How-To Geek

Congratulations, you have a new Google Home or Amazon Echo device! But for some reason, even though you’re confident you have the password correct, it won’t connect to Wi-Fi. The good news is, there are easy solutions to try.

Whether you have a new Google Home or new Amazon Echo device, setup should be easy. As long as you have the correct accounts created, the apps walk you through all the steps in a straightforward manner. But occasionally you might get hung up on connecting to Wi-Fi, even when you’re sure you have the password correct. Often, the problem isn’t your password but the network you’ve chosen or that your smartphone is trying to maintain a working internet connection.

Echo and Google Home devices learn your Wi-Fi details through a handoff. Your smartphone directly connects to the device (creating a temporary Wi-Fi network specific to them), and then the Google or Amazon app passes on the information about your SSID (the name of your Wi-Fi network) and password. Unfortunately, smartphones are aggressive about maintaining a good network connection. When you connect to the new network, your device might realize it can’t find the internet and fall back to using your cellular data instead. When that happens, your phone disconnects from the Google Home or Echo and the setup process can’t complete.

To avoid this, before you begin the setup process turn on airplane mode in your phone’s settings. Then turn on Wi-Fi (which airplane mode just turned off). Once you have reconnected to your network launch the Google Home or Alexa app and try the setup process again.

Falling back to cellular is a common enough problem that Wink makes this same suggestion when setting up its hub.

Google Home and Amazon Echo can connect to either the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band. It can be tempting to use the 5 GHz band since it tends to run into fewer congestion issues and provide faster speeds, and for those reasons, it probably should be your first choice. But consider how far your new voice assistant is from the router. If that distance is far (you’re at the edges of your house), then your connection may not be reliable. In that scenario, try the 2.4 GHz band. If you already are trying to use the 2.4 GHz band, then try the 5 GHz band, as interference may be the issue. If you have a mesh system, it will take care of choosing the best band for you.

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Google Glass lived a short, sad life. And when you look back, it feels like a bit of a dream. But the dream isn’t over yet, because Glass has found itself an industrial career.

There was a lot of hype around Google Glass when it was announced in 2012. It was featured in TIME magazine, endorsed by celebrities, and touted as the future of smart devices. But the smart eyewear was ridiculed by the media, and it became a big joke in the public eye. Google made some awkward attempts to keep the public interested in Glass (they put Google Glass in the shower, and they interrupted a Google+ keynote to push Glass wearers out of an airplane), but the Glass never picked up steam, and its public life ended in 2015.

Why did it fail? For one, nobody knew what Glass was supposed to do. Google itself couldn’t seem to find any uses for the product. Instead of developing life-changing software to show off the Glass’ capabilities, they released some awkward videos that made the Glass seem like a dorky extension of your cellphone. Customers that were part of the “Explorer” program (anyone that bought the device) were encouraged to build software on their own, a prospect that would be more exciting if the device cost less than $1500.

But most of the Glass’ woes were related to privacy and safety issues. The Glass was equipped with a camera, and people were understandably afraid of a future where anybody can walk around with a camera on their face. There was no way to tell when somebody was using their Glass to record video or take photos, so people assumed that Glass users were recording everything. A lot of states banned people from wearing the Glass while driving, because it’s an obvious visual distraction, and a lot of businesses (movie theaters, especially) banned the device because of its camera.

This isn’t to say that Glass is a bad piece of hardware; it just wasn’t ready to be thrown into the consumer market. If anything, the product was still in a beta mode. It had a lot of obvious kinks that Google needed to work out. The device’s safety and privacy issues were also legitimate and predictable, and Google should’ve taken the time to consider them before giving the product so much publicity.

While Glass was publicly floundering, Google was quietly testing it in the world of industry. Google’s “build your own apps” approach didn’t appeal to many consumers, but it sounded like a good deal to some corporations. Early adopters, like Boeing, could afford to drop thousands of dollars on smart glasses, and they had the resources to develop some useful software.

When Google noticed that Boeing and other corporations were much more interested in Glass than your average consumer, they leaned into it. After the Glass Explorer program came to a close in 2015, Google began work on an “Enterprise” edition of the device—a version that’s built specifically for industrial use, yet addresses most of the problems that people had with the Glass.

