Exciting tips

Need a tool to quickly cut and trim lossless video or audio files on Linux? Check out LosslessCut. It’s an electron-based video/audio trimming tool that can handle as much lossless video footage or audio files as you can throw at it. Here’s how to install LosslessCut on Linux.

Note: LosslessCut also runs on Mac and Windows. For more information on those versions of the application, click on this link here.

Install LosslessCut stable

LosslessCut is not a traditional program, and the developer has released no DEB or RPM packages, or even an AppImage for users to use. Since there are no Linux packages to download, we need to work with the generic binary file on the project’s GitHub page to run the app.

To get your hands on the latest Linux binary release for LosslessCut, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, use the wget download command to grab the release archive directly from the internet.

Note: LosslessCut does not support 32-bit. If you require 32-bit, consider trying to build the program from source instead.

wget https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/releases/download/v2.4.0/LosslessCut-linux-x64.zip

After the wget command finishes the process of downloading the LosslessCut Linux binary archive, you’ll need to install the unzip tool to your computer so that you can extract the contents of the file. To install unzip, follow the command-line instructions below that correspond with the operating system you use.

Ubuntu

On Ubuntu, Unzip can quickly be installed with the Apt command.

sudo apt install unzip

Debian

Those on Debian Linux can easily set up Unzip with the Apt-get command.

sudo apt-get install unzip

Arch Linux

Arch Linux users can get their hands on the Unzip tool with the Pacman command.

sudo pacman -S unzip

Fedora

Using Fedora Linux? Install the Unzip application with the Dnf command.

sudo dnf install unzip

OpenSUSE

On OpenSUSE Linux, the Unzip app is installable with the Zypper command.

sudo zypper install unzip

With the Unzip application set up on your Linux PC, the LosslessCut archive file can be fully extracted with the commands below.

First, move into the “Downloads” directory using the CD command.

cd ~/Downloads/

Extract the Zip archive with unzip.

unzip LosslessCut-linux-x64.zip

Set up the LosslessCut binary

LosslessCut can run directly from the folder extracted with the Unzip tool. That said, running the program in this way is incredibly inconvenient, and the last thing anyone would want to do before editing some video clips. So, in this section, we will go over how to set up LosslessCut on your Linux PC, complete with a desktop shortcut.

To start, the LosslessCut folder in “Downloads” must be put in the “opt” directory. To do this, start by moving your terminal session to the root user using sudo -s.

Note: do not use su! The sudo -s command will keep you in “Downloads,” and is better suited for this operation.

sudo -s

Now that the terminal window has access to root, use the mv command and place the “LosslessCut” directory in “opt.”

mv LosslessCut-linux-x64/ /opt/LosslessCut/

With the file in place, use the touch command to create a new shortcut file for LosslessCut in “/usr/share/applications/.”

touch /usr/share/applications/losslesscut.desktop

Using the wget downloading tool, grab the following PNG file to use as the icon for your desktop shortcut.

wget https://www.pngrepo.com/download/51032/video-editing.png -O icon.png

Place the newly downloaded “icon.png” file into the “/opt/resources/” directory using the mv command.

mv icon.png /opt/LosslessCut/resources/

Open up the “losslesscut.desktop” file in the Nano text editor with the command below.

nano -w /usr/share/applications/losslesscut.desktop

Paste the following code into the Nano text editor. To paste, press Ctrl + Shift + V.

[Desktop Entry]Name=LosslessCut
GenericName=Video Editor
Comment=LosslessCut video editor.
Type=Application
Exec=/opt/LosslessCut/LosslessCut
Icon=/opt/LosslessCut/resources/icon.png
Categories=AudioVideo;AudioVideoEditing;

After pasting the code into the Nano text editor, save the changes by pressing the Ctrl + O keyboard combination. Then, close the Nano text editor by pressing Ctrl + X. Once out of Nano, use the chmod command to set the permissions of the new desktop shortcut file.

chmod +x /usr/share/applications/losslesscut.desktop

Now that the new LosslessCut desktop shortcut file’s permissions have been updated and it is executable, you’ll be able to run the app by clicking on it in the “Multimedia” section.

Source code

The source code for LosslessCut is available on GitHub if you’d prefer to download it and build the app yourself, rather than using the Linux generic binary covered in this article. For more information on how to build LosslessCut from source on Linux, click here.

