Control Chromecast with Google TV from Your Phone To get started the first thing you need to do is download the Android TV remote app to your phone. It’s available for iOS and Android. For this article, I am using an iPhone but the experience is virtually identical on Android. The first time you launch the Android TV app you will need to grant it access to your network. Then it will ask you to agree to the terms of service....

The Siri Remote, which launched in 2015, has been designed specifically for the always-on Siri capable Apple TV and serves as a replacement for the original Apple Remote. It too will work with macOS devices — assuming you install a free third-party app called SiriMote for Mac. Once SiriMote has been installed on your Mac, you can control your favorite macOS apps, including QuickTime, iTunes, Apple Keynote, Microsoft PowerPoint, and many more....

Mail merge is a feature that allows you to create multiple copies of letters and emails to send to your contacts. Each letter or email can include both standard and custom personalized content. The information you use to customize each letter or email is taken from your data source like a contacts list. If you use Gmail as your main email client, there is no built-in mail merge feature. However, there is a mail merge add-on available for Google Sheets that links with your Gmail account....

Customize Microsoft Office Color Theme on Mac Step 1. Open an Office 2016 for the Mac. In my example, I’ll use Word. Click Word > Preferences Step 2. Click General Step 3. Under Personalize, click the Office theme dropdown. Choose between Colorful or Classic. As I mentioned earlier, the options are very minimal when it comes to changing the Color Theme. It’s basically White or Blue. Being that the new Mac Office Suite was just released....

Customize Windows 11 Lock Screen Wallpaper To get started, we’ll first take a look at changing the wallpaper as a refresher. To begin, click the Start button and click the Settings icon. Alternately, you can use the keyboard shortcut Windows key + I to open Settings directly. It’s also worth noting that you can right-click an empty area on your desktop and click Personalization from the menu. Either way, you get into Settings, make sure the Personalization option is selected from the left panel....

Defer, Delay, or Block Window 10 Fall Creators Update First off, let’s look at how to defer the update for up to a full year which you can do if you are running Windows 10 Pro. This will provide you enough time to evaluate your situation as well as learn if there are any issues popping up from other users. This also will allow you to get the security patches installed automatically via Windows Update....

Apps aren’t just for iOS, either. Your Mac comes installed with a whole range of apps, and the chances are that you’ve installed many, many more. Some apps never get used, however, or are only used once or twice. If you have unwanted apps on your Mac, it makes sense to remove them to free up some additional hard drive space. If you want to know how to delete apps on Mac, the steps below should help you get started....

Delete Your Apple ID First, you need to head to Apple’s Data and Privacy portal at privacy.apple.com and log in with the Apple ID and password that you want to kill off. If you have two-factor authentication enabled, you’ll need to take the extra steps to verify your identity. Then click Continue on the Apple ID & Privacy intro screen and then click Get started under the Delete Your Account section....

Disable the Dropbox Camera Auto Upload Prompt Right-click the Dropbox icon from your System Tray and select Preferences. In the Preferences window, click on Change AutoPlay Settings. This will opens up Windows AutoPlay settings. Scroll down to the Pictures category and then change it to Take No Action from the drop-down menu. When that is done, it won’t pester you anymore with requests to sync your photos. If you want a compromise that doesn’t altogether disable the feature, set Pictures to “Ask me every time,” and then you’ll have the option to open the Dropbox Camera Uploader when you connect....

What else does disabling Windows Search do? A few things: Disables the background processes SearchIndexer.exe, SearchProtocolHost.exe, and SearchFilterHost.exe.(SSD users will like this one) No more writes to the search index database at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edbNo more offline caches of external network attached storage or shares.Increased system performance, even if it is barely noticeable. Ready to disable it? Okay, the first thing to do is open Control Panel. From here click on “Programs and Features....

Unpairing your Apple Watch is fairly simple to do; you can do it from your iPhone, or even on the watch itself, although you’ll still need to turn off the Activation Lock elsewhere. If you’re ready to unpair your watch from your iPhone, then learn how to disconnect your Apple Watch below. How to Disconnect Apple Watch from an iPhone The easiest way to unpair your Apple Watch from your iPhone is through the Watch app on your phone....

Note: This requires a Registry tweak — make sure to back it up first in case something gets accidentally deleted. First you need to open the Windows 8 registry editor. From the Start screen, type: regedit in the Search field and click the regedit application under Results. Now in regedit browse to the following key directory: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\System Within this key are two otherwise blank entries that need to be modified to activate a startup message:...

By enabling this feature, you can glance down to see how close you are to your goal. So you don’t have to stop mid-document from opening the word count tool. How to Display the Word Count in Google Docs Online Visit the Google Docs website, sign in if necessary, and then open your document. You’ll then see the word count box display in the bottom left corner of your document....

16-Bit Apps The solution for such a scenario is to run the operating system on an older version of Windows, requiring setting up a virtual machine. If you still utilize a 32-bit version of Windows 10, you can get the best of both worlds by enabling the 16-bit subsystem. As Microsoft’s future heads toward 64-bit computing, the company is minimizing its support for many of the legacy components in Windows. The best way to add 16-bit support in Windows 10 requires some command line work....

Microsoft has included the ability to dictate and control your device with your voice on Windows 10. Microsoft has rebuilt the feature for Windows 11, and now uses a new on-device speech recognition engine that even works without an internet connection. We’ll show you how to use Voice Access to open and switch apps, dictate email messages, browse the web, and more below. How to Enable Voice Access on Windows 11 Once you enable the Voice Access feature, you can switch apps, use dictation for messages, and documents, browse the web, and much more....

Enable Dark Mode on Windows 11 You might want to enable Dark mode to reduce eye strain and/or improve battery life on your device. Then you might want to go back to the light mode in certain situations. Plus, it offers better aesthetics that can make the operating system more attractive. Here we’ll take a look at how to turn it on or off. Note: If you haven’t upgraded yet, you can still enable Dark mode on Windows 10....

While this tool is less effective in Windows 10 than older versions, it still allows you to quickly access some of your most important (and possibly hidden) settings. It’s basically a super control panel where everything is located in one central location. If you want to enable God Mode in Windows 10, you’ll have to follow these steps. How to Enable God Mode in Windows 10 God Mode allows you to quickly access important Control Panel settings from a single location....

Internet Explorer isn’t the only browser that can do hardware acceleration. Google Chrome has GPU acceleration as well, but it isn’t enabled by default. The feature is still being considered “experimental,” so perhaps it still has a few bugs to work out; but I haven’t had any problems with it yet. Enabling hardware acceleration in Chrome is easy, and we’ll show you exactly where the settings are in the groovy guide below....

In Windows 7, Media Center comes pre-installed – but it isn’t necessarily set up properly. In our two previous articles for Windows Media Center, we showed you how you can set up Windows Media Center for the first time and how you can rebuild your Media Center library. Another thing that Windows Media Center is missing is playback support for Matroska Video (MKV) files. With the rising popularity of the MKV format, this can become quite troublesome....

Enable 2FA for LastPass Sign in to your LastPass account and click the Settings button from the Actions list at the left of the control panel. An Edit Settings window will pop up. Click the Security Tab and then click “Print your Grid”. LastPass will take you to a page with a number-by-letter grid. This grid is unique to your account and can only be used by you. Right click the page and select Print....