Glass Enterprise is a lighter, more comfortable pair of glasses than the Explorer edition. It has a battery life that exceeds eight hours (perfect for holiday shifts at a warehouse), and it’s equipped with an LED that tells others when you’re taking photos or recording video. The Glass Enterprise hardware is also a lot more flexible than the Explorer edition. People can remove the Enterprise from its standard glasses frame and attach it to safety glasses or the inside of a helmet.

You could theoretically use the Glass Enterprise while wearing sunglasses, safety glasses, or even a pair of goggles.

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1. Alberta, Canada
2. Arizona, United States
3. Subcarpathia, Poland
4. Antarctica

Think you know the answer?

Smart Folders in macOS are a tool to help you organize and find your files. They’re not folders, as they don’t contain anything. They’re saved searches, and can save you a lot of time for searches you perform often.

For example, if you often open your downloads folder and sort by Date Added to find your recent downloads, you could instead make a Smart Folder called “Recent Downloads” which only contains files in your Downloads folder added there today, saving you a couple clicks each time.

You make them by defining the search criteria (i.e., all audio files on your drive) and them saving them as a smart folder you can put on your desktop or in Finder’s sidebar. They make use of Finder’s powerful search features that often go overlooked in favor of typing the name into Spotlight.

You’ll find the option for making Smart Folders under the “File” menu in Finder. You can get Finder to appear in the top menu bar by quickly clicking on your desktop.

This will bring up a familiar search dialog. You can click the + button on the right to add new search criteria.

You can add as many Smart Folders as you want, and by default, Finder will only pull out files that match all of the options you defined. If you want to change this behavior, you can hold down Option and click on the + button, which will change to three dots. This will group together a list of criteria, and you can choose from Any, All, and None.

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Nest

A lot of video doorbells can differentiate between a person and another random object, but what if you want to know exactly who rang your doorbell? There’s really only one video doorbell on the market that can do facial recognition, but it’s a great option.

Before we get into that, though, it’s important to know the difference between face detection and facial recognition, because you’ll see both of these terms used in the description of video doorbells when you go shopping for one. They may seem like the same thing, but the latter is far superior.

Face detection is when cameras can differentiate a person from another object. So while cameras can still detect motion for cars, animals, trees, and more, they can also specifically detect a person. The camera won’t know exactly who that person is, but it will at least know that it’s a human being and not a tree.

Facial recognition takes this a step further and not only detects a person, but can also detect who that person is, specifically. So with a little help from the user and after a few weeks of learning, the camera can eventually know exactly who came to your door, whether it was the postal worker or your neighbor.

With that said, if this is the kind of feature you’re looking for, here’s the best video doorbell that can get the job done.

Not only doe the Nest Hello come with facial recognition technology, but it’s also one of the best video doorbells to begin with.

The Nest Hello can record 1080p video and supports HDR. It also has two-way talk capabilities and night vision. It’s also the perfect size—small enough to easily fit on door casing and go over the spot previously occupied by your old doorbell.

The face recognition is pretty good, although it’s not perfect. Expect a hiccup here or there in the beginning, although total mismatches are incredibly rare. Most of the time you’ll find, in the beginning at least, it may ask you to identify a person you’ve already tagged (just with a photo from a different angle). This is to be expected when it’s learning faces, though.

The tough pill to swallow is that you need to be subscribed to the $5/month Nest Aware subscription in order to get access to the facial recognition. However, this will also give you seven days of video recording storage, as well as 24/7 continuous recording. That’s a small price to pay for instant and reliable recognition of the people who come to your door. And, as a pretty awesome bonus feature, if you’re using other Google family products like the Google Home Mini or Google Home Hub, it integrates very well with them, even announcing the name of the person it has identified like “John the Mailman is at the front door!”

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Last year, Vizio was sued for reportedly spying on customers and using this data to target ads. This resulted in a $17 million class-action lawsuit that is now paying customers who bought a Vizio smart TV between February of 2015 and February of 2017.

