We’ve come a long way from that simple volume slider in Windows 3.1 and later Windows 95. Back then, there was no guarantee every PC would even have a soundcard in it, so sophisticated sound mixing and volume control were limited to the purview of professional audio workstations. Today, Windows actually has a robust and sophisticated sound management system. The problem is that in an effort to keep the more “complex” stuff out of sight, Microsoft has made anything beyond tweaking the master volume slider hidden behind multiple clicks and menus.

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Windows 11 is still my go-to operating system, but using it sometimes feels like a constant tug of war between how I want to work and how Microsoft thinks I should work. I like Windows, I know my way around it, and it fits my workflow better than the alternatives. What frustrates me is how often Microsoft gives me plenty of ways to customize the little things while making some of the bigger annoyances much harder to change.

That’s especially strange when you consider how massive the Windows 11 Settings app has become. Most of the operating system can be adjusted from one place, yet there are still a few frustrating defaults that Microsoft doesn’t give you a straightforward switch for. For these three, I had to skip Settings entirely and turn to PowerShell. Fortunately, none of this is especially complicated. In each case, it’s mostly a matter of carefully copying and pasting a command, pressing Enter, and letting Windows do the rest.

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Everyone occasionally has problems with unusual file formats. Maybe you’re a Windows and Android user who encounters an HEIC file on the internet, downloads an image expecting a JPG only to get a WebP, or simply needs a PNG converted into a JPG. Whatever the specific case, usually converting an image requires using another program—often Microsoft Paint—or a converter on the web. At best, it is annoying, especially if you have to do it multiple times throughout your work day. If you use an online converter, it could be worse; it could expose sensitive information to a third party. File Converter replaces that entire process with a right-click menu option that converts your files locally. I’ve had it installed on my PC for so long now that it feels like Windows is missing something without it.

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Microsoft is acting further on its promise to fix some of Windows 11’s worst annoyances. The company is rolling out changes in the Windows Insider Experimental channel that promise a less cluttered search box that largely eliminates ads, although you’ll need to tweak settings to get the best results. The upgraded search starts with a “calmer” appearance that doesn’t try to stuff trends, trivia, and other less-than-helpful features into its home screen or results. You’ll see highlights for recent searches, clearer organization, and a better sense of where results come from. It’ll be easier to tell if you’re looking at a file or a web result, for instance.

More importantly, Microsoft has stripped “promotional content” (read: ads) from web results, focusing on the most relevant answer instead of promos and products. Windows 11 now prioritizes local results over the web, and a “first round” of ranking improvements will help useful settings show higher in results. Other updates include more forgiving results (mistype “utlook” and you’ll still find Outlook), more accurate file searches, and fewer crashes.

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The umbrelOS is a server OS for everybody. People who aren’t familiar with the command-line interface can just start their homelab using umbrelOS without any technical knowledge. And for people who already have one, umbrelOS can make an excellent addition to an existing setup. It feels polished and everything just makes sense. The labels on the buttons are easy to understand.

On the dashboard, you have a desktop-like home. Front and center we have the live resource usage stats. Below it, there is a dock.

Upload or browse your files

This file manager looks and feels a lot like the Finder on macOS with tabs for applications, documents, downloads, recents, photos, and videos. Here you can browse files that you’ve already uploaded to umbrelOS.

Copying, pasting, creating new files or folders, compress/uncompress work just like on desktop file managers.

Install self-hostable apps with one click

To download and run apps on your home server operating system, you typically use command-line package managers or Docker commands to host them as services on your phone.

The umbrelOS takes away all that complexity and gives you a simple app store where you can install any of the hundreds of self-hostable apps with a single click. Most apps that most people need are already here, so this store should suffice for most people.

Docker is what makes umbrelOS, and other graphical server operating systems like it possible. Under the hood, the “apps” are just Docker containers.

Quick app launcher

The shortcuts to your installed apps are also on the main dashboard. You can click these shortcuts to open the apps in a new tab. Swipe left if you don’t see them. These shortcuts save you the trouble of having to find and memorize the port numbers or IP addresses of your apps. On umbrelOS, just click the app icon, and it will open in a new tab.

Spotlight-style search

Access settings, files, apps, and more in one place You can press the shortcut Command+K or Ctrl+K to open a search bar. This works like Spotlight search on macOS or the command palette on Windows.

You can use it to launch installed apps or search for apps to install on the app store. It can look up files for you. It can do actions like rebooting the server or creating backups. And, of course, you can search through the files you have on this umbrelOS machine in that search bar.

Easily share files with other devices

You can go through umbrelOS settings to set up file and folder sharing.

Select which folders you want to share, and then connect using the instructions, alongside the username and password it generates. Then, on the other device where you want to access the shared folders, enter the umbrelOS smb link. Your username and the password as shown in the settings app.

smb://umbrel.local/

Just like that, it’s now showing up as a network drive on my Finder.

Back up your entire server

When you’re trying to host things on your local network, some things are bound to break or fail randomly at some point. When that happens, it’s a good idea to have the right backup system in place. This is another part of the job this OS excels at wonderfully. On the settings menu, there is a backup menu with two buttons.

• Set up > Another Umbrel or NAS > External Drive
• Restore > Full Restore > Rewind

This will back up your umbrelOS machine to another umbrelOS machine on your network, network-attached-storage or (NAS), or a physical USB drive plugged directly into the umbrelOS machine.

You can restore those automatic backups in two ways.

• Full Restore rebuilds your entire umbrelOS on a new machine.
• Rewind is a “time machine” that restores umbrelOS to a specific save point.

A polished point-and-click user interface for a home server operating system

The umbrelOS is completely free and it’s open-source. It has everything you could need to get a homelab started and make (there are some exceptions like running services which require HTTPS).

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You are trying to visit a specific website on your Mac, but you encounter connection errors like “Server Not Found” or “404 Not Found”, even though the site works fine on other devices in the same network. This usually happens when your Mac saves an outdated or corrupted Domain Name System (DNS) record in its local cache after a domain migration or network configuration change.

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As a beginner, I used to feel like I was fighting with the command-line interface. It did eventually click for me, but I wish it happened sooner. This is a list of command-line actions and commands that I wish I had learned on day one.

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There was a time when you could get by with a few minor tweaks to the default settings, or even some lightweight de-bloating script when setting up a fresh Windows system. That time was before Windows 11. The vanilla version of Windows 11 is practically unusable for me, and it takes a whole rigmarole to make it usable.

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If your default browser homepage and search engine keep mysteriously changing to Yahoo!, your computer is probably infected with a browser hijacker. While resetting the browser might seem to fix the problem, here’s how to do the job properly.

A browser hijacker is probably one of the least aggressive and destructive types of malware, but that doesn’t mean you should allow it to exist on your computer. These things make unauthorized changes to your browser settings so that advertising or a similar page that’s beneficial to the malware distributor is shown instead of the one you chose.

Because the people who spread this type of virus are somehow benefiting from the change of your search engine or homepage, it’s unlikely that a hijacker will cause your computer to crash or become inoperable. It can, however, cause performance problems, and can also be a sign that your computer is infected with other malware.

In this case, the virus is probably the “search.yahoo.com redirect” virus. It will redirect you to the Yahoo homepage via an intermediate website as soon as you launch your browser. And if you click on any of the links on the Yahoo homepage, any revenue from those clicks will be paid to the intermediary website owner.

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