Windows 10 1903 is out with its new Light theme and it’s terrible. The light theme is more a white theme where everything, everything is white and it’s blinding. You cannot set a color for the taskbar if you select the light theme. The option simply becomes inactive. Obviously, if you want to get taskbar color with the light theme, you’re going to need an app. Here’s two plausible solutions that do the trick.
Classic Shell
Classic Shell has been the go to app that Windows 10 users turn to when Microsoft screws up the UI of the OS. The Classic Shell app lets you force a taskbar color with the Light theme on Windows 10. Download and install the app, Run it, and go to the Taskbar tab.
Click the more button next to the Taskbar color field and enter the RGB value for the color you want on the taskbar. You should also change or consider changing the opacity though it’s not necessary.
Apply the change and you have taskbar color with the light theme.
Translucent taskbar
Translucent Taskbar is a very popular app that we fell in love with when it first came out. It doesn’t have an option to add color to the taskbar however, if you’re willing to make a little more effort with the wallpaper you set, this is a pretty good way to get color on the taskbar.
Download and run Translucent taskbar and set it either to clear or to blur. The icons on the taskbar will immediately become almost impossible to see if your wallpaper is dark. Change it to something that is light, or that is lighter at the bottom and you’re good to go.
Alternatively, you can add a color bar at the bottom of the wallpaper that you’re using. You can do this in most simple image editors. The above wallpaper with a color bar at the bottom would look like this after being edited.
And when applied as the wallpaper with the taskbar set to ‘clear’ looks like this. It can stand to be improved i.e., a lighter color for the taskbar can be used so that the icons are easier to see.
This method requires a little more effort since you have to edit the wallpaper you will use but it comes with the advantage of setting a different accent color and it gives your desktop a better look. Lastly, Translucent Taskbar is much lighter than Classic Shell and it won’t make any other changes to the OS.
There has to be at least one Mac at Microsoft that the UI/design team can use to see how to a light and dark theme is done right.
MacBooks, and Macs in general, have only one headphone jack. You can connect a headphone/mic combo device to it, and it will work just fine. You can also use an external device though it will normally still be detected as a combo device. If you want to use an external mic with a MacBook, it’s fairly easy to do so. You only need to make one small change.
External mic with MacBook
Boot your Mac and connect your mic to the headphone jack. Mics come in different configurations; some do not need to be powered separately, while others have their own power source. Still others may have an on/off button, while it may be absent on a general desktop mic. It is up to you to determine how the mic is put in its ‘working’ state.
Once you know it’s On, you need to set it as the input device. There are two ways to do this.
Input device – Menu bar
To set the input device from the Menu bar, hold down the Option key and click the speaker icon in the menu bar. The menu will have a ‘Input Device’ section and under it, your external mic will be listed. It is possible that if you’re using a name brand mic e.g., a Yeit microphone, it shows up with its own name/model number. If it’s a generic mic, or a low end one, it will likely just show up as ‘External Microphone’. Select it and you can use your external mic to record.
Input device – System Preferences
Open System Preferences and go to the Sound preference. It’s divided into several tabs. Go to the Input tab and your input devices will be listed there. Your external mic should show up there as well. It may show up with its brand and/or model name, or it may just show up as a generic mic. Select it and it will be used as the input device. You can now record from it.
Audio output
When you connect an external mic to a MacBook via the headphone jack, it normally expects the device to be able to handle both audio input and output. It can switch to just using it as an input device which is what happens when you select the mic. What all this means is that while you have an external mic connected to the MacBook, you will not be able to output sound to your speakers. If you go to the output tab, you won’t be able to select your MacBook’s speakers.
Contacts apps, good ones, make it easy to import or export contacts from other apps, services, and devices. They normally do this via CSV or VCF files. VCF files are the more commonly used format when it comes to importing or exporting contacts. CSV is less common. If you have a CSV file with contacts stored in it, and you need to convert it to VCF before it can be imported to a device or service, you can use Google Contacts.
Google Contacts is one of those services that supports both CSV and VCF files for importing and exporting contacts. It can be used as an intermediary to convert a CSV file to VCF.
Prepare CSV file
Make sure the CSV file has the correct headers for Google Contacts to read. if you’re not sure which headers you need, open Google Contacts and create a dummy contact. Use the export option to export it as a CSV file.
