Exciting tips

Hot corners are a macOS feature that allow you to activate certain features of the OS by moving your mouse cursor to one of four corners on the screen. It’s a neat feature that is easy to replicate on Windows 10. On macOS, they’re fairly popular however, the way a hot corner is activated might be counter intuitive. Moving the cursor off to a corner of a screen is something many do as a matter of routine. If you find the feature to be useful but wish it could be activated differently, there’s a built-in option on macOS that lets you activate hot corners with modifier keys.

Activate hot corners with modifier keys

Open System Preferences and select the Desktop & Screen Saver preference. Go to the Screen Saver tab, and at the bottom right, click Hot Corners.

You will see the familiar Hot Corner configuration window appear. Open any one of the dropdowns and highlight the feature you want to activate with the hot corner. While highlighting it, tap the modifier key or keys that you want to use to activate it. For example, if you want to show the desktop when you move the mouse cursor to the bottom right of the screen, but you want to do so only when you’re holding down the Command key, press it and select Desktop from the dropdown. You can use any combination of modifier keys for a single hot corner.

Click Ok, and the change will be applied.

Use hot corner with modifier keys

In order to use a hot corner with modifier keys, you need to first hold down the modifier key that you’ve configured for a hot corner, and then click and drag the mouse cursor to the specific corner.

If you’ve set multiple modifier keys to be used with a hot corner, you need to press them all at once. It’s a lot like a keyboard shortcut except a mouse gesture is also involved.

These modifier keys are added on a per-hot corner basis which means that some hot corners can have them while others can still be activated with just a mouse gesture. It’s a great way to keep yourself from accidentally activating a hot corner without disabling the feature and without installing extra apps to handle the job.

If you want to remove modifier keys from a hot corner, simply open the dropdown again and select a feature but without holding down any modifier keys when making the selection.

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Minesweeper is an old game. It was one of the earlier games that could be played on computers back in the 60s and 70s. It’s gone through a lot of variations however, the version that was popularized by Microsoft when it introduced the game on its Windows OS is what most people recognize. There are lots of other iterations of this game but that particular one seems to have stuck with most users. You can still play Classic Minesweeper on Windows 10, however, there are also lots of apps that let you Classic Minesweeper on macOS. Minesweeper – Classic Game is one app that’s both free, and that fits the bill.

Classic Minesweeper on macOS

Download Minesweeper – Classic Game from the Mac App Store.

Run the app and you’ll have Classic Minesweeper. This app replicates the game and not so much the version that Microsoft released for Windows. You get three difficulty levels; Easy, Hard, and Expert. The same rules apply to win the game. You have to avoid the mines or the game ends with every single one of them going off.

The game doesn’t have any settings other than the option to turn the sound off.

We mentioned earlier that this app doesn’t replicate the app that Microsoft introduced and to that end, it doesn’t let you create a custom grid for the game. The ‘Easy’ level gives you a smaller grid to play on with the other two levels giving you larger grids to play.

There are other Minesweeper apps available for macOS, some paid, some free. If you’re looking for something a little different, give ProximityMines: Minesweeper a try. The app is free but the free version only allows you to play on a small grid at the easiest level. For more advanced features, you have to buy the full version with costs about $5 and will unlock everything.

There are also online versions of the game as well so you’re not starved for choice.

Minesweeper isn’t exactly a complex game but it’s a fun puzzle game to play to kill a little time. No version of it is ever going to be demanding enough that you’d need a high-performance Mac. Even an older version will do however, with Catalina only a few months away from being released to everyone, these two apps are a good option because they’re both 64-bit. Catalina will no longer allow 32-bit apps to run so make sure any new apps you install are 64-bit.

The Mate desktop is based on Gnome 2.X, which has been around for more than ten years. Since it’s based on such old technology, it’s very reliable and rarely runs into issues. However, “almost” isn’t a 100% success rate, and unfortunately, sometimes issues can come up and stop your workflow. When these problems arise, many Linux users don’t know what to do to fix it. Here’s how to fix a frozen Mate Linux desktop.

Refresh the Mate panel

Most of the time when a crash or freeze happens on the Mate desktop, the panel is at fault. Panel crashes, even among stable well-tested software like Mate can occur, due to numerous factors, such as running out of memory, third-party panel applets, and so on. The best way to fix this problem is to refresh the broken panel.

Refreshing a non-working Mate panel is a little tricker than refreshing modern desktop environments such as Gnome Shell. The reason? Mate is built on an older release of the Gnome desktop, which never had a built-in “refresh” feature. As a result, you’ll need to take things into your own hands using the terminal.

