Category: Article

Safari on iOS has a surprising number of hidden tricks, letting you manipulate tabs, conduct page-specific searches, and more, and not all of these features are immediately obvious due to the gestures involved.

We’ve rounded up some useful must-know Safari tips that you might not be aware of or may have forgotten, so make sure to check out our video because we bet there’s something here that’s going to be new to you.

Close All Tabs – Have hundreds of tabs open in Safari on your iPhone? You can close them all at once. Just long press right on the “Done” button in the tab view (which you can get to by pressing the little icon that looks like two squares) and you’ll see an option to close all tabs.

Open Recently Closed Tabs – Accidentally closed a tab you didn’t want to close? In the tab view, long press on the “+” button and it will bring up a list of tabs that you’ve closed recently so you can open it right back up.

Search Your Open Tabs – With tons of tabs, you might need to do some hunting around to find the specific tab you’re looking for, but luckily, a built-in tab search feature makes this easier. Just scroll to the top of your tabs view (or tap the top of the screen to jump to the top) and you’ll see a search bar for searching tabs.

Close Filtered Tabs – If you want to close some of your tabs while leaving the rest open, the search feature doubles as a filter. After doing a search in your tabs, long press on the “Cancel” button next to the search interface and you’ll see an option to close only the tabs that match your search.

Find Text on Page – You know how you can use the Command + F feature on a Mac to find something specific on a page? There’s a find feature in iOS too. With a website open, type in a search phrase in the search bar at the top and then scroll down to “On This Page” to search for that term on the website. Alternatively, you can open up the Share Sheet and locate the “Find on Page” button.

Close Tabs on Other Devices – If you have multiple devices and use iCloudalong with the feature that syncs Safari information, you can close tabs on your Mac or your iPad right from your iPhone. To do it, open up the tab view (again, the little icon with two squares), scroll all the way to the bottom of your open tabs, and then you’ll see an interface that lists open tabs on other devices.

Handoff Websites – If you’re looking at a website on your iPhone and then want to open it up on your Mac, you can use Handoff, which is available on most modern Mac machines and iPhones. On the Mac, you’ll see a little Safari icon on your dock with a small iPhone icon, just click on that and whatever you’re looking at on your iPhone can be opened up right on your Mac. You can also open websites from device to device using the same cloud tab interface used for closing tabs on other devices.

Have other useful Safari tips that we didn’t share here? Let us know in the comments and we may include them in a future tips and tricks video.

In a blog post today, Google disclosed that it recently discovered a bug that caused some portion of G Suite users to have their passwords stored in plain text. The bug has been around since 2005, though Google says that it can’t find any evidence that anybody’s password was improperly accessed. It’s resetting any passwords that might be affected and letting G Suite administrators know about the issue.

G Suite is the corporate version of Gmail and Google’s other apps, and apparently the bug came about in this product because of a feature designed specifically for companies. Early on, it was possible for your company administrator for G Suite apps to set user passwords manually — say, before a new employee came on board — and if they did, the admin console would store those passwords in plain text instead of hashing them. Google has since removed that capability from administrators.

Google’s post goes to great pains to explain how cryptographic hashing works, likely in an effort to make sure the nuances surrounding this bug are clear. Though the passwords were stored in plain text, they were at least stored in plain text inside Google’s servers, so they’d be harder to get to than if they were just out on the open internet. Although Google didn’t say so explicitly, it seems like it wants to also make sure people don’t lump this bug in the same category as other plain text password problems where those passwords have leaked out.

And oh, there have been so many of those, as Wired notes. Twitter advised all 330 million of its users to change passwords back in March due to a breach. Facebook stored“hundreds of millions” of passwords in plain text in a way where up to 20,000 of its employees could have accessed them. Instagram had to fess up that Facebook’s breach had actually affected millions of Instagram users (not the previously disclosed smaller number).

For its part, Google didn’t characterize just how many users might have been affected by this bug beyond saying it affected “a subset of our enterprise G Suite customers” — presumably anybody who was using G Suite in 2005. And though Google couldn’t find evidence that anybody used this access maliciously, it’s not entirely clear who would have had access to these plain text files either.

