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What's a setting that you'd recommend?
Kind of an awkward title, but I'm talking about settings for your phone, your OS, your coffee maker, etc.
With all the tech in our lives, and with so many devices and software having quite a robust set of options for how they work, it's easy for us to not even know that something is available. How many cool things are we missing out on if we're just accepting the defaults?
So, what's a setting, on anything you have or use regularly, that you recommend to others?
What makes it so worthwhile?
Another useful setting for MacOS users is enabling the file path bar in Finder. Enable it with option+command+P or going to View > Show Path Bar in the Finder top bar.
MacOS does a lot of nonsense to obscure where a folder is in the file system so it can feel disorienting to know where your folders and files are in relation to each other. Enabling the path bar shows you the absolute file path of any folder you open in Finder. This makes using a Mac feel less disorienting than it does by default.
Oh my god thank you. This was one of the few remaining gripes I had with MacOS, and I'm not a regular enough user to have spent the time finding this setting lol.
also for finder, setting the search to search the current folder instead of the entire system by default (settings > advanced) has been really handy.
Movie Mode on your TV Heres Tom Cruise explaining it
More than just motion smoothing, I'd recommend searching "rtings calibration settings <tv model>" and using whatever settings they suggest. OLED TVs ship with settings that blow out / saturate colors to make it "HDR-ish" and it looks atrocious on animated content in particular.
Even just doing basic tuning like that makes a massive difference in quality.
Also worth noting that a lot of TVs will have a Dolby Vision mode that is pre-calibrated for that model of TV. That’s usually good enough for almost everyone when it comes to HDR.
I remember when my parents bought an expensive TV years ago. One of those curved ones. So I came over to check it out. I was like "WTF is wrong this TV? Why does it look this way? Like a soap opera? How much did you pay for this thing??" And they didn't have a soap opera on. They didn't notice it or at least didn't care, but I saw it right away. I remembered my mom watching soap operas as a kid and I really disliked how "smooth" they looked compared to other shows that looked "rougher."
So I spent at least half an hour just fiddling with all the settings, until I came across a setting that said "240hz." Turned it off, or rather turned it down to like 75hz or 60hz and and bam, everything looked nice and "rough" again. Always thought that was a terrible setting. Especially one to have on by default.
That setting, whatever name it goes by, drives me nuts. First time I noticed it was on a vacation when I was watching an animated show on Netflix, because it screwed up with the motion.
When I looked it up, apparently it's made with sports in mind...? No clue if it helps with that, but I hate that so many TVs use it as a default.
It's... way more complicated than that. I'm a little reluctant to get too into it, because someone else always comes along and nitpicks the details. But for a crash course, all of the consumer TVs are doing some sort of frame interpolation under those settings. That means they are making (interpolating) new frames to insert in between the actual frames that are in the content you are watching. It can make videos you watch "feel" more realistic, which is probably why people say it's for sports. This is the same method that modern de-compilations of N64 games -like Ship of Harkinian- are using to hit 60 fps or higher (but those games are much better at it than the TV because they have more information about the image and movement to go off of).
One of the reasons these settings have become so widespread is due to the issues with how modern televisions work compared to CRT. The old tubes had phosphors that would glow when the light beam hit them, then slowly fade out over a few frames. This made the image look a lot smoother than it does now, but introduced a type of blurring to the image. Modern screen's visual issues are most noticeable to me in films that are panning left to right quickly. If there is text, the jitter and stutter of low frame rate makes it impossible to read without pausing. On a CRT, it would be blurry, but you would have an easier time reading the text. With frame interpolation, we can more easily approximate that. The best solution available seems to be CRT beam simulation on a high HZ display (we're talking 120hz to be usable but with noticeable flicker or 240 or higher hz to actually look good to most users). Maybe one day we'll have a 480 Hz OLED that integrates this software solution, but I honestly doubt it.
Where I want to speak up is the idea that these settings are inherently bad because they're not. You may not like them, I may not like them, but some people do and they are there for a reason. It leads to a demonization of actual high frame-rate content, which sucks because filming in high frame rate is absolutely better for certain content. If can reduce the likelihood of rolling shutter issues for a start. That one is something that Netflix is extremely bad about. Ever notice how shows/movies where there's a bunch of flash photography going off on screen will have different potions of the image lit from frame to frame? It drives me crazy and immediately takes me out of the experience, but most people don't notice it. Suffice it to say, none of this technology is perfect. If someone likes the motion interpolation, then let them enjoy what they like.
Most people I've run into with motion smoothing don't prefer it, they just don't notice or care enough to form an opinion. A smaller fraction of people seem to prefer it, but they are just weird (J/K. Kinda). I literally cannot watch anything with motion smoothing. It makes me anxious for some reason. So if I can't change it, I just leave the room.
Some tvs call it motion blur. Motion blur is good, I don't want to have to process that many frames that quickly.
I've often wondered whether upscaling or downscaling is helpful, too. If I have a 4K file, should I try to watch it on a 1080p tv or vice versa?
Yes and yes, although for the latter example only if you don't have an alternative. It's always better to go for the higher resolution if it's available.
But what of this talk of it being 'better'? I guess that's my curiosity -- are movies compressed to 1080 meant to display on 1080p sets more accurately than 4k would? Is there an 'artists' intention' (or in this case, codec tecnician's) argument to be made here?
By downscaling from 4k to 1080p you're sampling multiple pixels into one. Four into one to be precise, which should increase sharpness and it should improve colour accuracy as it may retain some HDR colour depth when downscaling.
It is dependent on the downscaling tech, some will introduce blur and fuzz, but as far as I know you're unlikely to see lossy downscaling with modern video players.
Ultimately you're unlikely to see a large difference but there is a difference. If you have the option to use (good source material) 4k video files on a 1080p screen you should. Because it can't hurt. If storage is an issue, don't.
It's unlikely there's an artist's intention behind this. Just tech. An artist will try to film and display in the highest fidelity, not downscale for some minor improvement of detail in a lower resolution. 4k files on a 4k screen will still appear as higher quality than a downscaled 1080p video.
Thanks for the explanation.
Open Firefox Mobile, and choose settings.
Choose Private Browsing
Select "Open links in private windows"
Any time an email/website/app opens your browser, you'll get a nice purple border indicating that you're incognito, and none of your cookies/browsing history/sessions will be available to trackers etc. Comes in handy more than I'd figured. Also makes me feel pretty gleeful when I get a "Please accept all our cookies" message. Sure, I'll accept your cookies right into this incognito session which will be nuked as soon as I close it.
Late to the party here, but my fave is a DNS setting (for my Android Pixel 9 phone). Ads basically just don't appear ever on my phone. Under the 'Network & internet' setting, set 'Private DNS' to:
It's free and painless. Very occasionally there's a website (Jetblue's in-flight entertainment is one) which requires switching this off, but it's a simple switch and I turn it on again at the end of the flight.
Mullvad also make a very nice VPN (not free).
Interesting thanks. Here’s the documentation for these DNS: https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls
Now that's intriguing! Does it also get rid of ads in ad-supported apps? How about video ads in the YouTube app?
In ad-supported apps it may blank out the ads, because it prevents them from loading, but the ad 'screen' may still be there.
It does not block YouTube ads. DNS ad-blocking like this essentially blocks per-domain and YouTube is clever enough to serve ads from the same place that serves the videos.
