The Netflix UWP app has subtitles like its web version however, like the web version, these subtitles are limited. If you search for them, you will find that subtitles are available in many other languages for quite a few titles but Netflix doesn’t have them. The app does let you load external subtitles but it seems the built-in option often results in a play-back error. Here’s how you can load external subtitles in Netflix UWP.
In order to load external subtitles in Netflix UWP, you need to install another UWP app from the Microsoft Store called Subtitles for Netflix. This app can find and download subtitles, and when loaded from inside its save location, the subtitles play fine in Netflix UWP.
Need to load external subtitles for Netflix web? You can.
External subtitles in Netflix UWP
Install Subtitles for Netflix from the Microsoft Store. Click the Search icon at the bottom and look for the subtitles you want. Enter the name of a movie or series, a season, episode, and the language you want the subtitles to be in. You can also select where subtitles are from.
Once the app finds the subtitles, go ahead and download.
After the download is complete, click the settings button at the bottom right and in the panel that opens, click ‘Open in File Explorer’. A File Explorer window will open. Click inside the location bar, and copy the path to the folder.
Open Netflix and play the title that you downloaded subtitles for. Pause it before it gets ahead and tap the Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T key. A select file dialog box will open. Use it to navigate to the folder location you copied earlier, and then select the subtitle file for the title.
Once selected, Netflix will load the file and display subtitles from it. You can play the title and the subtitles will appear in order.
The Netflix UWP app seems to support external subtitles but not very well. Loading them causes the app to freeze on occasion when using this app so if that happens, close the Netflix app and open it again. The app might freeze on occasion but you won’t get playback errors the way you get when you pick a subtitle file from elsewhere on your disk.
The Subtitles for Netflix app is likewise a bit buggy so if it tends to get stuck, close and open it again. The pair may not be the most stable apps when they work together but the disruption isn’t constant and mostly tolerable.
Not all media looks the same. Some might be dark e.g. a game or a much awaited battle scene in an otherwise well-shot TV series, and you may have to increase the brightness and contrast on your screen to comfortably view it. Other media might be a bit too bright, and you have to tone the brightness and contrast down to make it easier on the eyes. Getting these settings just right takes time which is why it’s a good idea to create display setting profiles for your screen. These profiles basically save the display configuration that’s currently set and allow you to switch to them whenever you need to.
In order to create display setting profiles, you need an app that can save and execute them. Nirsoft has a free utility called ControlMyMonitor that does the trick. Before you start using this app, you should know that in our tests, it did not work with an internal display. It did work fine with an external monitor. The app is free so there’s no harm trying it out with your own internal display.
Create display setting profiles
Download and run ControlMyMonitor. Allow it to detect your monitor’s settings. If you have a multi-monitor set up, you can open the dropdown at the top and select a different monitor. Wait for its settings to load.
Once the settings load, you can change them one-by-one, and the changes will be reflected live on your monitor. You can change all sorts of things in addition to the brightness and contrast. For items you don’t recognize, it’s best to leave them the way they are.
Once you have everything set up the way you want it, click the save icon and save the settings as a CFG file. Change the settings again to whatever you need, and again save them as a CFG file.
To load settings, go to File>Load Monitor Config and select the CFG file with the display settings you want to load.
Your display’s brightness, contrast, and other components should update to reflect the settings in the file. It is possible that if you’re using an external monitor, its input source changes when you load a CFG file. For example, my monitor is connected via an HDMI port but loading a CFG file makes it so that it looks for input via DVI. That’s easy enough to change. The app has small little flukes like this but it works great otherwise.
If the only thing you need to change about your display is its brightness, you can forgo using this app and just make do with custom power plans. Create different power plans that are identical except for the level of brightness that they use. You can use different apps to trigger a change in the power plan, or change it manually when you need to.
Apple has native screenshot tools on both iOS and macOS. As of 2017, it also added native a screencast tool to iOS. A screencast tool was already present on macOS though the company was thoughtful enough to also include a screenshot option for the touch bar. That said, the screenshot feature for the touch bar is just that; it takes still images of the input panel. If you want to record the touch bar, you’re going to have to get creative.
