you want to prioritize, tap Prioritize device, decide how long you want it to receive VIP treatment, and hit Save to finish. Keep in mind that you can only give priority to one device at a time.

You can also use the Google Home app to choose the types of activity you want the network to put first. First, tap Wi-Fi, hit the cog icon to open Settings, and choose Preferred activities to tell the network what to prioritize. Your choices will include Video conferencing and Gaming, and the router will continue to give your picks bigger slices of the WiFi pie until you turn them off again.

[Related: What to do when your device won’t connect to WiFi]

If you’ve got a Netgear router, on the other hand, you’ll need to open a web browser, head to routerlogin.com, and log in using your router’s admin credentials (check the documentation that came with the router if you’re not sure what these are). From there, head to Advanced, Setup, and QoS setup to start making some changes.

Pick Upstream QoS, then Setup QoS rule, and finally Add Priority Rule. You can choose Online Gaming to make sure your games stay as lag-free as possible, Applications to prioritize a particular web app, Ethernet LAN port to specify a device connected to a router port, or MAC Address to single out a device hooked up to the network via WiFi.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2021.

The post How to give more WiFi to the devices that need it the most appeared first on Popular Science.

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

Gaming might not be the primary reason you bought your Apple TV 4K box, but it’s a nice extra benefit—there’s a huge selection of games you can play on the device.

The main advantage of doing this is that the connected TV screen is much larger than the one on your iPhone or iPad, and if you’ve already bought games on these mobile devices, you won’t have to pay again to play them on the Apple TV 4K.

For more advanced and involved gameplay, you can even hook up a Bluetooth controller, giving you a true console-like experience, even if the selection of games doesn’t quite match the top-tier titles on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Getting started

For starters, you need a physical Apple TV 4K device to play games on a connected television. That means this article doesn’t apply to the Apple TV app you might have on your smart TV, or on a streaming dongle you’ve connected to it. The Apple TV app is for movies and shows only, while the Apple TV 4K box is for movies, shows, music, photos, and games.

Your Apple TV 4K box is already set up and ready to play games—though it’s always worth checking that you’re running the very latest tvOS software, which you can do through Settings > System > Software Updates > Update Software. When up to date, you’ll have the latest bug fixes and performance optimizations installed, so the games you pick should run as smoothly as possible.

It’s also worth checking that the Apple TV 4K is outputting video at the best possible quality: 4K resolution, with HDR, at a 60 hertz refresh rate. You can do this via Settings > Video and Audio > Format, though the available formats you see will depend on the TV you’ve connected your Apple box to.

How to find games for the Apple TV 4K

You shouldn’t have any trouble finding games to play: Open the App Store (the icon showing a white “A” on a blue background) from the home screen, then scroll across to Games to see what’s available. The store will only show you games that will work on the Apple TV 4K, so there’s no danger of installing something that’s incompatible. Scroll across to Purchased to see games you’ve bought and installed on other Apple devices.

If you subscribe to Apple Arcade for $4.99 a month, you get access to an additional pool of more than 200 games. To find them, you can switch to the Arcade tab in the App Store or use the Apple Arcade shortcut on the home screen (an icon showing a white joystick on a red background). Select any game to see details about it, including the category it’s in and the age rating attached to it.

[Related: 14 tips for your Apple TV 4K]

Because your Apple TV 4K box is connected to a display far bigger than the one on your smartphone or tablet, the games that work best will be those that make full use of that extra screen space. If you need inspiration, the games we’ve enjoyed on the Apple TV 4K include the endless scroller Alto’s Odyssey ($4.99), the addictive puzzler Donut County ($4.99), and the classic car-dodging adventure Crossy Road (free with in-app purchases).

How to add a game controller to the Apple TV 4K

As you make your way around the App Store and Apple Arcade portal, you’ll notice certain games say a controller is required, others say a controller is optional, and some don’t say anything at all. For simple single-tap games like the aforementioned Alto’s Odyssey, for example, you can play using just the Apple TV 4K remote.

For more advanced titles, you’ll need to connect a controller like the one you might use on your PS5 or Xbox Series X. Just about any standard gamepad will do, as long as it supports Bluetooth—including the ones that came with your PlayStation or Xbox. If you’re going to buy one, though, make sure it supports the Apple TV 4K.

To connect the controller, you’ll need to make sure your controller is in pairing mode (its instructions or a quick web search will tell you how to do this if you’re not sure), then go to Settings > Remotes and Devices > Bluetooth. The controller should appear on this list, but if not, follow the How to Pair Game Controllers link for extra help.

Play Apple TV 4K games from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac

If you prefer playing a game on your iPhone or iPad, but still want to take advantage of the larger screen your Apple TV 4K is connected to, you can beam them over from your mobile device—as long as everything’s on the same WiFi network. This uses Apple’s AirPlay protocol for streaming video and audio, which is supported by most Apple devices—it’s not quick enough for super-fast gameplay, but it works fine for slower-paced games.

On the iPhone or iPad you’re using, swipe down from the top right corner of the screen to bring up the Control Center, then tap the Screen Mirroring icon (two overlapping rectangles). Choose your Apple TV 4K from the list, and the display will be duplicated on your TV. This is a good way to play games that aren’t officially supported by the Apple TV 4K, and you can always add a controller to your iPhone or iPad too.

[Related: 24 iPhone settings that feel like secrets]

If you’re on a Mac, click the Control Center icon on the menu bar (it looks like two toggle switches), choose Screen Mirroring, and select the Apple TV 4K box you want to connect to. Click Screen Mirroring again and choose Use As Separate Display to have the Apple TV 4K act as a second monitor, where you can display any games that can run on your Mac, while still controlling them with your computer. Click Screen Mirroring and the name of the Apple TV 4K to break the connection.

The post Your Apple TV 4K is secretly good for video games appeared first on Popular Science.

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

If you’re got smart lights set up at home, then you’ve probably played around with turning them on and off with your phone, and cycling through millions of colors. But if you have Philips Hue bulbs, you can also get them to sync with what’s on your TV screen or monitor.

So, you could have a wash of greens and blues behind your TV when watching Avatar, for example. Or your journeys through the vast world of Red Dead Redemption 2 could be accompanied by shifting colors as you move through deserts, forests, swamps, and snowy mountain ranges.

We’re assuming that you’ve already got your Philips Hue smart lights up and running at home. Then, depending on your setup and what you want, you can either use a desktop app or the Play HDMI Sync Box to have your smart lights react to your favorite content in real time.

Using the Hue Sync app

The easiest and cheapest way to sync your smart lights to your screen is to install the free Hue Sync desktop app for Windows and macOS. A caveat, though: this approach will only sync your lights to what’s on your computer, so it won’t work with your TV. Your laptop or desktop will need to be on the same WiFi network as your smart lights, so the program can see your Hue Bridge and the devices attached to it.

[Related: Find the best smart light for your home]

Download the desktop app and launch it. You’ll have two options: Help me set everything up and Search for bridge. Pick the first one if you’ve just bought your Hue lights and you’re installing them from scratch. The app will then take you step-by-step through the process of getting all the hardware connected. If your lights are already set up, select the second option.

Within a few seconds, the app should easily find the Hue Bridge and connect to it. If you haven’t already done it, turn to the Philips Hue app on your phone to set up what’s called an “entertainment area”: This is just a way of telling your Hue system which lights should be grouped together for syncing with screen content.

In the app, open the Settings tab, then go to Entertainment areas and Create area. Choose For my monitor, give the area a name, and then select the lights to include in it. The app will then prompt you to show the location of the lights within the room, so it knows how to sync them together with what’s on screen.

Once all that is done, head back to the desktop app—the entertainment area that you just created should be selected. Click on the name of the area to bring up the main syncing console: You can choose Start light sync to have the effect enabled on the selected bulbs.

There are also a few options to play around with on the app console. At the top you can choose one of four modes to determine the brightness of the lights: The ones we’re interested in here are Games (optimized for games) and Movies (optimized for video), but you can also pick Scenes to select a fixed Hue scene for your lights, or Music to have the lights sync along with the audio that’s being played.

If you pick Games or Movies, you can then control the strength of the effect: Pick from Subtle, Moderate, High, or Extreme. If the lights are changing color too often and it’s becoming distracting, choose Subtle or Moderate. The last option, Use audio for effect, means the Hue Sync desktop app will take into consideration the sounds in games and movies when choosing colors for the lights.

Based on our testing, the results are usually pretty good, though games and movies with more gradual color changes work best. You can always go back to the Hue app on your phone to tweak the entertainment area settings, as well as adjusting the options in the desktop app, to try and improve the results.

Finally in the desktop app, you can choose Settings to configure different aspects of the program, including which display is used for syncing (if you’ve got more than one), and whether or not the app starts up with your computer. It’s also possible to configure keyboard shortcuts for the desktop app from here.

Using an app can also work when syncing your smart lights to what’s on your TV—but that will only work if you have a Samsung TV from 2022 or newer. Philips Hue makes a Hue Sync TV app for these devices which you can find in the Apps section. The downside is it costs $130, but you might consider the functionality worth it for the seamless integration. The setup process is similar, but you’ll need to choose For my TV when setting up an entertainment area in the mobile app.

Using the Play HDMI Sync Box

If you have another type of TV, then you’ll need a hardware option to sync your smart lights with what’s on it. The Play HDMI Sync Box from Philips Hue is $250 and it comes with accompanying Hue Sync apps for Android and iOS. You can use this little gadget to connect up to four different HDMI sources—just keep in mind that if you’re playing on your console, you’ll need to connect the Sync Box both to your gaming device and your TV.

[Related: Best smart lights of 2023]

There’s support for Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and 4K resolutions, and the box is clever enough to recognize which source is playing and automatically switch to it. The information from the HDMI feed is beamed to your Hue Bridge at the same time as it’s showing up on screen, so your lights have a detailed map of colors to work from.

Setup is similar to the desktop app in that you need to create an entertainment area in the mobile app first. From the original Hue app on your phone go to Settings > Entertainment areas > Create area, and choose For my TV. The platform will ask you which smart lights are in the same room as your TV and where they’re positioned.

Then, from the Hue Sync app, you can turn effects on and off, switch between Video, Music, and Game modes, and adjust the strength of the effect and the brightness level in the same way as you can on the desktop app for computers. The apps also let you link the Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, or Apple’s Siri for the box, so you can use voice commands to enable or disable sync and switch between modes.

The post 2 ways to sync your Philips Hue smart lights to movies, games, and music appeared first on Popular Science.

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Going incognito in your browser and favorite apps has its benefits, even though it may not be as private as you think. Also known as private mode, this feature temporarily pauses tracking of your browsing or viewing history and doesn’t save data you input, such as login credentials and personal details.

We don’t need to know your reasons, but if you need to go about your business without leaving any tracks, we can show you how to go incognito on apps like YouTube, Instagram, and Google Maps, whenever necessary.

Turn on YouTube’s incognito mode

There are good reasons you might want YouTube to remember what you’re watching. Logging the videos you’ve watched improves your recommendations and makes sure you can easily get back to that hilarious sketch clip you enjoyed several weeks ago. However, if you share your device with someone else, activating incognito mode on Google’s video platform might help you keep your watch history private. 

[Related: Why YouTube is hiding dislikes on videos]

To temporarily go incognito on YouTube’s mobile app, tap your profile picture (top right), then choose Turn on Incognito. You’ll then start browsing on a clean slate, with fresh recommendations and no viewing history. To go back to normal, tap the incognito button (top right) and select Turn off Incognito.

You won’t find an incognito mode available for YouTube on the web, but you can get the same result by simply opening the video platform in a private browsing tab. Note that if you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber, the ads will return when you’re in incognito mode.

How to go incognito on Google Maps

Going incognito on Google Maps is useful if you need to research places or plan journeys without leaving any trace, or if you don’t want your searches to affect the recommendations the app gives you about where to go.

If you’re using the mobile app, tap your profile picture (top right), then choose Turn on Incognito mode. Your personalized recommendations and quick links to places like your home address will disappear, and the app won’t save anything you do in this mode. To exit, tap the incognito mode button (top right) and hit Turn off Incognito mode.

As with YouTube, you won’t find this option built into Google Maps online, but you can just open the site inside a browser set to incognito mode instead. You can still look up information about places and get directions, but you can’t leave reviews, save places, or see your location history.

Start a private session on Spotify

Your listening history shows up in a few places on Spotify. The app shares it with friends you’ve connected with on the platform, and your recently played artists show up on your public Spotify profile.

To listen to songs without this automatic sharing and tracking, you can start a private session—Spotify’s version of going incognito. On mobile, tap Home, the cog icon, and under Privacy turn the Private Session toggle switch on. From the desktop app, click the drop-down arrow (top right) to find the switch. To end a private session, just retrace your steps and flick the switch the other way.

If you don’t turn your private session off manually, it will automatically end after 6 hours or when you restart the Spotify app.

Going incognito on Instagram

While Instagram doesn’t have an incognito mode as such, you can stop your friends from seeing when you’re actively online. Tap your profile picture (bottom right), then the menu button (top right), followed by Settings and Privacy. Select Messages and story replies, then Show activity status, and turn off the toggle switch on the next screen. On the web, click the three-line menu in the bottom left corner of the screen, then Settings, and How others can interact with you. On the next menu, toggle on the switch beside Show activity status.

[Related: Why the web version of Instagram is better than the app]

This also means that you won’t be able to see other people’s Instagram activity status in places like the direct message conversation list, so keep that in mind. Retrace your steps and switch Show activity status back to on to go back to normal.

There’s not much you can do on Instagram without logging in, so opening your account in an incognito browser window won’t prevent the platform from tracking what you’re seeing. But if you use one to open direct links to profile pictures and individual posts, your browsing will stay private. 

Clean your viewing history on video streaming apps

Unfortunately, no video streaming service offers an incognito mode, as profiles are only meant for individual use. However, you can edit your viewing history and remove items if necessary. 

On Netflix on the web click your profile picture (top right), then Account. Choose your profile, open Profile & Parental Controls, and then Viewing Activity. Click the hide button (on the right) to remove something from your record—you can hide individual episodes or entire shows. If you want to absolutely hide your viewing history, just select Hide all. Whatever items you remove won’t show up as recently viewed or affect your future recommendations.

[Related: The government won’t protect your internet privacy, so here’s how to do it yourself]

If you’re using Hulu on the web, scroll down the Home page to find the Continue watching section and click View all. You’ll see a tiled view of all the shows and movies you’ve played on the platform—click the three-dot menu next to an item you want out of your viewing history and choose Remove. When it comes to shows, you won’t be able to remove specific episodes, and if you’ve watched every episode of a series, it won’t appear on the list because Hulu doesn’t save a history of the movies and shows you’ve completed. 

Other video streaming apps have similar options if you delve into your viewing history in the settings. They all support profiles, so your viewing record doesn’t have to get mixed up with the habits or preferences of the rest of your family or the people you share a place with.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2021.

The post How to go incognito on these 6 popular apps appeared first on Popular Science.

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

Coordinating locations with friends and family can be a real hassle. “I’m by a big tree,” “I’m standing on the corner,” and “My car broke down but there are no signs so just drive along I-95 for a while” simply aren’t helpful when there are multiple corners, dozens of trees, and 1,908 miles of Interstate 95.

It’s a lot easier if you use an app that lets you share your location safely and privately—without broadcasting it to the world. Apple has put tools inside iOS for sharing your location from an iPhone, and Google has done the same in Google Maps, but there are also several third-party apps that can do the job well.

At first it might seem unsettling to let other people know exactly where you are, but you’re in full control of who has this information and how long they have it for—and the next time you’re trying to meet up with someone, this can save you a whole lot of time and a whole lot of messages.

Glympse

Among the apps specifically built for location sharing, Glympse is one of the most comprehensive and competent. It’s great for quick, customized location sharing with people who might not all be using the same brand of phone or the same apps, and there are mapping tools inside the app that will help you find friends and family.

You can send location shares—called, appropriately enough, glympses—over email, text, or through other apps as well as Glympse. If the recipient is on a computer, or using a phone without Glympse, the glympse shows up in that person’s web browser instead, and only for the allotted time. You don’t even need a Glympse account to share your location.

You get full control over who you share your location with and for how long, and you can set up private groups where everyone can see where everyone else is. Another handy feature is the option to add public tags to your glympses: They work a bit like social media hashtags, and you can use them to let the wider world know that you’re at a music festival or a sports event.

Glympse is free for Android and iOS.

Life360

Life360 is aimed specifically at families, so you can keep tabs on where your kids are and make sure they’re safe. You can get alerts when they turn up at home or school, see where they are on a map, and even get alerts if they may have been involved in a crash on the road. With Tile tracker support, you can track your possessions in the app too.

The map view is the center of the Life360 app. It lets you check up on where family members are in real time, and for peace of mind there’s an SOS feature that lets anyone discreetly and quietly send an alert to their family. If your kids want a bit more privacy, they can share their general location rather than a precise spot on the map.

[Related: These smartphone settings could save your life]

You and your family can use Life360 free of charge, but you’ll get access to more features if you sign up for one of the premium accounts, which start at $15 a month. Paying for the service means 30 days rather than two days of location history, alerts for an unlimited number of locations instead of just two, and a road crash detection feature.

Life360 is free for Android and iOS, with a premium version starting at $15.

Messaging apps

Beyond standalone apps dedicated to location sharing, you’ll also find the feature built into several messaging and social media apps. If you want to temporarily share your location with a specific group of people—like when you’re on a family vacation—you might find that these apps are a better fit for you.

How to share your location on WhatsApp

In WhatsApp, tap the paperclip icon at the bottom of any one-to-one conversation or group chat, then choose Location. You can choose between sending a single message showing where you currently are, or broadcasting your live location in real time for 15 minutes, an hour, or eight hours (with the option to cancel the sharing at any time).

It’s perfect for quick and easy location sharing that you don’t want to go on indefinitely, especially as you probably already have the necessary group conversations set up inside the app for your friends, family, colleagues, and special events. Don’t worry: Your location will stay private within these group chats, or within the one-to-one conversation you’ve selected.

WhatsApp is free for Android and iOS.

How to use Snapchat’s location settings

Snapchat has a feature called Snap Map, which you can use to let your friends know where you are. No one who isn’t your friend will be able to see your location, and you can limit it to certain friends if necessary. The Snap Map will also show you public snaps posted to the Snapchat network—usually showing off a particular place or event to the world at large.

Tap the map pin (bottom left) on Snapchat’s camera screen to find the map and see where your friends are. Touch the cog icon (top right), and you can choose which friends can see where you are, or turn on ghost mode to temporarily hide your location. Your location only updates when Snapchat is open, and is removed from the map after 24 hours.

[Related: Make a Memoji that actually looks like you]

On this same screen, there’s also a Share live option: This grants specific friends the privilege of seeing where you are in real time, and you can enable it for one hour, eight hours, or until you turn it off. It’s a useful extra layer of location sharing you can enable for the people you trust the most, like your partner or your kids.

Snapchat is free or $4 a month for Android and iOS.

Share your location in Signal

The primary reason to get yourself and your friends on Signal is the security and privacy it offers: There’s end-to-end encryption, the option to use disappearing messages, and (perhaps most importantly) it’s run by a developer that isn’t interested in advertising to you or trying to keep you locked inside its own ecosystem.

While it’s not worth switching to Signal for its location-sharing features alone, it does have them, so you won’t miss out on being able to let other people know where you are at specific times. Like everything else in Signal, location sharing is handled simply and securely, and can be done within one-to-one conversations or inside group chats.

At the bottom of the relevant conversation, tap the plus button in the bottom right corner, then choose Location from the menu that pops up. You’ll then be able to confirm where you are before sharing your location—it’s shared in a one-off message with the people inside the selected chat, so your location won’t be updated in real time.

Signal is free for Android and iOS.

The post 5 location-sharing apps that aren’t run by Apple or Google appeared first on Popular Science.

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Your Samsung Galaxy phone’s lock screen is likely to be the first one you see in the morning and the last one you see at night. This is why it’s so important to set it up exactly how you want to.

Galaxy handsets come with a good selection of options and features to help you customize your lock screen, whether you want to set a new backdrop, make the clock a lot bigger, or add extra widgets for easier access to your apps.

Lock screen wallpaper and themes

Let’s start with the wallpaper. You can set separate background images for your home screens and lock screen—just press and hold on a blank part of a home screen and choose Wallpaper and style on the emerging menu.

Tap Change wallpapers to pick a new image—you can pick from photos featured by Samsung and pictures in your phone’s gallery. When you select the one you want,  you then get to choose whether you want to apply it to your lock screen, home screen, or both. Don’t worry—before you fully commit to your selection, you’ll see previews of how the backdrop will look.

[Related: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 review: Powerful vibes]

Back on the Wallpaper and style screen, tap Color palette to choose a color scheme for your phone’s entire interface. You can select your favorite from a list of basic hues, or pick a combination of colors based on the wallpaper you picked. Again, you’ll get a preview of how everything will look, so you can try as many as you want until you find one you like.

Instead of choosing a picture and a color scheme separately, you can go with a theme, which is a bundle of items including a wallpaper, a color scheme, and a particular icon and font style, that you can apply with a single tap. Press and hold on a blank part of a home screen, and select Themes to see your options. You’ll find free themes provided by Samsung, alongside others from third-parties, which you may or may not have to pay for. If you’re dealing with a paid theme, you’ll see the price listed next to it.

If you don’t want the trouble of changing the wallpaper regularly yourself, have your phone do it for you. After tapping Wallpaper and style and Change wallpaper, scroll down to Dynamic Lock screen. From here you can pick a collection of images (landscapes and plants, for example), and the device will automatically cycle between them every couple of weeks.

Changing lock screen elements

That’s the wallpaper and colors taken care of, but you can also edit the lock screen widgets and other elements on the display. From Settings, tap Lock screen and the next page will let you control how you unlock your phone and, if your handset supports the feature, activate the always-on display. There’s also a Roaming clock toggle switch—turn it on to see the local time at your location and at home, if you happen to be traveling in a different time zone.

Tap the Lock screen graphic and you’ll be able to change the style and size of the lock screen time and date widget. From this menu you’ll also be able to tweak the way your phone displays notification icons—as small buttons or larger bubbles, for example. Just tap on the element you want to change and the relevant options will appear.

You can also select Contact information to add your contact details to the lock screen, which can come in handy if you lose your handset and someone else picks it up, or if you’re ever involved in an emergency and someone needs to learn your identity. Galaxy phones also have shortcuts in the lower left and right corners of the lock screen, which you can easily change by tapping on the icons. You can use these shortcuts to launch utilities and apps like the camera, phone app, flashlight, voice recorder, or any other app of your choice. Tap Done when you’re finished.

[Related: Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro earbuds review: Riding high (fidelity)]

Back on the previous Lock screen page from Settings, tap the Widgets graphic and you’ll be able to pick which widgets show up when your phone is locked. There are a few to pick from, covering your upcoming schedule, any set alarms, the weather, and any music currently playing. Tap on Reorder at the top to change the order of the widget list.

There’s one final lock screen customization you might want to make: If you choose Notifications and then Lock screen notifications from Settings, you can set whether your phone displays notification content (like the previews of incoming messages) when your device is unlocked. If you don’t want anyone seeing something private when they glance at your locked phone, choose Hide content.

The post All the cool ways you can customize your Samsung Galaxy lock screen appeared first on Popular Science.

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You spend a lot of time looking at the lock screen of your Pixel phone—checking the clock, seeing if people have replied to your messages, and so on—so you’ll want to get it set up in the best way to suit you.

In fact, you might not have realized how many different ways you can customize the Pixel’s lock screen, from the size and color of the clock, to the type of notifications that appear before you unlock your handset.

Change your wallpaper and fine-tune your colors

The most basic way to customize the Pixel’s lock screen is by slapping on a new wallpaper, and you can set a lock screen backdrop that’s different from the one you have on your home screens.

To start, press and hold on a blank part of the home screen, then choose Wallpaper and style and Change wallpaper. You’ve got plenty of options here: You can dive into your own photo gallery, pick an image from one of the wallpaper collections Google has put together, or tap Emoji workshop to create a picture using emojis.

When you’ve selected an image, you’ll be taken to a preview screen—tap Lock screen to see how it looks when your phone is locked. If you’re happy, select Set wallpaper, then Lock screen (to set it for the lock screen only) or Home and lock screens (to set it across Android entirely).

Go back to the Wallpaper and style screen and you’ll see you can pick between Wallpaper colors and Basic colors for the operating system: Choose the latter to have the colors of Android menus and icons follow the color scheme of your new wallpaper. This will also affect the clock and widgets on the lock screen.

Adjust the at-a-glance widget

Google puts a handy at-a-glance widget on both the lock and home screens, giving you timely information such as the current weather forecast and appointments you’ve got coming up on your calendar.

To edit what this widget shows, tap and hold on it on the home screen, then choose Customize, and tap the cog icon next to At a Glance. You’ll see a long list of toggle switches for controlling content in the widget (and more behind See more features), including Fitness, Bedtime, Parcel delivery, and Commute.

On this same screen, there are also options for allowing apps you’ve got installed (such as weather apps) to send information to the widget on the home and lock screens, and to hide sensitive content from the lock screen widget—this is handy if you think other people might be looking at your phone while it’s locked.

[Related: Syncing Google and Apple calendars is less annoying now]

Google doesn’t provide a definitive list of what “sensitive content” actually is, but one area where we’ve seen this setting make a difference is with Google Calendar appointments. If you’re hiding sensitive content, these won’t appear on the lock screen, so other people won’t be able to see that job interview or doctor’s appointment you’ve got coming up.

Other Pixel customization settings

You can customize what appears on the lock screen in a few other ways by opening up Settings and tapping Display, followed by Lock screen. The Privacy option lets you show or hide sensitive content in notifications, as they come in—again, Google doesn’t say what “sensitive” means, but it does include the first line of incoming messages and emails.

Another option is to tap Add text on lock screen to do just that. The most common use of this feature is to put your name and perhaps some contact details (like an email address) on the lock screen in case someone finds your phone and needs to return it to you—though you’re free to add any kind of message you like.

Then there’s a series of toggle switches for showing or hiding various elements, including the Now Playing widget that automatically identifies songs that are playing nearby. And if you want a smaller clock that doesn’t take up the whole lock screen, turn off Double-line clock.

The last few options let you choose whether or not the lock screen “wakes up” to show information when you tap the display, pick up your phone, and notifications arrive. You can also turn off Always show time and info to prevent anything from appearing on screen while your phone is sleeping, which should help improve battery life.

The post How to set up the wallpapers and widgets that will make your Pixel more fun appeared first on Popular Science.

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

If you own a Google Pixel phone, you’ve now got some fun features to play around with. The latest Pixel drop update added a couple of new options for creating wallpapers on your device, giving you added flexibility when it comes to picking a backdrop.

The first one is cinematic wallpapers, which allows you to add a dynamic, 3D-style effect to any image you use on your lock screen. The second one is the ability to create emoji wallpapers, where you can use any emoji as the basis of your smartphone’s creation and generate a customized backdrop. Both features will give your device a personal touch and are incredibly fun to play around with.

All of the existing wallpaper options on the Pixel remain in place, so you can still pick a regular picture for your home screen or one of Google’s moving images or photos, if you want.

How to make cinematic wallpapers on a Pixel

To get into the wallpaper editor on your Pixel, tap and hold on a blank area of one of your phone’s home screens, then choose Wallpaper and style and Change wallpaper. Tap My photos, then select the image you want to use from your gallery. It can be a photo you took with your camera or a file stored anywhere else on the phone, like a picture you received or downloaded from the web.

When it comes to choosing the best image to turn into a cinematic wallpaper, there aren’t any restrictions, but some photos will work better than others. We found the best results come from images with clear foreground subjects—think kids, pets, or lamps. 

With your image open, tap the icon in the top right corner showing three sparks, and turn on the toggle switch that’s labeled Create Cinematic wallpaper. After a few seconds where Google’s AI will identify the foreground from the background to produce an effect where the two seem more separated, your new wallpaper will be ready to use. Tap Set wallpaper, and choose whether you want to apply it only to your home screens, or your home screens and lock screen.

[Related: Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Viva la (hardware) evolution]

Your Pixel will apply that cinematic effect as you lock and unlock the device, as well as when you switch between the home screens and your apps, swipe through home screens, and tilt your phone. Spend some time playing around with different types of images and you’ll get a better idea of how the feature works.

Keep in mind that animated backdrops usually consume more battery than regular, static wallpapers. It shouldn’t be a big problem, but if you’re regularly struggling to extend your phone’s battery life, you may want to think twice about using a cinematic wallpaper. 

How to make emoji wallpapers on the Google Pixel

To create an emoji wallpaper, tap and hold on a blank area of a home screen, then pick Wallpaper and style and Change wallpaper. This time, select Emoji workshop, and you’ll be ready to start playing around with the emojis of your choice. The system will already have selected some for you, but you can tap Edit emoji in the bottom right corner of your screen to make your own picks.

You can create a wallpaper from a single emoji, or from as many as 14. If you’re stuck for inspiration, use the Randomize button, which will pick some emojis for you. From what we can tell, the software tries to pick related emojis, but it doesn’t always get it right.

There are two other tabs here: Open Patterns to pick how you want your emojis arranged as they repeat across the screen, and the size of the emojis. Open Colors to choose the color scheme for your new emoji-based backdrop. All of these settings can be jumbled up again with a tap on Randomize.

When you’ve got something you like, tap the checkmark icon in the top right corner, and then choose Set wallpaper. You’ll notice your Pixel applies a few animation effects to the emoji wallpaper, as you swipe between home screens and lock and unlock your device. Note that as you create new emoji wallpapers, your old ones will be saved so you can go to the Emoji workshop screen to get them back.

Other wallpapers

If this is the first time you’ve experimented with the wallpaper settings on your Pixel phone, you might be wondering about all the other options that appear when you choose Wallpaper and style and Change wallpaper from the home screen.

The My photos option is fairly straightforward, enabling you to pick an image stored on your phone. You’ll also see curated collections of images provided by Google, covering categories such as Art, Landscapes, and Textures. The Live bloom and Living universe selections are a bit more interesting, as they come with added motion effects, like short video clips.

[Related: 7 tips and tricks to master your Google Pixel Tablet]

Head into Community lens to see images from other users that have been picked out by Google’s team. They cover some pretty dramatic landscape and nature shots, and can be useful if you’re not keen on using any of your own snaps (or generating a custom wallpaper using emoji).

Once you’ve set your wallpaper, back on the Wallpaper and style screen you’ll see a Wallpaper colors setting: Enable this if you want the interface colors on your Pixel (for lock screen items, menus, and other areas) to match the color scheme of the current wallpaper.

The post Emoji wallpapers and cinematic backdrops can make your Pixel phone as fun as you are appeared first on Popular Science.

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You can’t deny the thrill of unboxing a brand new gadget, but sticking to factory-fresh tech every time isn’t cheap. Buying second-hand electronics, on the other hand, can save you a significant amount of cash and is a lot kinder to the environment.

Whether you’re buying used phones or used laptops, you may have valid concerns about the quality and lifespan of your purchase. Fortunately, some common sense precautions can ensure that your previously owned gadgets serve you well for years to come.

No matter what kind of tech you’re in the market for, the rules of engagement are more or less the same when it comes to minimizing the risk of ending up with a dud. Read on to familiarize yourself with them and start enjoying big savings.

Check the seller

What vendor you buy from will depend on how comfortable you are balancing risk and reward. Used gadget sales backed by major companies are a safer bet. Apple’s refurbished program, for example, guarantees brand-new batteries, bundled accessories, and the standard Apple one-year warranty.  But this peace of mind comes at a price, as buying second-hand tech from a big retailer is likely to be more expensive than buying from a random stranger on eBay.

[Related: How to sell your unwanted gadgets for cash]

If you want to go with a name you know, you’ve got quite a few options, including Decluttr, Amazon, and Best Buy. You can also check in with your favorite electronics store or manufacturer website to see what’s available.

Buying second-hand tech from an individual or a smaller company will likely mean cheaper prices and more choices, but less warranties and protections. If you’re happy with that, you can check out sites such as eBay, Swappa, and Facebook Marketplace. All these sites allow you to perform due diligence on the person you’re buying from to find clues of their trustworthiness: you can look at their selling history, the amount of information they give about themselves, and how old their account is.

A useful way of vetting individual sellers is to ask questions about the item you’re interested in. You won’t only learn more about what you’re buying, but how quickly the vendor gets back to you and how they respond should tell you something about them as well. The good news is that the majority of sellers out there aren’t wanting to rip you off: They just want to make some money on older tech.

