Connexion
Love it or hate it, AI is changing tech at a rapid pace. Case in point: AI is now being used to reverse-engineer big-name software packages. Once complete, developers upload the cloned versions online as open-source tools that anyone can use for free. It seems no company is immune from these dupes, no matter how big it happens to be. That includes Adobe, and its legacy software like Photoshop, which now has a free-to-download AI clone called "PhotoCraft." I gave this clone a shot, and while it isn't perfect, it's remarkable how similar it is to the real deal.
One of the developers leading this particular charge is Brandon Thomas, a seasoned software engineer who has used Claude Opus 5.5 to build copies of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, Acrobat Pro, After Effects, and InDesign in the Rust coding language. They all get new names—Photoshop is PhotoCraft, Premiere is FilmCraft—but they're very similar in terms of features and layout to what Adobe puts out and charges a monthly fee for. It's another seismic industry shift driven by AI, and Thomas is apparently building clones of Microsoft Office apps next.
According to the developer, Thomas "got bit by the dark pattern 'cancellation fee' one too many times," which prompted the start of the project. "AI lets us take back tech and set the clock back to the pre-shitty era," says Thomas. "But now you can just create 1:1 functional equivalents, clean room, that are highly performant and cross-platform. Nothing is stopping you." In another comment, he declares, "Software is over."
It's not clear exactly how Thomas completed this project, but he has used the term "vibe coding," so it sounds like some kind of AI-powered observe-and-copy is going on here, even with his programming experience. The developer has also suggested this is a more worthwhile endeavor than supporting open source apps such as LibreOffice and GIMP as, in his view, "There is no reason to save broken software."
As Ars Technica points out, reverse engineering is usually tolerated as long as no code is directly copied, but if the new suite of tools too closely matches the look and feel of the apps they're cloning, that could mean legal trouble. The truth is, no one's sure yet—and it brings up again the legality of the AI models themselves, which have been trained on vast amounts of human-made code to get to this level.
Adobe is no doubt taking a very close look at this, but while it's still available, I decided to give the software a try myself. You can download the apps from the ArtCraft website, though they're labeled as "early alpha" and "in development" for now. According to Thomas, 99% feature parity with the Adobe equivalents should be "measured in months and not years".
The ArtCraft web portal offers a launcher app through which you can manage the entire 'Craft' selection of tools, but I focused on PhotoCraft as Photoshop is the only Adobe program I really make much use of. My first impressions: It definitely looks like a Photoshop rip-off.
PhotoCraft has the same color scheme, the same layout of panels, and the same menus in the same order—with the exception of Plugins, which I suppose will take a while. The keyboard shortcuts are the same, as far as I could tell, and the various preferences screens are very similar too—both in terms of the options you have and how they're laid out.
Most of the Photoshop work I do involves cropping and combining images, tweaking their colors and balance, and getting them in fixed formats for articles. I was able to transform my workflow from the Adobe app pretty much wholesale: The same panels, the same dialogs, and the same tools (from the clone stamp to the magic wand).
Plenty of image editors ape Photoshop, of course, because it's the industry leader—Pixlr, anyone?—but this seems on another level entirely. PhotoCraft is also fast and slick, and as far as I could tell, free from bugs. The only bumps I came across were some clunky snapping and selecting operations, which could definitely be improved upon but didn't actually break anything.
I'm by no means a power user of Photoshop, and people with more experience than me have found plenty of issues under the hood. I suspect that when it comes to playing around with more advanced tools and layer functions, cracks might start to show in the way you would expect from AI code trying to copy what another program does. I'm not sure "watch this program and make something that behaves the same" is the best way forward for software development.
That said, for me, PhotoCraft did everything I needed it to in terms of image manipulations, adjustments, and layer control, and did it well. How the app carries on long-term remains to be seen, as AI-written bug fixes and feature upgrades will presumably be piled on top of existing AI-written code—and that's assuming Adobe doesn't get involved.
Personally, I'm not going to cancel my Photoshop subscription: I can afford it, I use it, and I'm not yet ready to trust my projects to something that's been coded by AI. But this is the era we're in now, where AI can look at something—a painting, a website, a movie, a sprawling Adobe software application—and give you a very convincing imitation in not much time at all.
Plex has been around for almost 20 years at this point, and has added plenty of features and functions in that time. We've previously covered some of the ways it can be useful for creating your own personal streaming service.
Even if you're a seasoned Plex user, you should find something of use here, as there's everything from tweaking the metadata that the apps use to create your library, to improving the quality of your video streams—with a particular focus on films and TV shows (though Plex is capable of handling music and photos, too).
Your filenames and folder structure should give Plex enough information to correctly label TV shows and movies, but it doesn't always get it right every time. If you spot a mistake then there are a few ways to change it.
From the main page for a show or film, click the three dots and choose Refresh Metadata. This gets Plex to check again with its online sources, so if the data was missing or incorrect the first time around, this may fix it.
Your second option is to head to the listing for a specific movie or show, click the three dots, and then pick Fix Match. This lets you pick from a selection of online search results, and is useful for titles that are very similar to each other or very common.
The final way of fixing metadata is to go to an individual movie or episode, and click the Edit button (the icon that looks like a pencil). This lets you enter manual metadata edits that won't be overwritten by any online databases that Plex references.
As your media library grows and evolves, clutter can start to build up—particularly when it comes to items you've removed, that tend to leave metadata, preview thumbnails, and other bits of digital detritus behind. These leftovers are known as bundles.
You can clear out bundles and keep your library trim in a couple of ways: In the web app, click the three dots next to your media server on the left-hand navigation pane, then choose Manage Server > Clean Bundles.
The same option is in the troubleshooting part of settings on the web. Click the wrench icon (top right) to open Settings, then choose Troubleshooting > Clean Bundles. You can also follow the Scheduled Tasks link on the same page to have Plex do this chore automatically every week for you.
There may be times when you have multiple editions of the same movie in your library—director's cuts, perhaps, or extended editions—and if you have the Plex Pass plan then you can label these as separate entities inside your library
You can either change the filename on disk to have the edition in curly brackets after the title—so "Blade Runner (1982) {edition-Final Cut}.mp4" for example—or click the Edit button (the pencil icon) on a movie listing page and enter the details in the Edition field.
Your Plex content isn't automatically going to come with subtitles attached, and that's where the FileBot tool can help. Get the program installed on your system, sign up for a free account at OpenSubtitles, and you're ready to start looking for your subtitle titles. This is done via the Subtitles panel inside FileBot.
Use the green user icon to log into OpenSubtitles through Filebot, then search for your films and shows via the drop-down at the top and the Find button. When you find the files you need, double-click them to move them down to the lower window—in there, you can right-click, choose Export, and save them in the relevant Plex library folder.
There are other options, like a basic built-in subtitle search that's available if you have the Plex Pass, and the standalone Bazarr app, which gives you more options than either the integrated tool or FileBot, but takes longer to set up.
You don't have to keep your Plex library to yourself, but there are some tricks to sharing it with friends and family. From the web app, click the wrench icon (top right) to open the Settings pane, then choose Manage Library Access on the left.
Click Grant Library Access to let someone else into your media library: You'll need to supply a Plex username or an email address (which will be used to prompt them to sign up for a Plex account). You're then able to select the servers and libraries they can access. If you have a Plex Pass, you can set more limits in terms of age ratings and whether or not your friends and family can download content.
The wrinkles come with remote access. If you as the media server owner have a Plex Pass, then your friends and family can stream content remotely, as well as on the local network; if not, they each need a Remote Watch Pass ($2 a month or $20 a year) if they're not watching on the same local network as you and the server.
Tautulli is one of the best Plex add-ons around, giving you a host of useful stats about your media server—including records of who watched what. Once you've downloaded the installer for Windows or macOS, you'll be taken step-by-step through the process of connecting it to your Plex server.
If you've shared your Plex library with the family, then you can, for example, see what the kids are watching and when, and even the devices they've used and how much bandwidth they've used up along the way.
The plug-in is interesting enough even if you haven't shared your library: It's possible to break down viewing to day-by-day or hour-by-hour graphs, see the movies and shows you're watching most often, check out detailed information on your media files, and keep track of when new films and shows are added.
Collections are a useful way of applying some order to the chaos of your Plex media library, and the feature is perhaps not as well known as it should be. You can collect whatever you like, whether it's feel-good TV episodes or spy films.
To get started with collections, click the Edit button on a listing page (the pencil), then choose Tags, and enter something into the Collections box. If the collection already exists, it'll show up as you start typing.
You can also set up smart collections, where media files are added automatically. Set a search filter via the Library tab on your Films or Shows screen, and if you click the Add to button (the plus and horizontal lines icon on the right), you get a Create Smart Collection option. Any files that are added in the future that match your search filter get automatically added to the collection too.
Most of the time Plex will handle video quality automatically, and do a good job of it, but there might be occasions when you're not getting the best quality possible (particularly if you're watching on less powerful devices).
To make sure Plex is always serving up video as best it can, in the web app click the Settings icon (the wrench, top right), then Transcoder. If you know you've got the computer to handle it, you can set the top Transcoder quality drop-down to Make my CPU hurt, and enable the Use hardware acceleration when available.
In the apps for individual devices, you'll also find video quality options in the settings. Put video quality up to Maximum for best results—you may need to experiment to find the limits of what each device can handle.
You might not have given much thought to the Continue Watching pane that shows up on your Films and Shows pages, but you can customize this on the web to suit your own preferences—and maybe remove some content you don't want to keep around.
Click the wrench icon (top right) to open Settings, then select Library on the left. You're able to set a threshold (a number of weeks) beyond which titles disappear from Continue Watching, as well as limiting the number of titles included in title. Turn off the Include season premieres in Continue Watching checkbox to hide premieres for new seasons when you've finished old ones—otherwise they'll show up indefinitely.
The settings you configure here should propagate to the Continue Watching rows in your other apps; try closing and restarting them if not.
If you miss the traditional channel surfing experience when using Plex, there's a solution in the form of QuasiTV: This app works on Android TV, Google TV, and Fire TV devices, and wraps your Plex library and streaming services in a more conventional interface.
Sign into Plex, point it towards your libraries, and it'll create a custom channel guide filled with your shows and movies. These might get assigned to genres, or to the TV stations they originally aired on, and you can browse around until you find something you like—just like the old days.
It's not the most efficient way of searching through your Plex media library, but it's fun to use, and when I tested it out I rediscovered a few movies and TV episodes that I hadn't watched in a while.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Samsung is rolling out a major One UI 9 update, based on Android 17. If you've got one of the Galaxy S26 handsets launched at the start of the year, you should see it pop up on your device soon (it came pre-installed on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Flip 8 devices unveiled in July).
After the Galaxy S26, next in line for the update are the Galaxy S25, Galaxy Z Fold 7, and Galaxy Z Flip 7 phones—though Samsung hasn't said exactly when the software will arrive for those devices. After that, phones from as far back as 2023 should eventually get One UI 9, including the Galaxy S23, Galaxy Z Fold 5, and Galaxy Z Flip 5 handsets.
If you do have an eligible phone, you'll want to dive in and start making the most of the update as quickly as possible. These 10 hacks should get you up and running. From making your device more secure to creating your own custom widgets, these are my favorite tricks and tips for the updated OS.
AI Network Guard is a new feature in One UI 9 that cuts off the internet when you open an app you've put on a specific restricted list. It's actually designed to stop kids from stumbling across unsuitable content, but it works great for limiting doomscrolling for grown-ups as well.
The feature isn't easy to find, though—it's on the same hidden menu that features Samsung's wifi signal scanner (why Samsung is keeping it hidden is anyone's guess). From Settings, tap Connections and Wi-Fi, then tap the three dots in the top right corner and select Intelligent Wi-Fi. On the next screen, tap the Intelligent Wi-Fi button seven times to reveal a new Connectivity Labs option.
