Windows’ System Restore doesn’t get as much praise as it once did, even though it’s still an incredibly useful feature. Judging by the feedback on our own forums, it saves people from certain destruction on a nearly daily basis. The only problem is that it takes far too many steps to manually create a new restore point. Can’t we just make a shortcut icon for it? Turns out, yes, there are a couple of ways to do it....
Slack has become a vital communication tool for many businesses, especially ones with lots of remote employees. But no one wants to get pings at every hour of every day. Here at How-To Geek, we love Slack, and we’ve written about it before, giving you some excellent pointers on how to become a Slack power user and the best ways to search for stuff you absolutely have to find. But in an always-connected world, you have to manage your notifications if you ever want to “go home” at the end of the workday....
Unlimited cellular data is tough to come by. Keep an eye on how much data you’re using to avoid paying overage fees or having your data speed throttled down to a trickle for the rest of your billing cycle. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to micromanage any of this stuff. But we don’t all live in that world yet, and there are many ways to reduce the data your phone uses....
There may be times when you’re working with files in Ubuntu’s File Browser, Nautilus, and you want to switch to working on the command line in Terminal. Instead of manually navigating to the same folder in Terminal, you can easily jump directly to that folder. We’ll show you how to add an “Open in Terminal” option to the context, or right-click, menu in Nautilus that allows you to open a Terminal window directly to the folder selected in Nautilus....
Not all extensions are made equal. Some extensions, like Grammarly, work quietly in the background and don’t need an icon in the Chrome toolbar. Here’s how to pin and unpin extensions for a cleaner Chrome toolbar. How to Pin and Unpin Extensions in Chrome The Extensions Toolbar menu feature was first introduced in Chrome 76. Before the update, all extensions showed up directly in Chrome’s toolbar. Now, you can choose which extensions to show in the Chrome toolbar, and which ones to hide away in the extensions menu....
Word allows you to hide content in your document from viewing or printing. However, if you’re going to distribute the document, any hidden text can easily be displayed and viewed by the people who will have access to your document. Unfortunately, you can’t “lock” hidden text in Word so it can’t be viewed by others accessing your document. The best way to protect sensitive, hidden text is to remove it before distributing your document....
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Instagram doesn’t have a way to share other people’s posts publicly on your own account. This is pretty annoying if, for example, you want to repost a photo that your partner has posted to their account. RELATED: How to Direct Message People Through Instagram For whatever reason, Instagram only lets you share other people’s posts privately through direct messages. Thankfully, while Instagram is ignoring an obvious need, third party apps have stepped up to add the feature....
Are there particular Terminal commands you find yourself running several time a day? Do you wish you could trigger them quickly, with just a keystroke? As it turns out, you can! We’ve shown you all the Mac keyboard shortcuts you should be using, but this gives you an opportunity to invent your own keyboard shortcut to do just about anything you can imagine with the Terminal. There are two main ways to accomplish this, so let’s get started....
Whether you’re looking for apartments or used gadgets on Craigslist, you don’t have to keep checking the website. You can stay on top of things by getting notified when new posts go up that match your searches. How to Get Email Notifications Craigslist has built-in email alerts. You can get an email alert for any Craigslist search, and it’s free. To set up email notifications, just head to the Craigslist website and perform whatever search you want....
If you’d like to share your local Minecraft game with friends across the internet, it’s a bit more complicated than just pushing a button. Let’s look at the behind-the-scenes settings you have to tweak in order to connect two remote Minecraft players together. Why Share Your Game? Minecraft is a sandbox game and bringing your friends to the sandbox is part of the fun—but maybe you don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up your own vanilla home server, running a customized server, or paying for a remotely hosted server....
In the process of filtering Internet traffic, all firewalls have some type of logging feature that documents how the firewall handled various types of traffic. These logs can provide valuable information like source and destination IP addresses, port numbers, and protocols. You can also use the Windows Firewall log file to monitor TCP and UDP connections and packets that are blocked by the firewall. Why and When Firewall Logging is Useful To verify if newly added firewall rules work properly or to debug them if they do not work as expected....
Error Handling in Scripts Handling errors is part of programming. Even if you write flawless code, you can still run into error conditions. The environment on your computer changes over time, as you install and uninstall software, create directories, and perform upgrades and updates. For example, a script that used to run without issue can run into difficulties if directory paths change, or permissions are changed on a file. The default action of the Bash shell is to print an error message and continue to execute the script....
Facebook might be updating menus and interfaces left and right, but that sure doesn’t mean they make them easier to use in the process. The poor menu design and vague terminology makes it pretty difficult to make changes (or to undo those changes), in many cases. Read on as we help a reader liven up their news feed by returning previously hidden friends to the forefront. There is, in fact, a list....
In iOS 10, Apple made a small but fundamental change to the way touch ID users unlock their phone phone. If you’re tired of seeing “Press home to open” or “Press home to unlock” every time to you grab your phone, here’s how to switch it back to the way it was in iOS 9. How Touch ID Changed (and Why) RELATED: The Best New Features in iOS 10 (and How to Use Them)...
We Need To Talk About eval Used carelessly, eval can lead to unpredictable behavior and even system insecurities. From the sounds of it, we should probably not use it, right? Well not quite. You could say something similar about automobiles. In the wrong hands, they’re a deadly weapon. People use them in ram-raids and as get-away vehicles. Should we all stop using cars? No, of course not. But they have to be used properly, and by people who know how to drive them....
Open/close sensors, like those included with the Samsung SmartThings kit, are great for automating certain actions whenever doors or windows are opened. But if you’re having trouble getting them to work well, it might be because the metal on the door or window is causing issues with the magnet system that’s used on the sensors. Here’s how you can get around that. RELATED: How to Set Up the SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit...
If you’re stuck without a mouse temporarily, don’t worry—you can still use your PC. You’ll be glad to know that it’s possible to move the cursor around in Windows using only the keyboard. There’s a feature in Windows called Mouse Keys that allows you to use the numeric keypad to move your mouse around, click and double-click on items, and even drag and drop. We’ll show you how to turn on and configure Mouse Keys so you can use the numeric keypad as a mouse....
If you ever want to know how much data you’re using on your home internet, you usually can’t find out without a bit of router hacking or use a third-party app on your computer. However, if you use the Google WiFi router system, you can track this natively. Here’s how. RELATED: How to Set Up the Google WiFi System This is a good way to see which devices may be the culprit when it comes to hitting your monthly data cap, if you have one....
Wonder which of your Mac apps are connecting to the Internet, and what they’re doing? Private Eye lets you spy on your applications, watching every outgoing and incoming request in real time. And it’s free. We’ve told you that your Mac’s firewall is off by default, and how to enable it. We also showed you how to allow apps to communicate through it. If all you want to do is stop incoming requests, with a few exceptions, that should do the trick....
How important are the specs under your smartphone’s hood, really? That may seem like a silly question, but honestly: are specs what define phone’s worth? Hardware specs—like CPU speed, amount of RAM, camera megapixels, and so on—certainly make some difference, they’re an overrated metric for judging which phone you should buy. We’ve long since passed the days when specs ruled the smartphone game—it’s all about experience now. Once Upon a Time, Specs Mattered…More Since Apple only produces a couple of phones per year, this is really more about Android than anything else—there are tons of Android phones out there, and specs were originally how one manufacturer differentiated their handset from the others....