No matter where you buy from, always check the returns policy and warranty information. Walmart Restored, for example, offers a one-year warranty or 90-day free returns on all purchases. Meanwhile, if you’re buying used on Amazon, you also get a 90-day guarantee on everything.

If you’re buying from individuals, check the listing carefully, and when in doubt, just ask questions—again, this is a good way of weighing up who you’re dealing with. See if they’re able to provide the original receipt and proof of purchase, as the official warranty might still apply. 

Check the item

As well as checking the seller carefully, you’ll need to check the product. Start by taking a detailed look at the images provided by the vendor, and don’t be shy about asking for more if you need them. Then, go over the item description meticulously to look for any mention of damage or faults, which should be revealed up front. In particular, you want to know when the gadget was originally purchased and get a good idea of how much it’s been used and what condition it’s in now.

Some checks will be specific to the device you’re interested in. When buying used iPhones, for example, it’s worth asking the seller to check the battery health (under Battery in the iOS Settings). If you’re buying a used video graphics card, ask to see some benchmarks to check on performance, maybe from 3DMark or a game you’re keen on. The more detail you can get, the better.

It’s also worth double-checking what the item comes with in terms of bundled accessories like chargers and headphones. Sellers can often forget to mention this and it can make a difference when comparing or negotiating prices. When buying used tablets, for example, look for mentions of included cases, screen protectors, or keyboard accessories, and see if they’re the official ones or third-party replacements.

Something else to check for is whether or not the gadget comes in its original packaging. This is usually the case with refurbished items, but not so much when you’re dealing with individual sellers. If the original box and accessories are included, it’s more likely that you’re dealing with a genuine product that’s been obtained through legal means—but it’s no guarantee.

[Related: How to set the right price when selling your old tech]

The price of a second-hand gadget is another indication of whether you should be completing this deal. Be wary of anything being sold too cheaply, or that the buyer is trying to get rid of in a rush. Some sites let you search through completed sales on the platform to give you an idea of what an item should be fetching—on eBay, type in the name and details of the product on the search bar and check Sold items in the left-hand pane.

When you find a deal you’re happy with, make sure you follow whatever rules and methods set by the site you’re using. In the case of eBay, for instance, don’t arrange payment or postage outside of the systems the platform has put in place. You’ll actually get warnings if you try swapping email addresses, for example, because if you’re communicating outside of the site, eBay won’t be able to see the messages you’ve sent and received in the event of a dispute, voiding any kind of buyer protection they might have offered.

The post Pro tips for buying used tech without getting scammed appeared first on Popular Science.

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You probably know Spotify as a music streaming service, but you may not know exactly how robust its audiobook offerings are. At the time of writing, you can listen to more than 350,000 titles, and you can access them through the Spotify app in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

Audiobooks have been integrated pretty neatly into the Spotify user interface, so you can search for titles, add them to your library, and play audiobooks just as you would with podcasts and songs. You don’t have to dig deep to find audiobooks on Spotify, and getting started is straightforward.

How to find and buy audiobooks on Spotify

Depending on the whims of the Spotify algorithm, you may see audiobooks recommended to you as soon as you open up the app. You should also see an Audiobooks link, alongside Music and Podcasts & Shows, up at the top of the Home tab in the mobile app.

Follow any of these audiobook-related links to find titles, or open up the Search tab. Before you type anything into the search box, you should see an Audiobooks thumbnail underneath that will take you to the audiobook catalog. As with music, you’ll get a variety of recommendations, split into categories.

These categories change all the time, but you might see free or new audiobooks highlighted, or books that have been developed into movies, for example. Tap or click on any title to see information about it, including how much it costs, what its running time is, the average star rating left by other users, and who narrates it. In some cases, there will be a sample audio clip you can listen to.

[Related: 7 nifty Audible tips for your audiobook needs]

From the browsing we’ve done, Spotify’s audiobook pricing seems to range from completely free to up to $50 or so. Tap or click Get on a free audiobook to add it to your library, or Buy on a paid-for audiobook. Note that payments are all managed through the web, so if you’re using the mobile or desktop app, you’ll be redirected to a website.

By default, Spotify will suggest that you pay for audiobooks using a payment method you’ve used before, or one associated with your subscription, but you can change this if required. Audiobooks work independently from Spotify Premium subscriptions, too—you don’t need to be a subscriber to buy audiobooks, and if you are a subscriber you won’t get any titles bundled in with your monthly fee.

How to listen to audiobooks in Spotify

After you’ve purchased an audiobook on Spotify, you’ll find it in your library. On the desktop and the web, click the Audiobooks link at the top of the left-hand navigation pane, and on mobile tap Your Library, then Audiobooks. Click or tap Recents at the top to sort the audiobooks by the date they were added, the date they were published, author, or in alphabetical order.

You can actually add audiobooks to this list before buying them, too. On audiobook listing pages, you’ll see a plus symbol—click this to add the title to your library. You won’t be able to listen to it until you’ve purchased it, but it’s a handy way to shortlist audiobooks that you’re interested in.

Once you’ve selected an audiobook from your library, tap or click the play button to get it started. On the playback interface, you’ll see the same play/pause and skip buttons as you do with music—though the skip buttons let you jump between audiobook chapters, rather than between tracks on a playlist. The other controls match the controls for podcasts: You can skip forward or backward 15 seconds, and change the playback speed (from 0.5x to 3.5x).

[Related: Where to find new Spotify playlists when you don’t want to make your own]

It’s impossible to add audiobooks to playlists, but you can add them to the current queue, albeit in a rather clumsy way: You have to click the three dots next to an individual audiobook chapter (desktop and web) or tap and hold on a chapter (mobile) to find the Add to queue option. There’s no way to add entire audiobooks to the queue, which seems a bit of an oversight on Spotify’s part.

You can download audiobooks for offline listening whether you pay for Spotify or not—just tap or click on the downward arrow on the audiobook page. On mobile, you can also pin audiobooks to the top of the list in the Your Library tab. To do this, tap and hold on the audiobook you want to pin, then choose Pin audiobook from the menu that pops up.

The post How to listen to Spotify’s huge library of audiobooks appeared first on Popular Science.

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

Think back to how you felt turning on your phone for the first time. That sparkling, uncluttered interface, speedy performance, and plenty of possibilities. You can actually feel that again whenever you like by completing a full factory reset of your iPhone or Android.

Resetting a phone is about more than just getting a fresh start, though: It can fix persistent bugs, get rid of unwanted apps and dangerous malware, and free up storage space on your device.

And if you’re worried about losing everything, don’t be. As long as you take some time to consider the potential pitfalls and back up your phone beforehand, you can reset your phone without losing any data. Let us guide you.

Before you reset your phone, make a plan

Resetting a phone wipes it clean and takes you back to the setup stage, so you’ll need to make sure you’ve backed up all your important data first. We’ve covered this in plenty of depth elsewhere, but it’s worth dropping some quick pointers here.

Mostly, backups are common sense: Think about what you have on your phone and make sure you have copies of everything you want to save on another device, on a disk drive, or in the cloud before you hit that reset button.

A warning if you use two-factor authentication

If you use your phone to prove your identity for accounts with two-factor authentication (2FA), know that this data might disappear when you reset it. You’ll need to make absolutely sure you can still get into your online accounts without 2FA, albeit temporarily.

What this means in practice will depend on your 2FA-enabled accounts and the 2FA method you’re using for each one. Do some diligent research and you should have nothing to worry about. Some accounts will give you backup codes to use if 2FA fails, so if you get one, make sure it’s in a safe, accessible place. For other accounts, it might be easier to just disable 2FA until you’re all set up on your phone again.

Apple and Google both let you use SMS codes as a backup to a 2FA authenticator app and verification code, so that’s an option (assuming you are keeping your SIM after you reset your phone). Beyond that, other authentication apps let you back up your logins to the cloud, which might work best for you, or you could transfer your authenticator app and its codes to another phone or tablet if you have one spare.

[Related: How to do two-factor authentication like a pro]

Once you’ve decided to reset your phone, you should also spend a few days noting exactly how you use it and how easily you’ll be able to get everything back the way you like it. Most software developers know phones get reset, lost, or stolen on a regular basis, so they should have planned for that, but it’s best to make sure.

Bear in mind, too, that backing up your phone can take time, depending on the speed of your connection.

How to reset an Android phone

Google has always developed its software with the cloud in mind, and everything from Gmail to Google Photos lives mostly online. However, you should still make sure that everything you need is in the cloud and that you don’t need anything stored on your phone (such as files downloaded from the web).

It’s also worth double-checking that your password manager is syncing all of your credentials from the apps on your phone—go to Settings, Passwords & accounts, and make sure the toggle next to Automatically sync app data is on. With that done, all you’ll need to remember is the username and password for your Google account. Don’t worry about having to pay for apps you already own—the Play Store will recognize you once you’ve signed into your Google account and will know what you’ve previously purchased.

You’ll find Android’s own backup process under System and Backup in Settings. You’ll then see a list of the items you’ll be backing up, which should include data such as contacts, text messages, and certain device settings (including WiFi passwords). You can tap on some of them (like Photos and videos or Google account data) to get more details and customize what you want to add to or remove from your backup. If you have any doubts about leaving information behind, we recommend reading through the official Google support document for resetting Pixel phones.

When you’re ready to reset your phone, make sure it’s plugged in and charging so the process doesn’t get interrupted. Open Settings, then choose System, Reset options, and Erase all data (factory reset). Android will then show you an overview of the data you’re about to wipe. Tap Erase all data, enter the lock screen PIN code, and tap Erase all data again to start the reset process. Once the reset is complete, you’ll find yourself back at the Android setup process.

How to reset an iPhone

Traditionally, Apple hasn’t been quite as savvy as Google when it comes to constantly syncing data to the cloud, but iCloud has improved in recent years. It can now store a substantial amount of information for you (from contacts to calendars) while you’re busy resetting your phone. When it comes time to reinstall apps, Apple’s App Store will remember what you’ve paid for, so you won’t need to purchase them again.

As for backups, iOS has a comprehensive backup option, which uses either a computer or iCloud. If you open Settings, tap your Apple ID at the top, and then pick iCloud, you can see the apps sending data to the web. You can also choose iCloud Backup from this list to make sure a backup occurred right before you decided to reset your phone.

[Related: The best ways to back up all your photos to the cloud]

Before you proceed, you should also read Apple’s thorough support document on resetting iPhones, just to ensure you’ve done everything necessary. That document also covers how to back up your phone if you need extra help with that (iOS will actually prompt you to create a backup when you reset it, if you haven’t run one in a while).

Finally, get your phone plugged in and charging to make sure the reset isn’t interrupted, then open Settings and pick General, Transfer or Reset iPhone, and choose whether you want to Reset the device or Erase All Content and Settings. You’ll be prompted to enter the passcode for your phone and possibly your Apple ID password to confirm your choice (this is a good way to ensure you remember your Apple ID password, as you’ll need it to sign in again). After the reset, your iPhone will reboot to the setup screen.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2021.

The post How to reset your phone without losing everything appeared first on Popular Science.

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Canva is a graphic design software package available on the web, desktop and mobile, and it can help you make just about anything: from websites, documents, and whiteboards, to presentations, social media posts, posters, and newsletters. You can use the platform for free, but if you pay $15 a month, you’ll have access to more templates and stock content, and more advanced tools. 

Whatever you use Canva for, some tips will help you find more to explore. We’ll focus on the web interface, but you can find the same or similar features in the mobile and desktop apps too.

1. Switch the style up

In the toolbar pane on the left, click Design and then Styles to change up the look of your Canva creation: You’ll have a range of color schemes and font sets to pick from, organized into categories like Modern and Professional.

[Related: 5 ways to get started with Freeform, Apple’s app for creative thinkers]

Click on any style to apply it and see how it looks. All of the text and images you’ve put in place won’t change, but this feature is a quick and easy way to freshen up your layout without effort—especially if you’re stuck for inspiration.

2. Animate design elements

If whatever you’re working on is going to be viewed on a screen rather than in physical, printed form, you can take advantage of animations. Select any item or group of items in your design, and click Animate at the top to see your options. Pro subscribers will be able to do more, and get the ability to adjust the speed and direction of the animation.

Choose an animation style to see a preview.  When used well, adding animations to your presentation or website can really catch the eye, but be wary of overdoing them.

3. Leave comments for yourself (or others)

Right-click on any element on the page, and choose  Comment to attach text to different parts of your design, together with emojis and stickers. It’s a handy way of leaving reminders or notes to yourself.

Canva’s commenting feature is also useful when you’re collaborating with other people or sharing your designs. Everyone with access to the file will be able to access the comments, and you can @ mention other users to get their attention—they’ll get a notification telling them you’ve assigned them a task or have a comment for them they cannot miss.

4. Get everything positioned correctly

Having misaligned design elements can really hurt the visual aesthetic of your Canva creation, but there are tools available to make sure that doesn’t happen. To begin with, you can right-click on any item and choose Align to page to set its location in relation to the digital canvas as a whole.

There’s also a Position button in the toolbar at the top: Click it to set an element’s place down to the exact pixel. If you have multiple items selected (Shift+Click to select one by one or drag over them all using the mouse) you’ll also be able to quickly position them in relation to each other.

5. Pick out a color from anywhere

Select an element in your canvas to pick a color for it—just click the color swatch on the left of the toolbar. You’ll have a wide range of colors to choose from, but if you click the multicolored button with a + (plus) sign on it, you’ll access the color picker tool—it’s the one with a little pipette icon on it.

Use this feature to choose a color from anywhere on the design—you’ll even get a little zoomed-in grid to help you be as precise as possible. In fact, you can pick up a color from anywhere on your computer screen, so you can sample colors from websites or images you’ve got open in other tabs or have saved to your local hard drive without importing them to Canva.

6. Copy styles over

If you’re really happy with a font size and color combo,  or the border and tint you gave to an image, Canva lets you automatically copy this style over to other elements too.

[Related: Best presentation software of 2023]

Click the item whose style you want to take, then click the copy style button on the toolbar at the top: It looks like a paint roller. Finish by selecting another item on the page, and Canva will apply the style to it.

7. Apply colors from an image

Sometimes the most difficult part of creating a design is figuring out a combination of colors to use. But to make things easier, Canva lets you use one of your images as a foundation to develop your own color palette.

Just right-click on an image, choose Apply colors to page, and the platform will apply the scheme of the photo to the other items in your design. It’s a really good way of making sure everything looks cohesive and fits together visually.

The post 7 tips to unleash your creativity on Canva appeared first on Popular Science.

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Since Apple’s AirTags launched in 2021, they’ve allowed people to keep track of their bags, wallets, cameras, suitcases, and whatever else they can attach to. You can see their locations on a map on trusted phones, tablets, and laptops, and even get alerts when the button-shaped device goes out of range.

As useful as these gadgets are, there are also valid concerns about people using them for the unauthorized tracking of items and even other people. This is why Apple developed anti-stalking tech you can use to detect the close proximity of AirTags that don’t belong to you. 

The good news is that the software is also available to Android users, which means you can protect yourself even if you don’t own Apple hardware.

Tracking your own AirTags

Right now, you’ll only be able to set up a new AirTag using an iPhone or an iPad. Once you take the device out of the package, pull out the tab next to the battery to activate it. Your Apple phone or tablet should automatically notice it’s nearby: Tap on the Connect message that appears on screen to configure the AirTag.

[Related: How to track down your lost devices]

You can then follow your AirTags in the Find My app on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The options are the same no matter what device you’re using to track it: You can get your AirTag to make a sound, locate it if it’s nearby, and turn notifications on and off for when you leave it behind somewhere.

There’s also a lost mode option that you can enable if a particular AirTag isn’t showing up on the map. This feature enlists the help of hundreds of millions of Apple devices owned by other people—in an encrypted, anonymous way, according to the company—to see if the tiny gadget and whatever it’s attached to can be found. 

If someone should come close enough to your AirTag to identify it, you’ll both get an alert. On your end, you’ll get a notification saying your AirTag has been found, and its location will be updated in the Find My app. Whoever found your gadget will get a notification with your contact information (phone number and email) and a brief message, if you added one.

How to detect if an AirTag is tracking you

You don’t have to look far to find reports of AirTags being used to keep tabs on people without permission—despite this being a criminal offense. To counter this, Apple has introduced a variety of anti-stalking measures.

Unless you’ve changed certain device settings, an iPhone or iPad will alert you by default if an AirTag you don’t own is moving with you over time. To make sure these options are enabled, go to Settings and head to Privacy & Security and Location Services: Location Services should be on, and under System Services, Find My iPhone and Significant Locations should be on. You also need to make sure you’re not in airplane mode and Bluetooth is on. Finally, head to the Find My app, open the Me tab, and make sure Tracking Notifications are turned on.

 If an unknown AirTag is tracking you, you’ll see an alert to this effect on your device, and you’ll be able to check a trail of red dots on the Find My app that shows how far the gadget has moved with you.

The next step finding out where the AirTag is. You can tap Play Sound in the Find My app to have the tracker emit a noise, which might help you figure out its location. If you have an iPhone 11 or newer, your device is equipped with ultra-wideband (UWB) tech, so you can also tap Find Nearby to get detailed directions to where the AirTag is.

[Related: How to find a lost phone]

Google has built a similar anti-stalking feature into Android. From Settings, choose Safety and emergency, and then Unknown tracker alerts. You can enable or disable automatic scanning, as well as run a manual scan to see if an unknown AirTag has been traveling along with you. As with iPhones, you’ll be able to have the tracker make a sound or see how long it’s been with you on a map.

Additionally, an AirTag that’s been separated from its owner and on the move will occasionally emit a sound on its own. Hold any NFC-enabled device (this includes most modern phones) up to the AirTag to see details about it. The information on screen will show you contact information for the AirTag (if the owner has provided it) and put the tracker in lost mode. You’ll also see instructions for disabling the AirTag, which basically entails removing its battery. 

It’s up to you whether you report the missing AirTag and reunite it with its owner, or disable it completely. If it’s attached to someone else’s bag, chances are it’s genuinely been lost and needs to be returned, whereas if it’s been dropped into your own bag it’s much more likely someone is trying to keep tabs on your location without your knowledge. Whatever you choose to do, make staying safe your number one priority.

The post How to track your AirTags—and protect yourself when they’re not yours appeared first on Popular Science.

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There are two settings panels in Google Chrome for desktop: One appears when you choose Settings from the application menu, and one pops up when you type chrome://flags into the address bar and hit Enter.

These Chrome flags are more experimental settings aimed at power users, but anyone can use of them. They let you control the appearance of the browser, tweak performance, speed up downloading, and plenty more.

To find the ones you’re interested in, use the search box at the top of the flags list, and enable or disable them using the drop-down menus on the right-hand side. Here, we have some suggestions. 

If you’d rather use Chrome in dark mode all the time, find the #enable-force-dark flag and set it to Enabled. Every site you visit from then on will get the message to show its contents in dark mode, no matter what the rest of your software is doing.

2. See quick previews of open tabs

3. Keep more web pages in the cache

Locate the #back-forward-cache flag, set it to Enabled, and Chrome will keep more pages cached locally on your computer as you make use of the forward and backward buttons in the browser. 

This improves browsing speed on slower or less stable internet connections (if you’re going forward and backward a lot, at least) because pages won’t have to be loaded from the web each time.

4. Speed up downloads

Parallel downloading is where an application requests a download several times, which should speed up transfer times in a lot of cases. If you don’t mind the extra bandwidth this can take up, you can switch on the feature by finding the #enable-parallel-downloading flag and switching it to Enabled.

6. Fill out forms faster

To save you time when filling out forms and making payments on the web, Chrome will keep information such as addresses and credit card details stored for you if you want. By default, it will suggest details as you move through a form, giving you the option to select suggestions as you go.

But if you switch the #how-autofill-type-predictions flag to Enabled, then these suggestions will automatically be put in for you, no typing required. Assuming Chrome identifies the form fields correctly, it should save you time.

7. Get more privacy with incognito mode

Google Chrome’s incognito mode allows you to surf the web at your leisure without leaving any trace in the cache, history, and other browsing information. But when you’re playing a piece of audio or video, your device’s media player gets involved, and it might disclose the content you are consuming to others via your gadget’s lock screen, for example. 

To keep your operating system out of the equation, enable the #hide-incognito-media-metadata flag and ensure your incognito session is actually as private as it can be. 

8. Enable live captions on Chrome

There are several apps out there with their own live caption capabilities, but for everything else you play on Chrome, you can use the ​​#enable-accessibility-live-caption flag. This setting will generate captions for media playing on Google’s browser, even if the website you’re visiting doesn’t support them. 

This feature is only available in the desktop version of Google Chrome, which means you cannot use it on your mobile device. Luckily, if you have an Android phone, you won’t have to worry about that because these gadgets have a built-in live caption feature you can use.

9. Optimize Chrome for touchscreens  

Some laptop models include touchscreens, turning these devices into computer-tablet hybrids. Unfortunately, not all desktop programs and apps, including Google Chrome, are optimized to work on touchscreens. 

[Restore: How to clean a computer screen without destroying it]

This is where the #top-chrome-touch-ui can help. The setting bridges the gap between your shiny new touchscreen laptop and the desktop version of Chrome, making scrolling and navigating more fluid. 

10. Restore old flags—temporarily 

As we mentioned at the beginning of this story, Google Chrome flags are experimental. This doesn’t just mean that they might glitch, but also that they come and go: Some become part of the browser’s built-in features, while others disappear into oblivion. 

The post 10 Google Chrome flags you need to turn on right now appeared first on Popular Science.

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

There are lots of reasons why you might want to learn how to take a screenshot on your computer or phone: proving you finally completed that video game, recording a website layout for safekeeping, or even making a custom wallpaper image from your favorite movie for your desktop. 

Whatever the reason, here’s how to get it done on all the major platforms, whether it’s Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS.

How to take a screenshot on Windows

Figuring out how to take a screenshot on Windows is simple: Just make a simple tap on the PrtSc (print screen) button and a shot of your computer’s desktop will automatically save to the clipboard. You can then paste the screen grab into an image editor and save it in whatever file format you want. Windows doesn’t make any sound or show you any animation when you take a screenshot, so don’t be surprised if it seems like nothing is happening. Just go to your favorite image editor, hit Paste (or Ctrl+V) and you should see your screenshot. 

Depending on your keyboard or the make of your laptop, the PrtSc button may only be accessible while pressing another key like Fn, Shift, or Ctrl. If hitting PrtSc by itself gets you nowhere, try combining it with one of those keys until you get the desired results.  

If your keyboard has one, you can also use the Windows key to take a screenshot: Press Win+PrtScn and the image will be automatically saved into a Screenshots folder within your account’s Pictures location. Meanwhile, Alt+PrtScn will grab only the currently active window and copy it to the clipboard. You may also need an additional key like Fn or Shift for these shortcuts.  

[Related: 10 cool features to use Windows 11]

You can get help from various utilities, too. On Windows 11, locate the new and improved Snipping Tool (remember, it’s called Snip & Sketch on Windows 10): You can find it using the search tool on the taskbar or by hitting Win+Shift+S to summon a simplified version of it. Use the crosshair tool to select an area on your screen—the moment you let go of the left mouse button, Windows will add the screenshot to your clipboard. 

Use the buttons at the top of your screen for more options—the Freeform Snip button (second to the right), allows you to make selections in any shape you want; the Window Snip button adds a screenshot of the current open window to your clipboard; and finally, the Fullscreen Snip takes a picture of your entire screen and saves it to the clipboard. You can also use the dialogue box that pops up in the bottom right corner of your screen to open the image on the Snipping Tool app and edit it. 

Take note: You won’t get some of the Snipping Tool’s features when you summon it with the keyboard shortcut. But if you search for the full version of the app, you’ll be able to take screenshots with three and 10-second delays, as well as annotate pictures, crop them, and even measure them. Alternatively, you can use the Xbox Game Bar app that comes with Windows 11 to capture grabs from games.

If you need even more options and features, consider tools such as Dropbox (free, and it has its own screenshot feature) and Snagit ($63).

How to take a screenshot on macOS

Apple keyboards don’t have a PrtScn key—or, of course, a Windows key—so the shortcuts are completely different. Ctrl+Shift+Cmd+3 copies the current screen contents to the clipboard, but you can also drop the Ctrl part and just do Shift+Cmd+3 to save a PNG file directly to the desktop.

If you just want to capture part of the screen and send it to the clipboard for subsequent pasting, use Ctrl+Shift+Cmd+4. Then drag the mouse to outline an area of the screen or press the spacebar to capture a particular window. As before, if you leave out the Ctrl button, your Mac will save the image to your desktop rather than copy it to the clipboard: that’s as simple as hitting Shift+Cmd+4

[Related: 38 advanced Mac keyboard shortcuts for productivity]

Changing the number key to a 5 will give you more options. Press Shift+Cmd+5 to summon MacOS’s built-in Screenshot tool—a small menu bar that appears at the bottom of your screen. The first button to the left will take a screenshot of your entire screen, including the app dock; choose the second button, and your Mac will take a screenshot of the window you select with your mouse. The third button will show you a selection of the screen you can reposition and resize by using your mouse and the circles on each of the selection’s corners. Hit enter to take the image, which the system will save as a PNG file to your desktop. Hit Esc if you decide to abandon your screenshotting adventure once you’ve launched this tool.  

This tool also offers two more buttons to record the entire screen of your Mac or a particular open app. You can also hit the Options button to choose a new location to save your screenshots, access a timer, and see other options, such as remembering the tool you used the last time. 

As on Windows, there are numerous utilities that will help you in your screen-grabbing endeavors. You have a couple of free options, like Lightshot Screenshot and Dropbox. If you’re willing to part with $10, SnapNDrag can give you a few more options in terms of annotations and customizations.

How to take a screenshot on Android

On the majority of Android devices, you can press the volume down button and the power button together to take a screenshot. The screen should flash, and you’ll see a notification that a grab has been captured. Tap this notification if you want to share or edit the image. 

Pixel phone owners can also take screenshots by tapping the back of their phone twice. To set that nifty feature up, go to Settings, scroll down to System, and choose Gestures. The first item on the list will let you use the double tap as a trigger for multiple actions: toggle on the switch next to Use double tap and choose Take screenshot from the list. 

If you need to find the screenshot afterward, it’ll be in your device’s Photos app. If you have Google Photos, tap on Library in the bottom right corner of your screen, then choose the Screenshots folder under Photos on device. You can also go straight to the Files app, tap on Images, and then choose Screenshots at the top of your screen.

That said, Android devices come with all kinds of manufacturer-made software skins running on them, so the shortcut might be slightly different depending on the make and model of your phone. Still, most manufacturers have adopted the same key combo—on both Samsung Galaxy and HTC phones, for example, just press the power and volume down buttons simultaneously to take a grab. If you want to go hands-free, just engage the Google Assistant and ask it to take a screenshot for you.

How to take a screenshot on an iPhone or iPad

Capturing the screen on iOS and iPadOS devices is just as easy as it is on Android devices. 

On iPhones with Face ID, simultaneously press and release the side button and volume up button. On older models, combine the Home button and the side button (or the Sleep/Wake button). It’s much the same with iPads: Simultaneously press and release either the top button and the volume up button, or the Home button and top button. The screen will flash and the picture will be saved to a dedicated Screenshots album on your iPhone or iPad. Then you can review or share it by opening up Photos.

On iPads, you can also set up a specific gesture to take screenshots even more easily. Go to Settings and on the menu on the left choose General. Under Corner gestures, toggle on the switch next to Allow finger to swipe from corner, and choose Screenshot from either the Left corner swipe or the Right corner swipe options depending on what you want. To take the screenshot, just swipe from your chosen corner, and you’re done. 

[Related: The best screenshot and screen recording apps for your phone]

But wait, there’s more! It’s also possible to get your phone or tablet’s display up on a computer and capture it from there. On macOS, connect your device via USB, then run QuickTime, and choose File and New Movie Recording. If you select iPhone (or iPad) from the drop-down menu by the red record button, the device’s display will appear. To capture the window, use the Ctrl+Shift+Cmd+4, spacebar, and click combination we mentioned in the macOS section above.

On Windows, you can use an AirPlay client such as LonelyScreen or Mirroring360, then broadcast the iPhone or iPad screen to your laptop or desktop using the AirPlay feature built into Apple’s operating system. To do so, swipe down from the top right corner (or up from the bottom of the screen on some devices) to open the Control Center, then tap on Screen Mirroring to get connected.

Got all that? Feel free to use your new skills and take a screenshot of any part of this article you’d like to save for reference. 

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2017.

The post How to take a screenshot on any device (we know you want to) appeared first on Popular Science.

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Using a Windows PC doesn’t mean you can’t make use of Apple’s various apps and services. In recent years, the parent companies of both operating systems have made efforts to get their respective software packages working together, making it easier than it’s ever been.

You won’t have the seamless experience you get with Apple apps and services on macOS, but you have a couple of options to get them working on Windows—and you can choose whichever suits you best.

Use iCloud on the web

Load up the web version of iCloud in your Windows web browser, sign in with your Apple ID, and you’ll have access to a plethora of Apple apps: Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Photos, Drive, Notes, Reminders, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Find My. For some people, this is all the integration they’re going to need, as everything will sync back to the respective apps on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.

[Related: 5 ways to get started with Freeform, Apple’s app for creative thinkers]

Click Customize Home Page to change which widgets show up when you first open the site and click on any of the app links to jump to that app in your browser. For example, choose Photos to browse through everything stored in iCloud Photos. The navigation pane on the left lets you view individual albums, and the icons in the top right let you upload and download images.

There’s a lot of functionality in these web apps, and they’re almost as good as their desktop equivalents on macOS. Everything Apple will stay self-contained inside a browser tab, so it’s a good solution if you want to keep some distance between your Apple apps and everything else on your Windows PC.

Use iCloud for Windows

You can get a tighter integration between operating systems so that your Apple contacts show up in the native MS Outlook, and Windows automatically uploads photos to iCloud. For this, you need to download and install iCloud for Windows.

Sign up with your Apple ID credentials and choose whether you’d like to sync your files. You can pick and choose exactly what you want to integrate into the Windows system: iCloud Drive files, photos and videos, contacts, calendar information, web bookmarks, and browser passwords. Some entries have an Options button so you can configure them further and choose specific Windows locations for your iCloud files, for example.

Make your choices and click Apply—the utility will take care of all the necessary setup and syncing for you. In the case of iCloud photos and videos, you’ll see a new folder on your hard drive and a new iCloud Photos entry in the default Windows Photo app that you can use to browse and sync your files.

Use Apple email

Rather confusingly, Apple says you may or may not see a Mail option in iCloud for Windows, without specifying which system versions support the platform and which don’t. You’ll see that we don’t have it on our test system, but if you see it when setting up the utility, you can check the option to have emails from your Apple account sync with Outlook.

The variation is most likely down to how your PC is set up in terms of recent updates, as Microsoft and Apple are both constantly tweaking their services. If you don’t see the Mail option, you can still add your Apple email account in Outlook or any other third-party email client.

In fact, in the case of Outlook specifically, if you click File, Info, and Add account, you can enter your Apple email address and just click Connect—Outlook already knows the server settings to use. Note that if you have two-factor authentication set up on your Apple account (and you should), you’ll need an app-specific password from here to log in through Outlook, rather than your standard Apple ID password.

Music, TV, and movies

After something of a delay, iTunes for Windows is now Apple Music for Windows, so you can access your music library on your PC just as you would on a Mac computer. If you subscribe to the Apple Music streaming service, you can combine tracks stored in the cloud with those on your local hard drive, and keep everything synced between your devices (including Android).

[Related: iPhone users can also embrace Google and Microsoft apps. Here’s how.]

When it comes to TV and movies, you can either get to the Apple TV app through your web browser or through the official Windows app. The web interface is different in that you need an active subscription to Apple TV Plus, and you can only watch content from the platform—there’s no option to purchase movies and shows or watch them offline.

The Apple TV Windows app is a replacement for the old iTunes for Windows software, which means all the movies and TV shows from your iTunes library are carried over. You can watch content that you’ve purchased and buy or rent new films and shows, whether or not you subscribe to Apple TV Plus. And if you are a subscriber, all that on-demand content is available too.

The post You can use many of your Apple apps on Windows. Here’s how. appeared first on Popular Science.

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

As the world’s biggest social network, Facebook can keep tabs on about a third of the global population. Whether you visit the social network daily (as more than 2 billion users do) or only log on to to check hyperlocal neighborhood groups, you should be aware of how much personal data you’re giving to the site and its parent company, Meta.

