According to a notification from Apple, YouTube is dropping support for some Apple TVs in early March. Users can still watch videos from a secondary Apple device via AirPlay, but you won’t be able to use the YouTube channel itself on third-generation Apple TVs from 2012.

Newer Apple TV devices, like the Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K, will still support YouTube. These models run tvOS, which is a modified version of iOS. That means they can run many of the same media apps that an iPhone can. Older Apple TVs, however, used proprietary “channels” that had to be made specifically for these models. YouTube already pulled support for the first and second-generation Apple TVs, so it was only a matter of time before gen three got nixed, too.

We’d love to offer a workaround for those affected, but so far we haven’t seen one. That leaves owners of older Apple TVs with two options for watching YouTube on their TVs. The first is using AirPlay to watch YouTube. Watching over AirPlay is a minor extra step, but an extra step nonetheless. And you’ll need a compatible iPad or iPhone to cast from.

The other option is even less great: Switch to a different device when you want to watch YouTube. It’s possible you already own a viable alternative, such as a smart TV or a gaming console like the PlayStation 4 and 5, or the Xbox One, Series X, or Series S.

Besides, it’s probably time to upgrade that ancient Apple TV. And if you do, you have several options. The best upgrade for existing Apple TV users is the latest Apple TV HD or Apple TV 4K. The Apple TV 4K is the more powerful option, but the Apple TV HD is still a great choice for those without a 4K TV. Either will feel like a major upgrade if you’re moving on from an older Apple TV box.

If the new Apple TVs are too expensive, you could jump over to Amazon’s Fire TV stick or a Roku. The good news is that you can get the Apple TV app on either, which means you’ll still be able to watch all of your Apple-purchased content (or subscriptions) without paying for a more-expensive Apple TV set-top box.

The post What to Do When YouTube Stops Working on Your Old Apple TV appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

Kerboom. That’s the sound of your Telegram account automatically deleting itself. Honestly, I wish this feature was baked into more services. Wouldn’t it be great to have an old email account you never used disappear once you haven’t logged in for two years’ straight?

Telegram’s self-destruct sequence normally starts at six months’ worth of inactivity. As Telegram describes :

Telegram is not a commercial organisation, and we value our disk space greatly. If you stop using Telegram and don’t come online for at least six months, your account will be deleted along with all messages, media, contacts and every other piece of data you store in the Telegram cloud.

However, six months is just a default. You can edit that setting to a shorter or longer time period if you want a little extra security — as in, you want your account gone after a month or you don’t trust yourself and would prefer to have a little extra leeway before Telegram deletes everything on your behalf.

To get started, launch Telegram ( iOS , Android ) and pull up its settings by tapping in the lower-right corner. Next, tap on Privacy and Security, which should launch a screen that looks like this:

Tap on “If Away For” under the Automatically Delete My Account section and change it to whatever value you prefer:

• 1 month

• 3 months

• 6 months

• 12 months

And while you’re here, set up two-step verification on your account. Even though you might not have an account if you let it linger for too long, at least your inactive account will be secure for the short (or long) time period it exists. As part of Telegram’s 2FA setup, you can create a secondary password that one has to use when logging in on a new device in addition to receiving a code via SMS. That’s pretty secure, if you ask me.

The post How to Set Your Telegram Account to Self-Destruct appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

You might have already come across the news that a popular Chrome extension called ‘The Great Suspender’ was delisted by Google after it was found harboring malware. The Great Suspender was famous amongst users for helping to avoid memory issues on Google Chrome — which is often accused of RAM hogging tendencies. Now that this extension is no more available, here are some of the best alternatives to The Great Suspender that you can opt for without worrying whether they contain malware or not:

Top 5 The Great Suspender Alternatives For Chrome

1. OneTab

OneTab is undoubtedly the best alternative to The Great Suspender. I have been personally using this Chrome extension for a long time so I can vouch that it effectively reduces the clutter of tabs on your browser and reduces memory usage while browsing the internet.

