Digiwonk How-Tos

How To: Surf the Web Without Restrictions for Free Using Opera's Hidden VPN

The desktop browser market has some stiff competition going on, but Opera has always been able to maintain its market share by offering innovative features such as a data saver option. With over 350 million users, it's safe to say folks are appreciative of the efforts being made by the web browser's development team.

How To: Your One-Stop Guide to Secure, Encrypted Messaging

Now that smartphones have ensured that we're connected to the internet 24/7, online privacy has become more important than ever. With data-mining apps hoping to sell your information for targeted ads, and government agencies only one subpoena away from knowing every detail of your private life, encryption has become our last line of defense.

How To: Cross-Network Play Between Xbox & PlayStation Is a Great Idea... But We Deserve More

It was definitely a shocker when Microsoft proposed cross-network play between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 last month. After all, Microsoft and Sony have been competing for the same user base for more than a decade now, and this new feature might actually decrease console sales as a whole.

How To: 8 Fun (& Annoying) Easter Eggs in Google Hangouts

Google has added some fun Easter eggs to Hangouts that'll give you a few more ways to procrastinate throughout your day. All of them (except for one) work on the web browser version, the Chrome app, and the mobile apps for Android and iOS, and are activated by sending a specific message.

How To: There's an Easy Way to Make Sure Your Earphones Are Always Tangle-Free

Headphones cables, USB cables, and other cords have a nasty habit of getting tangled up in-between uses. These tangles are almost always a result of us just mashing and twisting the cord up for "storage," which ends up taking several minutes to carefully untangle.

How To: Make Donald Drumpf Again

John Oliver sunk his teeth into Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during the long segment on the latest Last Week Tonight. The whole 21-minute video is definitely worth a watch, but the real fun starts around the 18-minute mark.

How To: See Your Lifetime Amazon Tab (& Wallow in Your Painful Consumeristic Guilt)

How much you've actually spent and how much you think you've spent are usually two completely different results, and is especially true on Amazon when it's so easy to click and buy. You might think you've given Amazon a couple thousand over your lifetime, when the fact is that it's three or four times that amount.

How To: This Trick Shows You Exactly When You Clicked on That Purple Link

When you click a link from Google search, the link itself turns purple to let you know you've already visited this page. But let's say you're searching for something similar a few weeks from now and you see one of these purple links—you'll probably think to yourself, "What was I reading about on that site?"—and if you don't remember, you'll end up clicking the link again. And if you're a frequent Reddit user, you know this pain all too well.

How To: 15 Tips to Make You a Google Calendar Pro

Whether scheduling meetings, events, tasks, or even keeping tabs on the weather, a good digital calendar can help you stay on top of your game in ways that a normal calendar could never do. Indeed, there are many calendars to choose from, but Google Calendar is one of the best due to Google's excellent cloud service, feature-rich web-client, and their easy-to-use Android and iOS applications.

How To: Chrome's Download Bar Is Useless—This Extension Is the Fix You Need

Chrome's download bar has looked pretty much exactly the same for years now—a simple horizontal menu that spans the entire bottom of the browser and displays buttons for each of your recent downloads. It's not exactly pretty, and when it comes to functionality, the space it occupies could certainly be put to better use.

How To: Play Facebook Messenger's Secret Chess Game

Facebook just keeps coming up with more and more diversions to help you ignore your responsibilities. At least this diversion is a little more intellectual than most of the other things that can easily distract you on Facebook.

How To: Unlock VLC's Hidden Jigsaw Puzzle Mode

The VLC media player just celebrated its 15th birthday in February 2016, marking a decade and a half of hassle-free video playback for hundreds of millions of users on virtually every major operating system. The free and open-source player is so powerful and easy to use that it has almost completely vanquished all would-be competitors in its rise to the top.

How To: Enable Google's Material Design in Chrome's Desktop Browser

Google's design chief Matias Duarte has gained fame and acclaim for his recent visual revamp of the Android operating system, and now, Google's starting to incorporate this Material Design styling into more of its products.

How To: This Extension Brings YouTube's Best Mobile Feature to Your Desktop

If you've ever used the YouTube mobile app for Android or iOS, you've probably noticed a cool little multitasking feature it has. While watching any video, you can simply swipe down on your screen to shrink the video down to a thumbnail view, which then allows you to browse the rest of YouTube while the original video keeps playing.