To access a terminal window on your Mate desktop, press Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From here, run the pidof command on “mate-panel,’ the name of the process that handles the panel on Mate.

pidof mate-panel

Running the pidof command will return a number output. This number output is the process ID for the panel program. From here, you’ll be able to kill the frozen/broken Mate panel with the kill command.

kill process-id-from-pidof

Alternatively, if killing the program with the kill command and pidof doesn’t work for you, try the killall command along with “mate-panel.”

killall mate-panel

Once you’ve “killed” the panel, Mate should automatically bring up a new, working panel instantaneously, and your problems should be solved. If the system doesn’t bring up a new panel, you can call it in manually with the command below.

mate-panel &

Refresh the Mate window manager

Another reason the Mate desktop environment can lock up, freeze or crash is due to the Marco window manager. Usually, these crashes are due to the age of the window manager, or bugs, or various other factors.

Refreshing the Mate window manager (Marco,) much like the Mate Panel needs to be done in the command-line mainly because there isn’t a built-in refresh option for Marco in system settings.

Open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From there, run the marco –replace command. Be sure to add in the & symbol to instruct the Bash shell to place this command in the background.

marco --replace &

As you run the above command in the terminal on your Mate PC, the Mate window manager should instantly refresh itself and send the running command into the background. Now, run the disown command to disconnect Marco from your running shell.

disown

Once the disown command is run, any problems with the Mate window management system should be resolved!

Make a reset script

Refreshing the Mate desktop environment with the commands above is pretty useful, as it enables you to save yourself quickly. However, if you’re not a fan of remembering multiple commands to fix your Mate session, you’ll be happy to know that this can all be solved with a quick reset script.

The first step in creating a reset script is to make a new, blank file in your home directory (~). Using the touch command, make the blank “mate-reset” file.

touch mate-reset

With the new “mate-reset” file created, open it up in the Nano text editor for editing purposes.

nano -w mate-reset

Paste the first line of code at the top of the script. This code is known as a “shebang” and will let the Bash shell know what to do with the script file.

#!/bin/bash

Following the first line of code, press the Enter key to make a new line. Then, add the second line of code which will reset the Mate panel.

killall mate-panel

After the panel reset command, press Enter to make yet another new line. Then, add in the final line of code for the script, which will reset the Mate window manager.

marco --replace &

Save the edits to the script in Nano by pressing Ctrl + O, and close it with Ctrl + X. From there, update the permissions and install “mate-reset” into the “/usr/bin/” directory.

sudo chmod +x mate-reset

sudo mv mate-reset /usr/bin/

Once the Mate reset script is in the “/usr/bin/” directory, you’ll be able to reset your Mate desktop by pressing Alt + F2, and entering the command below.

mate-reset

Windows search can find just about anything on your Windows drive. If you like the feature enough, you can extend the search to other drives on your system. There are other apps/utilities that you can install if you find Windows search isn’t as effective or you can search for files and folders from Command Prompt. Here’s how.

Search for files and folders from Command Prompt

Command Prompt can search a particular drive, or a specific folder for files and folders. By default, assuming you’re running it with ordinary user rights, it opens to your user folder and you may, or may not want to search that particular folder. This is why you need to know how to move Command Prompt to a different location.

If you want to search other non-window drives, you will need to switch to it first with the following command;

Syntax

drive_letter:

Example

D:

To move to a different folder, use the command below. The quote marks are only necessary if you have folders that have a space in their names in the path that you’re entering but it’s best to make a habit out of adding them

Syntax

cd "path-to-folder"

Example

cd "D:\Images"

Search for files by type

The following command allows you to search the current folder for all files of a particular type.

Syntax

dir /b/s *.file_extension

Example

dir /b/s *.png

The above command will look for all PNG files in the current directory and its sub-folders. The /s switch tells the command to include sub-folders, and the /b switch displays files without including metadata making the list easy to read.

Search for files by name

To search for files by name, use the following command;

Syntax

dir *file_name*.* /s

Example

dir *arrow*.* /s

The above command will look for all files that match the file name you entered regardless of the file type. If you want to narrow the search down by file type, enter the file extension after the period.

Example

dir *arrow*.jpg /s

Search for folders

To search a folder for sub-folders, use the following command;

Syntax

dir "Name of folder to search" /AD /b /s

Example

dir Images /AD /b /s

Remember that the above command will search the folder you enter for sub-directories. If you want to search a different folder, use the cd command to move to where the folder is located and then run the command.