By using OneTab you can store your browsing sessions and regroup them to use later. You can even share the saved tabs via mail or text to your alternate device or with someone else.

2. Tabs Outliner

You can download Tabs Outliner on the Chrome store as The Great Suspender alternative. It helps in organizing the tabs on your web browser. You can choose to close or open tabs at once with a single click.

The best part is that when you save your session, it can retain the original text that the user is currently in so that it can be revisited later on. Besides this, you can add short notes to every tab you save which can come in handy when you are researching something on the web.

3. Session Buddy

Session Buddy is a session manager that helps you manage tabs on Chrome and bookmarks with ease. With this Great Suspender alternative, you can save open tabs as collections and restore them later. This helps in freeing up memory and avoiding clutter.

It also helps you recover your open tabs after a crash so you don’t have to worry about losing a web page that you finally found after a long search. All the tabs you save through Session Buddy can be seen and managed from one place.

4. Auto Tab Discard

Auto Tab Discard is a lightweight Chrome extension that you can use as The Great Suspender alternative to increase browser speed and reduce memory load when you have numerous tabs opened.

Using Auto Tab Discard, you can choose to auto-discard inactive, idle, or forgotten tabs after a configurable period of time, or manually discard them from the toolbar menu.

5. The Great Discarder

The Great Discarder is another best alternative to The Great Suspender. This Chrome extension automatically discards unused tabs to free up system resources. The best part is that it is a super lightweight extension that uses no content scripts or persistent background scripts.

However, there are a couple of limitations in comparison to The Great Suspender:

• You can’t view which tabs have been suspended
• Doesn’t stop a tab from reloading when it gains focus

The post 5 Best Alternatives To ‘The Great Suspender’ For Chrome In 2021 appeared first on Fossbytes .

We’ve covered a ton of iPhone and iPad features in the past , but these options are easy to overlook if you’re not used to browsing through the right sections of your iPhone or iPad’s Settings (or even just using certain buttons). And you should take some time to learn what’s available, as there are plenty of useful tools that Apple has snuck in there, and they’re great for increasing productivity.

Among our favourite iPhone hacks:

• Using a double-tap of your space bar to add a full stop and start a new sentence. Makes typing a whole lot speedier!
• Type simple equations in your search bar for quick maths. The Apple team shared that if you swipe right over the home screen, lock screen, or while you’re looking at your notifications then type the sum into your search bar, your phone will work it out for you.
• You can set up the apple on the back of your phone so it functions as a button .
• Change your settings so new notes don’t start with an annoying title .
• Toggling your iPhone’s brightness with a triple tap or dimming the screen even lower than you thought possible .
• Triggering your device to read whatever’s onscreen with a simple swipe gesture .
• Creating a virtual home button with the Assistive Touch feature .
• Removing system animations and auto-playing media.
• Zooming in even closer on your screen than normal .
• Changing your screen’s colour or applying filters to aide those with colour blindness .
• Controlling your iPad with a mouse .
• Setting auto-adjusting brightness —a feature worth knowing about, says Lifehacker’s Senior Technology Editor David Murphy, as it’s what you’ll need to toggle on and off (under Display & Text Size) to recalibrate the brightness sensor if your phone glitches out and stops automatically adjusting it on its own.

There are two features other we want to describe in a little more detail: magnification and voice controls. The former is a great way to get a closer look at anything your phone’s camera can see, and the latter is an incredibly useful way to control your iPhone or iPad with your voice.

Use Your iPhone/iPad as a magnifying glass

The Magnifier tool uses your device’s camera to zoom in on real-world objects.

1. To use it, go to Settings > Accessibility > Magnifier.
2. Tap the “Magnifier” toggle on.
3. Triple-press the home button to open the Magnify camera. You can zoom in and out using the slider, and snap a photo with the shutter button.