Starting now, owners of Vizio smart TVs can sign up to be part of said lawsuit and get their piece of the pie. Don’t expect a huge take here, of course, as the average payout is expected to be $13 to $31. You’ll just need to give them your name, address, phone number (which is how you’ll get the payment), and email address. They also want to know when you purchased your TV and what model it is if you know those things, but they’re not required.

To collect your coin, head over to the Vizio TV Settlement website, click the “File a Claim” button, then fill out out the form with all the aforementioned information.

After that, you’re good to go—just hang out and wait for your lunch money to show up. You don’t even have to be in a hurry here, either, as you have until April 29th to get it done. If you don’t do it before then, you give up your right to get anything from the settlement or sue Vizio for this in the future.

It’s also worth noting that as part of the settlement, Vizio had to agree to delete any consumer data it collected before February 6th, 2017. It will also make it easier to opt-out of this tracking in the future.

via The Verge

Right now, anyone can go on the dark web and purchase the account data of 617 million people across 16 different websites for less than $20,000. This account data includes birthdays, email addresses, full names, and hashed passwords.

Data breaches seem to happen all the time, and we’ve kind of gotten used to it. If you’ve never been affected by a breach, then they can be easy to ignore. But 16 websites have been compromised at once. This would be a good time to pay attention to a data breach.

As reported by The Register, here are the 16 sites that have been affected:

Dubsmash (162 million), MyFitnessPal (151 million), MyHeritage (92 million), ShareThis (41 million), HauteLook (28 million), Animoto (25 million), EyeEm (22 million), 8fit (20 million), Whitepages (18 million), Fotolog (16 million), 500px (15 million), Armor Games (11 million), BookMate (8 million), CoffeeMeetsBagel (6 million), Artsy (1 million), and DataCamp (700,000).

Some of these websites, including EyeEm, MyHeritage, and 8fit, have confirmed that they were hacked. But not all of these hacks are recent, some of them were done a year or two ago.

You may be thinking “I haven’t logged into Armor Games in years,” but just take a minute to think about how long you’ve been using the same email address or the same password. That 5-year-old login information could be used to access your Facebook, your email address, or your bank account.

That’s why you should change your passwords to something new and secure every time a big data breach happens. Make sure to enable two-factor authentication, and use different passwords for each website that you use. And while there isn’t any evidence that credit card or banking information has been compromised, it couldn’t hurt to freeze your credit if you’ve ever paid for content on any of these 16 websites.

Worried that your information has been compromised in a data breach? You can use Have I Been Pwned to check to see if your email address or passwords have shown up anywhere on the dark web. Just keep in mind that Have I Been Pwned isn’t perfect, and it may not have information from today’s data breach.

Source: The Register 

Pandora remains one of the most popular streaming music services around, but most users are still on the free, ad-supported plan. If you scuttle over to Groupon today, you can get three months of premium listening for free.

The Groupon deal actually lets you choose between three premium options, all for free: three months of either On-Demand Premium, On-Demand Premium Family Subscription, or Pandora Plus. Those subscriptions are normally $10, $15, and $5 a month, respectively, so there’s really no reason not to go for the more expensive one unless you think you might want to stay on it.

Pandora Premium offers pretty much all the same features as Spotify’s paid accounts: playing any song directly instead of using the randomized radio, custom playlists, downloads, and unlimited skips and replays for stations, and no advertising. Pandora Plus doesn’t have access to on-demand songs or playlists.

Groupon says that the time for this deal is limited, but doesn’t give a specific expiration. Go for it today if you want to get in.

Source: Groupon

puhhha/Shutterstock

Not everyone has naturally curly hair but that doesn’t stop many people wishing they could achieve those results. That’s why you need the best curling iron for the task. Here our are favorites.

Knowing which curling iron for you isn’t always as straight forward as you might expect. For one thing, you need to consider whether you want ceramic, tourmaline or titanium technology. Typically, ceramic plates are great for cutting down on frizz, as well as speed because they heat up more quickly and evenly than other options.

However, tourmaline is great if you want to build up the volume in your hair or you need to help your hair look a little shinier and smoother than it can manage naturally. Titanium is the lesser known variety but it’s good for managing coarse hair effectively without damaging it.

