Ghacks

EmuOS: run retro games and apps right in your browser

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 14:19:23 GMT

If you experienced the late DOS days or early Windows days first hand and want to relive that, or experience it for the first time, then you may want to hop over to EmuOS to do just that.

EmuOS emulates Windows in the browser, and it comes with a number of games and applications for you to run right from that browser as well. Want to replay Quake, the original Doom, or Half-Life? How about Transport Tycoon Deluxe, Worms 2, or Microsoft Solitaire? There is also Winamp, classic Paint, and Clippy to play around with and use right from the browser.

When you first open the EmuOS website in your browser (there are multiple mirrors), you get the choice between running an emulated Windows 95, 98 or ME interface, all emulated in JavaScript.

The desktop looks messy as expected, but you should not have any troubles identifying most of the apps and game shortcuts the team placed on it.

Just double-click on a game or app to start it in the browser; these are emulated as well, and performance depends largely on your system's capabilities. While you should be able to run most games and apps on any fairly modern machine, some may stress low performance machines.

Access to the underlying system is required for some games and apps. When you start Quake 2 for example, you get a browser prompt to allow EmuOS access to the file system.

You are probably wondering what EmuOS is all about, and how the project came to be. The GitHub project page provides a short description of the project and intention:

The purpose of Emupedia is to serve as a nonprofit meta-resource, hub and community for those interested mainly in video game preservation which aims to digitally collect, archive and preserve games and software to make them available online accessible by a user-friendly UI that simulates several retro operating systems for educational purposes.

The project website provides information on the supported browsers, emulators used by the projects, the list of supported games, apps and demos, and the libraries that the developers used.

EmuOS is not the first project designed to preserve and archive computer games and applications. The Internet Archive hosts a lot of game and application collections, e.g. this DOS games collection, C-64 emulation library, or Internet Arcade, all playable in the browser.

Closing Words

EmuOS offers an interesting look at early PC gaming and apps that users ran on their systems when Windows ME was the latest rage. Some of these apps and games are still available today, and you can even buy many of these games on Gog instead to play them locally and not in the browser.

Now You: What is your take on game and application preservation projects?

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How to change the display brightness if Windows 10 does not let you

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 07:34:27 GMT

There are plenty of ways to change the display brightness of a Windows 10 PC. What if some of these are not available? I ran into the issue the other day on a new system running Windows 10 20H2, an Intel 530 graphics adapter, and a LG 4K monitor.

The option to change the brightness was not displayed in the Action Center, and there was no option to add it or control the brightness using the Settings application.

Microsoft even has a support article up that supposedly tells you how to change the screen brightness in Windows 10. Problem is, it has not been updated since Windows 10 version 1903, at least that is the version mentioned in the article. Some of the instructions don't work anymore on newer versions of Windows 10.

While it was possible to use the monitor's own controls to change the brightness, it felt odd that the options were not there. I tried updating drivers to see if that would make a difference, but it did not.

Since I did not want to spend more time researching the issue, I decided to look for a free program for Windows to change the display brightness instead. Requirements were simple: it had to be free and as lean as possible; this excluded programs such as F.Lux right away.

ScreenBright

Some promising programs did not work under Windows 10 anymore, but I finally found a program that fit the bill: ScreenBright is a free portable program for Windows to change the display brightness and some other parameters. It has a size of less than 400 Kilobytes when unpacked, and an easy to use interface.

The original homepage of the developer is no longer available, and the last update dates back to 2014. Despite all that, it works just fine on Windows 10 20H2. You can download the latest version from our servers with a click on the following link: ScreenBright

All it takes is to start the application and use the brightness slider that it displays to adjust the brightness. The new brightness level is applied immediately and you may hit the save button to save the new level. You can then close ScreenBright without losing the changes. ScreenBright supports changing the contrast and color luminance, and the color warmth as well. The program even supports multiple displays if these are connected to the device.

Closing Words

ScreenBright is a well designed software program for Microsoft Windows devices to change the display brightness, contrast, and color luminance. It is portable and lightweight, and does not need to be running all the time.

Now You: Have you changed color settings on your systems?

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Perpetual Notes is a rich text editor that supports images, hyperlinks, tables and more

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 06:47:57 GMT

Many text editors that we have reviewed focus on plain text support; others such as OSD Note or ZIM support Markdown or HTML. Perpetual Notes is a text editor that supports rich text format (RTF).

It has a two-pane view, the sidebar on the left is the Notes list, and displays the name of each note that you have saved. Select a note to view its contents on the right pane.

Perpetual Notes supports 2 document formats, RTF and TXT. You can open existing files (only RTF) or create, edit and save new ones (both RTF and TXT). The application has an autosave feature which saves the current note every 30 seconds, when you switch to a different note or if you exit the program. However, you will need to manually save the document once, and the program will use it for subsequent autosaves. The Notes are placed in a folder, under the main directory where you extracted the archive to.

Add images to your notes from the Edit menu, Perpetual Notes supports BMP, JPG, GIF and PNG files.

The Draw option opens a standalone tool called Doodl, which is included in the program's archive. The Edit menu also lets you archive old notes to a separate folder.

Have some important notes? Toggle the read-only mode from the View menu to prevent unintentional edits. Sort the notes by name or written time, toggle the built-in spell checker, and manage the user dictionary.

Perpetual Notes has an optional dark mode, but it only works with plain text notes. The View menu is home to an Advanced menu, which has options to open the note in an external application, advanced search. Another useful option in this menu is the one that filters the list of notes to only view those which have an image in them. You can add a tag to your note by including [tag] in the 2nd line of your note, and use the Tag List option from the Advanced menu to get a list of all available tags in your notes.

The editor's format menu can be used to add rich text formatting such as Bold, Italic, Underline and Strike-through. The program lets you customize the font size, type, color and alignment. There are a few preset font options for highlight, title, heading, paragraph and monospaced text. You can adjust the alignment, indentation, line spacing from this menu.

The menu has some advanced options that are handy for creating bulleted, numbered lists, and it even has options to insert equations and tables. Perpetual Notes supports clickable URLs, so a hyperlink that you can paste will act as a web shortcut.

The program has a context menu with basic editing options, and a handy "Note Stats" that shows you the word count, character count, file size, created and modified date. The Search bar at the top of the left pane can be used for finding text inside your notes. You can use the File menu's Backup tool to save a copy of your notes, the program's creates a ZIP archive for the backup.