What is DNS?
If all you have is a business name and the phone book doesn't have the number for it, then you can't make the call. Similarly, when an app is trying to load an ad from
some-ad-service.comand the DNS doesn't know its IP (intentionally for ones likeadblock.dns.mullvad.net), then the app can't make the call. It's not bulletproof, though. As @fuzzy mentioned, some sites get around it by serving the ads from the same domain; any DNS is going to give the IP foryoutube.comfor obvious reasons, but that means when ads also come fromyoutube.comthe IP is known and the ads can load.That's pretty great, thanks! I might play around with setting this as the upstream DNS from my pihole this evening for another layer of blocking on the home network.
They also make a browser which I recommend!
I set every app on my phone to a different notification sound. I also assigned a unique sound to close family members' texts. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but the upshot is that for the notifications I get all the time, I have learned what the sounds are. That means I know without picking up the phone whether it's important. If my wife or daughter texts, I can check it right away, but I can ignore task reminders or pings from email/slack if I'm in a meeting. In general, it helps me from not be distracted by my phone when I'm doing something else.
I think my phone has been on silent mode for 10+ years at this point, as it always rings or starts making repeated notification sounds at the worst times.
Bring back the customizable notification LED!
I use silent mode 24/7, very few notifications, and have "emergency pass through" for a couple of important phone numbers that would only call me in important situations and that's it.
I want full control of my attention and time rather than giving that power to other people, apps, or companies.
Same reason I block ads, among many others, really. Attention theft.
I guess it wasn't clear from my post, but these are the notifications I chose because they have value to me. I have a ton of apps with all the notifications turned off so I can engage with them on my terms.
Oh, I was just adding my +1 to datavoid's post mentioning they've used silent mode for a very long time, because I have also. I wasn't (and don't necessarily think they were) questioning your own preferences or situation, just expressing our own individual approaches, which will understandably differ based on our experiences/life situations. Whatever works best for you is great!
Yep, sorry. I had a long, frustrating day and you got something that should have been directed elsewhere.
All good!
Great term.
I did consider custom notifications in morse code (one or two letters for each app), a good way to learn morse code and a good way to identify the app by ear, but I haven't had time to put it into practice.
I suppose that would make the noise more subtle but wouldn't help with the interruption.
I can’t remember where I came across it, but I believe if you dig deep into settings you might be able to create custom vibration patterns — so maybe you could encode the Morse code into the vibrate pattern instead of beeps, and that way you can keep the phone as silent as you want it?
I do remember seeing some different vibration patterns, though I did a cursory check now and didn't immediately find them, so maybe they got removed in an update?
What I remember was that the patterns were predetermined, though maybe you could still find ones that map to morse code. Not sure my leg would be sensitive enough to decode it though :)
I have always thought it would be cool to have a belt that briefly vibrates every time you are facing north. It would be like an extra sense that helped you maintain your sense of direction, especially indoors. So if I had that, maybe it could also be a pattern vibrating ringer.
Assuming the motor is in the small of your back, the conversation would be: "Dad, your butt is going off again, could you please answer it."
But if my phone is any measure, embedded compasses are nearly worthless. So for now I will just dream.
I can find it through Contacts - I made one years and years ago for my spouse and if I go to her contact info, I can still see the custom haptics and still have the option to create a new one.
Hmm, I still couldn't find it in all the places Google said to look for it, but I did find a few articles about it being removed in newer android versions.
Apparently BuzzKill is a way to do a lot to customize notifications (with Tasker). While reading about it, I came across this comment which seems like the opposite extreme. It would drive me crazy:
I guess it takes all kinds.
I used to leave my phone on vibrate all the time, but then my Pixel 6a developed a bug where vibration stops working until a reboot so I had to re-enable sound. It’s really annoying to have my phone chirping all day but otherwise I miss calls or texts.
Reduce Interruptions focus mode on iOS and MacOS devices.
It eliminates most notifications from alerting you unless it’s a phone call or the Apple AI decides it’s a time sensitive message. Plus you still can check the notifications pulldown menu to see what notifications you missed. You still have notifications, but you get to see them on your terms instead of having an app decide it gets to distract you.
It’s less isolating than Do Not Disturb, but still ends up with you not being disturbed or distracted regularly.
I just disable almost all apps notifications. I leave text messages, calls, and work emails/messages on, the rest I have to go into the app to see anything. I started doing this when some apps decided to abuse notifications to get me into the app, and I liked it so much I started doing it for almost everything.
This is the way. I honestly don't know why anyone allows notifications from anything that isn't a messaging app, or maybe scheduling / reminder type deals.
There once was a time when I decided to allow notifications from other apps, opting to shut them off only after getting advertisements / engagement farming / other bullshit. But after a while I realized that they almost universally abuse the privilege, and now they only get turned on if I am absolutely sure that I actually need them. And let me tell you, the odds are stacked against them.
I like this! For Android friends, we can set this up too. Go to Settings > Modes and create a new mode called "Reduce Interruptions" (or whatever you want). In the settings for the new mode, turn off "Allow all notifications" - this will add notification visibility controls to the "Display settings" menu at the bottom. From there you can customize it as you wish with these options:
I think you need to tweak some things under each notification filter category too, otherwise I believe it will just block all notifications by default. But most categories have an "allow all/everyone" option so it shouldn't be too cumbersome.
This is on Android 16 (specifically GrapheneOS, but they're basically identical in cases like this), so it may look a little different if you're on an older version or a different skin (e.g. Samsung's One UI).
Refrigerator: 3c
Freezer: -20c
POSIX-compliant mode on everything else
Having an "Extra Dim" shortcut in the Android top bar is handy. Along with Flashlight and Rotate Screen
with iOS we’d do Accessibility / Display / Reduce White Point.
i also mapped a triple tap on the back to turn on the flashlight at 1% instead of the normal lowest setting. way better for night when you’re not ready to use the face of God to find your water.
How do you adjust the default brightness for the flashlight? This is in iOS?
iOS -- and yes and no. Its triggered with an action (Accessibility > Touch > Tap Back) -- the shortcut is literally
Toggle Flashlightwith the brightness set really low but not all the way down.Its a shame --- in the jailbreaking days we had 'Amber', which turned on only one of the lights, giving a perfect warm light. I don't know why they don't let us have that.
That is so, so useful. Thanks for the tip.
There are a few really nice features that are for some reason buried in the Accessibility section. I use a triple click on the side button to adjust the white point at night and also the swipe down to reach the top of the screen.
that triple click is neat because you can also bring up a menu of accessibility shortcuts. A thread like this is fun, but there are so many little settings I take for granted and forget about.
I also have a double tap for the tapback to go to the home screen. I don't use it a lot, but it has come in handy.
When I switched from an iPhone with the home button to this new one without the home button, I found it so difficult to go back to the home page or to switch between apps in landscape mode, so I’ve ended up binding the “action button” to go to the Home Screen (via the world’s simplest shortcut, because it’s not one of the default options)
I have backtaps set to double-tap to go greyscale, and triple-tap to invert colours. I’ve also set an automated shortcut to put the phone into greyscale mode during my “bedtime” because it makes things just a little less attractive to pick up my phone when I should be sleeping. And the triple tap invert colours is mostly for effectively on-demand dark mode for apps/websites that don’t support it on my terms.
i really like a greyscale phone. it magically says, ‘don’t use me’ :)
Say what you like about POSIX, but their stove settings are on point! (/s)
Are you saying there's a way to configure eg bash to be more POSIX-compliant?