In any case, it’s fixed now and Google is appropriately sorry in its post about the whole issue:

We take the security of our enterprise customers extremely seriously, and pride ourselves in advancing the industry’s best practices for account security. Here we did not live up to our own standards, nor those of our customers. We apologize to our users and will do better.

For those eager to get the latest and greatest production build of Windows 10; good news. For those who would rather watch from the sidelines until the kinks are worked out; good news. Today Microsoft has officially launched the spring 2019 update for Windows 10, affectionately called the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. There’s a few new features under the hood, but the biggest change to Windows 10 this time is not a new feature you may or may not use, but instead a new approach to updates, and after almost four years of users not being in control, Microsoft has put the control back in the hands of the people using their OS. Finally.

I’m not going to pine on about days gone past, but one of the biggest changes to Windows 10 when it launched was that the update system was going to be better. Improved. More reliable. Except it wasn’t. Some changes, such as the cumulative updates, have been a huge relief for people setting up new machines, since they no longer needed to update their computer for several days. An update comes every month which should have everything you need to get you to current in one batch. This was a win for end users. However, Windows 10 also brought about a new idea called feature updates, where occasionally, a new version of Windows would come down the same pipe as a normal update. Assuming everything was well tested, the update should install with little fanfare, but as we know that’s not been the case. Windows is on far too many machines to make any update easy, and Microsoft’s feedback mechanism for update issues was not being monitored as it needed to, which lead to multiple feature updates with enough major problems that even the last update from October is only now being pushed out to some machines.

So today we get Windows 10 1903, or the May 2019 Update, and home users will finally get an option to pause updates even if they are using Windows 10 Home. It’s a small step, but coupled with a very measured rollout, hopefully this will be the smooth update Microsoft has been craving for the last couple of years. For those looking for further transparency, Microsoft has a Windows release health dashboard, which shows the status of current known issues, letting you know ahead of time if you may have an incompatible piece of software or hardware.

There are of course new features as well, since this is in fact a feature update for Windows 10. There’s a new light theme, providing a refreshing look for Windows 10 which pairs nicely with the dark mode that arrived a couple of versions ago. Cortana is no longer part of the search bar, and now lives on its own app icon on the task bar. More default applications can now be removed.

There’s more complex features as well, such as Windows Sandbox, which allows you to run an application in a virtualized container for testing without it having access to the system files. Think of it like Hyper-V, but without the complexity. It’s not as powerful as Hyper-V, but it’s also much easier to set up and use.

There’s a few other features as well that we’ll go through in a more comprehensive article after we’ve had time to dig through some of the new abilities. That being said, updates are now offering fewer and fewer big changes, which makes sense due to the maturity of Windows 10 now. Plus, with the lack of stability, it makes sense to offer less user-facing features that are more stable, rather than continue to offer a multitude of new things that may or may not get used.

For those looking to get a jump-start on the upgrade process, Windows 10 May 2019 Update is currently rollout out via Windows Update where you can just check for updates, and you’ll receive it if your computer doesn’t have any blocking hardware or software. Microsoft is taking a very measured and cautious approach here, which is the right thing to do. For those that don’t want to wait for Windows Update, you can always check out the Windows 10 Download page to get the update right now.

More models are likely affected, however.

Apple isn’t just trying to fix the MacBook Pro’s keyboard. The company has launched a repair program that offers free fixes for 2016 13-inch MacBook Pros affected by an issue with flex cable stress (aka “Flexgate”) that produces a stage lighting effect on the display’s backlight before it eventually dies altogether. You won’t have to risk a costly out-of-warranty repair just to keep using your machine.

This might not be the end to the story. While 2018 and newer revisions use longer cables that shouldn’t be at risk, iFixit pointed out that 15-inch MacBook Pros from 2016 also appear to be affected. You aren’t necessarily out of luck, however. Apple is promising reimbursements for people who paid for repairs, so there’s a chance you might be covered if (and only if) it extends the program to more of its laptops.