Controlling media that’s playing in a browser isn’t as easy as it is when you use a dedicated media player but Chrome has been working to bridge that gap. A few releases ago, it added support for the Windows 10 volume/media OSD keys and controls though many users seem more interested in disabling it than actually using it. With the latest release of Chrome, there’s a play/pause button that you can enable for the Chrome toolbar.

Play/pause button on Chrome toolbar

To enable a play/pause button on the Chrome toolbar, you need to open the browser and in the URL bar, enter the following.

chrome://flags

Tap enter, and you’ll be taken to the Chrome flags page. Here, search for Global Media Controls. Select the flag that matches, and set its value to ‘Enabled’ from the dropdown menu. Relaunch Chrome to apply the change.

The Play/pause button only appears if you have a tab open with media in it. If you later close the tab, the button doesn’t go away but it won’t be present in any new windows that you open until you open something else to play.

When you click the play button, a little window opens giving you the title of whatever is playing, the URL that the media is streaming from, the play/pause button, and buttons to move to the next or previous item in a list. In some cases, the window will also offer a thumbnail for the video that’s playing.

The control updates in real time and it supports multiple tabs which means you can access i.e., play/pause media, and move to the next/previous item in any tab from any window.

The feature doesn’t work the same for all websites but it will definitely let you play/pause media on most, if not all websites. During tests, it was able to play/pause YouTube, Facebook, and Netflix but the next/previous item buttons only appeared for the YouTube video. Additionally, the thumbnail and video title was only generated for the YouTube video as well. It’s safe to say that this feature works best with YouTube.

While the feature doesn’t work perfectly with all websites, it’s still not to be discounted just for that reason alone. It’s a native way to control media that’s playing in any tab and before Chrome 77, this is something that required an extension. There are still many extensions that outshine this feature but for something basic, this beats many other options.

Sandboxing is a method for running apps or even entire operating systems in an isolated environment. They run inside a container that separates them from the OS the container itself is running in. Windows 10 Pro users running feature update 1903 (or later) can use the stock Sandbox mode that it now ships with but, Windows 10 Home users have nothing like it. That said, there are plenty of sandboxing apps available for Windows 10 and one of the best ones has recently gone free.

Sandboxie is an app that has been around for a long time so it not only works, it works well. Since it’s now free, it’s available for use to just about anyone. It’s only limitation is that it can only run Win32 or desktop apps, and not UWP or Modern apps.

Sandbox mode on Windows 10 Home

Download Sandboxie and install it. The app is pretty small, and installation doesn’t take more than a few minutes. It will need to install an essential driver as part of the installation process.

Once installed, you can go through the six step introductory tutorial if you want. It is a simple to use app but it’s still a good idea to see how things work. Once you’ve gone through the tutorial, create a shortcut for the app that you want to run in sandbox mode on your desktop.

Open Sandboxie and drag & drop the shortcut onto the app’s window. You will see a box asking if you want to run the app in the default Sandbox, or outside it. The Default Sandbox is selected by default so just click OK on this window. If you want, you can also run the app with elevated/admin rights.

Sandboxie will show you the processes that are running for the app, and the app window will open with a yellow frame. You’re free to use the app like you normally would.

Sandboxie is an app that’s incredibly easy to use. If you click its system tray icon, you will find options that make it easier to select an app to run in sandbox mode. It’s light and unlike Windows 10 Pro and its Sandbox mode, Sandboxie doesn’t run an entire OS in order to run a single app. Instead, it runs only the app you choose making it much lighter.

If you want to run apps in sandbox mode on Windows 10 Home, this is one of the best options available. Not only is this app free, it’s been under development for years and is truly refined.

When you download a file, your browser saves the activity in its downloads manager. If you were to visit the download manager in a browser, you could probably find the download link of the file. If the file is no longer listed there, there’s one other trick you can use to find the download link of a file, one that won’t ever expire.

Download link of file

This works if you’ve still got the file on your drive. If you’ve uploaded the file to a cloud drive, and you decide to download it from there, this trick will not work. You must have the original file on your local drive.

Navigate to the file, and right-click it. From the context menu, select ‘Get Info’. The Get Info window reveals all sorts of information about the file, and not just the information that’s part of its metadata.