It was mostly a joke. If anything, the things I like are not quite POSIX compliant.
re: bash, yes there is:
I mostly use fish shell though. On Windows I use nushell 😎
This year I've had to start using Windows for work, I'll check out nushell!
Here's the config I use when I'm forced to use Windows! Hope it helps:
https://github.com/chapmanjacobd/computer/tree/main/.github/Windows/
Windows Users:
Download/Enable PowerToys. It's not exactly a setting so much as "the rest of the fucking settings" that many people might want.
Their "Run" launcher is a nice and quick way to access many things (or the command pallette, whichever you want). Simple and quick math, launching programs(without it trying to search the web or waste your time), quick shutdown/restart, quick access to specific settings, running scripots/commands, searching open windows, etc.
Fancy zones is "we have tilling window managers at home"...sorta. It's still a little too finnicky to work with/get configured but it's wroth having.
Keyboard manager lets you do the all important action of swapping capslock and left control, along with any other remappings you might want because you refuse to follow the GLORIOUS PATH OF BUILDING YOUR OWN!!!
PowerRename is GODLY and allows you to easily mass rename files using whatever logic you want with a previewed output.
Hell just having quick access to the shortcut guide is SO nice because it helps you get into the habit of using these tools rather than messing with them for a week and then forgetting how to use them.
There's a bunch of other tools in there that really are a "oh shit I didn't know that existed" or "oh yeah that one time i needed it I remembered it existed and it saved me a ton of time" tiers. It's all the tools that help between "basic user" and "fuck it i'll write my own script" and even if you're on the higher tier's its a bunch of stuff that saves time.
Another nice thing about the Keyboard Manager utility in PowerToys is that you can disable default Windows shortcuts with it.
So I can bind
Super+d(that normally minimizes all windows) to (instead) launch the Run or newer Command Palette utility, and get a dmenu or Rofi-like app launcher setup.I totally forgot about PowerToys! They're awesome, but I have been on Linux for 6+ years now and uh... that's just inherent hehe.
Run the microwave at 50% for double the time for more even cooking.
Always. The only things that should go full blast are beverages.
I'd generalize to say liquids or semiliquids e.g. soup.
1 - If you have a smartwatch, turn off all notifications - or at least, leave only for the most important apps.
This sounds obvious now that I'm writing it, but my apple watch became a source of stress which I didn't notice until I was groaning every time I felt my pulse vibrate. I felt that this was more distrating and disruptive than my own phone
2 - Not really a setting, but clean up your phone homescreen and only show the most important apps. Hide everything else. Use search whenever you need to access those hidden apps.
This helps in two ways:
The notifications were the main reason I got rid of my Apple Watch. My watch would vibrate to alert me to text messages when I was currently texting that person on my phone. It felt like having a toddler pull at my shirt when I was having a conversation.
Not just your watch, your phone as well. At least, that is my experience. The majority of notifications on my phone are silent without vibration. If something is urgent people will call me anyway.
For a lot of applications I have actively turned off notifications. For example, I have discord on my phone but will only know if I got pinged when I open the app.
I thought notifications were the whole reason people had smarwatches?
I can't stand notifications, they're the one thing that can send me from zero to a blind rage if they interrupt something I'm working on, or happen to frequently. I've actually broken a couple screen protectors from chucking my phone across the room because of that.
It's the reason I never got a smart watch. I would haaaaaaaate having a thing on my wrist that notified me of things.
I guess people use them for fitness tracking, but what other thing is a smart watch better than a phone at doing?
I dont have a smart watch, but I do like my fitness tracker because it's smaller than the phone to carry on a
runstroll.I imagine folks do use it exactly like a phone but smaller, maybe for it to play music, that you can talk to its AI and it talks at you, and contactless payment features?
for me, the smartwach is about the fitness and sleep tracker, being able to set timers, answering calls and pinging my phone. And before I had the airpods, I also used it to change music.
For the functions that aren't trackers: it's not that the watch is better, it's more about the convenience. For example when I'm cooking, sometimes I need to set a quick timer and it's easier to just do it on my wrist, instead of fetching my phone that might be on the table or sofa. Same thing for calls.
Pinging the phone is an underrated feature too. Sometimes I forget my phone or lose it in the middle of the sheets or in the sofa, and I can quickly find it with my watch. It also warns you when you leave the phone behind, like for example when you leave home without it.
Another feature, the watch is also capable of detecting when you fall. When you do, it will call your country's emergency number and I think it also calls or sends messages to your emergency contacts. Fortunately I never had to test it, but the one time I fell from my bike the watch detected it, I had to stop its countdown before it called the emergencies
{"coffee": {
"cream": "no",
"sugar": "no"
}}
When I started drinking coffee regularly, I decided that I'd drink black coffee instead of coffee with sweeteners/cream/milk/other stuff added in. This was mainly a health thing, as I know that it's easy to put in a lot of extra stuff/calories in to a coffee to get it to taste "nice". It also made me appreciate the difference in tastes that coffee can offer and when I have a coffee that does have other stuff added in it feels like a treat or something special to enjoy. Also, it's cheaper.
The downside being, when I have guests who like their coffee a certain way, I don't really have much to offer them besides some sugar and milk since I don't stock anything else that they might want in their coffee.
That's terrible. Using JSON in 2025?
Seriously though, black is how I drink most of my coffee unless I'm using my Moka pot. It's close enough to espresso that I can approximate a flat white or cappuccino and get decent results. However, I feel like this isn't a good fit for the topic - it's a personal preference more than a hidden setting that would be genuinely useful if it was more well-known. In fact, I'd argue that black coffee is the default, and that more people would enjoy coffee if they weren't pushed toward trying it black first.
Wait, what should we be using instead? My workplace is still working on replacing XML with Json.
Oh, I just have an irrational hatred of Javascript (and most things derived from it). I'd rather use XML than JSON, but modern alternatives like yaml and toml are fine too.
Controversial opinions incoming!
XML is best off staying in its death bed and YAML can go lay down beside it. TOML is is a good configuration language though.
XML sucks for a few reasons. Only really having strings sucks, but isn't a huge deal. Having both attributes and tags is a nightmare though. Having no concept of arrays is also just needlessly miserable. Just off the top of my head the most recent non-HTML XML API I've used, one that is somewhat popular and officially technically related to RSS, uses an insane mix of things that never would've happened if the spec was JSON. Stuff like "arrays" of items where each item is its own duplicate of the same tag and within them often contain data duplicated between attributes and tags and within some of those are more "arrays" of comma separated values. Like WTF is
<example:attr name="language" value="English" />and how are you supposed to know that the value is actually a CSV array that this time only has one entry? XML not giving an answer to "how do you set foo.bar = [1,2,3]" is the source of too many nonsensical XML specs. XML would be drastically improved if attributes didn't exist and if it had some syntax to represent when something is meant to be treated as an array.YAML sucks for different reasons. YAML's main problem is supporting unquoted strings. It also has some features that are too fancy for its own good, like references. YAML does have a good spec buried in it, but a ton of features need to be deleted until it's just easier-to-read JSON with comments.