Perpetual Notes has a built-in Calendar, Calculator and Timer that you can access from the View > Tools menu. The program stores its settings in a Config file that you can edit using the editor.

Perpetual Notes is freeware. The program is portable, though the extracted folder is over 21 MB, the essential files only sum up to about 3 MB. The rest of the files are rich text documents that act as help documentation.

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Vivaldi Mail, Feed Reader and Calendar can now be tested

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 18:10:43 GMT

What a surprise. Vivaldi Technologies, maker of the highly customizable Vivaldi web browser, have released a first technical preview of the long awaited mail component. When we interviewed Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner in 2018, he revealed that Mail was something the company did work on to close another feature users liked about the classic Opera web browser.

Today, Vivaldi Technologies announced that Vivaldi Mail is ready for public testing. Launched as a technical preview, it is integrated into the latest snapshot of the Vivaldi web browser. Users need to enable the mail component manually for the time being to start using it.

Here is how you enable Vivaldi Mail right now:

Load vivaldi://experiments/ in the address bar of the browser.
Check the Calendar, Mail, Feeds experiment.
Restart Vivaldi.

Select Mail from the sidebar panel and click on the button to add your first account. Adding an account is quite easy, all it takes most of the time is to enter the email address and in the second step the account password.

You do get a handful of options, e.g. to enable prefetch or add a sender name and signature.

The new component combines a mail client, a feed reader and a calendar. Vivaldi Mail supports IMAP and POP3, and that means that you can integrate any email client in Vivaldi Mail provided that it supports one of the two standards. The option to create a Vivaldi account and integrate it in Vivaldi Mail is also provided.

The mail component supports multiple email accounts that you can all add to the client, similarly to how you can add multiple accounts to Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird.

Vivaldi Mail uses a layout with three panes. The left sidebar, called the Mail panel, displays mail folders and accounts, and feeds. All mails of the selected folder are listed at the top and the selected mail is displayed at the bottom of the interface. Options to change the default view modes are provided, e.g. to switch to a horizontally split layout instead of the default three-columns layout.

You can toggle a lot of what is displayed by default to hide certain components; this is true for custom folders, mailing lists, Feeds, junk and trash buttons. Additionally, you may select to only display unread emails by default to better focus on these.

The Mail Panel displays unseen and unread counters for all folders that it displays; the difference between the two is that unseen refers to new emails that you have never seen before while unread refers to seen emails that you have not dealt with yet. In other words, unseen is the number for all new emails, unread for all emails that you have not marked as read yet.

Vivaldi Mail supports saving searches as filters; useful if you run the same search over and over again and want to speed things up a bit in the future. Labels are supported as well and they do get synced, even if you use a different client, e.g. Thunderbird, on another device.

Adding feeds is not as intuitive as it could be, as this can only be done in the Settings and not directly from the mail interface. Another thing that needs to be supported is the importing and exporting of OPML files so that users can migrate from another feed reader to Vivaldi Mail or export their feeds. Since it is a preview, it is possible that these smaller usability issues will get addressed in future versions.

The feed reader works really well and is easy to use. Some features of the mail component can be used here as well, e.g. to add flags to specific feed posts or labels.

The engineers have added keyboard shortcuts to Vivaldi Mail to speed up things for users who prefer to use the keyboard. You can reply with a tap on "R", forward emails with "F", mark emails "K" or entire threads "M" as read, or perma-delete emails with the shortcut Shift-M.

Another handy feature is that Vivaldi keeps track of the history so that you can go back and forth in mail folders using the history buttons.

Mails can be send right away, or you may queue them to bulk-send once you are done.

The calendar is the third and final component of Vivaldi Mail. It supports syncing through a Vivaldi account or any other CalDAV calender. Users may select to keep all the data local, but syncing is supported if required.

The calender supports a number of useful features including inline editing, simple creation of events, different layouts to view the data, a handy year overview option, full keyboard accessibility and more.

You can check out the very detailed blog post on the Vivaldi blog for additional details.

Closing Words

Vivaldi will be one of the few web browsers with a mail component once it launches in stable; this alone sets it apart from major browsers who don't offer these components. While you can add feed support via extensions to some, mail is not something that you may add using extensions.

The technical preview looks good already and it works fine. The feed reader is fast, but it needs a bit of work on the usability side, and it remains to be seen if it is capable of managing hundreds of feed subscriptions without performance issues.

All in all, it is a very promising start for Vivaldi Mail.

Now You: What is your first impression of Vivaldi Mail?

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You can now test Smart Copy in Microsoft Edge Canary

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 16:52:37 GMT

Smart Copy is a new feature of Microsoft's Edge web browser that is designed as an alternative to the regular copy functionality of the web browser. Smart Copy, in a nutshell, aims to provide users with advanced copy options to copy rich content and not only textual content.

Take a table in HTML as an example. If you need to copy the content of the table you can do so using the built-in copy functionality. Preserving the table structure is another matter entirely, and if you need only the first three columns, you may be out of luck depending on the table in question and browser that you use.

With Smart Copy, you are able to copy much like you would capture a screenshot. Once activated, you draw a rectangle around the content that you are interested in.

Let go of the mouse and select the "copy" button that is displayed once you do so. Microsoft Edge copies the content to the Clipboard, and you can paste it while preserving the table structure.

Windows version	Codenames	Release date
Windows 10	Threshold, Redstone, 19H1, 19H2, 20H1, 2 ...	July 15, 2015 July 29, 2015 (Availabilit ...
Windows 8.1	Blue	August 27, 2013 October 17, 2013 (Availa ...
Windows 8	'8'	August 1, 2012 October 26, 2012 (Availab ...
Windows 7	Windows 7	July 22, 2009 October 22, 2009 (Availabi ...

The selection process detects boundaries automatically so that all content of a cell is selected. The very same copy option works for other content types, e.g. lists and even non-text content types such as images.

When you right-click in Edge Canary you will see the new Smart Copy option already, but it is grayed out at the time. The keyboard shortcut displayed next to it however works; just use Ctrl-Shift-X to activate Smart Copy in Microsoft Edge, and start to draw the rectangle around content that you want to copy to the Clipboard.

