News
Operating Systems
Microsoft is trialing a new Home page in the Windows 11 Settings app that has, among other things and unsurprisingly, ads. The company is pushing ads for its subscription-based services into more and more areas of the Windows 11 operating system.
Windows 11 development continued in June 2023. Highlights include a new volume mixer that finally reintroduces support for changing the volume of individual apps more comfortably, support for passwordless access using passkeys, and a Windows Copilot preview.
You can check out Ashwin’s guide on enabling Windows Copilot in development builds.
Mobile
Samsung has unlocked its Quick Share program for Windows to work with non-Samsung laptops. The application allows users to transfer files between Windows and Samsung Android devices now, which is a big step up from only allowing it to be used on Samsung laptops and PCs.
There is, however, still one limitation. According to Sam Mobile, the new version of the app is only compatible with devices that use Intel’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers.
Browser
Google plans to display a popup to all users of its Chrome web browser starting in a few weeks. The popup informs users about Google’s Privacy Sandbox feature, which it hopes will replace third-party cookie tracking for the purpose of advertising.
All users need to react to the popup, as Chrome is locked until the user responds. Users who do not want this new form of advertising may turn it off in the new Ads privacy settings of Chrome.
Google’s method moves tracking into the browser, which, conveniently, is operated by the company.
Mozilla owned Pocket is transitioning away from using third-party accounts. The bookmarking, reading and discovery service will require a Firefox account soon.
Brave Browser will soon protect users against localhost access that is undesirable. Localhost access is used by a few legitimate applications and services, but also abused on the Internet, for instance for fingerprinting purposes.
Mozilla released Firefox 115 yesterday. The release is the base for the Extended Support Release channel of Firefox. It brings hardware video decoding for Intel GPUs on Linux, and a rather mysterious feature that blocks add-ons that are not monitored by Mozilla from running on some domains. Called Quarantined Domains, the feature is shrouded in mystery as Mozilla revealed virtually no information about.
Firefox users may turn it off in the following way:
Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
Click Accept the Risk and Continue, if the prompt appears.
Search for extensions.quarantinedDomains.enabled.
Set it to FALSE.
Restart Firefox.
The Waterfox browser project is independent once again. The founder, Alex Kontos, announced the change on the official blog.
Privacy and Security
Software Releases and Updates
Microsoft Teams users will see a new switch in the app soon that allows them to switch to the new Microsoft Teams app. The new app offers better performance according to Microsoft, but lacks some of the features of the classic app currently. These will be implemented soon, Microsoft promised.
Gaming and Entertainment
AmigaLive is a free project to play Amiga games over the Internet. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, and offers access to hundreds of games. You can play games in single player mode or online with friends.
The package includes everything to get started, there is no need to configure anything, but options to change keyboard mappings and other settings are provided.
The Steam Summer Sale has started. PC gamers may buy thousands of games at a discount until July 13, 2023. The sale is a rather uneventful one, but if you use Steam, you may find some games of interest that are discounted.
Other
Twitter has shut out anonymous users from viewing content on the site and also introduced read ratios for free and paying members of the service.
Article(s)
Windows Copilot: a useful tool or another way for Microsoft to push AI, Bing and advertisement?
Lots of Windows users face difficulties when using the operating system. Many of these are not critical but small or minor ones, at least from the eyes of experienced users.
Changing the desktop wallpaper, removing an icon from the taskbar, or turning on dark mode are just a few of the examples that regular users may spend time on figuring out.
One of the ideas behind Windows Copilot is to integrate an assistant into Windows, powered by AI of course, that may help users. In fact, the ability of Windows Copilot to perform certain actions automatically or on user request is the feature that stands out.
Microsoft highlighted some of these actions in the official announcement.
“Change to dark mode.”
“Turn on do not disturb.”
“Take a screenshot”
The remaining three actions were not related to Windows:
“Summarize this website” (Active tab in Microsoft Edge)
“Write a story about a dog who lives on the moon.”
“Make me a picture of a serene koi fishpond with lily pads.”
Windows Copilot is available as a preview currently. Some things may change and new actions and features may be added by Microsoft.