Go into Connectivity Labs, and you will at last discover AI Network Guard. Follow the instructions to set up a PIN, and you can then pick the apps you want to block internet access for. Use the Downtime feature (via the three dots, top right) to set certain periods in the day when those apps can be used as normal.
One UI has always impressed in terms of the number of customization options it gives users, and there's a new tweak available in the latest update. If you swipe down from the top right corner of the screen to get to the Quick Panel, then tap the pencil edit button, you've got more freedom to adjust its layout. You've always been able to swap widgets in and out, but now you can position them in any way you like (just tap and drag), and change their sizes (via the handles around the edges). The sound button is also now decoupled from the volume slider, so you can manage them separately. Tap Add a control to introduce new elements, and tap Done when you're finished.
If you want one person in particular to be the star of a video, My FanCam is here for you in One UI 9. It lets you load up a video you've already recorded and create a new clip with a specific individual front and center. The obvious use case for this is your kid in the school play or at sports day, but you can use it for whatever you want. You do need to give My FanCam plenty of material to work with in terms of footage and framing—it can't magically produce new angles or new clips out of nothing.
To get started, open up a video from the Gallery app, then tap the Galaxy AI button (the stars) and My FanCam to get started. After a few moments, you'll be able to choose the person you want to follow and select crop and aspect ratio settings.
Samsung Now Brief is aiming to give you timely alerts throughout the day about information that's relevant to you—such as weather updates or appointment reminders—and in One UI 9 you can make it more useful with the option to create your own cards. From Settings, tap Galaxy AI > Now Brief, then choose Custom cards. You can have three active at any one time, centered around weather details, health statistics, or particular categories of video pulled from the web.
Google has finally gotten around to building something to match the anti-car sickness Vehicle Motion Cues feature that Apple put into iOS last year, and it's called Motion Assist. It was rolled out as part of the Android 17 update, and Samsung has carried it over to its own One UI 9 upgrade.
To find it, open up Settings, then choose Google services > All services > Motion assist. Beyond enabling and disabling the feature, you can customize the color, shape, and opacity of the dots that flow across the screen while you're moving, and which will (hopefully) keep any nausea at bay.
Give your wallpaper game a bit of a lift by setting a Motion Photo as your phone's backdrop, rather than a static image. These images are accompanied by short videos when they're captured, giving you a second or so on either side of the still frame—tap the little icon that's an 'A' inside a series of rectangles to turn it on in the Camera app.
One UI 9 lets you set these Motion Photos as wallpaper to add a bit more movement and interest. You still set the wallpaper in the same way: Wallpaper and style, then Change wallpapers > Gallery from Settings. You should see a Motion photo option appear on compatible images.
The Finder is the search tool built into One UI, and it's traditionally been available at the top or bottom of the app drawer that appears when you swipe up on a home screen: You just type in the app or file you want to find on your phone. One of the nice tweaks introduced with One UI 9 is the option to have the Finder on the home screen for more convenient access. Open Settings, then choose Home screen > Show search on Home screen to enable it.
AI continues to become more integrated into our phones, and Galaxy handsets are no exception: You may well have several third-party AI apps on board your device, as well as the built-in Galaxy AI features. One UI 9 ushers in a new "AI Assistant Activity" dashboard that lets you keep tabs on what AI apps and their agents are doing on your phone, from booking concert tickets to analyzing photos. You can see everything that's been happening in one place. You can find the dashboard from Settings by tapping Security and privacy > AI assistant activity. Any actions AIs have taken on your behalf can be viewed app by app, with filters for activity over the last seven days or the last 24 hours.
Perhaps not a One UI 9 upgrade that's going to grab many headlines, but a useful one nevertheless: Samsung Notes now has a Tape tool that works exactly like the name suggests: It lets you put a bit of digital "tape" over part of your note. You can use this as a revision aid, as a decoration for scrapbooking or journaling, or to protect sensitive information when you're sharing screenshots of your notes. You'll find it along the bottom toolbar when a note is open (the icon looks like a piece of tape). You can choose different colors and patterns for your tape, change the size, and have the app automatically straighten your taping too. Use the tape icon on the tool pop-up to show or hide all your tape.
This is a tip that you'll hopefully not have to call on too often, but there's a new Warranty and Care section in Settings that brings together a few older features and adds some new ones on top. From here, you can sign up for Samsung Care+, check if your phone is still under warranty, book repairs for your device, or run a diagnostics check on your phone. You can even ask Bixby for some troubleshooting tips and advice.
The following content is brought to you by Lifehacker partners. If you buy a product featured here, we may earn an affiliate commission or other compensation.
The work you actually sat down to do rarely gets interrupted by something dramatic. It gets interrupted by housekeeping—a quick fix here, a quick lookup there, each one small enough to feel harmless and just long enough to break your focus.
This is true for freelancers, founders, designers, and developers. But it’s also true for work-from-home employees and busy people in general. And it’s not that any of these tasks are difficult (which almost makes them more annoying); it’s that each one takes just enough time and attention to pull you away from whatever you actually sat down to do. Little interruptions may not seem like much, but they add up to a surprising amount of time spent taking care of your Mac instead of letting your Mac take care of you.
MacPaw has spent 18 years building tools that take everyday work off Mac users' hands by noticing the small stuff you've stopped noticing, and quietly handling it for you. For anyone whose Mac doubles as an office, the files, apps, and projects add up—but the upkeep shouldn't have to.
Here’s how MacPaw’s products help you save time and frustration while using your trusty Mac computer.
When storage starts disappearing, you can open folders one by one, sort through old downloads, track down duplicate files, and try to uncover large files that are eating up space and collecting dust. Or, you can make that maintenance somebody else's problem.
CleanMyMac keeps everyday care in one place, so maintenance takes less of your attention. If you work with video or like to keep many applications open at once, freeing up space can help your Mac work as intended. You’ll spend less time staring at the dreaded spinning color wheel and more time getting things done.
Sometimes you just need an app for one specific task. Maybe you need to compress a video before sending it to a client. The job itself takes two minutes, but first you have to find an app, compare your options, figure out whether you trust it, download it, and possibly even pay for yet another subscription.
Setapp cuts out much of the scavenger hunt by giving you one trusted place to look for the right app, so a two-minute task doesn't start with 15 minutes of searching, comparing, and managing software. It also makes it easy to discover time-savers and cool tricks you didn't even realize were possible on a Mac.
Splitting a PDF or trimming the first few seconds from a video isn't complicated, but if you only do it occasionally, you might still end up digging through menus or Googling it all over again. Eney is MacPaw's on-device helper for handling straightforward tasks like these. Instead of relearning the process every time, ask Eney to take care of it on your Mac.
Go on, then—forget the steps. For straightforward tasks like these, Eney can handle them on your Mac.
There's no shortage of software promising to make you more productive, but finding, installing, learning, and managing all those tools can become another job of its own. The next time a small Mac task pulls you away from what you meant to do, see how MacPaw can help.
And there's more on the way. MacPaw is currently developing its own on-device AI stack for the Mac — an AI runtime called Elix and a memory layer called Mnemos — designed to make its products smarter, keep more of the work and your data on your Mac, and understand what you need before you have to spell it out.
Your Mac should do more for you without giving you more to manage. Explore MacPaw to see how Setapp, CleanMyMac, Eney, and other tools take everyday work off your hands.
Canva is one of the most popular design tools for creating everything from flyers and business cards to interactive presentations. It's pretty user-friendly even for those who don't have any design experience, but if you want to level up your Canva experience, consider these tips and tricks.
If you've ever tried to manually align multiple images, text boxes, or other design elements so they're evenly spaced, only to have them off by a tiny margin with each adjustment, the "Tidy up" tool is the solution to your problem. With this feature, you can group elements, and Canva will automatically snap them into place so you don't have to shift them pixel by pixel. Select three or more elements in your design, click Position in the toolbar, and choose Tidy Up. You'll also find a bunch of other alignment and spacing options on this menu.
For designs that need to be replicated with unique information—such as matching business cards for different employees or localized marketing flyers with a consistent design—use the Bulk Create tool to generate and fill in a template instead of manually editing each individual file. Bulk Create pulls data from an Excel or CSV file (or a compatible data app, like Google Analytics) and matches it to form fields on your design. You can use Canva's AI match or drag and drop data fields manually, then preview and generate the design.
If you find an image or graphic that you like, you can filter your search to see more assets from that same artist, so all of the illustrations in your design look cohesive. This is especially useful if you are creating a manual, guide, or series of social media posts that you want to keep visually consistent. Hover over the visual element and tap the three dots, then select View more by or See more like this. You can also star the artist to easily find them again.
If you're basing your design around a photo or image, you don't have to trial-and-error your way to finding the right colors for other elements. Canva has a free custom color palette generator that analyzes uploaded images and creates four-color combinations, complete with names and hex codes. You can apply the palette to a Canva design or save it for future use. If you already have a photo in your design, select the photo, click the color swatch, and look for Photo colors on the toolbar to see the palette.
Once you settle on the style and format of text and elements in your design, use "Copy Style" to apply them across the board without needing to manually select each individual setting, such as background colors, font styles and sizes, text colors, and alignment. Select the element or text you want to copy, then click the paint roller icon in the floating toolbar and choose the element or text you want to copy the formatting into. Canva also has a "Style Match" tool that uses AI to match the visual style of existing elements.
If you have multiple team members working on the same Canva file but don't want anyone to accidentally move or resize elements while editing text, you can lock only certain elements in place while still allowing the content itself to be changed. Select the element you want to lock—such as a text box, image, or graphic—and select Lock position only. Collaborators can edit text or unlocked elements without affecting those parts that are locked.
Canva's Grids feature divides your design into compartments, such as rows or columns, which you can use to place and align images, videos, color fills, or other elements with consistent, even spacing. Grids can also be used to easily crop images or retain custom filters and effects even if images are swapped out. You can also change the spacing between grid cells to create consistent margins. Grid layouts can be found under Elements > Browse. This is especially useful for collages, vision boards, and visual storytelling.
If a URL is written out on your Canva design, viewers can copy and paste it to visit the website. If you want to add a hyperlink and ensure it remains clickable, you'll need to download your file as a PDF and share it in that format. No other file types support clickable hyperlinks (and social media platforms strip links out of PDFs as well). Go to Share > Download > PDF to save your design with clickable links.
Canva has a built-in QR code generator that allows you to drop custom codes into your design using your existing color palette. By default, these QR codes are static, meaning the link is permanently fixed, and you'd have to swap out the QR code and distribute the new design if you wanted to make changes. Dynamic codes use a redirect link that can be updated and also track scan data, such as click counts and location. If you add the Hovercode app to Canva (search "Dynamic QR Codes" under the Apps tab) and link a Hovercode account, you can have up to 10 dynamic QR codes available at once for free. After that, you can upgrade to a paid Hovercode tier.
When using Canva to present to a group, you can start a Live session to have audience members ask questions and leave comments as well as upvote feedback from other participants. Simply select Present > Present full screen or Presenter view > Present and click Canva Live > Start new session. This will generate an 8-digit code, which audience members can enter at canva.live to join the session. Audience chat messages and questions will show in the Presenter window.
uBlock Origin is lightweight, effective, and free from shady business practices. Unfortunately, Google's move to Manifest V3 for browser extensions has hobbled ad blockers somewhat. In response, uBlock has split into two products—uBlock Origin and uBlock Origin Lite. The "Lite" version works with most Chromium-based browsers and Safari for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The full version of uBlock Origin primarily works in Firefox for desktops, laptops, and Android. With those differences highlighted, here are the 10 uBlock Origin (and uBlock Origin Lite) hacks you should know about.
When you use uBlock Origin Lite in Chrome or Safari, it allows you to choose one of three filtering levels: Basic, Optimal, and Complete. The "Basic" filters won't block as many ads as the others, but it also doesn't require access to your tabs and data. These days, most extensions require access to every one of your tabs, which makes uBlock Origin Lite's "Basic" filters an exception that accesses as little of your data as possible.
uBlock Origin and its Lite version both have built-in filters that let you block annoying cookie notices on most websites. To access this in uBlock Origin on any browser, click the extension's icon in the browser's toolbar, and select the gear icon. This will open uBlock Origin's settings page. Under "Filter lists," enable EasyList/uBO - Cookie Notices. This should automatically hide most cookie banners on the internet.