Having launched their Corsair One small form-factor PCs, as well as Bulldog PCs for the living room, Corsair is now entering the market of mainstream gaming machines with its Vengeance series of computers. The new systems are Micro-ATX PCs designed for gamers looking for performance and style, but not necessarily looking to build a machine themselves.

The Corsair Vengeance family of PCs currently includes two models — the Vengeance 5180 and the Vengeance 5185 — which use a Micro-ATX version the company’s Crystal Series 280X RGB case. The 680X offers two chambers, three tempered glass windows, and supports multiple RGB LEDs. The latter are clearly intended to be a defining feature of the new line of systems, so Corsair had equipped its Vengeance systems with 125 individually addressable RGB LEDs throughout these PCs, and which can be controlled using the company’s iCue software.

The more affordable Vengeance 5180 is based on Intel’s Core i7-8700, which is paired with MSI’s B360 motherboard, 16 GB of DDR4 memory, a 480 GB SSD, and a 2 TB hard drive. The more advanced Vengeance 5185 is powered by Intel’s Core i7-9700K and is accompanied by MSI’s Z390 motherboard, 16 GB of DDR4, a 480 GB SSD, and a 2 TB HDD. Both machines include MSI’s GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, so performance of the two systems should be rather close in today’s largely GPU-bound games.

Just like other gaming PCs from Corsair, the Vengeance family uses off-the-shelf components, yet comes in a custom chassis. And, since it is cheaper to build a Micro-ATX (both in terms of components and labor), Corsair’s Vengeance PCs are less costly than the company’s Corsair One SFF machines.

Corsair’s Vengeance PCs are available now directly from the company in the US. The Vengeance 5180 costs $2,399, whereas the more powerful Vengeance 5185 runs for $2,499.

Chrome OS has come a long way since its humble beginnings. Gone are the days of it being widely labeled as a “glorified web browser.” In addition to Progressive Web Apps, modern Chromebooks now support Android apps and Linux apps natively. With each app ecosystem, of course, comes notifications and those can pile up quickly in the recently redesigned Chrome OS menu.

Only last Fall did it become possible to clear all notifications with one tap, and it takes some doing to find the button. In the stable, beta and dev channels you have to swipe up on the bottom-most notification to even see the “Clear All” button. It does not appear without that extra action. Thankfully, this will no longer be the case in Chrome OS 76, currently available in the Canary channel, as the button has been moved to the top.

If you’re okay with living on the cutting edge and its accompanying risks, and you don’t want to wait for the change to find its way to the stable channel, you can switch to the Canary channel to try it out right now. A word of caution, though: it’s not for the faint of heart as you’ll be using the least stable of the four main Chrome OS builds.

While this might seem like an insignificant change on the surface, for those of you who are “Instagram influencers” (or other popular social media users), busy professionals, and power users will no doubt appreciate the simplified method to clear away those scores of notifications you’d rather get to later. Hopefully, the change makes its way through the dev, beta, and stable channels sooner than later.

Google Chrome v76 is getting a new security feature to fight popup spam.

Google engineers are planning to change how the Escape key works in the Chrome browser, and it’s all being done as part of a security-focused change meant to make it harder for shady sites to open popups.

The feature is expected to ship with Chrome version 76, scheduled for release at the end of July 2019.

The general idea is that starting with Chrome 76, pressing the Escape key on your keyboard will not “activate” a page and prevent it from running JavaScript code — like it did until now.

“Browsers prevent calls to abusable APIs (like popup, fullscreen, vibrate, etc.) unless the user activates the page through direct interactions,” Google said earlier this month.

“Not all interactions trigger user activation. For example, clicking on a link or typing in a textbox does, but swiping fingers on a screen or hovering with the mouse cursor doesn’t.”

Google will now classify pressing the Escape key in the same category as the above-mentioned actions.

“Since users never intend to interact with the page through the ESC key, it should not trigger user activation,” Google said.

ABUSED IN THE WILD

According to Google, there is at least one malware campaign that is abusing Escape key-generated popups to spam users.

