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A file system provides a way of organizing a drive. It specifies how data is stored on the drive and what types of information can be attached to files—filenames, permissions, and other attributes. Windows supports three different file systems. NTFS is the most modern file system. Windows uses NTFS for its system drive and, by default, for most non-removable drives. FAT32 is an older file system that’s not as efficient as NTFS and doesn’t support as big a feature set, but does offer greater compatibility with other operating systems....

Over the last decade, noise-canceling headphones have become more common, more affordable, and more effective. But as headphones become better at filtering out external sounds, more and more people complain that they cause ear pain, headaches, and a feeling of inner-ear “pressure.” These complaints date back further than 2009, so why hasn’t this issue been resolved yet? Well, first, we have to understand how noise-canceling headphones work. ANC Headphones Listen to External Noises and Cancel Them Out Contrary to popular belief, active noise canceling (or ANC) headphones don’t block out noise by physically shielding your ear from external sound waves....

The question of what’s causing your phone to disconnect from Wi-Fi can be approached from a few angles. Is the fault with your phone, the router, or your internet connection itself? Let’s try to find out which is causing your troubles. The Internet Is Having Issues Let’s start at the simplest and most likely explanation—your internet is having some troubles. It’s not your phone’s fault, it’s not even your router’s fault, your internet provider is just having some problems....

Windows 11 will be here before we know it, and a Microsoft executive has just teased a new feature called Focus Sessions. It appears to integrate Spotify into the Windows operating system. What Is “Focus Sessions” on Windows 11? Chief Product Officer from Microsoft Panos Panay showed off a brief video on Twitter showing how Focus Sessions will work, and it looks promising. The video comes just a day after the executive teased the new Snipping Tool in Windows 11....

Over the past three-plus decades, the icons of Microsoft Windows have evolved alongside improvements in screen resolutions and color depth. Here’s a look at how the size and style of Windows icons have changed over time. Windows 1.x (1985) and Windows 2.x (1987) In the first two major releases of Windows, application icons only appeared if you minimized a program to the taskbar at the bottom of the screen (in Windows 1....

Android’s New Accessibility Features Google has two different accessibility features coming to Android called Camera Switches and Project Activate. In a blog post, Google said the new features were “Built with feedback from people who use alternative communication technology.” The company continued, “Both of these tools use your phone’s front-facing camera and machine learning technology to detect your face and eye gestures.” Camera Switches is a new part of Android’s Switch Access feature that turns your camera into a switch that detects facial gestures and uses them to navigate a smartphone....

What Does a 4K Monitor Provide? The term “4K” refers to the next generational leap in display resolution beyond HD (also known as 1080p). While HD content is 1920 x 1080 pixels in size, 4K delivers four times as many pixels at 3840 x 2160. Four times the pixels means four times the screen real estate, so the first big benefit of a 4K over a true HD display is space....

Microsoft has been pushy with trying to get people to use Edge lately. Now, when you try to download Chrome through the Edge browser, a new pop-up may attempt to dissuade you by calling Chrome “so 2008.” Neowin first spotted the new prompts, and they come with a few messages that pop up when you go to the Google Chrome download page through Microsoft Edge. Here are the messages you might see:...

A YouTube video made the rounds about a month ago showing off a modified iPhone X with USB-C. It’s a cool project that shows what you can do with a bit of knowledge and creativity. Now someone owns the device, as it sold for a staggering $86,001 on eBay. RELATED: These New USB-C Logos Make Picking Charging Cables Easier Robotics engineering student Kenn Pillonel posted the video of the modified iPhone on YouTube, and it garnered over a million views....

What Is “Foveated” Rendering? We highlighted foveated rendering all the way back in 2018 as an important part of the future of VR, but years later it’s still an obscure concept. The main clue to what foveated rendering is, comes from its name. The fovea is the central part of the retina. The retina is the part of your eye’s anatomy that converts light to nerve signals, processed by the brain into the images you see....

Lightroom Presets are a popular way to edit images, but if you prefer to use Adobe Photoshop, there’s a way to use them in Photoshop, too—using Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). Let me explain. Why ACR Is (Basically) Lightroom Adobe Camera RAW and Lightroom use the same image processing engine under the hood, with only slightly different user interfaces. This means that Lightroom Presets work in ACR without you having to do any weird tweaks....

Photoshop is the best image editor around, and it’s packed with thousands of tiny little features you didn’t know you needed. One of these features is being able to change the background color of the interface. Sometimes, when you’re working, you’ll want to see how your photo would look against a white wall, or perhaps you’ll need to get more contrast around the edges so you can make a clearer selection....

Xbox is no longer just a gaming console. It’s an app and set of services integrated into Windows 10. But Xbox still uses whatever old gamertag, or nickname, is associated with your Microsoft account. You may have set this name on an Xbox 360 a decade ago, or may have been provided by Microsoft’s Games for Windows LIVE service. If you want to change your gamertag, but don’t have an Xbox–or just want an easier way to do it–you can change it through the Windows 10 Xbox app....

With concatenation, you can merge two or more values from multiple cells into a single cell in your spreadsheet. Microsoft Excel offers two different ways to perform this task, and we’ll show you how to use those two methods. Concatenate Using an Ampersand in Excel A quick way to join two or more values together is by using the “&” (ampersand) operator. You specify the values you want to join with this sign, and Excel puts all your selected values in a single cell....

Using color in Microsoft Excel can be a terrific way to make data stand out. So if a time comes when you want to count the number of cells you’ve colored, you have a couple of ways to do it. Maybe you have cells colored for sales amounts, product numbers, zip codes, or something similar. Whether you’ve manually used color to highlight cells or their text or you’ve set up a conditional formatting rule to do so, the following two ways to count those cells work great....

Pareto charts are popular quality control tools that let you easily identify the largest problems. They are a combination bar and line chart with the longest bars (biggest issues) on the left. In Microsoft Excel, you can create and customize a Pareto chart. The Benefit of a Pareto Chart The main benefit of a Pareto chart’s structure is that you can quickly spot what you need to focus on the most....

Microsoft doesn’t want you to disable Cortana. You used to be able to turn off Cortana in Windows 10, but Microsoft removed that easy toggle switch in the Anniversary Update. But you can still disable Cortana via a registry hack or group policy setting. This transforms the Cortana box into a “Search Windows” tool for local application and file searches. Cortana has become increasingly restrictive since Windows 10’s release. It was previously updated to ignore your default web browser....

Spotify’s Discovery Features Aside from having shareable playlists generated by both the community and by the company, Spotify has a ton of ways of directly recommending you new music. Since it’s the largest music streaming service, it has extensive data on all the music that you’ve listened to as well as what other users listen to. That’s why it has a robust set of discovery tools that let you find new songs or genres that you might enjoy....

It can be frustrating to not be able to find your downloaded files. This can happen on Android devices, too, which have file systems like any other operating system. Here’s how to find downloaded files on Android. Every Android device has some sort of File Manager app preinstalled. On Google Pixel phones, it’s simply called “Files.” Samsung Galaxy phones call it “My Files.” You also have the option to install a different File Manager from the Google Play Store....

This will show you a list of all the things you’ve ordered in the past three months. Scroll through the list until you find the order that you want to hide and click “View Order Details.” If you don’t see it, use the search bar to find it. For the item that you want to hide, click “Archive Order.” Then, click “Archive Order” again. Everything you ordered at the same time will also be archived....