How To: 10 Must-Have Chrome Tools for Lazy Students

Chrome apps and extensions are powerful tools for students: they can help optimize your web browsing experience by helping you take notes, check your grammar as you compose documents and emails, and even help you squeeze a little more juice out of your laptop's battery by freezing unused tabs and optimizing YouTube streams.

How to Install Remix OS: Android on Your Computer

If you read the reviews on Google's Pixel C, you'll notice one big complaint about the tablet/laptop—most reviewers feel that Android simply isn't ready to be used as a desktop OS. The developers at Jide felt the same way, so they set out to make a custom version of Android with proper multitasking support and a UI optimized for the mouse and keyboard.

How To: Buy a USB Type-C Cable That Won't Fry the Battery on Your Nexus, MacBook, or Pixel

Ready or not, the USB-C cable is about to take over your electronics. The new industry standard is fully reversible and packed with enough power to serve as a laptop charger or an HDMI cable, so it actually has the potential to replace every cord, wire, and connector in your house. In fact, the conversion has already started: The latest MacBook, Chromebook Pixel, and Nexus phones are sporting USB-C connectors out of the box.

How To: Clear Your Web Browsing History in a Hurry

If you've been visiting websites of ill repute, or if you've been Christmas shopping and don't want to spoil the surprise, it would be a disastrous situation if anyone were to come across your browsing history. Visited sites, cookies, and cache can paint a very clear picture of your recent internet activity, and depending on the situation, you may only have a few seconds to delete your history before someone else barges in.

How To: Recover a Lost WiFi Password from Any Device

These days, if you're having friends over, they'll probably ask to log into your Wi-Fi network before asking for a drink. But if you've forgotten your password, it can be quite hard to find, since most devices obscure the characters with asterisks.

How To: Bypass School Internet Filters to Unblock Websites

School internet filters serve a valid purpose—they keep students from wandering off into the deep corners of the web while still allowing at least some internet access. But a lot of these restrictions are completely ridiculous, to the point where some school districts block access to the educational material in National Geographic or forbid searching terms like "China," "Iran," or "Russia"—because, you know, breasts and commies.

How To: Get 1 TB of OneDrive Storage & Office 365 for Free from Microsoft

Just last month, Microsoft announced plans to take away a huge chunk of storage from the free tier of their OneDrive cloud service, and users are understandably quite upset. At the same time, they reneged on an offer to give Office365 users unlimited OneDrive storage, and instead, will only be offering 1 TB of storage.

How To: Order an Uber Ride Without a Smartphone

Taxi drivers and cab companies across the globe are in an uproar over Uber, and for good reason, too—you just can't compete with the low fares and ease of use that Uber brings to the table. The only downside is that the groundbreaking ride share service usually requires a smartphone—but that shouldn't be an issue anymore with one simple tip that I'll outline below.

Black Friday Deals: Smart HDTVs from $125, Tablets from $35, Speakers 55% Off, & More

There are going to be tons of great Black Friday deals on electronics in stores like Best Buy, Target, Walmart, etc. But if you can't endure another holiday of standing in lines and running over people to get what you want, shopping on Amazon from the comfort of your own home is the way to go.

How To: Get Michael Jackson's Thriller (& Rare Bonus Track) For Free from Google for a Limited Time

When an album sells a million copies, it gets certified as platinum and cements itself as one of its generation's biggest hits. When an album sells 10 million copies, it reaches diamond status and transcends generational gaps. But when an album sells well over 40 million copies, there's only one thing you can call it—Michael Jackson's Thriller.

How To: Call/Text Home for Free When Traveling Abroad

If you ever need to make calls and/or send texts to the U.S. or Canada from abroad, or even just receive them from those locations, there's an easy way to do so without breaking the bank. In fact, it's free, and all you need is a smartphone, computer, and some free tools.

Screw Hearts: How to Get Stars Back on Twitter

When people get accustomed to something, any type of change is typically met with resistance or disdain. So when Twitter decided to swap stars for hearts, the internet wasn't exactly receptive to the new aesthetic.