The current implementation has several issues. I’m not the only one who noticed these, as Neowin also published a review of Windows Copilot in which it expressed concern about the quality of the feature.
Some requests lead to direct actions, whereas others display a prompt for confirmation. There is also a shortage of actions available currently, but this may improve in the future.
Most actions are simple: taking screenshots, turning a feature on or off, these kind of things. Advanced tasks, such as troubleshooting network connectivity issues, uninstalling a Windows update that is causing problems, or returning the last 5 errors as recorded as an event by Windows are not supported.
It is possible to ask Windows Copilot advanced questions, but the answers are the same that Bing Chat will provide. There is no option to make the tool run advanced operations based on instructions that it pulled from various sources on the Internet, and there is good reason for that.
The AI has no option to verify the instructions and these actions could could issues on Windows systems.
I can’t see Windows Copilot support a lot of actions when it comes out. Microsoft will only implement actions that it considers safe, and a focus will be on things that are listed in the Settings as options.
Windows Copilot has the potential of becoming a true helper for Windows users, but it requires more work than just adding a few instant and some not-so-instant actions to it and filling the rest with the same functionality that Bing Chat offers.
As it stands right now, Windows Copilot won’t be the super useful tool that it could be, if Microsoft would assign more resources to it. Experienced users will probably find ways to turn it off completely once it lands, others may very well ignore it, like they did ignore Bing Chat’s integration in Windows.
How to continue using some third-party Reddit apps
It is July 2023 and that means that Reddit has more or less lost third-party apps support because of changes that the site introduced to its APIs.
The push is designed to get users to use the official Reddit app, which is not that great, and to gain more control over the entire community.
Third-party apps for Reddit were great; there were lots of them, and many offered a better experience than Reddit.
Many apps are already no longer available on the official app stores and users who have installed these apps may have noticed that they don’t work anymore.
There is hope, however. Some apps, on Android at least, may still be used, at least for the time being. The main idea revolves around creating an app on Reddit to get a unique ID and then patching the desired Android application using that ID.
It sounds complicated, but the process itself is pretty straightforward once you know what do do.
First, the limitation: only a few apps support this officially. These are:
BaconReader
Boost for Reddit
Infinity for Reddit
Relay for Reddit
RedditIsFun
Sync for Reddit
More apps may add support at a later stage, but this is is currently.
Here is how it works:
Open this page on Reddit, preferably in a browser on a desktop PC.
Select the option to create a new app.
Pick any name, switch to “installed app” and add one of the following URIs under redirect URL
BaconReader: http://baconreader.com/auth
Boost for Reddit: http://rubenmayayo.com
Infinity for Reddit: infinity://localhost
Relay for Reddit: dbrady://relay
RedditIsFun: redditisfun://auth
Sync for Reddit: http://redditsync/auth
Select create app.
The next page displays the client ID at the top. Copy the entire ID and save it to a new text document.
Name the text document reddit_client_id_revanced.txt.
Copy this text document to the root of the Android device. If you have it on your PC, you need to copy the file to your Android device, e.g. by sending yourself an email, using cloud storage, nearby share or other means. It is important that the file is in root and not in any of the folders on the device.
If you have installed the app currently, create a backup of settings in the app, if supported, before uninstalling it from the device.
Download and install the latest version of ReVanced Manager.
Follow the onboarding wizard to give it “all files access” and any other access it may request.
Now download the latest APK file of the application you just selected. Searching for AppName APK mirror usually does the trick.
Open ReVanced Manager on the Android device and select Patcher.
Activate Storage and select the downloaded APK file.
Activate the “selected patches” option. The patch that you placed in the root of the storage should be listed there.
Select “Default” and hit the done option.
After the patching is done, you may select “export” to save the newly patched APK file or select the “install” option right away.
Follow the instructions to install the patched app on the Android device.
You may now sign-in to your Reddit account to connect the app with the account.
Last but not least, you may import the saved settings again, if supported.
I tested this option with several apps on Android and it worked. Since Reddit has torpedoed third-party apps, it may at one point in time remove the option to create new apps from its service.
Here is a list of references:
How fast do Chromium-based browsers release security updates?
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