Make Sure “Optimized Battery Charging” Is Enabled Apple’s iOS 13 update introduced a new feature designed to protect your battery by limiting its total charge until you need it. The feature is called Optimized Battery Charging. This should be enabled by default, but you can double-check under Settings > Battery > Battery Health. Lithium-ion cells, like those used in your iPhone, degrade when they’re charged to capacity. iOS 13 examines your habits and limits your charge to around 80 percent until the time you usually pick up your phone....

Robocopy, or “Robust File Copy,” is a command line directory replication tool from Microsoft. It is available as part of Windows 7 and Vista as a standard feature, and was available as part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. NOTE: For Windows XP, you can obtain Robocopy by downloading the resource kit. Robocopy allows you to setup simple or advanced backup strategies. It provides such features as multi-threaded copying, mirroring or synchronization mode, automatic retry, and the ability to resume the copying process....

“As more and more consumers are tapping to pay with digital wallets and credit cards, Tap to Pay on iPhone will provide businesses with a secure, private, and easy way to accept contactless payments and unlock new checkout experiences using the power, security, and convenience of iPhone,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet in a press release. The first company to get on board with Apple’s new payment system is Stripe, which will start using it in Spring 2022....

The hack was performed by Lapsus$, which comes shortly after the group stole a whopping 1TB of data from Nvidia, of which the group released 20GB in a document. This time, Lapsus$ released the data through a torrent with more than 400 peers sharing the content. It’s not clear at this point if the group asked Samsung for ransom before it released the data. The group said the leak contains “confidential Samsung source code,” which is obviously not something the company wants to have out there....

The streaming service HBO Max is currently priced at $9.99 per month in the United States, and there’s a $14.99/month option for no advertisements. The more expensive option also adds 4K playback and the ability to download content for offline playback. HBO’s new promotion will give you the base plan priced for one year at $69.99, or the ad-free plan at $104.99. However, after the first year, the pricing reverts to normal....

AirTags and the Potential for Abuse This allows you to attach a tag to an item of value in the hope of finding it if it ever goes missing. The tag emits a Bluetooth signature that passing iPhones can detect and relay without exposing any information about either party. You can then use Apple’s Find My app on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac (or the web version at iCloud.com) to see where one of your AirTags was last found....

Depending on your activities and its level of sensitivity, a TrackPoint Mouse Button can be very helpful or very irritating. So how do you disable it if it is constantly causing you problems? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a frustrated 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 blaughw (SuperUser)....

There may be rare occasions in which you want to Quit the Finder completely–maybe to clean your cluttered desktop for a screenshot, or to close a bunch of Finder windows at once. But by default, the Finder doesn’t have a Quit option. This is generally a good thing, since quitting the Finder can have some unintended or unwanted side effects. For example, all the icons on your desktop will disappear....

Many of us juggle multiple email accounts between our professional and personal lives. Instead of managing multiple separate address books, you can use Windows 10’s People app to bring together all your contacts into a single, centralized interface. People App at a Glance The People app is a hub for all your contacts. It’s a competent contact manager that can store a wide variety of information about each person, including name, email address, street address, title, phone number, and much more....

If you’re not particularly impressed with the screensaver system on your Kobo Ebook reader you can customize it to your heart’s content. Read on as we show you how to make a small modification to your Kobo that opens upon the possibility of really big changes to the screensaver. Why Do I Want To Do This? If you’re familiar with ebook reader modifications you’re probably well familiar with the numerous hacks over the years intended to change the Kindle screensaver....

Start by opening up the Alexa app on your smartphone and tapping on the menu button in the top-left corner of the screen. From there, tap on “Settings”. Next, tap on “Sounds & Notifications”. From here, you can adjust the volume of alarms and timers at the top. This volume is independent from other audio functions on your Echo. To change the sound for alarms and timers, tap on “Alarm” under “Notification Sounds”....

There are various reasons why you may want to protect a document. Whatever the case, you may want to make a document read-only without requiring a password to open it. We’ll show you a few different methods of doing this. The first method involves assigning a password to protect the document from being modified. We previously showed you two methods for assigning a password to open the document. Once you’ve accessed the “General Options” dialog box, you can assign a password to open and/or modify the document....

Once you have removed a sticker, you can add another sticker or the same sticker if you want. RELATED: How to Use Snapchat: The Basics of Sending Snaps and Messages Remove a Sticker From a Snap To start the sticker removal process, first, open the Snapchat app on your iPhone or Android phone and access your Snap. Tap and hold on the sticker that you want to delete. If you are on an Android phone, drag the sticker to the trash can icon that appears to the right of your screen....

Why You Should Close Those Old Accounts We live in an age when data breaches are common. What happens if a service is breached and leaks all the personal data you’ve uploaded to it? What happens if a developer goes rogue and abuses saved credit card numbers, spams you, or sells their service to a company that will? If you reuse passwords, a password leak at one site means that attackers can get access to your accounts at other sites....

What Is “Auto Motion Plus” Anyway? Auto Motion Plus works by increasing the framerate of content you watch. Most TV in the US is filmed at 24 or 30 frames per second (fps), but almost all TVs refresh at 60fps or 120fps. So the idea behind motion smoothing is that by inserting extra interpolated frames, your TV can bring the low framerate 30fps content closer to the smoothness of high refresh rate displays....

What Is Motion Smoothing Anyway? Motion smoothing works by increasing the framerate of content you watch on the TV. It does this by artificially adding extra frames in between each real frame, to sync up the content to the refresh rate of the display, which can sometimes double or even quadruple the perceived refresh rate and “smoothness” of the picture. However, this doesn’t always look good, and often leads to blurry images and nasty artifacts....

When you install a new app–like, say, a video player–but don’t set the new app as the default for file types it supports, when you open a file that app can read–in this example, a video file–Windows will notify you that you have a “new app that can open this type of file”, and show a window to choose a new default app for that file type. This can get annoying after a while, but thankfully you can turn those notifications off....

With the new Windows operating system around the corner and an abundance of cheap computers on the market, you may find yourself asking what to do with your old PC and components. We will take a look at how to securely destroy private data on your old hard drive, ideas for repurposing, and how to get rid of them in a way that is friendly to the environment. Ensure Data Is Destroyed...

Apple’s iCloud Drive normally just works in the background on an iPhone or iPad. iOS 9 makes iCloud more accessible and useful, providing a new iCloud Drive app that lets you browse, view, and manage all the files stored in iCloud Drive. You can normally access iCloud Drive in Finder on a Mac, via iCloud for Windows, or on icloud.com. It’s now possible to access your iCloud files in the same way on an iPhone or iPad....

Most web browsers begin autoplaying content as soon as you open a web page. Enabling click-to-play plugins used to be an easy way to stop that, but what can you do today? Click-to-play allows you to conserve download bandwidth, improve page load times, reduce CPU usage, and extend laptop battery life. This feature gained popularity with Flashblock for Firefox and is now built into modern browsers. Can You Enable Click-To-Play on Modern Browsers?...