Hey, I admitted my hatred was irrational. All of my suggestions are just markup languages, so I am fully aware that they lack a lot of what makes JSON useful. We use a lot of XML at work (25+ year old design decisions are great!) and we use Ansible for server management, so I've been bitten by the shortcomings of both XML and YAML several times.
Admittedly, I love the use of Lua as a configuration language. IIRC, that's what it started as, and even though it's a complete programming language now it can still fill that role nicely.
yaml might make for a JSON replacement in certain contexts, as its intended purpose is to be a data serialization language, but toml makes less sense. At least for network communications, the intended purpose of JSON. JSON as a config file is a war crime. I'd also have to agree with the use of the word irrational if you'd rather use XML.
As to coffee, I disagree somewhat. If someone is going to a coffee shop and getting a 20 oz. drink that's ~90% (literally) milk, sugar, and flavors, they're likely not in it for the coffee. Mostly because at that point, the actual coffee matters so little to the overall flavor. I don't even know if it will get more people curious enough about coffee to branch out from the sweet stuff. Instead of focusing on what should be tried first, I'd just recommend people try a bunch of things for a few days straight. I didn't really care for my first espresso, but it grew on me.
Black coffee just takes some time to get used to, I think, regardless. These days I can appreciate a decent drip, pour-over, espresso, etc. without issue. Enough that I can't stand my work pots because people refuse to take the time to rinse them out properly.
My snobbishness ends pretty quickly though. I buy beans from a local roaster, use a cheap manual grinder, and only have an Aeropress and cheap (no temperature control) electric kettle.
Zooming in on this part of your comment. Before I got an espresso machine, I used an Aeropress for years. I generally live by the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and the Aeropress is like a Lagrange point in functional simplicity: better-than-decent coffee, easy to clean, portable and-- at least in my experience --indestructible in normal usage. There are a lot of guides online with instructions and recipes for frilly foofoo drinks that can be made with the Aeropress, but for regular old coffee-no-cream, it is really hard to beat an Aeropress. The only non-stock tweak I use on the Aeropress is to use a Prismo attachment with a paper filter.
If I may piggyback on this: americanos are just better iced. If you want black coffee, brew it, drip it, press it, or just drink the espresso straight. Hot americanos are weirdly flavorless, and it bothers me. But just drizzle some espresso on some ice and you have <3
Certainly a personal preference thing for sure, and no shame to anyone that does put stuff in their coffee. I keep my options open, but I tend to prefer black coffee 99% of the time because of multiple reasons- feels cleaner/healthier to not ingest any dairy/dairy-alikes or sugar, as I watch things like sugar intake closely, and I actually nearly always prefer the taste without it. Especially since I only buy decent quality coffee now and I want to get the most out of the experience of tasting the coffee itself (milk/sugar/anything additive ruin that experience for me personally by obscuring the flavor, which i refuse to do when I'm paying good money for good coffee).
However, occasionally, especially when I buy a coffee and find out I don't like it as much, or for things on the much darker roasted end, or when I happen to have some inexpensive / cheap coffee, an occasional low-sugar dairy-alternative oatmilk + coffee drink is nice.
I do think some of us coffee/tea nerds can be a bit harsh on people for enjoying what we see as a "messed with" or "low quality" cup of whatever (and I'm not saying you're doing this, of course). The best way to drink coffee/tea is however one enjoys it most, at the end of the day.
But I would gently recommend, without judgement, that people simply consider being open to higher quality coffees and teas, and potentially trying some of them without anything added, and you may surprise yourself at the world that opens up to you- of course, that's fully up to the reader how much they want to experiment or deep dive any of these things, it can get really deep really quickly, and some people just want to have their drink and go about their day without thinking about it- more power to you! :) The reason I recommend it is not to change what someone likes or judge it, but to simply give people the opportunity to experience the same thing I have experienced in upgrading my coffee/tea. I used to buy pre-ground commodity inexpensive grocery store coffee and inexpensive tea bag tea and upgrading both of those experiences was worth it for me, I get 10x the enjoyment now
(Also dang, I realize none of my comments can ever be properly concise... sry for the novel-length responses to everything)
Milk is also expensive enough that if you end up liking the higher quality coffee without milk then you are likely coming out even cost-wise.
I recently switch to loose leaf green tea (from a local shop) in the morning, and one espresso in the afternoon when I typically get kind of sleepy after lunch. Took about 3 weeks to adjust to the change in the morning. A nicer loose leaf tea helped (versus the grocery store tea bags).
Nice! I do the reverse typically. I do coffee in the mornings and then often a tea in the afternoon. I find the coffee sits easier on my stomach than the tea for early morning hours (depends on the tea, though, of course), and I want my biggest punch of caffeine in the morning and a smaller one in the afternoon.
Loose leaf is what I drink- all kinds of teas, including plenty of green teas.
I'm cursed with experiencing nausea if I drink tea first thing on an empty stomach (perhaps you're referring to the same thing?). I looked into it when I first put two and two together and it's apparently not uncommon, so I'm also now a coffee first, tea later kind of person. We also drink lots of fridge tea, loose leaf tea brewed overnight in the fridge - it's a lovely, refreshing drink for lunchtimes in summer (is this "iced tea", or would that require a chunk of sugar?).
Yeah I am referring to that same problem- nausea, etc.
I would consider that iced tea, yeah, a form of it at least.
This one is kind of obtuse to explain, and I definitely can’t help folks find it on a case-by-case basis, but both my wife’s and my car have door unlock default settings wherein, when your car is locked and you have the keyless remote in your pocket, touching the driver door handle unlocked only the driver’s door, but touching the passenger side door handle unlocked every car door. This is nice in theory for individuals who want to only unlock their door when getting in to drive, but in a couples / family context, it’s super annoying. The driver gets to the car first, unlocks the door, gets in, then manually has to unlock the rest of the doors for their passengers.
So, my setting tip is that if you find yourself in a similar situation, look into your car’s system settings (usually buried several screens deep in whatever UI it has) and see if you can toggle your car to unlock every door no matter where the touch comes from. We were able to do this on my wife’s 2014 Toyota, and haven’t tried with my car yet but I intend to look for it this week. Game-changer!
I don't think that this is an option on my car, but it's OK because that setting you like is just how it is. But I actually kind of wish it weren't. I kind of liked how my old Nissan leaf was; press the button on the handle once and it unlocked the driver's door, press it twice to unlock all of them.
I got a 2020 Ridgeline earlier this year, and it has the touch to unlock, touch to start, and auto-lock when you walk away. Between that and the wireless Android Auto connection (adapter), I don't have to ever take anything out of my pockets. It's very civilized.
I will say there are times when I want to leave the truck unlocked, and I basically can't. It really aggressively keeps locking itself. That can be a little annoying.
I have a habit of touching the rear door while walking to the driver's door on my car because it unlocks all the doors. I'll need to see if I can do this with mine.
My Honda Civic (both the previous '18 and the current '19) have driver unlocks all, and I've changed it to only unlock drivers' door, as I have no kids and typically do not ferry folks. But it was pretty easy to find (well, okay, at least for my old ass), so I suspect Hondas are good for this one.
That’s great to know - I think my Civic is the same “generation” as yours so it’ll hopefully be easy to find. Appreciate the insight!
