TabFloater Adds Picture-in-Picture Support to Any Tabs (Chrome/Firefox)

If you’ve been using Chrome for a while, you probably have noticed that nice PiP icon that sits on your toolbar when you’re on a page that plays a video. As soon as you hit that PiP icon, a sleek, resizable floating window will popup within your screen. That’s Picture-in-Picture (PiP) in action, a feature recently added built-in on Chrome.

Now, what if you want to achieve the same feat for virtually any tabs, not just for videos? Well, that’s basically the premise of this brand new extension called TabFloater.

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Currently, available for Chrome and Firefox (Windows for now), TabFloater lets you easily multitask & interact with other tabs. You don’t have to switch between tabs to copy or compare stuff.

"I created a browser extension called TabFloater, which can replicate the picture-in-picture functionality with any website. It moves a chosen tab into a smaller window, which is going to remain always on top, so you can interact with both websites at the same time." — Balázs Gyurák, Creator of TabFloater

Getting Started with TabFloater

Just like any browser extensions, getting started with TabFloater is straightforward. Just get your copy at their website and install the companion app. And you’re good to go.

Caveats

Unlike those PiP videos that play on a sticky window regardless of which app screens you’re on, TabFloater will only be active within the parent app of course. So, if you close or minimize your Chrome or Firefox, TabFloater will exit too.

Additionally, TabFloater currently works on Windows. So for Mac users, it will come up soon. The add-on creator does invite interested party to develop TabFloater Companion for Mac. Just comment on the official GitHub repo.

10 Efficiency Tips for Mac Users

Macs are fast, high-performing, and reliable computers; therefore, they are trusted by many professional individuals and brands.

However, a device like Mac can only reach its maximum performance and efficiency if you know how to take care of it correctly and take time to learn its neatest features that can enhance your productivity.

Thus in this article, you will find a list of 10 quick and easy tips that will help improve your Mac's efficiency by keeping enough free storage space and applying such useful tips as to how to crop photos on mac.

Tip #1: Check Storage Space

Checking storage space should become a habit so that you learn to keep on track with it regularly. Knowing how much free disk space you have left is important because if you fall below 10% of free storage space, your Mac will become slow and start underperforming.

The easiest way to track your storage space is to click on the Apple icon, go to the option About This Mac, and click on the Storage tab.

Tip #2: Uninstall Apps You Do Not Use

Apps can take up quite a lot of space, and to make sure that you have enough free disk space and can easily find the apps you need, uninstall the ones you no longer use.

Look for two types of apps to uninstall. First, start with the game apps you have downloaded just for fun and never really play. Secondly, look for multiple apps of the same type, such as time-planning apps. If you have five different ones, you probably only use one.

Tip #3: Remove Large Files

Moving forward, remove large unneeded files to make more storage space on your Mac. To locate these files, you can go directly to the Downloads folder that stores all of the files that you download from the internet; thus, it may include quite a few one-time use files.

Also, in the Storage tab, you can click Manage that will open a new menu with four suggestions that can help clear system storage. The option called Reduce Clutter will guide you through large files and other documents that you might not need.

Tip #4: Clean Your Desktop

To become more efficient, keep a clean desktop. Maintaining hundreds of items on your screen will make it difficult to locate the files you are looking for. More to it, if you do not name your files properly, you may send the wrong file to a client of yours.

Also, the more thumbnails you have on your desktop, the slower your Mac becomes. To display every icon, the computer is using system resources, which slows down your Mac.

Tip #5: Empty the Trash Bin

If you have recently deleted a bunch of files to clear some system storage, do not forget to remove them from the Trash Bin as well.

Remember that as long as you keep the deleted files in the Trash Bin, they are still taking up disk space and slowing down your Mac, thus making you inefficient.

Tip #6: Use Cloud Storage

For creative people who work as graphic designers, photographers, or video editors, it may be difficult to keep enough free storage space. Therefore, another solution, such as using a cloud storage service, might be necessary.

More to it, using a cloud service will bring in more benefits, such as easy file access and sharing.