Microsoft added another copy and paste option to Edge recently; this time to all versions including stable Edge. Users get the option to copy the address bar URL either as a plain text address or as a rich link. The second option is the default one, but you can switch to the old copy option instead if you prefer it.

Closing Words

Smart Copy looks as if it could become a useful tool in Edge's arsenal as it makes copying content on the Internet a tad easier if it is either formatted in a special way or otherwise hard to copy using plain text copy options.

Now You: What is your take on Smart Copy?

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Ghacks Black Week Deals: Babbel Language Learning: Lifetime Subscription (All Languages)

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 15:37:31 GMT

Babble is a popular service when it comes to the leraning of languages. The lifetime deal gives you access to all 14 languages that Babbel supports. These are:

Spanish (Spain)
German
Italian
French
Portuguese
Swedish
Turkish
Dutch
Polish
Indonesian
Norwegian
Danish
Russian
Spanish (Latin America)

You can access the service using applications for Android or iOS, or via the website. Babbel language courses focus on 10-15 minute lessons that fit well into most schedules. You could learn during the daily commute, when taking a break, or at any other time of day.

Progress is synced across devices, and there is a handy offline mode to use Babbel even at times when the Internet reception is bad or not available at all.

Lifetime access is available for just $199 at the time of writing. Updates are included, and you can learn as many languages as you like that are supported.

Click here to open the Babbel Language Learning lifetime deal on Ghacks Deals

Not for you?

You find hundreds of other deals with new deals posted daily on Ghacks Deals.

Fine print: make sure that you check out the specs and terms of the deal.

Disclosure: The deal is provided by StackCommerce in partnership with Ghacks Technology News; you need a StackCommerce account to participate in giveaways or make purchases. Check out the privacy policy and Terms of Service here.

Ghacks Technology News benefits from sales made on the Ghacks Deals website through a revenue share agreement.

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Save all metadata from your photos to a CSV document with EXIFextracter

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 11:19:19 GMT

Images that you take using your phone's camera or a digital camera often contain useful metadata information. This data lets you see which device was used to take the picture, the settings that were used and other information.

EXIF tags are also useful for managing and organizing your photo gallery. There are many image viewers that you can use to browse photos by tags. But if you want a record of all your photos and their folder locations, there are some tools that fit the bill.

BR's EXIFextractor is a freeware program that can extract the metadata from photos and save them in CSV documents.

It is a straightforward program. Click on the three-dot browse button next to the "Folder to scan" field to add the directory that contains your photos. You can toggle the option to include sub-folders if required.

Before you extract the tags, you will need to set up some options. Click on the button next to the Output filename field and navigate to the folder where you want the spreadsheet to be saved. You will need to give the document a name to save the file, e.g. Vacation.CSV, Party.CSV, etc.

The next set of options allows you select from various metadata that EXIFextracter can pull from the photos. This includes the following tags: Date, Time, Date and Time, Camera manufacturer and model, Camera manufacturer, Camera model, Lens Model, Width X height, Size of the image file, Exposure, Aperture, ISO, Was Flash used, Distance, Focal Length, User Comment. It can also save GPS related information such as Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, Date/Time, Direction. The program supports IPTC and XMP metadata like Headline, Description, Keywords, Comments, Author, Title and Subject.

Now, a lot of cameras don't save all this metadata, so let's say your pictures have 5 or 6 tags in them, there's no point to enable every single option. If you select all the tags, you'll end up with a lot of blank columns. Choose the ones you want by clicking the checkbox next to the option, and leave the rest unmarked. You may want to run a short test to see which tags your camera model saves to only select them in the future.

Click on the setup button in EXIFextracter, to bring up a couple of customization options. This window can be used to set a different date format and month names, you can optionally go for short names like Jan, Feb, or the proper names.

Back on the main screen of the application, there are a couple of other options that you can select. "Add Column Headings" creates a heading label for each column like Date, Time, Exposure, etc.

"Use full file path...." adds the folder location of each file to the file name column. You can disable it to make the document a little cleaner. Click on the drop-down menu and choose from Comma, Colon and semi-colon to set the Separator Character to be used for the output file.

When you are ready, hit the Extract button to generate the CSV file. A confirmation message will pop-up that mentions the number of files the tags were extracted from. The resultant file can be opened in Microsoft Excel or any compatible program.

EXIFextracter is compatible with Windows XP and above. It is in beta, but works well even in its current state.

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Configure Microsoft Edge's Paste behavior when copying URLs from the address bar

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 05:55:35 GMT

Sometimes, you may want to share an URL with someone else, or copy an URL for use in another application on the system. I copy URLs regularly as part of articles, as links provide readers with options to look up additional information and resources about the topic at hand.

When you copy the address from the Microsoft Edge address bar in recent versions of the browser, including the latest Stable version, and then paste it in another program that supports rich formatting, you will notice that the content is pasted as a link and not as plain text.

Microsoft changed the behavior of the copy and paste action recently in the company's browser stating that it is an improved version of the copy and paste feature.

The change is active by default, but there are options to switch to the previous paste option temporarily or permanently.

Here are the temporary paste options:

Once you have copied the address bar link to the Clipboard and are ready to paste the content, right-click in Edge and select Paste as > Plain Text. Sometimes. Paste as Plain Text may be displayed in the main menu and not the "Paste as" submenu".
Instead of using the mouse, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-V to paste as plain text

Tip: The option works for all sorts of links and rich content, not only address bar links. You can select the paste as plain text option to do just that, even for other content such as rich formatted text.

Some browsers and applications, Firefox for example, support paste as plain text as well. Just use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-V for that.

Change Microsoft Edge's paste behavior permanently

You may also go back to the status quo if you prefer to set the default paste action to plain text.

Load edge://settings/shareCopyPaste in the browser's address bar to open the Share Copy Paste preferences.
The two available options are displayed. Just switch to the one that you prefer. To restore the classic paste option, select "plain text" with a click or tap.

The change is applied immediately when you make it in the preferences.

Microsoft notes that you get the reverse option then when you select the Paste As action in the context menu. I did not get it all the time during tests, but it may depend on the text field that you want to paste the link in.

Now You: What is your preferred default when it comes to copy and paste?

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Be careful when you install Microsoft Edge extensions from the Microsoft Store

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 13:28:49 GMT

Browser extensions can extend the functionality of the web browser they are installed in or a site significantly; this is true for all browsers that support extensions, and the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge is no exception to the rule.