Open the CSV file and take note of the headers that have been used. Make sure your own CSV file has the same headers.
CSV to VCF
Visit Google Contacts and click the More button. Select the Import option and from the dialog box that opens, select the CSV file that you want to convert to VCF.
Once the file has been imported, and all the contacts show up in Google Contacts, select them all. You can use the selection box at the top to select them all with one click. Click the More button and select Export. This time, select the VCF format to export the file.
You can use Google Contacts to convert a CSV file to VCF, or vice versa. For VCF files though, it may be a bit tricky making sure they’re properly formatted. If you’ve created a VCF file yourself and it doesn’t import in Google Contacts, consider using the same trick with the CSV file to figure out what the correct format is.
It’s also worth mentioning that while Google Contacts will reliably convert files to CSV or VCF, whichever you choose, without losing any information, the app or service that you import or export it to must support all contact fields that are in the file. If the app doesn’t support a particular field, the information simply being there will not help.
It is possible that information from some fields is displayed in a different one just so that you can access it.
Standby is basically what we call Sleep on Windows 10. It’s nothing complicated; you can put your system to sleep from the options in the Power Menu and your system will enter a super-low power state without you having to close anything you’re working on. Windows 10 has different types of Sleep mode one of which is Modern Standby.
Modern Standby on Windows 10 isn’t available for all laptops and desktops that can run the system. It appears to be restricted to certain hardware. There’s no list on what type of hardware it’s available on however, a simple command will tell you if you can enable it on your system or not.
Modern Standby on Windows 10
Open Command Prompt with admin rights and run the following command. The Modern Standby type of sleep is S0.
powercfg /a
If the command tells you that Standby (s0) Low Power Idle is not supported, you cannot enable or use it. If it is available on your system though, you will may have to enable it. Here’s how.
Enable Modern Standby
Remember that this will not work unless you have hardware that supports it.
Tap the Win+R keyboard shortcut and enter ‘regedit’. Tap Enter and it will open the registry editor. Navigate to the following location.
Look for a value with following name, double-click it, and set its value to 0.
CsEnabled
When you enable Modern Standby, you don’t see any new options in the power options menu. You will only see ‘Sleep’ listed there, the same as usual. Select it to enter the new ‘Modern Standby’ mode.
What is Modern Standby
When you have normal standby or Sleep(3), your CPU basically powers down, the data is dumped to memory, and you have RAM consuming just the bare minimum amount of power needed to keep the data from being lost.
With Modern Standby i.e., Sleep(0), the CPU does not power down. It uses very little power but it is still running. Most Windows 10 services and processes are still running which means if there’s a pending update, it can download and install while your system is in Modern Standby. Other apps can also start a process or run (if scheduled to). This will cause the battery to be used up. Your screen will stay off though and you might just be left wondering why your battery has died.
We should also mention that some laptop manufacturers may void your warranty if you transport it in this sleep state. Most people who have a system that supports it actively look for a way to disable it.
The great thing about Apple’s products is how well they work with each other. It can build apps that communicate perfectly so that you have a seamless experience on all devices. A lot of this works via iCloud which can sync data from Messages, Notes, and other apps between your phone, tablet, and desktop. If you have iCloud sync enabled, you can get notes created on macOS on your iPhone, and notes from your iPhone on your Mac.
If you’ve enabled iCloud sync but it’s not working for Notes, the fix is pretty simple. In order to fix Notes not syncing to iCloud, you need to access it in your browser.
Check iCloud sync
Before you proceed with the fix, as simple as it is, you should still make sure that iCloud sync is enabled for Notes on both your Mac and iPhone.
To check if iCloud sync for Notes is enabled on your iPhone, open the Settings app and click your account at the very top. Tap iCloud and make sure it is enabled for Notes.
To check if iCloud sync for Notes is enabled on your Mac, open System Preferences and select iCloud. Make sure Notes is checked.
You should also make sure that the notes you’re creating are saving to the iCloud folder in the Notes app and not to the On this Mac folder. Notes saved to On this Mac will not appear on other devices no matter what.
Fix Notes not syncing
In order to fix Notes not syncing, you need to do two things. The first is to turn off syncing to iCloud for Notes and turn it back on again. All you have to do is uncheck Notes in the System preference of iCloud, wait a few minutes, and then check it again.