Tip #7: Invest in External Storage Solutions

However, to use a cloud storage service efficiently and without any annoying interruptions, you will need to ensure a strong network connection.

If that is not possible, you should consider investing in external storage solutions, for instance, external hard drives or USB keys. On the other hand, make sure you keep the files you use daily on your computer for fast access.

Tip #8: Use Streaming Services

Using such streaming services as Netflix or Spotify can help you keep more free disk space at all times and result in a better performing computer.

First of all, you will not have to download large media files to watch a movie or listen to an album by your favorite artist. Secondly, if you enjoy watching tv series, you will not have to worry about deleting the episodes that you have already watched.

Tip #9: Update the macOS Regularly

The Apple company has been working on developing and improving its devices and software for years and is still doing it constantly to provide you the best performance possible.

However, if you want to be using the best version of the device you own, you need to update the macOS regularly. Once you skip an update, you can find it in the System Preferences.

Tip #10: Learn How to Crop Images

You may think that you need to download photo editing software if you want to crop images on a Mac, but there is actually an easy way to do it without installing any new software.

The fastest method to crop images on your Mac is by using a built-in app called Preview. Once you open the image you want to crop, choose the Markup tools to cut out the part of the image that you want.

Local Files Not Syncing on Spotify iOS App? Here’s How to Fix

There’s this recurring issue of Spotify that we’re all too familiar with: local files stored from our computer suddenly don’t sync over to Spotify’s iPhone app. A quick Google search reveals it’s an issue affecting thousands of users. And sure it’s straight out annoying, considering that you lose access to tens or hundreds of local tracks coming from sources outside of Spotify.

Spotify, despite being the streaming behemoth that she is, is still marred with performance and playback issues that are too random that sometimes you get a random fix. This Spotify syncing issue usually happens immediately after a major update on its iOS app. Spotify could be introducing new features or purging locally stored data, causing synced local files to get wiped out.

Why Local Files Are Not Syncing on Spotify

There are a few reasons why local files fail to sync. First, you might have unknowingly deleted or moved the local files on your laptop. This action of course confuses the Spotify app on your desktop so it can no longer locate the local files. Second, for local syncing to work, in your Spotify desktop app, you’ll have to “Download” those tracks as well.

How To Fix Spotify Local Files Not Syncing

If you’re sure your local files are untouched and you encounter this Spotify synchronization issue. Follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the latest copy of Spotify installed both on your iOS and desktop app, and ensure you’re connected to the same network
2. Restart both apps on your iPhone and desktop
3. On your desktop, ensure you “Download“ the entire playlist where your local tracks are stored
4. Go back to your Spotify iOS app. Go to Settings > Local Files and ensure Local audio files is toggled.
5. Navigate to that same playlist and click the green "Download" icon.

You’re done. For best results, also ensure your iPhone is not on “Low Power Mode”. Low Power Mode limits background activity such as downloads & syncs.

How To: Import, Upload Videos from DropBox to Vimeo in Seconds

A few days ago, I was asked to upload a bunch of client testimonial videos to Vimeo. The videos are about 2+ GB in size total, and they all sit on DropBox shared with me by one of our clients. And me being on the other side of the planet with a limited internet data allocation and unreliable internet, I can’t afford to waste time and manually download them all locally and upload them to Vimeo. Sure it will take me forever to do just that.

A quick look on Vimeo’s dashboard doesn’t offer much help. There’s no “import DropBox to Vimeo” or equivalent that could help me move those videos from DropBox to Vimeo with ease. All I got is an UPLOAD” button that prompts you to locate your videos locally hosted on your computer.

5 Ways To Free Up, Increase Your DropBox Disk Space

After a few tinkering, I realized that there’s indeed a way to send and import videos from DropBox to Vimeo. And it’s easy to miss it because it’s hidden somewhere.

So, how do you import or upload videos from DropBox to Vimeo and save time?

The trick is easy: just head directly to https://vimeo.com/upload. On the right, click on the DropBox icon. It will bring in a DropBox dialog where you can choose the videos to import. And your videos will be automatically imported in seconds to Vimeo.