Microsoft operates its own extensions store as part of Microsoft Store, and things seemed to have taken a turn for the better with the switch to the Chromium base earlier this year.

Classic Microsoft Edge suffered from a lack of available extensions, and while Microsoft tried to explain the low number of extensions for the browser, it was clear that the browser could not compete with Google's or Mozilla's extension stores.

The switch to Chromium pushed the number of available extensions for Microsoft Edge and the Store is now hosting thousands of extensions for the browser. Edge users may install Chrome extensions as well next to that.

The increase seems to have brought along with it the issues that the other popular extension stores face from time to time. Microsoft had to remove malicious extensions from its Edge extensions store in May, and it appears that the company had to remove additional extensions this month.

Sites like Techdows published articles on the removal. According to the information, users of Edge opened support requests when they started to notice that searches were redirected when they used the Microsoft Edge browser.

It turned out that rogue extensions were responsible for that. All of these extensions were hosted on the official Microsoft Store; they used names of popular services and programs, e.g. NordVPN, Adguard VPN or The Great Suspender to lure users into installing the extensions.

Microsoft pulled the fake extensions from its web store and users who installed these in Edge will have them disabled on the next start of the browser automatically.

Raymone Hill, maker of the popular content blocker uBlock Origin, discovered another fake extension in the store that was based on an earlier version of uBlock Origin and manipulated website content to inject content on websites the user visited.

The two incidents suggest that users need to be very careful when installing extensions from the Microsoft Edge extensions store as Microsoft's protections are as weak as Google's protections on the Chrome Web Store.

In other words: there is always the chance that an extension is malicious in nature because of an insufficient vetting process. This leads to the following question: what can you do to protect yourself?

One of the best options is to analyze the code of the extension, but that is hardly something that all Edge users can do. Reviews and ratings help only so much, as they can be faked and sometimes, may not be available. You could look for reviews on trusted sites, or make sure that the company that supposedly created the extension has indeed created it by verifying that on the company site.

Now You: do you vet extensions before you install them?

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Get the definition of a selected word in a floating pop-up with the Dictionaries extension for ...

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 09:06:18 GMT

What you do when you come across a new word? You may look it up to find out about its meaning.

There are many add-ons that help simplify the task like the Dictionaries extension for Firefox and Chrome

It could use a better name for sure, but its features more than make up for it.

Once you have it installed, visit a webpage and double-click on a word that you want the definition of, and presto, a floating pop-up window appears with the word and its meaning.

This is not an offline dictionary, so you may see a delay of a second or two, while the extension fetches the word's definition. It is very similar to the Dictionary Anywhere add-on (which for some reason won't work at times), but Dictionaries' interface looks better. It has a dark theme which makes it easy on the eyes. The pop-up will display multiple definitions in case a word has more than one meaning, and also reveals other information, e.g. if it is a verb or noun.

Every definition has a pronunciation option. There are two speaker icons which will play audio. The icon on the left is for the US pronunciation, and the one on the right is for the UK version. There are no settings for the pronunciation and voice types. Sometimes it played a female voice, other times it was a male voice. I think it depends on the service that's used.

That said, the Dictionaries extension can get a little annoying because every time you select a word with a single-click and drag, or a double- click, the definition will pop-up. It can't tell you're selecting text for some other purpose, can it? Say if you're highlighting some text to search for it on Google, the add-on's going to be in the way with that pop-up. The good news is that you can disable this behavior.

Head to the add-on's Settings Section and look for the 3rd checkbox, it is labeled "Enable floating definition of selected word". Don't disable it, instead, enable the option right below it. This allows Dictionaries to display the pop-up when you select text while holding a hotkey (Ctrl or Alt or Shift).

Note: The add-on doesn't recognize the change until you restart the browser.

Select a word and right-click on it to "look up" its meaning using the add-on. Doing so, opens a pop-up window to display the definition.

The dictionary window has a search bar at the top that you can use to manually enter the word that you want to find. The add-on autocompletes the word as you type, so you can use that to your advantage. Hit the enter key or click on the search button in the box, or select the predicted word to view its definition.

The plugin pulls related topics, and Wikipedia information when its available and displays them in the window. The Dictionaries extension supports various Dictionary services including Longman English, Vocabulary.com, MacMillan, Dictionary.com, Oxford Dictionary, Urban Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Wikipedia, Bing, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster, Thesuarus.com, Lexico, Wikitionary, WordReference, and others.

Set the service that you want to use by clicking on the drop-down menu in the top right corner of the window, you can disable services from the options page.

You can also use the extension to find words in other languages besides English, it supports Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Tajik, Japanese and Thai.

Words that you look up are stored locally in the browser's storage. You can access the Dictionaries' history from the add-ons options page. You can delete the history, download the list as a CSV file, and also import them to Anki (I haven't tested this). The extension has a few hotkeys that you can use to quickly bring up the pop-up window, switch between words, etc.

Dictionaries is an open source extension. There is a bit of confusion regarding the name of the extension, it's officially called Dictionaries, but the developer seems to refer to it as "Dictionariez" in the description and on GitHub.

The context menu item is perhaps the only thing I disliked in the add-on. I would've preferred it if the menu item only appeared when a word is highlighted, but when you right-click normally (without any text selected), it says "Share your reading with PnlPal". There is no option to turn this off.

Dictionaries is by no means a perfect add-on, it has a few bugs here and there. Sometimes I couldn't get it to work, and required multiple clicks to get the definition to pop-up. The manual lookup tool is kind of a mixed bag. It displays "autocomplete" suggestions as you type the word, but sometimes when you click on a result, it does not find a match for the word that it predicted.

I don't have a screenshot of this, but the pronunciation's speaker icons disappeared a couple of times, but the feature still worked fine. The icons returned on their own later, perhaps after a browser restart.

Download the Dictionaries extension for Firefox and Chrome. I stumbled upon the extension on reddit. I use the Kindle eReader's built-in dictionary tool, which lets you tap-and-hold on a word to look up its definition, and I find the experience with Dictionaries to be very similar.