Facebook primarily uses everything it knows about you to craft more relevant targeted advertising. While some see this as uncomfortably intrusive, others accept the ads as the price they pay for the network’s free services and tools. Whatever you think about the ethics of this data collection, you should know what the company is learning about you—and how you can control the flow of information. While this guide can help, there’s only so much you can do to protect your privacy. If you really want to stop the company from mining your data, your best bet is to delete your Facebook account entirely.

Take a peek at your profile information

When you created your account, you entered basic background information, including your name and email address. The site also prompted you to fill out your location, work and education history, and friends and relatives currently on Facebook. But by observing your behavior on its network, the tech company has gathered a lot more information about you and your habits.

[Related: How to secure your Facebook account]

One quick way to see exactly what details Facebook knows about you—and limit who else can access them—is to visit the Your Facebook information page where Meta stores all that data. If you’d prefer to get there without a link, log into the site and follow these steps:

Both the website and the app will show you several categories of information that you can browse at your leisure, with recent activity displayed on top. What you see may vary depending on how much you use Facebook and what you do there, but we can give you an idea of what to expect.

• Your activity across Facebook: This will show you everything you’ve done on the social network, including posts, photos, activity you’re tagged in, and items you’ve sold on Facebook Marketplace.
• Personal information: Click here to find what Facebook knows about you, including your name, hobbies, relationship status, and employer.
• Connections: If you’d like to see your friends, followers, and requests you’ve sent and received, this is the category you need.
• Logged information: Here you’ll find information Facebook tracks about your activity, such as search history and your primary location.
• Security and login information: Where you’ve logged into Facebook, the devices you’ve used, and a history of every login and logout.
• Apps and websites off of Facebook: If you’ve connected other apps and websites to your Facebook account, you’ll find related data here.
• Preferences: Any actions you’ve taken to customize your account, perhaps to make it more useful and less toxic, will be in this category.
• Ads information: Whenever you interact with ads and advertisers on Facebook, that data is gathered here.

Check your Facebook ad preferences

Ironically, if you want to see the topics Meta thinks you enjoy, you won’t find it under “ads information.” Instead, select Logged information, then Ads interests to see what data Facebook uses to serve you advertisements. To stop the company from showing you ads based on any of these details, simply hit Remove next to any one of them.

This doesn’t require you to eliminate helpful details from your profile—you can share your relationship status, for example, but block ads that target you because of it. Facebook also allows you to dig deeper and learn more about ad preferences if you’re interested. But be careful, editing this data doesn’t benefit you—it benefits Meta, which will be able to target you more effectively.

Even if Facebook isn’t selling your information to advertisers, it could still be collecting it. In addition to making ads more relevant, the company can put your data—everything from the make and model of your phone to your most frequently used apps—to work fixing bugs and changing the social network. If you’re uncomfortable giving certain information to the social network, you can delete it from your profile entirely by going to your Facebook profile and selecting Edit profile to see what you can adjust. You can’t erase everything, but you can delete details such as where you work and go to school. You may also want to check out the More drop-down menu, where you can unfollow pages and manage other things you’ve liked along the way.

However, Facebook isn’t a completely closed black box. If you want to back up your data or save it for any reason, you can download all of it—just navigate to the Your Facebook information page (steps above), find Download profile information and click View next to it. You can select a date range, file format, and the quality of photos and other media in the final file.

[Related: Use these settings to share photos at their best quality]

There were once third-party tools that sought to offer this information and predict how Facebook might track and interpret your data, like the now-defunct website Stalkscan and Google Chrome extension Data Selfie. Now, you can just navigate to the Your Facebook Information page and click Download Your Information. You can select a date range, file format, and the quality of photos and other media included in that file. If you need a little more guidance, we have a full step-by-step within our story on how to delete your Facebook account.

Disable location and web tracking

Beyond the information you list on your profile and the pattern of your clicks (from likes to photo comments), it’s worth discussing two other big pieces of data in more detail: what Facebook knows about your location (determined via your smartphone) and your activity elsewhere on the internet.

[Related: How to stop websites from tracking you]

Letting Facebook’s mobile app know where you are has some upsides. It enables you to check into places, search for interesting spots nearby, and even find your friends more easily. It also tells Facebook where you tend to hang out, allowing the service to be more precise about the ads it shows you.

If this makes you uncomfortable, you can turn off its ability to keep tabs on your whereabouts. On Android phones, open Settings, tap Apps, find Facebook, hit Permissions, and select Location. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap Privacy & Security, then Location Services, find Facebook on the list of apps, and choose Never from the list of options that appear. If you don’t see Facebook under Location Services on your iPhone, you probably haven’t done anything in the app that might require your location. Even with these precautions, Facebook still can keep tabs on you—for example, it will take note when your friends tag you.

The simple reason why Facebook tracks you around the internet should be clear by now: better advertising. It can, for example, receive notifications when you spend time on specific webpages. In addition, the marketing platforms and sites to which Facebook sends your information can also give the social network their own carefully gleaned data about you (this is known as off-Facebook activity) What’s in this data? You can’t know exactly, beyond checking the Apps and websites off of Facebook information category we mentioned above.

To prevent Facebook from following you around the web, go to the Your Facebook information page (steps above), and click View next to Off-Facebook activity. You have three options:

Disconnect specific off-Facebook activity

Whether you’re on the web (Disconnect specific activity) or the mobile app (Select Activity to Disconnect), you’ll need to enter your password to proceed. You’ll see a list of brands and websites Facebook associates you with, and you can select the bubble (web) or Turn off (app) next to any of them to make your choices. Then hit Continue (web) or Turn Off Future Activity (app) to disconnect your Facebook account from the ones you’ve selected. Facebook will also provide a bunch of information about the process, including that Meta may still get information from the disconnected places, but it won’t be associated with your account.

Clear your off-Facebook history

Choose Clear previous activity (web) or Clear History (app), and you’ll be able to disconnect your off-Facebook activity history from your account. The data may still exist, but Meta says it won’t be linked to your account.

Manage future off-Facebook activity

There are two paths here: Connect future activity or Disconnect future activity. The former will allow Meta to keep gathering off-Facebook activity from certain places around the web and linking it to your account. The latter will prevent that, the company says. On the web, you’ve got to click the bubble next to your choice, but in the mobile app it’s a simple toggle switch.

open the Ads page, find Ads Settings from the menu on the left, and select Ads shown off of Facebook. Turn the toggle switch to Not Allowed. You can also visit the Digital Advertising Alliance and specifically opt out of numerous cross-site tracking programs, including the one run by Facebook.

These days, Facebook takes more care to explain what type of user data it collects, but you still can’t reclaim all of your information—that’s something you sacrifice when you sign up for the service. What you can do is be more aware of the types of information you reveal as you fill out your profile, react to your News Feed, and browse the web.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2017.

The post How to see everything Facebook knows about you, and what you can do about it appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Windows operating system has been around since 1985, and you’d have to be a true enthusiast to know every single thing the software can do. For most of us, there are features we’ve never come across or taken advantage of, hidden away in the operating system—and a lot of these can be really useful if you know where to find them.

Like the best hidden settings in Windows, these hidden features (there’s a difference, we promise) can make a real difference to the way you use your computer every day, and there’s likely to be at least one or two on this list that you will come to depend upon.

The secret Windows Start menu

The regular Windows Start menu is perfectly fine if you only want speedy access to the applications on your computer—but other times you might want to jump straight to a specific part of the operating system. The Task Manager, perhaps.

That’s where the secret Start menu comes in, although it’s not all that hidden: Just right-click on the Start menu button and it’ll appear. From there, you can access a host of useful shortcuts that have nothing to do with your apps.

Beyond the Task Manager, you can jump straight to the desktop, sign out of the user account you’re currently in,  search your PC, and access screens such as the Device Manager or the Terminal window.

Instant access to emojis, anywhere

Emojis can sometimes express what you want to say better than words, and there’s a way to find them in any Windows app or from any Windows screen that you might not know about. Simply press Win+. (the Windows key and the period key simultaneously) to bring up a panel packed with emojis and other special characters.

Screen recording

You may be familiar with the Windows Snipping Tool for taking screenshots, but it also has the ability to record screen activity—perfect for creating tutorial videos, getting help with a problem, or logging what’s happening on apps and websites.

Launch the Snipping Tool from the Start menu, then click the record button (it looks like a video camera) to do some screen recording. Select part or all of the screen, and the recording will begin. Use the pause and stop buttons at the top of your display to take a break from recording or finish it completely.

[Related: The best screenshot and recording apps for your phone]

Your recorded video will then pop up inside the Snipping Tool, where you can review it and save it to a specific place on your system.

Clipboard history

For a long time, the Windows clipboard could only hold one item at a time—whether it was an image, a line of text, a file, or whatever else. While it’s not immediately obvious from the user interface, the Windows clipboard can now store much more.

To make sure clipboard history is turned on, open System > Clipboard from Settings. Once enabled, you can view the full history by pressing Win+V on your keyboard—and the pop-up window that appears will let you permanently pin items to the clipboard, copy any item from the clipboard, and clear the clipboard history.

Detailed Windows troubleshooters

Windows has a bunch of helpful troubleshooters you can turn to before running a web search, asking a friend or relative for advice, or calling in the professionals to solve an issue. These tools can be quite effective, and cover almost every aspect of your computer’s operation.

Open up Settings from the Start menu, then choose System > Troubleshoot > Other troubleshooters. Click Run next to a troubleshooter to launch it—the topics they cover include video playback, Bluetooth, printers, and network and internet connections.

Energy recommendations for more efficient power

If you’re not sure about the best way to minimize the amount of energy your laptop or desktop is using, Windows can help by making some suggestions about how your PC is configured. It’s a helpful guide to the key settings involved.

From Settings, pick System, then Power & battery (on a laptop) or Power (on a desktop). If there are ways your PC could be saving energy, you’ll see an Energy recommendations link at the top—click this to view the recommendations.

They can cover everything from the brightness of the display to the way that USB devices are powered when your computer is sleeping. Click Apply next to any recommendation you’d like to follow, or Apply all to set them all at once.

Conversations with the Windows calculator

The apps that come built into Windows have their own share of hidden features too. Take Calculator, for example, which can do much more than your sums. Launch it from the Start menu, click the three lines to the top left, and you’ll see there are a mass of options for performing conversions.

You can run conversions based on currency, volume, length, weight and mass, temperature, energy, area, speed, time, and power, and you can calculate the number of months, weeks, and days between two dates as well.

The post 7 hidden Windows features you should be using appeared first on Popular Science.

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Knowing how to reverse image search is a useful skill. Sometimes called backwards image search, this technique allows you to use a picture from your device’s gallery, a screenshot, or an image URL as a starting point to find out where it’s been used online. 

You may have heard of it used in connection with Google image search, but the Big G is only one of the platforms offering this feature—there are several others you can use for free on your phone, tablet, or computer. The most accurate reverse image search tool will heavily depend on what you’re looking for, so it’s worth trying all of these options to see how the results compare.

Reverse image searching is a good way to find photos similar to ones you already have, or better quality versions of them. You might also want to find the original iteration of a picture or piece of digital art—or make sure no one is using your content without permission.

Search by image on Google

Google allows you to submit your image in a number of ways. Whichever one you choose, you’ll typically end up with a gallery that includes exact matches to your picture, as well as results that look similar to it. Generally, Google can identify what’s in your photo, so you might also see related text results. If it’s a logo, for example, you might see the company’s website, or if it’s a plant you might see its name and information about the species.

[Related: 5 Google search tips for the most accurate results]

1. From a desktop or mobile browser, head to Google Images

2. Click or tap the search by image button—it looks like a colorful camera. 

3. Submit your photo.

• On desktop, you can drag an image in from another window, upload a file from your computer, or paste in the URL of the image you want to find.
• On mobile, you can snap an image with your camera or tap the picture icon to the left of the search button to choose an image from your phone. As soon as you upload the image, Google will show you results for it. 

4. (Optional) To find exact matches from a desktop browser, click Find image source. To access the same tool from a mobile device, tap the image source button in the lower right—the icon looks like a small magnifying glass and globe. You’ll immediately see a list of matches together with their resolution and the website they’re on. This is extremely useful if you want to know where the picture was first posted or grab it at a different size or quality.

How to reverse image search on Bing

If you’d like to run a reverse image search on a platform other than Google, Microsoft’s search engine can also get the job done, and it categorizes the results for easy navigation. 

1. Open up Bing in a desktop or mobile browser and click or tap the square camera icon to the right of the search box.

2. Submit your photo.

• On desktop, you can drag an image into the window, pick one from your system, or enter an image URL.
• On mobile, you can take a snap with your phone’s camera or choose a picture from the device’s storage by tapping the picture icon in the lower left corner of your screen.

3. Bing will immediately present you with a list of matches split into three categories, but depending on the photo you used, you might not see all of them.

• Pages with this image: These are exact matches for the picture you’re searching for. 
• Related content: These are similar kinds of images to the one you’re searching for.
• Shop for similar: These are items on retail sites that closely match your image. This category comes in handy if you’re shopping for a certain top or pair of shoes, for example.

4. (Optional) To sort your reverse image search results, go to the Pages with this image section. There are two buttons on this panel—one specifying how many pages of matches Bing found, and the other specifying how many image sizes are available. Click or tap the pages button to see the individual URLs listed in order. You can also click or tap the image size button to see the matches grouped by resolution, in pixels.

How to reverse image search with TinEye

Another useful reverse image search tool is TinEye. As with Google and Bing, you can access the search box through a desktop or mobile browser. You can also save yourself the typing by getting the platform’s extension, available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera. 

1. Tap the Upload button to choose a picture from your phone or computer, or enter an image URL in the box. You’ll immediately see a collection of matches from the web. Alongside each of them, you’ll see the date a picture was first posted, and its resolution. 

2. (Optional) Sort results by using the drop-down menu at the top of the list. You’ll be able to group images by date, size, or closest match. 

3. (Optional) Refine your results using the checkboxes at the top. You’ll be able to filter by images that were recently deleted from the web and are no longer available, results from stock photo companies (handy if you want to license a picture), and items that are part of collections (groups of other similar images). If you’re trying to figure out when a picture was originally posted, that last option can be particularly useful—the image you’re looking for may have been uploaded as part of a set along with other similar ones.

Reverse image search is mostly safe

When you submit a photo for reverse image lookup, platforms like Google and Bing use their algorithms to analyze the file and find others like it online. To do that, they need to store the image for a limited period of time while they process it. 

Google’s terms of service, for example, are vague enough that they don’t say exactly how long they store the pictures you use for reverse image search. However, according to the company’s official community message board, they keep a copy for about a week, but it’s not indexed by Google and is only accessible if you have the file’s URL. After that, the image is deleted forever. 

[Related: Organizing your photos can be a chore. Let AI tag them for you.]

The post How to do a reverse image search appeared first on Popular Science.

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If driving your car is your main form of transportation, then Waze (available for Android and iOS) offers a solid alternative to Apple Maps and Google Maps when it comes to turn-by-turn navigation. But one thing that sets the app apart from the rest is the ability to record new voices for directions.

And it doesn’t have to be your own. For example, you could have one of your kids or that friend with the baritone to get you to your destination every time. You might even want to hear how your own voice does the job.

Note that these custom Waze voices only cover the basics of the directions. At the moment, Waze can’t leverage the artificial intelligent power to adapt your voice to pronounce the name of every place, road, city, or town in the world—although it might only be a matter of time before a feature like this is available.

Recording a new Waze voices

Open Waze on your phone. If you have an Android device, tap the three horizontal lines in the top left corner of your screen, followed by Settings; iPhone users should tap the My Waze heading at the bottom, and then the cog icon in the top left corner of the interface. Select Voice and sound, then the current voice used for navigation (most likely Waze voice), and finally, Add a voice.

You’ll see a safety warning reminding you to make sure that the verbal instructions you record are clear and accurate, and then Waze will ask for your permission to use your phone’s microphone. After that, it’s time to record—let your inner voice actor out or ask the person whose voice you’re using to step in.

[Related: Navigating with GPS is making our brains lazy]

Tap Name your voice at the top of the screen to identify the new narrator, and choose the phrases you want to record: There’s a comprehensive list with everything from “Let’s get started—drive safe!” to “Take the fourth exit”. You don’t have to tackle all of these in one go: you can always come back and finish your recording later, and Waze will default to its regular voice for any clips still pending.

When you choose a phrase, a recording window will pop up. Tap the red circle button to register your voice, and the blue play button to hear it back. Waze will tell you how many seconds you have to get each phrase in, so you can’t drag it out too much—the time will count down as you’re recording to make it easier to fit all of it in there. When you’re happy with a clip, tap Save.

As you start to build up the bank of voice recordings, you’ll see the red record buttons next to each phrase change—tap the blue play button to hear the clip, and a trash can button to delete it and try again. If you’re done for the day, tap Save to go back to the main Waze app.

How to switch between Waze voices

When you record a voice, the app will automatically set it as the default navigation narrator. To change it in the future, head to the settings screen on your phone as detailed above, and choose Voice and sound. A blue checkmark will sit next to the voice you’re currently using.

You’ll notice that Waze offers a wide selection of fun and serious voices to pick from, including cats, dogs, and noir detectives. Some of these voices will have an “including street names” label, which means they’ve been programmed with these specifics on the map. If you choose one that doesn’t (including your own recordings), you’ll have to settle for machine-generated voices and pronunciations for the names of specific streets and places.

[Related: Learning a new language? Here’s how to perfect your pronunciation.]

When it comes to the custom Waze voices, you’ve got two little icons next to each one: Tap the pen icon to go back to the recording screen to make changes and add phrases, or tap the share icon (an arrow pushing out of a box) to send your recorded voice clips to someone else on Waze. Maybe grandparents also want to be directed around town by your kids, so just tap the Share button to confirm and pick a contact or an app to share a link in.

So, next time you need to hit the road, open the map screen on Waze, enter your destination, and your selected voice will guide you there. You can also change the voice mid-drive by tapping the speaker icon next to the estimated time of arrival and choosing then Voice directions.

The post Anybody can be your travel guide with customized Waze voices appeared first on Popular Science.

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Paper copies and filing cabinets have become less common since cloud computing became more ubiquitous. But you may still need to sign a PDF document, which may be a problem if you don’t have a printer and scanner handy.

The solution is to do everything digitally, scribbling your signature with your finger, a stylus, or a mouse cursor, and pasting it on the PDF. There are multiple different ways to go about it, so you can choose the one that suits you best.

 How to sign a PDF document on Windows

If you’re looking for a built-in PDF signing tool in Windows, your best option is the Microsoft Edge browser that comes with the operating system. To open a file, drag it into a browser tab from File Explorer or press Ctrl+O and select the document.

[Related: How to combine PDF files for free without sketchy online software]

Up at the top of the screen, you’ll see a new toolbar: Click the small arrow next to Draw to choose the color and line thickness of your signature. With that done, leave your mark on the document using your mouse or trackpad. You may also use your finger if your Windows device has a touchscreen.

If you don’t like your digitized autograph and need to start again, click the icon that looks like an eraser. Once you’re happy with the result, head over to the save icons you’ll see up in the top-right corner of your screen—they look like floppy disks. Click the one on the left to save over the original PDF or the one on the right (with the pen icon) to save the signed document as a new file.

How to sign a PDF document on macOS

Over on Apple’s desktop operating system, your native PDF-signing tool is the easy-to-use  Preview. By default, all PDFs should open in the tool by double-clicking on them, but if that’s not the case, you can always summon the app via Spotlight search: type “preview” on the search bar that appears when you hit command + spacebar. Select the program and then open the document from there by going to File and clicking Open. 

Once Preview is displaying the relevant file, you should see an icon on the toolbar at the top that looks like a signature. If you don’t see the option, go to View and click on Show Markup Toolbar—it’s towards the bottom of the menu. Click the signature button and choose Create Signature. There are several ways to go about it: You can scrawl your autograph on your trackpad, you can hold a piece of paper with your signature on it up to your Mac’s webcam, or you can sign using your finger or an Apple Pencil on an iPhone or iPad linked to the same Apple ID as your computer.

When you’re done with the result, click Done and your scribble will drop into the document, where you’ll be able to reposition and resize it as needed. Your signature will automatically save for future use, so next time you open a document on Preview, you can click on the signature icon and your autograph will be there ready to be inserted wherever you need it.   

To save over the current PDF, choose File and then Save; or if you’d rather create a new file, choose File and Export instead.

How to sign a PDF file on Android

If you want to sign a PDF on Android you don’t need the hassle of downloading and signing up for another app—Google Drive, which should already be on your device, has you covered. Open up a PDF, then tap the edit button (bottom right), which looks like a pen with a scribble next to it.

Tap the pen tool (bottom left) and choose a color and line thickness for your signature. With that done, you can sign right on the document. Use the eraser or the undo (backward arrow) buttons on the toolbar to go back and start again, if you need to. You can then tap Save to overwrite the PDF, or tap the three dots (top right) and Save copy to create a separate file.

And if you don’t want to use Google Drive, Android has plenty of third-party options to pick from, as well. Adobe Fill & Sign can scan a written signature you’ve got on a piece of paper for example, while JetSign can work with other types of files (like Word documents) as well as PDFs.

How to sign a PDF on iOS or iPadOS

The digital signing features on iOS and iPadOS closely match those on macOS, and you’ll find the relevant tools in the Files app. Open a PDF in Files, then tap the icon in the bottom right corner that looks like a pen filling out a form. This brings up a list of your existing signatures, including ones you might have created on your Mac.

You can also tap Add or Remove Signature and the + (plus) icon to create a new scribble using your finger or an Apple Pencil. Once you’ve selected a signature, you can reposition it on the document by dragging it around with your finger, and resize it by moving the blue handles around the edges. Tap Done to overwrite the existing file. If you want a separate copy, tap the file name (top left) and then Duplicate.

As you would expect, plenty of third-party apps for iOS and iPadOS will take over PDF signing duties if you need them to. PDF Expert gives you access to a host of PDF editing tools, including the ability to add signatures, while SignNow is a good choice if multiple people need to sign the same file.

Other options to sign a PDF document

If you want to test and compare several tools, there are yet more options you can try out. If your PDF documents are in Dropbox, you can open them up on the web, then click Add signatures and Self-sign to add your autograph. You can draw using your mouse or trackpad, create a signature based on a font of your choice, or upload an image of your signature from somewhere else.

[Related: Easily convert a PDF to an image on your phone]

DocuSign also offers a comprehensive set of document-signing tools. Click your profile picture (top right), then Manage Profile and Signatures to assign your personal scribbles to your account, which you can then add to any of your documents. If multiple parties are signing the same document, DocuSign can keep track of who has signed what, and when.

If you want something simple that runs in your browser, you can rely upon ILovePDF for any kind of PDF editing or processing task. Just click Sign PDF and follow the instructions on the screen. You can scribble out a signature with your mouse or trackpad, upload an image of your signature, or generate one using your name and font of your choice.

The post All the ways to digitally sign a PDF appeared first on Popular Science.

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Perhaps you too have frowned whenever you think about those seemingly wasted seconds spent moving your hands from your keys to your mouse and back again, over and over and over. Time is money. That’s why learning—and creating—the right keyboard shortcuts can be such an advantage, as they allow you to whizz around your system faster and more comfortably.

All operating systems have presets you can work with, but if macOS doesn’t have the shortcuts you need, you can easily create your own. These custom key presses can help you get stuff done much more quickly, whether you’re launching apps and menus, manipulating files, or performing repetitive tasks such as closing programs at the end of the day.

This is exciting, but before you dive in and start creating shortcuts for macOS, we’d recommend familiarizing yourself with the hotkeys already available. It’ll save you from duplicating existing combos.

Create macOS shortcuts using Apple’s built-in settings

The good news is that one way to create custom macOS shortcuts is built right into the operating system. The bad news is that it doesn’t give you a great deal of flexibility, and you might also need to use a third-party program, depending on what you want to do. To get started, open up System Settings from the Apple menu, then choose Keyboard and Keyboard Shortcuts. A new dialog box will appear with a list of shortcut types on the left.

Click any of the options in the sidebar (like Mission Control or App Shortcuts), and you’ll see a list of the shortcuts already enabled. The combinations under each category cover a host of actions—from taking a screenshot to opening the Launchpad interface. Many of them can be enabled and disabled using the check boxes to their left.

To assign a new shortcut to an action that doesn’t already have one, double-click none and hit the new keys. To edit an existing shortcut, double-click the existing key combo, then type the new keys.

[Related: 38 advanced Mac keyboard shortcuts]

If you try to assign a keyboard shortcut that’s already in use, macOS will warn you with a message on the screen. You’ll still be able to carry on, though, as when you type in a shortcut, the system will launch all the actions linked to it. This, however, may result in your computer slowing down or even crashing, depending on which programs or actions the shortcuts trigger, so it’s better to keep combinations unique.

To create new shortcuts for your macOS apps, click App Shortcuts, then the plus icon. You’ll get to pick the app and then the menu item inside the app that you want to access. If the action you want isn’t listed on a menu, you can’t create a shortcut to it. Not with this tool, anyway.

Get some help from another program

If the macOS keyboard shortcut creation tool doesn’t cover everything you need, there are plenty of third-party programs that will be able to help you out.

One of our favorites is Alfred, which will be familiar to macOS power users. It acts as a supercharged system search tool and launcher that also supports customized keyboard shortcuts. You can use it to set key combos for a host of actions including opening apps and files and searching the web.

To customize your shortcuts, open Alfred from the menu bar and pick Preferences. There, you’ll see the General tab, where you can set the main hotkey to enable Alfred, and the Features tab, where you can set shortcuts for particular actions related to files and apps. For more complex keyboard shortcuts (including those controlling media and the clipboard), you can upgrade to a Powerpack version for £34 (about $43).

Another alternative is Keyboard Maestro. It’s $36, but it’s a very comprehensive tool and you can try it for free. The program can create more sophisticated shortcuts than Alfred, with the option to tie several actions together, and support for everything—from entering text to controlling system settings.

To create a shortcut for macOS with Keyboard Maestro, click the plus button at the bottom of the interface. You’ll need to assign the keyboard shortcut first, and then you can tell the program what you want it to do. The program is slightly more complicated than Alfred in terms of building actions, so if you don’t find it as intuitive, you can get more information on how the app works by clicking on Tutorial from the Help menu.

Create keyboard shortcuts inside your Mac apps

We’ve got no idea which programs you have on your Mac, but chances are that at least some support customized keyboard shortcuts. If they do, you’ll need to manage your key combos inside each app rather than across macOS as a whole.

Microsoft Word for macOS is one program that allows you to create custom keyboard shortcuts. To find the feature inside Word, you’ll need to choose Tools, then Customize Keyboard. You’ll see a new dialog box with all the commands and menu options you can assign shortcuts to—select one and press your chosen shortcut to link them. Make sure to use unique combinations, as any new ones you create will override the old ones. Don’t worry, though—you’ll be warned if your chosen shortcut is already in use.

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

Finally, use the drop-down menu at the bottom of the dialog box to choose whether the shortcuts apply to all Word documents (the Normal.dotm template) or just the current one (Document1 or whatever the currently open file is called).

If you have Adobe Photoshop on your Mac, you can set up customized shortcuts to get to your favorite tools more quickly. Just press Option+Shift+Cmd+K, or select Keyboard Shortcuts inside the Edit menu to start assigning.

Your selected shortcuts can launch menu items, interface panels (like Layers or History), and specific tools—select an entry from the list, click Add Shortcut, and press your chosen combination of keys. As in Word, if your chosen shortcut is already in use, Photoshop will warn you. If you continue, the new action will overwrite the old one.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2020.

The post Master your Mac by creating custom keyboard shortcuts appeared first on Popular Science.

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If there are Android apps and games you love and rely on, know that you’re not limited to using them on small displays. Not only will these programs work on a ChromeOS computer, but they’ll also run on Windows and—to a lesser extent—macOS. You may find the extra screen real estate and full keyboard and mouse controls to be a big advantage whether you’re gaming or working.

Some apps may not work perfectly—a consequence of trying to run software on a device it wasn’t intended for—but official tools from Google and Amazon have made this less of a problem. Just two years ago, the best ways to run Android apps on a computer were to buy one with ChromeOS or install an emulator on your PC or Mac. Today, you can also use Google Play Games and the Amazon App Store to do the job on your laptop or desktop.

Run Android apps on a ChromeOS computer

Using a Chromebook (or a Chromebox) is one of the best ways to run Android apps and games on a computer. ChromeOS has Android support built right in, so getting your favorite mobile programs to work won’t require any effort on your part. Click the launcher button (bottom left), find the Play Store icon, and browse for your apps and games just as you would on an Android phone.

If you don’t see the Play Store icon on your Chromebook, head to its settings (click the status bar in the lower right corner, then the cog icon), and select Google Play Store under Apps. From the same section of the settings pane, you can pick Manage your apps to view and uninstall them, or pin your favorite ones to the bottom shelf on ChromeOS.

[Related: The best Chromebook add-ons and tricks]

Newly installed apps will appear in the launcher, and you can open them with a click. Most apps will run perfectly well on ChromeOS, but that may not always be the case. If you notice some odd behavior and positioning, it means that particular app has not been optimized for Chromebooks or other larger screens.

Run Android apps on Windows via the Amazon app store

Windows now officially supports Android apps in a couple of ways. The first is via the Amazon app store, the same one you’ll find on Amazon Fire tablets. The store offers both apps and games, but the selection isn’t quite as wide as it is with the Google Play Store (more on that in the next section).

Open up the Microsoft Store from the Start menu, then search for “Amazon Appstore”. When you find it, click Install to get it set up on your system. You’ll have to sign in with an Amazon account—if you don’t already have one, you can register inside the app store itself.

When you’re up and running, you can search for games and apps using the box at the top, or browse the categories (like Kids and Editor’s pick) in the main panel. When you’ve found something you like, click Get and Download. You can launch any installed apps from the Start menu as normal.

To customize various aspects of how the Amazon app store works on Windows, click the Settings link on the left. You can, for example, choose to set up parental controls for in-game purchases, and have your apps automatically update whenever your computer is connected to WiFi.

Run Android games on Windows using Google Play Games

Microsoft and Google do offer an official way to play Android games on PC, but it’s games only—no apps. It’s also still in beta testing, so expect one or two bugs to occasionally appear. To get started, head to the Google Play Games beta page in your web browser and click Download beta.

Run the downloaded file, and after a few minutes of setup, you’ll be asked to sign into your Google account. When that’s done, you can start browsing—any games you previously installed on an Android phone or tablet will appear on the right, so you can easily install them on Windows if you want to.

[Related: 9 hidden Android features you’re missing out on]

On the left, you’ll see quick links to the home screen (with a selection of recommendations), your library, and the search function (you can browse by category or look for something specific). When you find a game you like, click Install. Note that all games have to be launched from the library inside Google Play Games, and they won’t appear on the Start menu.

To configure Google Play Games on Windows, click your profile picture (lower left), then Settings. You can choose whether or not the games on your system are automatically updated, manage the various permissions games have on Windows, and see details of your Google Play account.

Use an emulator to get Android apps on Mac and PC

Another option for Windows, and the only option for macOS, is to run an emulator. These emulators take code written for Android, interpret it, and then produce the same results on a desktop operating system. That interpretation layer means the apps might be slower than they are on your phone, but it won’t be a noticeable problem on most computers.

One such emulator is BlueStacks, which is speedy, free, and easy to set up. Get started from the Home tab, which will show you both BlueStacks’ own selection of games and a link to the Google Play Store where more apps and games reside. You can also use the search box at the top to look for something specific.

Everything you install needs to be run through BlueStacks’ own interface and app player rather than the Windows Start menu. There’s also a Multi-instance manager tool available from the left-hand navigation pane, which lets you run games and apps using different user accounts at the same time.

Another option worth considering is NoxPlayer, and it checks a lot of the same boxes as BlueStacks: It’s free, easy to configure, and available for both Windows and macOS. When you start up NoxPlayer for the first time, you’ll see a panel showing the key areas in the emulator: Click Game Launcher and then Game Service to start exploring.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2021.

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It’s not often that a new browser comes along promising to transform the way you access the web, but that’s exactly what Arc offers. Now available to anyone on macOS and iOS, with a Windows version due before the end of 2023, the program brings with it a slew of features that will help you browse differently.

For a start, tabs live on the left by default rather than at the top, and are automatically archived after a customizable period of time. You can keep different browsing activities separate with Profiles and Spaces, you can collect stuff from the web in Notes and Easels, and you can even change the look of sites as you browse.