Yep, gen 10! Since I got the '18 (which I got in '19) gen 11 appeared. There are a lot of things I don't like with the new gen, which I realized when shopping for my current one early last year.
Agreed. I went with a hatchback and have nothing but good things to say about it. It fits my whole drum set in it better than half of the subcompact SUVs we tried out. Big fan!
I have a full 4-door sedan (those hatchbacks look sick tho!), but it fits and seats the backseat/trunk better than our Volvo S40 did, for almost half the price!
(Also, the '18 was viciously attacked by a puddle on the freeway and was pulled into a concrete barrier, which is why I got the '19, and I didn't even realize I hit the deployed side airbags until I watched my footage! Made me love them even more. Just gotta hack the head to get that stupid "hit OK to proceed" when you first turn it on, and also turn off the seatbelt warning as I live in the only state where seatbelts are not legally required [though YES I WEAR THEM!] :)
Our Kias (Soul and Telluride) both let you double tap unlock to unlock all doors. That works from the key fob and the driver door. Passenger door unlocks all already. Pretty sure there's a setting to make that the default, but I don't like unlocking all the doors when I'm alone or my wife is alone.
Night Light in Windows. There is an option in MacOS too but I forget the name. While the option is meant to reduce the blue light at night, I think it's just good to have this on all the time if you work on the computer all day (and if you don't require super accurate colors). The display will be a lot more yellow, but it the payoff is huge in terms of reducing eye strain. Night mode (dark mode) is also good for this, but not an option on every single application. To me dark mode makes things harder to read too, especially in spreadsheets.
Not so much one option, but in general micro-managing your notification settings. Too many distractions these days! Ask yourself if you really need each app to pop up and interrupt you. Kill notifications per-app, and decide if each app needs to show: badges? play sounds? show up on the lock screen? show banners? Your attention is precious currency for apps, so guard it well.
Do Not Disturb: similar to the last point. It's a good idea to limit screen time before bed. Maybe set Do not disturb to start as early as 8:00 PM and end as late as whenever you are done breakfast, for example. Can always set specific contacts or apps as exceptions to this in the settings.
Access to photos, camera, microphone: guard this well. Apps love nothing more but to get their hands on all your data. Does an app really need your full photo library? Maybe you only give it access to the photos you need it to access.
It's called "Night Shift" on iOS and macOS. Here are the relevant support pages to enable the feature:
Android has a similar feature.
On Linux, GNOME and Plasma have their own implementations of the feature. For other desktop environments or window managers, one could use:
I use Gammastep. I shared my config in a previous comment:
https://tildes.net/~tech/1pbq/i_am_new_to_mac_os_give_me_your_favorite_or_preferred_settings_tools#comment-g3m5
With Gammastep, I have set up automatic light/dark theme switching when the sun sets or rises, for all the programs that I use. I also have a block on my status bar that I can click to force-switch light or dark mode across the system, regardless of time of day.
Turn off mouse acceleration. It inhibits your ability to develop the muscle memory to quickly move the mouse cursor precisely.
Make sure you have the Do Not Track signal being sent out by your browser. Especially if you live somewhere with laws requiring honoring of it.
Dark mode. All the time, every thing with a backlight. Because the less you stare at bright lights the better.
Semi-related: Disable any notification for all apps that aren't used for urgent communication. Push notifications are the popup of the 21st century. I have a related blog post percolating: Make things harder to use.
If your hybrid or electric car has a "comfort" mode, make sure it's set to that. The efficiency differences between that and Eco are minimal, and your passengers will thank you by not having your car lurch to a stop.
Unless you're printing out for something life-changing or a photograph, use draft mode.
Actually, you probaly shouldn't enable Do Not Track. The services which you would like to obey it, use it as a way to fingerprint your browser, and since barely anybody enables the setting, it ironically makes your fingerprint a lot more unique. It also turns out most browsers are phasing it out.
I was concerned about this until I found out the real problem is the list of fonts installed in my system... It's unique.
While we're on the subject, I will point out Firefox has a hidden setting that you can enable if you're truly concerned about fingerprinting. It will do things like randomize your timezone, fonts, etc. in order to make your fingerprint dynamic and thus unreliable to trackers. It's the strongest possible way I've found to defeat fingerprinting.
about:configprivacy.resistFingerprintingtotrueNow, do I recommend the setting? It depends. It can be kind of a hassle when you're trying to use websites/webapps that legitimately need those things...
Great find, thanks, I didn't know about that config setting. I remember being thoroughly annoyed by my visits to amiunique.org that would show me that I very much am unique, given the crazy detail in the settings that are being broadcast by my browser of choice.
And I'm sure that has nothing to do with most browsers being owned by massive tech giants that lose more money now that more laws are passing that require honoring it.
There is no legitimate reason to remove support other than 'it puts advertisers at legal risk for not respecting it. The fingerprinting problem would be solved by having it in a proper settings wizard.
Of course, telemetry and tracking will always be opt-out until we put the axe in the back of online advertising.
I understand the sceptisism, but the follow-up was specifically created to work in tandem with legislation and is specifically mentioned in privacy laws of some US states: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Privacy_Control, so it seems to be good news for a change.
This isn't true and there is no science to support it, it's something people (gamers?) just made up one day and pretended was true. The human brain ia very good at understanding and extrapolating acceleration. Windows's enhanced pointer precision is weird and there is merit in people understanding how it works and knowing they can turn it off, but there is nothing wrong with using it or other methods of acceleration.
I think this just depends on the person. I have encountered multiple "acceleration" situations where it feels more accurate, especially with small precise movements, with it turned off, and easier for my muscle memory to know exactly what movement is needed to achieve the precision needed. When it's not accelerated / on a curve but instead is a flat mapping of movement to positioning/speed, it definitely feels more natural to me. It's anecdotal sure, but I know how it feels to me and how it was impeding me and that's enough for me.
For a long, long time, this was the case on MacOS, where attempting to do precision work (photo, video, audio editing in particular) was very difficult for me because of how the acceleration would make it difficult to get precise movements in some ways. So much so that I had to download a third-party app to fully disable it. I think they've now improved on it quite a bit, but it used to be so noticeable and frustrating that I could not accomplish certain things I needed to do. IIRC, I also had to do some configuration in Linux to get acceleration/movement/etc with my mouse to be exactly what works with my brain too.
I never found Windows' version of this to be as annoying or inaccurate. But it can still be weird, like you said.
I adore dark mode but I know at least one person who gets eye pain from it. My suggestion would be to spend a week with it and see if you experience more or less eye strain.
I can't stand dark mode in the most apps on a desktop. My current solution is to use not-so bright lamp behind monitor to smooth light contrast in the night/evening. It can be related to astigmatism, I read at least few comments from some people with astigmatism that they also prefer light mode.
I have astigmatism and prefer dark mode.
The best thing I did for astigmatism was getting glasses. I have basically the lowest spherical correction, but have cylindrical corrections that greatly reduce the issue. (And I have different angles in each eye, so uncorrected makes street lamps look like elongated X shapes instead of a single slash.)
I'm wearing glasses all my life, heh. And you made me think, I'm completely ok with reading light text on dark or black background. But somehow using dark mode on desktop feels wrong. Maybe it's inconsistency between dark more implementations across different apps... maybe I should give it a try again.
