Posts

Music artists sometimes release albums under different aliases or band names, and those can quickly get jumbled together in iTunes. Here’s how to use manual sorting options to restore some order to your iTunes or macOS Music library. This works whether you’re using iTunes on Windows, iTunes on macOS Mojave or earlier, or Music on macOS Catalina. This guide refers to iTunes, but everything detailed here will work the new Music app in macOS Catalina....

NVIDIA’s ShadowPlay, now known as NVIDIA Share, offers easy gameplay recording, live streaming, and even an FPS counter overlay. It can automatically record gameplay in the background–just on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One–or only record gameplay when you tell it to. If you have a PC with modern NVIDIA graphics hardware, there’s a good chance you have access to this feature. It’s similar to Windows 10’s Game DVR, but has more features–and it works on Windows 7, too....

Google now makes it much easier to report “suspicious websites” in Chrome. Websites you might want to report include phishing websites, sites hosting malware, and similar bad things. Google will use these reports to block websites for everyone. This new official browser extension reports bad websites to Google Safe Browsing. That’s a service used by web browsers like Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox to proactively block malicious websites....

Screen recording on Mac was vastly improved with macOS Mojave (first introduced in 2018). With nothing but a built-in application, you can capture sound, mouse clicks, portions of your screen, and more. Here’s how to screen record on your Mac. Open the Screenshot Utility on Mac You can use the same tool to screen record that you do to take screenshots. Open up the Screenshot app using one of these methods:...

Since iOS 8, you can now see which apps are draining your battery the most. This includes apps that drain your battery in the background — something that’s possible on iOS since Apple added the “background refresh” feature in iOS 7. You can stop these apps from using so much battery power, especially if they’re draining that battery in the background while you aren’t actually using them. Apps do this to be helpful, but it uses power and costs battery life....

You can change the display resolution of your Mac to make text larger or gain more space. There are some predefined scaled resolutions available, but you can get more granular control over your display’s resolution. Normally a Mac will run its display at the resolution Apple believes is best. There are also four or five different options—depending on your Mac and display and highlighted below—that provide different outcomes. They’re fine, but they’re options to make text bigger or your desktop larger without using the number-based resolutions we all understand....

Many people have multiple Google accounts for Gmail and other purposes. Annoyingly, Google makes it very difficult to sign out of only one account at a time. It is possible if you know where to look. When you’re signed into multiple Google accounts, the option you’ll see from the accounts menu is “Sign Out of All Accounts.” This is really frustrating. Why should you only be able to sign out of all accounts or none?...

Most operating systems have a built-in task manager or resource monitor that lets you see all active processes and programs running on your computer. The Chrome web browser also has one that helps you end troublesome tabs and extensions. Open Chrome’s Task Manager To open Chrome’s Task Manager, click the “More” button (three dots), hover over “More Tools,” and then click on “Task Manager.” Alternatively, press Shift+Esc on Windows or Search+Esc on Chrome OS to open Task Manager....

When Apple says something is “available now,” it doesn’t play around. iOS 12.2 is available on all compatible devices now, and it includes the new News+ service (along with some other stuff). The company announced its long-rumored News+ service today, which offer access to over 300 magazines and several newspapers for just $9.99 a month for the entire family. News+ is the only service that was announced and is also available today—everything else (Apple Card, TV+, etc....

If you watch videos on a variety of devices, its likely that you’ve run into compatibility issues. Your iPhone might record 4K video, but can your PlayStation or your smart TV play that video seamlessly? Luckily, there are many free video converters available that will help you convert and watch your favorite videos on the device of your choice. Here are our top picks. Handbrake: The Best Choice for Most People (Windows, macOS, Linux) Handbrake is an open source video converter available for Windows, Mac, and Linux based systems....

SSH Security Basics SSH stands for Secure Shell. The name “SSH” is used interchangeably to mean either the SSH protocol itself or the software tools that allow system administrators and users to make secure connections to remote computers using that protocol. The SSH protocol is an encrypted protocol designed to give a secure connection over an insecure network, such as the internet. SSH in Linux is built on a portable version of the OpenSSH project....

You might have a few USB Type-C wall adapters around your home, but Spigen has one on sale right now that can fast-charge two devices at once. Best of all, it’s small enough to fit in any bag. Spigen’s charger can deliver 65W of power using USB Power Delivery (USB-PD) when one device is connected on either port. That’s enough to charge most ultrabooks, and any laptops or tablets, provided they support USB-PD....

What Is Bluetooth LE Audio? Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio is a new standard for low-power audio transmission over Bluetooth. It’s separate from Bluetooth 5 and 5.1. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG)—a community of over 34,000 companies that produce and design products that use wireless technology—announced Bluetooth LE at CES 2020. In addition to lower energy consumption, the new Low Complexity Communications Codec (LC3 for short), which was co-developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits and Ericsson, promises improvements in audio quality over the existing SBC Bluetooth codec....

Notification settings are relatively complex on a modern iPhone or iPad. It’s possible for an app to play sounds or vibrate your phone without showing any visible notifications. Here’s how to pin down the offender. Phantom Vibrations (and Sounds) It’s worth remembering that phantom vibrations are a common phenomenon. Many people have felt their iPhone vibrate in their pocket, only to pull it out and realize it hadn’t vibrated at all....

If you could only have one smarthome device, you should make it a video doorbell—assuming you can install one. And if you could only have two, it should be a video doorbell and a voice assistant with a display. Here’s why. Video Doorbells Are a Window to the Outside World A video doorbell combines a camera, microphone, and speaker set with a straight forward doorbell. Some connect to your existing wiring and some work with your house’s chime, others have options to run off battery power and require a wireless chime....

AMD made a big splash this spring with the introduction of its Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs and the accompanying X570 chipset. This duo starts shipping July 7, 2019, with promises of zippy PCIe 4.0 transfer rates, and a killer value proposition in terms of cost, core count, and power usage. Value has always been AMD’s advantage over Intel, with its Zen, Zen+, and now Zen 2 architecture. We won’t know for sure how well the new Ryzen 3000 processors perform until independent benchmarks and tests appear....

Windows Is Getting a Built-in Linux Kernel Traditional Linux distributions may not be taking over the world, but Linux is becoming even more pervasive than ever. Windows 10 will soon include a built-in Linux kernel updated through Windows Update. Windows itself will still be based on the Windows kernel, of course. The Linux kernel will power the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) and let you run even more Linux applications on Windows 10....

Find Files With the Advanced Search The more files you upload to Google Drive, the more you have to look through when you need one. Luckily, you have advanced search options that make the task easier. RELATED: How to Quickly Search Google Drive Enter a keyword or phrase into the Search in Drive box at the top of the main page. Then, click the Show Search Options icon on the right side of the search box....

Outlook includes a Quick Steps feature that lets you apply multiple actions to a message with one click. Outlook includes several default Quick Steps, but you also can create your own (and delete the default ones if you don’t need them). If you regularly perform the same set of actions, creating a Quick Step and assigning it a hotkey can save you a lot of time. Here’s how they work....

In a world where we’re all paranoid about devices spying on us (and rightfully so), perhaps no other devices receive more scrutiny than smarthome products. But is that scrutiny warranted? RELATED: Reminder: Your Smart TV is Almost Certainly Spying on You Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of different products out there that are spying on you, like smart televisions and browser extensions, but what about things like smart speakers, Wi-Fi cams, and other smarthome devices?...