Category: Technology

Almost every major PC maker has dabbled with the idea of a dual-screen laptop at some point. Way back in 2011, Acer released the Iconia 6120 sporting not one but two 14-inch displays. Then at CES 2017, Razer showed off Project Valerie which bumped the panel count to three before demoing something a bit less extravagant a year later in Project Linda. Fast forward to 2020, when Dell dazzled us with the Concept Duet. Even Apple gave the category a go on the old MacBook Pros with Touch Bars, only to reverse course and ditch them completely a couple of years ago.

Meanwhile, Lenovo has an entire family of devices dating back to the original Yoga Book and culminating most recently in the Yoga Book 9i, with the latter coming extremely close to turning the promise of dual-screen laptops into an actual appealing choice. But now after several generations of its own devices, ASUS has put everything together with the Zenbook Duo. It’s a super sleek machine with two screens that’s barely larger than a similarly sized clamshell. There’s also a detachable keyboard and a built-in kickstand for maximum adaptability. And starting at $1,500, the Zenbook Duo doesn’t command a massive premium for something with a ton of extra utility. So while it’s been quite a journey to get here, ASUS has finally made a dual-screen laptop that proves once and for all that two screens really are better than one.

Design

One of the most impressive things about the Zenbook Duo is that it doesn’t look like some kind of Frankendeivce. It’s just a regular-looking 14-inch laptop. Even after you open it, things still look normal with a physical keyboard and touchpad, not to mention a healthy selection of ports around the outside (two Thunderbolt 4, one USB 3.2 Type-A and a full-size HDMI 2.1 jack). A small part of me wishes ASUS had found room for some kind of SD card reader, but I understand if there just wasn’t space.

It’s only after you remove the keyboard that things get interesting because as soon as you do, the Duo’s second display springs to life. From here, you have a ton of options. Tapping three fingers on the lower panel summons a floating touchpad. Alternatively, eight fingers makes a virtual keyboard appear, which you can follow with a swipe up to reveal a traditional keyboard/trackpad combo. But the cool thing is that because these are all virtual stand-ins, it’s easy to swap in a new layout (like for other languages), move the touchpad off to the side or call up a numpad if you need to do some data entry. There’s just so much more flexibility when half of a laptop’s interior isn’t taken up by a rigid set of physical keys.

But things keep getting better, because on the bottom of the Duo is a flap that folds out into a kickstand. This allows you to prop the system up and use both screens as proper displays, sort of like a portable dual-monitor setup but all in a single self-contained system. And because the detachable keyboard connects wirelessly over Bluetooth, you can place it in front (or wherever you want) just like a desktop. The one small drawback to this design is that if you rotate the Duo’s displays into portrait orientation side by side, the design of the kickstand means there’s no way to adjust how far it tilts. This heavily favors the stacked setup with one display above, which is fine because I think that arrangement is more useful in most situations.

Another pleasant surprise is that for a device with two screens, the Zenbook Duo isn’t much bigger or heavier than a typical clamshell. It weighs 3.6 pounds and measures 0.78 inches thick versus the 2.82 pounds and 0.59 inches for a standard Zenbook 14 OLED. And when compared to something like a Dell XPS 14 (3.7 pounds and 0.71 inches thick), both systems are practically the same size.

My one gripe is that ASUS’ dark gray paint job color doesn’t help the Duo stand out. It’s almost like someone who wears subdued colors to avoid drawing attention. But this design is fantastic and I wish ASUS would give this laptop (and the engineers who designed it) the flowers it deserves.

Displays and software

The centerpiece of the Duo is its pair of 14-inch displays, which are an absolute delight. Not only do the matching OLED panels offer strong brightness (around 500 nits), they also pump out rich and accurate colors (100 percent of DCI-P3). But the real magic is when you use both panels together.

Moving apps from one display to another is as simple as dragging and dropping or using the handy menus that appear at the top of the display. In addition, there’s a floating button in the bottom left for ASUS’ ScreenXpert software, which provides shortcuts for adjusting brightness (separately or as a pair), disabling specific panels or pulling up handy widgets for things like a control panel, a handwriting recognition tool, news and weather and more. If the goal was to get as much value out of the Duo’s two displays, I think ASUS’ software does a pretty good job.