You can also import, upload videos from Google Drive to Vimeo. Just click on the Google Drive icon right beside the DropBox button.

How To: Use iOS 14 Picture-in-Picture on YouTube App (No Jailbreak)

iOS 14 is coming to iPhone! Just like Apple’s previous releases, the upcoming iOS 14 is packed with features that will redefine everyone’s iPhone experience.

One of iOS 14 much-awaited features is the introduction of Picture-in-Picture (PiP) playback on iOS (finally). That is, with PiP officially coming to iPhone, you’ll be able to multitask and navigate to other apps while a small, resizable window floats on your device’s screen.

iOS 14’s Picture-in-Picture playback will be officially supported on iPhone’s stock apps like FaceTime and Safari. In Safari for instance, you can play whatever video source and enable Picture-in-Picture with just a few taps. This makes it possible to do PiP on YouTube as long as you view it inside Safari.

But, what about PiP in YouTube app?

Unfortunately, PiP isn’t automatically enabled on third-party apps like YouTube. It’s up to individual third-party apps like YouTube to follow suit. And if for some reason Google won’t update their official YouTube app and bring support for PiP, then, here’s a neat trick to do Picture-in-Picture in YouTube app.

What you need:

• Shortcuts iOS app installed
• A copy of YouTube App PiP Opener by Nangu

Using Shortcuts to Enable PiP on YouTube iOS App

1. First off, add YouTube App PiP Opener shortcut and ensure it’s shown in Share Sheet (this is a one-time setup)

   

2. Ensure you allow custom shortcuts to be ran. Go to your device’s Settings > Shortcuts and enable Allow Untrusted Shortcuts
3. Launch YouTube app. Play whatever video you want.

4. While video is playing, hit Share icon. This should bring iOS’s Share Sheet.
5. Tap on YouTube App PiP Opener. It should launch and transfer video playback to Safari.
6. Just go fullscreen and tap the PiP icon. You’re done.

See, we’re exploiting Shortcuts’ app to view YouTube videos in PiP mode. Not the most elegant solution but it’s a nice workaround while waiting for YouTube’s turn to finally bring Picture-in-Picture to its official iOS app.

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Top 5 In-Demand Skills to Learn During COVID-19 Home Quarantine

With current COVID-19 pandemic situation, many people have been confined to their homes. Due to this, the majority of people are very idle in their homes and are not earning any income. Well then, in case you are one of them relax because you are in the right platform, below are some of the demand skills you can learn within 1-3 months while under home quarantine;

1. Coding

Coding is one of the demand skills in the market today and the best thing is you don't have to professional in coding to secure a job. With just basic skills you have chances to secure a job opportunity. One can start learning CSS and HTML coding and later advance to JavaScript. One can enrol for an online coding course at Udemy or any web development Bootcamp. Further, there are many basic tutorial videos available in YouTube which are resourceful to enable one to comprehend various coding languages.

2. Freelance Writing

Writing is one of the demand skills which is considered an asset because you can employ yourself and be your own boss. Freelancing involves writing online articles for various clients and submitting them through a certain forum. What you need is to have good grammar in the language you are writing. In case you are not a native speaker of that language, don't worry you can sharpen your skills by reading an introduction to freelancing guides and within a few months, you will be an amazing writer.

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3. Web design and development

Many companies are looking for experts in web design to enable their clients to increase their ranking in various search engines. One can learn web design via online tutorials and doing more practical work. However, you need computer literate to understand how web design is done.

4. Blogging

Being a blogger isn't hard. You just have to create interesting and well written online content. For you to be a good blogger you just have to write interesting and high-quality content in your blog. You can advance your skills by visiting the various blog and get to understand how they can attract many people.

5 Ways To Free Up, Increase Your DropBox Disk Space

The secret behind being a good blogger is concentrating in one area for example about fashion or politics. By so doing you will get knowledgeable on that area and you will your blog post will be very influential. These days you can create your blog for free in various websites like Wordpress etc.