If you expand the ‘More Info’ option, you will see the direct link to where the file originated from. It will be listed in the ‘Where’ field. All files that were downloaded will have this information. This is why if you downloaded a file from a cloud drive, this trick won’t work. That file will instead link to the cloud drive it came from.

The ‘Where’ field will be absent for files that were created on your system. In the previous screenshot, you can see three different Get Info windows. Two are for files that originated from the internet while the third (last/right most) one is for a screenshot captured on the Mac.

This information can’t be removed. It’s not part of the file’s metadata so if you were to move the file to a different OS, it won’t be there. It’s also why uploading it elsewhere and then downloading it overwrites the information. It can’t really be preserved beyond the device you have it on.

As for the link, it’s going to be correct but that doesn’t mean the file will always be available there. You can select and copy it, and paste it into your browser. The result will likely be the file downloading again (or a newer version of it), but if the link is dead or the file has been removed and replaced with something else, there’s nothing that can be done about it.

You also cannot edit this information. The link is there to stay though, if you open the file, and create and save an exact copy of it in an app on your desktop, you will have the file without its download information.

The fastest way to browse the hard drive from terminal in Linux is with the ls and cd command. The primary reason why it’s a good idea to use this method to browse your Linux hard drive quickly is that both of these commands come standard with the Linux desktop. There is no software to install, and the whole process of moving through the file system is very straightforward. Here’s how it works.

The ls and cd commands

Ls – shows the contents of any given directory. It can also be made to show hidden files with ls -a.

Cd – can change the working directory of the terminal shell to another directory.

So, for example, if you need to view a file in the “/opt” folder, you would first use the cd command to move to the “/opt” folder from the working directory the terminal starts in (home).

cd /opt

Once inside of the “/opt” directory, the ls command can be called in to show the contents of the folder, exposing the various files and sub-directories that you may want to access.

ls

It is also possible to browse backward with the cd command. For example, if you need to move from “/opt/sub-folder-1/” back one directory to “/opt” cd .. can be used.

cd ..

Terminal based file manager

The ls/cd browsing method is very basic and will allow users to move to through a Linux file system with ease, but it doesn’t offer advanced features such as the quick opening of files, or fast navigation. Also, typing out cd/ls over and over to move through a hard drive to access specific files and folders can be very tedious, and not the best method for impatient Linux users.

Another way to browse the Linux file system in the terminal is with a text-based file manager such as Midnight Commander or Ranger.

Midnight Commander

Midnight Commander is the go-to text-based file manager for many Linux users who need to browse a Linux file system through a terminal window. The reason it’s so popular? The user interface is colorful, easy to understand, and even Linux users who are new to the platform can figure out how to use it very quickly!

Install Midnight Commander

Midnight Commander has been around for quite a while in the Linux world, so virtually every distribution has it in their software repositories. To install it, open up a terminal window with Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, follow the command-line instructions below to get the app installed.

Ubuntu

sudo apt install mc

Debian

sudo apt-get install mc

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S mc

Fedora

sudo dnf install mc

OpenSUSE

sudo zypper install mc

Browsing with MC

With the Midnight Commander application installed, launch it from the terminal by entering the mc command.

mc

Once you open up the Midnight Commander app, a text-based file manager UI will appear on screen with two panels. From here, use your mouse (if you have one) and click on the folder you’d like to access. To go back a folder, click on “/..”.

To access some of the more advanced Midnight Commander functions press Alt + 2, select the option you want to execute in the menu with the mouse or up/down arrows, and press Enter to select your choice.

To access any of the special operations in the bottom bar of Midnight Commander, press Alt + 1 – 10.

Ranger

Ranger is another popular file manager for the Linux terminal. It lacks a lot of the more advanced features that Midnight Commander has, but it’s perfect for browsing files and folders on Linux through the command line.

Installing Ranger

Ranger is a well-known text-based file manager, so it’ll be easy to get going on most Linux operating systems. To install it on your computer, open up a terminal window with Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T and follow the command-line instructions below that match the OS you use.

Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ranger

Debian

sudo apt-get install ranger

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S ranger

Fedora

sudo dnf install ranger

OpenSUSE

sudo zypper install ranger

Browsing with Ranger

To browse your Linux hard drive from the terminal with Ranger, start by writing the ranger command in a terminal, and it’ll launch in your home directory (~).

ranger

With Ranger open, use the left arrow key to go back a folder level, or the right arrow key to open a folder. Use the up arrow or down arrow to highlight any file you’d like to access, and Ranger will instantly launch it in the default program, or display it if it’s a text file.

