Microsoft Designer is currently in a preview version available for invited users. Here is my first impression of the tool so far. — There are many graphic design tools out there. Canva might be the most common around bloggers, but I also like Pixelied a lot. Microsoft decided to create a direct competitor with Designer. It’s currently in a closed preview phase and only available via a waitlist. …

All you need is some coding skills, your Medium RSS feed, a database, and a scheduler to run your code regularly. Here are all the details! — Medium readers can subscribe to writers and get notified by email when a new article is published. I like the feature but it also leads to a lot of emails flooding my inbox. Sometimes I wish I’d get fewer emails but still don’t miss anything important. So I sat down…

A color picker, a hosts file editor, an image resizer, an app launcher, file explorer extensions, … there is a lot of stuff to discover! — Microsoft PowerToys is a collection of handy open-source helper tools to enhance your productivity and workflow on Windows operating systems. Supported architectures include x64 and ARM. The tool set is available in many different languages. Many tools were inspired by existing solutions. PowerToys combine all the utilities below in a…

I needed a backup phone. And it took me months to find one with a suitable size. Here is my struggle finding anything below a size of 6.5 inches. — The smartphone became more important to people over the years. We use it for chatting, distraction, news, shopping, and many more things. A day without our handy companion is impossible for many of us. I am no exception. And for months I wanted to buy a new phone just in…

Medium automatically creates an RSS feed for every writer. I’ll explain the content and show you some ideas of what you can do with it. — Have you ever wondered how many tools get information from Medium although there is no official Medium API? Some of them use old-fashioned RSS feeds that every writer has. They are created and updated automatically and contain a lot of useful information. In this article, I’ll talk about the details.

If you use cloud storage solutions like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox, you can keep your data secret with this tool. — Many people use cloud storage to store, share, and even backup their data online. When using an up-to-date phone or pc, you most likely will end up having some gigabytes of cloud storage just by using a specific operating system. …

Do you use a terminal and are you sick of the boring command prompt? You won’t be after reading this tutorial! — In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to customize your command prompt in your terminal. My example will work with Windows Terminal and PowerShell Core, but you can also do it on your MacOS or Linux system. The list of supported shells currently includes PowerShell, cmd, zsh…

An example of how to install apps with Windows Package Manager (winget), how to keep them updated, and how to use customized build scripts. — The Windows Package Manager contains a command-line interface (winget) and a public app repository to manage apps on your system. It allows installation, update, and deletion of items in your software catalog. A similar and maybe better-known system is chocolatey. Many apps don’t provide automatic update features but with winget, you…

I will show you how to install Google ChromeOS Flex on an old Windows notebook, explain the benefits and drawbacks and give you tips for day-to-day usage. — If you have an old Windows laptop at home that is outdated and slow, you can give it a second life with Google ChromeOS Flex. It’s a free operating system similar to Google ChromeOS and requires way fewer resources than the current versions of Microsoft Windows. Your device might get…