I seem to drift in and out of dark / light mode on desktop. I find myself being jaded with dark mode from time to time so I re-theme everything to light, and go 'wow, this is great', and keep it for a bit before going back to dark modes.
The dark mode periods seem to last a little longer than light ones maybe, but it's fairly even.
It's better on KDE as I have more theming options, light mode is less used on my Mac as it's not so controllable.
I prefer dark mode for most things but occasionally I switch to light mode for a couple hours and don't mind it... until I have to program and remember I despise light mode in the terminal
Reminds me of how on my Mac, I just invert the colors a lot to the point I remapped that to be Command+, for convenience. Sometimes to make a "dark mode", sometimes to make a "light mode".
i think folks with astigmatism can’t do dark mode. i switched to light themes for everything and will never go back.
Not saying your experience is invalid, just adding a data point: I have astigmatism and can't stand most light modes. They're just so goddamn bright! Plus most of my screens are OLEDs and I love that sweet sweet true black.
Any time I stumble into a website that Dark Reader (Firefox extension) doesn't catch (rare), I have a visceral reaction to it lol. It's very nearly physically painful, depending on the percentage of the screen that's white.
I run dark mode all the time and experienced a site that I couldn't force to dark mode the other day. As I was reading it my vision suddenly went wonky. So much so that I freaked out and scheduled an emergency appt with my optometrist. Turns out what I experienced was an ocular migraine. Never experienced that before and I hope never to do it again. The blistering bright white page seems to be what triggered the incident. Bleh. Dark Mode, all the way.
Ugh,
ocularvisual migraines are awful. Did you get the flashing blob that slowly expands from the center of your vision, eventually goes away, and then like five minutes later it's just a really terrible headache?I've gotten several over the years but never from light mode as far as I remember.
Mine was more like the right third of my vision got watery (for lack of a better description) and a little 'crack' showed up near the center. It made reading anything close to impossible. Lasted about 45m before it went away.
It was the first for me and it seemed triggered by the super bright white page. I'm paranoid about bright lights now. I've actually always been really sensitive to light. My night vision is great though.
Huh what you described sounded like what i had experienced twice but never found out the name of! so i had Visual migraines (both eyes, happens in brain) before and couldn't describe it well enough to find out the name.
It's also interesting on how different astigmatism can be, for me looking at white text on a black background gives horizontal halos after a while, making it extremely uncomfortable.
Must be! And you're correct to call it a visual migraine, not an ocular migraine (as I initially did). The Wikipedia article I added above points out that they are two distinct things often confused with each other. TIL!
interesting. it doesnt glare for you at all? I know a few folks with this and the eye strain and headaches cut way down after going light.
where possible, I've started using #eefbfe as my background color (e.g. for here)
I suppose it does glare sometimes, but I just don't often find myself in a situation where it bothers me I guess? I do occasionally have trouble with my monitor (which is by a window), but it's matte so it's still not that bad.
That's definitely preferable to #ffffff!
I've got some old paper from the 50s in this blue and I really like it. A lot of people with our wonky eyes get double-text or ghosting or something. I find that I just don't get the same sharpness that I do with a light theme. I also have my monitor dimmer with the light themes than the dark.
I switched over last year or the year before and really didn't like it at first. Its really weird. Also, the light theme color scheme scene is weak. Its all the same colors.
I absolutely abhor dark mode. I prefer to actually see what's on my screen. I especially hate it when my students are using their computers in dark mode and I need to see the code they're writing but they're all using dark mode with their especially low contrast syntax highlighting color schemes. And if you're not running on an OLED display, the backlight has to be run extra hard since the vast majority of the pixels are obscuring said light.
Another dark mode hater here. (but I do use f.lux for the sake of my eyes).
It's objectively easier to see things clearly in light mode for the same reason it's easier to see out in the sun than in a dark room, provided you don't stare directly at the sun. And light mode has always been a far cry from staring directly at the sun as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't tire my eyes.
Your sun reading analogy is backwards though. The reason it's easier to read in the sun than a dark room is because you are using reflective light to be able to see the content. When looking at a screen it's an emissive source of like. The principle of operations is different. And it's more akin to staring at the sun. To each their own though. OLED dark mode is, IMO, the best for your eyes.
How is the "principle of operations" different? In both situations light from the thing you're looking at is radiating into your eyes. Do you read physical books written in white ink on black paper? If not, all the white in the paper is reflecting sunlight into your eyes.
EDIT: I may have misunderstood your comment. What I mean is that light is light, and it's highly unlikely that the brightness of your screen is closer to the brightness of the sun than the brightness of the page you're reading, unless you're reading in the dark, in which case reading would be more difficult. /EDIT
Here's a balanced article on the subject (with links). I think we've discussed this on tildes in the past.
Here's a more recent one, also with links to various studies.
As for the clearer benefits of dark mode, device battery is not a concern to me (I'm not usually on a battery-powered device) and f.lux is already dealing with the circadian and fatigue issues, so it comes down to personal preference and personal health issues.
Comfort vs Eco is what my BMW has, which always defaults back to comfort.
Not sure if this counts as a setting but site search shortcuts in browsers (I mostly use chrome so this works, but IIRC firefox and others support it as well).
I have shortcuts set up for any sites I regularly search (Wikipedia, Youtube, etc.) and the skipped steps of navigating to a site is remarkably handy. Type
Ctrl-t w bananaand I have the wikipedia page open.Allow me to introduce you to Bangs.
I set DDG as my primary search engine in Firefox. Then, I can simply search any site I want from the address bar.
Search Wikipedia for banana
!w bananaSearch Amazon for banana
!a bananaSearch Google Images for banana
!gi bananaI love how obscure some of the bangs are. For example,
!tolkien Berenwill take me to the Tolkien Gateway page on Beren, and!bulba Metagrosswill go to the Bulbapedia page for Metagross. There's a whole list you can see just by using!bangs, it's fun to explore!Benazir, why do I have you tagged as Samwise on my Tildes custom label? Asking because you brought up Beren just now, and I think it was a fun fact I liked about you but have forgotten :)
Banazir is the original Westron name that got translated into Samwise. So technically, you have me tagged with my own username!
Oh I'm so glad I asked :D tag amended
There's a way to customize keywords this so google only searches forums and/or no AI suggestions either. I don't have it on this device.... Might come back to edit if I remember
I think they're easier to learn when I make them myself rather than looking up which existing ones DuckDuckGo has. And one less character to type since I don't need the exclamation mark.
Me too - I've never understood the appeal of bangs.
Most of these also work with Kagi, which I'm a very happy user of.
This is why I cannot leave DDG...
My province paid electricians to add energy efficiency QOL improvements for free in homes, so these are I guess permanent settings and I really like them.
Hall and stairs lights now have dimmers: I just need the minimal to see if I'm going for water in the dead of night.
The mudroom light is on motion detect so we never have to hunt for it when we come in, and won't forget to turn off at night
Water heater has a cozy blanket and some controller that heats less at night etc
Outdoor motion sensor lights at the door + solar powered lights little farther from the house
Bathroom humidity sensor
(Not a fan of "smart" thermostat but they also offered it)
Unrelated setting I like: cold water for washing machine
When using Steam on Linux or steamdeck... Settings > Steam Play > Enable Steam Play for all other titles.