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Control Internet traffic on your Windows device with NetLimiter

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 05:44:13 GMT

NetLimiter is an Internet traffic control and monitoring tool for Microsoft Windows devices; our last review of the software dates back to 2008 and NetLimiter 2. A lot has changed since then and the program's functionality has been extended significantly.

NetLimiter 4 is a Shareware program for Windows. It is available as a Lite and a Pro version, and a lifetime license is available for $19.99 respectively $29.99 at the time of writing.

The program may look like a firewall application on first glance as it enables you to control Internet traffic. You can block all Internet activity of a program that runs on the Windows device using NetLimiter, and that is one of its core purposes.

When you first start the program after installation, you are presented with a list of processes with Internet connections in the main interface.

The upload and download rate is displayed for each, and you see existing rules right away as well on the screen.

You can set new rules or change them right from the screen. To do that, hover over any process listed by the application and you will see six icons in the rules column. Use these to prioritize traffic, set download or upload limits, block incoming or outgoing traffic, or set incoming and outgoing quotas.

You may use the info view panel on the right to control these settings for the selected application.

Most rules are self-explanatory, but you may wonder what priority does exactly. When you set the priority of a process, NetLimiter will automatically limit other applications based on the priority level.

Setting an application to critical or high limits traffic of all applications with a lower priority to ensure that the prioritized application gets the bandwidth its needs. You could set the priority of an online multiplayer game or high quality video stream to critical to get the best possible performance.

Similarly, it is possible to set the priority of a process to low to limit bandwidth of the process if other processes with higher priorities require bandwidth.

Setting limits for individual processes is another option that NetLimiter provides. The main difference between using priorities and limits is that priorities are automatic and controlled by the application while limits are manually set by the user.

Limits define download and upload limits for individual applications. It is the maximum bandwidth speed of a program running on the system. You may set limits right away, assign quotas to applications to have limits assigned to processes once the quota limit is reached, or use a scheduler to assign limits based on day and time.

Besides setting priorities and limits, you may also block the incoming or outgoing traffic of an application outright. If you never want a program to transfer data to the Internet or receive data, this is the option to choose.

A right-click on a process displays a context menu with additional options that include killing a process, adding rules, opening the connection history, or moving it to the hidden list.

You may look up the connection history and traffic stats of the entire system or individual applications. The connection history provides you with a clean list of all programs with Internet connectivity while NetLimiter was running.

It is a great option to catch applications that you may have missed, and control their Internet or network traffic.

NetLimiter supports custom filters that provide you with advanced monitoring options, e.g. to monitor HTTP traffic of all web browsers, or to monitor traffic to a specific website or server.

NetLimiter Lite vs Pro

NetLimiter 4 is offered in two versions: a lite and pro version. Both editions offer the same core functionality -- Internet traffic monitoring, priorities, limits and traffic charts are supported by both -- but the Pro edition is the only one that supports rules, connection history and logs, the connection blocker, user permissions, remote administration, scheduler, the filter editor, quotas, and stats.

Closing Words and verdict

NetLimiter 4 is an advanced Internet monitoring and control application for Windows that is easy to use yet powerful. You may use it to find out which applications connect to the Internet, how much bandwidth processes use in real-time and over time, and to control traffic or block it outright.

Now You: do you use programs to monitor or control your Internet traffic?

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You can now play Flash content on the Internet Archive using emulation

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 16:20:59 GMT

Adobe Flash support ends officially on December 31, 2020. The aging technology has been replaced by others for the most part and browser makers and operating system companies revealed that their applications and systems would stop supporting Flash in 2020 as well.

The end of support has consequences, and one of these consequences is that Flash content that is available currently will be ignored once Flash is no longer supported.

Does that mean that all the good Flash games, animations and applications are no longer accessible? Not necessarily. We reviewed the software of the Flash Games Preservation Project in 2018 already, and the project has grown since then to over 70,000 games and 8,000 animations.

Now it is the Internet Archive's turn to provide a new home for Flash games, apps, and animations. The archive provides access to Flash content through emulation so that all of the content continues to run on the archive's site even after Flash support ends.

Adobe revealed that users won't be able to play Flash content in 2021; there is an option for Enterprises though.

The Internet Archive picked Ruffle as the emulator of choice. The emulator does not provide 100% compatibility but plays "a very large portion of historical Flash animation in the browser, at both a smooth and accurate rate" according to Internet Archive's Jason Scott.

The content plays in any modern web browser that supports Webassembly.

You can check out a collection of Flash games and animations that is already available. You find some all-time classics there already, but many games and animations are still missing.

Just select a game or animation to open its profile page on the Internet Archive website. A big "play" button is displayed at the top and a click on the button starts the emulator and then the selected Flash content.

The emulation works similarly to other emulations on the site, e.g. to play Dos games, C-64 games, or Arcade games.

Content is limited currently and that is the main drawback especially when you compare the offering with the Flash Games preservation project. Then again, the latest full version of the project has a size of more than 500 Gigabytes when extracted and more than 470 Gigabytes need to be downloaded. There are standalone versions that download games when selected though.

If you just want to play a game or animation, and it happens to be on the Internet Archive, then it may be the better option as you don't have to download anything and can get started right away.

Now You: Will you miss Flash content?

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Shell Tools is a freeware program that adds some useful shortcuts to the Explorer context menu

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 12:27:46 GMT

Sometimes you may need more options than the ones available in Windows Explorer. You can switch to a different program, or use some simple tools that enhance Windows' built-in file manager.

Shell Tools is a freeware program that adds some useful shortcuts to the Explorer context menu

The application comes in an archive, extract it to a folder and run the ShellToolsConfig.exe. This will bring up two pop-up windows. Click on the Enable for current user (or all users) button to install the program. A confirmation message will appear that says Shell Tools has been registered.

You may want to restart any open Explorer window for accessing the new context menu options. Right-click on a file and you will see two new options: File Note and Copy Path.

Select a file and click on the File Note menu item, and Shell Tools will open a new document in Notepad. The note isn't attached to the file, it is saved independently, so it is sort of a shortcut to created a new text document. The only difference is that the note is named after the file that you selected, e.g. Photo.JPG will have a note named Photo.txt.

The Copy Path option sends the selected file's full location to the clipboard. e.g. C:\Users\Ashwin\Downloads\Movie.mp4.

Let's say you want to copy a file's size, hold down the shift key and right-click on a file. You will see the Copy Size menu item and it lets you copy the size in KiB and Bytes.