Note: in addition to the arrow keys, it’s possible to open folders and files by clicking with the mouse.

To close the Ranger file manager, press Q.

Archive files, or zipped, or RAR files are compressed files which have to be extracted before they can be viewed or used. An archive will generally be much smaller than its extracted version which is often the point of compressing it in the first place. By default, when you extract an archive, it extracts to the same folder that the compressed file is in however, most utilities will let you choose where to extract an archive to. Here’s how you can do it with 7zip.

Choose where to extract archive

This will work with most archiving utilities. The option to extract an archive to a different location may be accessed differently but it will be there. With 7zip, when you install the app, it adds options to the context menu making it easy to extract or compress items.

Right-click a zipped folder and from the context menu, select 7-Zip. Select ‘Extract files…’ from the sub-menu.

You will see a window with an ‘Extract to’ field. Click the browse/select path button next to the field and choose where you want to extract the file to. When you click OK, the archive file will be extracted to a folder in the location you selected. This location can be in a different drive altogether if you want.

Other archiving utilities

7zip isn’t the only popular archiving utility for Windows 10. There are quite a few others and most will have an option to compress or extract folders from the context menu. That’s the first place you should look. The context menu will likely have a quick extraction option whereby the archive is extracted to the same folder that the archived file is in. Make sure you don’t select that option. Instead, look for any option that allows you to change how a file is extracted.

In the event there is no context menu option for changing how a file is extracted, you should open the archiving utility’s interface. There, you can select a ZIP or RAR file, and then choose where you want extract it.

Extracting a file to different location has no negative effects. The file will extract just as reliably if you were to extract it to the same location. The benefit is that if you’ve saved the archive to a folder/location that’s cleaned periodically e.g., the Downloads folder, you won’t lose the extracted files as well. Additionally, if your drive is low on space, extracting files to a different drive will make sure the extraction process isn’t interrupted by low disk space problems.

Chrome sync is a great feature that Google improves constantly. A recent update to Chrome now allows you to send links between connected devices. It’s a great way to keep everything in sync across multiple devices except when it syncs data you don’t want it to. Case in point; extensions. Extensions will sync so that you always have the same ones installed across all your synced Chrome browsers. If you need to selectively disable extension sync on Chrome so that extensions from one instance do not sync to all others, you can. Here’s how.

Disable extension sync

Chrome sync will sync lots of things; passwords, history, auto-fill, extensions, themes, and more. When you open Chrome on a device, it will make sure that everything from extensions to your browsing history is available from all other linked devices however, you can pick and choose what is and isn’t synced.

To stop extensions from an instance of Chrome from being synced to other devices, you need to open Chrome and click the more options button at the top right. From the menu, select Settings. At the very top of the Settings page, you’ll see the sync options. Click ‘Sync and Google services’.

On the next page, click ‘Manage sync’.

The next page will show you switches for the various items that you can enable/disable sync for. Turn off the switch for ‘Extensions’. From this point forward, all activity from the browser will sync to other Chrome installations but extensions will not.

You’re free to install more extensions, remove some of the existing ones, and enable/disable the ones that are installed without worrying about it changing how Chrome is set up on your other devices.

Chrome sync is selective in nature and users have freedom to choose what is synced. The syncing options are grouped and not itemized i.e., you can enable or disable extension sync as a whole but you cannot disable one extension from syncing while allowing all others.

If this doesn’t do the trick for you, you might consider creating different Chrome profiles on the devices that you use Chrome on and making the changes to the extensions on a per-profile bases. The profiles will not sync data between themselves but data from one profile will always be available on other Chrome installations that sync using the same account. If you prefer nothing sync from a particular installation of Chrome, you can always disable sync in it.

VNote is a VIM-like markdown editor for Linux. The developer designed the app around a similar design philosophy to that of the VIM text editor and its feature set is friendly to programmers and advanced users looking to write the markdown markup language. Here’s how to install it on your Linux OS of choice.