The downside to all this is that despite ASUS’ best efforts, Windows 11 and many apps still aren’t fully optimized for systems like this. For example, when I played a round of Teamfight Tactics and wanted to pull up some game stats on the lower display, I ran into an issue where the virtual touchpad stopped working. It was only after I set the game to borderless window mode, closed the game and relaunched everything that it started working again. Granted, situations like this were rare, but it’s important to remember that when you’re using a cutting-edge device, there may be some bugs or awkward interactions.

Performance

The Zenbook Duo comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD. While you can upgrade it with double the memory and a faster Ultra 9 chip, I found the base configuration to be plenty fast. On tests like Geekbench 6 and PCMark 10, the Zenbook Duo turned in results that were identical to those from similarly equipped clamshells, including ASUS’ own Zenbook 14 OLED. This is great because it means there’s not a ton of overhead due to the addition of a second screen and even when setup in desktop mode, dragging apps from one display to another felt snappy and responsive. The obvious drawback is that unlike some 14-inch systems such as the XPS 14, there’s no room for a discrete GPU, which makes the Zenbook Duo better suited to general productivity than more demanding tasks like video editing.

Battery life

You might think a system with two screens would be a battery hog, but the Zenbook Duo fared better than expected. With just one screen on, it lasted 13 hours and 12 minutes on our video rundown test, which is pretty much equivalent to (actually a touch longer than) the Zenbook 14 OLED (12:43). And with both screens going, the Duo’s time only dropped to 10:17, which is still more than enough to survive an entire workday.

Wrap-up

OK, so the Zenbook Duo delivers on the promises of dual-screen laptops. But one question I get a lot is who are devices like this actually for? The most obvious application is for people who carry a portable monitor around while traveling. But more generally, this thing is aimed at anyone who appreciates multiple monitors and wants a system that can recreate that experience in a more travel-friendly way, which is something the Zenbook Duo does with aplomb. The best part though is that it doesn’t make major sacrifices to do so, because thanks to its detachable keyboard, it can function just like any other clamshell when space is tight (like on an airplane).

When you have room to spread out, it transforms into a portable workstation with plenty of screen space for a project up top and bonus real estate for Slack, email, video calls or anything else you might need down below. It’s got ample ports so you don’t need to carry a dongle around and thanks to its gorgeous OLED screens, your work (or play) always looks great. The Zenbook Duo can do everything a traditional laptop can and more. Yes, the software experience could be a bit more polished, though that’s not entirely on ASUS. We still need a new version of Windows to provide better OS support for dual-screen machines. But considering all the struggles and multiple generations it took to get here, the Zenbook Duo is a marvelous torchbearer for a new class of portable PCs.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/asus-zenbook-duo-review-specs-price-the-first-dual-screen-laptop-worth-buying-130016756.html?src=rss 

Replacing a smartphone every two years is partially why billions of phones go into landfills each year. If stacked flat atop one another, that many handsets would reach farther than the ISS. But we’ve become accustomed to that 24-month time frame because wireless carriers often push an upgrade on biennial contracts, and many smaller phone makers only offer software support for two years. But now, with longer software commitments from major manufacturers, along with growing right-to-repair legislation, many newer phones can stay in our pockets for closer to seven trips around the sun. Here’s how you can extend the lifespan of your smartphone and avoid shelling out hundreds before it’s absolutely necessary.

How to make your smartphone last longer

Use a case

It’s a flashy move to carry a naked phone around, but the chances of a handset making it through a tumble go up dramatically when you employ extra protection. We recommend a number of them in our guide to iPhone cases and in our eco-friendly phone cases guide. In my family, we’ve been happy with Mous cases. Though we’ve never subjected our phones to the brutality seen in the company’s ads, I can say that these cases have seen my partner’s aging Samsung Galaxy and my elderly iPhone through some pretty gnarly spills, sparing them from scratches or worse.

Take care of the built-in battery (or use a power bank)

Since a phone’s battery is often the first thing to show signs of age, it’s worth it to follow recommendations for extending its lifespan. Lithium-ion batteries don’t perform well in heat and you should avoid charging them if it’s hotter than 95 degrees — doing so can degrade the battery quickly and even cause them to malfunction. They’ll tolerate cold weather better, but can get sluggish when things get too chilly.