What it does is try get steam to try to play unsupported games and most of the time it works flawlessly. I've been trying to jam it into every discussion where someone is looking to switch to Linux and wants to game. It should be enabled by default or steam should ask you on first launch.
I have never touched this setting and have still been able to run games that are “unsupported” on my Steam deck. What does that setting actually do? I haven’t seen a title in my library that won’t attempt to use proton, even if listed as unsupported.
In the past steam (on my computer) would not even let me download an unsupported title.
It's default now and you really only have to tinker when things don't work OOB (on both desktop/Linux and Deck).
Clipboard History - Windows Key +V to enable.
I can copy multiple items from 1 window and then go to another window and paste with Windows key +V to get a list of all of the recent items I've put in the clipboard.
CopyQ is a great alternative, at least on Linux.
CopyQ actually supports Windows and macOS too (I didn't know that until just now), but I've never used it on those operating systems. It's probably still great there, too.
Pano is a similarly advanced clipboard manager that is supposed to integrate well with GNOME (I've never tried it), and KDE has a built-in clipboard manager called Klipper.
Thank you! I've been missing clipboard history since switching some of my computers to Linux, just hasn't been a big enough issue for me to going hunting for a solution yet.
A few of my favorites for MacOS, run this on terminal:
Then
killall Dock; killall Finderor restart to be sure.that's a neat one! Sometimes a window's title bar will be so full of buttons that there isn't a good spot to grab it. You can also do it in BetterTouchTool with 1 Finger Touch Start (or similar for mice) > Start Moving Windows. I mapped it so hyper+cursor movement does it.
On Windows there's an open-source program called AltSnap that allows you to move/resize windows with
Alt+left/right click.On Linux, this behavior is standard. I don't actually know of any window managers or desktop environments that don't implement it, though the modifier key might differ between them (but is almost certainly Alt, Super, or maybe Control).
on macos, accessibility settings has three finger and drop. a must have honestly.
Auto-brightness - on your TV, on your phone, on your monitor, on your Steam Deck, everywhere where it's available. There is zero reason to burn out your eyes.
If you are lucky and have notification RGB LED on your phone, set different colors for missed call, SMS/IM and e-mail. That way just one quick glance tells you how needed your attention is. Don't have RGB notification LED? Unbelievable that we don't have it today as we had it already in 2009. Every phone should have at least normal notification LED if you ask me.
Not really setting, but more of an advice - tidy up your passwords! From people around me I know how messy password management gets without password manager. Especially when people save their passwords into browser that isn't synced up and they find out the don't have them after reinstall... Or if they don't even know their Google account name after buying new phone, let alone password... Tidy it up, you are doing this for you!
Auto-brightness is one of the first things I turn off on a new tv/monitor. I find it very distracting having the brightness noticeably jump around as the displayed content's brightness changes, even at the lowest/mildest setting. I do spend time "calibrating" baseline brightness and other settings (just by eye and RTings guide, no calibration equipment)
Phone auto-brightness seems to just be based on ambient lighting (or it's much better / more subtle than TVs if it's signal based), so I usually leave that one on. It occasionally settles on an absolutely stupid brightness for no clear reason and I have to adjust manually, but overall its worth it there.
Yeah, I like it on my phone (and wouldn't mind on my laptop, if it supported it), but I don't want it on my TV or desktop
I have Panasonic plasma TV from 2011 and it works like a charm with auto-brightness. It is also placed on really bad spot where it gets shade and also sunlight throughout the day and it handles it pretty well. If I set it manually it wouldn't work for my usecase. That said I knew this will be controversial take and there will be people who does exactly the opposite thing. And it is fine if it works for you!
I don't have monitor with auto brightness and I hate not having it. Menu isn't that bad but I hate fiddling with it. It doesn't have a dedicated button for say "profile switching" either to quickly set different value. And having it basically in the same situation as the TV I can really see how useful it would be to have auto-brightness. The thing is I have really bad positioning of my workspace where lighting conditions vary wildly throughout the day.
Phones (and Steam Deck) does pretty good job with that with occasional hiccup as you said.
The whole thing is that I know people who sets their brightness manually to stupid values (like 100%) and the TV or phone is unwatchable, not even mentioning how stupid it is in the evening when there is no other light in the room (or just very light ambient lighting).
I had one of those 2009 RGB notification LEDs and I’m flabbergasted that it’s not anywhere anymore. It was literally the only phone I had with it either. It’s a feature that costs almost zero to manufacture, too! But I guess everyone else prefers always-on screens that give out way too much info to the public….
What a great phone it was! My first top tier one, although I bought it used near the end-of-life. It was fast, really well optimized, everything worked just fine and if you wanted, you could delve really deep into the OS.
And the RGB LED? Absolutely superior. Nowadays you are lucky if you have any LED... At least Nothing Phones have they glyph interface that can work the same way. And to my knowledge, they are also high end devices just like N900 was.
The best thing is that I can't say that I miss my N900 - I still have it! Last time I used it as my daily was in spring of 2023 when my Pinephone broke after I dropped it and I was waiting for Nokia G22 to launch in our country.
I'm writing this from Pixel 6a which brings me once again to used high end phone, just like it did more than 10 years ago with N900.
I use an app called aodNotify that lets you have a notification light with various colours etc. I read that having part of your screen simulate a notification LED wasn't a good idea because it would probably burn out those pixels (or something, I only vaguely remember now). But now I have a thin border gently pulse all around the edge of my screen in various colours for various things for around 20/30 seconds (well, basically charging has one colour, my partner's messages have another, and everyone/thing else has another colour, I'm not really putting it throught its paces here).
I will clarify that I would absolutely love a dedicated multi-colour LED though. I limit the time of my notification flashing to avoid damaging those specific pixels, but I'd love a notification that could last for minutes/hours, so I could just glance at the phone and KNOW that nothing had come in since I last glanced in its direction.
I turn the setting off, too. It's nice when it works, but I'll often just turn the brightness way down or use a handy little Windows application called Pango Bright (https://pangobright.com/) that dims everything to a certain percentage.
It's an application for concert lighting booth systems, and is the perfect way to bright a system using Dark Mode themes down to even more bearable levels.
I have an odd one. If you've enabled developer options on your Android phone, you have access to a feature that I kind of think ought to be under the accessibility options: "Show taps".
All it does is provide a subtle visual hint wherever you tap on the screen, which isn't much, but I find it useful feedback that the phone is doing what I want/that I did press where I intended to. It also helps make things clearer when I'm casting or screen recording.
I've had it enabled since I found it years and years ago, it's one of the first things I set up on a new phone (along with
MessageEaseThumbKey as my keyboard).Disable notifications in you web browser. Thank me later.
While you're at it, if you're on Windows, disable notifications there too.
On IOS from a security perspective I recommend 2 settings:
Settings -> Screen Time -> Content & Privacy Restrictions -> {Don't Allow on Passcode & Face ID & Accounts} *use a pin in my case
In the event of mobile loss, your iCloud account and or passcode will not be easily compromised.
Another tip I heard recently, supposedly when a phone is stolen they'll sometimes put it into Airplane mode to prevent wipe requests coming over the network. If you remove the connectivity widget from the control panel then the phone can no longer be put into Airplane mode without unlocking it first.
