how to
A quick way to customize and declutter macOS’ System Preferences
Here’s a quick tip for macOS users. If you’re using macOS’ System Prefernces often, you might find out that some of the preferences available are either not useful to your particulat care or, once set, you don’t need to mess with them anymore. But everytime you open System Preferences they’re in your way. Let’s see how to hide them.
Continue reading “HOW TO: Customize macOS’ System Preferences”
mount any .torrent file or magnet link and use it as a read-only direcotry on your Linux or macOS machine
With BTFS (bittorrent filesystem) you can mount any .torrent file or magnet link and use it as a read-only directory in your file tree. The contents of the files will be downloaded on-demand as they are read by applications.
Continue reading “HOW TO: Mount any Torrent File as a Read-Only Directory on Linux and macOS”
Run macOS Catalina in a Docker Container on your Linux machine.
We already have a tutorial on how to install macOS Catalina on Linux. A simple tutorial on how set up a macOS VM in QEMU, accelerated by KVM. This is basically the same tutorial but everything runs, near native with X11 forwarding, in Docker.
Continue reading “HOW TO: Install macOS Catalina in a Docker Container on Linux”
Who knew that just one dot can help you bypass YouTube ads and paywalls?
We’ve already showed you how to watch YouTube without ads and serving Google your soul on a silver platter ( here, here and here ). But here’s a gem of a tip, coming from reddit user unicorn4sale: you can bypass youtube ads by adding a dot after the domain.
It’s a commonly forgotten edge case, websites forget to normalize the hostname, the content is still served, but there’s no hostname match on the browser so no cookies and broken CORS – and lots of bigger sites use a different domain to serve ads/media with a whitelist that doesn’t contain the extra dot
So how does this work? A link to a YouTube video looks like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXXX. To bypass the ads just add a dot after youtube.com like this https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=XXXXX
This also work with some of the websites serving paywalls. Just add a dot after the domain name. This also works on any website that has ads. Just add the dot after the domain name.
This will probably not last forever, and you shouldn’t rely on such a workaround. Always use an ad-blocker ( uBlock Origin recommended ), Pi-hole ( here and here ) and make good use of your hosts file ( here , here and here).
Built in setting to enforce HTTPS encryption on sites that support it.
HTTPS is a protocol that provides secure Internet transactions between web browsers and web sites. You can check to see if the web page you are visiting uses HTTPS by making sure that the URL at the top of your browser begins with HTTPS rather than HTTP. The “S” stands for secure. Some browsers also indicate that you are using a secure connection by displaying a closed lock in the corner of the browser.
HTTPS protects users from certain kinds of Internet surveillance. By encrypting your connection, HTTPS prevents eavesdroppers from seeing the contents of your communication with a website, including potentially sensitive data such as the contents of your email and chats, login credentials, search terms, and credit card numbers. Many sites support the use of HTTPS, but may not turn it on by default. Other sites have failed to implement HTTPS at all. Learn more about HTTPS here.
There are a bunch of Firefox addons, like HTTPS Everywhere, that will enable HTTPS encryption automatically on websites that supported. However, starting with version 76.0, Firefox comes with a hidden built-in setting known as HTTPS Only Mode which does the exact same thing. Let’s see how to enable the setting….
ALSO READ HOW TO: Turn On Automatic HTTPS Upgrade in Safari for iOS
1. Open Firefox and, in the address bar, type about:config
2. Click on Accept the Risk and Continue
3. In the search field type dom.security.https_only_mode.
4. By default, the preference value is set to false. Double click on it to set it to true
5. Restart your browser and you’re all set. Now, when you visit websites that also supports the secure HTTPS protocol, Firefox will force the upgrade. However, if a website still uses the unsecure HTTP protocol you’ll get an error.
Probably the easiest way to install Arch Linux on your computer.
Arch is a fantastic Linux distro. From being a rolling release to its stability, to the Pacman package manager and AUR. Not to mention the Arch Wiki. However, the lack of a default GUI installer drives users away to other Arch-based distros like Manjaro and ArcoLinux.
But if you want to run pure Arch, you can either follow the installation guide or use an installer like Anarchy, Zen or ezarch. Let’s take a quick look at ezarch installation script….
Continue reading “HOW TO: Easily Install Arch Linux Using EZarch Install Script”
The easiest way to create a multi-iso bootable flash drive
When you want to install a new OS, you usually create a bootable USB flash drive with the .iso of that OS. To do that you can use GUI programs like Etcher or Rufus or the dd command. But what do you do if for any reason you want a multi-iso boot flash drive? Or you simply don’t want to to wait for the drive to be formatted and flashed with a new .iso? You can use an open-source tool called Ventoy.
Continue reading “HOW TO: Create a Multi-ISO Bootable Flash Drive”
Other than Arch-based distros, my favorite distro is Pop!_OS from System76. So, I’ve decided to install it on old laptop that was just laying around gathering dust. Superb release.
However, after spending a few minutes to customize it, I’ve noticed that even though YouTube videos play just fine in Firefox, other video streaming sites like Netflix or vimeo and even gifv embeds on Reddit return errors.
Luckily, there’s an easy fix….
Want to quickly search for something on your favorite website? It’s super easy to create a custom search engine in Firefox
Firefox comes out of the box with a few search engines preinstalled. You can add more by installing addons. That’s all fine and dandy, however the problem with addons is that they add extra “weight” and bits of identifying information ( finderprinting ) to the browser. Also, you should always check the permission they require. Not every addon absolutely needs access to all tabs and pages.
If you want to add custom serch engines within Firefox, you don’t even need extra addons. Firefox allows you to easily create these custom search engines, for any website that has a search box. Basically you can take a link such as https://anywebsite.com?search=%s, where Firefox replaces the %s with the search term and create a custom serch engine.
Continue reading “HOW TO: Easily Create Custom Search Engines in Firefox”
SSHFS allows you to mount a remote filesystem using SFTP.
Maybe you need to work on remote projects, maybe you have multiple computers running different OS’ and you find yourself always going back and forth between them or maybe you just need to access a server. So how would you go about it?
You could use a cloud file hosting servive and sync everything across your computers, but depending on your needs that can get expensive. You could use an USB stick or external HDD/SSD, but if you run different OS’ with different filesystems that can quickly become an unnecessary headache. You can also use a FPT client like Filezilla but you can’t work on the remote filesystem unless you copy the file(s) on your local machine first.
If you don’t already have a system in place that works for you, you should take a look at SSHFS – a file system in user space that uses the SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to mount a remote file system.
Continue reading “HOW TO: Easily Mount Remote Filesystems on Linux, macOS and Windows with SSHFS”