If you’re storing a phone for a while, it’s best to do so with the battery at half charge, rather than full or empty. In fact, Li-ion cells last longer when they spend less time being either completely discharged or full — that’s why battery optimization features in iPhones and Pixel phones delay overnight charging to 100 percent until about an hour before you typically grab your mobile. And while it’s sometimes necessary to charge a battery quickly, a slower charging method when speed isn’t critical will put less stress on the ionic components and help extend the cell’s life.

But over time, any battery will eventually wear down. The cell powering my iPhone 11 can make it through a typical day, but if I’m traveling, relying heavily on navigation or using the phone as a hotspot, it’ll need a top-off before bedtime. That’s easy if I’m home, but out in the world, a battery pack is an essential. I have a slew of them on hand after testing for our best power banks guide and the two I grab most often are the Otterbox Fast Charge, because it looks cool and has a good capacity, and the Nimble Champ Pro, because it’s crazy fast.

If you really want to give your phone a new lease on life, a new internal battery could be the ticket. For Pixel phones, you can go through Google’s official channel for either a walk-in or mail-in repair, or you can pick the DIY route with iFixit’s Pixel repair kits and instructions. For iPhones, you can start with Apple’s official page, go through Best Buy or other third-parties, or try iFixit’s methods. Samsung also has an in-house option, or you can try Best Buy or iFixit. Depending where you go and the model of your phone, the price for a new battery and installation will likely run you between $45 and $150 — still far less than ditching your handset for something brand new.

Clean up your phone’s storage

Most advice on how to declutter your phone and make it run faster centers on one thing: freeing up space. Your phone’s OS will likely have suggestions for clearing up storage space, like automatically offloading unused apps or deleting year-old messages. You can also do things manually by deleting any apps you don’t use. Next, consider the photos and videos you’re storing locally and either opt to pay for cloud storage or transfer the files to a computer or an external backup device. You can also consider getting rid of any music and movies you may have downloaded for offline use, and deleting old messages and large attachments. A good rule is to keep your storage at around 80 percent capacity. Once you’ve deleted and transferred what you can, restart your phone to give it a chance to clear up its temporary memory.

Why you can (and should) extend the life of your smartphone

The e-waste stream grows each year and doesn’t do great things for human or planetary health. Smartphone companies are offering better and more consistent trade-in deals, but even some electronic recycling has its faults. Simply hanging onto a device instead of opting for a new one is the most efficient way of cutting back on a phone’s environmental impact — plus it’ll save you money.  

While every giant phone maker would like you to believe that upgrading annually is critical, it’s worth noting that new generations of phones often bear strong resemblance to the prior year’s model. We called both the latest iPhone and Google Pixel the most significant updates in years, but prior to that, upgrading didn’t make much sense. The latest Samsung Galaxy phone has a slew of new AI tricks, but physically, it’s not much different than the one that came before it.

With only minor hardware upgrades, the more exciting new features come via over-the-air software updates. When Google released the Pixel 8 last October, the company promised security and software updates for a full seven years. Samsung came out with the Galaxy S24 in January of this year and committed the same support for its handsets. Apple hasn’t made the same pledge, but when the launch of iOS 17 last year cut support for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, both models had enjoyed around six years of updates from launch.

What Apple did announce is that the batteries in all four models of the iPhone 15 last twice as long as the company originally claimed. Originally, battery capacity was listed at 80 percent of the original full charge after 500 cycles. Now, that same capacity rate applies to 1,000 cycles. The improvement, Apple says, comes courtesy of advanced battery tech and better power management from the operating system. It’s true battery technology has improved in capacity over the years, but longevity hasn’t gone up across the board, as a study by PhoneArena makes clear.

More advancements in battery life spans may be on the horizon particularly as the EV industry grows, which also relies on lithium-ion cells. For now, declining battery health is usually the most noticeable issue affecting older phones. This year, the European Parliament voted for rules surrounding battery-powered devices and included a mandate to allow consumers to “easily remove and replace” batteries. That won’t go into effect until 2027, and there will be plenty of interpretation as to what “easily” means. But EU mandates are what made Apple finally ditch Lightning ports on iPhones in favor of USB-C, so this could eventually be a step towards (once again) having smartphones with swappable batteries.