5. Graphic design

This is one of the marketable skills in the market. This is because many businesses have to come up with unique logos and images which will make them outstanding in the market. You can learn graphic design from platforms such as Lynda.com and within 3 months you will have a strong foundation in color, typography and layout. You can practice graphic design by using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

There are many demand skills you can learn while under home quarantine for a few months and help you make income during this pandemic or even secure well-paying jobs after this pandemic is over.

Anyone Can Remotely Crash Your iPhone thru SMS with this iOS Text Bug

There’s another iOS text bug making the rounds of the internet today that renders anyone’s iPhone useless. And Apple is currently rolling out a patch to fix this so be sure to update your iOS immediately to iOS 13.4.5 beta.

So, the offending text is a combination of an Italian flag emoji and Sindhi character. As soon as it arrives on your inbox as a text message or through your WhatsApp or Messenger, your iPhone will become unresponsive, forcing it to restart your iPhone.

Apparently iOS has an issue dealing with that offending text as soon as it arrives in your notification tray, causing it to exhaust all its internal resources and eventually crashing your device. This is similar to the 2017 iOS text bug that crashes your iPhone as soon as you get a message containing a specific Telugu characters.

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Apple is said to be seeding out an update to fix this Italian emoji and Sindhi bug. So be sure you’re getting the most recent update from Apple. Alternately, you can temporarily disable notifications from your iMessage, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

5 Ways To Free Up, Increase Your DropBox Disk Space

If you’ve been using DropBox since its inception back in 2008, chances are your FREE DropBox account now is either full or about to run out of space. That’s especially true if you’ve been using the platform as your go-to repository to store your personal and work-related files. That’s a massive 12 years of backup files to date.

While there are a handful of newcomers offering the same DropBox-like functionality + FREE disk space, nothing beats the niftiness and simplicity of DropBox. Not to mention the fact that DropBox has been used by well-known digital companies so we can be sure our data is well-protected.

DropBox’s Basic Plan gives you 2GB of disk space. Sure it’s not enough. And if you’re a freelancer who isn’t ready yet to upgrade, then, read along as I’ll show you how you can get as much as 20GB of disk space from DropBox at no additional cost.

(Note: 2TB starts at $9.99/month, if things aren’t tight please consider upgrading to paid plans)

Here are 5 legal ways to increase your DropBox disk space for FREE

1. Delete unused files

   Digital assets such as images, PSD, XD, and other Adobe files can easily eat up our DropBox disk space. Visit each and every single folder and see if you can safely remove those files. If it’s already a one-year-old project or so, better delete them.

   Removing those unused files and folders can quickly regain the extra DropBox disk space you need.

2. ZIP/compress folders

   If you have a large folder on your DropBox you want to keep but don’t constantly use, try archiving it and zip it. You can save as much as half of its size. You can even further reduce it by using the most optimized compression method or use GZIP format to shrink its size.

   How To Unzip Archived Files in DropBox without Downloading them Offline

   Of course, you don’t want to archive those folders you’ll likely access in the next few months. Just archive those 1-2 years old project folders that you don’t have reasons to access again.

3. Take Advantage of DropBox Referral System

   DropBox has an existing referral system that rewards you with 500MB bonus space for each successful referral installs. Just go to https://www.dropbox.com/referrals page to get your unique link and you can start inviting friends to signup.

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   A lot of people have been gaming this system and was able to snatch as much as 16GB of bonus disk space. The popular method includes using virtual machines and doing fake installations using their own referral link. DropBox requires each referred account to install its Windows or Mac app before rewarding the extra 500MB bonus disk space.

4. Move your backup files to other cloud services

   Again, DropBox has attracted tens of competitors trying to get a slice of the pie. Popular cloud storage platforms include Google Drive, OneDrive, Otixo, Mover.io, ZeroPC, etc. What these guys have in common is that they have free plans that give you as much as 30GB of FREE cloud storage space.

   You now have multiple options to choose from to unload some of your files and free up your DropBox disk space. You can go classic by downloading your DropBox files and upload them to your cloud storage of choice or you can use cloud storage management platforms such as Otixo to move files between multiple cloud storage providers. Doing so guarantees to free up your DropBox disk space.