If you see a distracting element on a webpage, you can use uBlock Origin's element zapper to quickly hide it. To use it, click the extension's icon in any browser, and select the lightning icon. You can now click the distracting element, and the extension will immediately hide it from the webpage. In the Firefox version of uBlock Origin, you can also use the picker tool to select an element, and choose from a list of elements to block. For instance, if you want to block a sponsored results widget, the picker tool lets you click the element and choose from different tags associated with the widget. This allows for more precise blocking without having to click the exact spot on the page where the full widget is highlighted.
To use it in Firefox, click the uBlock Origin icon in the toolbar, and select the eyedropper tool. You can select an element, and use the drop-down menu in the blocker pop-up to choose from a list of classes to hide on the page.
In uBlock Origin for Firefox, you have a one-click method to disable JavaScript on any webpage. You can use this to block trackers, annoying features that hijack scrolling, and in general, enhance your privacy. The risk is that blocking JavaScript can also break webpages, which is why you want to try it on individual webpages as opposed to disabling it at the browser level. To try this in uBlock Origin for Firefox, open a webpage and click the extension's toolbar icon. You can then click the > icon to disable JavaScript on the webpage. Reload the page, and Firefox will load it without JavaScript.
In Firefox, you can disable uBlock Origin for a single webpage. This is useful when the ad blocker breaks a webpage or doesn't load some elements correctly. To do this, click the extension's icon in the toolbar, and hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard while clicking the power button icon. Reload the page, and uBlock Origin will be disabled on that specific webpage.
uBlock Origin for Firefox lets you block large media elements on all sites (or single pages). This allows you to reduce data usage on a metered connection. You can use it to block media elements above a custom size threshold like 10KB, 20KB, etc. To try this on a single webpage, click uBlock Origin's toolbar icon, and then click the film reel icon. Reload the page, and you'll notice that certain elements won't load. To set a custom size threshold for these elements, go to uBlock Origin settings in Firefox. Visit the Settings tab, and scroll down to "Default behavior." Enable Block media elements larger than, and use the text box next to it to set the size threshold (in kilobytes).
uBlock Origin and its Lite version have a built-in AI blocker, which includes Google's AI-generated search summaries. To enable this feature, click the uBlock Origin toolbar icon, select the gear icon, and go to Filter lists. You can enable EasyList — AI Widgets. Now, search for anything in Google, and you'll notice that the AI-generated slop no longer appears up top.
uBlock Origin for Firefox has a built-in sync feature that uses your Firefox account to sync settings across devices, but it's not available in uBlock Origin Lite. In Firefox, you can go to uBlock Origin settings, and turn on Enable cloud storage support. Your uBlock Origin settings will then sync to every device where you're logged in with the same Firefox account.
There's also a manual sync feature that works in both versions of uBlock Origin. Head to the extension's settings, navigate to the Settings tab, and select the Back up button. This will back up your uBlock Origin settings to a file and save it to your device. You can use the Restore button on the same settings page to load saved settings to any browser running uBlock Origin. The only restriction is that you can sync uBlock Origin Lite settings with other browsers running the Lite version, while the Firefox version of uBlock Origin can only sync with other instances of Firefox.
Many websites add trackers to links you copy. Sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Threads use sharing links to trace which profile shared the links with you. Luckily, uBlock Origin can block most of these types of trackers. In uBlock Origin settings, go to Filter lists, and enable AdGuard/uBO — URL Tracking Protection. That said, I recommend that you check the URLs before sharing them with others. Sometimes, you may have to manually strip tracking data because no anti-tracking feature is completely foolproof.
uBlock Origin also ships with region-specific blocklists that target trackers from different locations across the world. If you find yourself accessing many websites from foreign countries, you should enable these blockers from uBlock Origin's settings. In the Filter lists tab, click the Regions, languages button to expand the list. This will reveal all country or region-specific blocklists. Enable the ones you need, and you're all set.
The following content is brought to you by Lifehacker partners. If you buy a product featured here, we may earn an affiliate commission or other compensation.
You’re cruising through a work meeting when your boss asks you to share your screen. Your stomach drops. You have something like 15 tabs open, PDFs scattered from bezel to bezel, and four identically titled Excel spreadsheets to toggle between. Basically, your Mac’s desktop looks like your bedroom did in the eighth grade.
While a messy desktop and digital clutter can be a source of anxiety for many people, it’s actually evidence of your deep work. Between an analyst keeping 15 tabs open so a model doesn't break and a strategist searching through 12 near-identical files right before a Zoom call, the clutter comes with the work.
Running a standard cleanup app to achieve “desktop zero,” or digital minimalism, isn’t always the right solution. It assumes the mess is the problem, and it asks you to interrupt your workflow to fix something that isn’t broken. The fear of accidentally purging a vital draft or dataset is a pain point for anyone with years of research and work stored on their hardware.
An app like CleanMyMac by MacPaw that respects your working files and clears the system junk works the other way around: it's built to go after what's safe to remove, not the files you're actively using. MacPaw, known for user-friendly Mac software like ClearVPN and Eney, built its flagship CleanMyMac app to be a safe, quick way to tidy up your machine.
Your open tabs aren’t the only thing slowing down your Mac; often, it’s the invisible stuff under the hood. Preview a dataset and a cache file writes itself somewhere you’ll never look. Open the same Slack PDF twice and you own two copies of it. Trial an app in March, abandon it in April, and its support files stay behind. None of it shows up on your desktop, but it’s all sitting on your drive.
CleanMyMac tackles hidden hardware weight, OS health, and security threats while keeping you in control of your user assets. The app identifies potential clutter, such as old versions and duplicate downloads, without forcing you into tedious manual folder searches. It then shows you the results so you can review what it found and choose what to remove. The four spreadsheets stay put, because you’re the only one who knows which version is current.
When you open CleanMyMac, the main tool you’ll see is called Smart Care. Click on it, and the software will automatically scan your Mac and purge invisible OS debris.
Here’s a rundown of what the app does:
Deep cleans: Utilizing Smart Selection technology, it intelligently targets and removes hidden background junk (outdated caches, temporary system files, and broken downloads) while respecting your personal work files.
Scans for threats: Automatically scans for background malware and security threats to keep your online life safe.
Boosts performance: Clears system memory (RAM) and tracks CPU loads to keep your Mac peppy during intense workloads.
Runs updates: Flags outdated apps so you can update them, and when you want to delete them, it clears out hidden leftover files apps leave behind.
Declutters storage: Deletes duplicate files (like those identical PDFs you’ve downloaded multiple times from Slack), similar photos, and forgotten large installer downloads taking up storage space.
Plus, CleanMyMac’s Cloud Cleanup tool will reveal large files hogging up your cloud storage. And the app’s real-time monitors help ensure you always have space available for new files, PDFs, and research materials.
A cluttered desktop, outdated files, and endless email chains aren’t the sign of a scattered brain. They’re evidence of deep, analytical work. What you don't know, and shouldn't have to, is how many gigabytes of cache files and abandoned app leftovers are sitting on your drive.
CleanMyMac by MacPaw clears the background weight, so the only thing competing for your attention is the problem you're actually working on. If you're curious, there's a seven-day free trial to test it out on your own Mac.
When you think about browsers, Vivaldi is probably not the first name that comes to mind—but it should be. This is a Chromium-based browser that focuses on adding so many features that you don't need to install multiple apps to get things done. Vivaldi has been around for over a decade now, and has become a pretty complete product, though it continues to improve. I've been using the browser for while, and these are the best Vivaldi hacks I've found in my time.
Vivaldi for Android, one of the best non-Chrome browsers on Android, recently added support for Chrome extensions—even though Chrome for Android still doesn't support extensions. You can use it to enhance your privacy by installing uBlock Origin Lite to block ads and tracking. You should also consider using Decentraleyes to evade tracking through centralized content delivery networks, and SponsorBlock to skip sponsored segments in YouTube videos. That said, all your favorite extensions should work here, and they're pretty easy to install on Vivaldi for Android. Just tap the puzzle piece icon in the address bar, and you'll see a menu that allows you to open the Chrome Web Store.
"Workspaces" allow you to separate tabs by project, like folders for your browser tabs. For instance, if you have a few sites open for work, you can group them under a separate workspace. I've created a workspace called "Research" to group all the tabs I use to compile my articles, and similarly, I have workspaces to group my long reads, distractions, and social media. To get started, click the Workspaces button in the tab bar, and select New Workspace. Give it a name, and start adding tabs to the workspace. You can right-click any open tab, and select Move > Workspace.
"Follower Tabs" allow you to go down rabbit holes without losing track of the original page. I often get lost when clicking different links on articles and websites. Vivaldi's Follower Tabs allow me to keep the original page open in a split-screen view while I read the context links, and I can quickly return to reading the original page. To use this feature, open any webpage, right-click a link, and select Open Link in > Open Link as Tiled Follower Tab. You can also open any link in split-screen view by right-clicking the link, and selecting Open Link in > Open Link as Tiled Tab.
Vivaldi's "Quick Commands" feature is a lot like Mac's Spotlight Search. Both allow you to make calculations, find settings, and execute automation commands. In Vivaldi, you can open the Quick Commands popover by pressing F2 or Ctrl-E (Command-E on Mac). You'll see a long list of commands here: The search box at the top allows you to look for specific commands, but you can get started by performing basic math, toggling the status bar, or even running a niche command like "Copy all links," which copies the URLs of all of your open tabs.
Vivaldi also supports some degree of automation through Command Chains. You can find this feature by clicking the Vivaldi button in the top-left corner of the browser (the exact position may vary depending on your layout), and selecting Settings > Quick Commands. Under "Command Chains," you'll be able to see a few examples of these automations, and you can click the + button to create your own. I like the simple "Toggle Fullscreen and Reader View" Command Chain for quick distraction-free reading. Once set up, you can run Command Chains by using the Quick Commands feature described above. Press F2, and search for the name of the Command Chain.
Vivaldi also allows you to customize most menus in the browser, including the right-click menu. I never use the Back/Forward buttons in these menus, and I find a few other options redundant, so I like adding features I'll actually use, such as "Find in Page." To do this, go to Vivaldi Settings > Appearance, and scroll down to the "Menu Customization" section. Use the drop-down menu to select Page, where you can add commands from the right pane. Right-click any command in the left pane, and select "Delete" to remove it. You can also reorder options, add a separator, subfolders, and so on. If you accidentally change things too much, you can always use the Restore Default Menu button on this page for a reset.
Vivaldi has a mode called "caret browsing," which shows a blinking cursor on any webpage, and allows you to use the arrow keys to browse the page, copy text, links, and images. This lets you use the browser without touching the mouse, similar to how keyboard navigation works in apps like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. You can toggle this feature on any page in Vivaldi by pressing Shift-F7.
Similarly, you can also create mouse gestures in Vivaldi to replace keyboard navigation. Go to Vivaldi Settings > Mouse, and check out the gestures under "Gesture Mapping." You can hit the + button to create your own gesture and link it to a browser command of your choice. To perform a gesture, just hold the right-mouse button, then move the cursor in the pattern you've recorded.
Vivaldi allows you to prolong battery life by using its Energy Saver and Memory Saver features. Go to Vivaldi Settings > Performance to view your options. Under "Energy Saver," you can enable Turn On at 20% Battery or Lower. I also recommend using Balanced Savings in "Memory Saver," which frees up RAM by unloading inactive tabs. This prevents the browser from slowing down, and as a result, enhances your battery life.
If you're constantly refreshing news websites or your social media feeds, you can automate that action with Vivaldi. Just right-click any open tab, select Periodic Reload, and choose a time interval. The browser allows you to refresh the page once every minute, two minutes, all the way up to once every 90 minutes.
Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Proton VPN’s latest promotion offers its two-year VPN Plus plan for $2.99 per month (down from $9.99), a 70% discount that saves you $168 over the introductory term. While the monthly figure is useful for comparison, this is not a month-to-month subscription: Proton charges the full $71.76 when you sign up—though you do get a 30-day money-back guarantee, giving you time to check how it performs with your devices, internet connection, and streaming services. After the initial 24 months, the plan renews at $83.88 per year, or $6.99 per month.
For everyday use, you can open the app and let Proton pick a server, or choose from more than 140 countries when you need a particular location. That could help you access services from home while traveling, although streaming platforms may still block VPN connections. The subscription also covers 10 devices at once (so there’s room for your phone, laptop, and TV without switching between them), with apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and supported TV devices, including Fire TV. Whatever device you use, there’s no bandwidth cap to keep track of, though the speed depends on your connection and which of Proton’s 20,000-plus servers you choose—its VPN Accelerator may help, but the advertised improvement of up to 400% applies to VPN connections, and it shouldn’t be read as a promise to quadruple your broadband speed.
Beyond changing your apparent location, privacy is the stronger reason to consider Proton, whose apps are open-source and independently audited, with a published external audit of its no-logs policy offering more accountability than a blanket promise of anonymity—but those checks, while useful, won’t stop a website from recognizing you when you sign in. For extra protection (at the possible expense of speed), you can also enable Secure Core, which sends traffic through an additional server in places such as Switzerland or Iceland. Meanwhile, NetShield blocks known ad, tracking, and malware domains, helping prevent some unwanted resources from loading without guaranteeing ad-free streaming or protection against every threat. Taken together, all these features make the subscription, at this introductory price, worth considering if you use VPN regularly across several devices.
An advertiser paid for editorial consideration of this deal. Our editorial experts vetted the deal based on our independent expertise. Because we determined that the deal will save money for the consumer, we wrote the content.
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
A lifetime license for Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 is typically priced at $499.99, so getting it bundled with a full set of beginner-friendly coding courses on sale for just $34.97 on StackSocial is a steal. The IDE itself is still the core draw. This is a 64-bit development environment built for handling large codebases without slowing down. It supports C#, C++, .NET, and web stacks such as ASP.NET, and it integrates directly with tools like GitHub and Azure. In practice, that means you can write, test, and ship code in one place instead of jumping between apps. That said, Visual Studio is not a lightweight tool you install on a whim. It's built for people who spend time coding every week, whether for work, freelancing, or serious learning.
Once you're inside, the newer additions to the IDE lean heavily on AI-assisted coding—tools like IntelliCode suggest entire chunks of code based on what you are already writing, and then there is Live Share, which is useful if you collaborate with someone remotely and do not want to spend time setting up the same environment. All of these work, though performance depends on your internet connection and system specs.
Speaking of which, this software expects a reasonably modern machine. Microsoft recommends at least 8GB of RAM and a multi-core processor, and storage can quickly grow depending on what you install. This is not something you would run comfortably on an older or low-spec machine.
The bundle also includes a long list of coding courses, covering Python, C++, JavaScript, Flutter, SQL, and even niche areas like computer vision and Salesforce development. These are all pre-recorded courses with lifetime access, so they work best for self-paced learners who are comfortable navigating different instructors and formats—that can be both a strength and a drawback, so this great deal makes the most sense if you're planning to spend real time learning or building projects.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
There are multiple ways to download YouTube videos, but the only official method is paying for YouTube Premium. If you're not inclined to do that, you're not out of luck. Instead, you can use one of many YouTube download hacks to watch videos offline, download video transcripts, or even extract audio from YouTube videos. Be aware, however, that YouTube constantly changes its website and apps, so these methods may not always work, but I've tested all of them and confirmed they are working at the time of writing.
It's also important to note that downloading YouTube videos outside of the app's official channels is against the company's terms of service. That said, if you're only downloading videos for personal use, you'll likely be fine, but if you plan to reupload that content to your own YouTube channels, or attempt to monetize the content you've downloaded, that's another story. Please download responsibly.
Downloading YouTube videos without Premium is a fairly complex task on the iPhone, but thanks to the power of automation and scripting apps on the App Store, it can be done. I recommend using the YouTube Download shortcut to save videos for offline viewing on your iPhone.
During this process, the automation routine will frequently present you with permission prompts. This is normal because iOS doesn't allow apps to access data from various sources without confirmation. While YouTube Download is one of the most popular shortcuts for iOS, make sure you install it from the RoutineHub link above. This ensures that you always have the latest version of the shortcut, which is important for two reasons: Apple's iCloud links don't always automatically update, and YouTube's code changes frequently. Follow these steps to download YouTube videos on your iPhone:
You'll need three apps: a-Shell mini, Scriptable, and Apple's Shortcuts (this one's installed by default).
Go to the YouTube Download page, and tap Get Shortcut. You can skip the registration prompt, and tap Add Shortcut to add it to your library.
Once the shortcut is installed, open any YouTube video (in Safari or the YouTube app), and tap the Share button.
If you're on the YouTube app, tap the More button in the share sheet. Skip this step if you're using YouTube via Safari.
Scroll down the share sheet until you see a list of shortcuts. Select YouTube Download. This is where the automation kicks in, and starts throwing a bunch of prompts your way. Permit it to access various YouTube URLs, a-Shell mini, and Scriptable, all of which are necessary for the shortcut to do its job.
Once the permission prompts are done, the shortcut will ask you which video quality you want, where you'd like to save the video (Files or Photos), and if you'd like to download subtitles, thumbnails, and so on. Pick the options you desire, and the shortcut will start downloading the video.
Once the download is complete, you'll find the video saved in the location you specified.
Downie ($20) is the Swiss Army knife of video downloaders, since it supports saving videos from a lot of sites, including YouTube. Once you install the app, copy a YouTube video URL, and click the + button in the bottom-left corner of Downie's home page. The app may take a minute to start downloading the video, but it gets the job done. Downie is also available as part of the Setapp subscription, which offers a way to get the app (along with many others) at a lower price.
It's safe to say that yt-dlp is the gold standard for YouTube downloaders on desktop. As good as it is, installing and running it is a bit complex since it's a command-line utility. That's where apps like Stacher come in, since they provide a user-friendly frontend for yt-dlp. You can install Stacher on Windows or Linux, paste the YouTube URL, and the app will handle the rest for you. I should warn you that antivirus software often falsely flags trusted YouTube downloaders, which means that even if you download the setup file from the official website, your Windows PC probably won't let you run the installer.
Instead, you can get the app from Winget, a hidden package manager for Windows. Open the Start menu on your PC, search for "Terminal," and open the app. Paste the following command to install Stacher:
winget install -e --id Stacher.Stacher
Alternatively, you can go to Stacher's page on Winstall, and install the app from there. When you're ready, run Stacher, and accept its prompts to install yt-dlp and ffmpeg. Now you can paste any YouTube video URL in the app, and click the "Highes" button. Use the "Download Format" drop-down menu to select your preferred video quality, and then click the Download button to get started. The default download location is the Downloads folder on your PC, but you can change it using the folder path button in Stacher.
If you want an app that will download YouTube videos on your Android phone, you probably won't find good options on the Play Store. Most people are better off using web-based YouTube video downloaders, but if you absolutely want to use an app, try NewPipe. You will have to sideload this onto your phone, which is becoming increasingly difficult as Google continues to lock down the Android ecosystem.
Once you download the apk file from NewPipe's website, run it on your phone to install the app. You may have to dismiss some warning prompts before you can complete the installation. When you have NewPipe running, the app shows a download button below each YouTube video. Tap it to complete the task. If you want a more aesthetically pleasing alternative to NewPipe, you can check out LibreTube.
A simple website that downloads YouTube videos is probably the best option for most people. If that's what you need, you can visit Cobalt to save videos for offline viewing. The website periodically goes down or disables downloading due to rising costs or changes from YouTube's end. If you face these troubles, you can look for mirrors such as this one. When you find a working mirror, just paste the YouTube video URL, and click the download button. The website will show a download progress bar, and save the file to your device when it's done.
NeoDLP is another useful frontend for yt-dlp, which has a few tricks up its sleeve. It supports downloading YouTube playlists, embedding chapters and other metadata, and most importantly, removing sponsored segments from downloaded videos. You can install the app either via its Winstall page, or use the following winget command:
winget install -e --id neosubhamoy.neodlp
When you have NeoDLP running, click the Settings button in the bottom-left corner, and go to Sponsorblock to set up sponsor removal. You can choose which categories to remove, such as sponsored segments, subscription reminders, hooks, fillers, etc. Once done, click the Downloader button in the left pane, paste the YouTube video URL, and click Search. The app takes a short while to find the video. Once it does, select the Combine button next to "Download Options." You can now select if you want subtitles, the correct audio stream, and the video quality you wish to download. Then, click Start Download.
If all you want is a searchable video transcript of a YouTube video, then you don't need a video downloader. Instead, head over to this YouTube Transcript website, paste the video URL, and click Extract transcript. You can either copy the transcript or download it in formats such as pdf, txt, srt, etc.
You may discover that a downloaded video doesn't have the best audio quality, and that you'll need subtitles to follow what the host is saying. In these cases, you don't need to redownload the video with subtitles. You can just use Downsub to extract subtitles from the video. Just paste the video URL in the text box on Downsub's homepage, and click Download. You'll see that you can download subtitles in srt, txt, vtt, and other formats. The site also allows you to choose subtitles in different languages. Be aware that this feature doesn't work reliably when trying to download YouTube's auto-generated subtitles.
For those who want an app just to extract audio files from YouTube videos, 4K YouTube to MP3 is a decent app for the job. It's simple enough: You can copy a YouTube video URL, click the Paste Link button in 4K YouTube to MP3, and the app handles the rest. It'll extract audio from the video, convert it to the mp3 format, and save it to your computer's Downloads folder. The free tier limits you to five downloads per day, which is good enough for casual use. If you want to get more audio files for free, you may consider using other YouTube downloaders mentioned in this guide.
If you want a short clip from a YouTube video, you don't have to download the entire video and then trim it using an editing app. Instead, you can use ClipsCutter, an online video trimming service. You can paste the YouTube link on the site, select the start and end times for your clip, select the format and resolution, and click Create. The site will create your clip and allow you to download it quickly. The free tier allows you to download clips up to 10 minutes long and restricts the resolution to 360p, but you can pay $6 per month to remove those restrictions.
If you're a Windows user, you've hopefully installed regular Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft, which address critical security vulnerabilities across the company's software. The last few months' worth of fixes have been especially important, as they've included a record number of bugs and a swath of zero-days that have been actively exploited or publicly disclosed.
The August Patch Tuesday release this week is no different: The update fixes 400 flaws, including three zero-days. Compare that to March, when Microsoft issued patches for just 83 bugs in total (two of which were publicly disclosed zero-days). The seemingly sudden uptick in vulnerabilities and security fixes is due, in large part, to AI.
AI is playing both sides of the field when it comes to security. Threat actors are using AI to develop and deploy hacking tools more quickly and at scale, so more flaws may be more exploitable than before. This forces tech companies to respond more quickly as well. As ZDNET notes, companies that patch vulnerabilities during regular update cycles (like Patch Tuesday) now have to rush to address bugs sooner and may begin to shorten the time between updates, as Apple did earlier this summer.
While AI is helping to exploit vulnerabilities, it is also finding them so they can be fixed. Last month, Microsoft announced that AI has allowed its engineering teams to find and analyze a larger volume of potential flaws before they can be exploited. (The company noted that this also directly contributes to the increase in security updates included in Patch Tuesday). Google, too, is using AI to discover, triage, and fix security flaws in Chrome. It's worth noting that while AI is good at identifying vulnerabilities, it is far less effective at actually patching them—and may introduce more bugs along the way.
Windows users should ensure security updates are installed as soon as they're available to minimize the risk of active exploits. Patch Tuesday is released around 10 a.m. on the second Tuesday of the month, and you should receive them automatically. However, you can check the status under Start > Settings > Windows Update > Check for Windows updates.