Even in the US, legislation will soon compel companies to make repair a better option. Right-to-repair bills were passed last year in New York, Minnesota and other states. California has the strongest rule, and it even garnered Apple’s support. Once the law goes into effect in July, it will require companies to provide repair tools and documentation, and to sell components for seven years after the last new model is made for any device costing more than $100. Of course, the law didn’t say anything about prohibiting “parts pairing,” in which a device only works properly when repaired with official parts by a manufacturer-authorized repair center.

Currently, a number of phones have decent repairability scores, according to the online repair community iFixit (the FairPhone 5 gets the highest marks). After California’s law goes into effect, more models may become user-repairable, considering few manufacturers are likely to ignore the state’s nearly 40 million customers. In the meantime, authorized repair is an option, as is self-repair for the more industrious.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-to-make-your-smartphone-last-longer-120014817.html?src=rss 

NVIDIA’s H100 chips are used by nearly every AI company in the world to train large language models hooked into services like ChatGPT. It’s been great for business. Now, the company is ready to make those chips look terrible, announcing a next-generation platform called Blackwell.

Named for David Harold Blackwell, a mathematician who specialized in game theory and statistics, NVIDIA claims Blackwell is the world’s most powerful chip, reaching speeds of 20 petaflops compared to just 4 petaflops the H100 provided. Yeah, throw it in the trash. You need new chips.

And if you didn’t know how powerful NVIDIA is, its press release for this new platform includes quotes from the CEOs of OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Tesla — yes, all CEOs you probably know the names of.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

YouTube lays out new rules for realistic AI-generated videos

Apple can’t get out of facing a class-action lawsuit over AirTags stalking claims

The 5 best cordless vacuum cleaners for 2024

Sony may have paused PS VR2 production

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Hackers gave pro players cheats during Apex Legends competition

The tournament is postponed until further notice.

Yeah, this is bad. Respawn, the EA-owned studio behind Apex Legends, has postponed the North American Finals tournament after hackers broke into matches and equipped players with cheats. Footage of the hacks on Twitch show players being able to see their opponent’s location through walls, while notable player (and one of the best) ImperialHal was gifted an aimbot to hit enemies more easily. Respawn says it would share more information soon, but as of time of writing, the studio hasn’t elaborated.

Continue reading.

Logitech’s $999 4K livestreaming camera is triple the price of its 1080p model

The Mevo Core has improved built-in mics and works with any MFT lens.

Logitech is expanding its Mevo lineup of livestreaming cameras. The company’s new Mevo Core shoots in 4K, a big upgrade from the 1080p Mevo Start camera kit I tested a few years back. However, the trade-off is pricing as the new model will set you back three times as much for a three-camera setup. $999. So yes, this is probably for the pro streamers.

To emphasize that, the Core ships as a body only, but Logitech will sell lens bundle kits through Amazon and B&H Photo Video. You will need to buy an additional lens just to make it work. And it’s only compatible with micro four-third lenses — so there’s a high chance you’ll have to buy one.

Continue reading.

Apple wants to bring Google’s Gemini AI to iPhones

It’s like Google search on Safari all over again. Plus 15 years.

Apple is reportedly in talks with Google to integrate its Gemini AI in iPhones, according to Bloomberg. Gemini could be the cloud-based generative AI engine for Siri and other iPhone apps, while Apple’s models could be woven into the upcoming iOS 18 for on-device AI tasks.

There are regulatory concerns to consider—the Department of Justice has already sued Google over its search dominance, including the way it pays Apple and other companies to use its search engine. But given how Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership turned the Bing search engine into something people were actually talking about, the team-up might be worth the risk.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-nvidia-says-its-blackwell-gpus-are-the-worlds-most-powerful-chips-111500942.html?src=rss 

You know the feeling. You’ve spent the last few hours digging into some research project, Wikipedia binge or Reddit rabbit hole, and now you’re drowning in a sea of tabs. Your computer slows to a crawl, and you’re at a loss on how to get things back in order. Fortunately, there are some not-so-obvious features built into your web browser that can help you out. If you often struggle to keep your web surfing in check, we’ve rounded up a few helpful tips on how to organize your tabs across Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox, including suggestions for built-in tools and time-saving extensions.