Right-click on an image and the context menu will have a new option named "Resize to JPEG". You may use this option to convert images to the JPG format. When you select it, a sub-menu appears that allows you to set the picture's resolution.

There are some menu items which appear when you have a Font file selected, to install, uninstall, load and unload the fonts. The caveat is that Shell Tools requires ImageMagick to be installed for the Resize to JPEG option to work.

ImageMagick will run briefly to convert and resize the image and close automatically, and the resultant file will be renamed.

Shell Tools adds a few options to the folder context menu in Windows Explorer. The first two are toggles to display Hidden Files and File Extensions. The refresh icons option will reload the icons for all files in the folder. The fourth option in the context menu is Shell Tools Configuration, which opens the program's settings window.

You can enable or disable the shell commands, toggle the menu items to show up only when you use the Shift key. In addition to this, you can customize some options such as Resize to JPEG. Define the resolutions, file types that are supported (JPG, JPEG, BMP, TIF, TIFF, PNG, DNG, CR2, CR3, WEBP, HEIF, PSD). Enable the option to strip the metadata from images, and add/remove various parameters used for resizing the image.

Note: Shell Tools supports mapping folders to the Windows Sandbox, I wasn't able to test this since I haven't installed the feature in my Windows 10 Home.

To uninstall Shell Tools, open the configuration window and click on the More drop-down menu and select Enable/disable, and then on the next screen you will be able to remove the menu from your computer.

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How to disable Sponsored Top Sites in the Firefox web browser

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 06:56:28 GMT

Some Firefox users noticed over the weekend that the browser listed "sponsored" links in the browser's address bar and on the New Tab page. The links, clearly marked as sponsored by Mozilla, are displayed to a small group of users as part of an experiment.

Word got out about Sponsored Top Sites in October when a bug on Mozilla's official bug tracking website Bugzilla@Mozilla confirmed plans to add a toggle to disable the functionality to the Firefox web browser.

The advertisement appears to have been introduced in Firefox 83, released earlier this week to the Stable channel.

If Sponsored Top Sites sounds like something that you have heard before, you are not mistaken. Mozilla announced in 2014 that it would integrate Sponsored Tiles on the browser's new tab page; the feature was pulled from Firefox at the end of 2015 and Mozilla decided to "focus on content discovery" instead back then.

Now, five years later, the feature makes a return under a slightly different name. Sponsored Top Sites may be displayed to Firefox users and Mozilla earns money from user clicks on these links.

Mozilla published a support page that provides additional details on the implementation and its advertising partners. According to the information published on the page, Mozilla is working with adMarketplace and only accepts advertising partners that meet the organization's privacy standards.

Anonymized technical data is sent through a Mozilla-owned proxy service before it is send to the sponsoring partner.

When you click on a sponsored tile, Firefox sends anonymized technical data to our partner through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. This data does not include any personally identifying information and is only shared when you click on a Sponsored Top Site.

How to disable Sponsored Top Sites in Firefox

Mozilla added options to disable Sponsored Top Sites to Firefox's user interface.

Note that the sponsored links displayed in the address bar are the same that you see on the New Tab Page.

Firefox users who see these right now may remove individual top sites in the following way.

Hover over the sponsored entry on the New Tab Page.
Open the menu with a click on the three dots.
Select Dismiss.

It is furthermore possible to disable the feature entirely.

Select Menu > Options.
Switch to the Home Panel.
Under Firefox Home Content, locate Top Sites.
Uncheck Sponsored Top Sites.

The change removes sponsored sites from the New Tab page of the browser and also from the address bar.

Firefox users who prefer to make the change directly may also modify the following preference, e.g. on about:config.

browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites

This needs to be set to FALSE to disable Sponsored Top Sites.

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Google extends Chrome support for Windows 7 until January 15, 2022

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 14:23:33 GMT

Google revealed this week that it decided to extend support for Google Chrome on Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system until at least January 15, 2022.

Support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020 officially for all Home systems while Enterprise and business customers could extend support by up to three years. The organizations and companies had to pay Microsoft for the privilege of receiving up to three years worth of security updates for the operating system.

While Microsoft gave Home users no option to extend the life of the operating system, browser makers and other software companies decided to extend support of their products because large numbers of users were still using devices with Windows 7 when official support ended.

Google announced that it would support Windows 7 until at least July 15, 2021 initially. The company revealed that it could extend the period, and that is what it did. The new support end has been moved to January 15, 2022 so that Windows 7 users get an additional six months of Chrome support.

The new end of Chrome support for Windows 7 is still a year short of Microsoft's own maximum end of support for paying customers. Microsoft will provide support until January 2023 for companies and organizations that pay the company for three full years of extended security updates.

Another extension is not out of the question according to Mac Christoff, Chrome Engineering Director; this would depend on a number of factors including the speed of migration and usage numbers. It is therefore at least in theory possible that Chrome will also be supported after January 2022 if the figures justify it.

Google's announcement focuses on Enterprise customers and the challenges that some of these companies faced in 2020. According to Christoff, 21% of organizations are still in the process of migrating devices to Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system, and 1% of Enterprise customers have not even started the process.

Now You: are you still on Windows 7?

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Get shortcuts for Recycle Bin, Admin tools, customize the taskbar, access Godmode and more with ...

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 13:40:40 GMT

About a month ago, the October 2020 update rolled out to Windows 10. And Microsoft in all its wisdom decided that it was time to kill off a very useful feature from the operating system, the System Control Panel.

If you try to access it, you will be redirected to the Settings app instead. It's not just this, Windows isn't what it used to be, there have been many changes in the past few years that are counter-intuitive.

Open Explorer and try to find the Recycle Bin. This is perhaps one of the most used feature in Windows, but you don't have it on by default. You can add it back in a few simple steps if you know how to, but that doesn't fix other such annoyances in the OS.

Hidden Windows 10 Features is a freeware tool that brings together a bunch of useful options, and you can customize the settings per your requirements. You will need to run the application with administrator privileges because it has to modify system-level options.

The toolbar at the top of the program's interface has 6 gigantic buttons and each of the buttons leads to a tab with a lot of options for you to tweak.

This PC

This set of options adds shortcuts to various elements in Windows Explorer. This includes the Recycle Bin, All Control Panel Items, Run, Switch Between Windows, Administrative Tools, Network Connections, Printers.