Next, open Safari and sign into iCloud in the browser. Once signed in, click Notes and wait for the notes to load. Make sure that the notes that you’ve created on your Mac appear in Notes on iCloud. Once you’ve done that, they should start syncing to all your devices.
This is an odd fluke that happens on occasion but it doesn’t occur often enough for it to be classified as a bug. Notes normally sync within seconds since they’re often just text however, if you’ve added images to your notes, and they’re fairly large, make sure you give the note enough time to sync to iCloud before you turn your Mac off.
You can find information on just about anything online. There are great write up and detailed essays available on almost every topic. There is also a ton of data, raw and otherwise available that you can access for free. If you find a useful data table online, and it’s an HTML table, you can copy it with a simple keyboard shortcut however, it’s not always pretty or easy. If you have a particularly long, or complicated table that you need to copy, you can do it in Firefox with an add-on.
Download table as CSV lets you download an HTML table in CSV format. You can then open the CSV file in Excel and create graphs from the table, or analyze it.
HTML table in CSV
Download the Download table as CSV add-on. Visit a website that has a table on it. If you’re looking to test the add-on out, you can always go to Wikipedia and look up something like world population statistics.
Find a table, and right-click it. You will see a ‘Download table as CSV’ option in the context menu. Select it, and then select if you want to open the file in your default spreadsheet app, or save it to your local disk.
The data is formatted perfectly in that the values aren’t mixed up. The rows and columns look exactly the way they did on the webpage. You can convert the file from CSV to any other format of your choice. If you use Microsoft Excel, you can convert the file to XLSX after opening it in the app.
If you need to convert a table you made in Excel or Google Spreadsheets to HTML, and you don’t have a WYSIWYG editor that can do that, give Tableizer a try. It’s a pretty basic app that lets you copy and paste a table, and gives you the HTML code for it. You can paste that code into your website and it will render it perfectly. You can create the table yourself if you want but making tables in HTML without a proper editor is the most tedious thing you will ever do.
The Download table as CSV add-on works great most times but at times, the option doesn’t appear in the context menu. If that happens, you should refresh the page, or close the browser and open it again. Make sure that you’re clicking inside the table and not outside it. You should also check if it is indeed an HTML table and not an image of it.
For the first time, Elementary OS’s desktop environment is available for Fedora users in the new version 30 release. In this tutorial, we’ll show you what it takes to get the latest version of Pantheon up and running on Fedora Linux.
Note: don’t want to use Fedora but want to try out Pantheon? Try installing Elementary OS instead! The desktop is also available for Arch Linux as well!
Upgrade to Fedora 30
Fedora 30 is out and has been for a while. Still, not everyone has upgraded from version 29 to version 30. So, before we go over how to get Pantheon up and to run, upgrading is necessary. To do this, open up a terminal window, or your Gnome Software app. Once open, head over to this guide on how to upgrade Fedora. Follow the instructions carefully, and soon your Fedora Linux PC will be running version 30!
Are you not a fan of upgrading through the traditional method? Consider heading to the Fedora Project’s official website to download and install Fedora 30 directly!
Install the Pantheon desktop packages
On Fedora, Pantheon is best installed through the “Pantheon Desktop” package group. To do this, launch a terminal window. After that, run the Dnf update command to refresh all of the software on your Linux PC. While it’s not essential, it’s a good idea to run an update so that your PC is at it’s best.
sudo dnf update -y
With everything up to date, it’s time to install the Pantheon package group with Dnf. Using the terminal command below, install Elementary’s packages.
sudo dnf group install 'Pantheon Desktop' -y
Assuming the Pantheon desktop is done installing, it’s time to enable the Gnome login manager.
Note: you should only enable the Gnome login manager if you are not already using LightDM. LightDM works just as well as Gnome does.
To enable the Gnome login manager, first install the package with dnf install.
sudo dnf install gdm -y
After the packages are done installing, enable it with systemd.
sudo systemctl enable gdm.service -f
Once the Gnome login manager is ready to go, reboot your Fedora Linux PC and move on to the next step.