I was surprised at just how close the camera lets you zoom-in, though the quality of the zoomed-in image will differ between devices. If you find your zoomed image is too bright, try turning on the “Auto-Adjust Exposure” option in the Magnifier menu to help reduce glare. (Note that Magnifier is different from the Zoom feature listed above; that one gives you a closer look at whatever apps or photos are currently displayed on your screen.)

Use Siri to manage your iPhone or iPad via “Voice Control”

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control
2. Tap “Set Up Voice Control” then tap “continue.” You’ll be shown a list of Siri commands that can be used to control your device.
3. Tap “Done” to close the instructions.
4. Tap the “Voice Control” toggle the feature on.

You can now use any of the commands listed in the instructional guide to control your device (and you can find the list again by tapping “Learn More…” under the “Voice Control” toggle).

You can also customise your commands, onscreen feedback and interface setup in Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control . Here’s what each option does:

• Language: Set your preferred language for controlling Siri (defaults to your system’s preferences).
• Customise commands: Create and edit new voice commands.
• Vocabulary: Lets you teach Siri new words that can be used to create commands. This can help make your commands feel more natural.
• Show confirmation: Turns on visual feedback when a command is heard by Siri.
• Play sound: Enables audio confirmation when Siri hears your commands.
• Show hints: Offers real-time tips based on how you use Siri commands, and suggests commands to use.
• Overlay: Turn this on to give each on-screen element a number value, .which can then be used in your voice commands to specify buttons or parts of the screen you wish to access.

This article has been updated since its original publish date.

The post How To Unlock the Best Features on Your iPhone appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

Many Twitter found their display settings suddenly changed without warning today.

For some — including me — the app swapped from the “Dim” dark mode to the fully-black “Lights Out” theme, while others are now seeing the default Light mode rather than either dark mode. Some users were unable to change their Twitter display settings back to a dark theme if their OS was set to light mode.

Good news is, if you’re unhappy with Twitter’s new look, there’s an easy explanation and an even easier fix.

Twitter recently changed its website and mobile app to automatically match your device’s theme settings, and “Lights Out” is now the app’s default dark theme. So if your computer or smartphone has dark mode on all the time, Twitter now shows up with the “Lights out” theme unless you manually change it to “Dim.”

This is also why Twitter switched to light mode instead of dark mode in some instances — the app is simply responding to the device’s system-level settings. However, Twitter told The Verge the forced light mode was an unintended bug. The bug is reportedly fixed now, so users can switch back to Dim or Lights Out in the app’s settings without having to change their device’s OS theme.

How to restore Twitter’s dark mode settings

On desktop (Windows, Mac):

1. From any Twitter page, click “More” from the sidebar to open the overflow menu.
2. Select “Display ” to open the display settings. (These options are also found under Settings and Privacy > Accessibility, Display and Languages > Display ).
3. Select your desired theme under the “Background” section. The new theme will appear automatically.

On mobile (Android, iOS):

1. Open the Twitter app then tap your profile picture to open the overflow mneu.
2. Go to Settings and privacy > Display and sound .
3. Make sure the “Dark mode” slider toggled on.
4. Select your preferred dark mode appearance.

(Note: This menu is only available on the standard Twitter mobile app. Twitter Lite doesn’t include display options.)

The post How to Fix Twitter’s Recent Dark Mode Changes appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

Google’s search engine has become a verb in the same way as ‘hoovering’ became a synonym for vacuuming and ‘Breville’ became the term for a toasted sandwich. But with the current tensions building between Google and news providers in Australia threatening the very availability of Google search in the country, folks are having to now consider what alternatives exist.

Here are a few.

DuckDuckGo

I’ve looked at DuckDuckGo before. Its big benefit over Google is that it is very privacy focussed.

Getting it to limit results to Australia is interesting – it does a poor job at that. But for the majority of searches, it works just fine. I tend to use the “site:” option a lot to find data at specific places as it works more effectively than the search tools on most web sites.

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Bing

If nothing else, Microsoft’s Bing looks a lot prettier than Google and most of the others.