You may also use it to hide default folders like 3D Objects, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures and Videos. I don't recommend enabling this, but there is a shortcut to hide the C Drive (and other drives) too.

If you're unsure what an option in Hidden Windows 10 Features does, hit the preview button next to it to see a demo screenshot of the feature. That really adds to the user-friendliness of the program. Select an option by toggling the checkbox and hit the apply button in the bottom right-hand corner to confirm the changes. You don't have to restart your Computer, or even re-open Windows Explorer for the changes to be reflected. Don't like something? Uncheck the box, and click on Apply.

Taskbar

There are five options available in Hidden Windows 10 Features for customizing the Taskbar. The first one disables thumbnail preview (also called Aero Peek), which is displayed when you mouse over the taskbar icon of an opened program.

The second setting disables the system tray. You may modify the delay time of the Taskbar thumbnails and their live previews. The last option here lets the system tray clock to display the "seconds".

Context Menu

Enabling "Copy To" and "Move To" creates two new shortcuts in the Windows Explorer context menu.

Enable those and right-click on a file or folder and select the option that you'd like to use.

This opens a pop-up window that you can use to select the directory where you want to copy/move the file/folder to.

The 3rd setting in the in Hidden Windows 10 Features' Context Menu tab, adds a dedicated "Open with Notepad" option to Explorer's context menu. This is useful for opening readable/editable files (INI, LOG, NFO, etc) in the operating system's default text editor. If you're accessing files from a different account, you will find the Take Ownership option handy.

System

Gain access to the GodMode shortcuts and the legacy calculator from the System tab.

You can hide elements such as the Action Center, OneDrive (from Explorer). Ever wished that Windows would stop adding "shortcut" to the name of a shortcut that you created? Well, you can disable that behavior using Hidden Windows 10 Features.

The System tab also houses options to disable Aero Shake, Cortana, Lock Screen, and the annoying message that says "Look for an app in the Microsoft Store" when you try to open some files.

Security

These options strengthen your computer's security. You can toggle autorun, secure log, disable the Windows Script Host, and set Windows to delete the page file when it shuts down.

Privacy

This tab has just two options, and you can choose to disable Windows 10's compatibility telemetry and the Bing web-search from the Start Menu.

When you run the program for the first time, you will see a pop-up which informs you that Hidden Windows 10 Features is free for non-commercial usage. Hit the "Don't show again" option to dismiss it. You will need to log out and log back in for some of these changes to work, or restart the Explorer process.

Hidden Windows 10 Features isn't a must-have program by any means, it just make things a little easier to access for average users.

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Watch YouTube without Ads on your Fire TV

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 07:02:19 GMT

Google revealed plans this week to monetize videos from publishers on YouTube that have not joined the partner program. The change takes affect in the United States first but will roll out to all other regions that YouTube is available in.

YouTube viewers will see more ads on the site as a consequence, and that is a problem especially if YouTube is watched on the TV and not a device that supports content blocking.

While it is clear that advertisement is necessary to finance a service such as YouTube, it is also clear that Google pushed ads more aggressively on the site in recent time.

Video ads may play in front of videos but may also interrupt playback of a video to display unskippable ads.

If you use Amazon's Fire TV to watch YouTube on your television, or have an Android-based Smart TV, you may install a third-party application on the device to watch YouTube without advertisement and get other benefits from the change next to that.

Smart YouTube TV is an open source application designed specifically for Android TVs. The app is designed specifically for TV screens, supports 4K, runs independent of Google Services, and does not require root.

The application needs to be sideloaded as it is not available in Amazon's Apps store. Sideloading simply means that the application is installed from a third-party source and not the officially supported store.

Preparing the Fire TV

First thing you need to do on your Fire TV is to enable sideloading support.

Turn on your TV and bring the Fire TV interface to the front.
Select Settings from the menu at the top.
Open Device and select Developer Options from the Device menu.
Toggle the option "Apps from Unknown Sources" so that it reads "on" once you are done.

This is all it takes to enable sideloading. All that is left now is to get the Smart YouTube TV app on the device and install it.

Downloading and installing Smart YouTube TV

There are numerous ways to achieve this, here is a straightforward option:

Go back to the front of the Fire TV interface.
Open Search.
Search for "Downloader", a tool to download files to your Fire TV. It is this app, compare the screenshot and ratings to make sure it is the correct one.
Select install when asked to install the app on the device. You can launch it right away after installation. There is also an option to delete the downloaded APK file which you can do to free up some space.
Activate the URL / Address field in the Downloader app and load https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/en/.
The homepage of Smart YouTube TV loads.
Use the Fire TV remote to scroll down to the download section and select the Stable release to download. There is also a Beta release and a special YouTube Kids version.
The same installer should be displayed once the app is downloaded to the device. Install it on the device and start it up afterwards. You may also delete the downloaded APK file again.
The interface resembles that of the YouTube app for the Fire TV, but you will notice that it does not display any advertisement.

The installed YouTube app by Google remains installed, and you can continue to use it as well. You don't need to sign in to an account to use the app, but the option is provided.

Now You: how often do you watch videos on YouTube?

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File Hash Checker is a lightweight program that can be used to check the integrity of files

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 15:29:40 GMT

Have you ever wondered if a file that you downloaded is safe, or if a backed up file is still working fine and not corrupt? Sometimes you may encounter errors when a file doesn't work.

It is possible that the browser had been closed accidentally, or the network connection was ended abruptly, or in the worst case scenario, the file could have been tampered with. For backups, it is possible that the storage device is not working properly anymore, e.g. when a DVD has read errors.

A good way to make sure you have the complete file, and not a broken or corrupted file is to check its integrity. This is done by verifying the file's hash values. Windows Explorer does not have an option to do this by default, but we have plenty of options to choose from. File Hash Checker is a lightweight program that can be used to hash the integrity of files.

The program has a clean interface which is refreshingly devoid of toolbars and menu bars. The first box at the top is the file path, use the browse button to navigate to the directory where the file is at and select it.

File Hash Checker also supports drag and drop, so you can use Explorer to add a file to be checked quickly. You have to drop the file just below the text field to get it working. Pasting the location of the file in the field however does not seem to add the file.

