Mechanical keyboards are all the rage these days. Hardcore gamers and long-haul coders alike are flocking away from traditional membrane-based keyboards in favor of their more clicky-clacky competition. If you still haven’t hopped on the bandwagon, here’s everything you need to know. How Keyboards Work To understand what makes mechanical keyboards great, you must first understand how keyboards work. At its most basic, any keyboard (mechanical or otherwise) works pretty much as you would expect it to: you hit a key, that keystroke is registered by the electronics in your board, and sends it to your PC, where it turns into text....

Carpet Can Block Airflow Modern PC cases usually aren’t completely flat on the bottom. They have feet so that their base is off the floor a bit. There’s airflow underneath the case. All PC cases have fans that expel hot air and vents that allow entry for cool air; some cases even have additional intake fans that further facilitate drawing in cool air. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. If you place your case on some thick plush carpeting, the carpet might block some of that airflow....

You probably have a lot of apps and documents on your Mac, but access a few very frequently. This little terminal command adds a useful, but hidden, feature: a one-click menu to access your recent apps and documents right from your dock. RELATED: How to Customize and Tweak Your Mac’s Dock There are a lot of ways to customize and tweak your Mac’s dock, but while checking out an amazing list of OS X command line prompts, we found a hidden gem....

If you’ve looked closely at your camera, you’ve probably noticed a strange circle/line symbol somewhere on it (you can see it above). It’s generally near the viewfinder but could be anywhere on the side. What’s most unusual about this symbol is that, unlike most of the other weird things all over your camera, it’s not paired with a button. It just sits there on its own. So what does it mean?...

The latest LTS version of Ubuntu is Ubuntu 22.04 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish,” which was released on April 21, 2022. Canonical releases new stable versions of Ubuntu every six months, and new Long Term Support versions every two years. The Latest LTS Version Is Ubuntu 22.04 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish” The newest long-term support release of this Linux distribution is Ubuntu 22.04, codenamed “Jammy Jellyfish.” It uses version 5.4 of the Linux kernel....

If you’re a Linux user, you’ve probably heard that you don’t need to defragment your Linux file systems. You’ll also notice that Linux distributions don’t come with disk-defragmenting utilities. But why is that? To understand why Linux file systems don’t need defragmenting in normal use — and Windows ones do — you’ll need to understand why fragmentation occurs and how Linux and Windows file systems work differently from each other....

Google said in a blog post this week, “Forums can be a useful place to find first-hand advice, and to learn from people who have experience with something you’re interested in. We’ve heard from you that you want to see more of this content in Search, so we’ve been exploring new ways to make it easier to find. Starting today, a new feature will appear when you search for something that might benefit from the diverse personal experiences found in online discussions....

Customize Workout Views You can switch between multiple views during a workout by swiping up and down on the screen or scrolling the Digital Crown. Different workout types use different views by default. For example, during a run, you’ll see a view for Heart Rate Zones. And during a hike, you’ll see an elevation chart to show your altitude gained. You can add different views to any workout of your choice and change the information shown on these different screens....

The hard truth: Apple doesn’t let you store Time Machine backups in iCloud, even if you have space. So what’s the problem, Apple? Time Machine Is a Local Backup Solution Time Machine is designed as a local backup solution since it backs up every single file on your Mac. Backups are made incrementally, with only new and modified files being copied with each backup. Time Machine then creates a “snapshot” of your Mac as it appeared at that time....

To open up the defragment utility, just type defrag into the Start menu search box, and hit enter. Vista users will have to click through a UAC prompt, but you should see this screen: Windows 7 users will see a very similar dialog, and will need to click the Configure Schedule button: From this screen, you can disable automatic defrag by unchecking the box. You can also modify the schedule by clicking the Modify schedule button (no surprise there)...

You’ve probably heard that you always need to use the Safely Remove Hardware icon before unplugging a USB device. However, there’s also a good chance that you’ve unplugged a USB device without using this option and everything worked fine. Windows itself tells you that you don’t need to use the Safely Remove Hardware option if you use certain settings – the default settings – but the advice Windows provides is misleading....

If you’re using multiple Google accounts simultaneously there’s a good chance that one of them is the one you want to default. When it isn’t the default it’s rather frustrating; read on as we show a reader how to ensure the account they want is the default one. Well, you will have to sign out of all your accounts, but only once. Although it isn’t well documented, and nowhere in the configuration dashboard or menus is it even noted, there is a method to the multi-login madness....

With the introduction of the Force Touch Trackpad on the new 2015 MacBooks, Apple also changed some of the gestures around, including getting rid of the three-finger drag that made it easy to move windows around. However, the gesture is still there—you just have to enable it in the settings. RELATED: How to Use Your Macbook’s Trackpad Gestures Granted, you can still drag around windows by clicking down on the trackpad and dragging your finger around, but some users (including myself) find it much easier to use the three-finger drag....

How to Browse and Connect to Wireless Networks From the Command Line Browsing available wireless networks from the command prompt requires only a single command: Unfortunately in order to connect to a network, you need to have a network profile for it. This means that you need to have connected to it at least once before. To see what profiles you have available on your machine, use the following command:...

iOS 10 has added the ability to clear all notifications at once. This is a feature that iPhone users have been wanting for a while now, and it has finally arrived. No doubt, seasoned iOS users will recall what it used to take to clear out unwanted or read notifications from the Notification Center. One by one, you would have to go through and delete each individually. Not only was this time consuming and tedious, but after awhile you might be apt to just give up....

Notes for macOS has evolved a great deal over time, and now offers the ability to collaborate with other people. RELATED: How to Use Apple’s New Notes App to Organize Your Thoughts Collaboration with Notes is a pretty simple and straightforward process, and it’s really handy for sharing shopping lists, itineraries, and to-do lists with your family and friends. (Plus, it works in iOS too!) Open the Notes application on macOS and either select an existing note or create a new one, then click the “Add people to this note” button in the toolbar....

If you are heading out of town, you might want to put a note on your email to let people know you won’t be available, or to contact somebody else while you’re away. Most email services provide a way to send out an automatic reply to incoming messages when you aren’t available to check your email. Here’s how to setup a vacation responder for the most popular email services....

Symbolic links, also known as symlinks, are special files that point to files or directories in other locations on your system. You can think of them like advanced aliases and here’s how to use them in MacOS. Symbolic links are similar to aliases, except they work in every application on your Mac—including in the Terminal. They’re particularly useful when apps don’t want to work correctly with a regular alias. On macOS, you create symbolic links in the Terminal using the ln utility....

Managing a Discord server requires a great deal of effort. If you can’t find the time to manage your server, you can remove it from Discord. This is easy to do, and we’ll show you how to do it in Discord on desktop, web, and mobile. When you delete a server, Discord removes all your data shared on the server. This server then no longer appears in your Discord menus....

If you come across a site that asks you to enable JavaScript, or you want to run your own scripts, you will want to activate JavaScript in your Mozilla Firefox browser first. Here’s how to do just that. In Firefox, JavaScript is enabled by default. However, if you or another user has disabled it, it’s easy to turn it back on. Also, note that the instructions in this guide apply to the desktop version of Firefox....