Different hair length also requires a different curling iron with the longer the hair, the longer the curling iron needs to be so you can wrap your hair in a continuous spiral around it. Makes sense, right?

Whatever your hair type, we’ve got a curling iron for you. Here’s our pick of the bunch.

Simply looking for an all-in-one kind of solution? Buy the Xtava 5 in 1 Professional Curling Wand and Curling Iron set. It offers 5 different curling barrels of different lengths, with clamps included too, as well as a heat resistant glove.

Whether you have short hair or long hair, there’s a barrel here for you. In each case, they use tourmaline technology so your hair looks shiny and vibrant. Precise digital temperature controls mean you can change up the temperature of the curling wand, depending on if your hair is fine, thick, or somewhere in between. At any time, you can check the LCD screen to see what the temperature is and adjust it accordingly. It’s an ideal package if you change up your hairstyle and length regularly.

Long hair means you need a longer curling iron. The Anjou Curling Iron is the best of the bunch. At 1.5 inches long, you won’t have to worry about missing anything when curling your hair. It’s a ceramic based curling iron so it’s perfect for those of us with thick hair and no urge to make it bigger.

The iron heats up to 410F in a mere 60 seconds so you can get to work fast. Don’t worry though—if you want to change up the temperature, it’s easy enough to adjust from between 200F to 410F so that the iron suits fine and normal hair, as well as thicker locks.

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As part of Microsoft’s push towards cloud and mobile apps, they’ve invested in several cloud-only additions to the old familiar Office apps. One of these is Flow, a trigger-based system for creating automated workflows.

If you’re the kind of person who reads How-To Geek regularly, you’re probably aware of the drive for personal productivity that’s been raging for pretty much the whole millennium. Flow is Microsoft’s attempt at giving you the kind of automation for notifications, alerts, data gathering, and communication that will help you spend less time on boring but necessary admin work and more time on interesting (and productive) things.

Think of Flow as IFTTT, but with a slant towards the office rather than IoT or hardware.

Flow allows you to create “flows” (short for “workflows”) that are based on trigger events. For example, you could create a flow that would download the responses to a Microsoft Forms questionnaire to Dropbox regularly, or post a message in a Slack channel if a Visual Studio build fails.

RELATED: How to Create a Questionnaire in Microsoft Forms

Anybody can use Flow if they sign up for a free Microsoft account. People with an Office 365 subscription can also use Flow, but they get much the same functionality as people with a free Microsoft account.

Flow also comes with business versions of Office 365 and Dynamics 365, but different subscription levels get different versions of flow that match up with the paid and free accounts. It’s a bit confusing, but you can check out the details on Microsoft’s pricing page.

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If you’re in the market for a great deal on a last-generation Apple Watch, you’re in luck if you don’t mind a silver aluminum model with a white sport band. You can get a Series 3 brand new for just $229.

This is a decent $50 discount from the usual price of $279, and even though it’s the previous generation, it still does the job really well for those who really don’t see the need to have the latest and greatest—the Series 4 is definitely an upgrade, but most casual users probably don’t really need the newer features.

The Series 3 still comes with GPS built in, better water resistant than previous generations, and a much faster processor than older models. So you’re still definitely getting a good product even if it is the last-gen Apple Watch.

Losing a good photo can be pretty traumatic, and accidentally deleting photos is easier to do than you might think. If you’ve accidentally deleted a photo on your iPhone, there are several ways you might be able to recover it. Let’s take a look.

Here, we’re going to run through some of the ways you might be able to recover a deleted photo, and while they may not all be specific to your situation, hopefully at least one will get your photo back where it belongs–in your photo library.

The first and easiest place to look is on your iPhone. Open the Photos app and then tap “Albums” at the bottom of the screen.

Next, scroll to the very bottom of the screen and tap “Recently Deleted.” Here, you’ll see all of the photos and videos that you deleted less than around 40 days ago. Anything older than that will have been removed, but this is absolutely the first place to check.

If your photo is there, tap it and then tap “Recover.”

