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There are many programs that can improve your Windows user experience. Usually this is done by giving you more options to choose from.

WinCustom is a freeware tool that lets you disable many features that are available in Windows, but it is not one of those privacy programs that you may run to disable certain privacy-related features. The program is portable. It displays a splash screen for a couple of seconds when you run it.

The interface displays four tabs: Start Menu, Taskbar & System Tray, Windows Explorer & Desktop, Miscellaneous.

Start Menu

This tab allows you to Hide or unhide the following options: My Documents, Recent Documents, Music, Videos, Downloads, Pictures, Favorites, Recorded TV, Games, Run Command, Control Panel, Default Programs, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Devices & Printers, Help & Support, Connect To, Network, Homegroup, User Profile Folder and My Computer.

It's fairly easy to use. When you click on an option in WinCustom's interface, it will process the command and after a few seconds restart Explorer automatically to apply the changes. The issue here is that you can't select multiple options at the same time, as the program processes the change immediately after you click the box next to a setting. So it takes a while to make a lot of changes.

Some options in WinCustom will only be activated after the computer has been restarted. The CTF Loader process remained open when I tried to disable the Language Bar, I couldn't close it. A restart fixed the issue.

The Start Menu tab allows you to disable App Launch Tracking, Pinning of Programs to the Start Menu, the Context Menu and the Drag-and-Drop behavior.You may choose to disable right-click entirely across the Start Menu, Taskbar and System Tray. The option below it helps prevent users from accessing the settings for the three elements.

Hide the Power menu options including "Shutdown, Restart, Sleep, Hibernate and Log Off options. This doesn't disable the functionality of the options, it just hides them from the menu. Clicking on the Power button just says "there are currently no power options available".

Taskbar and System Tray

Worried that someone may alter your taskbar settings? Disable access to it from the second tab in WinCustom. Prevent the taskbar from being resized or moved, while also disabling button grouping, adding new shortcuts or toolbars.

The Hide Language Bar icon disables the "Keyboard/Input language selection" button. Toggle the elements that are displayed on the system tray like the Action Center, Network, Battery, Volume and the Clock icons.

Note: The toggle for the Action Center doesn't seem to work

Windows Explorer & Desktop Settings

Explorer has a ton of visual elements on the screen. WinCustom can be used to declutter the file manager considerably. Disable the Explorer Menu Bar, Library Pane, Preview Pane, Details Pane, etc. Trim down the Navigation Pane by disabling the Library, My Computer, Network icons.

Hide the options to Show File Extensions, Hidden Files & Folders. Prevent system icons for the Control Panel, Recycle Bin from being placed on the desktop. The program can be used to remove items from the Explorer context menu, so if you don't use Share, Map Network Drive, Disconnect Drive, Restore Previous Versions, you can remove them from the menu.

Miscellaneous

The Miscellaneous tab in WinCustom can be used to disable the Task Manager, Windows Error Reporting, Windows Update (and Auto Update), and legacy applications such as Mail, Messenger, Media Center, Marketplace, Games Info & Updates or Limit the preservable bandwidth for QOS to 0.

The program works with Windows 7 and above. WinCustom is an unusual tool for customizing your Windows, but it is definitely not for the average user. I'd advise caution while using such programs, especially since this one doesn't have a "reset to default" option. Create a backup before you use it.

WinCustom

For Windows

Download Now

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Launchers are a great way to find and run programs installed on your computer.  Flow Launcher cranks it up a notch by adding support for web searches, system commands, and more.

The program's installer is quite hefty at 80MB, and the installed folder sums up to about 275MB. You cannot choose the folder where the program gets installed to. However, there is a toggle for "Portable Mode" that you can enable from the settings, after which you can manually move the AppData folder that was created by the installer to a custom location.

If that sounds too big or cumbersome, try Launchy or the updated fork LaunchyQT.

When you run the program, a long search bar appears on the screen. This is Flow Launcher's interface. It is a floating widget that you can drag to a different location, by clicking on its borders.

Enter the name of the file that you want to find in the search box, and the results will appear below the bar as you type. Hit the Escape key to hide the search bar. To bring it back, use the hotkey Alt + Space. You may also use the tray icon's right-click menu and select the "Open" option.

Click on a result to open it, or access it using hotkeys. To open the first result, use Alt + 1, use Alt + 2 to view the 2nd item in the results, and so on. Flow Launcher displays 5 results by default, this can be changed from the settings, and you may set it to show up to 17 items.

But how is this different from a search program like Everything? Flow Launcher supports plugins, go to the Settings > Plugins screen to view the list of available add-ons.