Arc’s ultimate aim is to provide a more intuitive, more focused window to the web—and by exploring how these various features and settings work, you’ll be able to get a feel for whether or not Arc is the right browser for you. 

Getting started with Arc

Once you download Arc for macOS and install it on your system, it’ll ask you to sign up for a free Arc account. This will mainly be used to sync browsing data across devices and file bug reports, and you can’t use the browser without one. Once you’ve supplied a name, email, and password, the initial setup process will start.

Setup involves importing data such as your browsing history, stored passwords, and bookmarks from another browser on your system (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Opera are all supported)—click on any of the browsers listed to see the data that will be transferred across. Select a browser and then click Next to do the import, or click Do this later if you’d rather start fresh with Arc.

Arc will then ask you to pick a color that it’ll use as its main accent color, so you’ll have a browser that’s tailored to your tastes right from the beginning. The next stage is picking out web apps that you often have open, such as Gmail or Notion—Arc will ask you to sign into these apps, and will put links to them front and center once you finish setup.

[Related: How to cover your tracks when you’re browsing the web]

For the penultimate step of the setup process, you can choose whether or not to activate Arc’s built-in ad blocker. The choice is yours, but bear in mind that many websites (this one included) rely on advertising revenue to run. Finally, you’ll get your Arc card: A simple image with your name and a graphic that you can use to show off your support for Arc on social media and elsewhere.

Using Arc

When you get into Arc, the first area to be aware of is the sidebar on the left. It’s home to your favorites (which look like app shortcut icons), pinned tabs just below, and unpinned tabs beneath that (under the line). As mentioned above, unpinned tabs are automatically archived after 12 hours by default, but you can change this by going to Arc > Settings > General.

You can view archived tabs via Archive > View Archive, and you can turn an unpinned tab into a pinned one by dragging it up above the sidebar line or pressing Cmd+D. You can also drag tabs back down to unpin them, and reorder them by clicking and dragging within both the pinned and unpinned sections. To visit a new site, enter its URL in the box in the top left corner, then hit Enter and it’ll pop up in a new tab.

That box is also good for running searches, and you can set your default search engine via Arc > Settings > General. Just to the right of the box you’ll see options for copying the current URL, sharing it via another app, taking a screenshot, and applying a boost—boosts let you change the colors and fonts on a page, so you can give any site a custom look. There’s also a “zap” button for removing elements of a webpage, such as menu bars or widgets.

If you’ve got several people using Arc on the same computer, you can set up profiles for each person via File > New Profile. Profiles have their own separate sets of browsing data (such as history and favorites), so you can also use them to keep various parts of your browsing life independent—you might have one profile for work and one profile for leisure.

[Related: The information tracking cookies could be gathering about your family]

Then there are Spaces, which are like profiles within profiles. Again, you could have separate ones for your job, vacation planning, hobbies, side hustle, or whatever you like. Favorites stay constant across Spaces, but pinned tabs and unpinned tabs change, and each Space can have its own color theme. To make a new Space, choose Spaces > New Space. Your Spaces are listed at the foot of the sidebar for easy switching, and can be managed via Spaces > Edit Spaces.

To help you keep track of everything you find on the web, Arc offers Notes and Easels—you can create either by clicking on the plus button at the bottom of the sidebar. Notes are just as they sound, collections of text, links, and images that you can use to record ideas and thoughts. Easels are a bit more creative, combining scribbles and shapes with text, images, and screenshots you’ve grabbed from the web.

Also of note is the Cmd+T keyboard shortcut, which works a bit like Spotlight does on macOS. Hit this shortcut in Arc, and a box will pop up: You can type in a search, the URL of a website you want to visit, the title of a tab that’s already open, a command (such as “pin tab”), or a place within Arc you want to go to (such as “settings”). It’s a one-stop shop for getting anywhere in Arc.

As you can see, Arc is packed with features, many of them not available in other browsers, and there are more that we don’t have the space to explore here, like Split View for multitasking (View > Add Split View) and the stripped-down, Little Arc mini version of Arc (File > Open Little Arc). It’s worth at least giving Arc a try, to see if it offers enough to dislodge your current browser from its default position.

The post The new Arc browser will literally transform how you use the web appeared first on Popular Science.

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When you delete a file from your computer, it doesn’t simply disappear from existence—at least, not right away. Even if you immediately empty the Recycle Bin or Trash folder, all your deletion does is earmark the space that file takes up on your hard drive as vacant. Until another file or application makes use of that room, the old data will remain. This is why specialized programs can often recover deleted files for you.

But recovery isn’t always a priority. If you want to securely erase sensitive files, or you’re selling your device to another person, you’ll need to know how to permanently delete files from your computer, tablet, or phone. That way, no clever software will ever be able to bring your old files back from the dead. Follow this guide to make sure unwanted files disappear forever, beyond the reach of even the most determined data forensics team. Just make sure you really want to permanently erase the data before you start.

If you’re on a computer, your first move should be to delete the file from File Explorer in Windows or Finder in macOS. Then clear out whichever undelete tool your operating system uses—either the Recycle Bin or the Trash folder. That’s where most people would stop and move on to another task, leaving their data vulnerable. But you’re not most people.

Permanently delete files from standard hard drives

If you’re using an older desktop computer or laptop, it probably has a traditional mechanical hard drive, also called an HDD. If you’re unsure, a quick glance at the specs should tell you one way or another. Data on these drives is stored close together, which makes the information easier to recover.

To overcome this problem and securely remove a file or folder, you’ll need the help of a third-party program. For Windows, the simple Eraser tool is one of the best, or you can try Recuva, which is billed as a file recovery program but also performs secure deletions. Both free programs work similarly: They overwrite the vacant space on your drive with random data so the original files and folders can’t be brought back.

For a Mac with a mechanical hard drive, the process depends on the age of your machine. On newer HDD Macs, we’d recommend Permanent Eraser, which is free. Simply point this app to the files and folders you want to get rid of, and it will take care of the rest. But if you’re running an older device with Yosemite or an earlier version of macOS, you can simply open the Finder menu and choose Secure Empty Trash, an option that overwrites all the files in the Trash folder with junk data.

The options differ because Apple removed the Secure Empty Trash function from El Capitan and all subsequent versions of its software. The company did so because its new MacBooks use solid-state drives, or SSDs, which work differently than mechanical HDDs. If your Windows or Mac machine has an SSD, you’ll need a distinct approach.

Permanently delete files from SSD drives

Many laptops, especially those built by Apple, contain solid-state drives. These are becoming ubiquitous because they’re much faster than hard drives, though they are more expensive. SSDs also handle file deletions differently than mechanical drives: They don’t give you the same control over where data gets saved, so overwrite programs won’t work.

So, instead of writing over deleted files, SSD users need to encrypt the disk. Encryption means the username and password you use to log onto your computer will act as an unlock code for the files, even if they’ve been deleted. Without that code, no one can read what’s on your computer or recover erased files. The only danger is if someone discovers your username and password combination, logs onto your machine, and fires up a file recovery program. Because SSDs store bits of data at random locations around the disk, you don’t really have any way to prevent people from doing this. Just choose a strong password and be careful about who has access to your computer.

[Related on PopSci+: Stop choosing bad passwords already]

Macs should automatically encrypt files, but you can make sure by opening up System Settings, clicking Privacy & Security, and finding the FileVault option. On pre-Ventura versions of macOS, it’s System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault. If FileVault isn’t already set to “on,” turn it on, and it will make sure your deleted files become inaccessible. On Windows 10 and 11, you can employ the built-in BitLocker tool (search for it from the taskbar), but only if you have Windows 10 Pro or Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, or Education. If you don’t, you can use a third-party alternative, such as the free VeraCrypt, to encrypt your disks.

If you’re selling your computer and want to permanently delete everything on it, you can go beyond encryption to protect your data. First, transfer everything you want to keep to another machine, remembering to back it up. Then, fully reinstall the operating system to securely wipe all the data on the SSD.

To reinstall macOS, follow Apple’s instructions. For Windows, you can reset Windows 10 or 11, or use SSD manufacturer tools to perform a full wipe as comprehensively as possible. These tools are available for SanDisk, OCZ, Samsung, and other SSDs.

Permanently delete files on tablets and phones

Computers get a lot of data security press, but many of us keep vulnerable information on tablets and phones as well. These devices rely on flash storage similar to that used in SSD drives, so the deletion principles are the same: With no easy way to securely delete files, you must encrypt the data stored on your mobile devices. On the bright side, it’s virtually impossible to recover deleted files because apps only get limited control over the file systems on smartphones and tablets. That means you don’t really have to worry about files making an unwanted return on these devices.

Rather than bothering with secure deletion, you should instead protect your phones and tablets against unwanted visitors: Enable a fingerprint ID or at least a PIN code to prevent anyone but you from accessing your devices. If no one else has access, they can’t mess around and recover erased files, which would take a high level of technical know-how anyway. All iOS devices, as well as all Android devices that run version 6.0 (Marshmallow) or later, apply encryption by default. So as long as you protect your lock screen, you’ll be able to protect your data as well.

[Related: All the ways to edit your iPhone lock screen]

That said, if you’re getting rid of your mobile device, you should perform a complete factory reset to securely wipe everything on it. As always, make sure you have backups before you do. Your next step in iOS will be to hit the Transfer or Reset Phone option within the General menu inside the Settings app, then hit Reset. On an Android device, open Settings and head to System, then Reset options. In there, you’ll find Erase all data (factory reset). In some cases, it is technically possible to retrieve data after such a reset, but that would require FBI levels of skills, so don’t lose sleep over it.

One final option we haven’t mentioned is putting on a pair of safety goggles and taking a hammer to your hard drive or smartphone and bashing it into oblivion. For good measure, you can run a few nails through the hard drive or flash storage to make sure it can never be accessed again. After that type of damage, no one will ever touch your deleted files. If you’re getting rid of your computer or mobile device, physical destruction is the ultimate in paranoid data protection.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on August 20, 2017.

The post Permanently delete files (for real) appeared first on Popular Science.

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

The World Wide Web has been up and running since the early 1990s, and countless amounts of text, images, video, and audio have been uploaded since then. Run a web search today though, and it’ll likely prioritize newer pages. Not great if you’re looking for something older.

Going back in time on the internet is possible, but you need to have the right tools and techniques to dig deep into the past. Once you’ve refined your skills, you can pull up everything from your first tweet to famous web pages from the previous century.

Try looking for veteran politicians or long-running TV shows, but adjust the dates to 2000-2010, and you’ll see how opinions can shift dramatically when it comes to people or entertainment. If you’re looking for a specific older article, the date range tool can make the task much easier, and you can add other filters too (e.g. site:popsci.com to restrict the search to a particular domain).

This feature isn’t exclusive to Google—if you prefer the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo, click the Any time filter at the top of the screen after you run a search to get similar date range options. Unfortunately, the same custom date search feature isn’t available everyone on Bing. It used to be, but Microsoft has restricted it to news, image, and video searches. If you’re in Bing’s news tab, click the Any time dropdown menu to get date options, and if you’re in the image or video tabs, click Filter to bring up several dropdown menus, then choose Date.

In many cases, sites will render older pages using their current layout and style—presenting the old content in a new way. If you want to see sites as they were in the past, or look up pages that Google and Bing can’t reach, you can turn to the Wayback Machine. It features hundreds of billions of pages preserved exactly as they were originally published.

Type in the name of a website, like www.popsci.com, into the search box on the Wayback Machine, and you’ll see an overview of the pages saved from that domain. You can click into individual years, months, and days to see how those pages looked when they first appeared. Many of these cached pages are fully browsable too, so it’s just like surfing the web in the old days.

[Related: This free tool can reveal who is behind any internet domain]

The Wayback Machine is the best option for pulling up older pages as they originally were, but there are alternatives. Time Travel searches smaller web archives, including those managed by Stanford and individual countries. You can also find a limited number of official and government sites archived by the US Library of Congress.

If the site you’re looking for is particularly well-known, you might find it preserved in a digital museum. The Web Design Museum has pulled together several hundred significant pages, showcasing some digital design trends of yesteryear, while the Version Museum has captured the changing style of big sites such as Amazon, Apple, Wikipedia, The New York Times, Google, and Facebook.

Find old posts on social media

Searching through older social media posts on Twitter and Facebook requires a different approach. These platforms come with built-in search features and work with a number of third-party tools that you can use to hunt back through years of social media posts, created by you or other people.

The advanced search page on Twitter lets you search for tweets based on the date they were posted (back to when Twitter launched in 2006). Besides the date, you’ll need to enter other search criteria, such as a particular user account or a keyword you want to search by.

You can use this search tool to look for your older tweets, or those made by anyone else, as long as the account is public. There are even filters for narrowing your search based on how much engagement the post got—if you’re running a search with a lot of matches, prioritizing the popular tweets can help filter out the noise.

If you want to go back to the very beginning of a Twitter account, the date an account was created is listed on the user’s profile page—that should help you focus your search. You can also request a download of your Twitter archive by opening Twitter’s settings, clicking Your account, and selecting Download an archive of your data. You may need to verify who you are before you can get the data, but once you have the archive you can open the file in your web browser and quickly get to your earliest tweet using the list of years and months.

[Related: Allow us to show you how to bulk-delete tweets]

Over on Facebook, posts are much less likely to be public and visible to everyone. You can search the posts of someone you’re friends with by opening a profile and clicking the three dots on the right, followed by Search. When you run a search, you’ll see search filters down the left-hand side, including one for Date Posted.

The same filters appear when you run a general search from the box in the top left-hand corner of the Facebook interface: Enter a keyword or two, then hit Enter to run the search. Click Posts and Date Posted to narrow the results based on year. It’s not a precise tool, but it might help you find what you’re after more quickly.

The post 5 ways to go back in time on the internet appeared first on Popular Science.

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Setting up two monitors or a single ultrawide display gives you a huge amount of flexibility when you’re working or gaming on your computer. But if you’re new to this setup, it can be easy to stick with the same grids and single-window layouts you’ve always relied on. Don’t.

Both Windows and macOS have tools and options to optimize your additional screen space, but there are also plenty of third-party apps that will help you intelligently arrange on-screen elements. This means a cleaner, more organized desktop, but also lets you squeeze more productivity and/or entertainment out of your setup.

How to set up ultrawide and dual monitors on Windows

With an extra display hooked up to your Windows 10 or 11 laptop or desktop, head to Settings from the Start menu, then choose System and Display to see your options. Click and drag to set how Windows sees them in relation to each other—this will determine how they’re connected spatially so you can drag windows from side to side naturally.

Scroll down to the Multiple displays settings to pick how to use your two monitors. You can choose to Duplicate these displays to see the same windows on each one, or Extend these displays to use your monitors as one big desktop. The latter will allow you to take full advantage of the additional space.

To move open windows from one screen to another, just click on the title bar and drag them across. Using Windows keyboard shortcuts, it’s even easier—just press Shift+Win+Left arrow or Shift+Win+Right arrow to move the active program straight to the other screen.

By default, Windows will show the taskbar and Start menu button on both displays, but you can change this. From Settings pick Personalization, then Taskbar, and turn off the Show taskbar on all displays toggle switch. (You’ll find it under Multiple displays on Windows 10 and Taskbar behaviors on Windows 11.) This will give you more room on your secondary display for any full-screen windows, which are ideal for movie-watching, gaming, or photo-editing programs.

[Related: Get the Windows 10 taskbar back on Windows 11]

Window-snapping can be useful on two displays as well as one—just drag the title bar of a window to the left or the right of one of your displays to dock it on that half of the screen. But having two monitors can interfere with this process, as dragging windows to one edge of one screen may shift them to the other monitor. To get around this, use the Win+Left arrow and Win+Right arrow keyboard shortcuts to get your windows snapped to the side of the display.

If you’re using an ultrawide monitor, open windows can still look stretched even when they’re running on half a screen. PowerToys, Microsoft’s very own suite of utilities, is one of the best options here. It includes a tool called FancyZones that lets you split a monitor up into as many zones as you like—three columns for an ultrawide monitor might be a good place to start. Hold down Shift while dragging a window to drop it into one of these zones, and confine it there.

DisplayFusion offers even more control over virtual monitors or different areas of your screens. With this app you can have as many different regions as you like and drop your programs into them. That way, you could have YouTube running in a small window in the corner, while Excel takes up half the screen, for instance.

However, that functionality is a paid-for pro feature that will cost you $29 to unlock, but you can decide if you like it first with DisplayFusion’s 30-day free trial. The program includes a wealth of other settings for multiple and ultrawide monitor management too, like the ability to have certain apps open on certain displays, and to set a screensaver that runs simultaneously across all your screens.

One final tool is UltraWideo. This extension runs on Chrome and Firefox, making it compatible with macOS too. If you’ve got an ultrawide monitor, it will expand video playback on sites such as Netflix and Hulu so there are no black boxes at the side of the screen, making the most of the available space.

Ultrawide and dual monitor setup tips for macOS

If you’re on a Mac computer and have a second screen connected, you’ll find the key settings for your monitors by opening the Apple menu, clicking System Settings (System Preferences if you’re using an older version of macOS), and then Displays. To use each one separately, uncheck Mirror Displays and then switch to the Arrangement tab to tell macOS how your screens sit in relation to each other.

Moving open windows from one display to another is easy—just click and drag the title bars to the other screen. You’ll also see options for moving open applications to a different screen if you open up the Window menu from the bar at the top, or you can click and hold the green maximize button on a window to send it to a different display.

Speaking of the menu bar, this will appear on both of your monitors by default when you’ve got two connected. The same happens with the dock at the bottom of the display, and apps will appear on the same screen you used to launch them. If you want to have the dock on only one screen, your only option is to set it to appear on the far left of your left-hand screen, or the far right of your right-hand screen. You can do this through the Desktop & Dock section of System Settings (System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar on older versions of macOS).

[Related: 23 useful Mac settings hiding in plain sight]

It’s worth mentioning that you can use an iPad as a second screen if you employ a built-in macOS feature called Sidecar. If both your Mac and iPad are registered with the same Apple ID, are near each other, and have WiFi and Bluetooth on, you should see the iPad appear as a display option when you click the AirPlay icon (it looks like a TV with a pyramid as a base) in the macOS menu bar.

Apple computers don’t snap and arrange windows in the same way Windows computers do, but you can still put them where you want them to go. Open up the Window menu, and you’ll be able to choose Tile Window to Left of Screen and Tile Window to Right of Screen, which works in a similar way to Window’s snapping.

A neat little utility called Magnet can fill some of the feature gaps remaining on macOS. It’ll cost you $10 but you may find it worth the money if you need to keep control of your open windows.

With any program open, you can click the Magnet button on the menu bar to snap the app to the left or right side of the screen. If you’ve got two displays connected, you can transfer the app from one to the other. There are also options to snap windows to a third or two-thirds of the display’s width, which is handy on an ultrawide monitor.

To get even more control, give Mosaic a try—you can use it for a week for free, after which it’ll set you back $13. It lets you plot out a specific grid of areas for your programs to snap to, and the more room you have to play around with, the more useful Mosaic becomes. You can drag and drop windows into place, use keyboard shortcuts, and more.

Another utility worth recommending is BetterTouchTool, which will be yours for $10 after a 45-day free trial. Its primary focus is on customizing keyboard, mouse, trackpad, and gesture shortcuts on macOS, but it also does a window management well. Not only can you quickly snap programs to a half, a third, or a quarter of the display, you can also create custom shortcuts to do it, too.

As we said before, UltraWideo for Chrome and Firefox also works on macOS, so it’s a great option if you’re dealing with an ultrawide monitor. Finally, you might find more options for optimizing a particular software for the additional space by delving into the settings for the apps and sites you’re using. A good example is Adobe Premiere Pro, which has multiple dockable windows you can move around.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on October 1, 2020.

The post Make the most of your dual or ultrawide monitor setup appeared first on Popular Science.

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

When you want to download a video from YouTube, a quick web search will reveal several tools that promise to do the job—but even leaving aside the issue of violating the YouTube terms of service, we can’t guarantee that they’re safe or reliable.

If you want to download YouTube videos, there’s only one official way to go about it: To put down $14 a month for YouTube Premium.

That might seem a lot for the privilege of downloading videos, but it also means that you’ll never see an ad again, can keep videos playing in the background on a phone, and will get access to a complete Spotify competitor in the form of YouTube Music.

Download YouTube videos to a computer

When you’re using YouTube in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Opera and are signed into an account that has YouTube Premium, you’ll see a Download button underneath every video when you open up its full page. Click the button, and the download will start. You must keep YouTube open in a browser tab to keep the downloads running, but you can leave the page you’re downloading from to view other videos.

You’ll see the option to download videos in other places, too. On the front page of YouTube, for example, you can click the three dots next to any video to find a Download option there. It’s on search results pages too, if you click the three dots next to any clip.

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

To see downloads that are in progress and to view your downloaded videos, head to www.youtube.com/feed/downloads (you might want to bookmark the link for future reference). You can also click the YouTube logo in the top left corner and choose Downloads from the menu that appears to get to the same screen. To delete a video, click the three dots next to it, then choose Remove from downloads.

Click Download settings (top right on the downloads page) to change the quality of downloaded videos (better quality means longer download times and larger file sizes)—or get YouTube to prompt you to choose a quality setting every time you initiate a download. You can also turn on smart downloads, which will download a selection of recommended videos in the background for you.

Your browser of choice will cache your chosen videos on your computer’s storage drive for when you need them, but they’ll be in a scrambled format that only the browser can recognize. That means you can’t open up a folder on your Windows or macOS system and see a list of video files. To watch the videos you’ve saved, you need to go through YouTube.

How to download YouTube videos to a phone or tablet

A similar set of download features are available on the YouTube app for Android and iOS. When you’re browsing through videos on the Home tab, you can tap on the three dots next to any clip to find a Download video option, and that will start the download. Tap through on a video to get to its full page, complete with comments, and there’s a Download button there you can use as well.

When you search for videos in the app or browse a channel you’re subscribed to, you’ll see three dots next to each video as you scroll—tap these dots and pick Download video to save it to your phone.

As on a computer, these downloads won’t be saved as separate video files, but as data that only the YouTube app can interpret—so you can’t open downloaded videos in another video app on your device. To see videos that have been downloaded or are currently downloading, open the Library tab and choose Downloads.

[Related: How to use DeArrow to get rid of “YouTube face”]

To remove a video, go to the Downloads screen, tap the three dots next to a video, and then hit Delete from downloads. If you want to manage download settings, tap the three dots up in the top right corner of that screen and then hit Settings—there you can set a download quality for the videos, for example. On Android (but not iOS), you can opt to only download videos when connected to WiFi, and see how much space your downloaded YouTube videos are taking up.

On Android, there’s also a toggle switch for Smart downloads, and an Adjust smart downloads option for setting how much storage space this feature consumes. When enabled, it’ll download recommended videos from YouTube in the background for you, so you’ll always have something to watch when you’re without an internet connection.

The post How to download YouTube videos to watch offline appeared first on Popular Science.

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

The Whoop 4.0 band is a little different from your standard fitness tracker. It’s designed for people who are absolutely serious about training and exercising (hence the monthly $30 subscription fee) and want to complement their workouts with some of the best fitness technology around.

If you’re interested not just in counting steps but also monitoring body strain and recovery times, as well as getting detailed stats on everything from heart rate to sleep, the Whoop might be for you. This is how you get the most out of your membership, the band, and the app that goes along with it.

1. Start a journal

Journaling can help both you and the Whoop app better track your fitness and health habits, so you can easily identify where you’re doing well and where you could be doing better. The app will remind you to create an entry every morning and you can log as much or as little as you like—from the number of beers you’ve had and your anxiety levels, to whether or not you had any dairy products in the last 24 hours.

[Related: The Army put Whoop bands on paratroopers in Alaska to fine-tune its training]

From inside the Whoop app, tap More and then Journal to get started with the feature or see previous logs. You can also click on Customize Journal to change the prompts you get.

2. Wear the Whoop 4.0 band differently

The Whoop 4.0 comes with a wrist band but that’s not your only option—the company behind the tracker also has a clothing line that offers alternative ways to wear your device.

You can opt for t-shirts, sports bras, leggings, and swimsuits, so you should be able to easily find something that fits your exercise routine and preferences. They’re all designed with a pouch to securely hold the Whoop 4.0 tracker, so you can continue to monitor all of your vital statistics.

3. Track your stress levels

One of the features that set the Whoop 4.0 apart from the average fitness tracker is the Stress Monitor, which gives you a real-time stress score between 0 and 3 based on your heart rate and your heart rate variability.

You can find this tool on the app’s Home tab, where you’ll be able to tap anywhere to see details on how your stress levels have changed in the last 12 hours or so. Here you’ll also find information on how the platform calculates the score and ways in which you can lower your score and relax.

4. Connect your Whoop to other services

Just because you’re using a Whoop 4.0 band doesn’t mean you have to abandon other fitness apps and services if you like them. Whoop can share data with Google’s Health Connect or Apple’s Health for vital health and fitness statistics; Strava for walking, running, and cycling, and TrainingPeaks for all-around training.

To manage these integrations, open the More tab in the Whoop app and choose Integrations. Select any of the items listed on the screen and the app will guide you through the connection process. You can share specific data types to and from the Whoop, including sleep activity and heart rate.

5. Join a Whoop community

You can speed up your fitness journey by training as part of a community, and Whoop has plenty to choose from. Open the Community tab in the Whoop app to browse through recommended teams that you might like to join and enter invite codes for specific ones.

Team communities share data such as strain, recovery, and sleep, and there are daily leaderboards so you can see how you’re doing compared with everyone else. You can also put together your own team and invite family members and friends for a more personal sharing experience. Tap Create team to get started.

6. Charge your tracker in the shower

You might be aware that the Whoop 4.0 band is waterproof, but this protection also extends to the rather unconventional battery charger that comes with the tracker. Whether you’re popping in the shower or doing dishes, you can keep your band on and recharge it right away.

[Related: Best fitness trackers of 2023]

Both the Whoop 4.0 band and its official charger have an IP68 rating, meaning they’re protected against dust and water. The tracker should be able to survive up to two hours in water up to a depth of nearly 33 feet, which gives you some idea of what you can do with it.

7. Wake up at the right time

The Whoop 4.0 is smaller than the average smartwatch, making it more comfortable to wear to bed. The band can track various aspects of your sleep and wake you up at an optimal time with a quiet buzz on your wrist.

In the app, open the Coaching tab, and tap anywhere in the Sleep Coach section. On the next screen, turn on the alarm function: You can tell the band to wake you up at an exact time, whenever you’ve hit your sleep goal, or when it detects your body has recovered.

With the latter two options, you get to specify a last wake-up time so you know you won’t be late to work in the morning. To turn off the alarm on your Whoop 4.0 band, double-tap the top of the device.

The post 7 tricks to squeeze all of the benefits out of your Whoop 4.0 band appeared first on Popular Science.

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Few among us would not jump at the chance to make their laptop battery last longer. After all, our work and personal lives are at the mercy of the battery packs inside our laptops, smartphones, and other mobile devices. When these batteries die, we have to put our lives on hold until we can find somewhere to plug in again. It’s no wonder battery life estimates are one of the first specs many look for when choosing a new device.

Start with brightness: Dial down the brightness of the screen as much as you can without having to strain your eyes, using whatever keyboard shortcuts your laptop offers. You can make more detailed modifications by opening up System, then Display in Windows’ settings, or Displays in System Settings on macOS (System Preferences if you’re using an Apple OS older than macOS Ventura).

Screens that time out sooner also use less battery. To set this and a bunch of other power-saving options, choose Power & battery inside the System section of Settings on Windows 11 (Power & sleep on Windows 10), or Screen Saver from System Settings on macOS.

[Related: One telltale sign it’s time to replace your laptop’s battery]

Other settings available on the same screens let you put your hard drives to “sleep” (they’ll take longer to wake back up, but they’ll use less power), put USB devices into a low power mode, and more. These adjustments won’t make major differences, but you can eke out some extra battery life by enabling them.

If you’re using Windows, there’s a special battery-saver mode that maximizes the time you’ll get between battery charges. It limits background activity and notifications and automatically adjusts the display brightness once your battery level dips below a certain point. To find this utility, click the battery icon on the taskbar, then Battery settings or the cog icon.

Apple’s low power mode does essentially the same job on macOS, and you can decide when it turns on by opening System Settings, then Battery. On the same settings page, there’s also a Battery Health widget—click the i icon to learn about your battery and decide if you want to enable Optimized Battery Charging to extend your laptop’s battery life.

Both Windows and macOS also feature a dark mode, which can reduce power draw, but only on laptops with OLED screens (an LCD screen draws the same amount of power to show black as it does white). If you have one, the dark mode option is under Personalization and Colors in the Windows Settings.

Reduce your laptop’s workload

The harder your computer is working, the faster it’ll drain your battery. When you’re away from a power source, you should close any programs hanging around in the background that you’re not actually using. If your laptop runs fewer applications and avoids demanding programs (such as games and video editors), its battery should last longer.

Even if you close everything you’re not using, the browser drains your battery more than you might think. Resist the temptation to have dozens of browser tabs open at once (or at least put them to sleep), and your laptop will thank you. And when you’re browsing on battery power, avoid video streaming sites. They typically demand a lot of juice, both because they keep the screen constantly active and because they require a decent amount of processing power.

Audio makes a difference too. Active speakers blaring out music will use up more battery power than silence—or a pair of plugged-in headphones. If you can, turn down the volume or do without sound altogether.

[Related: The best headphones of this year]

Maintaining WiFi and Bluetooth connections also uses up battery power, albeit a pretty small amount. If you can disconnect your laptop and work offline—and do without a wireless mouse and other peripherals—your laptop battery will last a little bit longer as a result. We’re not talking major improvements, but you might just make it to the end of the day.

It’s not just the weather, either—running demanding applications on your computer can generate the heat your battery needs to avoid. This brings us back to the idea of sticking to lightweight tasks and programs while you’re away from a power source. If you really have to have a gaming session or encode some video, consider using a laptop cooler to dissipate heat more effectively, keeping your laptop battery running longer.

There’s an ongoing debate within tech circles over the “healthiest” approach to recharging batteries. The most up-to-date advice suggests that shallow discharges and recharges are preferable in the long-term, rather than allowing your battery to drain completely each time—though you should still do a full discharge about once a month. Unplugging your laptop once it’s fully charged, rather than leaving it always plugged in, tends to be better for your battery’s health as well.

Finally, if you won’t be using your laptop for a while, Apple and others recommend leaving the battery with a 50 percent charge in it—leaving it fully charged or fully discharged for an extended period of time can damage it permanently.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on April 3, 2017.

The post 3 ways to make your laptop battery last longer—maybe all day appeared first on Popular Science.

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Calibrating your monitor means making sure it displays colors correctly—that content other people have created looks accurate on your screen, and vice versa. If you’re working on documents or images for a wider audience, or simply just want things to look good, you want that kind of accuracy.

Color calibration is also important for making sure anything on your screen looks its best, from games to movies. It ensures that light areas aren’t too blown out, that details aren’t lost in dark areas, and that color tones look natural. The process can improve your viewing experience even if you’re not a creative professional.

You should also bear in mind that laptop screens are configured and calibrated at the factory, and no adjustments are necessary (or indeed possible, apart from brightness). These calibration steps only apply if you’ve got a separate monitor hooked up to your Windows or Mac computer.

Getting started with color calibration

Before you dig in, you’ll need a working knowledge of your monitor’s settings and controls, so checking the documentation that came with it or running a quick web search might help here. You can also just play around with the on-screen controls until you know what’s what. You’ll be adjusting settings such as brightness, contrast, and color temperature.

Every monitor will be different in terms of what settings are available and how you access them, but the calibration tools we’re covering here will take you through the adjustment process—you don’t need to guess when it comes to which levels are right. Just make sure your monitor is set to its native resolution (the highest resolution it supports) for best results.

[Related: The best 4K monitors of this year]

A warning: don’t touch anything until you make sure the ambient lighting in the room where you’re using the monitor is as close to its natural state as possible. If you’ll usually have a light on, turn it on; if the room is most often bathed in bright sunlight, make sure the curtains are open. This will make a difference to how whites, blacks, and colors show up on screen and how they look to your eye.

Windows color calibration tools

To load up the monitor calibration tool that’s built into Windows, open the Settings panel from the Start menu, then search for “calibrate display color” in the search box in the top left corner. Click on the first result that appears, and you should see a new screen that promises to help you calibrate your monitor for you. Click Next to continue.