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Don’t you love the smell of dog breath in the morning? No? Well, grab one of these great dog toothpastes and scrub the stench away.

Dental hygiene is important for dogs, just like it is for humans. While dogs don’t eat nearly as much sugar as humans do, they can still experience all kinds of dental problems. That weird smell wafting from your best friend’s mouth could be a sign of plaque buildup, gum disease, or tooth decay.

Well, you dog can’t wear dentures, so you’re gonna have to step up to the plate and start practicing some doggy dental hygiene. You’ll need a good doggy toothbrush, a little self confidence, and a lot of tasty dog toothpaste to get the job done.

It’s hard to convince your dog that toothbrush time is necessary or comfortable, but finding an agreeable toothpaste can make things much easier. If your dog has sensitive gums from years of poor dental hygiene, then you’ll want to find a sensitive toothpaste. If your dog is a spoiled foodie, then you might want to find a tasty toothpaste that your dog can look forward to.

Lucky for you, we’ve taken the time to find the best doggy toothpastes, for a variety of doggy dental needs. Keep in mind that all of these toothpaste can be safely swallowed by you or your dog.

If you’re looking for a soothing toothpaste that will go easy on your dog’s teeth, then you should try the Vet’s Best dog toothpaste. It’s affordable, gentle, and made from familiar ingredients like aloe, neem oil, grapefruit seed extract, and baking soda.

While Vet’s Best isn’t as tasty as some other doggy toothpastes, it’s a great option for pets that have sensitive teeth or gums. Plus, it’s only $5, which is fantastic.

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Doxxing is the collection and publishing of someone’s private information online, usually done with the intent of inciting harassment in real life. While not technically illegal, it’s considered harassment by most people, and there have been bills proposed to make it a crime.

Probably not. Doxxing is generally a targeted abuse, similar to harassment in real life, and unless you’ve got a target on your back, you’re probably safe. It normally affects famous people—particularly Internet famous people, such as live streamers, YouTubers, and social media celebrities. Since many of them go by an online alias, revealing their real name is a major violation of privacy. Having your name, phone number, and address posted online leaves you vulnerable to real crimes, like swatting, physical harassment, and stalking.

While you might not have to worry as much if you have a small Internet presence, these days you can very quickly go viral for all the wrong reasons. Political debates, in particular, are a hot topic on sites like Twitter and Facebook (where your personal information likely already resides), and one wrong word can trigger a wave of hate from whoever disagrees with you.

Occasionally, people dox for other reasons, like in 2013 when Reddit accidentally accused the wrong person of being the Boston Bomber. He wasn’t the bomber; he was a victim who had died in the incident, but his family had to deal with droves of angry people until the real suspect was found. This form of Internet vigilantism seems justifiable to the people doing it, which makes it spread much quicker and arguably makes it more dangerous.

The large majority of doxxing incidents are just people collecting your personal information from social media sites, not any actual computer hacking. It’s hard to stop it from happening because people generally share way too much info freely online, and even relatively private people could fall victim to it.

For example, even if you’ve got your birthday hidden on your Facebook profile, people can find it out just by scrolling down your timeline and looking for “Happy birthday! Finally able to hit the bars!” posts. Once they know exactly when you were born, they can more easily access data on other sites. But, while hiding your birthday publicly won’t stop Internet Sherlock Holmes from finding your info, it will stop lots of nosy people, so it’s best to keep it private.

RELATED: Why It’s Dangerous to Share Your Birthday Online

Realistically though, hiding all of your personal information and becoming anonymous goes against the point of social media. Sure, it makes sense never to post your address, phone number, or birthday online, but people can infer a lot about you based on seemingly innocuous posts—even little details like where you work.

Deleting old posts and making sure to be careful in the future is an option, or you could go nuclear and delete your social media accounts altogether, but most people won’t be bothered to do so. And remember, most people don’t have to worry much about this in the first place. Just please don’t post your debit card online.

Julia Tim/Shutterstock  

One of the only ways to protect your right to privacy and information online is to use a VPN. Some websites infringe on those rights by blocking VPNs, but they do it for a good reason.