Search for folder with unknown name

If you’re not sure what the name of a folder is, you can use the following command.

Syntax

dir /s/b /A:D "D:*partial-name-of-folder*"

Example

dir /s/b /A:D "D:*Stea*"

Minecraft doesn’t have the fanciest, most high-end graphics. It is, after all, a game made of blocks however, users have been able to make it look much better than it does out of the box with texture packs. Texture packs are great but if you want to add a hyper-real look to Minecraft, shaders are the way to go. Here’s how you can install Shaders on Minecraft UWP for Windows 10.

Shaders for Minecraft UWP

There aren’t a lot of Shaders available for Minecraft UWP. Those that are built for the Java version will not work with the UWP version of the game which means your choices are going to be limited. That said, you can still find a few nice looking shaders for the game. Just make sure it is built for Windows 10 or for the UWP version of the app. For the sake of this post, we’re going with the Chocapic Shaders. Go ahead and look for any other shader and download it. It will download as a .mcpack file.

Install Shaders for Minecraft UWP

Navigate to the folder that you downloaded the Shader to. By default, it will be detected as a file that can be opened with Minecraft. Double-click it and it will open Minecraft. You will see a ‘Import Started’ message.

The import only takes a few seconds so you should see another message telling you the import was successful.

Click the Settings button on the game’s welcome screen and then select ‘Global Resources’ from the column on the left. In the pane on right, you will see the Shader that you added. Select it, and click the plus button to add it. Return to the main screen.

The Shader will take a few seconds to load but once it does, the world view behind the buttons on the main Minecraft screen will change to reflect the Shaders that you added. Go ahead and load up a world to play in.

Uninstall Shaders

If you want to remove a shader from Minecraft, you can unload it so that only the default texture loads or you can uninstall it completely. To unload a shader, open Minecraft, click the Settings button, and in the column on the left, select Global Resources. In the pane on the right, select the Shader and click the minus button under it. This will unload it.

To uninstall it, tap the Win+R keyboard shortcut to open the Run box. Enter the following, and tap the Enter key.

%LocalAppData%

In the folder that opens, navigate to the following location and delete the shader from the ‘resource_packs’ folder.

Packages\Microsoft.MinecraftUWP_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\games\com.mojang\resource_packs

Limitations

Shaders tend to slow down Minecraft or they require a more capable system for the game to run smoothly. You might see the UWP version slow down considerably after installing a shader.

A shader for Minecraft UWP is a lot like a texture pack with some differences. These differences are more pronounced on the Java version but not so much with the UWP version. You will have to manage your own expectations here.

A torrent isn’t always a single file. It can be multiple files that are all downloaded via a single torrent. These files may, or may not be in a particular sequence but if they are, and you want to download them in that sequence you have two options. There’s a manual way to do it which requires time, constant user intervention, and it works on any and all torrent clients. The second method works but with specific torrent clients only.

Download torrent files in sequence

The first method, which works regardless which torrent client you’re using requires that you skip all files except the first one that you want to download. When the first file has been downloaded, you will have to manually select the second file and begin downloading it.

Disclaimer: The screenshot below is for illustrative purposes only. Do not pirate copyright protected content.

Go ahead and add the torrent. Allow it to load a list of the files it will download. Select all the files except the first one in the sequence, right-click one of the selected files, and select the ‘Don’t Download’ option from the context menu.

When the first download is complete, select the second file, right-click it, and select Start.

If you don’t want to have to manually intervene each time a file download completes, you can use the qBittorrent client. It has an option automatically download file in sequence. The client is free, and open-source. Go ahead and install it. When you add a torrent, there’s an option to ‘Download in sequential order’. Select it, and then add the torrent to the client. The files in the torrent will now download in sequence. The files must already be sorted into a sequence for this to work.

There are some other clients that have this same option but we can’t give you an exhaustive list of them all. If you’d rather not use the qBittorrent client, check if the one you prefer has a similar setting. If it doesn’t, and it also doesn’t support plugins, or a plugin that adds this feature isn’t available, you’re going to have to switch torrent clients.

For what it’s worth, qBittorrent isn’t a bad client by any measure. It has more than just the basic features that a torrent client has and clearly, a few more than the basic ones. The UI might be a bit outdated for Windows 10 but there are apps out there that look far worse.

Quick look is feature on macOS that allows you to quickly preview a file. It supports quite a few different file formats and it’s so popular, there are apps that replicate it on Windows 10. The feature is great because it’s quick but if Quick Look tends to get stuck, or takes a long time to actually show the file you want to preview, it defeats the purpose of having it. If you have Quick Look stuck at loading, here’s how you can fix it.