You can use the launcher to search your browser's bookmarks by typing b followed by the name of the site that you want to open, e.g. b Gmail. Flow Launcher will list the matched bookmark, and you can open it in your browser. Before you use it, you'll need to set the path of the browser, and optionally choose whether to open links in a new window or tab.

Want to open a URL? Type it and hit enter and it will open in the browser that you selected in the settings. You could try typing google.com and it will open the search engine's homepage. There are some other useful internet shortcuts in Flow Launcher. Let's use our previous example where we wanted to open Google. Why waste time visiting the site and then searching for something, when you can do it directly from the launcher?

The g command triggers Google search, follow it up with the term you want to look up.  Type g weather. This will open the Google results page for the weather. Remember, Flow Launcher keywords are case-sensitive, in this instance the g is lowercase.

Similarly, there are other action keywords like wiki - Wikipedia search, Facebook - Facebook search, Twitter, Maps, Translate, DuckDuckGom Gmail, etc. You can modify the keywords, add new ones, and also customize the actions too. If you want search suggestions to be displayed in the launcher, enable the option and select Google or Baidu. That is really cool.

The launcher can be used to perform calculations directly, just enter a mathematical expression in the search box. For e.g. If you type 22/7, the solution is displayed in the first result, use Alt + 1 to copy it directly to the clipboard.

Flow Launcher is handy for previewing colors using #HEX values. For e.g. #00adef.

Enter the name of Windows' Control Panel items in the launcher to open the corresponding shortcut, e.g. Programs.

The Explorer plugin has options that let you use Flow Launcher to search for files. To use it, type * followed by the query, e.g. * screenshot. This will display files which have screenshot in their name.

The program can be used to search for content inside documents with the doc: command, e.g. doc: readme will find documents which contain the term "readme".

You can add directories to the launcher's Quick Folder Access for better results. Flow Launcher uses Windows' built-in Search Indexing options, so you can use it to include or exclude (whitelist/blacklist) folders to the search process.

The launcher allows you to terminate a running process quickly using the kill command. Let's say, you want to close the Calculator, type "kill calc", this will list the process' name and ID which helps identify the program that you wish to close. Hit the shortcut keys or select the result to close the program.

Flow Launcher's "Program" plugin lets the search engine scan the Start Menu and Registry to pull the relevant results. Click on the All Programs button to add them to the search, similarly the File Suffixes option will add all file types. Force the program to manually scan again by clicking on the "reindex" button.

If you're a power user who regularly uses Windows' Run command, you should know that Flow Launcher replaces the Win + R shortcut. You can of course, disable the option. The tool supports Command Prompt and Powershell Commands.

You may use shortcut commands to execute various system level actions like Shutdown, Restart, Log Off, Lock, Sleep, Hibernate, Empty the Recycle Bin. There are commands for using the launcher too.

Flow Launcher has a dark theme by default, but has other themes to choose from. The program's tray icon can be hidden from the Settings.

Flow Launcher is an open source software written in C#. The program used anywhere between 100MB -200MB of RAM in the background over several hours of usage. If you find it using too much resources close and restart the program, it fixes any memory leaks.

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Pandora and other online radio services may be cool, but they lack the charm of a real station. Programs like Screamer Radio are great for this as they provide you with access to thousands of Internet radio stations from all over the world.

Tray Radio is a similar freeware application that you can use to listen to internet radio stations. The application, true to its name, is located in the system tray when you run it. Left-clicking the icon brings up an equalizer and the playback controls. Hit the stop button to stop streaming music.

Adding Radio Stations

Method 1

To access Tray Radio's options, right-click on the icon. Select the Install Station Packet menu item to get started. You'll notice it is partly in Dutch (because the developer is from The Netherlands). Clicking on a region shows the names of the available channels, and they are in English. Check the channels you want to install and hit the Save button. Right-click on the tray icon and you will notice that the radio stations that you added are available.

You can manually add radio Station packets, too, but they need to be in the ZIP or TRSP format. A Station packet is nothing but the radio station name, its streaming link, a menu name of your choice and the logo. Hit the Station Packet Creator to add your own; it's a bit buggy as it wouldn't recognize the logos and wouldn't save without a logo. I'd recommend using method 3 for adding stations.

Tray Radio has several European language stations ready for installation. English speaking readers can use the Blues FM, Engeland National (includes BBC), or Soma FM, which still gets you about 40 stations.

Method 2

Same drill, right-click on the icon and select Shoutcast search. This window allows you to search for radio stations by Top 500 (not customizable), or by keywords and genres. Select a station from the result and you can play it, and also view some of its information. To save it, click the "Add to Favorites" button. This option adds the saved radio station to the main menu of Tray Radio.

Method 3

In this method, you'll need the streaming URL of the internet radio station you want to add. Give the station a name, and paste the link of its logo (optional), hit the save button. You'll be able to access the radio station from the tray icon's "Manually Configured Stations".