To be clear, you cannot record the touch bar. You can take screenshots but to record it, you’re going to have to make do with a hack. You will need to run a touch bar simulator. This will put a virtual touch bar on your screen that you can then record with the default screencast utility on macOS.
Record touch bar
It’s really easy to get a virtual touch bar on a Mac. It’s virtual so it doesn’t matter what year your MacBook is though you must be running macOS 12.2 or later. There’s an app called Touch Bar Simulator that does the job. Install and launch it and set up the touch bar for recording.
Once you’re ready to record, open Launchpad and look for the Screenshot utility under the ‘Others’ folder. Open it, and select the record option. Start the recording.
The touch bar will show the record controls along the left side and that isn’t something that you can avoid. The recording will include all activity on the touch bar. When you’re done, click the Stop button to end the recording.
The virtual touch bar’s title does indicate that it is a touch bar simulator but you will find that it replicates the real hardware perfectly. Any app that you might install for modifying the touch bar runs on this virtual touch bar without any problems.
If your MacBook does not have a touch bar, it’s preferences will not be present in the System Preferences app however, when you run this simulator, the options are duly added to the System Preferences app. There may be some niche areas where this virtual version doesn’t match the actual hardware but in most cases, it’s going to replicate it without any problems.
The screencast that you record will be high quality and all changes i.e., buttons etc., that happen on the touch bar will be recorded. If you need to create an instructional video for using the touch bar, or you need to demonstrate how an app works, this is as good a method as any to do so.
For Gnome users on Linux, the default icon theme is known as “Adwaita.” This default icon theme consists of brown folders and custom program icons for the Gnome family of applications.
Out of the box, the Adwaita icon theme doesn’t look too bad on the Gnome desktop, because over the years the developers have worked tirelessly to improve the theme. Still, despite all of the improvements to it, there are some glaring issues, such as missing icons for third-party applications. Additionally, while it does look decent, the design isn’t exactly the most exciting on Linux.
To fix the boring Adwaita icon theme on the Gnome desktop, Newaita icon was created. It takes a lot of design inspiration from Gnome’s own Adwaita icons but improves all app icons with a material design spin. The theme also provides users a dark variant of the theme, and different folder colors to choose from.
Note: the Newaita icon theme was designed to improve the overall look of Gnome’s default icons. That said, the icon works with all desktop environments, and not just Gnome Shell, so feel free to follow along and install it even if you’re using an alternative desktop environment.
Download Newaita icons
The Newaita theme is available for download to Linux users via GitHub. To download the latest Newaita icon files the “git” package must be installed on your system. To start the installation, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. With the terminal window open, follow the command-line instructions that correspond with the operating system you currently use.
Ubuntu
sudo apt install git
Debian
sudo apt-get install git
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S git
Fedora
sudo dnf install git
OpenSUSE
sudo zypper install git
Generic Linux
The source code for the “git” tool is located here. Download and compile it to get it working on your Linux OS, if “git” isn’t found in any repos.
Now that the “git” package is set up use it to download the latest Newaita icon files with the git clone command in a terminal window.
git clone https://github.com/cbrnix/Newaita.git
Downloading Newaita from GitHub will take a few minutes. The reason it takes time to download is that there are so many icon files to download. Be patient. When everything is done downloading, the icon data will be in “Newaita.”
Install Newaita icons
The Newaita icon files are downloaded to your Linux PC. The next step in the installation process is to place the icon files in the correct location on the system. To start the installation, open up a terminal window and follow the instructions outlined below.
Single-user
If you’re only planning on using the Newaita icon themes for one user account on your Linux PC, the best way to go about installing everything is in Single-user mode. Keep in mind that if other users want access to Newaita, you must log in to their account and follow these instructions as well.
Start by creating a new folder called “.icons” in the home directory with the mkdir command for the user in which you’re currently logged in as in the terminal window.
mkdir -p ~/.icons
Using the CD command, move into the newly downloaded “Newaita” folder.
cd Newaita
Move the icon files from the “Newaita” directory to the new “.icons” folder with the mv command.
mv Newaita/ ~/.icons/
mv Newaita-dark/ ~/.icons/
When the Newaita files are in place, close the terminal window and move on to the “Activating Newaita” portion of this tutorial.