As BleepingComputer reports, the August security update addresses flaws across the following categories: 176 elevation-of-privilege vulnerabilities, 11 security feature bypass vulnerabilities, 110 remote-code-execution vulnerabilities, 86 information disclosure vulnerabilities, 21 spoofing vulnerabilities, and 12 denial-of-service vulnerabilities. Forty-two of the bugs are rated "critical" and include remote code execution and elevation of privilege flaws.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
If your time on macOS is solely spent switching between the well-known apps that everyone uses—your web browser, Notes, Apple Music—then you're missing out. There are a host of more unusual and idiosyncratic apps for Apple's desktop operating system that are well worth digging into.
The apps collected in the list below fall under that description, and while they might not have been installed on millions of Macs or be particularly complex in what they offer, they're all quite useful. Give them a try and see how they can upgrade your macOS experience.
Scrolling isn't particularly hard on macOS, but what if it were even easier? ScrollPods teams up with a connected pair of AirPods to let you scroll up and down webpages, documents, and more with a tilt of the head. It works with anything on screen that can be scrolled.
The utility is simple to set up, and based on my testing, it works quite well. The default sensitivity is just right, with slight head tilts enough to nudge a page up or down, but you can adjust the sensitivity and set up custom gestures for the app through its settings.
ScrollPods (free)
You can add some extra functionality to your MacBook trackpad with Slidr: It turns the left side of your trackpad into a brightness slider, and the right side into a volume slider, so you can quickly adjust these key settings without interrupting your typing and scrolling flow.
You're able to take advantage of a free trial before committing to the purchase, so you can see if it works for you. It couldn't be any more straightforward to use: The app runs from the menu bar, and there are options for adjusting the sensitivity and position of the slide gestures, and swapping over the brightness and volume sliders if you prefer.
Slidr (free trial, then $4.99)
A picture-in-picture mode can be very useful when multi-tasking, but it's not supported in every app—something Pipiri fixes. Once you've got Pipiri installed, any window on the macOS desktop can be put into a picture-in-picture mode, running on top of your other apps.
So, for example, you can keep an AI agent window or a social media feed visible on screen while you get on with something else. There are lots of options to play around with, too, including the refresh rate of the overlaid window, app hotkeys, and adaptive resizing.
Pipiri (free trial, then $9.70)
Haptyk takes advantage of the hidden accelerometer that's built into every Apple Silicon MacBook keyboard, figuring out how hard you're striking each key and adding appropriate audio. You get mechanical keyboard sound effects, with your existing MacBook keyboard.
I gave the app a go and it works really well: There's zero lag on the sound effects, and you get the same experience across every app. You've got 16 different keyboard sound packs to choose from, plus lots of configuration options (including volume, pitch, and gain).
Haptyk (free trial, then $8)
If you're a regular video caller, then you'll know that subtle feeling of dread that rises up whenever you're called upon to share your screen or to record something you're doing. What browser tabs do you have open? Is an embarrassing notification going to pop up?
Stealthy deals with this with the minimum of fuss, hiding your desktop icons, the desktop wallpaper, and the dock. silencing notifications, and clearing away open app windows you don't want visible on screen. It can also launch automatically when video calls start.
Stealthy (free trial, then $12.99)
There's nothing too revolutionary about Gestimer, but it does a simple job in an intuitive way, and is likely to come in handy more often than you might think. It lets you set timers and reminders by just dragging down the app icon from the macOS menu bar.
There's no messing around with opening up other apps or digging through calendars—it's just click and drag, with the length of the drag controlling the time that's set. There's a persistent countdown in the menu bar, and you get a notification at the appropriate time.
Gestimer (free trial, then $6.99)
Unclack is both simple and useful: It mutes your microphone when you're typing (even more helpful if you've installed Haptyk, above). That means you no longer need to worry about your aggressive typing style distracting other people during video meetings.
It runs quietly from the menu bar and you don't need to do anything to enable or disable it—it just works, and you won't even know it's there. Should you need to talk and type at the same time, you can disable Unclack with a couple of clicks until you need it again.
Unclack (free)
Snipping Tool is the default app for screenshots in Windows 11. There's a lot more to the app than that, however: With it, you can take screen recordings, extract text from images or websites that disable copying, and use a reverse image search tool. While ShareX is still my favorite app for taking screenshots in Windows, I think Snipping Tool has reached a point where it's great for both beginners and power users. Here are 10 essential Snipping Tool hacks that every Windows 11 user should know.
Copying text from images is one of the most common uses of screenshot tools, and Snipping Tool does it quite well. You can right-click any image in Windows 11, and go to Open with > Snipping Tool. Once the photo opens, you can click the Scan Text button to select all the text in the image. Windows will take a few moments to identify all the text in the photo, and, when it's ready, you can click Copy all text from the popover menu. You're also free to select a single sentence or block of text by clicking and dragging the cursor over it, and you can right-click this selection to reveal the Copy text button.
If all you want to do is copy text from sites that disable copying, interface elements in an app, or PDFs of scanned pages where you can't select the text easily, then you should use Snipping Tool to select and copy text without even taking a screenshot. This allows you to reduce unwanted image clutter by skipping the "taking a screenshot" step, and jumping straight to extracting text. To try this, open the Snipping Tool app in your Windows PC, and click the Text extractor button in the toolbar. You can click and drag over an area of the screen that contains text, and the app will automatically select it in a moment or two. Click Copy all text in the popover menu, and you're done.
Snipping Tool allows you to do some basic image editing, which you can use to automatically redact sensitive information from screenshots. Open any screenshot in Snipping Tool, and click Scan text. Once the tool scans for text, a popover menu will appear. You can select Quick redact here to automatically hide all phone numbers and email addresses in the screenshot. It's pretty accurate and puts a black bar over sensitive information, which is much safer than blurring phone numbers and email addresses.
Setting up an elaborate screenshot on your PC can be frustrating since Snipping Tool takes the screenshot instantly by default. In these instances, you can set a delay of three to 10 seconds before you capture the screen. If you have the Snipping Tool open, right-click its icon in the taskbar to quickly take a timed screenshot. Three buttons let you take a screenshot in three, five, or 10 seconds. You can also set up the Snipping Tool to always add a delay before capturing a screenshot. Open the app, and click the camera icon in the toolbar. Then, click the timer icon in the toolbar, and select the delay you wish to add.
When my friends or family members call for help with tech issues, I often send them a screencast with commentary to show how to fix the issue. In Snipping Tool, you can toggle a setting to include microphone audio by default when you record the screen. This lets me record my voice while I'm demonstrating how to solve the problem, and I use the mouse pointer to highlight what to click. Once you set up Snipping Tool to record your audio by default for screen recordings, this process hardly takes any time. Open Snipping Tool in your PC, and click the three-dots icon in the top-right corner. Select Settings, and enable Include microphone input by default when a screen recording starts.
When you capture screenshots, you can make Snipping Tool automatically add a solid color border to each image. This is great for posting to social media, as it makes screenshots look uniform and fit your aesthetic. Go to Snipping Tool settings and enable Add border to each screenshot. Select the Color block to pick the color you want for the border, and use the Thickness slider to adjust the width of the border.
The Freeform tool lets you draw an area on the screen, and captures a screenshot of everything inside that area. You can draw any shape you like, and the tool automatically closes small gaps in the shape to complete the screenshot. I like the fact that the Freeform tool is forgiving enough to smooth out poorly drawn shapes, which means you don't necessarily need to have steady hands to capture useful screenshots. To use this tool, open Snipping Tool, and click the camera icon in the toolbar. Next, select the rectangle icon, and choose Freeform. When you take the next screenshot, Snipping Tool will let you draw an irregular shape on the screen.
If you disable auto-save for screenshots, it directly copies screenshots to the clipboard. You can then make edits and send them to the app you need, or hit the save button to store the edited screenshots. This stops screenshots from piling up and adding to the clutter on your hard drive. I only need to save around one in 10 screenshots I capture, which makes this particularly useful for me. To try it out, go to Snipping Tool settings and disable Automatically save original screenshots.
Snipping Tool has a "Shapes" option, which is meant to hide people's faces from images or screenshots. Here's how it works: Once you open an image in Snipping Tool, you'll see a bunch of editing tools in the toolbar. Select the Shapes tool, which is next to the Eraser tool, and you'll see a series of options. Select the Emoji tool to add an emoticon over faces. Alternatively, you can select the Square or Oval tools, but be sure to use the color fill option to hide private information thoroughly. Select Fill, and choose a color. You can also disable the Outline if you wish to, as it adds a border to the shape you draw on the screenshot. Then, you can draw a rectangle, square, circle, or an oval on the screenshot, and you'll find a solid color block that can hide sensitive information.
Snipping Tool has a reverse image search feature that uses Bing to locate objects, places, or elements from your screenshots or images. You can use this to identify subjects in an image, or to check if a scammer has copied a profile picture from a different person's profile. To use this feature, open an image in Snipping Tool, and click the three dots in the top-right corner of the app. Select Visual Search with Bing, and it will open Bing's reverse image search results in your default browser.
Microsoft's Windows apology tour continues. After introducing sweeping changes to the Start menu and the taskbar, Microsoft's sights now turn to the infamous Windows Search box. It's no secret Windows Search is bloated with ads and web pages, among other results you likely don't want. Personally, I switched to using the PowerToys Command Palette for all my search needs. But now, Microsoft is slowly testing an updated Search Box that prioritizes local files and apps and doesn't take a century to load. If you're in the Windows Insider program, you can get in line to try the following new changes.
Windows Search no longer shows a "Recommended" feed of web content and suggestions. Bring up Search, and what you'll see is a clean list of your recent searches. When you start typing, Microsoft will now prioritize local searches first. That means local apps, files, and folders will show up first and faster. Microsoft is also updating Search with broader parameters, so even if you misspell an app name, it should still show up in the list.
The results page also features an updated design. The results on the left have more breathing room now and show additional context, such as file type, when it was modified, and so on. You'll also see a preview of the file and metadata once you select a result, with better buttons for main actions like "Open." Microsoft is also focusing on reliability, promising a drop in crashes and random glitches. We'll only know how well that really works after testing this out for some time.
The broader search integration isn't completely gone here, however. You'll see a web results section below the local results, though this section also gets a redesign. Before, web search showed a promoted post at the top, hiding the actual result or answer until you scrolled down. Microsoft now shows the direct result at the top, and pushes the promos down below.
Finally, there are distinct toggles in Windows Settings to disable the entire web search and Microsoft Store suggestions section, so Windows Search can focus purely on surfacing local files and quickly launching apps. Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Show Suggested Search Results and disable the toggles for Web Searches and Microsoft Store.
Earlier this year, security firm Huntress discovered a malicious browser extension that initiates ClickFix attacks, a sophisticated attack designed to take over your computer. In a ClickFix scheme, bad actors get you to install their browser extension, then display a fake error prompt in your browser. This pop-up offers a fix that often requires you to copy a malicious command and run it in the command prompt on your device. Since then, the onus has been on the user to avoid downloading suspicious extensions, but now Opera is adding ClickFix protections directly into its browser.
The feature, called Paste Protect, is designed to stop code injection attacks such as ClickFix. When Paste Protect believes you are the target of a ClickFix attack, it displays a pop-up, warning you not to copy malicious commands, and offers a button to close the tab to sidestep the attack. You do have the option to click "Show content" to view the first 120 characters of the command, in case you want to review what Paste Protect flagged as malicious.
Paste Protect allows you to bypass the block if you wish, with a red button labeled "Hold to copy (unsafe)." To copy the command, you'll have to hold this button for over five seconds. You'll also have the option to always allow copying code from a site you trust, which is helpful in case the feature accidentally blocks code from a legitimate site. The warning may be enough for most casual users to realize that something's off, similar to how Apple and Microsoft protect you from installing untrustworthy apps on your computer. You'll see a warning that blocks you from installing those apps, but there's an option to bypass it if you know what you're doing and are confident that it's a false positive.