The tool will take you through adjustments for gamma, brightness, contrast, and color balance, showing you how a series of sample images should ideally look on screen, and then guiding you through the process of adjusting your monitor’s settings accordingly. A final tweak ensures that text is as readable as possible on screen.

macOS color calibration tools

Over on macOS, you can launch the built-in monitor calibration tool by opening the Apple menu, then choosing System Settings > Displays. Click the dropdown menu next to Color profile (it will be displaying the profile your monitor is currently using), then choose Customize followed by the plus icon to find the display calibrator.

Follow the instructions on screen—you’ll be shown images that help you correctly set the brightness, contrast, and color of the display, and each step will be explained in detail. When you’ve finished the process, you can save the calibration settings as a new color profile, which you can select for the monitor you’re using.

Online color calibration tools

There are a few free online tools that can help you in your quest to get the perfectly calibrated monitor. They work in a similar way to the functionality built into Windows and macOS, using specifically created images and telling you how they should look on the screen to give you an idea of the levels that your monitor settings should be set at.

One example is Photo Friday, which displays a variety of grayscale tones on screen. In some parts of the configuration image, the difference between the tones is very small—your monitor should be configured so you can see these slight differences and they aren’t lost due to incorrect contrast settings.

Online Monitor Test is more comprehensive, with both color and grayscale tests so you can ensure the color temperature and color balance are accurately set. In each case, your monitor should be set up so you can distinguish the smallest gradations in color (scroll down the page to hide the menu overlay from view).

You can also find a detailed set of calibration tools over at RTINGS.com, one of the best monitor review sites on the web. The site offers downloadable patterns that you can use to get the picture mode, brightness, contrast, sharpness, and color temperature of your monitor set appropriately. There’s also some useful information on the technical aspects of calibration and the tools that the professionals use.

Professional color calibration tools

Speaking of professionals, if you’re employed in a field such as graphic design or photography, you’ll want a dedicated hardware tool called a colorimeter (or color calibrator). As they can cost hundreds of dollars, they’re not really for the casual user, but it’s worth mentioning them in the context of calibration.

Colorimeters are similar to digital cameras, only they’re built for the specific purpose of monitor calibration. They give you a super-precise reading of the colors your monitor is displaying, and can then produce what’s known as an ICC (International Color Consortium) profile—this essentially tells the software on your computer how to display colors correctly, given your monitor settings and work environment.

[Related: How to set up a second monitor for your computer]

One of the most popular colorimeters is the Datacolor Spyder X Pro, which costs $150. It sits on the screen like a webcam in reverse, measuring color output, and it’s particularly geared toward photographers. If you spend a lot of time taking and editing photos, even just at a hobbyist level, you might consider it a worthwhile investment. For graphic designers, meanwhile, something like the $250 Wacom Color Manager is a common pick.

As with the tools we looked at above, the software bundled with these devices takes you through the steps of displaying and measuring sample images, then adjusting the monitor settings accordingly. For best results, you should check color calibration every few weeks to account for the small changes in the output of monitors as they age.

The post Your computer monitor’s colors look bad because you haven’t calibrated them appeared first on Popular Science.

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The less efficiently you use your laptop’s browser, the faster it will drain your computer’s battery life. Think of all those open tabs, constant pings back to the web, and uploads and downloads—they’re individually small but can quickly add up to a tapped-out battery.

There are ways to ensure your browser is working with as little strain on your laptop’s battery as possible, and some browsers even come with built-in tools for this. Deploy some or all of these tricks, and you might be surprised at how much extra time you manage to eke out between battery charges.

Energy Saver in Google Chrome

Google Chrome has garnered a bit of a reputation for draining battery power, but a feature called Energy Saver could change that. Energy Saver automatically kicks in when your laptop battery drops to 20 percent, limiting background activity in the browser and turning off some visual effects.

The feature is on by default, but you can check that it’s enabled in Chrome’s settings: Click the three dots in the top right corner of the interface, then choose Settings and open the Performance panel. You can turn Energy Saver off completely, have it turn on automatically when you hit 20 percent battery life, or have it activate whenever your laptop is running on battery power.

[Related: How to keep your Chrome extensions from snooping on you]

Chrome also has a feature called Memory Saver, which you can manage from the same Performance panel. It frees up memory from inactive tabs, putting them into a sleep-like state until you need them again. This isn’t specifically sold as a battery saving measure, but any time you can free up system resources like RAM, battery life will benefit—and if there are sites you want to be exempt from Memory Saver, you can whitelist them by clicking Add.

Efficiency mode in Microsoft Edge

Not to be outdone, Microsoft Edge has a power saving feature that it calls Efficiency mode. It reduces tab activity, turns off some video optimization, and snoozes tabs if they haven’t been used for five minutes. It might make Edge run slightly slower, but it won’t demand as much from your laptop battery.

To configure Efficiency mode, click the three dots (top right), then Settings and System and performance. You can choose between Balanced savings (which tries to balance browser speed and battery life) and Maximum savings (which goes all-out to save battery). You can also disable Efficiency mode completely if you’d like.

Lower down on the page are some additional options for Efficiency mode. You can specify the length of time Edge waits before putting inactive tabs to sleep, for example, and you can specify any sites that you want to exempt from it. You can even turn the mode on when connected to power to reduce the power draw of your laptop.

Battery Saver in Opera

Opera is another browser that comes with a built-in battery saving mode, and it’s called, appropriately enough, Battery Saver. Like those in other browsers, it works by turning off background activity that’s not essential to the browser tab you’re currently in, and it disables certain plug-ins and animations as well.

When you’re using Opera on your laptop and you’re not connected to a power source, you’ll see the Battery Saver icon in the toolbar at the top (it looks like a battery). Click it to see how much browsing time you’ve got left, approximately, using your current power settings. You can then click the small cog icon to configure Battery Saver.

[Related: The best internet browsers you’ve never heard of]

Actually, there’s only one configuration option, besides being able to turn the feature on and off completely: You can have Battery Saver automatically enable itself at 80, 50, or 20 percent battery level, or whenever you unplug your laptop from a power connection

General tips for any browser

While browsers such as Firefox and Safari don’t have dedicated energy saving features, there are ways to use them as efficiently as possible. One way to keep battery drain to a minimum is to be disciplined about the number of tabs you have open at any one time—the fewer tabs you have, the better for your battery life.

A variety of third-party extensions can help here too: Auto Tab Discard for Firefox, for example, or Tab Suspender for Chrome. They work by unloading open tabs that you haven’t used in a while, reducing the pressure on your system CPU and RAM, and then loading them back into memory again when you need them.

Dark mode, if your browser has one, can also make a difference to the work your laptop display has to do and, therefore, to the corresponding drain on the battery. This mode will normally follow the lead of your computer’s operating system (like Safari on macOS, for example), but it doesn’t have to—in Firefox, click the three horizontal lines (top right), then Settings, General, and choose Dark under Web site appearance.

The post The browser settings that could save your laptop’s battery appeared first on Popular Science.

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After a few years of use, even the best machines just don’t run as smoothly or quickly as they used to. Luckily, a few tweaks under the hood can speed up your MacBook, iMac, or Mac Mini. These performance-revving adjustments aren’t immediately obvious, but they can give macOS a new spring in its step.

1. Tone down the visual effects

There’s no doubt macOS is a gorgeous-looking operating system. But all those fancy animations and transparency effects take up resources that could be going towards actual applications. If you want to make sure your machine runs as lean and as mean as possible, you can turn these extra visual flourishes off. This trick is especially useful for those who tend to leave a lot of applications, windows, and browser tabs open at one time.

To cut down on the extraneous eye candy, open up System Settings from the Apple menu, then go to Accessibility and click Display. Activate the toggle switches next to Reduce motion and Reduce transparency, and you’ll have a faster, albeit plainer, interface. On Apple machines that haven’t moved to macOS Ventura, you’ll find these options and the others in this section under System Preferences.

[Related: 23 useful Mac settings hiding in plain sight]

While you have System Settings open, you can adjust more visual settings. From the Desktop & Dock tab (Dock & Menu Bar on older versions), you can switch off the animation for opening applications. For another tiny speed boost, use this menu to activate the switch next to Automatically hide and show the Dock. This will lock it in place at the bottom of your desktop rather than having it constantly disappear and reappear.

Open Spotlight with Cmd+Space or by clicking on the magnifying glass in the menu bar. Then type “activity monitor” into the box. Select the first suggestion that appears, and it will show you all the applications and background processes currently running on your Mac.

Within Activity Monitor, you’ll see a barrage of constantly changing numbers and app names, but don’t panic. These screens are actually pretty simple to navigate. The first tab, CPU, shows how much processing power each active program requires. (CPU stands for central processing unit; this component acts as the brains of the computer and performs most of its calculations.) You’ll see all open programs in the column on the left, along with the percentage of processor time they’re currently taking up. The bottom of this tab will show you the overall CPU usage with a constantly updating graph.

Switch to the Memory tab, and you’ll find similar readings, but this time for RAM. (A computer’s RAM, or random access memory, stores information.) Keep your eye on the Memory Used entry down at the bottom of your window—this shows how much RAM macOS is currently eating up. If it’s somewhere near the maximum amount of RAM installed on your machine, that might explain any system slowdowns or crashes you’ve been experiencing.

Within Activity Monitor, you may encounter unfamiliar programs or processes. Select the unknown item, then click the “i” button at the top of the window for more information about what that application does. To stop it in its tracks, click the “x” button—just be sure you know what the process does first.

Once you’re comfortable navigating within Activity Monitor, you can use this knowledge to speed up your Mac. First, identify the applications that are consuming more than their fair share of resources. If they don’t need to be open, you can shut them down. If you’d like to keep running one of the programs in question, open its settings to see if you can get it to work more efficiently. For example, if one of your memory hogs is a browser, you might try disabling any extensions.

3. Free up storage space

Your macOS machine relies on having a decent chunk of free hard disk space where it can store temporary files. It also needs this room because it will store information on the hard drive if it runs out of RAM. Without that space, you’ll probably notice sluggish system performance when your laptop or desktop starts to run low on hard drive room.

Thankfully, Apple has provided some built-in storage options that will, if used correctly, help you speed up macOS. Open the Apple menu, hit System Settings, General, and Storage to see which types of files are using up your disk space. To tidy them up and gain some extra room, click the “i” icon next to any of the categories listed at the bottom of the window, select what the application or file want to kill, and hit Delete. Just make sure to back up files somewhere else before trashing them. On older versions of macOS, you’ll find these options by navigating through Apple menu > About this Mac > Storage > Manage.

Open System Settings from the Apple menu, click General, and hit Login Items to see—and change—the programs that get to start automatically. Use the toggle switches to add and remove programs to the list. If you don’t recognize any of the applications, a quick web search should tell you what they are and why they want to launch with macOS. On older versions of macOS, go to System Preference, Users & Groups, select your account, and switch to the Login Items tab.

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

It’s important to note that you’re not actually deleting any programs from your system when you flip these switches—you’re just stopping them from starting automatically. If you need them later, you can always open them the normal way, and you can even add them back to the Login Items list. Ultimately, you’ll need a bit of trial and error to work out the best balance between having certain applications and utilities always available, and having macOS boot up as quickly as possible.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on August 22, 2017.

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It won’t be finished nor officially launched until later in the year, but macOS 14 Sonoma is now available as a public beta. This means that anyone who wants to try this early version of the software can do so.

For developers, making beta software available to download is a great way of having a wide group of people test their code so they can fix any remaining problems. For users, it’s a chance to access new and improved features earlier than they ordinarily would.

Bear in mind that you do this testing at your own risk, as public betas usually come with some bugs and issues. Some of your favorite programs may not work properly, and you may see problems such as battery life drain. That said, Apple betas are generally reliable and stable, but they still recommend installing the software on secondary devices that are not “business critical”. 

If you do decide to give macOS 14 Sonoma a go, make sure all your important data is safely backed up before proceeding. Once that’s done, you can start enjoying the best features of Apple’s newest operating system.

How to install the macOS 14 Sonoma public beta

The macOS 14 Sonoma public beta will run on all relatively new Macs:

• 2017 iMac Pro or later
• 2018 MacBook Air or later
• 2018 MacBook Pro or later
• 2018 Mac Mini or later
• 2019 iMac or later
• 2022 Mac Studio or later.

If you think your machine qualifies and you want to join the program, open up the Apple Beta portal in Safari on your Mac, then click Sign up to register for the macOS beta using your Apple ID. If you’ve already registered to run beta software on an Apple device, click Sign in instead. You’ll have to agree to the terms and conditions that confirm you know what beta software involves.

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

With that done, switch to the macOS section of the Apple Beta page, click Enroll your Mac, and Open Software Update. This will take you out of Safari and into System Settings: Click Beta Updates > macOS Sonoma Public Beta > Done.

Your Mac will then check for and download the latest public beta version of macOS, and will let you know when it’s ready to install. After a restart, you’ll be able to explore everything that this new version of the operating system brings with it.

1. Desktop widgets

Apple has been busy adding widget functionality to iPhones and iPads in recent years, and now it’s the turn of the Mac. For the first time, you can add widgets to the desktop as well as the Notification Center, making them more accessible and easier to refer to.

Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Edit Widgets to see what’s available—you can browse through the widget selection by app using the options on the left. To add a widget from the list, click on the green + (plus) icon or drag it over to the desktop. You can also add widgets from the Notification Center just by dragging them onto the desktop.

Once in place, you can rearrange and organize your widgets by dragging them. Finally, right-click on an applet to open its settings, where you’ll be able to tweak its details or remove it completely.

2. New screensavers

Apple has put together some gorgeous new slow-motion screensavers to mark the arrival of macOS 14 Sonoma—from whales and jellyfish swimming underwater, to the rolling landscapes of Hawaii and Yosemite National Park.

Open the Apple menu, then choose Screen Saver to see them. When you select a screensaver, the toggle switch at the top gives you the option to set an accompanying still image as your desktop wallpaper too.

3. Dock web apps

From Gmail to Slack to Instagram, a lot of the apps we use every day run in a browser. On macOS 14 Sonoma you’ll be able to pin these web apps to the dock, where you can launch them as you would a normal desktop application.

All you need to do is open up a web app in Safari, then select File > Add to Dock and specify a name for the shortcut. As well as showing up on the dock, the web app will also appear in Launchpad and you’ll be able to find it through Spotlight search.

4. Safari profiles

Apple’s browser Safari has now caught up with Google Chrome in offering profiles. This feature allows you to have one profile for business and another for leisure time, for example.  Each profile works independently from others, so it has its own separate browsing history, extensions, and tab groups.

To create a new profile in Safari, click Safari > Settings > Profiles > New Profile. You’ll be able to choose a name, icon, and color for the new instance, as well as set up a new favorites folder or import an existing one.

When you’ve set up a second profile, a little drop-down menu appears in the top left corner of the Safari interface—open it up to switch between profiles. Head back to Safari > Settings > Profiles to further configure each instance and remove any that you no longer need.

5. Improved message search

There are a host of smaller upgrades for native apps on macOS, including better PDF support in Notes and some auto-categorization functionality in Reminders. One of the most notable among these updates is the introduction of search filters in Messages.

[Related: Duck yeah, Apple’s next autocorrect update makes it easier to swear]

Open the Messages app, click inside the search bar, and look for a contact to find conversations with that person. When you select the contact, now you’ll also see Link, Photo, and Location options, so you can narrow down your search.

6. Presenter Overlay

Apple’s macOS 14 Sonoma is adding a new video conferencing feature called Presenter Overlay. This tool allows you to stay visible to other participants while sharing something on your screen, like a slideshow. It should work with just about every video calling app eventually, but right now it only works with FaceTime and Zoom.

When you’re on a video call in FaceTime, click the Share Content button on the video feed (a small figure in front of a screen). A new dialog appears letting you choose whether to share the whole screen or a specific window. The Presenter Overlay options are on the same dialog: You can appear in a small bubble or as a larger overlay.

The post 6 new features in macOS 14 Sonoma’s public beta you have to try appeared first on Popular Science.

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First announced in June, iOS 17 has now reached the public beta stage. That means anyone with a compatible iPhone can install an early version of the operating system ahead of its official launch later this year.

In general, beta software isn’t fully finished and optimized, so you should expect some bugs along the way. Apple recommends only using betas on “non-production devices that are not business critical”, and you should absolutely make sure you’ve backed up all of your data before installing it.

This might sound a bit scary, but the benefits of putting up with a few bugs are that you get access to iOS 17’s cool new features ahead of time.

How to sign up for the iOS 17 public beta

The iOS 17 public beta will run on the iPhone XS (2018) and later models. On your mobile device, use Safari to head to the Apple Beta portal, and tap Sign up. You’ll be registering for early access to the operating system using your Apple ID. If you’ve previously tested beta software on an Apple device, choose Sign in instead.

Before you can enroll your device, you’ll need to agree to a lengthy list of terms and conditions explaining the risks of installing beta software—this is standard practice. When you reach the enrollment page, tap Open Beta Updates. This will take you to your phone’s Settings app, where you’ll be able to select iOS 17 Public Beta. Your iPhone will start downloading the software and you’ll get a notification when it’s ready to install.

[Related: Duck yeah, Apple’s next autocorrect update makes it easier to swear]

To get back to this screen, go to Settings > General > Software Update > Beta Updates. From that last menu, you can leave the beta at any point by choosing Off.

To leave the Apple Beta program completely, so you no longer have the option of switching to beta software, head to the unenrollment page in Safari on your iPhone, and tap Leave Apple Beta Software Program.

But before you decide to drop Apple’s public beta program, make sure you try out some of the most fun and useful features iOS 17 has to offer.

This feature is enabled by default, but you can head to StandBy in Settings to turn it off if you don’t like it. There you can also customize notifications, and turn night mode on or off, which applies a red tint in low light.

StandBy kicks in automatically every time you lock your iPhone, charge it, or put it at an angle (so not flat on a surface) or in landscape orientation. Swipe from left to the sides to move between your other screens, and long press on a widget to customize it.

2. Offline Maps

It’s taken a while, but Apple Maps has finally caught up to Google Maps in letting you save particular map areas so you can use them offline. This feature comes in handy if you’re abroad, want to save your data, or are heading to a place where you know the phone signal will be patchy. The maps you save locally to your phone will include all the data you can find on an online map, except live traffic information. This means you’ll still be able to look up opening times for stores, for example.

In Apple Maps, press and hold on your profile picture, then tap Offline Maps: You can then see maps you’ve downloaded or choose Download New Map to save a new area. The platform will automatically update your saved maps in the background whenever there’s a new version of Apple Maps. 

The Offline Maps menu will also allow you to opt to download maps over cell networks and WiFi, or WiFi only, and force Apple Maps into offline mode whenever there’s no phone signal.

3. Live Voicemail

Live Voicemail shows a real-time transcription as someone is leaving you a voicemail, which lets you decide whether you want to pick up the call or deal with it later. If you think it’s important, tap Pick up to stop the voicemail and take the call. But if you decide it can wait, you can tap the voicemail icon (two underlined circles) to see the transcription and find out what the call is about before you dial.

This feature is on by default when you install iOS 17, but you can turn it off via Phone and Live Voicemail in Settings. 

To use the Level feature, head to the Camera app. Whenever you’re trying to take a photo, three gray lines will show up next to each other in the center of the frame, and the one in the middle will tilt as you angle your phone. You’ll know the shot is leveled when the middle line aligns with the ones on either side—they’ll turn yellow and disappear so you can take the photo.

5. Contact Posters

iOS 17 lets you make your own Contact Poster, a graphic that shows up on people’s phones when you’re calling them. You can pick an image (or your memoji), and customize the text font and background.

If you see a message prompting you to Update Your Name and Photo when you install iOS 17, you can tap it to set up your Contact Poster. Otherwise, you can get to the same settings later by opening Contacts, and tapping My Card then Contact Photo & Poster.

You’ll be able to have several Contact Posters set up with different combinations of colors, images, and fonts. From the same screen, you can set your Contact Poster to only appear for people actually listed in your contacts, rather than everyone you call.

6. Personal Voice

iOS 17 has a new accessibility feature called Personal Voice that lets your iPhone speak in your voice. It has the potential to be hugely useful for those with disabilities or degenerative diseases that affect their ability to talk. Once you save your voice to your device, you can type out text and have your phone read it in your voice in apps such as FaceTime.

[Related: Simple accessibility settings that will make your smartphone easier to use]

You’ll need to record about 150 phrases with your iPhone so that it can synthesize your voice, but you don’t have to do this all in one go. To get started, head to the Accessibility section of Settings, tap Personal Voice, and then Create a Personal Voice. Note that all the data supporting this feature will only live locally on your device.

The post 6 great features to try out in the iOS 17 public beta appeared first on Popular Science.

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You’re sure that file is here somewhere. You saw it only the other day, but it seems to have vanished. Hunting down data stashed on your computer can be a frustrating experience—partly due to our untidy habits when it comes to saving files—but it doesn’t have to be.

Both Windows and macOS come with helpful tools and tricks you can use to track down any missing file. And if that doesn’t work, there are a number of third-party applications that can help you get the job done.

Another way to focus your search is to use a wildcard. The asterisk symbol (*) can stand for any character, a group of characters, or even entire file names. For example, you can run a search for “*.docx” to find all the Word documents stored on your system, as they share the .docx file extension. If you want to search only for images saved as JPEGs, you can type “*.jpg”. If you’re not sure of the extension for a given software or file format, you can easily find lists of the most common ones.

There’s also the question mark wildcard (?), which can stand in for any single character. Looking for “picture?.jpg” will return picture1.jpg, picture2.jpg, picture3.jpg, and so on. Wildcards can be combined or used by themselves, depending on how much you want to narrow your search.

For more precise searches, open up the folder you want to look in, and search within the box in the top right-hand corner. If you want to search the entire computer, open any folder in File Explorer, go to This PC (or the name of your PC), and find the (C:) drive. Once you’re in there, any search you run from the search box in the upper right-hand corner of the window will look at all files on that drive. As a reminder, you can do a traditional search or use any of the wildcards mentioned above.

The Search tab (Windows 10) or Search options button (Windows 11) that automatically appears at the top of the window when you run a search gives you more ways to narrow down the results list. For example, in the Refine box (Windows 10) or Size option (Windows 11), you can look for files of a particular type or size. This is especially handy if you’re looking specifically for large files on Windows.

You can also search for files that have been modified during a certain time period (like within the last day or month), which can help if you have misplaced a file you were recently working on.

[Related: 20 essential Windows keyboard shortcuts]

Another trick is to use what are known as boolean operators—primarily NOT and OR. A search for “box OR cube” will return files with either word in the filename, whereas searching for “box NOT cube” will only match files with names that include the word “box” but not “cube”.

You can also use AND to find matches for files that contain two specific terms, like “box AND cube”. These boolean operators work all around Windows and can be very helpful if you don’t remember the exact name of what you’re looking for.

If you tried the built-in tools and are still digging for the files you need, there are a couple of third-party Windows applications that might get the job done. Everything is a free app that starts by showing you every file on your system—hence the name—and then filters the list as you search.

Type your query in the search box at the top, using any relevant wildcards and boolean operators. Then use the Search menu to narrow down the results by matching entire words or by looking for specific file types. Choose Advanced Search from this menu to specify words you do or don’t want to match (you’ll also be able to search the text inside a file here). It’s not the most polished-looking app, but once you get used to it, you’ll find it a fantastic ally in your file-searching endeavors.

Another option is UltraSearch, which is also free to download. Type your search terms and narrow the matches down based on file type. You can use wildcards and search within the contents of files, but boolean operators won’t work here.

UltraSearch is more user-friendly than Everything, but it doesn’t offer as many features. What sets it apart, though, is a built-in preview tool, so you can take a quick look at the files to make sure you’ve got the right one.

How to find files on macOS

Spotlight is the hub of search on macOS, and hitting Cmd+Space on the keyboard or clicking the magnifying glass on the menu bar will launch it. Type out the name of the file you’re looking for and you can have it open in seconds.

By default, your search results will include apps, contacts, and web results, so you might need to do a bit of scrolling to get to the file you’re after. If you only want to use Spotlight to look for files, you can change your Mac’s search settings. On macOS Ventura, go to the Apple menu, click System Settings, go to Siri & Spotlight, and uncheck any categories you don’t want to appear in search results. If you’re using an older version of macOS, you can find these options by going to the Apple menu, clicking System Preferences, and going to Spotlight.

Spotlight supports plenty of natural language queries, which means you can type your search as if you were asking an actual human being. Don’t be afraid to experiment: try “photos from last month”, or “files from yesterday”. Spotlight can understand and process a wide variety of queries.

Right at the bottom of the Spotlight results list, there’s the Search in Finder link. Click it to switch your search to the Finder file manager. Alternatively, you can go directly to Finder to begin with, and then start looking via the search box in the top right-hand corner. This tool may initially appear as only a magnifying glass icon, but it will expand when you click on it.

Again, just type out the name of the file you’re looking for. Both Spotlight and Finder will search for files by their names or content, and even though boolean operators (“OR,” “NOT,” and “AND”) work, you can’t use wildcard characters like you can on Windows.

If you run a search from Finder or switch your results to Finder, you’ll see some filter suggestions appear below the search box as you type. These suggestions let you restrict the results to filename matches or specific file types.

[Related: How to rename multiple files on macOS]

Click the small plus icon below the search box to add filters. These include file types, the dates files were created or last modified, the names of the files, or their contents. You can, for example, look for filenames that start with “pic” and end with “archive” and have anything else in between.

You can also combine filters using the plus and minus icons on the right to add and remove them as required. For example, you can look for files opened within the last week that have the word “meeting” somewhere inside.

You can also use the buttons next to the word “Search” to switch between looking in the particular folder you’re viewing in Finder (and all its subfolders), or across your Mac as a whole. To change which one Finder picks by default on macOS Ventura, choose Finder > Settings > Advanced, and make your choice under When performing a search. On older versions of macOS, navigate through Finder > Preferences > Advanced to find those options.

If you’re still overwhelmed by the number of search results, use the icons on the Finder toolbar to change how they appear or are ordered on-screen.

As with Windows, several third-party options are available for even more powerful searching. HoudahSpot ($34, with a free trial available) can search several folders at once, will quickly preview files for you, and will make running complex searches easier.

Build up your search criteria using the boxes on the left—name, text content, file extension, content kind, and so on—then click the Play button up at the top to search both within the hard drive and inside each file. If you need to, you can limit the number of results returned, focusing, for example, on those most recently opened or created.

Another useful tool is Alfred, which does advanced file search and a lot more—it’s like having your own digital butler on hand. The app essentially works as a productivity enhancer for macOS, and lets you set up customized keyboard shortcuts, run automated tasks, access system commands more easily, and much more. As far as file searching goes, hit Option+Space to open the Alfred interface, then type “find”, followed by the name of the file you’re looking for.

Open Preferences from the Alfred icon on the menu bar, then go to Features and File Search—you can tell Alfred exactly where to look and how many results to show. All of this basic searching is free, but advanced filtering requires the Powerpack add-on (£34 or about $44).

You may not need these extra tools, but no matter what kind of search quest you’re going on, you should be able to find what you’re looking for—either through the native options in Windows and macOS, or an additional program. And the more you make use of these features, the more adept you’ll get at using them.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on July 22, 2019.

The post Find any file on your computer appeared first on Popular Science.

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Most of us would gladly take payment for what we’re already doing online anyway, and that’s exactly what Microsoft Rewards (previously known as Bing Rewards) is. This program will give you points in return for searching the web and buying digital goods online, which you can redeem for rewards such as gift cards from popular retailers like Amazon, Starbucks, and Sephora.

To get in on the deal, you’ll have to use Microsoft’s products, including Bing and the Microsoft Store, which offers games, software, movies, and TV shows. If you’re happy with those terms, the company will reward your loyalty to its services.

How Microsoft Rewards works

Every dollar you spend in the Microsoft Store earns you one point, but you can also get points by playing games. The company will suggest some via email, but you can go straight to the Microsoft Rewards page to earning points while you kill time online.

It’s very much like a loyalty program, similar to those offered by retail stores and airlines. You can sign up for free, but you will need a Microsoft account to participate, which the company will use to track your activities and reward them accordingly.

Newcomers will start at Level 1 of  Microsoft Rewards, but if you collect at least 500 points in a month,  you can move up to Level 2. This tier gives you five times more points for your Bing searches, and up to 10 percent in discounts on rewards claimed through the Microsoft Store. You can easily keep track of how many points you’re earning through the Microsoft Rewards dashboard.

[Related: RIP Internet Explorer, and thanks for all the memes]

Once you’ve accumulated some points, you’ll be able to redeem them for gift cards, entries into sweepstakes, digital games, and movies, as well as donations on your behalf to a non-profit of your choosing. But that’s not an exhaustive list. At the time of writing, for example, you can earn three months of Spotify Premium by searching with Bing in Microsoft Edge for three days in a row.

The not-so-fun side of Microsoft Rewards includes daily emails that feature a variety of online deals and quizzes. As we mentioned before, this is similar to other loyalty programs out there that bombard you with marketing content on a regular basis, so this is standard practice. You can always filter out these messages, and if you think you’re missing out on something, you can always check out the Microsoft Rewards page online to see all offers.

How to use Microsoft Rewards

Head to the official Microsoft Rewards site and click Join now to go through the registration process—if you don’t already have a Microsoft account, you’ll need to make one. Once you’re done, the site will take you to your Microsoft Rewards dashboard, which shows how many points you’ve earned. Further down you’ll see opportunities to earn points today, from quizzes to Bing searches.

For more details on how you’re doing, including your current level, switch to the Status tab, where you can see a more detailed history of the points you’ve accumulated and set goals for reaching reward milestones. On this page you’ll also be able to check your streaks history, which tracks times when you’ve earned rewards for several consecutive days in a row—you get bonus points after hitting a three-day streak.

You don’t have to go through the dashboard to earn points: As long as you’re registered with the program and you stay signed into your Microsoft account, you’ll automatically get points for searching on Bing and spending your money in the Microsoft Store. To check how many points you’re earning in real-time just look at the tally in the top right corner of the Bing website or the Bing app for Android or iOS.

[Related: Google vs. DuckDuckGo vs. Bing—is it time to switch your search engine?]

If you want to earn even more points, you might also want to use the Microsoft Bing Search with Rewards extension for Edge. Just installing the add-on gives you 30 points, but the tool also gives you easy access to your total tally and suggests more ways to earn points.

As you might have guessed, the Rewards tab on the Microsoft Rewards dashboard lets you redeem your points. You can search the offers and sort them by how many points they cost—when you see something interesting, click on any reward to see more details and claim it. The biggest prizes will take some time to earn (like a $25 NFL shop gift card, which is 32,500), but if you’re using Bing and Edge regularly, points can pile up pretty quickly. 

Finally, if you later decide that Microsoft Rewards isn’t for you, you can quit the program by heading to the opt-out page.

The post How Microsoft Rewards can help you benefit from being chronically online appeared first on Popular Science.

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The fastest way to transfer photos from an Android phone to a computer is to use the Google Photos app—but this option isn’t for everyone.

Maybe you don’t want all of your personal media files sitting on Google’s servers, or maybe you refuse to pay the company for cloud storage. Whatever your reason, you may want to move your pictures from your Android device to a laptop or desktop computer over a USB cable.

It’s important that you choose at least one alternative storage method for your photos and videos—that way if your phone gets lost, stolen, or badly damaged, your precious digital memories will live forever.

We’re going to focus on manually transferring files without WiFi, so you’ll need a USB cable that fits your Android phone at one end and your PC or Mac at the other. With the latest computer and phone models, a USB-C-to-USB-C cable should do the trick.

[Related: USB-C is on track to become the charging cable standard in the EU]

When working with both Windows and macOS, you may have to put your phone in file transfer mode. To do this, connect your Android device, tap the Charging this device via USB notification that automatically pops up, find Use USB for, and select File Transfer. 

How to transfer photos from Android to Windows

After you connect your Android phone to your Windows 10 or 11 computer with the appropriate USB cable, File Explorer should automatically open a new window showing the contents of your mobile device. If that doesn’t happen, you should be able to find your phone by looking in the left-hand navigation pane of File Explorer or clicking This PC to see a list of connected drives and devices.

Once you find it, you can browse your Android smartphone just as you would any other folder on your Windows system. You’ll typically find your photos and videos in a folder called DCIM, so you can move them to your computer however you like: drag and drop, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, or the copy (two rectangles) and paste (a clipboard and a rectangle) icons in the File Explorer toolbar at the top of the window.