6. Upgrade your DropBox plan

   If you want to skip the headaches of increasing your DropBox disk space, then, this would be your last option. DropBox Plus tier sets you back $9.99 a month which gives you 2 TB storage space. That should already be enough storage space for your digital life.

Wrapping it up

Our work-related stuff can easily eat up our DropBox 2 GB storage space. While there are other cloud storage platforms we can check out, it’s the security & simplicity of DropBox that makes it hard to depart. And if you’re unprepared to upgrade to a much higher storage plan, you can try the above suggestions to free up and increase your DropBox storage space.

How To Unzip Archived Files in DropBox without Downloading them Offline

Few days ago, I was confronted with this situation where I needed to get a specific file within a zip file shared to me on DropBox. The trouble is, the archive file is over 2GB in size and I am on a limited internet data connection and I can’t afford to waste time downloading the entire 2GB file just to get a specific file for my web project.

Such dilemma would’ve been not a problem if, and only if, DropBox has a built-in file management system where you can zip or unzip files in DropBox website. However, as you might already know, DropBox web app is still deprived of such functionality. And there are no DropBox App Extensions that can do basic archive file management.

So normally your only way out is to download the entire ZIP file on your local drive and do the actual unzipping on your machine, which sounds very much unacceptably antiquated.

Because 2GB of data would cost me $5 in my country to download (and $5 is not cheap), I had to find a way how to unzip DropBox files without downloading them first. Thankfully, I found a way out, albeit not the most straight-forward. And this article, I’m going to show you how.

What you need

• DropBox account
• Google Drive account
• Otixo account (or other free cloud file management apps)

Cutting off the crap, this method works this way: using Otixo service, we remotely copy those zip files from DropBox to Google Drive. And once those zip files are transferred to Google Drive, you can unzip them straight from Google Drive website.

How to unzip Dropbox files without downloading them first offline

For the purpose of this tutorial, I'm going to use a demo file globe-at-home.zip which sits right inside my DropBox account

1. You’ll have to signup or login first to Otixo and connect your DropBox and Google Drive cloud accounts. Otixo has a decent file management functionality where you can connect multiple cloud drives into a single interface so you can quickly manage your files from multiple sources. We wrote about it before, so go check it out.

2. Once you’ve added both your DropBox and Google Drive accounts, copy your DropBox ZIP file to your Google Drive. The transfer should take in seconds.

   

   

3. As soon as you hit the Copy button, the ZIP file should arrive on your Google Drive account.

   

4. Now, you're ready to unzip the archive inside Google Drive. To do that, you'll have to add ZIP Extractor as add-on to your Google Drive. See our guide here.

   Once ZIP Extractor is added, you can open your archive file with ZIP Extractor, as seen below:

   

5. And finally, selectively extract the contents within that ZIP file.

   

You're done!

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ZIP Extractor will then automatically create a new folder containing all the extracted files within that folder where the original ZIP file is located.

Final Verdict

Being able to unzip files in DropBox isn't natively supported yet on DropBox web app. However, with a little bit of creativity, we can achieve the same feat by moving that ZIP file from DropBox to Google Drive and do the extraction in the latter. Well, thanks to Otixo.

Spotify iOS App Gets Native Sleep Timer Support

Music streaming giant Spotify silently rolls out an update to its iOS app which finally brings a sleep timer support for its app. No need to separately launch the iPhone’s Clock app.

Setting up a sleep timer on Spotify

To set up a sleep timer on Spotify, be sure you’re getting the latest update of the app. While your Spotify songs are playing, launch the Now Playing screen, tap the tiny three dots that sits in the upper right of your screen, and then scroll down a bit until you see the “Sleep timer” option. From there you can set a timer from 5 mins to 1 hour.

To turn off sleep timer on Spotify, just redo the above steps and in “Stop audio in“ screen, just tap ”Turn off timer“.

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As a music app, a sleep timer is a hotly-requested feature of Spotify which lets you doze to your favorite songs without draining your iPhone’s battery. It’s a feature first introduced to the Android version last year. iOS users, on the other hand, resort to the iPhone’s Clock app to stop audio playback on Spotify at a predefined time.