ClickFix attacks are quite sophisticated: They may show a fake captcha verification that's designed to fail, and offer a "solution" in the form of malicious code that you can run on your device. Opera claims it uses platform-specific detection techniques for Linux, macOS, and Windows to identify patterns associated with malicious scripts, and blocks them via Paste Protect.
This isn't Opera's first security feature aimed at protecting users from malicious activity. The browser has offered a "Hijack Protection" feature for a few years, which prevents sites from replacing the contents of your clipboard without your permission. This means that if you copy a URL, Opera will stop sites from changing the copied link to a malicious URL. Paste Protect adds an extra layer of security to the browser.
While added security features are more than welcome, vigilance is always the best defense against online scams. Don't install extensions or apps from developers you don't know or trust; never click suspicious links, whether you find the on the web or someone shares them via text or email; and never copy code from the internet and paste it in your device's command prompt without being 100% sure of what you're doing.
Discord is one of those apps that has helped kill off good ol' internet forums. If you look hard enough, you can find a Discord server for most any niche hobby, online course, or fandom of choice. I'd been aware of the app for a while, but I didn't join Discord myself until I found a server for my favorite iPhone game (Imbroglio, by Michael Brough), which is about as niche as it gets. Thanks to the tips I got from the kind people on this server, I was able to finish the incredibly difficult roguelike with all 16 characters.
Since then, I've used Discord regularly to follow more than a few of my hobbies and interests, including, but not limited to, motorsports, gaming, fountain pens, and studying Japanese. In this time, I've discovered a few tips and tricks to make the experience better, and I've collected the best of them below.
Like every free service out there, Discord shows ads to make money. By default, it uses your Discord activity to personalize some of these ads, and you can disable that to protect your privacy. Click the gear icon in the Discord app to open settings. Go to Data & Privacy > How Discord Uses Your Data, and disable "Use my Discord activity to personalize Sponsored Content." This will also automatically disable the option right below it, which is called "Use third-party data to personalize Sponsored Content." Both these options stop Discord from using your data for ads. While you're at it, you should also disable Use data to improve Discord and Use data to personalize my Discord experience. Both options are located on the same settings page.
Discord has a feature called Clips, which allows people to record a clip of a voice channel. You can think of this as the equivalent of being on a group call and recording a funny moment from the call so that it can be shared on social media. Streamers use this to promote their channel via short clips, which is much easier to promote on social media than an hours-long stream.
If you're a part of a voice channel on Discord, you can ask the app to mute your voice from these Clips, so even if someone else records one clip, it won't contain your voice. To do this, go to Discord settings > Data & Privacy > How Discord Uses Your Data, and disable Allow my voice to be recorded in Clips.
When you make changes to your Discord profile, the app sends a push notification to your friends about it. This is fine when you and your friends don't mind it, but personally, I dislike both sending and receiving such alerts. If you feel the same way, you can disable this feature by going to Discord settings > Data & Privacy > Profile Privacy, and disabling Share when I update my profile.
Discord Nitro is an optional paid subscription service that adds a few features to the app. Nitro Basic costs $3/month, and it lets you upload up to 50 MB per file. The premium tier is called Nitro, and it costs $10/month. For this price, you get 500MB uploads per file, HD video streaming, and a few other features. Most people don't need any of that, but if you're a Discord power user, you'll probably find something of value in the subscription. Before you start paying for it, though, there are a few ways to get Discord Nitro for free, at least for a couple months:
Check for Discord promos. Sometimes, Discord offers a Nitro trial for two weeks or a month. Keep an eye out the promo offers in Discord's app or social media handles.
Try promotions from other companies. Lots of companies, such as Sony, Microsoft, and Epic Games Store, periodically offer Discord Nitro for free. You can check this Discord Support page to see which offers are active. You may need to make an eligible purchase at a third-party site to get Nitro for free.
Participate in Nitro giveaways. Some Discord servers may host a Nitro giveaway, which is an easy way to get it for free. Even if servers don't have giveaways, generous members often gift Nitro subscriptions in popular servers. If you're a helpful member of the right server, you could get Nitro for free for short durations.
Discord has a frankly overwhelming interface. It feels crowded, and it's difficult to use if you don't memorize a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. You can navigate it with your mouse, but everything seems to take one click too many, and useful features are hard to find quickly or are buried beneath layers of menus.
Fortunately, Discord makes it easy to find your favorite keyboard shortcuts—it ships with a cheat sheet. When you're running Discord on Windows, press Ctrl-/ (forward slash) to reveal the cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts. On a Mac, this shortcut is Command-/. The shortcuts are neatly categorized by type and presented in a format designed to be easy to memorize. Try it, and you can level up your Discord game instantly. (I frequently use Ctrl-Shift-M to mute or unmute my microphone, Ctrl-K to quickly switch between conversations, and Ctrl-Alt-Up Arrow/Down Arrow to switch between servers.)
If you're ancient enough to remember IRC (Internet Relay Chat) servers, then you're probably familiar with chat commands that let you make a statement, add a shrugging emoji to your words, and so on. Apps such as Discord have brought some of those chat commands to the modern era, and you can use quite a few of them in the app. Start your Discord message with /spoiler to mark your message as a spoiler, hiding the contents until someone clicks the text. This is great when you're discussing plot points from books, movies, or games and don't want to ruin them for others. Similarly, you can try /shrug, /sticker, /tableflip, and other commands.
The full list of chat commands can be seen by typing a forward slash (/) in the text box; Discord will also explain what these commands do. I use this regularly to search for stickers, gifs, and to add spoiler tags. You can also use Markdown shortcuts to format your messages in Discord. The company has a detailed support page explaining Markdown commands and how you can use them to quickly add bullets, numbered lists, bold, italics, headers, and code blocks to your messages.
Discord lets you add bots to your server, which is great for automation. If you have an upcoming garage sale, are hosting a workshop, or organizing a watch party, you can set up bots to send reminders to members. Other bots let you play music for server members to listen together, play games in the server, and even use AI services without leaving Discord. MEE6 is a highly customizable bot that can handle several automation tasks for you, but that's just one of many options. (For more, check out the Discord Bot List.) If you have some coding know-how, you can follow Discord's guide to building your own bot, too. While it's nice to add multiple bots to your servers, I recommend against adding too many—they'll create unwanted alerts and clutter.
Discord has many apps that let you watch videos, listen to music, or play games together. I really like Watch Together, which lets you watch YouTube videos with your friends. You can add it by clicking your server's name up top, and selecting App Directory, where you'll find Watch Together in the list of featured apps. Once it's added to your server, open any channel, select the apps button in the text box, and select Watch Together. You'll now see a YouTube feed, and you can use the search bar to add videos you wish to watch with others.
To use custom emoji in Discord, you normally have to pay for a Nitro subscription. However, you can create your own server for free, and use custom emoji there without paying. The catch is that you can't import those custom emoji for use in other servers. You can get started by creating a server in Discord. Just click the + button in the left pane of the app, select Create My Own, and follow the on-screen instructions to get the job done. Once your server is up and running, click the name of the server at the top of the screen, select Server Settings > Emoji. Click the Upload Emoji button, and you can upload transparent PNG files to get started. You can add up to 50 custom emoji and an additional 50 animated emoji without paying.
Discord has a bunch of Easter eggs that you should check out if you appreciate when an app offers a sense of fun. There are quite a few gaming-related references in here, so this is particularly interesting for gamers. Here are some of my favorites:
Discord Discord Revolution: Press Ctrl-/ to view the keyboard cheat sheet. Press any arrow key, Enter/Return, or the space bar key to hear different notes. This is a reference to the game Dance Dance Revolution.
Street Fighter animation: With Discord open on your computer, press Ctrl-/ to open the keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet. Now, press this key combination: H, H, right arrow, N, K. You'll see the Raging Demon animation from Street Fighter's Akuma.
Lo-fi beats with Wumpus: Press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-W to listen to lo-fi beats with Discord's mascot Wumpus.
Discordo: Press Discord's app icon in the top-left corner 16 times to hear an audio clip that says, "Discordo."
Copy combo: Click your username in the bottom-left corner of Discord's app. In the pop-up, click the Copy button next to your username, and it'll say, "Copied!" Repeat this multiple times and you'll see a new message each time. The final message is "Beyond Godlike."
You can find many more Discord Easter eggs on this Fandom page.
Prime Day is June 23 to 26, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it's over.
Follow our live blog to stay up to date on the best sales we find.
Browse our editors’ picks for a curated list of our favorite sales on laptops, fitness tech, appliances, and more.
Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox.
New to Prime Day? We have a primer on everything you need to know. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices and inventory are always subject to change.
Prime Day may be synonymous with Amazon, but that hasn’t stopped other brands from capitalizing on the shopping frenzy that accompanies the season. VPN platforms, which are typically subscription-based and not listed on any third-party ecommerce stores, are no exception either.
From June 23 to 26 this year, VPN providers like ExpressVPN, Norton, and Surfshark are offering up to 80% off on long-term subscriptions for new users, many backed by a full refund guarantee. For a two-year subscription, that means a solid several hundred dollars worth of discounts. I took a look at the pros and cons of each provider’s deal, what’s included, what’s not, and what you should pay attention to in the fine print.
If you sign up for a two-year subscription to NordVPN Complete, you get a 75% markdown on standard prices that comes out to $4.49 a month—or $121.23 up front for 27 months. (NordVPN also throws in three extra months on its two-year subscription.)
Keep in mind that after the introductory period is over, you’ll pay $219.48 per year for NordVPN Complete, which is a sharp increase. But Complete is right in the middle of NordVPN’s three subscription tiers, which I feel offers the most value for money. Apart from the VPN, you also get access to Dark Web Monitor, an ad blocker, a password manager, and 1 TB of encrypted cloud storage space.
Nord also has a cheaper Basic plan that’s available for $3.49 a month at a 69% discounted price, if you’d rather have the VPN by itself, no extras. NordVPN is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can use your subscription on up to 10 devices simultaneously.
For just $2.79 a month, Surfshark’s One plan offers a two-year VPN subscription with three extra months added for free. If you look at it purely from a pricing standpoint, Surfshark has the lowest pricing and the biggest discount among all the VPN providers on this list.
Surfshark is one of the only VPN companies that lets you connect an unlimited number of devices to your VPN plan, instead of restricting you to somewhere between five to 14 concurrent devices total. Moreover, Surfshark One bundles this with an antivirus, a data breach alerting tool, a privacy-focused search engine, and identity theft protection for all users in the United States. Surfshark also has a similar 30-day refund window, but sadly offers a smaller pool of server locations compared to Nord and ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN’s Advanced plan usually costs around $475.72 for a two-year subscription, but a tie-in with a FIFA World Cup 2026 giveaway brings the cost to $83.72, or $2.99 a month. Subscribers who join now will also benefit from reduced renewal prices at $119.95 every two years, so you won’t suffer a huge price shock at renewal.
Along with the VPN protection, you also get ad, tracker, and malware blocking for your web browser. On top of that, the Advanced plan gets you 100 private email addresses, a password manager, and even a small eSIM plan. That said, you should know that users who subscribe with this promotional offer won’t benefit from their standard 30-day money-back guarantee, so you should only commit if you feel certain.
ProtonVPN is open-source, independently audited, and covered by the data protection regulations of Switzerland, which certainly helps promote their "privacy-first" claims. Built by the company that owns Proton Mail, ProtonVPN has a two-year Plus plan that gets you access to over 20,000 server locations across 140 countries. Right now, that plan is available at 70% off the usual price for just $2.99 a month instead of the usual $9.99. Moreover, your renewal prices will continue at $83.88 for every twelve months instead of the usual $119.88.
With this subscription, you can connect to Proton VPN from up to 10 devices. You’re also backed by the standard 30-day refund guarantee, in case you don’t like your experience with the service after all.