How to organize tabs in Chrome

Google Chrome lets you organize and label tabs in groups.

Google Chrome is by far the most popular web browser in the world, but some of its built-in tab management tools may not be immediately apparent. One trick is to use “tab groups,” which lets you cluster multiple tabs into groups that you can label and color-code. This makes it easier to distinguish between different topics and compartmentalize; clicking a group’s label will collapse or expand all tabs within.

You can create a group or add tabs to an existing group by right-clicking on the one you want to move, selecting “Add tab to (new) group,” then choosing where you want the tab to go. Alternatively, you can just click and drag a tab in or out of a group to add or remove it. All of this still works if you’ve selected multiple tabs simultaneously, which you can do by holding Ctrl on Windows or Cmd on macOS as you click.

If you right-click on a tab group’s label, you can change the name and color, ungroup all the tabs within it, close the group entirely or move it into a new window. (You can do the last of those just by dragging the group label out of its current window, too.) There’s also a “Save group” toggle, which lets you save a tab group and sync it across devices, where it’ll be accessible from your bookmarks bar. After turning this on, you can hit “Hide Group” to remove it from view without losing the tabs completely. If you don’t need a particular set of tabs right now, this can be a handy way to reduce clutter. If you close a group accidentally, note that you can restore it from Chrome’s three-dot menu, hovering over History, finding the group’s name and clicking “Restore group.”

With or without groups, you can quickly search through all of your open tabs by using the “Search tabs” button. This is the downward-facing arrow in the top left or right corner of your window. You can also pull this up by hitting Ctrl + Shift + A on Windows, or Cmd + Shift + A on macOS. This will show you a tidy vertical list of all your open tabs, plus a handful that you’ve recently closed. You can close them directly from here as well, and the menu will break out any open ones that are currently playing audio or video. You can also search through your open tabs directly from Chrome’s address bar: Just type “@tabs”, then hit the spacebar or Tab to initiate it.

Clicking this icon in your Google Chrome window will let you quickly search through your open tabs.

If you like to order your tabs by putting them in distinct windows, you can give each a custom name for better organization. If you have a bunch of work-related material in one window, for instance, you could call it “Work”. To do this, pull up the window you want to name, right-click the empty space next to the new tab (or “+”) icon and select “Name window.”

From that same menu, you can also select “Bookmark all tabs” to bookmark all of your open tabs and put them in a particular folder. Hitting Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + D will bring you to this same function.

Tab management isn’t as big of a hindrance on smartphones, where you might only look at one webpage at a time. But we’ll note that Chrome lets you create tab groups on Android by tapping the square “Switch tabs” button, then holding and dragging a particular tab over to whatever other tab you want to group it with.

That feature isn’t available on iPhones and iPads, but you can still search through open windows by hitting the same Switch tabs button, then selecting the Search icon in the top left corner. You can also pin and bookmark tabs from the Switch tabs menu after pressing and holding an open tab. For bookmarking multiple tabs, press Edit, then Select Tabs, check off the tabs you want to bookmark, then hit Add To… > Add to Bookmarks.

How to organize tabs in Edge

Clicking this icon in Microsoft Edge will let you view your tabs in a vertical list.

Microsoft Edge is built on the same codebase as Chrome, so its tab management features are similar to those found in Google’s browser. It, too, has a grouping feature, which works similarly: Just right-click on one or more tabs and select “Add tab(s) to (new) group.” As with Chrome, you can give each group a custom name and color, and you can quickly collapse or expand the tabs within each group by clicking its label.

Also like Chrome, hitting Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + A will pull up a search menu, which lists your current and recently closed tabs and distinguishes any media-playing tabs. You can still use the “@tabs” shortcut mentioned above — just hit the Tab key after typing it into the address bar — and assign custom names to windows as well.