Ubuntu/Debian installation instructions

The developer of the VNote application doesn’t have a DEB package for Ubuntu Linux, and there doesn’t seem to be any plans to change that. The only existing Linux-native package is an RPM for various releases of OpenSUSE Linux. Thankfully, this RPM package is easily converted to a DEB for use on Ubuntu.

The conversion of the VNote RPM package starts by downloading the RPM file directly from the internet, via the wget command in terminal.

Note: this process should also work on Debian Linux.

wget https://provo-mirror.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Chingyat/openSUSE_Leap_15.1/x86_64/vnote-2.5-lp151.2.1.x86_64.rpm

With the RPM file downloaded from the internet, install the Alien package conversion tool on your Linux PC. On Ubuntu, it’s the following command.

Note: need help getting the Alien package conversion tool working on your Linux PC? Follow our guide here.

sudo apt install alien

After installing the Alien package conversion tool, use it to generate an installable DEB package from the RPM file.

sudo alien -dvc vnote-2.5-lp151.2.1.x86_64.rpm

The output of the Alien package conversion tool is a DEB package with the label of “vnote_2.5-1_amd64.deb”. From here, install the file to your Ubuntu Linux PC with the dpkg command.

sudo dpkg -i vnote_2.5-1_amd64.deb

From here, you’ll need to install the Qt5 dependency that VNote requires to run correctly on Ubuntu.

sudo apt install libqt5webenginewidgets5

Once the “libqt5webenginewidgets5” package is set up on Ubuntu, the VNote markdown application should run flawlessly!

Arch Linux installation instructions

VNote has an Arch Linux AUR package available for installation. The package downloads and sets everything up quite nicely, which is excellent considering the developer has not provided a native Arch Linux package in the release section.

A few packages must be installed to get the VNote app to work on Arch Linux. These packages are “Base-devel” and “Git.” Without them, the AUR package will not build. Using the Pacman command, load up the packages.

sudo pacman -S base-devel git

After installing Git and Base-devel, download the latest VNote AUR package with the git clone command.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/vnote.git

Move the terminal session into the “vnote” folder using the CD command.

cd vnote

Build and install VNote on your Arch Linux PC with the makepkg command.

makepkg -sri

Fedora installation instructions

Fedora Linux isn’t officially supported by the developer of VNote, which is strange, as they do have official packages available for OpenSUSE Linux, and both Linux distributions use the same packaging format.

Getting the VNote markdown editing program working on Fedora Linux is pretty simple. To start, open up a terminal window and download the latest RPM package file from the OpenSUSE 15.1 LEAP software repository with the wget command.

wget https://provo-mirror.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Chingyat/openSUSE_Leap_15.1/x86_64/vnote-2.5-lp151.2.1.x86_64.rpm

After downloading the RPM package file to your Fedora Linux PC, install it with the dnf install command.

sudo dnf install vnote-2.5-lp151.2.1.x86_64.rpm

OpenSUSE installation instructions

On OpenSUSE Linux, the VNote application is extremely easy to get working, as there are dedicated software repositories for all current releases of the operating system (except 42.3, because of the QT version it has).

To install the VNote software on your OpenSUSE Linux PC, follow the instructions outlined below.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

To get the VNote app working on Tumbleweed, head over to the OBS page for VNote, and click the “1 Click Install” button under the “OpenSUSE Tumbleweed” section. Then, follow the on-screen instructions in YaST to get VNote.

OpenSUSE 15.1

For LEAP 15.1, go to the VNote OBS page, and scroll down till you find “OpenSUSE LEAP 15.1”. From there, click on the “1 Click Install” button next to one of the community packages to get the software set up.

AppImage installation instructions

If you’re using a Linux operating system that doesn’t support the RPM or DEB format, and can’t interact with the Arch Linux AUR, the only way to run the VNote application is to download the AppImage release of the program. To get your hands it, open up a terminal window and use the wget downloading tool command below.

wget https://github.com/tamlok/vnote/releases/download/v2.7.2/VNote-2.7.2-x86_64.AppImage

When the VNote AppImage file is done downloading to your Linux PC, create a new folder called “AppImages” in the home directory using the mkdir command.

mkdir -p ~/AppImages/

Using the mv command, move the VNote AppImage file into the newly created “AppImages” folder.

mv VNote-2.7.2-x86_64.AppImage ~/AppImages/

Once the VNote AppImage file is in the “AppImages” folder, it is time to update the permissions of VNote, so that the program can run successfully on the system.

sudo chmod +x VNote-2.7.2-x86_64.AppImage

With the permissions of VNote up to date, move the terminal session into the “AppImages” folder using the CD command.

cd ~/AppImages/

To launch the VNote AppImage, run the following command in a terminal window.