Although it’s not privacy focussed, you can tweak the preferences so the ads you see are better targeted and it also boasts its own mobile apps for iOS and Android. Additionally, Microsoft has openly stated they have no problem with the proposed news media bargaining code.

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Search Encrypt

If privacy is what you want, then Search Encrypt is worth a look.

It takes online tracking prevention seriously by blocking online trackers and using local encryption to secure your searches. It uses AES-256 bit encryption with Secure Sockets Layer encryption so your searches and other web activities are secure as well as hiding them from other users who have access to your computer.

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Wolfram Alpha

Back in the old days, search engines worked by having humans curate content rather than spidering the web and caching lots of content. Wolfram Alpha uses a combination of curation with a mathematical model that generates search results that are computational facts.

For example, if I look up “Australia”, rather than getting a list of websites about our country, I get a bunch of data about Australia; things like land mass, population and demographic information.

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Start Page

While Google’s search results are often considered the best, people are concerned about being tracked by the search giant. Start Page pays Google to access its results but strips away all the trackers.

So, you get great search results without having your search history become a tool to track you and target you with ads. And, it also includes the “Anonymous View” feature. If you click on a search result you can visit the site in full privacy. The sire will never know you were there. You’ll find the feature next to every search result.

This article has been updated since its original publish date.

The post 5 Google Alternatives That Don’t Suck appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

Brief: Super Productivity is an awesome open-source to-do app that helps you manage tasks, track tickets, and manage time.

No matter what you do, improving productivity is a common goal for most of the people. Usually, you would end up trying various to-do list apps or a note-taking app to help yourself organize and remind things to efficiently keep up with your work.

Sure, you can check out those lists and try them as you like. Here, I’ve come across something unique that you also may want to try if you wanted a desktop to-do application with a solid user interface, GitHub/GitLab integration, and a list of essential features.

Super Productivity seems to be an impressive to-do list app with some unique features to offer. In this article, I’ll let you know all about it briefly.

Super Productivity: A Simple & Attractive Open-Source To-do App

Super Productivity is an open-source app, and it is actively maintained by Johannes Millan on GitHub.

To me, the user experience matters the most, and I’m completely impressed with the UI offered by Super Productivity.

It also offers a bunch of essential features along with some interesting options. Let’s take a look at them.

Features of Super Productivity

• Add to-do tasks, description
• Track time spent on tasks and break
• Project management (with JIRA, GitHub, and GitLab integration)
• Ability to schedule tasks
• Language selection option
• Sync option to Dropbox, Google Drive, or any other WebDAV storage location
• Import/Export functionality
• Auto-backup functionality
• Ability to tweak the behavior of timers and counters
• Dark Mode theme available
• Add attachment to tasks
• Ability to repeat tasks completely for free
• Cross-platform support

In addition to the features I mentioned, you will find more detailed settings and tweaks to configure.

Especially, the integration with JIRA , GitHub and GitL ab . You can automatically assign tasks to work on without needing to check your email for the recent updates to issue trackers or tickets.

Compared to many premium to-do web services that I’ve used so far, you will be surprised to find many useful features completely for free. You can also take a look at the video below to get some idea:

Installing Super Productivity on Linux

You get a variety of options to install. I downloaded the AppImage file to test. But, you can also get the deb package for Debian-based distros.

It is also available as a snap . You can find all the packages in the GitHub releases section .

If you’re curious, you can check out its GitHub page to know more about it.

Concluding Thoughts

I found the user experience fantastic with Super Productivity. The features offered are incredibly useful and considering that you get some premium functionalities (that you’d get normally with to-do web services) it could be a perfect replacement for most of the users.

You can simply sync the data using Google Drive, Dropbox, or any other WebDAV storage location.

It could also replace a service like ActivityWatch to help you track the time you work on your tasks and remain idle. So, it could be your all-in-one solution for improving productivity!

Sounds exciting, right?

What do you think about Super Productivity? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.