Instagram is more than just a place for people to share photos—it’s a fully fledged social network. You can even privately message your friends and people you follow. Let’s look at how. From the Messages Page Open Instagram and from the main page, tap the Direct Message symbol in the top right corner or swipe to the left to get to the Messages page. Tap the + New Message button and search for the person you want to message....

Email threads allows you to see all emails sent and received with the same subject line grouped together into one conversation. Threaded view has been available in macOS for a while, and is now available in the Mail app in iOS 10. Threaded view is useful for preventing older emails from the same conversation from being lost. You can view the whole history of a conversation in one place. When threaded view is turned on, conversations are indicated by a double right arrow button to the right of the day/date....

Thanks to a new iOS 10 feature, you can now install extensions for Apple Maps that let do things like reserve a table or get a ride without ever leaving the map. Here’s how it works. iOS 10 brought a lot of interesting new features, but arguably none as powerful as opening up some aspects of the platform to third-party developers. All the new iMessage apps are the standout example, but Apple has also opened up their Maps app to developers, giving you clever new options for interacting with locations and services all from within Maps....

Windows’ “Enhance Pointer Precision” setting helps with some mice, but hurts with others. If you find that it keeps enabling or disabling itself automatically, here are some potential fixes. RELATED: How to Boost Your Mouse Pointing Accuracy in Windows This option, which you can find under Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Mouse > Pointer Options, is an interesting one. When you enable it, Windows dynamically adjusts the sensitivity of your mouse depending on how fast you move the cursor....

Windows 10’s May 2019 Update features a new, brighter default desktop background. It looks great—with the new light theme. If you use Windows 10’s dark theme, you’ll probably want a darker background. Strangely enough, Windows 10’s original desktop background has been removed from the latest version of Windows 10. You’ll have to download it from the web or copy its files from an older Windows 10 PC. Microsoft isn’t hosting this wallpaper image anywhere we can find, but you can download it from elsewhere....

Windows 10 lets you use handwriting input in any application, and many applications include full support for inking. Windows automatically attempts to learn your unique handwriting style when you write with a pen, but you can also train it manually to improve the system’s handwriting recognition. Turn Automatic Learning On or Off Automatic learning is enabled by default. To check whether it’s still enabled, , click the “Advanced settings” link at the left pane of the Control Panel > Clock, Language, and Region > Language window....

Belkin has an entire line of smarthome devices that go by the WeMo name, including a smart light switch that you can control from your smartphone, allowing you to turn on and off lights (or anything else connected to that switch) right from your smartphone. Warning: This is a project for a confident DIYer. There’s no shame in getting someone else to do the actual wiring for you if you lack the skill or knowledge to do so....

By default, System Restore automatically creates a restore point once per week and also before major events like an app or driver installation. If you want even more protection, you can force Windows to create a restore point automatically every time you start your PC. RELATED: How to Use System Restore in Windows 10, 11, 7, and 8 System Restore is an important tool that can help you recover from many different types of problems....

If you want to retrieve a single email from a backup file, importing that whole file of emails into Outlook is time-consuming overkill. Here’s how to open a PST file in Microsoft Outlook and browse the contents, no importing needed. Backing up your emails to a PST file is a good way of creating a long-term email archive and saving space in your email account. But one potential drawback is that it’s not obvious how to access an individual email in a PST file without importing the whole file....

“PC gaming” has traditionally meant Windows gaming, but it doesn’t have to. More new games support Mac OS X than ever, and you can play any Windows game on your Mac. There are many ways you can play those Windows PC games on your Mac. After all, Macs have been standard Intel PCs that come with a different operating system preinstalled since 2006. Native Mac Gaming RELATED: Getting Started with Minecraft...

If Word is acting glitchy and abnormal, resetting it might be necessary. Although Microsoft doesn’t provide a “reset” button to bring Word’s user options and registry settings back to default, a couple of fairly simple solutions are available. Running Microsoft’s Easy Fix Wizard The first (and easiest) solution is to run Microsoft’s Easy Fix Wizard that automatically resets Word’s user options and registry settings for you. To find the Wizard, go to the “Here’s an Easy Fix” section of Microsoft’s Troubleshooting page....

Next, at the top of the homepage, under your name, click “Account & Lists”. From the dropdown options, click “Your Account”. On the next page, under Order History, click “Download Order Reports”. Next, you will see a Request Order History Report form: Leave Report Type set to Items. For the start date, choose January 1 and as far back as the year selector goes (the year you began ordering from your account, in our case, 2006)....

You’re not the only person who lives in your house, and you’re not the only person who watches things on your Kodi box. Why should there be only one media library, with one list of what has and hasn’t been watched, and one favorites list? Kodi has offered a profile system for years, and you shouldn’t overlook it. Maybe you and your roommate are watching the same show at different times, and want to keep track of your watched list separately....

Over time, your Mac has inevitably amassed a lot of files in the Desktop and Documents folders. If you have more than one Mac, you can now share them easily over iCloud, and you can also access these files anywhere, on any device. The iCloud Desktop and Documents feature is new to macOS Sierra, and it’s one that promises to make a lot of people’s lives easier, provided your Apple devices are all connected to the same iCloud account....

If you’re working in a LibreOffice Writer document, and need to do some simple calculations, instead of opening the Windows Calculator, you can perform the calculations directly in Writer. We’ll show you how to calculate simple equations in LibreOffice Writer using the Formula bar and the Calculate function. You can also use pre-defined functions in your equations, such as mean (average), square root, and power. Performing Simple Calculations The Formula bar in LibreOffice Writer allows you to perform simple calculations while working in a text document....

If you’ve ever opened a spreadsheet to discover that you made an error and saved the file, then you know how aggravating this can be. With Microsoft Excel for the web, you can review your version history and restore or download a previous version. This is useful whether you’re the only one using the workbook or collaborating with others. Mistakes happen, but with Microsoft Excel, you can undo them....

RELATED: How Does File Compression Work? Algorithms and Trees The gzip data compression tool was written in the early 1990s, and it’s still found in every Linux distribution. There are other compression tools available, but no matter which Linux computer you find yourself needing to work on, you’ll find gzip on it. So if you know how to use gzip, you’re good to go without the need to install anything....

Beat the Next Crypto Cycle Historically, the Bitcoin market has operated in boom-and-bust cycles over time. The rest of the crypto market is closely tied to the value of Bitcoin, including Ethereum, which can still be mined using GPUs (despite the planned switch to proof-of-stake). High demand for GPUs among crypto miners was one of the reasons why GPU prices were so high until recently. When the crypto market crashed in June 2022, prices of both new and used GPUs dropped dramatically (corresponding with lower demand....

Corel’s Parallels is one of the most popular apps for running Windows on a Mac, alongside options like VMware Fusion and VirtualBox. Parallels Desktop has now released a new update, but if you don’t have the all-access subscription, it’s probably not worth the upgrade fee. Parallels Desktop 18 includes a new option to “download, install, and configure Windows 11 in one click.” The previous release already had full support for Windows 11, but now you don’t need to go hunting for the latest ISO file....

While it’s commonly thought Chromebooks aren’t good for anything more than surfing the web, that’s not the case. If you need to do some video editing from your Chromebook, there are definitely some tools out there that can do the job. Of course, we’re not talking full-on Adobe Premier functionality here—Chromebooks are more useful than they get credit for, but dedicated Windows and Mac software is still going to be a more powerful solution....