This demo page shows how current versions of Chrome will open a new page/popup for the example.com domain. But when opening the same page in Chrome Canary (v76), the browser will block the new page/popup using Chrome’s built-in ad-blocker tool.

Firefox already includes a similar feature.

In the previous months, Google has rolled out similar security-minded features to protect Chrome users from spammers and malicious advertisers.

For example, in Chrome v73, Google added a security feature that would prevent malicious code loaded in iframes from initiating a download on a user’s device.

The company also fixed an “evil cursor” bug abused by tech support scammers and banned extensions using obfuscated code from the Chrome Web Store.

Would you buy any product that limited your access to Google’s services?

The dust-up between the U.S. and Huawei has pushed the idea of how dependent on Google a phone manufacturer can be. Huawei is one of the biggest companies in the world, and having access to Google’s services is what drove its smartphone market share into the sky — now nearing 20% globally, above Apple. Watching consumer reaction as that access is revoked gives a feeling that any future growth has ground to a complete stop and Huawei is in a heap of trouble as far as Western markets are concerned.

I’m not here to ponder the legitimacy of the U.S. claims or play armchair quarterback and decide if the restrictions are valid or not. National security is one of those things where anyone who can voice an opinion isn’t really qualified to do so. You may like the decision or hate it, but like me, you can’t do anything about it. The restrictions are in place, Google has to abide by them (as do Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and others) because it is a U.S. based company. Huawei and Google may try to remind us that not everything is horrible, but it really is. For now, at least.

Google is Android; Android is Google

This all shines a light on how much value Android has without Google. Should this most recent ban last forever, Huawei will have no problem building phones that run the latest version of Android and keep them updated with security patches and new platform versions. This is because of the open-source nature of the operating system itself and if a handful of dedicated enthusiasts can do it, so can a giant mega-global corporation the size of Huawei. But building phones that nobody will buy isn’t all that useful; you wouldn’t want to use a phone that could only include what’s open when it comes to Android.

Imagine if you picked up your phone and all of Google’s apps and services stopped working. Would you want to use a web browser (but not Chrome) to access your Gmail or check Google Maps? Have you ever tried to access your Google Drive storage on a mobile web browser? Even making a phone call probably depends on access to your contacts through a Google service. Forget access to Google Play for a moment — as much of a blow as that is, it can be circumvented easily enough as we’ve seen from Amazon — your Android phone is tethered to Google in so many ways that it can become almost worthless without it.

A vehicle for services

This all started long before Android. We can look back as far as the first iPhone and see it. Apple is a tech fairy tale come true. At one time the company was about to go the way of the Dodo, but now it’s the most valuable company in the world, the number two (or three) smartphone maker globally, and manufacturer of the best selling mobile device ever built. And you could say the iPhone owes much of its success because of how easy it was (and still is) to access your Google services like YouTube and Gmail. I certainly wouldn’t disagree, and a lot of other people would say the same. This holds true for more than just phones, too. When it comes to the PC market that doesn’t include mobile devices, would you buy a new laptop if it limited your access to Google’s services? A laptop that couldn’t install Chrome or visit the Google Maps website? 10 years ago, maybe, but today the answer is a resounding “no.”

It’s easy to see how much dominance Google holds over the mobile computing ecosystem as a whole, but companies that make Android phones are particularly screwed if access is cut off or made more difficult. We’re partially to blame because we use and rely on Google’s services. Companies like Samsung and Huawei are partially to blame because they can’t, for myriad reasons, offer a compelling second choice.

But mostly, Google is to blame because it likes to be successful and push its services into Android. Android without Google’s services and infrastructure can be successful — every Android phone sold in China, roughly 25% of which are made by Huawei, has none of them — but people in the West would never enjoy being weaned to WeChat as a service provider. We only buy Android phones because of the value Google adds through services. If every Android OEM was cut off today, most everyone here would buy a Pixel or an iPhone as soon as they could afford it.

