OS X 10.11 El Capitan includes a new “mouse locator” feature. If you lose your mouse pointer, just shake the mouse or move your finger on the touch pad vigorously, and the mouse pointer will temporarily grow very large so you can see it. There’s a good use for this feature, and it’s somewhat surprising that Apple would put it in the Accessibility preferences, instead of somewhere perhaps more well traveled....

Java is, and always has been, the source of many woes. And security holes. Lots of security holes. There’s really no reason to have it installed anymore, especially now that Minecraft has its own bundled Java for both OS X and Windows. So today is the day you remove it. RELATED: Java is Insecure and Awful, It’s Time to Disable It, and Here’s How If you uninstall it and figure out that one of your applications depends on Java and won’t run anymore, it’s easy enough to reinstall it again....

Paint 3D is a new application included with Windows 10’s Creators Update. You can use it to work with 3D models and put together 3D scenes. Your work can be shared online or even printed on a 3D printer. Paint 3D, Explained RELATED: What’s New in Windows 10’s Creators Update This isn’t just a new version of Microsoft Paint. It’s an easy-to-use 3D modelling application that lets you create your own 3D models and create scenes with multiple 3D models....

The Status Bar in Word is available at the bottom of the document window and displays information about your document, such as what page you are currently viewing, how many words are in your document, and whether any proofing errors were found. You can easily customize the Status Bar by adding more information to or removing information from it. To do this, right-click anywhere on the Status Bar. Items that have check marks next to them display on the Status Bar....

The Roku is a streaming box…and not much else. There’s no hard drive space onboard for your personal videos, and most models don’t even have a USB port for external drives. But that doesn’t mean you can’t play your own videos, listen to your own music, or browse your photo collection. RELATED: How to Get the Most Out of Your Roku: Six Things You Should Do If you’re trying to get the most out of your Roku, you should learn your options for streaming local media....

How much energy do your smartphone, laptop, and tablet chargers really use? Should you unplug them when you aren’t using them to save power and money? We measured exactly how much power a variety of common chargers use, and how much keeping them plugged in will cost your each year. You’ve probably heard of “vampire power”—the amount of power a device uses in standby mode when you aren’t using it....

We’ve written about rooting your Android smartphones and tablets before, but why don’t they come rooted? Google argues that rooting is a mistake for security reasons, as it subverts Android’s security model. Over the years, Google has added more and more formerly root-only features to Android – from screenshots to support for encryption and VPNs. The goal is to minimize the need for rooting. What is Rooting, Anyway? Android is based on Linux, where the “root” user is equivalent to the Administrator user in Windows....

Full-Array Local Dimming and Blooming Blooming, also known as the halo effect, is a display artifact that occurs when light from isolated bright objects on a screen bleeds into darker areas surrounding it. This creates a sort of a halo around the object, hence the name “halo effect.” It is associated with full-array local dimming on LED screens. Monitor and television manufacturers primarily use two kinds of displays these days—LED-backlit LCD and OLED....

Markup Text The text you’re reading right now isn’t just made up of text characters. When a group of characters are in bold, italics, or underlined, they are formatted. Under the hood (in a way you can’t see while reading this), these characters are wrapped in tags to make them appear that way. The same goes for text that is smaller, appears in a different color, or is written in a different font....

While all operating systems have some things in common, you may find yourself wondering if one type of operating system has a specific ‘feature’ that another one does. With that in mind, today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a curious reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Photo courtesy of BiblioArchives/LibraryArchives (Flickr)....

If you’re interested in Google products, you may have stumbled upon the Google Store. This is the place where Google sells its own products, but it wasn’t always like that. The Google Store has an interesting history. The Google Store Started as a Tab Google’s first “store” was the Android market. It existed only on Android devices, and it delivered Android apps and games. Google slowly added different types of content to the Android Market, which necessitated a change in branding to “Google Play....

While most of us just see normal file and folder names on our Windows systems, other people may have encountered something a bit more unexpected – file and folder names with a dot in front of them. Why does this happen? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a very curious reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites....

The Cortana digital assistant does all the silly things we’ve come to expect and mock in our digital assistants. Ask her about Clippy and her circle morphs into the maligned paperclip, ask for a joke and she’ll give you one. But Cortana is more than the parlor tricks — spend a little time customizing the setup and you’ve got a highly useful digital assistant. And she’s coming to your computer in Windows 10....

Windows 10 marks a big shift in philosophy from Windows 8. In Windows 10, you’re free to sideload your own universal apps from outside the Windows store — just as you can sideload apps on an Android phone or tablet. With Windows 8, Microsoft copied Apple’s iPad and iPhone model, forcing you to get your apps from Microsoft’s curated store. Windows 10 shifts back to a more PC-like, Android model — you can get apps from anywhere you like....

3D Pinball Space Cadet was a game first included in the ‘Microsoft Plus!’ pack for Windows 95, and it gained popularity for its inclusion in Windows XP. Even though the game doesn’t ship with Windows anymore, you can still play it on just about anything. The fun started in late 2020, when Muzychenko Andrey (‘k4zmu2a’ on GitHub) started de-compiling the classic 3D Pinball game for Windows, fixing bugs on modern devices in the process....

Many of these features were introduced in the fall of 2019 with watchOS 6, iOS 13, and macOS Catalina. As long as your devices are running these versions of the respective operating system or newer, you should have access to the features we discuss below and more. Unlock Your Mac Apple added a feature in 2016 that allows you to unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch. To use this feature, your Apple watch must run watchOS 3 or newer, be paired with an iPhone 5 or later, and your Mac will need to have been manufactured sometime after mid-2013....

Windows 10 phones home more than any other version of Windows before it. Along with Windows 10, Microsoft released a new privacy policy and services agreement containing 45 pages of legalese. If Google wrote these, Microsoft might say you were being “Scroogled.” RELATED: Why Microsoft’s Scroogled Ads Are Wrong About Chromebooks Like it or not, Microsoft isn’t alone here. What Windows 10 is doing has become common and normal across the web, Android, iOS, and other modern platforms....

When you upgrade your computer’s hardware, it is a given that you expect a boost in performance, but sometimes you get an unexpectedly significant increase beyond what you counted on. Today’s SuperUser Q&A post helps a confused, but happy gamer understand how he lucked out when he upgraded his computer’s memory. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites....

Sometimes you want or need a program to automatically run with elevated privileges as soon as you sign into Windows, but how do you set something like this up? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has some helpful advice for a frustrated reader. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Screenshot courtesy of Acid Pix (Flickr)....

When you choose to attach a photo or video, Mail opens iPhone’s default Photos app to let you add your items. For other file types, Mail opens iCloud Drive from where you can choose and attach your files. You may also choose other cloud storage providers to attach your files from. RELATED: How to Add Attachments in Gmail for the iPhone Attach a Photo or Other File to Your Emails in Mail on iPhone To start the attachment process, first, launch Mail on your iPhone....