Build Elementary Tweak from source
One of the most controversial aspects of Elementary OS is how the developers feel about customizing the desktop. They think it’s bad for users to do, as it messes with their carefully crafted UI and theme. Still, to get the most out of Pantheon on Fedora, some things need to be modified. In this guide, we will not be installing any third-party icons or themes. However, it should be noted that the Pantheon desktop on Fedora needs work, and doesn’t enable the correct theme by default. So, we must dig inside the desktop to quickly change some settings using Elementary Tweak.
Getting Elementary Tweak on Fedora is possible, despite the app being Elementary-centric, thanks to the source code. To start, open up the terminal and install the various dependencies required to build the app.
sudo dnf groupinstall "C Development Tools and Libraries" -y
Once the code is done compiling, install it with the command below.
sudo make install
Change theme settings
Now that Pantheon and Elementary Tweaks are set up on Fedora, it’s time to fix the broken theme settings on the desktop. To do this, log out of your current session to return to the Gnome login screen. Then, locate the gear icon and click it with the mouse to reveal alternate sessions. Using the mouse, click “Pantheon.” Then, log into the desktop with your user and password.
Let Pantheon load the desktop. Once the loading is done, click the application menu at the top-left portion of the screen to reveal the search box. Then, type in “Settings” into the box.
Open the app that says “System Settings” to access Pantheon’s system settings, and Locate the “Tweaks” icon to access the Elementary Tweaks app. When you’ve successfully accessed “Tweaks,’ follow the step-by-step instructions below to set the correct look for Pantheon.
Step 1: Locate the “GTK+” drop-down menu and change it from “Adwaita” to “elementary”.
Step 2: Locate the “Icons” drop-down menu and change it from “Adwaita” to “elementary”.
Step 3: Locate the “Cursor” drop-down menu and set it to “elementary.”
Step 4: Locate the “Layout” drop-down menu and change it from “Windows” to “elementary.”
Step 5: Open up a terminal and run the command below to access the Pantheon dock settings.
plank --preferences
Inside of the dock settings, locate “Theme” and change the drop-down menu to “GTK+”.
After all of settings are correctly applied, your Fedora Linux PC will have Pantheon correctly set up and ready to go! Enjoy!
Minecraft is one of the few video games to support the Linux platform. In the past, we’ve talked about how to play Minecraft on Linux. In that tutorial, we outlined how to manually download the Jar package, install Java and get the game running.
The method covered in the old tutorial for playing Minecraft is now obsolete, and the standalone Jar file isn’t available for downloading anymore. As of now, if you want to continue enjoying Minecraft on Linux, you need to download the new Minecraft launcher for Linux from Mojang. So, in this tutorial, we’ll show you how to get the Minecraft game working by installing the new launcher. Let’s get started!
Download installer
Mojang has put the new Minecraft launcher for Linux on their website. To download it for your Linux distribution, go to Minecraft.net. Once there, log in to your existing account (or set up a new one if you need to do so).
After logging in to your Mojang account on the website, find the “back to Minecraft.net” button at the top and click it to return to the home page of the website. Then, click the menu button on the right, followed by the green arrow button under “download.”
Upon clicking the download button, the website should automatically detect your current operating system, and reveal the recommended download option for your Linux OS.
There are many different download options for the new Minecraft launcher for Linux, including a DEB package, and a community AUR package. Follow the download instructions below for your Linux OS.
Ubuntu/Debian
Mojang has created a new, installable DEB package for Ubuntu and Debian users. It’s an excellent way to get the game running, as the package pulls in Java, and everything you’ll need to enjoy the game with no fuss. To get your copy of the new launcher, look on the download page for “Desktops”, and click on the “Linux” option.
After clicking on “Linux,” the website should auto-detect that you need to download the DEB. If not, a direct link to it is here.
Download the DEB package to your Debian or Ubuntu Linux PC and move on to the set-up section of the guide.
Arch Linux
Mojang has linked to an official AUR package for getting Minecraft working on Arch Linux. To get your hands on it, you must install the Trizen AUR helper. To start, use the Pacman package manager to install both the Base-devel and Git packages.
sudo pacman -S base-devel git
Next, grab the code for the Trizen AUR helper. Getting this app will make getting Minecraft working way easier.
git clone https://github.com/trizen/trizen
Install the Trizen app.
cd trizen
makepkg -sri
With the Trizen app working on Arch, move down to the setup section of this tutorial.
