VLC is the king of all media… it plays almost anything on any platform, any time, any place. It’s great. Lately, however, I’ve been having issues with VLC skipping whenever I’m playing high-def media streaming over a network. RELATED: What Is Judder, and Why Do TVs Have This Problem? Alter How Much VLC Caches the Video First, open VLC’s preferences by going to Tools > Preferences. Then, click “All” under the “Show Settings” option at the bottom of the window....

The coolest part of owning a Nintendo Switch is picking it up from the dock and taking Zelda with you in the car (…or to the bathroom). Every time you do, though, the countdown to a dead battery begins ticking. Fortunately, there are some small things you can do to squeeze a little extra juice out of your game. Lower the Brightness on Your Display RELATED: How to Adjust the Brightness On Your Nintendo Switch...

When working with others on a form in Google Forms, sharing and managing responses isn’t easy. However, you can configure Google Forms to deliver the responses directly to a specific email address or multiple addresses. Here’s how. Why Get Responses in Your Email Notifications? Google Forms by default only notifies you with emails about new responses without including the response data. You may want to avoid the hassle of opening the Google Forms dashboard and sharing the data with others....

A cleaner desktop is only a terminal command away. While you can use Stacks to automatically organize the desktop, nothing beats a clean slate. RELATED: How to Organize Your Desktop With Stacks on macOS Mojave To get started, open the Terminal app on your Mac using Spotlight Search or Launchpad. Terminal is the built-in command-line application on Mac. But don’t let that overwhelm you. In this guide, we will be using Terminal to run a specific command in a safe manner....

Highlighting text draws attention to it. If you subscribe to Office 365, you can highlight text directly in PowerPoint. If you use a desktop version of PowerPoint, you’ll need to use a workaround. We’ll show you both ways. Highlighting Text in PowerPoint (Office 365 Subscribers) If you’re an Office 365 subscriber, go ahead and open PowerPoint and move to the slide that contains the text you want to highlight. Once there, select the text by clicking and holding the left mouse button and dragging your cursor over the text....

When a new version of Android comes out for your phone, it doesn’t usually drop for everyone at once. Instead, it rolls out over time. However, you can easily check to see if it’s available on your device instead of simply waiting for a notification to show up. NOTE: This article used to contain an unconfirmed trick for “forcing” Android to check for updates by force stopping the Google Services Framework and clearing its data....

OneNote 2016 is a great program for taking, storing, and syncing notes, but how do you protect private information you store in those notebooks? No worries–you can keep them safe with a password. RELATED: How to Sync OneNote 2016 Notebooks to Your OneDrive Account and Access them Anywhere Password protecting notebook sections is one of those useful features OneNote has that Evernote does not. You cannot password protect entire notebooks in OneNote, only sections in notebooks....

There are plenty of reasons to print a presentation you create in Google Slides. You may want to review the slides away from your computer or create handouts for your audience. Google Slides provides several options for printing a slideshow. Open the Google Slides Print Settings With each of the print options below, you’ll navigate to the same spot first. With your slideshow open, click File > Print Settings and Preview from the menu....

Apple put a touch screen on the MacBook Pro, but doesn’t offer some way of launching or switching apps from it. Seriously, Apple? It seems like an oversight, but happily a couple of developers have stepped up to offer this feature. Two main applications offer touch bar app switching and launching: TouchSwitcher and Rocket. Both are compelling in their own way, but we like TouchSwitcher as a starting point. Here it is in action:...

Do you prefer Google Chrome to Microsoft’s Windows 8 apps? Well, you’re in luck, even if you have a Windows 8 PC. You can swap the entire “Modern” environment for the Chrome OS desktop, hiding the Windows 8 interface entirely. You can also use the Chrome desktop as just another app on Windows 8, swapping back and forth between other Windows 8 apps and the traditional desktop. That’s more practical, but where’s the fun in that?...

The iPhone 13 doesn’t have a visible home button below its screen. You may be used to lifting or tapping it to wake it up, but that won’t work if it’s not already powered on. Here’s how to turn it on. Is My iPhone Asleep or Powered Off? If the screen on your iPhone is black, it’s possible that the iPhone is in sleep mode. To check, first try tapping the screen....

Android includes full access to a file system, complete with support for removable SD cards. But Android itself has never come with a built-in file manager, forcing manufacturers to create their own file manager apps and users to install third-party ones. With Android 6.0, Android now contains a hidden file manager. The file manager doesn’t have its own icon in the app drawer, as Google still wants to hide the file system from most people....

Breakout rooms—side rooms where meeting attendees can split into small groups—work for in-person meetings and video conferences. Here’s how to set up and use the Microsoft Teams equivalent for virtual meetings. Create Breakout Rooms To create breakout rooms, start a video call, then click the breakout rooms button in the toolbar of the meeting. In the “Create Breakout Rooms” panel that opens, select the number of breakout rooms you want (up to a maximum of 50), choose whether attendees will be assigned automatically or manually, and click “Create Rooms....

The fdisk command is a text-based utility for viewing and managing hard disk partitions on Linux. It’s one of the most powerful tools you can use to manage partitions, but it’s confusing to new users. This tutorial will go through the basics of using fdisk to manage a partition table. After using fdisk, you’ll have to use a mkfs command to format new partitions with a file system. Sudo vs....

If you’ve ever wished you could create advanced, automated interactions between all the smart devices in your house, Stringify is your new best friend. With it, you can have multiple devices turn on or perform actions when certain conditions are met. Why Stringify Rocks RELATED: How to Automate Your Favorite Apps with IFTTT Stringify works along the same principle as the ever-popular IFTTT. IFTTT has some pretty frustrating limitations. It can only use one trigger to activate one action at a time, for example....

RELATED: The 10 Best Action Movies to Stream for Free in 2022 The Fast and the Furious Play Video It’s hard to believe that this monumental action franchise started out as a street-level drama about car-racing thieves boosting electronics. Series regulars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, and Michelle Rodriguez star in this movie about LAPD officer Brian O’Conner (Walker) going undercover to stop the underground crew run by Dominic Toretto (Diesel)....

Apple showed off the upcoming iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 updates at WWDC, and the latter has many multitasking improvements for the iPad. The main upgrade is ‘Stage Manager,’ a feature also coming in the next macOS update, which organizes your currently-open applications in a new panel on the left side of the multitasking screen. You can tap an app from Stage Manager to switch to it, or drag an app to place it on top of your currently-open application — the first time the iPad has supported overlapping app windows....

The way iOS handles notifications has always been less than ideal, but iOS 12 goes some way to improving matters. Part of that is the new ability to change how notifications are handled, right from within the Notification Center. With the arrival of iOS 12, Apple made it possible for people to receive a notification, decide that they don’t want ever to have to see it again, and then make that happen all without going spelunking into the often confusing world of the Settings app....

Hey Microsoft, could you please stop breaking my PC? The latest WPD driver update released on March 8, 2017 is just the latest in a long string of bad updates. If Windows 10 is going to force these updates on my system, the least Microsoft could do is test them properly first. Don’t get us wrong: automatic updates are very important for security reasons, and we believe they are a good thing....

Apple has lost its mojo. Their obsessive attention to detail seems to have slipped away. When Apple revived itself and found its way into everybody’s homes, hands, and wallets, it became a company that consistently met and exceeded expectations. It became a company with the resources to do virtually anything, with more cash on hand than the US government. Apple has become accustomed to making stuff that people actually want....