The latest update to Niantic’s much-loved and oft-maligned mobile game, Pokémon Go, has arrived. Front and center is a new feature that promises to let you set a Poké buddy, so you can walk and earn candies. This is for those Pokémon that appear so rarely, that evolving them seems unlikely or left to chance. Now, you can wrest a bit more control out of the process. It works the same way trainers hatch eggs: as you walk, you accrue kilometers and after a certain number of kilometers, your buddy Pokémon “finds” a candy....

System Restore is a Windows feature that can help fix certain types of crashes and other computer problems. Here’s how it works, how to set it up, and how to use it when things go awry. We’re going to be using Windows 11 in this article, but System Restore has been around a long time — and works pretty much the same way in each version of Windows. The instructions here are good for Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11, and you’ll encounter only minor differences throughout the process....

You’re installing some packages with Homebrew on your Mac, when you see a 404 error. Installation simply stops. Seriously? RELATED: How to Install Packages with Homebrew for OS X The Homebrew team is generally good about finding and fixing 404 errors, so running brew update will generally solve such problems. But if that doesn’t work, and you need a particular application right now, you can work around the issue yourself....

If you are experiencing problems with your wireless router, then you might start tweaking the settings in order to improve performance, like choosing a different channel. But are some channels inherently better than others? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a curious reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader IAmJulianAcosta wants to know if it is better to use a Wi-Fi channel with a higher frequency:...

System Preferences are a Mac users one-stop location to make changes to the operating system, tweak the hardware, and configure features like Siri and Parental Controls. Most people access the System Preferences by clicking on it in the Dock. But there are at least six other ways to access the System Preferences. Some of these methods let you access all of the System Preferences, while some let you pick the exact one you’re after....

EA Access for Xbox One gives you access to more than 50 games, discounts, and trials of new EA games before they’re released. But is the monthly (or yearly) subscription fee really worth it? What Is EA Access? RELATED: What Is EA’s Origin Access, and Is It Worth It? EA Access is for Xbox One owners, and it works exactly like EA’s Origin Access on PC. However, these are separate services that require a separate fee....

More and more new devices are using Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi Direct allows two devices to establish a direct, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection without requiring a wireless router. Wi-Fi becomes a way of communicating wirelessly, like Bluetooth. Wi-Fi Direct is similar in concept to “ad-hoc” Wi-Fi mode. However, unlike an ad-hoc Wi-Fi connection, Wi-Fi Direct includes an easier way to automatically discover nearby devices and connect to them. The Concept You may already have a device using Wi-Fi Direct....

Both Linux and the BSDs are free and open-source, Unix-like operating systems. They even use much of the same software — these operating systems have more things in common than they do differences. So why do they all exist? There are more differences than we can cover here, especially philosophical differences about the way one should build an operating system and license it. This should help you understand the basics, though....

Between the browser history and tracking cookies, it’s easy to feel like your browser is tracking and spying on you. But web browsers store this private data for good reasons. We have shown you how to have your browser clear private data whenever it closes or always start in private-browsing mode. However, having your browser keep all this private data can be very useful. Image by Symbiotic Browser Cache The browser cache is a place where your browser stores bits and pieces of downloaded websites – images, scripts, CSS style sheets, and more....

The new Force Touch trackpad on Apple’s MacBooks is similar to the 3D Touch display on the iPhone 6s and 7, allowing you to press down harder to perform a different task or bring up secondary options. Here are some cool things you can do with the MacBook’s Force Touch trackpad. The Force Touch trackpad is available on the 12-inch MacBook, as well as all 2015 MacBook Pros and newer....

I got my first remote job in 2011, and I’ve been working from home ever since. What started as just a laptop in my bedroom has evolved to a desktop PC and a dedicated office. While the right tech certainly helps, the key to successfully working from home is building good habits. RELATED: The Best Work From Home Apps for iPhone and Android Put on Real Clothes Let’s start with what might be my most controversial WFH opinion: You should get dressed to work from home....

Viruses and other types of malware seem largely confined to Windows in the real world. Even on a Windows 8 PC, you can still get infected with malware. But how vulnerable are other operating systems to malware? When we say “viruses,” we’re actually talking about malware in general. There’s more to malware than just viruses, although the word virus is often used to talk about malware in general. Why Are All the Viruses For Windows?...

We all know that there is a right way and a wrong way to detach USB mass storage devices from our computers, but does the same principle apply to MTP devices? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a curious reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader RockPaperLizard wants to know if you can simply pull the USB plug on MTP devices connected to Windows:...

Not everyone can afford to deck out their homes with Wi-Fi lights, outlets, and voice control. But that doesn’t necessarily mean your home has to be dumb. Here are a few ways to make your home a bit smarter, without spending a lot of money. Granted, these cheaper solutions don’t offer the ability to control things from your smartphone, and they don’t connect to your home network. That’s the tradeoff you make for cheaper, older tech....

First, Ensure Your Charging Case Is Charged One reason your AirPods aren’t charging is that your charging case has run out of battery charge. This happens when you’ve used all the battery juice on the case, and it has no more charge left on it to supply power to your AirPods. You can check your case’s current battery level by placing your AirPods in it and bringing it near your paired iPhone or iPad....

The current Nest Wifi is a decent mesh router, but it has increasingly fallen behind the competition — it only supports Wi-Fi 5, while Eero and others have sold mesh routers with Wi-Fi 6, and models with the even-newer Wi-Fi 6E standard have been available for months. Google’s answer is the new “Nest Wifi Pro,” which will compete more directly with products like the Eero Pro 6E. The Nest Wifi Pro works much like earlier Nest Wifi routers, with the ability to create a mesh network that covers a larger area using several nodes....

The Purpose of a Hard Drive Stripping it back to basics, the primary role of a hard drive is to store data; photos, files, applications, games, etc. Your hard drive is also the place you’ll install your operating system (OS), which, if you’re installing Windows 11, will take up around 30GB of storage, though a total of 64GB will need to be available. The capacity of a hard drive won’t have any performance effect on your computer, unless the disk is nearly full, in which case it can cause some problems....

In 2016, PC game distributor Steam grew its already-impressive library by 4,207 new games—nearly 40% of its total at the time in just twelve months. The platform is growing almost exponentially. That’s a good thing if you like a little variety in your PC games…but with all that variety, it becomes harder and harder to find the gold among the dross. That said, there are a few tools built into Steam that allow you to more reliably find the best games, at least according to other Steam users....

RELATED: How to Add or Edit Text in Photoshop Add Text to a Photo on Windows To add captions to your photos on a Windows PC, use the free and built-in Paint app. This app lets you edit your images in many other ways, too. Note that we’re using Windows 10 in the screenshots, but the process is essentially the same on Windows 11. To start, locate your photo in File Explorer....

At first, I thought the new MacBook Pro touch bar was actively worse than a traditional keyboard for adjusting volume or brightness. After all, with keys you can turn the volume up or down with a quick tap. From what I saw of the touch bar you needed to tap the volume button, then adjust the slider that appears. A tap, followed by a tap-and-move motion. I was wrong. There are a couple of gestures that let you adjust volume or brightness in one quick motion, though they’re hard to stumble upon if you don’t know about them....