Unfortunately, most games still won’t work with a mouse and keyboard. Developers don’t want you dominating in Call of Duty because you can precisely aim with a mouse while your opponents are using controllers. Still, this is a handy trick to know, and we’ll show you how to do it. How to Connect Your Mouse and Keyboard You can use either a USB mouse and keyboard or a wireless Bluetooth mouse and keyboard....

A progress bar is a graphic that, in PowerPoint, visually represents the percentage of the slideshow that has been completed. It’s also a good indicator of the remaining amount. Here’s how to create a progress bar in Microsoft PowerPoint. You can manually create a progress bar by inserting a shape at the bottom of each slide. The problem with this approach is that you’ll need to measure the length of each shape based on the number of slides in the presentation....

Are you managing a small project or tasked with creating a timeline for one? Without extensive tools like a Gantt chart or expensive software like Microsoft Project, you can create a simple project timeline right in Microsoft Excel. A basic project timeline shows milestones or tasks with dates in chronological order. This allows you or your audience to see the entire project at a glance and in one spot. Using a SmartArt Graphic built into Excel or a free downloadable template, you can create a timeline for your project to show exactly what’s necessary....

Live polls are a great way of gauging reactions, preferences, and answers during a meeting without having to stop for everyone to have their say. Here’s how to use and create polls in Microsoft Teams meetings. Adding a poll to a meeting is part of the administration of the meeting, so only organizers or presenters can add and manage polls. External guests and other attendees can all respond to Microsoft Teams polls, though....

How to Create a Transparent Widget Background with Scriptable To do this, we’ll be using the free app Scriptable to cut out part of the background via a ready-made script. You won’t have to write a line of code! All you do is copy, paste, and then hit the run button. The way the app does this is quite clever. First, you take a screenshot of an empty Home screen page....

Previously, Apple offered a single Automatic Updates toggle (which wasn’t enabled by default). If you opted-in, your iPhone or iPad would download the latest update in the background, and it would install it overnight if your device was plugged in and charging (after notifying you about it). But what if you just wanted to download the updates but didn’t want to install them right away? You’d have to dismiss the prompts and reminders for updates on an almost daily basis....

The home screen is made up of “Channels” and three sections across the top. These channels are horizontal rows that display content from services. There’s also a lot of content discovery going on, as well as a basic apps list. Let’s dive in. RELATED: How to Change the Screen Saver on Android TV Add (or Remove) Shortcuts to Your Favorite Apps We’ll start on the “Home” tab with the row titled “Favorite Apps....

Zoom gives users the option to require attendees to register for Zoom meetings. You can ask for things like name and email, and set custom questions. This also increases your meeting’s security. Here’s how to enable attendee registration for Zoom Meetings. Here’s aa few notes, however, before we get started. First, this option is only available to licensed users, which makes sense because you’d only use this feature in business meetings anyway....

Visit Google Takeout’s website and sign in with your Google account to get started. By default, this tool exports your data from all of Google services. Click “Deselect All” to only extract an archive of your cloud drive. Scroll down until you reach “Drive” and check the box next to it. There are a few more options underneath it you may find handy. You can pick which folders to back up with the “All Drive data included” option....

A chargeback lets you dispute a credit card transaction and reverse it, getting your money back. For example, if you paid a subscription fee to MoviePass and the company just won’t let you cancel your subscription, you can do a chargeback. The chargeback process is handled entirely through your bank or credit card issuer. The issuer will contact the business and sort things out, and you should almost certainly win if you have a valid reason for the chargeback....

Back Tap is a powerful accessibility feature that can come in handy for all iPhone users. If you’re using an iPhone X and newer, simply tapping the middle part of the back of your iPhone twice or thrice will launch a preconfigured action. You can use Back Tap to quickly open Notification Center, Control Center, Siri, and more. You can even launch shortcuts with this feature. And thanks to background shortcuts also introduced in iOS 14, they’ll be initiated instantly, without jumping into the Shortcuts app....

If you know you’ll be referring to the content of a previously-viewed slide at some point during your presentation, it might be useful to insert a link pointing back to that slide for quick access. Here’s how to set it up. Linking to Another Slide in the Same Presentation Open your presentation and navigate to the slide that will contain the hyperlink. Once there, highlight the text, object, shape, or image to which you want to attach the link....

While browsing with Microsoft Edge, you sometimes need to restart your machine or log out while in the middle of an important task or research process. Luckily, there’s a way to tell Edge that you’d like to preserve all your tabs and reopen them the next time you restart. Here’s how to set it up. First, open Edge. In any window, locate the ellipses button (three dots) in the upper-right corner and click it....

Mac users running macOS Big Sur and newer have both options. They can keep system controls in the Control Center and they add any control directly to the menu bar. This includes new Control Center modules like “Now Playing,” “Display,” “Accessibility Controls,” “Fast User Switching,” and more. RELATED: What’s New in macOS 11.0 Big Sur, Available Now There are two ways to add and remove controls to the menu bar....

The new Messages app (on iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and above) lets you pin up to nine conversations to the top of the conversations view. There are a couple of ways to do this. The easiest way to pin a message is to open the “Messages” app and then swipe right on a conversation to reveal the “Pin” button. Tap the “Pin” icon to instantly pin the conversation to the top of the screen....

Occasionally, you might want to print or save a list of the files in a directory. Windows doesn’t feature a simple way to do this from its interface, but it’s not too hard to accomplish. Printing a directory listing is probably not something you’ll need to do often, but it can occasionally be useful. Maybe you just want a quick list to compare with another directory. Maybe you need to generate a printed list for some work reason....

Mac users who are running macOS Big Sur or newer have access to the unified Notification Center which shows notifications and widgets on the same page. The widgets that you see on the iPhone home screen will be available here as well. But unlike on the iPhone and iPad, you can actually resize widgets that you’ve already added to the Notification Center. On your iPhone or iPad, you need to remove the old widget instead....

If you use the Twitter app from a cellular data connection on your iPhone or Android device, you might worry about data usage—there are a lot of cat videos out there. Luckily, Twitter provides an easy-to-enable “data saver” mode to reduce data usage. Here’s how to turn it on. First, open the Twitter app. In the upper-left corner of the screen, tap your profile picture (on Android) or the hamburger button (on iPhone) to open a menu....

Starting in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, you can delete entire home screen pages (previously, you could only hide them). If you want to start using the App Library, this is the quickest way to get rid of all but the first home screen page without individually deleting apps. RELATED: How to Use the App Library on iPhone How to Delete Home Screen Pages To get started, tap and hold an empty part of your iPhone or iPad home screen....

You’ll know when your Xbox controllers are in dire need of a good cleaning, as they may begin to malfunction. Buttons can stick, joysticks can degrade, and so much more. Generally speaking, it’s always important to both clean and sanitize all of your controllers regularly, and keep them from getting filthy in the first place. Keep in mind that these tactics can help disinfect and kill germs, but they are not proven to be effective when fighting pathogens and viruses like COVID-19....