Compared to Surfshark or ExpressVPN, Norton offers a much less lucrative 54% discount on yearly Plus subscriptions with no added months for your first purchase. That’s about $4.17 a month or $49.99 for the first year, which renews at $109.99 per year.
While the offer may not be as glamorous as the rest, Norton pairs its VPN with a solid antivirus, free dark web monitoring, and a secure password manager. On the downside, you can only access your VPN from up to five devices and need to upgrade to the Ultimate plan for 10-device access with parental controls. That said, Norton is the only VPN provider on this list that offers a 60-day money-back guarantee. The rest (minus ExpressVPN) offer a standard 30-day period. If you don’t want to lock yourself into a VPN service you may not enjoy using, this is the safest choice for assessing a long-term commitment.
Titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator can offer truly gorgeous visual experiences, but there's an awful lot of simulation involved before you get to the flight. You have to learn a lot about cockpit controls, take-offs and landings, and other simulator-y stuff before you're allowed to soar into the sky and see the planet from a bird's eye view.
That's one of the reasons that the flight simulator mode that just launched in Google Earth on the web is likely to be so popular—in just a couple of clicks, you can be zooming through canyons or across cities, without worrying about what kind of plane you're in or how your flaps are set.
As Google mentions, this isn't a completely new experience. It's actually been ported over from the Google Earth desktop app, but there, it's rather hidden—more of an Easter egg than a full-blown feature—and offers much more of a flight simulator feel. For example, you need to choose a plane, and figure out how to take off in it, before you get to the eye-popping visuals.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Now that this simplified version is available in the web app for free, and it can be run instantly without any flight training, it's likely to be much more popular. To test it out yourself, point your browser towards Google Earth on the web, then click Explore Earth. Find somewhere you want to fly through, then choose Tools > Flight simulator.
Google has helpfully provided some instructions for flying around. You can use either the mouse or the keyboard, and there are basically four directions to master: Up, down, left, and right. You can also adjust your thrust speed.
Everything works through your web browser, so you'll need a fairly modern Windows or macOS computer for this to work smoothly—a lot of data needs to be streamed to your system as you fly. "Flying at extreme speeds or over low-bandwidth connections may result in temporary loading delays," Google says.
The first thing you'll notice once you're in the air is that your flight is harder to control than you might think. It's worth taking a few seconds just to appreciate the view before you do anything, because there's a fair chance you're going to get into trouble pretty quickly once you start pressing keys or clicking around.
Use the Up arrow to nudge the nose of the plane down (go lower), the Down arrow to nudge it up (go higher), and the Left arrow and the Right arrow to bank in those directions. Small touches are key: If nothing seems to happen immediately, don't keep pressing the keys, as you'll very soon get out of control.
I found the mouse controls, where you just click and drag on screen, even harder to use. Within a few seconds of trying to change course, I was flying upside down. Not long after that, I was spinning around uncontrollably. Every adjustment I tried to make seemed to make the situation worse.
Don't worry about too much about hitting the ground—you'll just see a "You crashed! Restart" message, and you immediately take off again. Actually, it was quite a relief after a few minutes of spin-induced dizziness. I think Google Earth needs to make the flying controls less sensitive, or at least give us a quick reset option.
For now, you can't pause or reset the flight without quitting the simulator (via the arrow, top left) and going back in. There are no external views available either—you're basically locked in to looking dead ahead from the cockpit
Even with those caveats, and especially now that I am starting to get the hang of the controls, it's fantastic to be able to soar across any point of the globe in 3D. If you've been looking for something like Microsoft Flight Simulator without the learning curve—and you don't care about advanced features beyond the actual flight—this is a perfect way to zone out for a few minutes.
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
You can get a one-time license for Microsoft Office 2024 Home & Business, plus a set of training courses, on sale for just $106 right now. The lineup is what most people expect: Word for writing, Excel for spreadsheets, PowerPoint for presentations, Outlook for email, and OneNote for notes. It installs on a single Mac or PC, but the license is tied to your Microsoft account, so you're not locked to one machine forever. That said, there are no future upgrades included, and no built-in cloud storage or real-time collaboration like you get with Microsoft 365.
The 2024 version doesn't reinvent anything, but it does smooth out some everyday tasks. Excel feels more capable with large datasets and supports dynamic arrays, which reduce the need for repetitive formulas. PowerPoint lets you record presentations with your voice, camera, and captions in one go, which is useful for sharing updates without being in the room. Word includes a Focus Mode that clears distractions, along with writing suggestions that help tighten sentences or adjust tone. And, while the AI tools are present, they stay in the background—Excel can point out trends or suggest charts, and Word can summarize or edit text. They are helpful nudges, not shortcuts that do the work for you.
The included training is what makes this bundle more approachable, especially if you have only used the basics so far. There are more than 130 lessons across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, along with a deeper Excel track that goes into formulas, functions, and data handling. There is even a short section on using Excel with ChatGPT. The lessons move from simple tasks to more structured workflows, such as filtering data or organizing larger sheets. It's not a formal certification path, but it does give you a clear way to build skills at your own pace.
My PC is nine years old, and even though I've upgraded its SSD and RAM, it does experience the occasional freeze. It most often happens when I leave Age of Empires 2 running while I complete a few quick chores around the house. Once I'm back at my PC, the game sometimes becomes unresponsive, and my only option is to hold down the power button for a forced shutdown. This is not good for your computer, and ideally, you'd want to try other options first. So, I've been looking for a solution to force-quit frozen apps, and this Reddit thread gave me a few solid ideas. Here's what I found worked for me:
If you're trying to launch Task Manager, it may get stuck behind a full-screen app. To prevent this, you can force the app to always appear above all other apps on your computer. You can open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Esc or searching for the app in the Start menu. Once Task Manager is running, click Settings in the left pane, and under "Window management," enable Always on top.
If a full-screen app is frozen in Windows 11, you can use the keyboard shortcut Win-Ctrl-D to create a new desktop on your PC. This will force Windows to switch to the newly created desktop, and allow you to access Task Manager or other apps that you need. Once you've used this tip to handle the rogue app, you can press Win-Ctrl-F4 to close the new desktop. To move between different desktops in Windows, press Win-Ctrl-→ or Win-Ctrl-←.
Pressing the power button usually turns off your computer. Most manufacturers have you long-press the power button to do a forced shutdown, but this should only be used in emergencies. This is the equivalent of yanking out the power cord to turn off your computer, and you risk losing data by using this option. If you're encountering a frozen app, you can configure the power button to put your PC in sleep mode instead. The benefit is that waking your PC opens the lock screen, and you can use that to access Task Manager.
To set this up, open the Start menu and search for "Control Panel." Open Control Panel, and in the top-right corner of the window, click the drop-down menu next to "View by." Select Large icons or Small icons. This will reveal all Control Panel features, including Power Options. In the left pane, select Choose what the power buttons do. Now, click the drop-down menu next to "When I press the power button," and click Sleep. You can press the power button on your PC now, and it'll put the computer to sleep.
Microsoft coded a hidden keyboard shortcut into Windows for you to use when encountering a black screen. Maybe your computer isn't frozen, but an app is stuck, or there's an issue with a display driver leading to a black screen. In these cases, use the keyboard shortcut Win-Ctrl-Shift-B: It'll recreate your desktop and let you avoid a forced restart of your computer.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
The built-in password managers from Google and Apple are quite good these days. But if you're switching between multiple devices and OSes, a dedicated cross-platform password manager like Bitwarden can really help. It's open-source, encrypted by default, and most of its features are free on all platforms. And you can even use it to sync passkeys and two-factor authentication codes between all your platforms. But just using the Bitwarden apps to store passwords and autofill them won't get you very far. Because you're dealing with extremely sensitive passwords and secure notes, you should take some extra steps to secure your data, and make the password management process a bit easier (without compromising your security).
Your Bitwarden account is valuable, and protecting it should be your priority. While you should set a long, yet memory-friendly master password, it's best to add a second layer of security as well. Bitwarden supports multiple two-factor authentication methods for your vault. Go to Settings > Security > Two-step login to get started. While you can set a simple email authentication, it's better to use something more complex. If you want to use a software-based method, set up two-factor authentication with a separate authenticator app (like Google Authenticator). For the most secure protection, use a hardware key like YubiKey—if you have Bitwarden Premium anyway. While 2FA via an authenticator app is very secure, a hardware key ensures that only someone with physical access to the key can access your Bitwarden vault.
Autofill is incredibly convenient. When you have the Bitwarden extension or app installed, it will prompt you to fill passwords with just a tap. In fact, Bitwarden also offers a feature called "Autofill on page load" that will fill in your password details without even waiting for you. It's convenient, but a security risk, since anyone with access to your device could log into your accounts right away. Thankfully, this is not enabled by default. In case it happens to be enabled, you can turn it off by going to Settings > Autofill.
To beef up your account's security, disable autofill altogether by going to Settings > Autofill > Show autofill suggestions on form fields. Instead, you should use the Bitwarden button in the extension bar. When you open the Bitwarden vault using the extension, it will first show you the available autofill options for the current websites, which you can click to autofill manually. This is a more secure route because, as you'll see below, it's possible to lock the Bitwarden vault using a PIN or biometrics—balancing the convenience of autofill with some added security.
Again, for convenience's sake, Bitwarden won't lock you out until you restart your browser or your PC, which can be on for weeks on end. However, there's an option that forces you to unlock your vault after a couple of minutes of inactivity (or with each use). Go to Settings > Account Security, and from the Session Timeout section, click the Timeout dropdown. Here, you can use the Immediately option to lock yourself out after each use, or 1 minute to give yourself a bit of breathing room. From the Timeout Action dropdown, you can choose between Lock and Logout. If you choose the Logout feature, you'll have to log in again with your master password. Lock is the better option for most, as it lets you unlock your vault with some easier (but safe) options.
Bitwarden's desktop and mobile apps support biometric authentication so you can unlock using Face ID or Touch ID on Apple devices, or via fingerprint authentication on Android and Windows. To set it up, open the Bitwarden app and go to Settings > Security. Then, enable this feature in the browser extension if you use it. Go to Settings > Account Security, and from the Unlock Options section, enable the "Unlock with Biometrics" feature to enable biometric scanning. If you want to go old school, you can also use "Unlock with Pin" to open the vault using a unique pin.
Passkeys combine the convenience of passwords with the security of 2FA. These are cryptographically generated keys that are stored securely on your device or a passkey service. Authentication happens using your on-device biometrics, such as Face ID, Touch ID, or the fingerprint scanner. Traditionally, each device requires its own passkey and verification. But now, you can add a passkey to a service like Apple Passwords or Bitwarden, and the same key can be used across all your supported devices.
The next time you create a new account, use the Passkey option for authentication. As long as you're signed in to Bitwarden on your computer (with the app), you'll get an option to save passkeys to your vault. And Bitwarden supports native autofill for both iOS and Android. On iPhone, go to Settings > General > AutoFill and Passwords and make sure AutoFill Passwords and Passkeys is enabled. Then, enable the Bitwarden app and disable other autofill apps for a smoother experience. On Android, go to Settings > Autofill > Autofill services > Bitwarden.
If you use Bitwarden for password management, but something else for 2FA codes, you know it can be frustrating to log in to sites. Instead of two systems, you can add 2FA codes to the Bitwarden extension. This way, Bitwarden can generate and fill one-time passwords no matter where you are. This works in browsers and on desktops too. The setup for 2FA in Bitwarden is the same as any authentication service: scan the QR code or use the link to add the account to your Bitwarden vault. (The company has a detailed guide on it as well.)
Of course, by having everything in one system, you are compromising on security a bit. If someone has access to your Bitwarden vault, they now have access to your 2FA codes too. If you want to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket, you can also use Bitwarden's standalone Authenticator app, which doesn't actually require a login. It works similarly to Google Authenticator, is mobile-only, and won't be associated with your vault.