There is another way to get things done faster, click on the menu button and toggle the only option that is available. Enabling this option creates a shortcut in the Windows Explorer context menu, to be more specific it adds File Hash Checker as one of the options in the "Send To" menu. So you can use this to send the selected file to File Hash Checker. You should know that by enabling the Shell extension, you're making the program non-portable, i.e. it writes to the registry.

You can only add one file to the program at a time, which means you cannot compute or compare the hashes of multiple files at once. If you need that functionality, check out alternatives such as SigCheckGUI, HashTools, or QuickHash GUI.

Once you have selected a file, the program automatically displays the SHA1 hash value by default. But File Hash Checker supports 4 additional hashing methods including SHA256, SHA384, SHA512 and MD5. To enable one of the algorithms, click on the box next to it and click on the "Compute Hash Value" button. Click inside the text box and you can copy the computed hash value to the clipboard.

How do you compare the hash values using the application? Say, you downloaded a file from a website and the developer has provided the hashes for it, you can copy the value and paste it in the Expected Value field in File Hash Checker. You may click the "Read Clipboard" button to automatically paste the content. The program will display a banner next to its computed value to indicate whether the values match.

The "Match" banner doesn't appear when the values are not the same, in fact there is no indication that says they are different.

Here's a screenshot that shows a comparison that shows how it looks, I used the value provided by Mozilla's FTP servers and used File Hash Checker to cross-verify the downloaded file's integrity.

File Hash Checker is an open source program, which is written in C#.

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Microsoft Edge 87 Stable is now available with automatic Internet Explorer redirects and more

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 13:41:21 GMT

Microsoft has released an update for the company's Chromium-based Microsoft Edge web browser. Microsoft Edge 87 Stable is already available on the official download website and also as a direct in-browser update.

You can check the installed version by loading edge://settings/help in the browser's address bar. The page runs a check for updates when it is loaded and will download and install newer versions if discovered during the check.

Microsoft Edge 87

Microsoft Edge 87 is a feature and security update. The new browser version incorporates the latest Chromium project security updates according to Microsoft. The advisory page lists 19 different security vulnerabilities and the highest severity rating of "high", one level below the maximum severity level of "critical".

Microsoft Edge 87 includes several new features, many of which designed for Enterprise and business environments.

All users get the new shopping feature which we have reviewed here. It is a port of the feature of classic Edge and designed to alert users when deals related to the viewed products on certain shopping sites are available.

Edge displays an icon in the address bar when a coupon is found in the database that it uses. A click opens the lists of coupon codes. Microsoft has not addressed the display usability issue in the stable release, as only two of the coupons are displayed by default. A click on "see more" lists the others, but that involves quite a bit of scrolling because of the design and limited space; this makes it difficult to get an overview of all available coupons.

Other features for all users

The highlight function of the PDF document viewer supports keyboard input in the new release.
When printing on both sides, users may select to flip on the long side or the short side of a sheet.

Enterprise and business features

Most features are designed for Enterprise and business environments. Starting with Microsoft Edge 87, sites may be redirected from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Edge automatically if an incompatibility message is displayed by the browser.

Microsoft published a support document that provides additional information, including policies to manage redirects or prevent these in the first place.

Other changes for Enterprise customers:

Kiosk mode supports new privacy features to deal with user data, e.g. to delete data on exit or delete downloaded files automatically. This support document provides additional information on Kiosk mode and the new functionality.
ClickOnce deployment enabled by default to better align with the legacy version of Microsoft Edge. ClickOnceEnabled's status of "not configured" has ClickOnce enabled now instead of Disabled.
Enterprise New Tab Page becomes a daily work dashboard by integrating My Feed on the page: "My Feed brings together information from news providers relevant to your work and industry. This can be further customized to your interest.".
TLS Token Binding support for policy-configured sites.

The official release notes page lists new, deprecated and obsoleted policies.

Now You: Have you tried Edge 87? What is your impression?

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Expect even more ads on YouTube soon

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:28:37 GMT

YouTube visitors may see more ads in the future as Google changed the terms of use on the site this week in regards to displaying video ads on videos that are not in the YouTube Partner Program.

Publishers may join the YouTube Partner Program to enter a revenue share agreement with YouTube. The Google company displays ads when a publisher's videos are played on the site, and the creator gets some of the revenue in return for that.

Publishers need to meet certain requirements before they may sign-up for the YouTube Partner Program; currently, the requirement is to have more than 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of viewed content over the past 12 month period.

Publishers who don't sign-up for the YouTube Partner Program, either because they don't meet the requirements or prefer that their videos are displayed without ads, would provide viewers with an ad-free experience until now.

The change, called "right to monetize" in the YouTube Terms of Service, gives YouTube the right to monetize content that is available on the platform without compensation.

You grant to YouTube the right to monetize your Content on the Service (and such monetization may include displaying ads on or within Content or charging users a fee for access). This Agreement does not entitle you to any payments. Starting November 18, 2020, any payments you may be entitled to receive from YouTube under any other agreement between you and YouTube (including for example payments under the YouTube Partner Program, Channel memberships or Super Chat) will be treated as royalties. If required by law, Google will withhold taxes from such payments.

Google plans to roll out videos on a "limited number of videos from channels" that are not in the YouTube Partner Program. Additionally, payments made from YouTube to U.S. creators will be considered "royalties" going forward. The change affects publishers from the United States only at this time but Google plans to expand this to other regions in 2021.

Advertisement won't be displayed if a video or publisher is not advertiser-friendly in the eyes of YouTube. Advertiser-unfriendly content includes videos with violence, adult content, harmful or dangerous acts, inappropriate language, or controversial issues. Creators could add such topics to their videos to avoid advertisements.

The change affects small changes that don't meet the partner program requirements yet and publishers who have made the deliberate decision not to join the program. While larger publishers may join the partner program to get at least some compensation for their efforts, small channels don't even have that option. YouTube is earning 100% of the revenue without even allowing these channels to get a share of the money because of the artificial limits the company put in place previously.

Closing Words

Google is pushing more and more ads on YouTube; while desktop users and mobile users may block ads using ad-blockers, the same cannot be said for viewing YouTube on most TVs. YouTube displays advertisement before a video starts, even if it is only a minute or so long, and started to push in-video ads more aggressively as well that pause the actual video.

Now You: Do you use YouTube?

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