A slippery slope

This is a problem for all of the companies involved in making and selling Android phones. It’s why we see Samsung invest time into the Galaxy Apps store and Bixby, or why LG builds webOS televisions with ThinQ, and why Huawei spent so much money on its own AI system and Chinese-specific ecosystem for mobile devices. The company that has the most to lose, though, is also the company that holds all of the cards: Google. It’s already under antitrust investigation(s) concerning Android, and when we see something like the decimation of Huawei’s hopes of continuing to sell phones outside of China because Google has to pull its services from the company those investigations become more and more interesting.

If you were to ask for my opinion on all this, I would reach for a cold beverage and say it’s yet another stunt from Washington that will blow over once it’s purpose has been served, Huawei will soon regain access to everything Google, and we’ll all forget about it when the next bit of tech drama arises. (How much lasting damage there is to Huawei in the end will depend on the length of time that passes.) We’ll also be a little savvier when it comes to how Google uses Android to further its business interests and how quickly it could cripple a partner if it were to revoke access to the Android we all love. And who knows, it might even play out that way.

Rolling out to phones via an app update.

Over the last few months, Google’s been steadily adding an official dark mode to more and more of its apps. Following the likes of Google Messages, News, Contacts, and others, Google’s now announced dark modes for Calendar and Keep.

In the next few days, you should receive an update for both the Google Calendar and Google Keep Android apps that will add the new dark mode functionality. To enable dark mode in Calendar, you’ll go to Settings -> General -> Theme. If you’re using Keep, the process is Settings -> Enable Dark Mode.

Dark mode for Google Calendar will work on devices running Android Nougat or higher, whereas Keep’s dark mode works for Android Lolipop and above.

If you don’t see an update for either app in the Play Store right away, don’t worry. Google started pushing out Calendar’s dark mode update on May 16 and Keep’s began making its way to users on May 20. In both cases, Google says it can take up to 15 days for the updates to reach everyone.

Huawei has relied on the Google-developed Android operating system to power its popular range of smartphones.

Google has dealt a major blow to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei by blocking the firm from using critical apps and services like Gmail and YouTube on its range of smartphones, according to reports.

Just like other major smartphone makers including Samsung and LG, Huawei relies on the Google-developed Android operating system to power its mobile devices.

But, amid a US crackdown on Chinese technology companies due to ongoing security concerns, Reuters and The Verge report that Google has suspended business with Huawei and in doing so hugely undermined its lineup of handsets, which are among the most critically-acclaimed and best-selling on the market.

Existing products will no longer receive Android updates, which bring new features and security improvements, and future releases will lose access to the vital Google Play Store, through which users download new apps.

Huawei will instead be restricted to using a public version of the operating system called Android Open Source Project, which does not include standard Google apps like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Photos and YouTube.

Although Huawei smartphones are banned from the US, enormous sales figures in China and impressive growth in parts of Europe has seen the company overtake iPhone maker Apple in terms of market share.

The Verge reported earlier this month that Huawei was now only behind Samsung when it comes to global smartphone sales, with 59.1 million shipments in the first quarter of 2019.

But the intervention from Google could cripple hopes of further expansion.

While a custom Huawei-built operating system would cause little issue in its home market, where most Google apps are banned anyway, it would likely be rejected by Western customers.

Google apps and services are a critical part of Android devices, and Huawei owners in Europe and the UK may now be forced to seek alternatives to what the Chinese company has to offer.

Huawei has not commented on the reports, but has continued to insist that its products pose no security threat.

Last week, its UK executive vice president Jeremy Thompson told Sky Newsit is willing to go the “extra mile” to reassure countries its technology is safe.

His comments came after Prime Minister Theresa May came in for criticism over a National Security Council decision to back the use of Huawei technology in “non-core” 5G network infrastructure in the UK.

That was despite a warning from the National Cyber Security Centre and the US government that the company could not be trusted.

Donald Trump has declared a “national emergency” over the perceived threat posed by Chinese companies and imposed severe sanctions on Huawei, with US companies barred from using telecommunications equipment made by firms deemed to pose a national security risk.

The US commerce department has also added Huawei and 70 affiliated companies to a blacklist banning it from acquiring components and technology from US firms without government approval.

Google has not responded directly to the reports, but said it was “complying with the order” issued by the US president and was “reviewing the implications”.