Sharing passwords in plaintext is downright risky. But sometimes, you need to share an account password with a friend or colleague who's working remotely. In this case, Bitwarden's Send feature can come in handy. You can share anything in plain text or upload a file (though this requires Bitwarden Premium). Go to the Send tab in the Bitwarden app or extension and click the New Send button to get started. Here, you can give the transfer a name and include additional details if you want. You can choose when to auto-delete the link and set up a password for it for extra security.
In case there's an emergency, and you can't access your own vault with all your secure notes, you can designate a trusted contact to do so on your behalf. Bitwarden's Emergency Access feature is highly customizable, and you can choose the level of access based on your personal needs. You can authorize trusted contacts to only view your data, or let them take over your entire account. To get started, head to Bitwarden's website, then go to Settings > Emergency Access.
Don't sleep on Bitwarden's keyboard shortcuts. By default, simply using Command/Control + Shift + L will open Bitwarden and will autofill the last used password for the website you're on. If you have 2FA enabled, Bitwarden will also copy the two-factor code to your clipboard. All you have to do is press Control/Command + V to paste it in the text box. Press Enter, and you're logged in. If you go to the Extensions Shortcuts page in Chrome, you can also assign dedicated shortcuts for locking the vault, generating a new random password, and opening the Bitwarden extension.
It's great that you've enabled a PIN lock and Face ID scan. But for extremely sensitive features, like accessing secure notes and entering bank account passwords, you might want to go one step further. Bitwarden has a feature that forces you to enter your master password again to access your secure data. Even if someone gets access to your Bitwarden account when your device is unlocked, they still won't be able to access the truly important data. To set this up, go to any item (secure note or login), click Edit, scroll down, and enable Master password re-prompt.
After some harsh feedback about the quality of Windows 11, Microsoft is on a sort of apology tour. The company is promising to improve the operating system, addressing critical issues and features that annoy longtime Windows users. It started off with a way to delay Windows updates for longer than a week. Now, Microsoft is testing new settings that let users customize the placement and size of the taskbar alongside the start menu.
The fact that you couldn't move the taskbar to the top or side of the screen has bothered Windows 11 users ever since launch. As with many frustrating aspects of Windows, there are multiple workarounds to customize the taskbar and its placement using third-party apps and registry hacks. But now, Windows users will finally have a native, reliable option for customizing the taskbar. These changes are currently rolling out over the next couple of weeks to Windows Insider members in the Experimental channel. Hopefully, they make it to a public build in the near future.
The biggest news, of course, is that the taskbar is finally detached from the bottom of the screen—at least, if you want it to be. You can now move it to the top, or to the left or right edge of the screen. When you do, the taskbar content will adapt automatically. You can also choose where you'd like to align the icons. You can place them on top or in the center when the taskbar is on the sides, or on the left or center when it is on the top or the bottom.
If you dock the taskbar to the side, there's a new option to “Never combine” taskbar buttons and to show full labels for all windows separately. This will basically show you a vertical list of all open windows, even if they're from the same app. Windows Insiders who already have this feature can go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors to customize the taskbar position and icon alignment.
If you're using a Windows tablet, or a laptop with a small screen, there's now an option to make the Windows taskbar smaller (icons will also scale down automatically). Go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors > Show smaller taskbar buttons and set it to Always.
The Start menu in Windows 11 has expanded to include not just apps, but also recommendations, shortcuts, and even updates from your connected smartphone. If all you really want is a quick way to launch apps, this can seem like too much. Microsoft is now consolidating settings for customizing the Start menu, making it easier to get to the minimal Start menu experience.
There are many other changes planned for the taskbar in the near future. Over the next couple of weeks, Microsoft will start adding Start menu customization features to independently show or hide sections like Pinned, Recommended, and All. There will be a separate toggle to disable the Recommended section only in the Start menu (decoupling it from the Recent Files section in the File Explorer), as well as a new size setting for the Start menu, letting you choose between a Small or Large size. Currently, the Start menu automatically adapts to your display, which can be inconsistent if you use multiple displays along with your laptop. Lastly, Microsoft is adding an option to hide your name and profile picture from the Start menu for added privacy. With all these features combined, you can create a Start menu that's smaller, devoid of profile pictures, and only showing apps that you have pinned yourself.
The Opera you're using today is obviously a very different browser from the one it was decades ago. Perhaps the most significant change is that it's now a Chromium-based browser, which means you can install Chrome extensions to fill any features you may be missing. That said, the browser still retains its core philosophy of shipping useful integrated features—even if those options aren't always obvious. From bypassing unskippable YouTube ads to using a built-in volume booster for every tab, here are the best Opera hacks you should know about:
If you live on the bleeding edge of tech, you can use Opera's "Early Bird" to try all kinds of experimental features. To do so, click the three-line menu in Opera's toolbar, scroll to the bottom, then select Go to full browser settings. Now, enable Early Bird, go through the list of features on the page, and enable the ones you wish to try. At the time of writing, these features include Browser Connector, which connects the browser to ChatGPT or Claude, and Sharing Point, which adds a button to share an Opera download link with your contacts. Note that these features can change or be removed at any time.
Opera has a sidebar that lets you install "apps" within your browser. It supports ChatGPT, Gemini, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Translate, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Bluesky, music streaming services, and a few more apps. These services are pinned to the left pane, and function as their corresponding apps do. You can think of these as pinned tabs in your browser, which are all neatly stacked in the left pane. I've used the sidebar to run Apple Music, a few messenger apps, and Gmail, which is easier to track than the same services in different apps.
Of course, the sidebar versions of these services may not always have all the features that proper desktop apps do (e.g., music downloads on Spotify), but the overall implementation is quite good. Sidebar apps appear in a floating window in Opera, and you can pin that window to the screen if you wish to. You can configure the Opera sidebar by clicking the three-dots button in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
You can open two tabs side by side in Opera for improved multitasking. To start, right-click an inactive tab in the tab bar and select Create split screen. This will place that tab, as well as the active tab, in a split-screen view. I find this helpful for research: For example, you can open a lecture in the main tab, and a search engine, AI service, or a notes app in the second tab. In split-screen view, you can continue reading or watching content on the main tab, while using the secondary tab to quickly look up information or to take notes.
Opera supports bypassing unskippable video ads on various sites, including YouTube. When you watch a video in Opera, and an ad starts playing, you'll see a tiny forward button at the top of the video. When you click it, the browser will instantly take you to the end of the ad, though you may still have to press YouTube's "Skip" button. If you're on the ad-free tier of your streaming services, you can stop the Video Skip button from appearing on videos by going to Opera settings > Video. From here, disable Show Video Skip button on all supported videos.
I often watch videos in picture-in-picture (PiP) mode when I'm browsing the web or working, but I get annoyed when I have to keep moving the window around to avoid obscuring text on my screen. Opera has a useful feature to sidestep this issue: It lets you adjust the opacity of PiP windows, and you can make them translucent enough to avoid disturbing your workflow. To enable this for all PiP videos, go to Opera settings > Video, and enable Make pop out transparent. If you'd rather do this manually for each video, start playing the video, then click the pop-out button at the top of the video to send it to PiP mode. Finally, click the Transparency button in the top-left corner of the PiP mode video.
Like most tech companies these days, Opera has a bunch of AI features in its browser. Luckily, you can easily disable most of them. Go to Opera settings > Opera AI, then disable Opera AI and ChatGPT in the sidebar. This also removes the AI button from the browser's toolbar. Finally, you can click the three dots in the bottom-left corner of Opera's window and uncheck ChatGPT and Gemini.
Opera ships with a way to control the volume levels on each tab, a feature that requires an extension on most other browsers. When you're playing media in any tab in Opera, hover your mouse over the corresponding tab, and you'll see a floating menu with a volume slider. This lets you set the volume from 0 all the way to 500%, which can be great for audio sources with low volume levels. You can also use this feature to play music at a lower volume while listening to a lecture or a podcast.
Opera has a hidden enhanced privacy mode, which blocks trackers while you're browsing the web. You can enable this via Chrome Flags: Type opera://flags in the address bar and open the page. Then, use the search bar to look for Enhanced privacy settings section. Use the drop-down menu next to the feature, and select Enabled. Restart Opera, then go to Opera settings > Privacy & security. Scroll to the bottom and enable Enhanced privacy protection. Note that this may break the functionality of some websites, but I've been using it for a few days without any noticeable negative effects.
Opera has a few hidden keyboard shortcuts that tie actions to a single button, instead of the usual two or three key combinations. You can go to Opera settings > Features > Shortcuts, and turn on Enable advanced keyboard shortcuts to use the following keyboard shortcuts:
Press 1 to cycle left through the list of tabs.
Press 2 to cycle right through the list of tabs.
Press / to use the "find on page" feature.
Press Z to go back.
Press X to go forward.
Press 0 (zero) on Windows/Linux or + on Mac to zoom in.
Press 8 to zoom in more (in increments of 100%).
Press 9 on Windows/Linux or - on Mac to zoom out.
Press 7 to zoom out more (in increments of 100%).
Press 6 to return to 100% zoom.
Press Ctrl-` (the tilde button) to go to the previous tab you'd clicked.
Opera has a powerful Snapshot tool you can use to take a screenshot of the visible page, the entire webpage, or save the page as a PDF. I typically ignore all browser screenshot tools in favor of OS options or third-party apps, but Opera's screenshot tool is solid. After capturing a screenshot, the app opens a preview window where you can make basic edits and annotations. To use this tool, click the camera button in the toolbar, then select one of the available options. You can choose Capture visible page to take a snap of the webpage visible on the screen, Capture full page to take a screenshot of the full site without scrolling, or Save page as PDF to save the screenshot as a PDF. You can also take a cropped screenshot as well, if you only want to capture a specific section of the page.
Keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures are useful, but Opera goes one step further with its "rocker gestures." Rocker gestures let you press the mouse buttons in a particular sequence to go back or forward on any webpage. You can try this by holding the left mouse button, clicking the right mouse button, releasing the left button, then releasing the right button. You can rock from the right button to the left to go back, and from left to right to go forward. To enable rocker gestures, go to Opera settings > Features, and scroll down to the "Shortcuts" section. Here, click the switch next to Enable rocker gestures.
Opera for Android now has an eSIM feature that lets you hop on a cheaper international roaming plan at certain times. If you're unhappy with your provider's roaming plans, you can check out Opera's offering. At the time of writing, Opera offers 3GB of free data for three days. The free data offer is available for people in the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and the UAE. The roaming plan is currently supported in 47 destinations.
To use this feature, download Opera for Android on a phone running Android 10 or newer. Tap the profile icon in the bottom-right of the browser's home screen, scroll down, and select "eSIM." Hit the "Claim now" button, pick the destination you're visiting, review the plan summary, and tap "Confirm." This will activate the free trial. Opera says you can buy more data once the free plan expires, and that the data plan won't activate until you reach the destination you've selected.
Opera has had a built-in VPN for a few years, but there's now a way to automatically activate the feature when you connect to public wifi networks. That way, you can protect your browsing even if someone takes a peek at the public wifi connections. To use it, go to Opera settings > VPN, and enable "Always use VPN on public Wi-Fi." This feature is currently available in France and the U.S., but Opera says it'll add more regions in the future.
When you select a currency on any webpage in Opera that doesn't match your local medium of exchange, the browser will display the converted currency in a pop-up. However, you don't have to stick with Opera's default currency. If you're traveling abroad, for example, you can change the setting to match the local currency, so you can quickly covert to the currency you'll be paying in. To set this up, go to Opera settings > Search engine, and go to the "Search Pop-up" section. Select the drop-down menu next to "Currencies to", and choose your preferred currency.
Opera also has a built-in webpage translator. The moment you open a webpage in a foreign language, it'll offer to translate the webpage to English. If you speak multiple languages, this can be quite annoying, but it doesn't have to be. You can ask Opera to skip translations for websites in languages you also understand. Go to Opera settings > Languages, and in the "Opera Translate" section, click the Add languages button. You can add multiple languages to this list, and it'll skip translations for all.
Lateo.net - Flux RSS en pagaille (pour en ajouter : @ moi) 