System-wide
Looking to install the Newaita icon theme system-wide so every user on your Linux PC can have access to it? If so, start by opening up a terminal window and using the CD command to move into the “Newaita” directory.
cd Newaita
Next, move the Newaita icon theme files from your home directory where they were downloaded to the new icon folder with mv.
sudo mv Newaita/ /usr/share/icons/
sudo mv Newaita-dark/ /usr/share/icons/
When both folders are done moving to the “/usr/share/icons/” directory, Newaita is successfully installed system-wide on your Linux PC. Move down to the “Activating Newaita” section of the guide to learn how to enable it as the default icon set.
Activating Newaita
After installing the Newaita icon theme on your Linux PC, it must be enabled as the default icon theme. To enable it as the default icon theme on your system, open up “Settings,” and look for “appearance,” “icons,” or “themes,” or similar settings.
When you’ve made your way into the icon settings for your Linux desktop environment, switch over to the default icons to “Newaita” or “Newaita Dark,” and your desktop should instantly switch over to the new theme.
Are you having issues enabling the Newaita icon theme on your Linux PC? Do yourself a favor and take a look at the linked list of desktops below to learn all about how to change the default icon theme on Linux.
Minecraft is an open world where you can make just about anything if you’re creative enough. The world does have its rules but you’ll be surprised to learn how players work around them, and the little hidden tricks the game has for players to discover to this day. It’s ten years old but you can still learn something new like how you can change the text color for signs in Minecraft.
Signs can be made out of any type of wood but the default color for them is black. It’s fine if your sign is made of Oak but if you’re using Dark Oak, it’s hard to read. Here’s how you can change the text color for signs. This works for both the Java version and the UWP version of the app.
The Section symbol
In order to change text color for signs, you need to declare the color before you start entering the text for the sign. The color is declared by entering the Section symbol § followed by the color code. On Windows 10, you can enter this symbol by holding down the Alt key and tapping 0167 on the number pad.
Color codes
Minecraft has different color codes. You can check what each color looks like by visiting DigMinecraft. The codes for the respective colors are as below;
Color
Code
Dark Red
§4
Red
§c
Gold
§6
Yellow
§e
Dark Green
§2
Green
§a
Aqua
§b
Dark Aqua
§3
Dark Blue
§1
Blue
§9
Light Purple
§d
Dark Purple
§5
White
§f
Gray
§7
Dark Gray
§8
Black
§0
Using color codes
Now that you know what color code to use, you can start changing the color of the text. In Minecraft, place a sign and enter the text editing mode. Enter the section symbol followed by the color code. Without adding any extra space, enter the text you want to show on the sign. If the text overflows to another line, you will have to enter the color code before the second line.
Example
§fThis is a test §fsign
You can also apply bold, underline, and italic styles to text. They will each require a code of their own and they can be used with color codes.
Style codes
The codes for the various styles are given below;
Description
Code
Bold
§l
Strikethrough
§m
Underline
§n
Italic
§o
If you want to use both a color code and a style code, reference the example below to use them.
§f§lsign text
This will give you bold white text. Again, you will have to enter this at the start of each line on the sign. If the text overflows to a second line and this code isn’t present at the start, the text color of the second line will be the default black.
Virtualization isn’t something the average user needs, or even knows about. It’s needed if you for example, have to run virtual machines and the average user doesn’t really need to do that. That’s why, even if your system supports it, virtualization will not be enabled by default. You may have to enable it from Windows 10 or from your BIOS.
Virtualization can be enabled easily enough but your system, or more precisely, your processor should support it and not all of them do. If your processor doesn’t support virtualization, you cannot enable it. Here’s how you can check if an Intel processor supports virtualization or not.
Intel Processor virtualization support
There are two ways to check if your Intel Processor supports virtualization or not; you can look up the specifications for the processor on Intel’s official website, or you can use a hardware detection app from Intel to check virtualization support.
Processor specifications
Intel has detailed specifications for its processors available on its website. The only thing you need is to know what model and generation your processor is. Open Task Manager and go to the Performance tab. Select CPU in the column on the left, and in the pane on the right, look at the top right corner. Copy the name for the processor. If Virtualization is already enabled though, you will see a line indicating the same below the graph.
