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While there are plenty of third-party programs to accomplish a task, sometimes you just want to use a built-in method to do the same thing. Today’s SuperUser Q&A post helps a reader find an awesome built-in solution to keep his files from being deleted or overwritten. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Notepad screenshot courtesy of Dan (SuperUser)....

Windows has included batch files since before it existed… batch files are really old! Old or not, I still find myself frequently creating batch files to help me automate common tasks. One common task is uploading files to a remote FTP server. Here’s the way that I got around it. First, you will have to create a file called fileup.bat in your windows directory, or at least inside some directory included in your path....

Your device needs a magnetometer for the compass function to work, and almost all Android smartphones have these included. You also need to install the Google Maps Android app , if it isn’t already. These instructions should work on all recent Android versions. Checking Google Maps Direction Accuracy Before you calibrate your compass, check to if your device’s direction is being accurately reported in the Google Maps app. Open the Google Maps app on your Android device, then look for the blue circular icon showing your location....

Whenever you save a new file in Windows 10, the Save As window defaults to whichever of your user folders–Documents, Music, Pictures, and so on–is appropriate to the file type. If you’d rather not save files on the C: drive, though, Windows lets you create those folders on another hard drive to act as your default save location. Changing your default save location creates a new Users folder structure on the new drive and saves all new files there by default....

When you first install Word, the default location for saving files is OneDrive. If you would rather save documents on your computer, you can easily change that, although Word also sets a default folder on your computer for saving files, which is normally “My Documents.” To change the default location for saving files, click the “File” tab. On the backstage screen, click “Options” in the list of items on the left....

Android TV might not be as customizable as an Android phone, but there’s still a lot you can do to personalize it. One of those is choosing which screen saver to use. We’ll show you how to change it up. Just like on a computer, the Android TV screen saver is what you see when the device is idle. By default, it displays high-quality photos, along with the current time and weather....

Mozilla Firefox blocks any pop-ups on your websites by default. If you’d like it to show those pop-ups, you will have to disable the built-in pop-up blocker first. We’ll show you how to do that in Firefox on desktop, iPhone, and iPad. RELATED: How to Disable Windows 10’s Taskbar Pop-up Notifications Disable Pop-Up Blocker in Firefox on Desktop To turn off the pop-up blocker in Firefox on your Windows, Mac, Linux, or Chromebook computer, first, launch Firefox on your computer....

While Github is most commonly used to host large code projects, it also functions as a pretty good file host, and sometimes you just want to download a file or two without cloning the entire repo. Github supports this, both from the site and command line. Downloading a Single File From The Github Website If you’re fine using your web browser, you can download single files pretty easily. Head over to the file you want to download and click “Raw:”...

Encrypted DNS Is More Private and Secure Every time you visit a website using a domain name (such as “google.com,” for example), your computer sends a request to a Domain Name System (DNS) server. The DNS server takes the domain name and looks up the matching IP address from a list. It sends the IP address back to your computer, which your computer then uses to connect to the site....

We like Apple’s OS X a lot but there are some things about it that are lacking and even surprisingly lag behind Windows. One of those features is the ability to quickly click on the date/time in the system tray to see a small pop-up calendar. It’s nicer than having to open a full-size calendar and then clicking again to close it. Simply click the date, check to see what next Tuesday is or what day March 4 falls upon, and then get back to your work....

With iOS 8, your iPhone or iPad can now have a local file system like the one Android users have. Store files for use offline, access them in any updated app, and save files directly to the file system from other apps. What’s more, some of these solutions allow you to easily access a Mac or PC’s files on your device. You can also use this trick to access files via FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and other protocols in any app....

If you drive to the same place every day (say, to or from work), you’d probably like to know how long it will take you to get there before you leave. Thanks to the Shortcuts on iPhone, it’s easy to make a dedicated shortcut that speaks the live commute time to your home, office, or another destination. Here’s how. Your iPhone will get this estimate from Apple Maps, predicting the current time it will take you to commute to the destination based on live traffic and other factors....

If you’ve noticed hotspots in your digital photos, areas where a stuck pixel in the camera’s sensor has rendered very bright spots of color that don’t belong in the image, you’re not alone. It’s an incredibly common phenomenon, but that doesn’t mean you have to put up with it. Read on as we discuss what distinguishes stuck pixels from other sensor defects and problems, how to identify it, and how to fix it both in-camera and out....

Windows has Ctrl+Alt+Delete and Macs have Command+Option+Escape to force frozen applications to close. Linux has its own ways of “killing” those misbehaving processes, whether they’re graphical windows or background processes. The exact graphical tools you can use will depend on your desktop environment, as each desktop environment brings different tools to the table. But most of them are pretty similar. From a Graphical Desktop Modern Linux desktops deal with this fairly well, and it can be surprisingly automatic....

Special folders work well because they centralize where particular types of files are saved. Add in cloud storage, and suddenly you have automatic and effortless backups of your most important personal files. It’s no secret we like the combination of special folders and cloud backups. It’s effective and efficient, taking much of the onus off the user. It is as backups should be but, of course, you still have to put in the initial work to set it up....

You can pair each Echo device in your home with up to four Echo Buttons, which is useful if you play any trivia-style games on the Echo. But you can do a lot more with it than that. Everything about the Buttons is simple, from using them (just press the button!) to getting the devices paired to your Echo. And the box includes everything you need, even batteries. Once you have the batteries installed, pairing is a simple affair....

With the new Microsoft Edge, extensions, apps, and other services can continue to run in the background even after you close the browser. This means that Edge will continue to use your computer’s resources. Here’s how to stop background processes. What Are Background Apps? By default, Microsoft Edge allows background apps and extensions to run in the background on your computer. This lets extensions and apps that require being run 24/7 access to your computer’s resources....

As part of a suite of privacy enhancements in iOS 14, apps will have to ask before tracking your activity across other companies’ apps and websites. Here’s how to stop them from asking and automatically tell apps not to track you. First, open Settings on your iPhone or iPad. Tap “Privacy” on the Settings screen. Tap “Tracking” near the top of the Privacy screen. Tap the switch beside “Allow Apps to Request to Track” to turn it off....

Hotel rooms still have televisions, and you can put them to use when traveling. Why use your laptop, smartphone, or tablet when you can watch thing son the bigger screen? For the record, we’re talking about reasonably modern TVs with HDMI ports on the back here. Older TVs without HDMI ports will be more trouble. You may want to pack a small streaming stick like the Roku Streaming Stick, Google Chromecast, or Fire TV Stick, or even a larger set-top box like an Apple TV, Roku, or Fire TV....

Firefox can crash for a variety of reasons, but you can quickly fix most crashes with Firefox’s Safe Mode and Reset features. However, even these tricks won’t fix every crash. Web browsers are complicated pieces of software that interact with lots of other software on your system – extensions and themes, plug-ins, security programs, graphics drivers, and more. Incompatibilities or out-of-date software can often cause crashes. Use Safe Mode Firefox has a Safe Mode that loads Firefox without loading your add-ons....