Fix Quick Look stuck at loading

Open Finder and navigate to the following location;

~/Library/QuickLook

Here, there should be a file called DropboxQL.qlgenerator if you use Dropbox on your Mac. Delete this file. If you do not use Dropbox on your Mac, you can skip this step however, if other cloud service apps are installed on your system, and one of them has a “qlgenerator” file in this location, delete it.

Next, Restart Finder. Tap the Command+Option+Escape keyboard shortcut, select Finder, and click Relaunch.

After you restart Finder, open Terminal and run the following command. You will need to authenticate with your user password.

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

The command takes about a minute to complete but it may take less or more time depending on your system.

This next step might take a little time. Open Activity Monitor. You can open it from the Launchpad, or you can search for it via Spotlight. Once it’s open, look for all Quick Look processes. Tap the Q key and it will jump to the first process that begins with that letter. Keep tapping it until you find a Quick Look process. With the process highlighted, click the close button at the top (see screenshot below) to quit it. Repeat this for all Quick Look processes. Additionally, look for and quit all QuickLookSatellite processes.

Restart Finder again the same way you did before. When you next select a file and tap the Spacebar, the Quick Look preview will open much faster.

We’ve highlighted Dropbox as one of the apps that may cause problems with Quick Look but it may not be the only one. Other cloud service apps might also be to blame, and desktop apps i.e., those that do not work with an online service might also be causing the problem. As such, those apps may have a qlgenerator in the Quick Look folder. You can try deleting them. It won’t have any long or short term negative effects on your Mac. The files will automatically be generated again when you use Quick Look.

Sticky Notes was recently updated. The update came a few days before Windows 10 1903 was released which means if you’re on Windows 10 1809, or even 1803, you can still get the updated Sticky Notes app. The update has one highlight feature; you can finally pin sticky notes on virtual desktops.

The notes that you open on a particular desktop will be pinned to it. If you switch away from the desktop, the note will not reappear on the desktop you’ve switched to.

Pin sticky notes on virtual desktops

You can create a note on any desktop, and then pin it to a different one or you can create it directly on the desktop that you want to pin it to.

If you’ve already created the note, switch over to the virtual desktop and then open the note that you want to pin. That’s all you have to do. Switch to a different virtual desktop and the note won’t follow. It will remain on the desktop that you opened it on.

Likewise, if you create a note on a certain virtual desktop, and close the app (not the note itself), it will remain on that desktop. Every time you switch to the desktop, you will see your note pinned there. To get rid of the note, simply close it.

If you want to move the note i.e., pin it to a different virtual desktop, close the note on the desktop that it is open on. Switch to the virtual desktop that you want to open the note on, and open it there.

Of course, you can also move sticky notes from the task view. Open a sticky note on any virtual desktop. Switch over to the task view by clicking the task view button on the taskbar. Right-click the sticky note and select Move to from the context menu. Select the desktop that you want to move the note to from the sub-menu.

After this update, the sticky notes are all individual windows. This allows them to be pinned to desktops. It’s a small change but a good one that enables this feature to work. The new windows are indicated by their buttons/icons on the taskbar and they might confuse users since it wasn’t exactly mentioned the app would work that way but it’s a smooth transition otherwise.

If you haven’t updated to Windows 10 1903, open the Microsoft Store app and check for updates. The update should be available globally by now.

Removing an Ubuntu installation from a dual-boot setup and restoring Windows is something that users looking to stop using Linux want to know. Sadly, not a lot of information is out there for new users, and as a result, many that try to delete Ubuntu from a Windows/Linux dual-booting setup often break their computers.

In this guide, we’ll go over in-depth how to completely remove Ubuntu from your computer and restore the Windows boot manager. However, before we begin, please back up all critical data from your Windows partition to an external hard drive to prevent any data loss if an accident occurs. Be sure also to back up your data on your Ubuntu installation as well, as it will be deleted during this process.

Note: though this guide focuses on Windows 10, any recent release of Windows (7/8/8.1) works with the instructions in this guide, though the repair functions will differ.

Create Windows installation USB disk

Fixing a system so that it no longer loads up Ubuntu and only has Windows on it starts by creating a Windows installation disk, as the installation disk, in addition to coming with a fresh version of Windows, has some recovery utilities that we can use to remove Ubuntu.

To create a Windows installation disk on your Ubuntu partition, download a free copy of Windows 10 from Mircosoft, and follow this guide to learn how to create an installation disk. Or load into the Windows partition on your system, download Windows, and create your USB live disk with this app here.