Snap
The developers of Minecraft have a generic TarGZ archive on the download page for Linux users, which enables everyone, even those not using Ubuntu, Debian or Arch Linux to get the app working. Unfourtunately, that method is tedious, so it’s great to see that the new Minecraft launcher for Linux is on the Snap store.
To download Minecraft from the Snap store, you must first enable Snapd on your system. To do that, head over to this tutorial here and follow the instructions specific to your Linux distribution. When done, move on to the setup section.
Flatpak
Minecraft is on Flathub as a Flatpak, so if you are running a distribution that supports it, you’ll be able to quickly grab the game. To get Minecraft downloaded over Flatpak, you need install the Flatpak runtime. here for help on how to do that.
Once the Flatpak runtime is up and running on your distribution, you’ll have to set up Flathub, so that the Minecraft package is accessable. To enable Flathub, open up a terminal and enter the command below.
With the Flathub repo up and running, go to the setup section to finish the installation.
Set up the installer
Now that we’ve gone over how to download the Minecraft installation package for various Linux distributions, it’s time to install it to the system. To get it working on your particular Linux operating system, open up a terminal window and follow the instructions that correspond to the OS you use.
Ubuntu/Debian
To get the new launcher working on Ubuntu and Debian PCs, use the CD command to move to the “Downloads” directory.
cd ~/Downloads
Once inside the “Downloads” folder, run the dpkg tool to install the package.
sudo dpkg -i Minecraft.deb
After the initial package installation, you may run into some dependency issues. Fix this with:
sudo apt install -f
Arch Linux
The hard part of getting Minecraft working on Arch Linux is setting up Trizen. Now that you’ve got the tool ready to go, it’s one simple command to install the new Minecraft launcher. In a terminal, enter the following command.
trizen -S minecraft-launcher
Snap
With Snapd working, getting the new Minecraft launcher is a simple snap install command.
sudo snap install mc-installer
Flatpak
With the Flatpak runtime and the Flathub repo working on Linux, you’ll be able to quickly install the latest Minecraft launcher with flatpak install.
Virtual desktops on Windows 10 haven’t changed much over the years. They are more or less in the same shape they were in when originally introduced. This is despite the fact there’s potential for the feature to be truly useful. It’s now just even with virtual desktops on macOS. You can move any app or a single app window from one desktop to the other but you have to go through task view to do it. If you want to move windows between virtual desktops without Task View, you can install a super lightweight File Explorer extension called MovetoDesktop.
VirusTotal scan
Before we proceed, we have to warn you that this app was flagged by six anti-virus apps/services when scanned on VirusTotal. That said, it has a positive leaning rating from the community. Tests showed that it is not malicious in any way. Some of its ‘maliciousness’ may be attributed to the app not having much of a UI. With this in mind, try this app at your own risk. It is open source so if you understand code, you can take a look at what’s going on under the hood.
Move windows between virtual desktops
Download and run MovetoDesktop. You won’t see any indication that the app is running. As mentioned in the previous section, it has no UI of its own. Make sure you have at least one virtual desktop.
Open any app of your choice, right-click its title bar and you will see a ‘Move to’ option in the context menu. Select the desktop you want to move the window to.
The window will be moved to the desktop you selected and you won’t have to go through task view at all. This works on both desktop apps like File Explorer, Control Panel, and VLC player, and also on UWP apps like Netflix, Skype, and Slack.
Since MovetoDesktop has no UI, you might want to know how you can quit the app. There’s not even a system tray icon that you can access. To quit the app, open the Task Manager and look for MovetoDesktop on the Processes tab. If you’re having trouble finding it, tap the M key repeatedly to scroll through all processes that begin with the letter ‘M’. When you find MovetoDesktop, click the End Task button at the bottom.
If you accidentally ran the app’s EXE more than once, you will have to quit it just as many times. For each time the app was run, there will be a separate process for it in Task Manager. To check if it has been closed, right-click the title bar of any window and the Move to option should no longer appear there.
Want to the current window to a different virtual desktop with a hotkey instead? Give zVirtualDesktop a try.
Fallout: New Vegas is a post-apocalyptic open-world RPG developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda. It’s widely considered one of the best games in the Fallout series by fans.
