With this accessibility feature on, the phone “talks back” to you, reading aloud whatever is on your screen. You just tap the screen, and it’ll read whatever’s currently in focus. That way, you can read web pages or click on buttons and links without ever looking at your screen. It can even describe images to you.

Since you’re using single taps to hear the screen out loud, you can’t use the usual touch gestures to interact with the phone. The Talkback feature comes with its own set of gestures to navigate the phone.

They’re pretty straightforward, but you have to learn them and practice getting them down. I hope to help you fast-track that process. We’ll start from the basics and build up from there.

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The Linux desktop environments (DEs) determine how the OS looks and feels and how you interact with it. The DE includes windows, icons, panels, menus, and any GUI you interact with when using the OS. Naturally, choosing the wrong DE will lead to a poor overall experience.

Not all Linux distros come with a DE preinstalled. Arch Linux and Debian lack both a DE and a GUI. You’ll need to set them up yourself. That’s why beginners should avoid these distros. Want to get to know some of the popular Linux DEs? Starting off, we have GNOME. It’s very popular but a huge departure from the conventional desktop experience seen on Windows or macOS. GNOME is super minimalistic with a heavy focus on virtual desktops for app management.

You can try Fedora for the vanilla GNOME experience.

Alternatively, you can use Ubuntu, where you get a customized GNOME experience supporting a dock and desktop icons to make it more user-friendly.

However, if you want something more familiar yet powerful, go with KDE Plasma. It’s highly customizable with tons of advanced settings and options.

By default, it looks like Windows. However, you can tweak it to resemble macOS—which is what Garuda Linux does.

That said, having so many options can be overwhelming—especially for those looking for a simpler OS. Cinnamon can be a great option here with its traditional Windows 7-ish layout and favorable balance between features and usability. It has a gentle learning curve to ensure you focus on using the OS instead of learning the OS. Linux Mint is the definitive way to experience Cinnamon.

Now, there are dozens of other DEs, but I recommend starting with either GNOME, KDE Plasma, or Cinnamon. One of these will likely meet your needs. As you get comfortable, you can explore other DEs.

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Creating Google Drive shortcuts not only increases efficiency but also saves you time and streamlines your workflow. Instead of navigating through multiple layers of folders, a shortcut takes you directly to the file or folder you need.

As a writer, I regularly manage most of my project files in Google Drive. I often find myself repeatedly opening the same file or folder, and creating a shortcut is a quick and painless way to get back to it.

Furthermore, you can share shortcuts with colleagues or friends to enhance teamwork. Also, if you have a file in a shared team folder but want easy access from your personal folder, you can create a shortcut instead of duplicating the file. This way, you avoid cluttering your Drive with copies, and any updates made to the file are reflected everywhere.

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• To view all user accounts on Windows 11, go to Settings > Accounts > Other Users. View family accounts at Settings > Accounts > Family.
• To retrieve the account list using a command-line method, open Command Prompt, type the “net user” command, and press Enter.
• To view more details about user accounts, in Command Prompt, type the “wmic useraccount get” command and press Enter.

Do you want to find out all the user accounts that exist on your Windows 11 PC? If so, you have both graphical and command-line methods to list existing accounts. I’ll show you the various ways to do that.

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Microsoft just announced a few changes coming to WSL, including a new getting started experience. The first time someone installs and runs WSL, a new window appears explaining what WSL is and some of its key features. The window will also be accessible from the “Welcome to WSL” button in the WSL settings app.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux can be a bit difficult to understand, so any improvement there is welcome. WSL works a lot like a virtual machine (WSL2 is actually just a Hyper-V container), but the Linux VM doesn’t have its own desktop environment, and it shares access to files and other resources from the host Windows PC. Even if you have used Linux before, there can still be a learning curve with accessing and moving files, incomplete USB support, and other important differences.

Microsoft also announced a few other changes coming to WSL. There’s a new way to create WSL distros with simple configuration files and .tar archives, which will mostly be helpful for Linux distro developers and sharing configurations in enterprise settings. You can configure a custom icon, startup command, and name, then package it as a simple file for other people to install.

Finally, Red Hat is now an official WSL distro, so Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be set up from the usual install command. Most people will probably still want the typical Ubuntu or Debian distro, but for developers and companies using Red Hat and Fedora, it’s a helpful improvement.

The new setup experience and distribution packaging formats are available for testing in WSL Preview 2.4.4, and they should roll out to the stable WSL experience once any bugs are ironed out.

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Having the best productivity tools is key to completing your workload efficiently. For simple daily tasks, you don’t need a task management app.

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