As useful as they are, these balloon notifications are sometimes annoying or a distraction at the least in the work or the server environment. So, if you ever need to, here is how you can easily disable balloon notifications in your Windows system. Note: before proceeding, please make sure that you have a good backup of your Windows Registry, just in case. Disable Balloon Notifications Disabling balloon notifications in Windows is easy....

The Two Paths to the Lock Screen While using Ubuntu, you meet the lock screen through two different paths. The first is during the initial boot, after which Ubuntu will ask you to choose your account and enter your password to enter your desktop. The second is after idling for a while. After some time, Ubuntu will blank your screen. After even more time, it will automatically lock the computer and display the login screen....

1. Get a Video Downloading Extension Video DownloadHelper (Firefox | Chrome) is a good example of an extension that helps you download videos directly from your browser. Here’s how it’s done: Once you’ve installed it on your machine, the download(s) will start in the extension’s pop-up panel. Note that some videos can be downloaded directly from the browser (for instance, videos from Reddit) without the help of the companion app....

Fortunately, there’s a way to force dark mode on all the apps on your device, even those which are yet to offer a dark mode option of their own. You don’t even have to access apps individually to turn dark mode on for each. Instead, you’ll be able to simply flip on a switch and turn the lights out for all your apps. Why Get Dark Mode on Your Device Dark mode features a design that reduces light emitted by a screen while maintaining the minimum color contrast ratio required for readability....

Not Just Google Docs Before you worry, Google Docs Dark mode isn’t just for Docs. It’ll be available for Sheets and Slides as well. You can enable the mode individually in each app, depending on your needs. You’ll also have the option to preview documents in light mode, even if dark mode is enabled. This can make it easier to view documents that are more difficult to see in darker themes....

Date Night Movies We’ve all been there before. You settle into the couch with a friend or significant other with the intention of popping some popcorn and watching a movie. The only problem is neither one of you can seem to agree on what to watch. Maybe you feel like a mid-90s action film. Your friend on the other hand is in the mood for a light-hearted romantic comedy. Normally, one of you would have to concede to the other and send the rest of movie night begrudgingly watching something you have no interest in....

What details? You may wonder. Well, how about your favorite programs? When an operating system gets an upgrade, your software may not be up to snuff, at least not initially, when it comes to compatibility. Before you go ahead and install that upgrade, you will want to be sure that you are going to be able to run all of your favorite (and essential) software. Skip this step at your own peril....

So, you’ve just spilled water on your MacBook Water and electricity are never a good mix and could even be dangerous. If your MacBook is currently connected to a power source, you should unplug it immediately. While it’s tempting to try to fix a water-damaged MacBook yourself, don’t turn your laptop on, boot it up, or attach it to any power source while it’s still wet. If you just splashed a little water directly onto the keyboard, you may be in luck....

Here are some ways to fix the frozen App Store issues on a Mac: Force Quitting the App Store from the Force Quit Window If the App Store is frozen and doesn’t let you do anything with it, you can force quit it so that it gets closed completely, and you can then relaunch it from the Launchpad or the Dock. Make sure the App Store is still open on your Mac....

If you face this issue, there are several ways to fix the problem. Disable Chrome Extensions Google does not develop Chrome extensions. Third parties create them for use in Chrome. Since Google does not maintain them, sometimes they will not run correctly with a new version of Chrome. To see if an extension is causing the black screen, first disable all your extensions. If the black screen disappears, then one of the extensions was the problem....

With iOS 11 and High Sierra, photos and videos will no longer be encoded in the familiar and pretty much universal JPG and MP4 formats. Instead, photos will use HEIF, and videos will use HEVC. The more modern HEIF and HEVC formats have certain advantages, but also some limitations that you may not even be aware of. Fortunately, it is possible to make your iOS device use the more common JPG and MP4 formats....

Here’s how you can generate GPG keys in Linux with just a few simple terminal commands. Installing GnuPG You’ll need to start by installing GnuPG first. For Debian or Ubuntu-based distros, open a terminal and run: Linux distributions using DNF or YUM (like Fedora) should run the following: or If you’re running Arch, install GnuPG with the following command: You can also download the source code and compile it yourself if you’d prefer....

But today we’re talking about the other side of the Powerpack upgrade. The part that will let you manage your files without even opening up the Finder will give you a powerful clipboard, snippets utility and a lot more. So let’s get to it. 1. Use Actions to Quickly Move, Copy and Manage Files OS X’s Finder is good at organizing files and folders in a simple structure. But you know what’s even better?...

If you use Yahoo Mail for most of your email correspondence, then there is a quicker, more compact way of tracking your emails within your browser. Fastest Notifier for Yahoo Mail is an add-on for Firefox that lets you check your Yahoo mail and receive Yahoo mail notifications from the browser’s add-on bar. The add-on does not require a restart after installation, so you immediately see the Yahoo icon on the top-right corner of the browser....

Slowly but surely the usage gap between the two is narrowing. Having two separate applications to serve more or less similar functions seems more and more obsolete. If you are a Gmail and Telegram user and agree with the statement, you can try Telegram’s Gmail Bot to receive your email within the Telegram client. The Rise of the Bots One thing that separates Telegram from most other instant messengers out there is the existence of Bots....

You may grumble about how you need to buy a stronger Internet connection, but that may not be true. Here are some key ways to know whether your connection is effective enough to play online and what you can do to improve things whether you are playing on a PC or your phone. The importance of Ping Internet providers like Comcast advertise with their upload and download speeds, but those speeds actually are not that important for gaming....

What is wget (And What It’s Used For)? For the unaware, wget is an open-source non-interactive command-line utility to help you download resources from a specified URL. Because it is non-interactive, wget can work in the background or before you even log in. It’s a project by the GNU team, and it’s great if you have a poor Internet connection. This means it’s robust in otherwise non-optimal conditions. Once you install wget, you’ll run commands and specify a destination for your files....

For example, you can easily switch to a different display/login manager, add another desktop environment or change other key components of your software stack. In contrast, you might get weird conflicts on other distributions when trying to switch default packages. Why Debian Has Old Software Here’s the short version, without too many technical details. Once most of the known bugs are removed, packages are frozen to a particular version. Most of them will never receive feature upgrades, only security fixes....

Luckily, with the release of the Raspberry Pi Imager tool, installing Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi is now very easy. You’ll learn in this article how to flash an Ubuntu image to your Raspberry Pi. Introducing the Raspberry Pi Imager In March 2020, the official Raspberry Pi Foundation released the Raspberry Pi Imager tool. This is a straightforward tool that downloads a list of the various operating systems that you can use with your Raspberry Pi....

In this tutorial, we will show you how to get VLC-shares up and running in your Ubuntu machine. VLC-shares is available for Windows as well and the installation and configuration instruction is pretty easy and straightforward, so we will not touch on that. Installing VLC-shares in Ubuntu First of all, go to the VLC-shares website and download the “vlc-shares_0.5.*.zip” file. The latest version (as of this post) is version 0....