Next, visit this link, and select the type of processor you have. Consult the processor name to determine which type you have. I have a Core i7, 6th generation processor.
Clicking on the type of processor you have will reveal an exhaustive list of every single chip that Intel has produced of that type. Here, you need to look for the number assigned to your chip. Once you find it, click it to go to the processor’s specification page. Scroll down to the Advanced Technologies section and look for ‘Virtualization’.
Intel® Processor Identification Utility
This tool basically gives you the same information that the website does but you don’t have to be bothered selecting which processor you have. Download the Intel® Processor Identification Utility and install it. It will ask to send Intel data about your system during installation so pay attention to what prompts you accept and decline.
Run the app, and expand the CPU Technologies section to view virtualization support on the chip.
If your CPU supports virtualization but you’re unable to use it on Windows 10, it likely means it needs to be enabled from BIOS. You will have to dig around until you find the setting. In some cases, your BIOS might simply have blocked access to it in which case, you might have to tinker with the BIOS yourself to unlock access. This is not something you should take on lightly as you might end up bricking the system. Consult a professional.
If your CPU doesn’t support virtualization, you cannot force it to. There’s no hack or work around that will add it. You will have to buy better hardware.
Those that play video games on Linux computers typically (but not always) use USB gaming headsets to listen to the sounds coming from games they play. The reason that most Linux gamers go with headsets is that they come with stellar headphone speakers and allow for a better, more clear audio experience. They also come with pretty good microphones, and these are used for team chat during gameplay.
USB gaming headsets is excellent, and they make playing video games on Linux a much better experience. However, they’ve got some issues. The main problem with these gaming headsets is that they plug in via USB. These types of headsets aren’t bad on Linux, but since these devices are powered by USB, they have their sound system and register as a different device from the main sound card on the PC. As a result, the Linux system often doesn’t switch to it when it’s plugged in, and it can force game audio to go through speakers, rather than the headset.
Switch between speakers and USB gaming headset
To fix the problem of game sound going through the speakers instead of your USB gaming headset on Linux, you’ll need to install a pulse audio sound tool called Pavucontrol. It gives you an easy, all in one place to control every aspect of the Linux sound system very easily.
To install the Pavucontrol app, open up a terminal window with Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, follow the command-line instructions below that match the Linux OS you use.
Ubuntu
The Pavucontrol volume app is available to all Ubuntu Linux users through primary software sources. If you’re using Ubuntu and need to install it, use the Apt command below.
sudo apt install pavucontrol
Debian
Debian users looking to get the Pavucontrol tool can install it through the “Main” software repo. To start the installation, use the Apt-get command below.
sudo apt-get install pavucontrol
Arch Linux
On Arch Linux, the Pavucontrol application is in the “Extra” software repository. To install it, ensure you have “Extra” enabled. Then, use the Pacman command below to start the installation process.
sudo pacman -S pavucontrol
Fedora
Using Fedora Linux and need to install Pavucontrol? Lucky for you, the app is ready to install via the default Fedora Linux software repositories. To start the installation, use the Dnf command below.
sudo dnf install pavucontrol
OpenSUSE
Pavucontrol is ready to install for all OpenSUSE users via the “Oss all” software repo. If you’d like to install it on your system, use the Zypper command below.
sudo zypper install epiphany
Once the Pavucontrol tool is installed on your Linux PC, open it up by searching for “pavucontrol.” Or, press Alt + F2, type in “pavucontrol” and launch it with your desktop’s quick launcher.
Set headset as default
To switch audio interfaces from the default sound system on your Linux PC, you must navigate to the “Configuration” tab in the app. Once in the “Configuration” area of Pavucontrol, you’ll see a list of sound devices that Linux can detect and use. Look through this list for your computer speakers, HDMI audio out, or other audio devices not related to the USB gaming headset.
Click the drop-down menu next to each device that isn’t your USB gaming headset, and set it to “off.” Setting it to this option may seem like a bit much, but by shutting it off, your Linux OS will not try to switch audio back to other audio devices when using the headset.