Another way to access some of Edge’s tab-related tools is through the dedicated “tab actions” icon in the top left corner. To make this visible, click on Edge’s three-dot menu button, then go to Settings > Appearance > Customize toolbar, then activate the “Show tab actions menu” toggle. Here, you can find a search menu, a list of recently closed tabs and a list of Edge tabs you have open on other devices. You can also use an “Organize tabs” feature that automatically sorts your tabs into groups using AI. We’ve found the latter to work fairly well — though it’s not immune to hiccups, so you’ll still need to manually move a tab or rename a group every so often. Chrome has a similar AI auto-sorting tool, but it’s only available as an “experimental” feature as of this writing.

Microsoft Edge can use AI to group your tabs automatically, though the results won’t always be perfect. (As evidenced by “Engadget Editor” Mark Zuckerberg.)

The tab actions menu also lets you turn on Edge’s “vertical tabs” mode. This moves your tabs from their usual spot above the address bar to the left side of the window. This view won’t be everyone’s favorite, but the wider space can make it easier to identify which tabs you have open. If you prefer to keep the tab actions button hidden, you can swap between the standard and vertical tabs views on Windows by pressing Ctrl + Shift + , (Comma).

Like other browsers, Edge also lets you save tabs as bookmarks (or “favorites”). But we’ll also give a quick mention to the browser’s “Collections” tool, which you can access by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Y or hitting the icon in the top right corner that looks like two squares and a plus sign. This is more of a native web clipper than a full tab manager, but if you want to stash web pages alongside images, text notes and the like, you can hit “+ Add current page” within a given Collection to add your current tab to it. On macOS, you can also right-click a tab to add all open pages to a Collection at once.

How to organize tabs in Safari

You can click this icon to quickly create a tab group in Safari.

Like Chrome and Edge, Apple’s Safari browser lets you organize tabs into distinct groups. There are a few ways to set this up. For one, you can click the downward-facing arrow in the top left of the Toolbar. From here, click New Empty Tab Group, or select New Tab Group with # Tabs to put all the open tabs in your window into their own group. (The “#” will just be whatever number of tabs you have open.) You’ll be prompted to give each group a custom name. You can find these same options under the File menu or by right-clicking any open tab.

You can click the Show Sidebar button in the top left corner to view, rename, delete and rearrange your groups as needed. You can also access this by going to View > Show Sidebar or pressing Cmd + Shift + L as well. If you right-click a group’s name in the Sidebar and select Copy Links, you’ll make a neatly formatted list of all the links in that group, which you can paste into a doc or text chat. Clicking the icon at the top of the Sidebar that looks like two overlapping squares with a plus symbol will create a new tab group as well.

To add a tab to a group, right-click the tab, select Move to Tab Group, then choose where it should go. With the Sidebar open, you can also drag a tab into a group directly. To quickly swap between groups with the Sidebar closed, click on your current group’s name in the top left corner, then select the group you want from the resulting dropdown menu. These tab collections will sync across multiple Apple devices if they’re connected to the same iCloud account.

The Sidebar can work somewhat like the vertical tabs view that’s available in Edge. If you hover over “# Tabs” at the top of the Sidebar or the name of any tab group below that, you’ll see a rightward-facing arrow. Click it, and you’ll see a vertical list of all the tabs nested within. You can access similar views for your bookmarks or Reading List at the bottom of the Sidebar. However, using this won’t hide the horizontal tab bar like it does in Edge.

You can quickly swap between your tab groups in Safari by clicking the sidebar icon.

You can select multiple tabs at once by holding the Cmd button, then dragging them out to a new window or group as needed. You can also reorganize all your current tabs by their page title or website; just right-click one of them (or go to the Window menu), then hover over Arrange Tabs By.

To more comfortably see what tabs you have open, click the Tab Overview icon. This is the symbol in the top right corner that looks like two overlapping squares. It presents all of your tabs in a grid as large thumbnails, generally making it easier to find a particular page. You can also get to this page by selecting View > Show Tab Overview, pressing Cmd + Shift + , or by right-clicking on a tab group in the Sidebar and selecting the appropriate option.

In the top right corner of this Tab Overview screen is a search bar. This function is also available on iPhones and iPads. Unfortunately, this search is limited to just the tabs in your current group, not those in separate groups or windows. Typing a keyword in the address bar will usually suggest a few corresponding tabs you have open, too, but this isn’t comprehensive.