You can also right-click on the name of your phone in File Explorer, and then choose Show more options > Import pictures and videos to move files across. You can pick and choose which photos and videos to copy, or you can just grab everything. By default, the files will go to the Pictures folder in your Windows user account, but it’s possible to change the items’ destination by selecting More options.

As it’s a new program freshly downloaded from the internet, you’ll get a pop-up dialog asking you to confirm that you want to run it. Once you do, connect your Android phone to your Mac with the appropriate USB cable. You should then see a pop-up window asking if you want to allow the “accessory” (your phone) to connect to macOS. Choose Allow to continue.

You’ll then see a list of all the folders on your Android phone—your photos and videos will likely be inside the one called DCIM. Open it up to get at your files, then drag and drop them wherever you like on your computer. If you want to use them with the macOS Photos app, open that program and click File, then Import to point it toward your photos and videos.

As always, it’s a good idea to keep your photos (and other data) backed up to an external drive, just in case something should happen to both your phone and Mac. For backing up your files to another location, you can choose one of many available third-party programs, or use the Time Machine tool that comes built into macOS. As always, cloud storage is an option if it works for you. Don’t skip this step—it’d be tragic to transfer everything just to lose it from a hard drive crash.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on December 8, 2022.

The post The best ways to transfer photos from an Android to a computer appeared first on Popular Science.

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

The hottest trend in artificial intelligence right now is generative AI, which can produce an entire essay or realistic images from just a text prompt. Now you can also use this technology to build a website.

Easy-to-use website builders that don’t require any coding are now commonplace, but these AI-powered platforms make leaving your mark on the web even easier. They allow you to skip the dragging and dropping and turn a brief outline of what you want your site to look like into something fully functional.

For the purposes of this guide, we’re using Framer, one of the best AI-powered site builders we’ve found so far. The platform also provides hosting services, and it’s free to use for sites with up to 1GB of bandwidth and 1,000 visitors per month, but you can pay for a subscription (starting at $5 a month) to remove these limitations. 

Look out for other similar AI web tools. It’s possible new and better ones will pop up in the future, along with established website creation services adding AI tools of their own.

Creating an AI-generated website with a prompt

Head to Framer to get yourself a free account. Once you get to the proper Framer interface, you’ll see a Start with AI button right in the middle of the screen—click it to start building your site.

The more details you provide in the prompt box that will pop up, the better results you’ll get. If you wait a few moments before entering your prompt, you’ll see some examples appear on the screen that will be useful to inform your own: Include the name and purpose of the site, the kind of style you want (like “playful” or “professional”), and the different elements that the site should include (such as a portfolio or a sign-up form).

As you type out your prompt, you’ll see a progress bar along the bottom of the input box that will make sure you’ve entered enough details to generate a page. Try to have it completely full before you stop typing, and if you want to provide even more information, you can keep on typing. When you’re done, click Start.

The platform will build your website before your eyes, adding graphics and text inspired by your prompt. All the sites Framer produces are responsive, which means they automatically adapt to screens of different sizes. If you want to see how your website looks on tablets or smartphones, you can see these different layouts if you scroll across. If you’re not happy with the resulting design, click Regenerate on the right or edit your prompt if you think you need to.

Down the right-hand side of the screen, you’ve got a choice of color palettes and fonts that you can pick from to refine the AI-generated design. You can cycle through the colors to see how each of them will look by clicking the palette buttons. You can also click on an individual section of the site, and then the AI button to the right (the icon showing two stars) to go through the color options for that specific section.

Click the cog icon (top right) to edit various settings, including the site name and description. Here you can also set the thumbnail image that will show when you share your site on social media. If you know HTML and want to add all of these details directly into the code, you can access it here too. In the top-right corner of the interface, you’ll see a play button—click it to preview how your site looks in a web browser.

Tweaking the design and adding content

As impressive as Framer’s AI engine is, it’s unlikely that it’ll get everything perfectly to your taste. To make changes, just click an image or text box to bring up layout and effects settings, for example. With a double-click, you can change the actual image or enter your own text.

Right-click on anything that’s on your website and even more options appear. You’ll be able to delete, move, and duplicate blocks, as well as change their alignment and edit which other blocks they’re linked to so you can move them as a group. You can undo any mistakes with Ctrl+Z (Windows) or Cmd+Z (macOS).

Click Insert (top left) if you want to add entirely new sections to your website: anything from portfolio pages, to headers and footers, to web forms. Framer will guide you through the creation process in each case. The colors and style will match the rest of your site, and you can click and drag to reposition any new elements if you need to.

There’s a CMS (Content Management System) built into Framer: Click CMS at the top and then Add Blog to attach one to your website, using the style and colors you’ve already established. You’ll see both an index page for the posts (visible on your homepage) and the individual post pages themselves, with some sample content added in. To see all the posts, add new ones, and delete existing ones, click CMS at the top.

Double-click on any blog post to make changes. You can change the style of text, add links, images, and videos, and split posts up with subheadings. Framer will save all of your changes automatically, so you don’t need to worry about losing any work. Help is always at hand, too: From the front screen of the platform, click the Framer icon (top left) and choose Help from the menu to see users’ frequently asked questions.

Up in the top-right corner, you’ll see the Publish button, which will put your site live on the internet. You can also use this button later to apply any future changes you make to your website once it’s already out there. If you’re using Framer for free, you’ll get a custom URL on the framer.ai domain, and your site will have a small Framer watermark overlaid on the bottom right corner.

The post How Framer and other AI tools can help you build your own website appeared first on Popular Science.

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There are all kinds of ways to speed up your WiFi at home: You can pay for a faster broadband package, upgrade your network’s hardware, or move your router into another room.

But you can also get faster downloads and uploads on your home WiFi by identifying which apps are hogging all of your bandwidth and using them more sparingly. It’s easy to do and you can go about it on your phone, tablet, or laptop.

[Related: How to boost your WiFi speed]

By default, you’ll only see the last month of usage, but at the top of the screen, you’ll be able to change the time range to see statistics from a specific moment up to four months before the current date.

Android allows a number of third-party apps to dig into data usage in more detail. One of the best we’ve come across is GlassWire Data Usage Monitor, which will alert you about tools using a lot of bandwidth, and show you charts with the source and the amount of data your apps have accessed in the last 24 hours. GlassWire is free to use, but you can pay $5 a year to see more stats from further back in time.

Unfortunately, third-party apps for iOS and iPadOS aren’t allowed to monitor WiFi usage for individual apps, but they can tell you about WiFi usage overall. Network Utility is a fine example, giving you a breakdown of how much data your Apple devices have downloaded over both WiFi and cellular networks since they last restarted. This monitoring is free, but you can pay a one-off $2 upgrade to remove the ads and get a variety of more advanced network diagnostic tools.

With the limitations on Apple’s phones and tablets, you’re going to need to do some detective work to identify apps using a lot of bandwidth. For example, you can cross-check overall data usage on Network Utility with your screen time stats and which took most of it (Screen Time in Settings can give you more information on this). That way, if WiFi usage shoots up for a particular day and you’ve been using a particular app a lot, for example, then you’ll know that it’s a data-hungry one.

Find the Windows apps taking up all of your bandwidth

On a Windows computer, right-click on a blank area of the taskbar and choose Task Manager, then open the Processes tab to see all of the apps currently running on your system. As well as showing the demands on the computer processor, memory, and disk, you can also see which apps are using up most bandwidth.

Switch to the App history tab to see these statistics over the last month—excessive network usage is marked with a darker shade of blue, but you can also click Network to sort the apps based on how much of your precious WiFi they’re using up.

You can get a similar set of readings from Windows Settings by choosing Network & internet, then clicking the Data usage link next to your WiFi connection. You’ll see app data usage for the last 30 days, with the biggest bandwidth hoggers at the top of the list.

Learn which macOS apps are taking up all of your WiFi

When it comes to macOS, the Activity Monitor utility will reveal everything you need to know about the network usage of specific apps. Launch it with a search in Spotlight (Cmd+Space) or from the Utilities folder in Finder. Once the app is open, go to the Network tab and you’ll see all the apps that are currently running and the amounts of data they’re sending and receiving.

The stats update in real time, which should help you to spot which programs are taking up all of your WiFi. However, it won’t show data usage for apps that aren’t currently open, and there’s no way to access any historical logs of network activity on macOS.

You’ll get more or less the same information with a third-party utility, like the $10 iStats Menu. This app sits in the menu bar and provides diagnostic information on your system, but will only show the current state of your network, so no long-term breakdown of how much internet activity particular apps are responsible for.

How to spot WiFi-hogging apps on other devices

There may well be other devices and apps connected to your WiFi network, but it’s not quite as straightforward to figure out how much of it they’re using up. Your best option is to look for any apps supplied by your router manufacturer or internet service provider, which may list bandwidth usage by device.

[Related: Boost your connection by checking your Wi-Fi strength from any device]

If you’ve got an Eero router, for example, the accompanying apps for Android and iOS give you a breakdown of which devices are connected, how much WiFi they’re currently using, and how much data they’ve downloaded in the past. It’s not an app-by-app breakdown, but it can be helpful.

If you notice your PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X is currently using up a lot of bandwidth, for example, you can check which apps or games they are running. For reference, other devices such as smart home gadgets shouldn’t be taking up much of your WiFi connection at all.

The post Speed up a slow home connection by checking for WiFi-guzzling apps appeared first on Popular Science.

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Google is back in the tablet game with the Pixel Tablet, a 10.95-inch slate that will set you back $499 and comes with a charging dock that’s also a stand and speaker. As you would expect, it runs the latest Android 13 software too.

If you’ve just picked up a Pixel Tablet, or are thinking about it and want to know what the hardware can do, these tips should be useful—it’s capable of much more than your smartphone is.

Launch both apps you want to use one after the other, then swipe up from the bottom of the screen and hold your finger briefly in the middle to bring up a gallery of thumbnails showing recently used apps. Swipe to the app you want to position on the right (landscape) or at the top (portrait), tap Split, and then select the second app you want to place on the left or at the bottom.

The Pixel Tablet splits the screen in half by default, but you can change this by dragging the center dividing line with your finger—doing so will allow you to give more room to one app (such as a video player) and less room to the other (like a note-taking app).

2. Identify songs playing nearby

Like the Google Pixel phones, the Pixel Tablet has a few exclusive apps and features, including the Recorder app that can transcribe spoken audio into text. There’s also a Now Playing utility that works in the background, automatically identifying songs that are playing close by the Pixel Tablet.

But Now Playing isn’t enabled by default, so you’ll have to turn it on before you can do any of that. To do so, open Settings, choose Sound, then Now Playing, and turn on the Identify songs playing nearby toggle switch. You can come back to this screen later to tap Now Playing history to see tunes the Pixel Tablet has recently identified.

3. Enable hub mode

When your Pixel Tablet is charging on its official dock, you can put it into “hub mode.” This essentially gives you easy access to smart home controls and Google Assistant, as well the option to display your choice of photos or artwork when the tablet isn’t in use.

When you set up the tablet for the first time, you’ll have the option to enable hub mode, but you can toggle the feature on or off later too. Just open Settings, then tap Hub Mode. There, you can configure settings such as what the tablet uses for a screen saver, and what sorts of alerts and reminders are shown.

Pick Screen saver, and your options are Art gallery, Full-screen clock, Google Photos, Weather, and the even cuter Weather frog. Within some of these, there will be an extra Customize button—for choosing the type of clock face you want to use, for example.

4. Use picture-in-picture video mode

Another way to make full use of your tablet’s 10.95-inch screen is by keeping videos playing while you use other apps. The same picture-in-picture mode is available on Android phones too, but it looks a lot less cluttered on a tablet.

All you need to do is launch a video in an app that supports picture-in-picture—like Netflix, Disney Plus, Prime Video, or YouTube (with a premium subscription)—then swipe up from the bottom of the screen to launch another app. A mini player will stay on the screen, and you can reposition it by dragging it around. Tap on the mini player to get playback controls, or drag it down to the X at the bottom of the screen.

To disable picture-in-picture for a particular app, open Settings, then choose Apps and See all apps. Find and select the app you want to disable the feature for, tap Picture-in-picture, and turn the toggle switch off.

5. Stay in the frame

If you’re using your Pixel Tablet to make video calls to friends, family, or colleagues, there’s a neat little feature that ensures you’re always in the frame and in focus, even if you’re moving around while you’re on the call.

The feature you want is called continuous framing, and you activate it by tapping the relevant icon while you’re on a video call—it looks like a person’s profile with four corners around it. One note: You can’t use continuous framing if you’re using background effects on a call.

6. Give kids their own space

Fire up your Pixel Tablet for the first time and you’ll notice a Kids Space app. If you’ve got younger family members using the tablet, it’s a great way to keep them entertained and safe.

Launch the app and you’ll be asked to create a child account for the tablet, or pick an existing one you’ve set up through Google’s Family Link service. As you go through the initial setup process, you’ll be able to put filters in place for Google search and Google Chrome, and put limits on accessing content from the Play Store. You can also choose which apps are available to the child.

With that done, the Kids Space app can be used for curated videos, books, music, and games, while the rest of the tablet stays locked down to your specifications. To switch back to your account, tap the username icon (top right).

7. Send audio and video via Chromecast

The Pixel Tablet dock comes with Chromecast capabilities built right into it, so you can beam audio and video over from compatible apps on an Android phone or iPhone—as long as the tablet is docked, charging, and on the same WiFi network as the device you’re casting from.

Most video and audio apps offer a Chromecast option: If it’s available, somewhere in the app you’ll see a button that looks like a rectangle with three curved lines in the lower left corner. A variety of web apps that run in a browser, including those for YouTube and Netflix, have a Chromecast button too.

Once you tap or click the button, you’ll see a list of Chromecast devices on your local WiFi network, which should include your tablet: Select the Pixel Tablet to connect. You can control playback from your phone or on the tablet screen. To break the connection, tap the Chromecast button in the originating app again, then Stop casting.

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You may have not realized it, but your messaging app of choice may not be sending photos at their best quality. Instead, it’s resizing or compressing the pictures you share to send them more easily. This is useful if you have a limited or spotty connection, but sometimes the shrinking makes your pics look small or even blurry when they arrive at their destination.

To send higher quality pictures on Android and iOS and make the most of your images, you’ll need to know which settings to tweak and where to find them. Once you do, you’ll have the freedom to adjust to every photo-sharing situation.

You get three options: Auto (recommended), Best quality, and Data saver. WhatsApp hasn’t gone on record saying exactly what specs the auto mode uses, or how it decides which settings to pick in any given occasion. But if you want to make sure your photos always look their best when you share them, choose Best quality.

[Related: Edit gorgeous photos right on your phone]

You’ll see a message telling you that best quality photos are larger and can take longer to send, so if you don’t have a particularly fast connection, you might want to use Data saver sometimes as well.

Finally, choose between Standard or High. Signal doesn’t offer any information about the details of these two options, but High is the one to pick if you want to maximize the quality of the media you’re sharing.

Change iMessage photo quality

If you rely on Apple’s instant messaging service, you should know that there is a data saver mode that will reduce the quality of the images you share. It only takes a moment to make sure that this mode isn’t enabled—from the main iOS Settings app, select Messages, then scroll down to the Low-Quality Image Mode toggle switch. If it’s on, turn it off to maximize the quality of your shared pictures.

Share from Apple Photos without losing quality

There aren’t any quality settings to know about in the Photos app on the iPhone, but be aware that the platform automatically resizes images in shared albums to a maximum width or height of 2048 pixels. To get around this, choose a different method of sharing through the Apple Photos app that doesn’t involve shared albums. Sending a direct iCloud link, for example, is a good alternative.

From the mobile app, tap your profile picture (top right), then Photos settings, Backup, Backup quality, and Original quality.

How to upload high quality photos to Instagram

Meta’s photo-sharing app was relatively slow to introduce image quality settings, but they’re available now. Instagram’s settings, specifically make it easier for users to share images and videos over a spotty connection. 

Other apps that don’t have photo quality settings

For apps we haven’t mentioned—including the likes of Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Google Chat—there are no quality settings for images and videos you upload. 

Not only that, but there’s very little in the way of information about whether these platforms compress your photos at all. If you really want to avoid apps changing the quality of your pictures and videos, use a messaging app that has these settings available, or use direct links through apps like Dropbox, for example.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on January 18, 2022.

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You may have grown accustomed to the idea that one phone plays music, podcasts, or an audiobook to one set of headphones, but that was the past—this is the future. Today’s top-end handsets are capable of sending the same sounds to two pairs of wireless headphones at the same time.

That means you can share a tune or a story with a friend or family member, whether you’re sitting on the couch, riding the subway, or anywhere else. All you need are compatible pairs of wireless headphones and a smartphone that supports the feature.

If you don’t see your Apple or Beats headphones on this list, check the Apple support page to see if your model has been added. Assuming you’ve got the right hardware in hand and one pair of headphones has already been connected to the iPhone, load up whatever you want to listen to and open the Control Center with a swipe down from the top right corner of the screen.

[Related: The best apps for listening to music on your phone]

Tap the AirPlay button (an upward arrow pointing into a concentric set of rings), then tap Share Audio. At this point, you’ll need to connect the second pair of headphones. For AirPods and AirPods Pro, hold them close to the phone in their case, then open the case lid. For AirPods Max, just hold them close to the phone. For Beats wireless headphones, put them in pairing mode as detailed in the headphone instructions, and hold them close to the phone.

That should be enough to get the iPhone to detect the second pair of headphones. When they show up on screen, tap Share Audio to connect. Back in the Control Center, you’ll see two pairs of headphones connected, with individual volume sliders for each of them. The second pair of headphones will stay hooked up to the iPhone until you remove them, which you can do by tapping the checkmark next to the headphones in the Control Center.

How to use Dual Audio on a Samsung phone

On Samsung phones, the ability to send audio to two different pairs of headphones is called Dual Audio. You can use any two pairs of Bluetooth headphones, but only certain Samsung phones offer the feature: The Samsung Galaxy S8 (and later S series phones), Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 (and later Z Fold phones), and any Samsung Galaxy Z Flip model. Your phone must also be running Android 10 or later.

The process for adding a pair of headphones is the same, whether you already have a set connected or not. Open the main Settings screen, then tap Connections and turn on the Bluetooth toggle switch if it isn’t already enabled. Select Bluetooth, and the phone will begin scanning for nearby Bluetooth devices.

At this point, your second pair of headphones (and the first, if they’re not already hooked up) needs to be in pairing mode. If you’re not sure how to do this, check the instructions that came with your headphones or run a quick online search to check—there will typically be a physical button somewhere that you can press to ensure the phone can find the headphones.

When the headphones appear on the phone’s screen, tap on them and then pick Pair to connect. Next, go back to the home screen and open the Quick Settings pane with a swipe down from the top right corner of the display. From there, tap Media output and select both headphones to send audio to both sets simultaneously. Each pair of headphones also has its own volume slider. To disconnect a set of headphones, head back to Bluetooth in Settings, tap the cog icon next to the device, then hit Disconnect.

How to share audio on other Android phones

Unfortunately, no other Android phones currently offer the same native audio-sharing feature you can get on iPhones and Samsung phones—there’s no similar functionality on Google Pixels, for example. While other Android phones can certainly connect to multiple Bluetooth devices, they can only send audio to one of them at a time.

That said, there are a few workarounds you can try. The Bose Connect app can send audio to two pairs of headphones from an Android phone, but it only works with a specific list of Bose wireless headphones (there’s a list on the app listing). Then there’s the SoundSeeder app, which syncs music across multiple phones—everyone involved can use their own headphones with their own phone to hear the same song at the same time.

[Related: 9 hidden Android features you’re missing out on]

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With so much of our time spent tapping away at a keyboard, a boost in typing speed can make you more productive in almost any line of work—whether it’s powering through your inbox, writing up reports, or staying in touch with team members on messaging apps, many of us could make our days easier by typing a little faster.

What’s more, you don’t have to enroll in a course to get your fingers flying, because there are plenty of free typing apps that you can use right at your desk—you could even set aside 10 minutes each day and then see how far you’ve progressed at the end of the month. We’re sure you’ll find one typing trainer that fits your style among the seven listed below.

What we like about Keybr, in particular, is the variety in the exercises, and the way it adapts to meet your skills—the developers say underlying algorithms match the tests to your typing speed, and it works well as far as we can tell. It also benefits from a slick and simple online interface, which always lets you know where you are and what to do next.

Keybr is available online for free with ads (registration optional).

Ratatype

If you still have to look at the keys on you keyboard, Ratatype is the typing app for you: It eases you in with an introduction to touch typing, showing you where to put your fingers on the keyboard, and even giving you some advice on sitting posture. With all that digested, you can get started on the first of 15 lessons, each made up of multiple typing exercises.

Ratatype is meant for students, and it shows—the interface is colorful and friendly, and the typing exercises are basic, focusing on getting you to hit the right keys rather than typing anything that makes any sense, at least to begin with. Your profile page makes it easy to see how far you’ve progressed and jump in and out of the exercises as you need to.

Ratatype is available online for free (registration required).

The Typing Cat

Few web apps can match the visual charm and exercise variety of The Typing Cat, which throws in a few games alongside the standard exercises to keep you interested. A keyboard stays on screen at all times, so you’ll know where your fingers should be, and the tests are fun and intuitive. Try the Typing Test first, to see how fast you already are.

From there you can jump into a tiered series of courses and lessons that manage to be comprehensive without being daunting—you can see where you are at every stage. You can just launch in and start typing, but you can save your progress if you register for a free account, and if you pay a few dollars a month, you’ll have access to the advanced lessons too.

The Typing Cat is available online for free, $4.50 a month, or $32 a year (registration optional).

TypingClub

If you just want to jump in and get going, we’d recommend TypingClub, which is just about as simple an app as you can get. It’s still polished and professional though, and smartly leads you through a host of exercises—they can get a bit repetitive, but they’re certainly effective. The site lets you go at your own pace and take a break at any time.

[Related: The best keyboards of the year]

You get several exercises to try out for free, but there is a premium subscription option available that opens up access to plenty more. Subscribing also removes the ads on the site, lets you save your progress, and gives you more detailed reports. Overall, it’s a nice balance between free lessons for casual users and a paid option for the more dedicated.

TypingClub is available online for free with ads, $8.50 a month, or $78 a year (registration optional).

We like the pictures that illustrate where to put your fingers, and the progress reports that pop up at the end of each exercise. The finger workouts are varied too, with letters sometimes scrolling down from the top of the screen as well as staying static. If you want to get up and running quickly, and start from the very start with touch typing, this app is a great option.

Typing.com is available online for free with ads, or with a one-time payment starting at $8 (registration optional).

TypingAcademy

What’s most impressive about TypingAcademy is its lightweight and uncluttered interface: It’s all beautifully laid out and a breeze to use. You can dive into a variety of lessons or speed tests, as well as read up on the basics of touch typing or review your statistics. The app doesn’t pressure you to sign up or bombarded with ads—it’s just a fun, fast experience.

There are a wealth of exercises and lessons to work through, and if you register an account (which doesn’t cost anything) you can even create your own exercises. Even if you’re not registered, your performance and stats are saved to the web browser you’re using, so you can chart your progress. You can also pay for it’s premium version, TypeLift Pro, starting at $2 a month, to remove ads and get access to more visual assistance, an exercise plan, and more settings, among other extras. It’s not the flashiest of apps, but it’ll still get the job done.

TypingAcademy is available online for free or starting at $2 a month (registration optional).

TypingMagic 11 and TypingTrainer

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The iPhone has evolved to the point where you don’t have to do everything manually anymore. Apple’s phones allow you to easily automate tasks such as sending texts, creating calendar events, opening apps, controlling your smart home devices, playing music, taking photos, toggling WiFi, and much more.

You can handle all of this through the Automations tab in the built-in Shortcuts app. If you haven’t fully explored this tool, you should know automations are even simpler than shortcuts, as they are easier and quicker to create. 

We’ve got seven of our favorites to get you started. Once you’ve tried them, you’ll no doubt be able to come up with many other ways to use this feature to suit your lifestyle and needs. 

To create automations, open the Shortcuts app, go to Automation, tap the + (plus) icon in the top right corner, and choose Create Personal Automation.

1. Text someone when you get home

If there’s someone in your life who needs to know when you get home from work every day—maybe for picking kids up, organizing meals, or just for peace of mind—you can set this up through your iPhone’s automation.

[Related: Get around your phone more quickly than you already are]

Select Arrive as the first part of your automation, then tap Choose next to Location to find your home on a map. If you tend to be in and out of work during the day, tap Time Range to specify that the automation should only work when you finish your day.

For the action, tap Add Action, Apps, Messages, and Send Message. You can then specify the message and the recipient at the top of the screen. When you’re happy with your automation, tap Next to review it and then Done to confirm.

Choose Alarm from the first automation screen, then Is Snoozed from the next set of options (or Is Stopped if you prefer). Further down you can set this automation to apply only to a particular alarm, like the one that wakes you up in the morning rather than any reminder that goes off during the day.

Tap Next, then Add Action, Media, and Play Music. You can then pick your preferred playlist in Apple Music at the top of the screen: Tap Music, Library, and Playlists. Once that’s done, choose Next and Done.

3. Silence your phone in the office

You don’t necessarily want your phone sounding loud alerts for incoming calls or messages while you’re at work. This is where you could use an automation to set the ringer volume of your iPhone.

There are a number of ways to do this in terms of triggers, but using the moment when you connect to your office WiFi is a good one. Pick Wi-Fi and then Choose to set the network. Continue by tapping Next, Add Action, All Actions, and Set Volume. Select your volume level on the next screen, then Next, and Done to confirm.

You can use this connecting to WiFi trigger to prompt more actions as well. You might want to get your phone to launch a specific Focus mode when you’re at work, or turn on a VPN when you connect to the WiFi at your local coffee shop.

4. Charge your phone up faster

There’s a lot to like about the iPhone, but generally speaking, charging speeds tend to lag behind Android devices. One way of speeding up a recharge is to make sure your device is doing as little as possible while it’s plugged in, and there’s an automation for that.

Pick Charger, then Is Connected, then Next. On the subsequent screen, choose Add Action, All Actions, and Set Low Power Mode. Choose Next to review the automation and then Done to confirm it.

Low power mode limits background activity and reduces the brightness of the display, meaning less of a drain on your battery and faster recharge. 

5. Email yourself a daily reminder

If you need help remembering to lock the back door every day, or buying a present a couple of days before your anniversary, then automations can help.

From the list of automations, choose Time of Day—you can pick a certain time every day, limit the automation to weekdays, or select a specific date in the year. Choose Next, Add Action, All Actions, and Send Email. You can then configure the message, choose yourself as the recipient, and tap Next and Done to finish.

Apple’s Reminders app can do the same sort of job, but this automation gives you a few more options. You can choose someone else to be the recipient, in case it’s your partner who needs a reminder on your anniversary. You can also have your phone vibrate rather than emailing yourself a note.

6. Get a VIP notification for certain messages

You might have a scenario where you don’t want to be checking your phone every five minutes but you don’t want to miss an important message or email from someone in particular. So maybe you could flash a certain smart light on your desk, for example.

This is actually pretty easy to do with automations. Choose Message and configure the trigger—it can involve a particular sender, specific words within the message, or both. When that’s done, tap Next to decide what happens.

You’ve got loads of options here: You can play a particular sound or have your phone vibrate, for example. To blink your smart lights, choose Add Action, All Actions, and Control Home, then pick the correct action from the Home app. Tap Next and Done and your automation is ready to go.

7. Automatically find your way home

If you’re often in unfamiliar areas and need to navigate home, you can have directions load up every time your iPhone connects to CarPlay. You might not always need them, but when you do, it can be a real timesaver, especially if you’re in a rush to get going.

[Related: Your WiFi and your smart home don’t get along. Now what?]

Pick CarPlay, Connects, and Next, and the automation will run every time your iPhone connects to your car stereo. Then choose Add Action, All Actions, and Open Directions. Set the Destination as your home address, then Next and Done to confirm.

You can also use the CarPlay trigger in all kinds of ways—you might want to start a particular driving playlist on Apple Music, for example, or turn on various Do Not Disturb features so you’re not tempted to check your phone while driving.

The post 7 automations that will transform how you use your iPhone appeared first on Popular Science.

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With a little bit of cash, you can stick your name (or any other combination of letters, numbers, and dots) after a “www” prefix and build a unique domain that stakes your claim to a portion of the web. And it doesn’t have to be expensive—you can snag one or two domain names for less than you might think.

How to buy a domain name

The only way to buy domain names is through a domain name registrar. There are several of these sites, but before you pick one, make sure it’s accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—the organization charged with keeping the web’s domain names in order. ICANN looks after the Domain Name System (DNS) protocols that make sure you get to the right website when you type a URL into your browser’s address bar.

Domain name registrars are all broadly similar in terms of the features they offer and the prices they charge. A domain name typically costs just a handful of dollars a year, but the price can quickly go up if you want something that’s popular and very recognizable.

A quick web search should reveal plenty of companies ready and willing to register your domain name, but there might be some variation in price. It’s always a good idea to shop around before you make your purchase. Other factors to consider before making a decision include extra features such as domain name privacy (so no one else can see who owns your site) and free email addresses to go along with your domain. Be wary of introductory rates that only apply for the first year, as they may radically increase after that time period has passed.

To get you started, some of the best-known and most reliable domain name registrars include GoDaddy, Bluehost, Domain.com, and Google Domains. Domain name registrars typically offer other internet-related services, including web hosting and e-commerce features. You’ll need the former if you don’t have your own server to store and manage your website’s files and apps, while the latter can be helpful if you’re setting up an online shop. These additional options can help you pick the registrar that’s best for you.

The search results will show a plethora of options to pick from, together with their prices. On the right end of a domain name or website address, you’ll find the top-level domain: something like “.com” or “.org”. You’ll notice that the most common top-level domains will cost more, but you can cut costs by going with something a bit less recognizable, like “.xyz” or “.info”.

[Related: Build your own website, no coding required]

The rest of the domain name is up to you. As long as the website address is available and hasn’t been claimed by someone else, you can register it. But before you commit, spend some time playing around with more specific search terms and variations. Sometimes one version of your desired domain name may already be taken, while another one might not be, or you may be able to find a cheaper price for a name variation you’re satisfied with.

Once you’ve picked a domain name (or two), you’ll need to enter your personal details and some payment information. The registrar you’re using will ask you how long you want to register the domain name for—as with most services, signing up for more years usually means a lower annual price. At this stage, the platform might also offer you some paid-for extras, such as enhanced security for your domain and email addresses matching your domain name.

You have your domain name: now what?

It’s important to know that a domain name doesn’t come with a website. If you want to actually put words, images, and anything else on your domain, you’ll also need a web hosting package. Your registrar will likely be able to sell you one, but it will cost substantially more than your domain name did—anything from a few dollars to several hundred dollars a month. Prices will vary depending on a number of elements, like the expected amount of traffic—big businesses with lots of traffic every day will likely pay more than, say, a portfolio website that only expects a couple hundred visits a month from potential clients. You’ll also spend more money on web hosting for features like email addresses with your domain’s name, 24/7 technical support, and the ability to host more websites.

There are less-costly options, but some won’t allow you total creative freedom over web design. Blogging platforms like Blogger and website builders like Ucraft provide free web hosting options and let you use a domain name with your blog at no cost. Tumblr will host your site for free too, but you’ll only be able to use your own domain name if you get it through them. You can also attach domain names to WordPress blogs, sites built through Wix, and portfolio pages made in Carrd, but you’ll need to be on a paid-for plan with the platform you’re using.

Those are only the most popular choices. Just about every website builder, blog platform, and landing page maker will let you use your own domain name (usually at a cost), so if you find one you like, visit the platform’s support page to learn how to set everything up.

[Related: Setting up a secure private email server isn’t as hard as it sounds]

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By now you’ve almost certainly heard of headline-grabbing generative AI tools such as Bing AI, ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Dall-E, and software developers are finding ways to stuff artificial intelligence into existing programs. While this technology can produce its own content, it can also extend images made by humans.

Try Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill

At the time of writing, Adobe’s AI-powered Generative Fill is only available in the beta version of Photoshop, though it should reach the main app soon. If you’re a Photoshop subscriber, you can install the beta from the Creative Cloud application on your computer: Click Beta apps (on the left), then Install next to the Photoshop (Beta) entry.

There are a number of ways to use Generative Fill, but when it comes to extending the background of an image, you’ll first need to get the canvas to the size you want via Image > Canvas Size. Next, select the blank area outside the original image—you could use the Regular Marquee tool, the Magic Wand tool, or any other tool you prefer for the job.