After disabling all other sound devices, look for your USB headset, and ensure that it’s enabled with default audio settings (like Digital Output + Digital Input, Analog Output + Analog Input, Analog Stereo Duplex, etc.) From here on out, the Linux sound system will only use your USB gaming headset to play sounds.
Switch sound devices back
After playing video games, you may wish to stop using the USB gaming headset as the default sound device on your Linux PC, and switch everything back to normal.
To switch everything back to normal, open up the Pavucontrol application on your Linux desktop. From there, find the “Configuration” tab and select it to show your list of available sound devices.
In the “Configuration” area of Pavucontrol, set the USB gaming headset profile to “Off.” Configuring the USB gaming headset’s profile so that it’s set to “Off” will tell the Linux sound system to stop using it entirely.
When you’ve disabled the USB gaming headset in Pavucontrol, look through for your computer speakers that were previously disabled and turn them on with one of the available profiles in the drop-down menu.
As soon as the speakers are turned back on in Pavucontrol, the audio output should switch from the USB gaming headset back to your speakers!
The Realtek 8812AU is a wireless chipset that can handle network connections in AC (5Ghz,) and lesser 2GHz connections too. The chipset is most notable in use in the Netgear A6100 USB WiFi adapter. By default, this wireless chipset doesn’t work on Linux via open-source drivers in the kernel. It does have support for Ubuntu Linux though, as there are non-free drivers that the operating system will set up during the initial installation process. Aside from Ubuntu’s support for the A6100, other Linux distributions have virtually no support.
Since there isn’t very good support for the Netgear A6100 USB WiFi adapter by default on Linux, users looking to use the Realtek 8812AU WiFi card on Linux must manually install the drivers into their own Linux kernel. Given how hard it can be to install drivers on Linux, we’ll show you an easy, step-by-step process on how to enable it.
Note: these instructions work with all USB WiFi devices that use the Realtek 8812AU chipset.
Set up the building environment
The Realtek 8812AU WiFi driver for Linux requires that it be built from source code. So, before downloading the driver, you must install the necessary build-time software packages.
Installing the build-time packages on Linux requires the terminal. To open up a terminal window, press Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, once you have access to the command-line, follow the installation instructions that correspond with your Linux distribution below.
Ubuntu
Click on “Software & Updates” and select “Additional Drivers.” From there, you’ll be able to easily install the WiFi drivers for this device, with no need to build the code from source.
Realtek’s 8812AU driver files are on the internet, hosted via GitHub. To get the driver files necessary to make WiFi cards with the Realtek 8812AU chipset work on Linux, use the git clone command below.
Let the files download to the “/usr/src/8812au-4.2.2/” directory. They must go to this directory, or the driver, once installed, will not work with DKMS. After everything is done downloading, use the CD command to move your terminal session into the “/usr/src/8812au-4.2.2/” directory.
cd /usr/src/8812au-4.2.2/
Building drivers and installing them on Linux requires root privileges. To gain root privileges with your current user, make use of the sudo -s command, as it will keep the command-line shell in the current working directory, but switch to root for the user.
sudo -s
Using the cp command, copy the included ” 8812au.ko” driver file to the module directory of the Linux kernel you currently run. To make this easy, we’ve added the $uname -r command. It’ll auto-detect the kernel information.
Once the driver file is in the correct location, run the depmod command.
depmod
Running depmod should take a couple of seconds, and no output should print into the terminal. When it’s done, the terminal is useable again.
At this point, the USB driver should be up and running, and there’s no need to go further if you do not require DMKS. However, please understand that skipping the DKMS steps means that the driver needs to be manually re-installed after each kernel update.
DKMS setup
DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) is a framework for the Linux kernel that allows third-party Linux kernel modules (like this WiFi driver) to be automatically re-installed every time the Linux kernel receives a new update.
Setting up this driver in DKMS is an excellent idea, and it will take a lot of the headache of setting up your Netgear AC1600 USB device, or any other WiFi USB device using the Realtek 8812AU chipset.