When the disk is made, reboot your computer and load into the Windows installation system. You may need to access your BIOS settings to boot from USB.

Cleare out the Grub bootloader

With the Windows installation USB disk created and ready to go, it’s time to take the first step in uninstalling Ubuntu Linux: clearing out the Grub bootloader screen that appears during a reboot.

To get rid of the boot screen through the Windows installation USB, you need to select the “Repair my computer” button, followed by “troubleshoot.”

Once you select the Troubleshoot option, you’ll be taken to a blue screen with a few tools to repair a non-working Windows 10 install. Look for the “Command-prompt” option, and select it with the mouse to access the command-line in Windows 10 for your PC.

Inside of the command prompt window in the Windows 10 installation disk, only one command needs to be run. This command will set the Windows boot manager as the default boot option on your computer.

bootrec /fixmbr

After running the bootrec command on the Windows 10 installation disk, type in the exit command to return to the repair selection screen. After that, reboot your PC, and unplug the USB, as it is no longer necessary to get rid of Ubuntu.

Delete Ubuntu partitions

Now that the bootloader for Ubuntu is removed as default on your computer, it’s time to delete Ubuntu from your hard drive. The way to do this is with a partition editor that comes with Windows 10. To access the Windows 10 partition editor, start by pressing the Win + S key on your keyboard. From there, type in “partition,” and a search result should appear that says “Create and format hard disk partitions”. Click on this search result to launch the Windows 10 partition editing tool.

Inside of the Windows 10 partition editor, you’ll notice quite a few partitions on the main hard drive. These partitions are labeled by “volume” in a descending list. Look through the list and determine which ones are related to Windows. Once you’ve figured out which ones are Windows’ volumes, write them down on a piece of paper to ensure that you don’t accidentally delete them.

Note: with UEFI, ignore any Fat32 partitions, as the bootrec command re-writes the Linux boot, so deletion isn’t necessary.

After taking note at the Windows-related partitions, find the Ubuntu-related once. These ones will have no drive label, or any other information, other than “healthy primary partition”.

Select the partition in the graphic layout with the mouse. Once you’ve made the selection, right-click on the partition to open up the right-click mouse menu. From there, look through the mouse-menu and choose the “Delete Volume” option.

As soon as you select the “Delete Volume” button, a message will appear that says “The selected partition was not created by Windows and might contain data recognized by other operating systems. Do you want to delete this partition?” Select the “Yes” option to remove the Ubuntu partition.

With the partition removed, right-click on the free-space that now occupies the old partition and create a new volume, extend the existing free space to Windows, etc. Then, reboot your PC.

As you log back into your Computer, you will boot directly into Windows, and Ubuntu Linux will be gone from the system!

Regardless of what OS you use, you will inevitably have to search entire folders for other folders or files. Every file manager, regardless of how basic or advanced it is, supports a search feature however macOS’ Finder can save folder searches and proactively update them to include new files that match a certain criteria. This feature is called Smart Folders.

Create Smart Folders

Smart folders target a particular folder and this can be your entire home folder or one little folder nested inside several others. You can even select your entire HDD or SSD. Navigate to the folder you want to search e.g., the Downloads folder. On the menu bar select File>New Smart Folder. A new window will open that looks a lot like Finder but the icon in the window’s title bar will show a purple folder.

Click the plus button on the save bar and it will add the first rule for including files in the smart folder. You can add as many rules as you want by clicking the plus button again, and again. The rules allow you to include files by type, date modified, created, accessed, among other things. You can also change the criteria from ‘Kind’ to ‘Name’, or ‘Contents’. If you select ‘Other’ from the menu, you get an entire list of attributes that you can use to filter files.

Once you’ve added as many rules as you need to for your files, click the Save button at the top. Give the Smart Folder a name and if you want, you can uncheck the ‘Add To Sidebar’ option.

The Smart Folder is now ready so you can access it whenever you want. It will update to include or exclude any files that have been added and that meet its filtering criteria.

If you later need to change the rules for a Smart Folder, navigate to it. Right-click it, and select the ‘Show Search Criteria’ option. You can then change the search filters you’ve set, add new ones, or delete the ones that are present.

If you choose to not add Smart Folders to the Finder side bar, you can access them from your Home folder under Library. The Library folder is a hidden folder so navigate to your Home folder and tap the Command+Shift+. keyboard shortcut to reveal it. Inside the Library folder, there’s a folder called ‘Saved Searches’. All your Smart Folders are saved to it. You can modify them or create a shortcut to them.