Your Mac makes all kinds of decisions on how it should function based on settings, of course, but you may not know that the way your screen (and your backlit keyboard) brightens and dims is based on the so-called auto-brightness feature. Which, luckily, is controllable by us measly humans! Today’s article is all about how you can do just that.
Parallels Desktop: Using XML to Create Custom Touch Bar Buttons for Windows Apps
Recent versions of Parallels Desktop add Touch Bar support to popular Windows apps in your virtual machines. But with a little bit of XML editing, you can add completely custom Touch Bar buttons to almost any Windows app. Here’s how it works.
How to Check FaceTime Data Usage on the iPhone
Apple’s FaceTime feature is a great way to keep in touch with people, but how much data does a video call use? If you’re concerned about usage stats—whether for FaceTime video or for audio-only calls—we’ll tell you how to find out how much you’ve consumed on any particular conversation!
How to Remove Siri from the Touch Bar
Siri is great, even if it lags a bit behind some of the other voice assistants. (We’re looking at you, Google.) But on the Touch Bar of the MacBook Pro, its button can take up valuable real estate that you could use for other, more important icons. We’ll tell you all about it in this article!
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Apple Watch: How to Change the Default Apple Pay Card
Apple Pay on the Apple Watch is an incredibly convenient way to pay for stuff in stores that support it. But if you’re seeing the wrong card when you invoke the payment service on your device, then never fear—we’ll tell you how to change it!
How to View GPU Usage in macOS via Activity Monitor
macOS and many applications heavily utilize the GPUs in your Mac. Wouldn’t it be great to see exactly how much each GPU is being used? Instead of turning to third party apps, check out this tip on using Activity Monitor to see GPU usage.
How to Play AV1 Videos in Windows 10 With the Free AV1 Codec
Windows 10 doesn’t currently include any out-of-the-box support for the new AV1 video codec, but Microsoft is currently testing an extension that will bring full AV1 support to Windows in the future, and you can download the beta version for free right now.
How to Use Mojave’s Quick Actions to Quickly Combine PDFs on the Mac
Apple’s new version of macOS has a ton of new features and improvements, but one of our favorites is the fact that you can combine PDFs right from the Finder instead of having to jump through hoops in Preview or Acrobat. The details are inside today’s article!
How to Disable Web Shows in Plex
Many longtime Plex users prefer to maintain a completely local media library and don’t want new online media sources such as Web Shows, Podcasts, and News to clutter up the Plex client interface for them and their users. Thankfully, Plex Web Shows can be disabled. Here’s how.
How to Completely Replace Notepad With Notepad++ in Windows
Notepad++ is a popular free text editor for Windows that includes many features essential for viewing and editing code, creating and modifying macros, and working with multiple documents simultaneously. Many Notepad++ users prefer to use the app instead of the default Notepad that ships with Windows. Rather than manually changing the default application for multiple file types, there’s an easier way that allows Notepad++ to completely replace standard Notepad. Here’s how it works. Replace Notepad with Notepad++ First, make sure…