To start the DMKS setup, add the 8812au module to the DKMS system with the dkms add command.
dkms add -m 8812au -v 4.2.2
After adding the module with the add command, it’s time to build it into the Linux kernel. Building through DKMS is done with the dkms build command.
dkms build -m 8812au -v 4.2.2
Building shouldn’t take a long time, as the module is already installed on the system. If you run into any errors in the terminal during the build, reboot your Linux PC and try the dkms build command again, and everything should work fine.
When the module is built with dkms, you can install it using dkms.
sudo dkms install -m 8812au -v 4.2.2
With all of the DMKS stuff out of the way, use the echo command below to ensure that the driver automatically loads up at boot.
echo 8812au | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
Assuming you’ve followed all of the steps correctly, your Realtek 8812AU WiFI card should work perfectly on Linux!
Ads are how online content is ‘paid’ for. The content might be a useful article, or it might be a hosted file that you can download. In either case, ads keep the lights on and allow you to consume the content you need for free. Sure, the ads are annoying but they’re necessary. That said, not all ads are the same. A good, reasonable ad shouldn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. It should look like an ad, and act like an ad. Unfortunately, when it comes to software repositories, you often get ads disguised as download buttons. Users are highly likely to click on these ads thinking they’re the real thing and end up with countless pop ups opening. Here’s a simple way to identify real download links and buttons.
Identify real download links and buttons
This trick works in practically all browsers and doesn’t require that you install any add-ons or extensions. What it does require is that you do not compulsively click items on a web page. Navigate to a web page with a download button or link. It may have several of them, or just the one. The point is to find out if the one you see is real or not.
Hover the mouse cursor over a link or button and you will see a small bar appear at the bottom of the window. This bar is part of your browser’s UI and it reveals the link that you’re about to click. Look at the URL and the domain that it links to will reveal it.
In the screenshot below, the download button is on MediaFire and the link that’s revealed also shows that it links to MediaFire. The name of the file is also part of the URL. All this indicates that the download button is real and clicking it will start the download.
If the link were an ad, the URL would contain the name of an ad related service or domain. For example, if the ad being shown is powered by Google, the domain name will show Googleadservices. Likewise, there are plenty of other ad services that are used and they can all be identified by looking at the URL.
The same trick works for links and for buttons. Once you’ve identified which is the correct link, you can click it and download the file. Some downloads are hidden behind ads i.e., you have to click the ad and view it for a certain period of time before you’re taken to the actual download page. In such a case, this method is of no use because the real download button/link simply won’t appear until you interact with the ad first.
PCs can have a single graphics card, or they can have a graphics card and a dedicated GPU. It all depends on what you buy. A PC with a dedicated GPU will cost more but it will be more capable than a PC without one. If you’re looking to run games, or other apps that are graphics-intense, you will need a GPU to run them smoothly. If an app needs to use the high performance graphics card, it will automatically do so, or Windows 10 will decide which graphics card it should use. If you need to force an app to use the GPU, you can, provided it’s a desktop app and your GPU’s control panel has the option to force the app to run with it.
If you need to force UWP apps to use the GPU, you may not be able to use the same method that you can use for desktop apps. Your GPUs own control panel may not support it or it may not be able to select a UWP app. If you’re on Windows 10 though, you can force the change through the OS.
Force UWP app to use GPU
Open the Settings app and go to the System group of settings. Select the Display tab and look for the ‘Graphics Settings’ option.
On the Graphics Settings screen, open the dropdown under ‘Choose an app to set preference’. Select ‘Universal app’ under type, and then open the next dropdown. You will see a list of all UWP apps installed on your system. Select the app that you want to run with the GPU, and then click Add.
Once the app has been added, select it and click ‘Options’. A pop-up will open where you can select which graphics card is going to be used to run the app. Select the ‘High performance’ option which will force the app to use the GPU. Click Save and then open the app.
You can check from Task Manager which graphics card is being used by the app. Open the Task Manager and look for the app on the Processes tab. Select it, and then look in the GPU Engine column.
Since this setting is imposed by Windows 10, it seems that it takes a little time for the hand-off to be made. During tests, when I first ran Minecraft, Task Manager showed that it was using GPU 0 which is the on-board graphics card however, by the time the game’s home screen had loaded, it was using GPU 1.
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