./VNote-2.7.2-x86_64.AppImage

Alternatively, to launch VNote without the terminal, launch the Linux file manager, click on “AppImages,” and double-click on the VNote app image. It is also possible to launch it by right-clicking it and selecting “run” or “execute” if your file manager supports it.

Sharing links between devices isn’t always easy. The only exception is if you’re using an iPhone and a Mac that have a shared clipboard. If you’re on a different desktop OS such as Linux or Windows 10, your ability to share links to another device runs into platform restrictions. Chrome has added a new feature to its stable release that lets you push links to other connected devices. The browser is easily one of the most popular browsers on the desktop and it has mobile versions for both Android and iOS. It’s a great way to share links between the various devices that you own. Here’s how the feature works.

Chrome connected devices

This feature relies on Chrome sync to work. A connected Chrome device is any device that has the Chrome browser installed and that has Chrome sync enabled. All devices must be using the same Google ID to sync data. Chrome sync is available on all versions of Chrome desktop and mobile.

Send links to connected devices – Chrome desktop

Open the link that you want to send in Chrome and right-click in the URL bar. From the context menu, select Send to your devices. Select a device from the sub-menu and then open Chrome on the device.

You will see a notification telling you that you’ve received a new tab. Tap it, and the link will open. On mobile devices, these notifications only appear in Chrome and are not send through the mobile OS’ notification system.

Send links to connected devices – Chrome mobile

On your mobile device, whether it’s Android or iOS, open the link you want to send to a device and tap the share button. A menu will open listing various options once of which will be ‘Send to your devices’. Tap it and then select the device you want to send the link to.

Go to the device that you sent the link to, and you will see an alert/notification (depending on the platform) telling you a link has been sent. If you tap it, it will open the link in a new tab.

If you’re sending links to a desktop via Chrome, the browser must be allowed to send notifications. Unlike its mobile version, the notifications on the desktop are delivered via the desktop OS’ notification system.

Adding new devices is pretty easy; all you have to do is install Chrome on the device and then sign in and enable sync via the same Google ID.

Hardware needs to be kept clean. You can let your laptop or a MacBook get fairly grimy before it starts to actually have an effect on how it runs e.g., letting dust and such build up inside it, but you should keep it as clean as you can. This obviously means cleaning spilled items even if it’s just a drop or two as soon as you can. On principle, you should shut a MacBook down when you’re cleaning it but if you need to clean it while it’s on, you may want to disable the keyboard to avoid accidental key presses.

Note: You can also just lock a MacBook and clean the keyboard. Any keys that are pressed won’t actually do anything since the lock screen will block them.

Disable the keyboard on macOS

If you’re not willing to shut down your MacBook or lock it for cleaning, or you’re just really interested in a way to disable the keyboard on macOS, there are two free apps that you can use.

The first is KeyboardCleanTool. The tools has been developed by the same person who made BetterTouchTool and it’s built for cleaning the keyboard. When the app is run, it will disable the keyboard but still allow you to use the trackpad or a mouse. Once you’re done cleaning it, click the app’s button and it will enable the keyboard.

The second app that works almost the same way, and is also free, is called KeyboardLocker. You can download it from the Mac App Store. The app disables everything from the keyboard to the trackpad the second it is launched. In order to enable the keyboard again, you have to tap the Command+Q keyboard shortcut.

It goes without saying that if you happen to have a pet that likes to step on your keyboard, or even sit on it, these apps might also be of some use to you. In fact, they’re probably more useful in that scenario since you can always turn your MacBook off or lock it for a little wipe down.

If you decide to use these apps to clean the keyboard, make sure you don’t have anything that will steal focus away from them. You might not be able to quit them if that were to happen. Scheduled actions can still be executed on the Mac even if keyboard input is disabled e.g., you can enable a timed screenshot and it will still be captured so be careful nothing sends them to the background. Neither of these apps are set to run at startup, nor do they have the option to be able to, and for good reason. Don’t try and force them to either.