For sites you plan to revisit regularly, you can bookmark a tab by hitting Cmd + D, or going to Bookmarks > Add Bookmark. To bookmark multiple open tabs, select Bookmarks > Add Bookmarks for # Open Tabs.

You can search through your open tabs in Safari from the tab overview screen.

You can also use Safari’s profiles feature to break up tab congestion. This lets you separate your browsing into discrete spaces, each with their own browsing history, cookies, tab groups, bookmarks and the like. You could make a dedicated “job” profile, for instance, to prevent your work-related tabs from getting mixed up in your personal browsing. In this context, it’s like a more hardcore alternative to tab groups.

To create a new profile, select Safari > Create Profile… > Start Using Profile, type in the name you want, then select a corresponding symbol and color. Any prior browsing data will then be listed in a default profile called “Personal.” To add another profile, go to Safari > Manage Profiles, then hit the + button in the resulting menu. You can delete profiles from this same spot: Just select the one you want to trash and hit the – button. Switching between profiles is a bit cumbersome, but you can open a window under a new profile by clicking File or your current profile name in the top left corner, then selecting “New Window”. To go between two active windows that are tied to separate profiles, do as you usually would: Right-click the Safari icon in the Dock and pick the appropriate option.

Many of the tips above are applicable to Safari for iPhone and iPad. To create a tab group on an iPhone, hit the Tab Overview button, touch and hold a page, then choose Move to Tab Group. Alternatively, just long-press the address bar while viewing a web page. On iPhone, you can sideways-scroll through your tab groups through the Tab Overview as well. On iPad, you can add all of your open tabs to a group by tapping the downward-facing arrow at the top right of this same screen, then selecting one of the “New Tab Group” options at the bottom of the resulting menu.

How to organize tabs in Firefox

Like other browsers, Firefox lets you quickly search through your open tabs.

Mozilla Firefox’s native tab management tools aren’t quite as robust as those in Chrome, Edge or Safari. There are many extensions you can add to close the gap — we’ve noted a few below — but by default, there’s no grouping feature, custom window naming or vertical tabs mode.

You can still see a tidy list of each window’s tabs, however, by clicking the “List all tabs” button, which is the downward-facing arrow in the top right corner. Above that list you can also access a tab search function. If that’s too cumbersome, typing a relevant keyword in the address bar will display any corresponding open tabs at the bottom of the dropdown list that pops up. Alternatively, you can put a % symbol before or after a keyword search in the address bar to limit your search to just your currently active tabs.

As with most browsers, Firefox lets you pin tabs, create bookmarks, close several pages at once and drag multiple tabs into new windows simultaneously. To put all your current tabs into a bookmark folder, right-click on any tab, choose “Select All Tabs,” right-click again and choose “Bookmark Tabs.”

To open all bookmarked tabs in a folder, go to your bookmarks menu or bookmarks toolbar, right-click, then select “Open All Bookmarks.” If you want to search for a specific bookmark, put a * symbol before or after a keyword query in the address bar to limit a search to solely your bookmarks.

For a little extra organization, note that Firefox also lets you assign custom tags to your bookmarks. You can add these in the menu that pops up whenever you click the star icon for a specific web page, or by clicking Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + O to bring up your full bookmarks library then adding tags as needed. You can also get to the latter by hitting the three-line menu button on the right side, then selecting Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks.

The Firefox View tab displays recently closed pages in addition to tabs you may have active on other devices.

After setting this up, you can look for a bookmark just by typing out a tag in the address bar. You can also make it so a search in the address bar only pulls from bookmarks you’ve tagged by adding a + symbol.

You can see a clean-looking list of open and recently closed tabs on the Firefox View page. To access this, just click the icon pinned in the top left corner of your browser window. It’s still possible to reopen your last closed tab with the usual Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + T shortcut as well.

Finally, we’ll also make note of Firefox’s “Containers” feature. This is similar to Safari’s profiles, though it’s aimed more at privacy than reducing tab clutter. The idea is to separate your browser cookies between distinct clusters of tabs, so you can log into multiple accounts for one website in the same window or prevent a site from seeing any information about tabs outside of its specific container. Using containers distinguishes your tabs by different color codes, though, which gives it a modicum of organizational value.