By default, when you make the selection, a pop-up window will appear showing the Generative Fill button—click on it. If the pop-up doesn’t arrive, choose Edit > Generative Fill. Either leave the prompt field blank (which means Photoshop will fill the space based solely on existing pixels and its own judgment), or enter some guidance (like “dark forest” or “white beach”), and then click Generate.

Every time you use Generative Fill, you get three variations: Use the arrows that appear on screen near the selection to move between them. If you’re not happy with any of the options, you can tweak the prompt to add more detail and click Generate again. To get rid of your AI additions, use the Edit > Undo tool as you normally would.

Let Dall-E 2 start “outpainting”

Dall-E 2 is one of the best-known AI image generators right now, and its own background fill feature is called “outpainting.” You can sign up for a free account to test it—you’ll get 50 free credits when you sign up, then 15 free credits every month after that. Each outpainting you do will cost you one credit. If you run out, every additional 115 credits will set you back $15.

In the web app, choose Upload an image (under the search box), and pick the photo you’d like to expand. When you’re in the editing environment, tap F or click the Add generation frame button (a square with a plus symbol on its top left). Drag the frame with the Select tool (the arrow symbol) so it overlaps some of your original image while also extending the canvas—this gives Dall-E 2 some source pixels to work with.

You’ll need to enter a prompt, even with the original image available as inspiration for the AI, so type out what you want to see in the box above the image. You can extend the background in the same manner, or introduce something new like a mountain, a forest, or a lightning storm. When you’re ready, click Generate.

Use Clipdrop’s Uncrop tool

Clipdrop is a suite of AI-powered tools for creators: You can use it for free, but your images will be limited to a resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels and come with a watermark. If you want to overcome those limitations, you’ll need to pay $9 a month. One of the tools Clipdrop offers is Uncrop, and you can access it directly on the web.

To use it, click inside the dotted frame to pick an image from your computer, then use the handles on the screen to drag out the canvas as far as you’d like it to go, beyond the borders of your original picture. Alternatively, you can type out the canvas size you want, in pixels, in the boxes at the bottom (or pick a preset size). Click Next to continue.

After a bit of processing, Clipdrop presents you with four variations to choose from—use the thumbnails or the arrows at the bottom of the screen to navigate through them. There’s no text-prompting involved—Clipdrop simply uses the pixels that are already in the image to figure out how to extend it. It does occasionally introduce new elements, such as a towel in the beach scene we were working with.

When you’ve found an image you’re happy with, click Download to save it to your device. The three dots beside the Download button will lead you to other areas of Clipdrop, where you can change the lighting of an image or increase its resolution. You can also click Edit to go back to the canvas page and change the dimensions of your finished picture, before generating the background again.

The post How to use AI to expand the background of any image appeared first on Popular Science.

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It’s safe to say we’re always looking for ways to make our WiFi faster and more stable everywhere in our homes. And there are a few methods you can try—from moving your router out of a corner to buying a better one altogether.

But one relatively affordable and simple trick you may not have considered yet is plugging a WiFi antenna into your laptop or desktop. Your computer most likely already has one inside, but depending on your current setup, an external antenna can mean a more stable and faster connection across a greater distance.

WiFi antennas are not an upgrade for everyone, but they can be very effective for some. To decide whether it’s right for you, it helps to know how these devices work and what they can offer.

How WiFi antennas work

If you can remember a time before the internet, you might also remember when personal computers didn’t come with WiFi built in, strange though it might seem now. As wireless connections became more ubiquitous, laptops and desktops had to catch up, and people often used WiFi dongles to get older devices online.

Nowadays, you’d be hard-pressed to find a computer that didn’t have everything you need to get online: Manufacturers integrate one or more WiFi antennas somewhere on the motherboard or inside the chassis (sometimes on the outside of a desktop PC case). But external WiFi antennas can still be useful in some scenarios. If you buy an antenna that’s more powerful than the one built into your computer (particularly one that supports a newer WiFi standard), your machine will be better at picking up your router’s signals, so you should see a stronger and more stable connection.

[Related: The best WiFi 6 routers of 2023]

Just having an external WiFi antenna connected through a USB cable can make a difference, as you’ll be able to relocate it up on a shelf or on the other side of a desk, where the WiFi signal might be stronger.

If you think you might benefit from a WiFi antenna, make sure they support WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E: the fastest, highest capacity WiFi standards around right now. As long as your router supports these protocols, a WiFi 6- or WiFi6E-compatible antenna should give you a substantial boost in terms of latency, stability, and download and upload speeds.

There are multiple factors that determine your network’s speed and stability, including your router, your computer, and the layout of your home. This is why it’s not guaranteed a WiFi antenna will make a difference with your setup, but with some careful detective work you should be able to make a good guess. Start by checking reviews of WiFi antennas online, for example, to see if you can find feedback from users with a similar set of hardware as you.

Setting up a WiFi antenna

You won’t find a wealth of antennas for sale, because they’re still quite a niche upgrade. Two devices that are worth a look are the TP-Link AX1800 WiFi 6 adapter ($70 on Amazon) and the Netgear A8000 Nighthawk WiFi 6E adapter ($80 on Amazon). They both connect via USB 3.0 for the fastest possible transfer speeds, so your computer will need to support USB 3.0 too.

The specifics of installing an antenna will vary between models, but all these devices need software, which will either come in the box or be available to download on the manufacturer’s website. For the Netgear antenna, for example, the driver comes on a USB stick with the device, but you can also download it from the Netgear site.

You’ll usually need to connect the antenna before you install the software. Both the Netgear and TP-Link models come with a wired dock, so you can either plug the antenna directly into your computer (which is probably easier on a laptop that you’ll be moving around) or use the dock to better position the antenna (which might work better on a desktop).

[Related: How to boost your WiFi speed]

Your new antenna will automatically take over WiFi duties, and you should be able to start enjoying improved connectivity straight away. There’s no need to reconnect to your WiFi network—the login information will still be saved to your device.

If you need to troubleshoot any problems, make any changes, or switch back to the built-in WiFi antenna, you can do this in the operating system settings. On Windows, go to Settings, Network & internet, and then WiFi to see your options. If you’re on macOS, open System Settings and then go to Network and Wi-Fi.

Finally, there’s also a way to combine the power of your antennas. The app Speedify ($15 a month) can add up the signals from multiple WiFi antennas on both Windows and macOS. In other words, your new external antenna and your existing internal one will work as a single device, theoretically boosting WiFi speeds and stability. You can cancel at any time, so it might be worth giving it a try to see if it’s able to boost your computer’s connection even further.

The post Installing a WiFi antenna can boost internet speeds all around your home appeared first on Popular Science.

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Tracking your reading with an app means it’s easier to look back on the books you’ve loved, see how your reading habits are changing over time, and find recommendations for what to read next. And while there are numerous tracking services to pick from, The StoryGraph is making a name for itself among readers.

Launched in 2019, this mobile and browser-based app offers detailed stats about your reading, personalized recommendations powered by artificial intelligence, and an interface that’s both clean and simple. You can sign up for and use StoryGraph for free on the web, or download its equally inexpensive Android and iOS apps. If you decide you like it, you can pay $5 a month (or $50 a year) to get the Plus plan benefits, which include even more stats, additional recommendations, and priority support.

Getting started with StoryGraph

When you sign up for a StoryGraph account, you’ll need to provide an email address, a username, and a password. As part of the on-boarding process, you’ll have the opportunity to import your reading history from the Amazon-owned Goodreads.

You can follow other people and be followed by other StoryGraph users, and when you set up your account you can pick your community preferences, including who is allowed to send you friend requests and see your reading updates. You can also change these options later on.

[Related: Keep your brain in shape by reading more books]

Once you’re into your account, you’ll see four options for what to do next. You can get some recommendations, set your reading goals, see a selection of reading challenges that you might want to attempt, and browse what’s proving popular in the community.

You can also start logging past, current, and future reading: Click in the search box (top right), then look up a book you want to read, are reading, or have read. When you get to the book’s page, click to read to add it to the list of books you want to get to. Alternatively, click the arrow next to to read and select read, currently reading, or did not finish.

For books you’ve read, you’ll have the opportunity to add a review and rating, plus the date you started and finished it. These review pages go into a lot of depth: You can add everything from the book’s mood and pace to how diverse the cast of characters is, and you’re free to add as much or as little as you like. If you’d prefer to just leave a star rating, you certainly can.

How to manage your reading progress

Click your profile picture (top right), then Profile to see an overview of your activity on StoryGraph. One cool feature is the way the site summarizes your reading data, in terms of the type and length of books you normally enjoy. The same page also shows you what you’ve recently read, what you’re currently reading, and what you want to read.

When it comes to the book (or books) you’re currently reading, you can plug in the number of pages you’ve completed and add any notes you’d like. To do so, go to Reading Journal from your profile, and then click Edit. This helps StoryGraph figure out your reading speed and compile your reading stats.

Click Stats at the top of the screen to see these statistics at any time: The page gives you a detailed breakdown of your reading over time, including which authors and genres are your favorite, and your average pace. Stats can be broken down by individual years or even months if you want a closer look.

Select Reading Challenges at the top of the interface, and you’ll be able to set yourself a reading goal, which might help you get through your reading backlog quicker than you otherwise would. Goals can be set in terms of the number of books, pages, or reading hours you want to get through.

StoryGraph lets you set multiple goals at once if you’d like, and will email you with updates about your progress if you like—though this is optional if you’d prefer not to be nagged. You can dip into the Reading Challenges page at any time to see how you’re doing, and to adjust your goals if necessary.

Use StoryGraph to find new books

The AI-powered recommendation engine built into The StoryGraph is one of the best parts of the app, but you’ll need to give it some information before you can use it. Click Home (at the top), then Find out more in the recommendations section, and finally Take the survey to share a bit about your reading tastes and preferences.

The questions cover topics such as your favorite genres, and what you think is most important in a good book (like realistic settings or strong character development). The survey only takes a few minutes to complete, and then StoryGraph will present you with a selection of titles picked just for you. Click to read next to any of them to add them to that list.

There are plenty of other ways to find new stuff to read. Go to an individual book’s page, for example, and you’ll see you can Browse similar books like the one you’re looking at. Head to the Home page, and you’ll see a list of books popular on StoryGraph during the current week—click Browse to see more.

You can also open up the Community tab to see what everyone else is reading. If you see fellow users with similar tastes to yours (StoryGraph will even point you toward a few), you can follow them so they appear prominently in your community feed next time. You’re even able to set up buddy reads, where you read a book alongside one or more other people.

The post StoryGraph is a comprehensive book-tracking app for all sorts of readers appeared first on Popular Science.

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We’re all different when it comes to upgrading our phones. Maybe you get a new one every year or don’t even think about it before having your device for at least five years. But no matter how often you swap your handsets, you want to make sure you’re giving your gadget the best chance at a long life by properly looking after it.

This will result not only in a better experience for you but in not having to upgrade your phone as quickly as you otherwise would, saving you a substantial pile of cash along the way.

Buying a case can prolong the life of your phone by protecting it from drops, knocks, and spills. Whether your handset slides out of your grab at the top of a ladder or gets crayoned on by your kids, a case can be a truly useful buffer between it and the real world.

[Related: Best iPhone cases for protection and style]

Esthetics are not the only factor to consider, so think carefully about which one you want. Thicker cases offer more protection but obviously add more bulk to your device. Besides shielding your phone, some cases also offer extras like an additional battery pack or slots to store your credit cards.

Screen protectors can also work alongside cases to keep the display on your phone safe. If it’s properly installed, you’ll barely notice it’s there and it can make the difference between your screen shattering or staying intact when you drop it.

First and foremost, keep your phone updated with the latest versions of its operating system and individual apps. This will allow it to run optimized code at all times, with the latest bug fixes and efficiency improvements. Software updates are mostly handled automatically, but you can still check for them via General and Software Update from iOS Settings or System and System Update from Android Settings.

It’s also worth freeing up as much storage space as possible, which will give your phone more room to work with. To do this, uninstall the apps you don’t need, and clear out files (such as photos and videos) you’ve got backed up elsewhere.

Another common repair is dodgy charging ports, which may be to blame for your phone not juicing up properly. Replacing this part can help protect the health of your battery and ensure that the faulty component doesn’t start damaging anything else inside your phone.

When you reach a certain level of damage, it’s probably more cost-effective to just buy a new phone, but it’s worth weighing up your options if a repair will keep your handset going for longer.

You might also want to consider getting your phone insured—especially if you splurged a big chunk of cash on a top-of-the-line, rare, and very expensive-to-fix device.

On iOS, open Settings then choose Battery, Battery Health & Charging, and Optimized Battery Charging to turn the feature on. On Android, from Settings go to Battery, Adaptive preferences, and then Adaptive charging. If your phone knows it can take its time (like when you’re charging it overnight), then it will.

There are several other ways to improve your phone’s battery life: Keep it away from extreme temperatures (like a hot car), take it out of its case while you’re charging it, and store it half-charged if you won’t be using it for a while. The latter prevents your phone from falling into a deep discharge state (if it’s not charged at all) or losing capacity (if it’s fully charged).

The post Easy tips to make your expensive phone last longer appeared first on Popular Science.

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Wishing somebody a happy birthday requires little effort on your part, but it immediately makes your friends and family feel appreciated and cared about.

But if your brain cannot handle yet another important date, your ever-loyal smartphone offers a host of ways to stay on top of birthdays and other special occasions. Just make sure you use at least one of these approaches to avoid missing someone’s big day.

[Related: How to set phone reminders for anything]

Snapchat will display a cake icon next to your contacts in the main chat list when it’s their birthday—swipe left from the camera screen to see it. You can also tap on a friend’s avatar to get to their profile page, and if it’s their big day, you’ll see an It’s Their Birthday! graphic. Unfortunately, you can’t look up birth dates in advance.

Other social networks are less helpful. Twitter will display people’s birth dates on their profile pages but only if they’ve provided the information. There’s also no list or notification you can use: to know if it’s somebody’s birthday, you’ll have to visit their page to find out. Instagram is even less helpful and doesn’t display birthdays at all, so you’re out of luck. Unless someone specifically puts their date of birth in their bio or uploads a ‘happy birthday to me’ post that you notice.

Of course, Google isn’t guessing here—this feature relies on the information provided by your contacts. If you want to add birthday info yourself, you can open a contact page, tap the pen icon (top right) and then tap Significant date. Enter the birth date and make sure it has a Birthday label underneath. You can also store dates such as anniversaries in the same way. On the main Highlights menu, the app may also prompt you to add birthdays to your contacts more easily. If you see the notification to Add birthdays, tap it and then tap the birthday cake icons you see next to each of your contacts. 

The listings in the iOS Contacts app also have a birthday field you can fill in. On a contact page, tap Edit and then tap add birthday to enter the date. The iOS Contacts app doesn’t remind you about birthdays, but the iOS Calendar app can, which brings us neatly to…

Google Calendar offers similar integration with Google Contacts. In Google Calendar, tap the three horizontal lines (top left) and make sure the Birthdays calendar is checked (tap Show more if you can’t see it). There’s no way to manage notifications for these events in Google Calendar, as these alerts are handled in Google Contacts.

There’s nothing to stop you from creating your own birthday calendars in the iOS or Android Calendar apps, which would give you a bit more control over formatting (like colors) and let you set different notifications for each birthday. But you’ll need to maintain them manually, which may involve a lot more work than you’re willing to input. The same goes for any other third-party calendar app that you might be using.

[Related: Little kids think birthday parties actually make you get older]

Over on Android, we like Birday, which is open source, as well as easy and completely free to use. You can enter birthday data manually or import it from Google Contacts, and the app can track everyone’s age, count down to specific birthdays, and show you all of your friends and family’s special days on a year planner as well. 

Countdown+ Widgets (for Android and iOS) puts the emphasis on counting down to birthdays or any other event you’re interested in. You can import data from the calendars on your phone or from Facebook, customize the countdowns in numerous ways, and see all upcoming events in a simple list. You’ll also be able to remove ads after paying a one-off fee of $2, which will also allow you to back up your data and get even more customization options.

The post How to make sure you never miss someone’s birthday appeared first on Popular Science.

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When your desktop or laptop refuses to start, that means either its hardware or software is having trouble. Identifying the problem’s root cause isn’t an exact science, but you can rule out many potential issues by taking a methodical approach to troubleshooting.

As you work through these steps, keep in mind that there’s a very, very long list of reasons why your computer might not be turning on. Finding and fixing the problem often involves a lot of trial and error. We may not be able to include every potential issue, but we can guide you toward solutions for some of the most common problems. If all else fails, we’ll explain when it might be best to call in the professionals.

Next, ensure that your machine is receiving enough power. If you’re dealing with a laptop, plug it in and ensure that the charging light is on. For a desktop, double-check that the monitor is firmly connected. With any type of computer, make sure you’re using the power cable that came with it—or, if the original broke, that you have an exact replacement. If you own (or can borrow) a spare cable, try switching to that one to make sure it’s not the cause of the problem.

[Related: How to slow down a hot computer]

Once you’ve shut everything down, briefly push the power button to turn the machine back on. If your computer springs to life, at least for a few seconds, the culprit is probably damaged software… but this response doesn’t entirely rule out a hardware issue. So look for any messages on screen that might hint at what’s going wrong. Does the computer give a reason why it can’t boot? Is it unable to detect the hard drive or another specific component?

If the power button gets no response at all, it’s a tell-tale sign that something has gone wrong with the hardware. In this situation, if you’ve already tried that alternative power cable, it might be time to visit a local repair shop for a professional assessment.

Is it possible to pin down the exact hardware issue? We can’t cover every scenario here, but if you own an older computer or have recently moved your machine around, you may have damaged or dislodged a component. With a desktop, you can try powering down the machine, opening up the case, and double-checking all the connections to and from the motherboard. But we’d only recommend that step if you’re confident poking around your computer’s guts. For the rest of us, a professional assessment is probably better.

Deal with software problems: Windows

When software refuses to let a computer start up, it’s usually because of data corruption: The system can’t find a file it relies on to boot up properly. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a message on screen explaining what’s wrong, along with instructions for what to do next. Otherwise, you’ll have to walk through some troubleshooting steps to pin down the problem.

On a Microsoft machine, the computer can try to fix itself. If it fails to start up three times in a row, both Windows 10 and 11 will automatically display a recovery console, called Startup Repair, on screen. When the big “Automatic Repair” heading appears, click Restart, and the system will attempt a number of fixes. This might be enough to get you back up and running.

However, if you try to start up after that and land back on Automatic Repair instead of your usual Windows desktop, click Advanced options to enter the Windows Recovery Environment. From there, click Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings. Here, choose Restart, and you’ll eventually see a list of boot-up options. Choose option four or hit F4 on your keyboard to Enable Safe Mode. If you need to use the internet, pick option five or tap F5. Both options will launch a stripped-down version of Windows, with only the essential applications and utilities enabled. You may be able to launch Windows in this minimal state. If you can, try uninstalling any programs or devices you’ve recently added, as they could be interfering with system startup.

If you can’t launch even this simple version of Windows, try a system reset. We have a full guide to all your Windows 10 and 11 reset options, but the basics for Windows 10 are: Open your computer’s settings via the cog icon on the Start menu, click Update & Security, and select Recovery. Under Reset this PC, select Get started to begin the reset process. On Windows 11, you’ll choose System > Recovery > Reset this PC > Reset PC.

After that, Windows will replace and repair many of the key operating system files. It will also offer to wipe your personal files, but unless you have extremely up-to-date backups, you should opt to keep them. This final measure should fix most software-related boot-up issues. However, if your computer still doesn’t start, the culprit is probably the hardware. As mentioned in the previous section, we recommend that you turn to the experts for help fixing this type of error.

Deal with software problems: macOS

The macOS operating system typically does a better job of repairing itself than Windows does (although Microsoft has caught up in recent years). That said, software corruption is still very much a possibility.

As an analog to Windows’ Startup Repair, macOS has Recovery. To use it, run an internet search on your phone or some other device to determine if your computer uses Apple silicon or an Intel processor. If it’s the former, press and hold the power button to turn on your Mac until a list of startup options appears. Click Options, then Continue. If it’s the latter, turn on your computer and immediately hold down Cmd+R until you see an image.

When the computer loads, you’ll see a list of options. Start with Disk Utility, which will scan your Mac’s internal drives for problems. It will also attempt to fix any issues it encounters, which might get your computer working properly again.

[Related: 4 hidden Mac tweaks to speed up your computer]

If you can get into macOS via Safe Mode, a normal restart might fix your problem. If not, try uninstalling any non-essential applications or devices—particularly anything you set up around the time your startup problems began.

If you’re still having issues, you might need a full reinstall. Go back to the Recovery screen and choose Reinstall macOS. This will completely restore your machine’s software back to its factory state, so only do this if you’ve backed up all your important data. Like the equivalent Windows process, a reinstall should fix most software problems.

How to recover files from a dead computer

Even if all these attempts fail, your precious data may still be safe (unless the primary cause of your startup troubles is a damaged hard drive). Of course, in an ideal world, you wouldn’t need to retrieve that data, because you’d have already backed up all your files. However, if you don’t have available backups, you’ll want to pull your data from your hard drive.

On the simplest level, you can remove the drive from your laptop or desktop and access it from another computer. You could, for example, set it up as an external drive, but to do that you’ll need an enclosure like the models from Inateck ($12 on Amazon) or Sabrent ($12 on Amazon). Just make sure to buy one that matches the hard drive you’re extracting from your old machine.

Once you have an enclosure, you’ll need to power down your computer, remove the side or bottom panel, and disconnect the drive from its enclosure and cables. You’ll want to follow an online guide, which you can find by searching for your dead computer’s make and model along with the phrase “remove hard drive. If you’re not exactly comfortable working on hardware, we recommend that you leave this task to a professional repair shop.

When you set up your old drive in a new enclosure, you can plug it in to a working machine, where it should appear as a normal external disk. If your original files are Mac ones, you’ll need to access them from another Apple computer, but if you don’t have one, a program like MacDrive ($50 with a five-day free trial) will let you access them on Windows (Windows drives are much more accommodating, so you won’t need extra software to read them on a Mac). Then you can copy the files to the new computer—and make sure to back them up this time.

Try other data-recovery methods

Another option for recovering data from a dead computer is to access your files through a different operating system. However, this will only work in situations where your laptop or desktop can actually stay on long enough for you to boot from a portable system.

If it can, set up a portable Linux operating system on a USB stick (full instructions here). Pop that into your dead computer, start up on the Linux operating system, and try to access the drive that way.

However, if you want to get as much data as possible off your drive, and you’re prepared to pay for this peace of mind, you should get help from a data recovery service. A quick web search should turn up plenty of options in your local area.

The post How to save a dead computer, or at least try to revive it appeared first on Popular Science.

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No matter your operating system, Mozilla Firefox makes a great default browser. The free program is quick, intuitive, and packed with features. And you can customize it in all kinds of ways, from tweaking the look of the software to changing the appearances of individual websites.

Once you dig past the surface-level options, you’ll find you can do even more with this privacy-focused browser. These features include app troubleshooting, expert tab management, and entirely new ways of surfing the web. Check out the tips below to ensure you’re taking advantage of all Firefox has to offer.

1. See tabs on your other devices

If you’re using Firefox on multiple devices—maybe a laptop, a desktop, and a phone—and you’re signed into the same Firefox account on all of them, you can see open tabs across all of them through a feature called Firefox View.

First, click the three horizontal lines (top right), then Settings and Sync to make sure you’re signed in. As long as you’re signed in on at least one other device, you can click the Firefox icon on the far left end of the tab bar to see the tabs you’ve got open elsewhere.

2. Customize your address bar

You can turn the Firefox navigation bar into a search powerhouse. That way, when you type keywords (rather than URLs) into the address bar, you’ll be searching for those terms across the web. First, choose the search engine you prefer, whether that’s Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or something else. Then set it as Firefox’s default, so search terms in the navigation bar will yield results from that search engine. To do so, open the application menu (click the three horizontal lines on the top right of the page), then choose Settings and Search to set the default.

The address bar can act as more than a standard search engine, too. By typing in special keywords, you can launch custom searches within pretty much any site you like, including Wikipedia, IMDb, Amazon, and more. To set this up, navigate to the site you want to search and find its search box. Right-click inside the box and choose Add a Keyword for this Search. A dialog box will pop up. Next, type something short but unusual in the keyword box. This is the term that will trigger your site-specific search when you type it in the Firefox address bar, so you don’t want it to resemble any normal keywords you might search for on a regular basis. For example, you might choose to trigger an IMDb search with the term “imdb”, because you’re not likely to run a general search for that word.

Click Save, and you can then search within that site by entering your keyword, followed by your search terms, in the address bar at the top of the browser. To stick with our previous example, type “imdb Tom Cruise” into the navigation bar to search the IMDb website for Tom Cruise.

3. Watch videos in picture-in-picture mode

When you’re watching a video in Firefox, you’ll see a small overlay button that looks like two rectangles with an arrow pointing from one to the other. Click on this, and your video will pop out of Firefox. Then, you can carry on browsing while the video continues to play.

Click and drag the pop-up window to move it, and drag in (or out) from its edges to resize it. Click the X to close the picture-in-picture video, or the back to tab button (an arrow pointing to a box) to continue playback inside Firefox again.

4. Delete browsing data when Firefox is closed

Keeping on top of cookies and other browsing data saved by the sites you visit in Firefox can be tricky. This data saves information such as your location and your settings for particular sites, and while it can streamline your browsing experience, you may not feel comfortable with websites knowing this much about you.

If you’d like to stay a little more private, click the three horizontal lines (top right) in Firefox, then choose Settings and Privacy & Security. There, you can check the box labeled Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed. Every time you shut down the browser, these files will be automatically wiped, so you won’t need to worry about them.

5. Turn on mouse gestures

Clicking and scrolling is fine, but Firefox lets you supercharge your online navigation with mouse gestures that allow you to trigger specific actions by moving your mouse a certain way. Give it a trial run, with the help of the Gesturefy add-on, and there’s a good chance you’ll never look back.

First, install the extension inside Firefox and restart your browser. To explore the available gestures, open the main menu (the three horizontal lines in the top right) and choose Add-ons and themes. Find Gesturefy, click the three dots next to it, then Options, and you’ll find the configuration panel.

Under the Settings tab, you can set the trigger button, which is a button you need to hold down while making a mouse gesture. Gesturefy’s default trigger is the right mouse button, but you can change it if you’d like. Switch to the Gestures tab to see some of the gestures already in place. For example, dragging the mouse quickly to the right, then the left (with the right mouse button held down) closes the current tab. You can add more gestures to the extension’s repertoire here, too.

It may take you some time to get the hang of these gestures, but once you do, you may find that a quick hand movement feels much more intuitive than fishing around for toolbar buttons or scrolling through menus.

6. Manage your tabs

Tabs make up the core of your browsing experience—but you don’t have to settle for the default options Firefox gives you. Check out the Tree Style Tab extension, for example, which introduces a new tab panel on the left and lets you organize your open tabs into hierarchies, almost like a family tree.

Then there’s Tab Stash: This extension lets you save batches of tabs together as bookmarks inside Firefox. If you’re researching a particular topic, for example, and want to come back to it later, you can quickly save all your open tabs as a group that you can open up again later.

You should also check out Simple Tab Groups. This extension does exactly what its name suggests, enabling you to organize open Firefox tabs into color-coded groups in—you could have one group for work stuff and another for personal stuff, or whatever you like.

7. Take screenshots of webpages

There are all kinds of reasons you might want to take screenshots—for posterity, or maybe to refer to in a separate document—and this is really easy to do in Firefox. Just right-click on a blank part of a page, then choose Take Screenshot. You can either click on an element (like an image) to grab it, click and drag across a region to capture, click Save full page to screenshot the entire page, or click Save visible to just capture what you can currently see on screen.

8. Snooze tabs for later

You might be familiar with snoozing your alarm—hitting a button to postpone your wakeup call and sleep for a few extra minutes. Now you can do the same with Firefox tabs, thanks to a third-party extension called Snooze Tabs.

The extension is pretty simple to use: Click the extension button on the toolbar (it looks like a jigsaw piece), then pick Snooze Tabs. You can send the tab you’re currently viewing, or all your Firefox tabs away until a later time and date—choose a preset option like Tomorrow morning or specify your own with Custom time.

9. Search through your tabs

Browser tabs seem to multiply like magic, and you likely have dozens of them open at any one time. That can make navigation tricky, but there is a tab search trick that can help: Click inside the address bar at the top of the Firefox interface, then type the percentage symbol (%)and a space. You’ll then be able to search through the titles of the tabs that you currently have open.

10. Refresh Firefox

If you find your software bogged down with a bunch of extensions, or behaving sluggishly for no specific reason, most programs require that you uninstall and reinstall them to restore their factory settings. Firefox offers a built-in refresh feature that easily resets the browser back to its factory settings and gets it running as good as new. As Mozilla explains, a refresh will return most Firefox settings back to their default state, but it won’t affect your saved bookmarks, stored passwords, browsing history, or even open windows. What it does scrub are third-party extensions, website permissions, modified user preferences, and any customizations you’ve made to the Firefox toolbar.

To access the refresh feature, type “about:support” into the address bar and hit Enter. This takes you to the master troubleshooting page. Click the Refresh Firefox button on the right, and instructions will guide you through the short process.

If you’re really having problems with Firefox, you may not be able to start it at all, which will prevent you from performing a refresh. So try running it in Troubleshoot Mode, which disables everything except the core Firefox program. To open the browser in Troubleshoot Mode, hold down the Shift button (Windows) or the Option button (macOS) while clicking or double-clicking the program icon. As Firefox starts, you’ll see the Troubleshoot Mode window appear. You can continue to browse in Troubleshoot Mode, or go ahead and run that refresh right away.

11. Switch to dark mode

Firefox comes with its own dark mode, which you may prefer. Click the three horizontal lines in the top right, then pick Settings. Open the General tab, and you’ll find Dark under the Web site appearance heading. This will be applied to Firefox’s own settings and new tab screens, but will only darken a website if the site has been coded to respond to a dark mode request from the browser.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on September 11, 2017.

The post 11 hot Firefox tips and tricks that might finally convince you to switch browsers appeared first on Popular Science.

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AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Bard have now reached a level where they can write emails, essays, and entire books. There’s an ongoing debate on how good that content actually is, but these platforms can certainly give a passable impression of a human being when it comes to creating copy.

That’s a problem when it comes to proving you wrote a particular document, whether you’re submitting a college essay or entering a short story competition. Right now, we don’t have a reliable way of detecting AI-generated text (ChatGPT can’t tell if ChatGPT has written something), but there are some options you can explore.

One is to track the changes to your document as you create it in your program of choice. It’s not a foolproof option, as you could still manually type out any output from ChatGPT or Bard, but it does at least show whoever’s reading your document how it came together, if they ever want to check.

When it comes to passing on your work to someone else, you need to use the built-in Google Docs sharing feature: Click Share on the right to grant access or to get a link you can copy and paste into an email or chat box. If you save your work as a Word document or a PDF, the version history won’t be transferred over to the file.

Note that whoever you’re sharing your document with will have to log into a Google account to access it, and you’ll have to give them Editor permissions too. If the other person opens the document anonymously via a link, or only has Viewer or Commenter permissions, then won’t have access to the version history, and won’t be able to see that the document is all your own work.

By default, the software will underline new text and color it red, but you can change this by clicking All Markup on the Review tab: Choose Simple Markup to have edits highlighted in the margin rather than in the body of the text, or No Markup to turn off highlighting altogether. Whether the highlights are visible or not, you can click Reviewing Pane (or Reviewing on macOS) on the Review tab to see all the document revisions. The person reading your work will be able to see all of the edits you made to the document in the same way, demonstrating it’s your own work.

The second option is to save your Word file to your OneDrive account and share it via a link, which is the more modern, Google Docs-style approach. While the Track Changes option is still available, you can also click the name of the document at the top of the window, then Version History, to view (and revert to) previous versions of the document.

Go to File, then Share, and you can generate a link for the file to pass on: Make sure the recipient has editing privileges and can sign in with their own Microsoft account. They’ll then be able to access the version history of a document by clicking on its title, whether they open it on the web or in Word for desktop. As long as the file is in your OneDrive account, version history will be available.

If you’re using Pages on a Mac, open the File menu then Revert To and Browse All Versions to see previous versions of the document (and revert back to them if needed). If you’re using Pages on iCloud on the web, click the three dots (top right) and then Browse All Versions. Anyone you’re sharing the document with has the same options available to them, as long as you’ve granted them editing privileges.