How To: Apps & Extensions You Should Be Using Right Now in Chrome

If you use Google Chrome as your default desktop/laptop browser, then Chrome OS will be pretty easy to get up and running if transitioning from Windows or macOS. Google has created an operating system that is fast, lightweight, and versatile enough to be adopted by pros and novices alike.

How To: Block Spoilers for TV, Movies, & Sports in Your Browser

Unlike in the physical world, on the internet you're actually able to shut people up and block spoilers of newly-released movies, your favorite TV shows, or a sports event you've yet to watch on your DVR.

How To: Adobe Flash Player Is Bad for Your Computer (Here's How You Uninstall It)

Roughly four years ago, Adobe decided to abandon development of the mobile version of their popular Flash Player browser plugin. Their excuse at the time was that this move would enable them to focus more on HTML5 development for mobile devices and allow them to put more effort into maintaining the fluidity and security of their desktop Flash plugin.

How To: Watch Free Movies on YouTube

If Netflix's $9.99/month has deterred you from signing up for its streaming service, you're probably looking for cheaper alternatives to stream movies and TV shows, like Crackle (free with ads) or Hulu ($7.99/month with some ads). And now there's a new option for you when it comes to movies—Paramount Vault.

How To: Turn Pandora Likes into a Spotify Playlist

Although I am a loyal premium Spotify subscriber, I still regularly use Pandora in hopes of stumbling across new artists and songs. If I'm fortunate enough to come across something I enjoy, it's easy to use the Like feature in Pandora to locate the song later.

How To: Chrome Extensions Every Twitter User Should Know

When it comes to news, updates, and arbitrary nonsense, it's hard to find a better source than Twitter. And for some of us, the best way to consume Twitter is through the web (versus a mobile app). But as much as I prefer the standard browser version, it's easy to make it better, faster, and more convenient using a few Chrome extensions—and here are my favorites.

How To: 12 Browser Add-Ons for Reddit Pros

Reddit, the self-proclaimed "front page of the internet," continues to take a big bite of my free time each and every day, as well as millions of its other users'. The clicking and scrolling through page after page never gets old, but you could speed things up with a few browser extensions and double your Reddit knowledge in half the time. Here are my favorite extensions you can try out for the Chrome, Firefox, and Safari web browsers.

Today Only: How to Get an Amazon Prime Membership for Only $67

Amazon Prime is a yearly subscription service that offers free two-day shipping as well as free streaming of Amazon Video's movie and TV show catalog, which includes their original award-winning series Transparent.

Professionally Lazy: Slack Off at Work Without Getting Caught

We are most certainly not machines. We all need some downtime every once in a while to set our sanity scales back in balance, which in turn, makes us more productive workers. This is a premise that several forward-thinking employers fully understand, but these types of companies are few and far between in corporate America.

How To: 3 Ways to Find & Save Old Photos in Your Gmail Account

After my hard drive crashed recently, I lost everything. Old college essays, half-written stories, short films, and most importantly, all of the photos that I had saved from the past five years... all gone.

How To: Find Old Songs You Absolutely Love (But Never Knew About)

Spotify has a feature called Taste Rewind that claims to know what you would've listened to back in the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, and oughts ('00s), all based on your listening history and favorite artists. You can essentially time travel into the past and already have "favorites" songs to listen to! While I was skeptical at first, I tried the feature out for myself and was pleasantly surprised with the results. So if you want to create uniquely tailored playlists from the past five decades, st...

How To: Should You Use Twitch or YouTube Gaming for Live Streams?

Dropping upwards of $60 on a new game can really break the bank, and being a struggling college student leaves me having to decide whether to pick up the latest title or, you know, eat. But often my more primitive urges win out, meaning the only way to enjoy the latest and greatest games are vicariously, using increasingly-popular live streams.

How To: Disable Twitter's Annoying Autoplay Videos

It's bad enough that we have to deal with autoplaying video advertisements all over the Web, so why do we have to be subjected to autoplaying videos on Twitter, too? Autoplay video are muted by default, but that doesn't make them any less annoying, especially if you have a small data plan on your phone.

How To: Watch Netflix in Sync with Friends Remotely

If you want to watch a movie on Netflix with a friend, family member, or significant other, but can't meet up in the same living room, the next best thing is doing it remotely from the comfort of your own homes.