A “hack” is a technique, trick, strategy, or shortcut that makes life easier. Hacks minimize sources of annoyance, speed up efficiency, make it easier to play at the Thunderbolt online casino, or enhance productivity. Tech mavens have their own hacks. Some are closely guarded secrets while others are so well-known that even your grandmother might use them.
Check out some of the best little-known tech hacks that anyone can do on a PC, laptop, or mobile device for free.
TLDR to Summarize
TLDR stands for “Too Long; Didn’t Read.” Not everyone is familiar with the acronym but everyone knows the experience of seeing an article that looks like it could possibly be of interest but not having the time to open it up and read the whole thing. Teachers who want to summarize an article for students, journalists researching a subject, students who are overwhelmed with too much information, and others can get the gist of a long article or document without investing the time into reading the whole thing by installing the TLDR extension into their browser. Once the extension is added you can open the site with the article and then open the TLDR extension to access a quick summary of the text.
To add the extension to Chrome, open the Chrome web store/Google Store, locate the TLDR extension and click “Add to Chrome.” Approve the extension by clicking “Add Extension.”
Passwords
Everyone knows that you should choose difficult passwords that are a combination of numbers, small letters, capital letters and symbols in order to thwart would-be hackers. Today, most Internet users are also aware that they shouldn’t use similar passwords for multiple sites. How do you keep your digital life safe without going crazy?
For one thing, you can use non-English characters on your keyboard (if you have a keyboard with non-English characters) to make your password harder to crack.
You can safely store your passwords on a local document by choosing a standard password comprised of letters and numbers and then, for each individual site, varying it with additional characters scattered before, after, and in-between the standard password. When you store it on your document, store it by using stars for the standard letters and numbers along with the website’s unique symbols. For example, if your “standard” password is “sunnydays2589”, that password should not be written anywhere (except, perhaps, on a slip of paper next to your computer). But on your password storage sheet you’ll note @%*********() for website #1, %*****#****$ for website #2, etc, with the stars standing in for “sunnydays.”
If you’re having trouble logging in to a site and you aren’t sure if your caps lock is on or you are typing foreign characters, etc, you can view a masked password by changing the password input type as text.
Frozen Phone
Devices freeze which often indicates that a “reboot” is in order. But sometimes, when a phone freezes, it won’t respond to a reboot. When that happens you have a number of options.
When that happens, try plugging your phone into a charger. Sometimes a phone freezes when it has run out of battery so once you give it a little new charge you’ll be able to charge it up a little so it can then respond.
If that doesn’t work, you might need to force the device to restart. For Android, hold down the Power and the Volume Up buttons simultaneously. Power and Volume Down may also need to be tried.
As a last resort, remove the battery, let the device sit for a minute and then replace the battery and try to start the device up again.
Finally, try to identify the reason that the phone froze. If you see that the phone freezes when you open a specific App, delete the app. You can then reinstall it to see if the app works better once it’s been reinstalled.
If all else fails, perform a factory reset. You can find tutorials on how to reset the phone on youtube.
KBy the way, if you want to charge your phone faster, put it in airplane mode while it’s being charged.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Learn keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts allow you to cut, paste, copy, save and perform other functions more quickly than you could with a mouse. Some of the most frequently-used keyboard shortcuts include:
- Copy: Ctrl + C.
- Cut: Ctrl + X.
- Paste: Ctrl + V
- Bold: Ctrl + B
- Save: Ctrl + S
Increasing numbers of government offices are going online these days. That’s good news for the public because it means that many tasks that once required a visit to the office can now be taken care of online.
These offices frequently send out forms that need to be filled in and signed. The forms are often sent as PDFs, meaning that, unless you’ve paid for a PDF editor program, you have to print them out, fill them in by hand, and then scan them in order to send them back.
Now you can edit the forms for free on your device through the PDFEscape.com website. Open the form via the site, complete your edits and then save it into your computer to be sent onward as needed.
Save time and money while you do more for less with tech hacks.