The big names that are notorious for blacklisting VPNs are Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and the BBC. It’s hard to figure out exactly how many websites block VPN access, but the number could be in the thousands. Most of these sites aren’t actively at war with VPNs, but they manage to blacklist a lot of VPN IP addresses over time passively.

Before going into this, you’ll want to know what IP addresses are and how VPNs work. We’ll keep this brief. When you connect to the internet through a router, you’re given an IP address. This address, essentially, identifies your computer or router so that websites know where you’re connecting from and can send traffic back to you. The IP address that you’re assigned at home is different from the IP address that you’re assigned at a coffee shop.

When you use a VPN (virtual private network), you’re effectively tunneling all of your online activity through a remote server. Your service provider can’t see what you’re doing online, because the traffic is encrypted and funneled through a remote server. Websites can’t see your actual IP address; they can only see the IP address of the server that’s masking your activity. So if your VPN funnels your activity through a server that’s in a different state or country, websites think that you’re connecting from said state or country.

RELATED: What Is a VPN, and Why Would I Need One?

It’s common for websites to locate and track users based on their IP addresses. IP tracking is an easy way to increase account security, build targeted advertisements, and show users different content depending on the country in which they live. This practice of IP tracking is one of the main reasons why people use VPN services, but it’s also the reason why blocking VPN access to a website is so easy.

A VPN service owns a limited number of IP addresses. And since most VPN servers use IPv4 (an outdated IP address protocol), it’s difficult to generate unique IP addresses, and a pool of subscribers are often sharing the same IP addresses for months or years at a time. Websites that want to blacklist VPNs simply need to use services like ipinfo to block IP addresses that have been used by multiple different users.

There are two other ways that websites can blacklist VPNs, but these methods aren’t as common as IP blocking. One method, called port blocking, requires websites to figure out the exit ports that VPNs are using for all of their IP addresses. Port blocking is easy and effective because most VPNs use the 1194 OpenVPN port. Another method, called deep-packet inspection, checks users’ metadata for cryptography signatures. These signatures are like the fingerprints of VPN services, and hiding them is difficult.

Again, the most notorious VPN blacklisters are Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and the BBC. All of these websites stream media, and they all blacklist VPNs to honor regional contracts with licensing companies.

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1. Babe Ruth
2. Joe Jackson
3. Ty Cobb
4. Honus Wagner

Think you know the answer?

Google Docs is great, but because it typically requires an internet connection to use, getting things done when you’re offline can be challenging. If you’re using Google Chrome, an official extension named Google Docs Offline changes that.

RELATED: 10 Tips and Tricks for Google Docs

Note: Using Google Docs offline requires Google’s official Chrome extension, so you can only use it in Google Chrome. It works for Docs, Sheets, and Slides, but not Forms.

First, you’ll need to install the Chrome extension Google Docs Offline. After installing it, you’ll find a new setting in each of the main Google apps that lets you set things up for offline use. When you enable that setting in one app, it becomes automatically enabled in all supported Google apps, so you don’t need to go to each app to enable it.

We’ll be working with Google Docs in our example, but it works the same in Slides and Sheets. In the app, click on the hamburger icon in the top left corner, and then again on “Settings.”

In the Settings window, toggle the “Offline” switch to the on position and then click “OK.”

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Reading mail in plain text can be a blessed relief from complicated formatting, not to mention being quicker to open and more secure than HTML-heavy emails. Here’s how to use plain text as the default in Outlook.

Before we get into how to do this, it’s worth noting that plain text has benefits and drawbacks, both for the sender and the receiver. The main drawback of plain text is that it has no formatting and no inline functionality like images or links. Virtually all of the mail you read will look at least a bit different if you read it in plain text, and some mail will be almost unreadable if it’s been heavily formatted.

However, there are benefits, too. Plain text is more secure because nothing is hidden. There can be no embedded tracking images and no hidden phishing URLs (because if the URL is visible in plain text, you’ll be able to see the whole URL, rather than whatever text the sender wanted you to see). For this reason, plain text emails you send are less likely to be viewed as dangerous or malicious by automated scanners because plain text simply can’t be as dangerous as HTML. (This doesn’t mean someone can’t send you a malicious link in plain text, but it’s much more difficult to trick you into clicking it.)