You can also go to Settings -> Face ID & Passcode -> Allow Access When Locked and disable everything. This prevents you from being able to open the notification center or control center at all while the phone is locked.
The only setting I've left enabled here is "Live Activities."
Tiny setting, but on Apple laptops I immediately swap ctrl and Spock’s button functionality. I rarely set caps lock on but the caps lock key is so much larger! I got used to it being that way with a Japanese keyboard layout and could never go back.
I know it's just a typo, but I really want a Spock's Button on my keyboard. Maybe a heavy V, like:
\\//as a non-mac user, what is the Spock button really? Is it that key with the squiggly square-ish symbol on it?
I assume they were talking about the caps lock button. That's the one I've heard many people talk about reassigning, since THERE'S RARELY A GOOD MODERN USE CASE FOR IT.
I remap caps to HYPER and use it for all of my window management, launching applications (e.g. hyper+e opens a new Finder window), and more :)
I should map for Spock. \\//
Caps Lock I'm guessing. I do it on MacOS and Linux. Huge improvement. I don't swap them though, I just make caps lock an alternative ctrl/cmd button.
Apple laptops have a Spock button? What does it do?
Turn off location settings on most apps on your phone. Make them "ask to use" or whatever the setting is because otherwise you will always be using location, and it will drain your battery.
Adjust brightness settings on your TV based on the time of day you're watching. Nice sunny morning news? Put it on brighter, late at night watching a movie? Put on movie mode. Your eyes will thank you for not blinding yourself and/or for being able to see what is being shown during the day without squinting too hard.
I’m not sure if it’s still needed nowadays, but on Android I’ve always sped up the animations (0,5x) in developer options and installed nova launcher.
Ctrl + Win + Left/Right arrow to switch between virtual desktops
Highly recommend to bind these shortcuts to unused keyboard or mouse buttons for a little productivity boost.
Bonus: Turning off animation effects under "settings -> accessibility -> visual effects" makes the transition between desktops instant.
⊞ Win+Tab ↹: to see what's running
and most importantly...
⊞ Win+Arrow: to organize the many different things I have running on my three monitor PC.
You might find FancyZones useful. It's part of the larger PowerToys collection of utilities. Contains tons of neat and nifty tools.
Ooh, yes. More of this please!
I live in the mountains and we get a lot of snow. There are two settings I use frequently.
Select Shift
Many automatic transmission vehicles allow you to go into a "manual" mode where you can usually set the max gear the vehicle will go in, effectively allowing you to force down shifts (most don't let you shift up, though). This is helpful to me in a few ways:
TCS Off in the Snow
It might sound crazy but I turn traction control off in the snow. The main reason is: if you are sliding with your wheels turned, even with ABS on (understeer) you can sometimes regain control by taking your foot off the brakes, and giving it some gas, spinning the tires a bit to force oversteer. But traction control systems will detect your spinning tires and cut your throttle. This one is a little trickier and there are certainly pros and cons, but it has kept me from hitting the curb in a few roundabouts over the years. Also this one works better on AWD/4WD vehicles than FWD.
One nitpick here is to be very careful with #3 (downshifting) in snow/slippery surfaces! "The rolling wheel gets the grip." Downshifting is creating rolling resistance similar to braking. In this scenario, if your resistance is higher than available grip, sliding will occur. If you're sliding because of too much resistance, manipulating the brake pedal is infinitely quicker/more modular than attempting to change to a higher gear.
MacOS
w/ BetterTouchTool
Launch Finder with key combo
open -na "Finder" ~/DesktopHide Icons in Menubar
System
cmd+shift-5> Options > change the default location for screenshots or usedefaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop && killall SystemUIServerdefaults write com.apple.screencapture name -string "tomf is a cool guy"; killall SystemUIServerdefaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg && killall SystemUIServer.DS_Storefiles on network shares --defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true && killall FinderIOS
edit: here's a goofy one for weechat --
/set buflist.format.hotlist_none "${indent}${color:${calc:(88+${number})}"-- depending on your buffer count, it'll give you a nice gradient. Adjust the 88 / offset to a good set that works for your theme :)Niche: but by default on Linux systemd-oomd does exactly nothing (verify with oomctl). The most casual setting is setting
on the root slice
-.slice.man systemd.resource-controlfor details. Maybe your distro does this out of the box but mine (NixOS) does not.A lot of systemd defaults are not great.
This is a nice article that walks thru a lot of options.
On my system, turning off Discord's hardware acceleration in the settings removes some microstutter in many games. If you, like me, suffer from motion sickness and need Discord for coop, this may be a setting that is the difference between being able to play a game and lying down on the floor in five minutes fighting the urge to throw up, even after you have tweaked all the in-game settings to be optimal for a motion sickness sufferer.
I need to make this change in both Windows and Linux. For some, I believe turning off the Discord overlay is also needed, or does the trick on its own.
I have solved so many weird problems by turning off hardware acceleration over the years since it became a thing. Any time an application is acting buggy or using an unreasonable amount of system resource; check the settings to see if it's possible to disable hardware acceleration.
On MacOS you can set it so the scroll wheel on your mouse will preview all windows for whatever app your mouse is hovering over in the dock. So say you have 3 Firefox windows open and you need to jump to a specific one from another application, simply scroll up on the dock icon and click the Firefox window you're after. I believe it's already a trackpad gesture and the command just enables it for the scroll wheel.
It's not quite as simple as the hover preview that Windows has, but it's the best approach I've found.
defaults write com.apple.dock scroll-to-open -bool TRUE; killall DockSource
I find binding volume controls to a programmable mouse so convenient for gaming or web browsing that I refuse to use one where it's not possible these days.
100% agree
I can't live without Volumouse anymore. I use Middle click + scroll wheel. Any loud sound is turned down immediately :)
I have gone a step further and have been running an external amp at my computer for over 5 years. Having a dedicated volume knob that I can reach for is quite nice
A dedicated volume knob is tactilely satisfying and is better for large adjustments, but the whole point of having volume controls on the side tilts of my mouse wheel is so that I don't have to reach for anything; if the mumbler starts talking on a podcast or the loud part of a song starts up or whatever, my hand is already on the volume control. It's constant virtually effortless fine-tuning that never breaks my flow.
It's a relatively small change, but I'd liken it to getting forward/back buttons on a mouse; no, it's not difficult to click on the actual buttons, but once you've made things just a little bit smoother all the time it's hard to go back.
I think it is also good for small fine tuned adjustments. Mine are not stepped, so I can really dial it in at the volume I want, and not stuck either being on a notch slightly too loud/quiet.
Interesting comparison, since I am dead set in my ways on back/forward buttons on my mouse. I did a quick timing of how long it takes me to move my cursor to the back/forward keys on my browser and how long it takes to reach for my volume knob. They come out to about the same amount of time, so maybe volume control on my mouse would be beneficial for me, except I keep software volume at a consistent setting.
True, I was looking at things through the lens of my own situation, where I keep the volume adjustment interval pretty low, so fine adjustments are easy but large ones take a few more clicks.
For comparison, my own setup is generally headphones with a random grab bag of content in a household where I've come to suspect the other inhabitants don't always have absolute silence as their top priority. It sounds like your soundscape may be a bit more consistent, so I wouldn't go out of your way to get a mouse that can do it, but if you've already got one I'd give it a whirl; you'll know in a day or two if it clicks.