You’ll need to install this as an extension on macOS, but once it’s set, you can add one or more tabs to a container by right-clicking it, selecting “Open in New Container Tab,” then choosing the container you want. There are four presets by default; to create a new container, click the three-line menu button and select Settings. Then, look for the Tabs submenu, click the “Settings…” button next to “Enable Container Tabs,” click “Add New Container,” then choose the name, color and icon you want.

Third-party tab extensions

The browser extension OneTab quickly collapses your open tabs, sorts them into an orderly list and makes them easily shareable.

All of these built-in browser tools should make navigating tab hell a little more manageable, but if you’re still not quite getting what you need, there are tons of third-party extensions and add-ons that can help. Perhaps the most popular is OneTab, which is available for Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari. This adds a little icon by your address bar that, when pressed, quickly collapses all open, non-pinned tabs in your window into an orderly list of links on a separate page. From there, you can then open and delete pages individually or all at once, drag them into different groups of links you’ve previously saved with OneTab or turn a list of links into one shareable URL. There are other add-ons along these lines, but OneTab is clean, fast and dead simple to use. Plus, it can help make your browser a bit less of a memory hog.

Tab Session Manager for Firefox, Chrome and Edge works similarly. It saves all of your open tabs at once, regardless of whether they’re in different windows. It doesn’t close your tabs — instead, they’re displayed as a vertical list in a dropdown menu. You can add tags to specific clusters of tabs, sync “sessions” between devices and search for tabs right from its menu. You can also access tabs from windows you’ve closed.

Firefox particularly benefits from tab managing add-ons. Tree Style Tab, for instance, adds a detailed vertical tabs view, while Window Titler lets you add custom tags to windows. And while Simple Tab Groups may not be quite as intuitive as the grouping tools built into Chrome, Edge or Safari, it’s still a decent way to get that sort of functionality in Firefox.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-to-organize-browser-tabs-150011935.html?src=rss 

Logitech is expanding its Mevo lineup of live-streaming cameras for creators. The company’s new Mevo Core shoots in 4K, meaning, unlike the 1080p Mevo Start we reviewed two years ago, cropping and digital zooms won’t lead to overly grainy video. However, the tradeoff is pricing, as the new model will set you back three times as much for a three-camera setup.

The Mevo Core continues the lineup’s trajectory of wireless multicam live-streaming directly to platforms like YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. (Of course, you can also record content to upload later.) The $999 package ships as a body only, although Logitech says it will sell lens bundle kits through Amazon and B&H Photo Video. Either way, you’ll need at least one Micro Four Thirds (MFT) lens to get started, and the company says any powered or manual MFT lens will work on day one.

The camera has a large 4/3 CMOS sensor, which Logitech says diminishes noise and improves low-light performance and depth of field compared to the 1080p model. The Core shoots in 4K at 30fps for recording content to upload later; if you’re live-streaming, you can instead use 1080p at 30fps. This model supports WiFi 6E, which could help with network latency and stability if your router also supports it.

The camera’s body is noticeably bigger than that of the Mevo Start. At 3.5 x 3.5 x 3.25 inches, it has a similar depth and height but is about twice the width. With its battery installed (and no lenses mounted), it weighs 1.5 lbs.

Logitech says its audio is upgraded, too. It has a built-in three-microphone array with noise cancellation. You can also connect an external mic (or other audio source), which we found essential in the Mevo Start. We’ll have to wait and see if the Core’s built-in mics fare much better.

The Mevo Core’s battery life is estimated at six hours. If you need more time, you can plug an external power source into its USB-C port. It also includes an HDMI port, a 3.5mm one (for analog audio), and a microSD card slot. Logitech says it can double as an (incredibly expensive) wired or wireless HD webcam.

Like previous models, the Mevo Core works with Logitech’s Mevo app (where you can adjust things like focus, zoom, and aperture) and Multicam app to set up multi-viewpoint recording or streaming.

The Logitech Mevo Core is available for $999 for a single (body-only) camera starting today. It’s available from Logitech, Amazon, and B&H Photo Video.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/logitechs-999-4k-livestreaming-camera-is-triple-the-price-of-its-1080p-model-070146814.html?src=rss