With that in mind, here’s how to read all messages in plain text, send all messages in plain text, and send just an individual message in plain text.

If you want to read all mail in plain text, head to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings.

Choose the Email Security option, and switch on the “Read all standard mail in plain text” option.

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When your cat sheds all over the house, it’s more than just an annoyance. It’s also a good sign that your cat is working on a pretty gnarly hairball. Luckily, this problem can be solved with a good grooming product.

Cat’s, like people, need their hair to be brushed and combed. Ungroomed hair can turn into painful tangles, mats, and messy furniture. Not to mention, hair is indigestible, and it just so happens that cats (and some people, I guess—please don’t Google it) end up eating their hair if it gets too loose. This leads to hairballs and digestive problems, which is nasty and unhealthy.

RELATED: The Best Vacuum Cleaners for Pet Owners

Grooming your cat may sound like a hassle, but it’s easy with the right products. You just need to take a moment to think about the quality of your cat’s coat, and how much your cat dislikes physical attention. There are all kinds of brushes and combs for your cat, and while they all share one common purpose (reduce shedding), they’re all made for different cats in different situations.

For example, regular brushes are meant for routine grooming, but they aren’t always great for dematting your cat’s hair or pulling loose hair from your cat’s undercoat. And if your cat hates the feeling of a prickly brush down their back, then they may learn to avoid your grooming attempts entirely. Dematting tools are quicker and more effective on your cat, but they can give your cat (harmless) bald spots if you over-do it. Lucky for you, we’ve taken the time to find the best grooming products for your cat, and to explain why they may or may not suit your cat’s needs.

While you’re in a deal-with-the-cat-hair sort of mood, by the way, you might want to check out our top pick vacuums for pet owners. Good brushes will help you keep the fur from ending up on the carpet and sofa, but once it’s there it’s handy to have a good vacuum to get it out.

The slicker-style brush is severely underrated. Unless your pet’s coat is prone to outlandish, physics-defying mats and knots, a slicker brush is all you really need. This style of brush is made with fine, detangling wires that can pull loose hair and small tangles from your cat’s coat. Hertzko sells a really nice, self-cleaning slicker brush for an affordable price. It has a quick-release button that pushes the hair out of the wires to make cleanup fast and easy.

There is one downside to the slicker-style brush. Most cats love to be groomed, but there are a handful of sour-pusses that can’t stand it. When a cat doesn’t like to be groomed, you need to find a product that can do the job with speed and efficiency. You may want to consider an undercoat deshedder, which requires less frequent use. That being said, you shouldn’t assume that your cat hates brushes until you see it for yourself.

Okay, hear me out. The Delomo grooming glove looks ridiculous, but it’s genuinely a good product. This glove is made from a gentle, easy to wash silicone material that won’t prick or scratch your cat’s skin. Since your hand is larger than a regular brush, the Delomo glove is useful for pulling off massive amounts of hair in just a couple of strokes — perfect for a cat that doesn’t want your attention.

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Did you know Chrome has themes? Most people probably realized this at one point but since forgot. Google wants to remind us that themes in Chrome are a thing with a bunch of new internally-designed looks for your favorite browser.

While there are 14 new themes, the most notable look here is the Just Black theme, which effectively brings Dark Mode to Chrome. Of course, an official dark mode is still (probably?) in the works, this should at least curb those cravings for an all-black-all-the-time look in Chrome.

If black isn’t your thing, though, never fear: there are 13 others to choose from! Blue, teal, purple, pink, more different pink, yellow, brown, and some others are all here—there’s even a classy panda theme with the appropriately named “Black & White” choice. It’s a pretty solid look.

All these themes are free to use—just give the “Add to Chrome” button a click-a-roo on the theme’s page. If you don’t like it, an Undo button appears immediately after installation, but you can also revert to the default in Settings > Themes or by heading straight to chrome://settings/appearance and clicking the “Reset to default” button.

Head here to look at all the new themes. Enjoy.

Techdows via Android Police