The Fallout games (both 2D and 3D) generally work pretty well on Linux, including New Vegas. Here’s how to play Fallout: New Vegas on Linux.
Method 1 – SteamPlay
Valve’s SteamPlay is quickly becoming the best way to play Windows games on Linux. The reason for this is that the technology is so automated, that users hardly have to anything to get even some of the most high-end games to work!
Fallout: New Vegas has always worked pretty well on Linux, but ever since SteamPlay has been a thing, it’s been easier than ever to get the game working on any Linux distribution.
Purchase Fallout: New Vegas for Steam
Before dealing with Fallout: New Vegas and how to make it playable on Linux via SteamPlay, you’ll need to purchase the game. To get your copy of the game, ensure you have a Steam account and click here to go to FNV’s store page.
Note: don’t have a Steam account? Click here to make one!
On the FNV store page, locate the “Add to Cart” button and click it to make your purchase. Currently, the game is 9.99 USD.
Install Steam on Linux
Playing Steam games on Linux requires installing the client on Linux. In this section of the guide, we’ll go over how to install the Steam client on Linux
Press Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard to open up a terminal. Then, follow the command-line instructions that correspond with your Linux OS.
To install Steam, you must enable RPMFusion. To do this, follow our guide on the subject. Then, use Dnf to install Steam.
sudo dnf install steam
OpenSUSE
sudo zypper install steam
Enable SteamPlay on your Linux PC
Playing Fallout: New Vegas via Steam on Linux requires enabling SteamPlay with games that don’t officially support SteamPlay yet. To do this, open up “Settings” in your Steam app, click “Steam Play,” and click the box next to “Enable Steam Play for supported titles.”
Can’t figure out how to enable SteamPlay on your Linux PC? Check out our guide on how to enable SteamPlay on Linux!
Install the game – Steam
Installing FNV on Steam works like any other game in your library. To do it, launch the app as normal. Then, click “Library,” and look for “Fallout: New Vegas” in your game library. Then, click the blue “Install” button to download and install it on Linux.
Play on Linux – Steam
Playing Fallout: New Vegas on Steam requires very little effort. To play the game, click on “Library” and look for the game in the list of games you own. Then, click the blue “Play” button to enjoy Fallout: New Vegas!
Method 2 – GOG and Wine
If you’re not a fan of Valve’s Steam but still want to enjoy Fallout: New Vegas on Linux, try the GOG method. It doesn’t require any proprietary app stores like Steam, and you’ll still get the same game.
Purchase Fallout: New Vegas from GOG.com
To play FNV on Linux via Wine, you’ll need to purchase the game from Good Old Games. As of now, the website has the “ultimate edition,” which comes with all downloadable content, and other cool things. If you’d like to get a copy of the game through GOG, click here to go to the game’s store page.
Once you’ve made it to the FNV store page, click “Add to cart” to buy the game. Currently, the ultimate edition, with all the DLC is 19.99 USD.
Install the latest release of Wine
Running FNV on Linux requires the latest version of Wine. Any version of Wine should be enough to get FNV working. However, it’s probably best to install Wine version 4, as it comes with DXVK and many other optimizations that prove to make Windows gaming on Linux much better.
Installing Wine 4 is easy to do on most Linux distributions at this point, as it’s the current version on most modern Linux operating systems. However, if your Linux PC doesn’t have version 4 available, follow our guide to learn how to install version 4 of Wine on your Linux computer.
Don’t want to use Wine 4? Another good option to get Fallout: New Vegas working on Linux is to use the Wine Staging branch, as it regularly gets updates and improvements. For more information on Wine Staging, check this post.
Install the game – Wine
To install FNV on Linux, open up the Linux file manager. Then, find the “Downloads” folder and click on it. Next, double-click on the Fallout EXE setup files to launch it in wine.
Using the GOG installer, install the game on your system. Assuming you’re running a relatively recent version of Wine, the installer should work with no issues. When it’s done, close it, and the game will be set up on your Linux PC!
Play on Linux – Wine
To start up FNV via Wine on your Linux PC, open up your application menu and locate the “Wine” section. In this area, you should see a Fallout icon which you can double-click on to launch the game. Or, alternatively, double-click on the FNV icon on your desktop to enjoy!
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