Amazon Alexa relies on a Wi-Fi connection to work smoothly with smart home devices. But if your Wi-Fi goes offline, you can still use Alexa with select Echo models to control your smart light or smart plug. Here’s how to set it up. The Alexa app for your phone manages voice commands for Echo devices that have a built-in smart hub. It can do this even if it isn’t connected to the internet with the Local Voice Control feature. So far, Echo Plus (1st Generation and 2nd Generation) and Echo Show (2nd Generation) support Local Voice Control.

That being said, there are a few things that you need to know before getting started:

• You must pair the smart home devices with the Amazon Echo first.
• You can use commands for only select actions, like controlling volume, checking the time, or canceling existing alarms or reminders. You won’t be able to set new alarms or reminders, check the weather, or play music.

With those things in mind, you’re ready to get started.

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Similar to the Chrome browser for iPhone, iPad, and Android, Google Chrome on the desktop has includes several personalized recommendations on the New Tab page. These can feel intrusive and distracting, so we’ll show you how to turn them off.

The mobile browser’s New Tab page is a lot like the Discover feed. It’s the news and other articles that Google thinks you might be interested in. The desktop version, however, is more about product recommendations and recipe ideas based on your browsing. The good news is Google made it easy to turn off these “suggestions.” You don’t need to mess around with Chrome flags, either.

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If you’re using Windows 11 and need to quickly switch between headphones, speakers, or other sound devices, there’s a quick, almost hidden way to manage your audio output from the taskbar.

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Handing your phone to someone can feel like handing over your whole life. There’s usually a lot of personal information they can access. Android’s “App Pinning” feature can help by preventing someone from leaving an app. Here’s how you can lock an app on Android. By “pinning” an app, you are locking it to the screen. Whoever you hand your device to won’t be able to leave the app unless they know the special key combination or a passcode. It’s a neat little trick that all Android users should know.

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You can do this in the mobile app for iPhone or Android instead if you prefer. To start, launch the Facebook app and make sure that you’re logged in. Click on the “More” tab in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

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Thinking of taking a break from Facebook but don’t want to start over from scratch? Facebook allows you to deactivate your account so that you can take a hiatus and pick up where you left off at a later date.

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In the mobile Gmail app for iPhone and Android, tab categories show up in the sidebar menu. Although the interface between the Gmail app on iPhone and Android is slightly different, the process for removing tab categories is the same. Tab categories can be disabled in the Inbox section in the Gmail app settings on a per-account basis. If you use multiple accounts, you’ll have to repeat this process for each account.

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Gmail offers a feature that categorizes your email in tabs like Primary, Promotions, and Updates. If you enabled it by mistake, or if you prefer to view all your emails together, here’s how to remove tab categories in Gmail. While Gmail syncs customizations and settings between all your devices, the tab categories aren’t one of them. If you use Gmail on multiple devices, you’ll have to go in and disable tab categories on each device (and each account) individually.

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If you’ve ever used Microsoft Excel’s data types feature for details on geography, stocks, food, and more, then you’ll love the addition of templates. Microsoft offers several data types templates to help you track all sorts of things. These templates help you use the cities data type to plan a relocation, the stocks data type to track your investments, and the food data type to log meals for your diet.

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It’s easy to lose individual Microsoft Teams chats—also known as Direct Messages—in the long list of conversations. Here’s how to get control of your chats by hiding, pinning, and filtering messages in Teams.

As there’s no way to group chats like Slack, the key elements to organizing Microsoft Teams are the ability to hide a chat (so it disappears from the list), pin a chat (so that important chats are always at the top), and filter the list (so that you can find the chats you want).

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