The post Prove your writing is not AI-generated by tracking changes in your docs appeared first on Popular Science.

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Software updates are crucial to the health of your various gadgets and it’s generally in your best interest to install them as soon as they’re available. Apple knows this so they introduced a different type of software update called Rapid Security Response. These patches run separately from the usual iOS or macOS updates and work in a slightly different way.

If you see a Rapid Security Response notification on one of your Apple devices, don’t panic—it’s there to keep your device safe and secure.

Behind the more showy, user-facing upgrades, these updates also do a lot of important work under the hood in improving security and stability. The problem is that sometimes significant security issues come to light and need to be addressed immediately rather than in a few weeks or months.

That’s where Rapid Security Responses come in. Apple can send out these patches whenever they need to so that security vulnerabilities don’t stay vulnerable for long. The company says these responses could help “mitigate some security issues more quickly,” particularly those that pose a current risk. The company is now sending these updates to iPhones, iPads, and Macs running iOS 16.4.1, iPadOS 16.4.1, or macOS 13.3.1 or later. If you haven’t already, make sure to update your operating system to receive them.

For the good health of your Apple gadget, we strongly recommend you authorize these automatic updates, but if you feel strongly about preventing software from installing without your consent, you can stop Rapid Security Responses. To go about it, open the Settings on your iPhone or iPad and choose General, Software Update, and Automatic Updates. Once there, toggle off the Security Responses & System Files option. On a Mac computer, open the Apple menu, then select System Settings, General, and Software Update. Click the info button next to Automatic updates to find the Install Security Responses and system files option and toggle it off.

When your Apple device installs a Rapid Security Response, the iOS, iPadOS, or macOS version number will have a lowercase letter after it—so “macOS Ventura Version 13.3.1 (a)” for example. To check this, go to Settings on an iPhone or iPad, or to System Settings on a Mac, and choose General, and then About. You’ll notice that, unlike normal software updates, these special security patches don’t come with any details about what they’ve fixed, presumably in the interests of speed and security.

[Related: Smart ways to manage software updates on Windows and macOS]

If you’ve disabled these automatic updates, you can still manually check for Rapid Security Responses in the same way as you would for any other update: Just go to General and Software Update in the settings on your Apple device. Any Rapid Security Responses your device doesn’t apply immediately will be rolled into the next standard software update, but we strongly advise you to protect your device by installing them as soon as they appear.

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Disaster has struck—a nasty piece of malware has taken root on your computer, and you need to remove it. Viruses can cause serious damage, but you might be able to get your computer back on its feet without too much difficulty, thanks to an array of helpful tools.

We’re using the term malware to refer to all kinds of malicious programs, whether they’re viruses, ransomware, adware, or something else. Each of these threats has its own definition, but the terms are often used interchangeably and can mean different things to different people. So for simplicity’s sake, when we say malware, we mean everything you don’t want on your computer, from a virus that tries to delete your files to an adware program that’s tracking your web browsing.

With so many types of malware and so many different system setups out there, we can’t cover every scenario. Still, we can give you some general malware removal pointers that should help you get the assistance you need.

First, identify the problem

When malware hits, you sometimes get a threatening error message—but sometimes you don’t. So keep an eye out for red flags, such as an uncharacteristically slow computer, a web browser inundated by endless pop-ups, and applications that just keep crashing.

Most machines have some kind of antivirus security protection, even if it’s just the Windows Defender tool built into Windows 10 or 11. Extra security software isn’t as essential on macOS—its integrated defenses are very effective—but that doesn’t mean a clever bit of malware can’t get access.

If you do have a security tool installed, make sure you keep it up to date. Then, when you suspect you’ve been hit, run a thorough system scan—the app itself should have instructions for how to do so. This is always the first step in weeding out unwanted programs.

[Related: How to make sure no one is spying on your computer]

You might find that your installed security software spots the problem and effectively removes the malware it on its own. In that case, you can get on with watching Netflix or checking your email without further interference. Unfortunately, if your antivirus software of choice doesn’t see anything wrong or can’t deal with what it’s found, you have more work to do.

Deal with specific threats

If your computer is displaying specific symptoms—such as a message with a particular error code or a threatening ransomware alert—run a web search to get more information. And if you suspect your main machine is infected and potentially causing problems with your web browser, you should search for answers on your phone or another computer.

Telling you to search online for help may seem like we’re trying to pass the buck, but this is often the best way to deal with the biggest and newest threats. To remove malware that has overwhelmed your computer’s built-in virus protections, you’ll probably need to follow specific instructions. Otherwise, you could inadvertently make the situation worse.

As soon as new threats are identified, security firms are quick to publish fixes and tools. This means it’s important to stay in touch with the latest tech news as it happens. If your existing antivirus program is coming up blank, check online to see if companies have released bespoke repair tools that you can use to deal with whatever problem you’re having.

Finally, based on what your research and antivirus scans tell you, consider disconnecting your computer from the internet to stop any bugs from spreading, or shutting down your machine completely to protect against file damage.

Tools such as Microsoft Safety Scanner, Spybot Search and Destroy, Bitdefender Virus Scanner (also for macOS), Kaspersky Security Scan, Avira PC Cleaner, Malwarebytes, and others can parachute onto your system for extra support. There, they’ll troubleshoot problems and give your existing security tools a helping hand.

All of the apps listed above will do a thorough job of scanning your computer and removing any malware they find. To make extra sure, you can always run scans from a couple of different tools. If your computer has been infected, these apps will most likely be able to spot the problem and deal with it, or at least give you further instructions.

Once your existing security tools and an on-demand scanner or two have given your system a clean bill of health, you’re probably (though not definitely) in the clear. That means that any continued errors or crashes could be due to other factors—anything from a badly installed update to a failing hard drive.

A more drastic—but extremely effective—course of action is to wipe your computer, reinstall your operating system, and start again from scratch. Although this will delete all your personal files, it should hopefully remove malware and other unwanted programs at the same time. Before you take this step, make sure all your important files and folders are backed up somewhere else, and ensure that you’ll be able to download all your applications again.

Reinstalling the operating system and getting your computer back to its factory condition is actually much easier than it used to be. We have our own guide for resetting Windows 10 and 11, and Apple has instructions for macOS. If you need more pointers, you can find plenty of extra information online.

That’s it! Through a combination of bespoke removal methods, existing security software, on-demand scanners, and (if necessary) a system wipe, you should now have effectively removed whatever malware had taken root on your system. At this point, if you’re still struggling, it’s time to call in the experts. IT repair specialists in your area may be able to lend a hand.

Next, install a solid security tool you can trust. For Windows 10 and 11, the built-in Windows Defender program is a competent antivirus tool even if you don’t add anything else. That said, you can opt to bolster your machine’s defenses by paying for extra software from the likes of Norton, Avast, and many others. While the number of shady programs targeting Apple computers is on the rise, they’re still more secure than Windows machines. The general consensus is that macOS is mostly safe from harm, provided you only install programs through the App Store and apply plenty of common sense. That means you should avoid following shady links or plugging in strange USB drives you’ve found lying in the street.

Finally, make sure your software is always patched and up to date. Most browsers and operating systems will update automatically in the background, but you can check for pending patches on Windows 10 by opening Settings and clicking Update & security (on Windows 11 it’s Settings > Windows Update). If you have a macOS computer, just open up the App Store and switch to the Updates tab to see if anything is available that you haven’t downloaded.

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The era of recording mixtapes and burning CDs for friends and family has passed by, so you’ll have to get creative if you want to share the latest track or artist you’re excited about.

One of your options is social media. You can share music on Instagram or have your pick from the TikTok music selection with only a few taps.

When you select a song, Instagram will add it to your story as a sticker, and down at the bottom of the screen, you’ll be able to scroll through the track to pick a snippet of up to 15 seconds. You can also tap on the song’s icon to get more options: select a different sticker style, remove it completely, or use the album art instead. Tap Done to post the story.

If you want to add music to an Instagram post on your main feed, you can do so by tapping Add music on the final screen before publishing. You get a similar option when making a reel—just tap Audio on the left before or after you record your clip. 

Yet another way to share music on Instagram is by posting a link to Spotify or YouTube, for example. In a Story, choose your image or video, tap the sticker icon, and choose Link. You can also just paste a URL in a direct message conversation if you want to go for something more private.

The app will then take you to the music selection screen: Browse through the Recommended tab to find popular TikTok music suggested by the algorithm, or Favorites, where you’ll find the sounds you’ve tried in the past. Finally, if you want something completely new, you can tap the magnifying glass icon on the right and use the search box. When you tap on a track you’ll get a preview—if you’re OK with it, confirm your choice by tapping on the pink checkmark button, but if you want to make some edits, you can always hit the scissors icon.

Snapchat

Snapchat offers almost as many ways as Instagram for sharing music with friends and family. Let’s start with Snapchat stories. Tap the camera icon at the bottom of your screen to go into recording mode, and either before or after capturing an image or clip, tap the musical note symbol on the right.

You can browse through the music that Snapchat suggests (trending tracks and songs based on mood), as well as search for specific tunes via the box at the top. Tap on the small play button to preview a track, or on its title to add it to your story.

You can then drag across the song’s sound wave to pick a 10-second snippet to use. With that done, tap Next to post the image or video as a story or as a snap directly to one or more of your contacts.

Tap your profile picture (top right), select the three dots, and go to Audio to connect your account to your favorite music service. If something is playing on Spotify or Apple Music when you capture a BeReal photo, you’ll see an icon down in the lower right corner of the image. Tap it and pick Shared so your friends can see the track and artist, or Private so only you can see what was playing when you took that picture.

In both cases, you can search for specific tracks or pick one of the Facebook suggestions. After you add a song, tap on its icon on the right to pick which part of it to embed into your story, and change how the track details and lyrics display in your post.

Stories aren’t your only option. To add music to a Facebook post, for example, tap Music from the list of options that pop up underneath as you’re creating it. You can also link your Spotify and Facebook profiles so people can click through on: From the mobile app, tap your avatar on the left, then go to Edit profile, and next to Links choose Add. Continue by tapping  Add Social Link and then Spotify.

The best way to share music on Twitter is to just paste in a link from somewhere else, whether you’re internally sending a message to one person or broadcasting a tweet to the world. If you’re sharing from Spotify, tap the three dots next to a song while on the app, then choose Share and Copy link.

The post Social media posts are better with music. Here’s how to add your favorite tunes. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Adobe has been building artificial intelligence into applications like Photoshop for several years now. But Lightroom Classic, another of the company’s image editing programs, also features AI tools to quickly improve the look of your photos.

Underpinning it all is Adobe’s mighty AI muscle, trained on huge libraries of stock and publicly available images to generate new pictures. This means Lightroom Classic knows what a sky or a person looks like in a photo, and can make changes accordingly.

You can now use AI to pick out backgrounds, subjects, skies, and objects: Just click the Masking icon on the right (it looks like a circle inside a dash-lined square) and pick Subject, Sky, Background, or Objects. You’ll also be able to choose Brush for more precise control over where your selection goes.

The program will shade the new masked selection in red and you’ll be able to manipulate it as needed. For example, if you selected the sky, you’ll be able to tweak the brightness and contrast to make your photo appear sunnier. The Masks window, which will pop up on the right of your screen when you select something,  is where you can switch between your masks, create new ones, and delete them. Just click the three dots next to each item to see a full set of options.

Use the sliders that pop up underneath the tool when you click it to change the size and opacity of the brush, and paint over the object you’d like to remove. Once you finish your selection, the program will get to work. Lightroom Classic automatically chooses which parts of the background to sample to replace the deleted object, but you can use Ctrl+click (Windows) or Cmd+click (macOS) to specify a particular area, such as a blue sky.

This works just like the Tone Curve tool, but it only applies to the area of the picture under the mask. Along the top of the panel you’ll see selectors for the red, green, and blue channels—use them for more precise adjustments.

Choose Photo,  Enhance, and then check the Denoise option so that the AI can work its magic. The slider underneath the tool’s icon lets you control how aggressive it is—you can check the preview panel on the left to see the difference before you commit any changes. When you’re happy with the level of denoising, click Enhance to confirm your choice.

To find them, go to the Presets dialog box on the left and click on the small arrows right next to it to see the full list of Adaptive Presets. For example, you can select Storm Clouds to add a bit of drama to the sky or Enhance Eyes to highlight the peers in a portrait.

Open up the Masks window via Tools and Masking to see the mask that Lightroom Classic’s AI created to apply the effect. You can edit this mask as any other, allowing you to use the brush tool to change the outline of the selection the program has come up with, for example.

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The swift rise of generative platforms such as ChatGPT and Dall-E mini has brought artificial intelligence to everyone’s attention in recent months. But programs such as Photoshop have been offering AI assistance of their own for quite some time now.

When it comes to Adobe’s image editing software, these capabilities are there to help select the outline of an object, fill in a picture’s background, or change the expression on someone’s face. Your AI-enhanced edits can be subtle or quite dramatic, and there’s plenty of room to experiment.

All of this machine-powered magic works in a similar way, no matter what Photoshop tool you’re using: developers have used vast amounts of stock and copyright-free images to train the program to be able to decide where a pixel should or shouldn’t go, or what color it should be.

To use them, go to Filter in the main navigation bar and then click on Neural Filters. You’ll be able to choose from a wide range of actions, such as adding depth to your images and smoothing the skin on people’s faces. Each filter comes with its own set of options, so you can tweak them to make them more or less aggressive, depending on what you want your final photo to look like. You may notice some of the filters are still in beta. This means they’re works in progress, so keep that in mind if you use them, as the results might be less than perfect.

For example, click Smart Portrait and you’ll be able to use simple sliders to make people in the photo look happier, younger, or older, and even change the direction they’re looking in.

Switch to Object Aware mode on the right menu to get Photoshop’s help in picking out edges, then use the Refine Edge Brush Tool to make cuts—select it by clicking the second icon from the top down in the left sidebar, or hitting the R key on your keyboard. It’s particularly good when you’re trying to trace around very faint edges, like someone’s hair.

Open an image, go to Edit, and then Sky Replacement to make alterations. You can drop in one of the program’s presets or load your own, as well as tweak the sky’s temperature and brightness, and make adjustments to the foreground to help it match the lighting.

Select an object in your photo, go to Edit, and choose Content-Aware Fill. You’ll be able to refine your selection further and see a preview of how the fill is going to work. You can specify areas of the image Photoshop should use to fill in the background once it removes the object.

To do this even quicker trusting in Photoshop’s process and without any refinement options, select an object and press Shift+Backspace. Just make sure the Content-Aware option is selected in the dialog box that pops up, and click OK to apply the changes.

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It might be hard to believe, but the Apple TV box—not the Apple TV app—has been with us since 2007. In that time, it’s gotten both smaller and smarter, and it has a few tricks up its sleeve that you might not know about.

While the Apple TV is designed to make it easy for you to sit back, relax, and get to your entertainment as quickly as possible, you can improve your viewing experience by digging into some of the settings and hardware features. Note that these tips work with all generations of the Apple TV 4K, whether you have the latest version and its Siri Remote (with a circular clickpad), or the older model and its Touch Remote.

To delete an app from the home screen entirely, tap and hold on it, press Play/Pause, and select Delete to remove it. As on iOS, you can create folders too: press Play/Pause and choose New Folder to create one, and you’ll be able to drag app icons into it. To remove them, drag them out of the folder.

There are more options for changing your home screen’s appearance on the General menu within Settings, including switching between a light and a dark interface mode and choosing from a list of available screensavers.

2. Tame your notifications

If you install apps that support notifications—like the Apple TV app, which will alert you to new shows—you’ll see badges on the app icons when there’s a new alert. If you’d rather not have the extra clutter, go to Settings and open up Notifications, where you can turn these badges on or off for each app.

You can double-tap the Home button (which looks like a big TV display) to show all of your recent apps. Within an app, if you slide a finger left or right on the touch-sensitive top half of the Touch Remote or tap the left or right side of the clickpad ring on the Siri Remote, you’ll go backward or forward in videos and audio tracks.

A downward swipe (Touch Remote) or a tap on the bottom part of the clickpad ring (Siri Remote) brings up more options while you’re watching something. The options vary by app, but in the Netflix app, for example, it will bring up the subtitle and audio options.

If you find your remote too sensitive, or not sensitive enough, head to the Settings app, then choose Remotes and Devices to adjust it. You can check on the remote’s battery level at the same time.

4. Control the Apple TV 4K with your iPhone

You can use your iPhone to control your Apple TV 4K, and you may find that easier than the device’s remote. Setting this up is as simple as opening the Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your phone’s screen), then tapping on the remote button (which looks like your Apple TV 4K remote). If you can’t see the button, open iOS Settings and choose Control Center to add and position it.

[Related: All the ways to customize your iPhone lock screen]

5. Get info on your screensavers

The Apple TV 4K has some of the most gorgeous screensavers in the business. If you find yourself particularly taken with a scene and want to know where in the world it is, lightly touch the top half of the Touch Remote or the clickpad on the Siri Remote (without actually clicking) to see the location.

6. Add more users

You don’t necessarily want family members or housemates ruining your Disney Plus recommendations list or checking out your photos and videos, which is why the Apple TV 4K supports multiple user accounts. From Settings, pick Users and Accounts, then Add New User. This new user will need their own Apple ID, which grants them access to all their apps and services. You can swap between users from the same screen, or by pressing and holding the Home button (with the TV display icon on it).

7. Check how much space apps are using

You get a certain amount of on-board storage with the Apple TV 4K, but all those high-resolution movies can quickly eat up precious space, and you don’t want to run out of room. If you need to free up some storage, you can see which installed apps are the biggest data hogs by going to Settings and choosing General, followed by Manage Storage.

The next screen will show all the apps on your Apple TV 4K, with the bulkiest (perhaps a game of some sort) at the top. Handily enough, there’s a trash can right by each entry on the list—tap this icon once to delete the app and free up some space. The Apple TV 4K remembers your app purchases, so you can always download them again.

8. Do more with Bluetooth devices

Your Apple TV 4K has Bluetooth, so make the most of it. You might already know you can boost the audio capabilities of your box with Bluetooth speakers or your own headphones, but you can connect other devices as well. Up to two Bluetooth devices can be connected to your Apple TV 4K at any one time.

For example, tvOS now supports Bluetooth keyboards, which means you can save yourself the hassle of typing out movie titles and search requests—just swap the Touch Remote or Siri Remote for a keyboard.

Or, add an MFi Bluetooth game controller to give yourself more intuitive control over your big-screen games. From the Settings app, head to Remotes and Devices, then choose Bluetooth to pair devices or to remove one device and make room for another.

9. Make your Apple TV kid-friendly

The Apple TV can entertain kids of all ages, but you don’t necessarily want your youngsters to access all available material or start spending your money on in-app purchases.

On top of that, you can disable multiplayer gaming, screen recording, and even explicit language in Siri’s responses. All of these blocks and limits are protected by a PIN code, which must be entered to turn them off again.

Just install Plex on your computer and install the Plex app on your Apple TV to get started. If you need a little more help, Plex has more information about setting up the app. VLC Media Player is also worth a mention here, as it’s one of the most versatile media players for computers and phones. On the Apple TV, it provides support for streaming almost anything from your local network.

12. Calibrate your TV picture

The Apple TV 4K offers a rather smart color calibration feature, which you can use if you also have an iPhone. From Settings, choose Video and Audio, then Color Balance, and follow the instructions on screen. Note that you’ll need to turn your iPhone toward your TV to monitor and adjust the balance of colors. When the calibration is done, which only takes a few seconds, you’ll have the option to accept the new settings or go back to the original calibration.

13. Get help from Siri

Siri is available on the Apple TV, so make use of the voice-controlled assistant by pressing and holding on the Siri (microphone) button on the remote—it’s on the front on the Touch Remote and on the side on the Siri Remote.

Try asking, “What’s the weather forecast?” or saying, “Show me comedy movies from the 90s” (or whatever genre you’d prefer). The best part is, Siri’s results pop up at the bottom of the screen most of the time, so they won’t interrupt what you’re doing.

When watching movies and shows, you can say, “Forward 10 minutes” to jump around, or ask, “Who stars in this?” to get a list of cast members to appear on screen. Another good vocal trick is asking, “What did he (or she, or they) just say?” This prompts Siri to rewind whatever you’re watching by 15 seconds and temporarily turn subtitles on. Meanwhile, saying, “Reduce loud sounds” can make it easier to hear dialogue.

14. Use picture-in-picture

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Quick Response (QR) codes were popular before the COVID-19 pandemic, but now they’re everywhere, from restaurant menus to billboards. These square codes are quick and easy to use, and anyone can scan them on their mobile device using its built-in camera, no special app or update necessary. 

If you’ve ever wondered how to make a QR code, know that it doesn’t require any great degree of technical know-how or a huge amount of time. You just need the right app and the content you want to encode.

[Related: QR codes are everywhere now. Here’s how to use them.]

On mobile, the process is similar:

Chrome’s QR code generator is free and easy to use, but gives you little in terms of customization. If you create the code on an Android device or a computer, it will always have the Chrome dinosaur in the middle, but you can avoid that by using an Apple mobile device instead.

You can also try The QR Code Generator, which has nearly the same name as the one we just mentioned. You can easily access this free platform from your browser, and you can start creating QR codes from the get-go. To enjoy features like the ability to add logos, make simpler patterns, or generate dynamic QR codes, you’ll have to create an account. But if you have basic needs, this site is intuitive and provides everything you’ll need.  

What you can do with QR codes

QR codes can store around 4,000 characters of text, which can be a plain message, a link to a website, a file to download, or pretty much any other information you can think of. You’re probably most familiar with their ability to store website URLs, whether that’s a portal to a company website on an advertisement or a shortcut to a bar’s drinks list.

The post How to make a QR code and share digital data with anyone, anywhere appeared first on Popular Science.

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It’s a sign of the times that most new technology brings with it new privacy and security issues, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT is no exception. The text generator is truly impressive (at least to some), but it also raises questions about how it collects and processes our data.

ChatGPT’s developers trained the large language model on vast amounts of publicly available text on the web. But the chatbot also uses your conversations with it to learn, so if you want to protect your privacy, you’ll need to know what your options are. 

From that point on, every time you close the browser tab, your conversation log with ChatGPT will disappear from your account. But that doesn’t mean it’s entirely gone—behind the scenes OpenAI hangs on to your chat history for 30 days to “monitor for abuse” before permanently deleting it.

Back on the Data Controls menu, there’s an Export data option. This won’t affect how OpenAI uses your information or delete what it has already collected, but it gives you a better idea of what OpenAI has on you. It might include chats you haven’t erased and the feedback you’ve given to ChatGPT’s responses. 

If there’s anything in there you’re not comfortable with, you can manually wipe your chat history. Back on the ChatGPT interface, click your username and then Clear conversations to get rid of your entire log all at once, or click the trash can icon next to any specific chat to wipe it out. ChatGPT won’t be able to use deleted conversations for training, but depending on how long your chat history has been there, the chatbot might have gotten to it before you did. To prevent that from happening in the future, or just in case someone gets access to your computer and wants to take a peek at your conversations, it’s a good idea to tidy your chat log up every now and again.

Finally, if you no longer want to talk to ChatGPT, you always have the option to delete your account, which you can do from the Data Controls panel.

The chatbot’s privacy policy says OpenAI logs data such as your conversations and the features you engage with, and may share “aggregated information” such as user statistics with third parties. As a response to legal requests from law enforcement, for example, the company may also share users’ personal information, such as email addresses and location data, with “affiliates.” But the document is vague and doesn’t specify who these affiliates might be exactly. 

It’s a standard privacy policy, but the rule is clearly the same as with most platforms online: the less you’re sharing about yourself, the better. That won’t only protect you from questionable privacy practices OpenAI might have in the future, but also from bugs and hacks. For example, a recent ChatGPT outage resulted in people seeing titles from other active user’s chat history. 

If there’s public information about you on the internet, ChatGPT might be able to tell other users about you—and if that’s not scary enough, think about what could happen if it gets things wrong. If you want to correct inaccuracies or just stop ChatGPT from learning about you, you can fill out this form or get in touch with OpenAI via dsar@openai.com. You can learn more about the data ChatGPT is trained on in the platform’s support page.

When it comes to using an app or browser extension built on top of ChatGPT, you’ll need to apply the same caution you would with any other third party tool: check the permissions it requires, read through the privacy policy and terms and conditions, and find out about any associated costs, whether it’s subscription fees or in-app payments. 

As soon as something becomes as popular as ChatGPT, scammers and hackers also want in on it, so we’d also recommend researching the background of the developer behind any ChatGPT tool you use. 

The most trustworthy apps will have privacy and security settings of their own you can configure. When it comes to the ChatGPT-powered Bing AI chatbot run by Microsoft, for example, click the three horizontal lines in the top right corner of the Bing interface, then choose Search history to see the chats that you’ve had with the AI and to clear these results if needed.

The post 3 ways to prevent ChatGPT from using you as training data appeared first on Popular Science.

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Banish the bloatware

Your shiny new laptop might already be weighed down by unnecessary applications. These are called bloatware, and to expand on the brief definition we offered above, they’re basically the laptop manufacturer’s attempts to push its own services. Some can be useful, but you don’t have to keep them around if you don’t want to.

You could open up the Applications folder in Finder, and then drag the app icon down to Trash to remove it from your system. Alternatively, open Launchpad from the Dock or the Applications folder, click and hold on an app icon until it starts shaking, then tap the little X icon that appears on it.

Be careful with installers

Plenty of programs will attempt to install extra software while you’re working your way through the initial setup process. Not only will this add extra clutter to your system, it can also be risky from a security perspective—you’re granting access to apps you haven’t fully vetted.

The only way to really guard against this is to pay attention as you install new software, and don’t zone out while clicking the “next” buttons until you’ve reached the end. Watch out for boxes that are checked by default and effectively give permission for the program to install extra software.

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

You should also be careful about the software developers you trust to install applications on your laptop. There are many honest and reputable smaller developers out there, but always do diligent research before downloading and installing something new: check the history of the developer, and read reviews of the app from existing users.

To be on the safe side, limit yourself to installing apps from the official Microsoft and Apple stores whenever possible—these programs have been vetted, and shouldn’t attempt to install anything extra. On Windows, choose Microsoft Store from the Start menu; on macOS, click the App Store icon in the Dock.

Lock down your browser

Your browser is your laptop’s window to the web, so you’ll want to make sure it’s shored up against apps and extensions that surreptitiously install themselves. Keeping your browser updated is the first step, but thankfully modern browsers take care of that automatically (so long as you close all your tabs and restart the browser every once in a while).

Avoid agreeing to install any add-ons or plug-ins you don’t immediately recognize as programs you opted to download. If you’re in any doubt, navigate away from the page you’re on or close the tab.

Watch out for extra toolbars appearing in your browser, or browser settings (like the default search engine) changing without warning—you can always head to the extensions settings page in your browser to remove add-ons you’re not sure about.

When you install a new extension in your browser, you’ll get a pop-up explaining the permissions it has—the data it can see, and the changes it can make to your system. Don’t install any extras on top of your browser without double-checking the developers behind them and reading reviews left by current users.

Practice good security

To maximize your protection against applications that would install themselves without your permission, we recommend installing an antivirus package whether you’re on Windows or macOS—you can find a variety of independent reports online to point you towards the best choices. These packages typically include dedicated tools that watch for unexpected software installations.

If you’re on Windows, you can make use of the built-in Windows Defender software that comes with the operating system and specifically checks for the installation of authorized apps. On Windows 11, open Settings, click Privacy & security, then Windows Security, Open Windows Security, and App & browser control to make sure the feature is enabled. If you’re still using Windows 10, open Settings, then click Update & Security, Windows Security, and App & browser control.

[Related: How to make sure no one is spying on your computer]

The post Make sure your computer isn’t downloading stuff you don’t want appeared first on Popular Science.

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There’s a wealth of software available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS—but not all of it has been developed with the best intentions. There are apps out there that have been built to steal your data, corrupt your files, spy on your digital activities, and surreptitiously squeeze money out of you.

The good news is that a few smart questions can steer you away from the shady stuff and toward apps you can trust and rely on. If you’re not sure about a particular piece of software for your phone or computer, running through this simple checklist should help you spot the biggest red flags.

Old software that hasn’t been updated in the last year or so isn’t necessarily bad, but be wary of it: It’s less likely to work with the latest version of whatever operating system you’re on, and it’s more likely to have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by bad actors (because it’s hasn’t been patched against the latest threats).

Don’t automatically trust brand new software either. An app may have been rushed out to cash in on a trend (whether it’s Wordle clones or ChatGPT extensions), and these types of apps are built to make money rather than offer a good user experience or respect your privacy. It may be worth just waiting until you’ve seen some reviews of the app in question.

2. What are other people saying?

That brings us neatly to user reviews, which can be a handy way of gauging an app’s quality. It’s easy to use the dedicated reviews sections in official app stores to see what other people think of the software, but in other scenarios (like downloading a Windows program from the web) you can do a quick web search for the name of the app.

Be sure to check several reviews rather than just relying on one or two, and look for running themes over isolated incidents (the customer isn’t necessarily always right). See what users are saying about bugs and crashes, for example, and how any requests for support have been handled.

[Related: What to do when your apps keep crashing]

Reviews can be faked of course, even in large numbers. Don’t be too trusting of very short and very positive reviews, or reviews left by people with usernames that are generic or look like they might have been created by a bot. Place most faith in longer, more detailed reviews that sound like they’ve been written by someone who’s actually used the software in question.

If you’re on Android or iOS, you can tap the developer name on an app listing to see other apps from the same developer. If they’ve made several apps that all have high ratings, that’s positive. Developer responses to user reviews are a good sign as well, showing that whoever is behind the software is invested in it.

Checking up on the developer of an app that you’re downloading from the wilds of the web isn’t quite as straightforward, but a quick web search for their name should give you some pointers. Developers without any online or social media presence, for instance, should be treated with caution.

4. How much does it cost?

Pay particular attention to how much an app costs, both in terms of up-front fees and ongoing payments: These details are listed on app pages on Android and iOS, and should be fairly straightforward to find on other platforms too. You don’t want an app that’s going to extort money out of you, but you also need to figure out how the costs of development are being supported.

Like the other questions here, there are no hard and fast rules, but if an app is completely free it’s most likely supported through data collection and advertising—this is true from the biggest names in tech, like Facebook and Google, to the smallest independent developers. Freemium models are common too, where some features might be locked behind a paywall.

[Related on PopSci+: You have the power to protect your data. Own it.]

If you get as far as installing an app, go through the opening splash screens very carefully, and pay attention to the terms and conditions. Watch out for any free trials you might be signing up for,that could be charging your credit card unexpectedly in a month’s time (even if you’ve uninstalled the app).

Ideally, apps should explain to you why they need the permissions they do. Access to your contacts, for example, can be used to easily share files with friends and family, rather than to pull any personal data from them. It’s not an exact science, but it’s another way of assessing whether or not you want to install a particular program.

You can change app permissions after they’ve been installed, too, and you should check in on these every once in a while because settings may change as developers update their app. We’ve written guides to the process for Windows and macOS, and for Android and iOS. If you do think that a piece of software is reaching further than it should do in terms of permissions, you can block off its access to them rather than removing it.

The post Stop and ask these 5 security questions before installing any app appeared first on Popular Science.

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

Google has become so synonymous with search that the company’s name has found its way into the dictionary as a verb—and that means your Google search history can reveal a lot about your life. If someone manages to gain access to that treasure trove of information, they could learn about everything from the medical conditions you’ve been worried about to where you’ve been on your vacations.

With so much sensitive data involved, you should make sure that your search history is safe from prying eyes. There are ways to make extra-sure that no outsiders can get a glimpse at what you’ve been looking for, and to block Google itself from knowing anything about your online queries.

Put a password on your Google search history

Your Google account is protected by both a password and two-factor authentication if you’ve switched that on (we recommend you do). That should minimize the risk of anyone else being able to log in and take a peek at what you’ve been searching for, but you can do more.

If you’re on a computer where you’re regularly logged into Google, your browser has your password saved, and other people (maybe housemates or colleagues) are likely to be wandering past, you might feel like an additional layer of security is required. Or maybe you’re just very private and security-conscious.

For these situations, Google has created an extra password step just for your search history. Even if someone makes it to your Google account page, they’ll need your password to enter the search history section.

You can enable this by going to your Google account page, and choosing Data & privacy from the options on the left. Scroll down to the History settings box, click Web & App Activity, and then hit Manage all Web & App Activity at the bottom of the page. Finally, click Manage My Activity verification, fill in the bubble next to Require extra verification, and hit Save.