Some radio stations have the URL on their website, like Soma FM does. For other stations, go to their website and play the stream in your browser. Select "Inspect Element" to bring up the developer tools. The network tab should display the stream's URL. Not all sites display the URL, so you'll have to find it some other way.

Stream Quality Issues and Fix

Some stations were choppy and I assumed the program was causing it. I gave it a few days and noticed that it only happened with some channels. BBC Radio and many other stations were working fine. I fired up Screamer Radio to see if it was better, and experienced the same issues with the same stations. In fact, a few seconds later it always displayed a message saying connection lost. That's when I decided to try a VPN to see if it was a server issue, and it worked perfectly.

So, the jittery stream quality wasn't the program's fault, but a connectivity issue. Just make sure that the VPN server location is at the same country as the radio station operates from. I also noticed that a laggy stream can in turn cause the program to lag badly.

Lyrics

Tray Radio displays the station name next to its icon when it's active. Left click on it to view the lyrics panel.

You can customize the lyrics' text size, type, and the background color. It also works in full screen, to switch to the full screen mode, right-click on the station name on the status bar.

Hover over the tray icon to view the current radio station's information (name, bit rate).

Music Player and Recorder

The Media Player can menu can be used to access the built-in music player in Tray Radio. The program is capable of playing MP3, M4A, WMA audio files. To record a radio station's stream left click on the icon (equalizer screen), and hit the record button. The recording will be saved as an MP3 in the default folder, you can set the folder from the configuration > General menu.

Tray Radio isn't without flaws. It's a bit slow to switch stations, and sometimes the lyrics don't work, though that can be due to the stream. If you have the patience for that, it's a good program.

Radios have always been special to me. I have used Transistor Radios (portable ones with knobs), Pocket Radios, Mobile phones (Nokia devices in the mid-2000s), and of course smartphones. Radio Garden is a website you can use from any web browser. What about you, which radio software do you use?

And to all of our readers, a Happy World Radio Day (it was yesterday, but nevertheless).

Tray Radio

For Windows

Download Now

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True to its name, Textbrowser can open multiple documents at the same time in a tabbed manner. Of course, you can use it to create and edit text files using the editor at the center of the screen.

Textbrowser is compatible with all supported versions of the Windows operating system as well as unsupported systems such as Windows XP or Vista.

The Toolbar offers basic file operations, editing actions, and lets you switch between tabs and files quickly. The Menubar at the top lists advanced options that you may not need all the time.

The Edit menu is useful if you want to change the selected text from Uppercase to Lowercase or the other way around. It can also add the current date and time to the text and remove empty lines.

You can disable some of the program's visual elements from the View menu. It contains toggles for Word Wrap, Switch Editor and Binary View.

There are three additional view options; Line Numbers, Special Characters, Highlight Active Line, but these only work in the secondary editor mode which you toggle using the Switch Editor option. When enabled, the changes are quite reminiscent of Notepad++'s editor.

Note: Binary View opens a new document in binary mode.

The editor supports TXT, HTML and XML files by default and syntax highlighting which you may access from the Highlighter menu. Support for programming and scripting languages such as VB, JS, Lua, SQL, C#, or PHP is included natively. Text editors designed specifically for coding, e.g. Geany or Atom offer better functionality though.

The Window menu is perhaps what I liked best in Alternate Textbrowser. It lists options to tile documents horizontally or vertically, and to cascade them.

If you pick horizontal or vertical, you may place multiple documents next to each other. Cascade as the name suggests changes to stacked windows. Regardless of which mode you're using, the tab bar at the top is visible so that you may switch quickly between open documents.

Tip: To exit Tile or Cascade view, just hit the maximize icon on one of the opened document windows.

There is a Folder selection menu below the editor pane. Selecting a directory will display all the documents that it contains in a small pane at the bottom of the screen. This can then be used for opening the document quickly; that's another neat feature to have.

TextBrowser has an ASCII code viewer and a compare text tool which are both available from the Tools menu. The latter can be used to select a source file and a second one, and compare the differences between the two.

Both the installer and the portable version of Textbrowser come with two standalone tools from the same developer called Memo and Calculator. You can access them from the program's folder, or directly from the interface from the Tools menu.

Alternate Tools Memo is a note taking application. When Memo is opened (and in the background), it manages to capture text that you copy to the clipboard, which I found to be pretty useful. The Alternate Tools Calculator program is pretty good and supports scientific functions and currency conversion. You can edit the currency values or add new ones too.

Closing Words

TextBrowser may not be as comprehensive and feature-rich as Notepad++ or other advanced text editors for the Windows operating system, but it is well designed and supports a handful of useful features.

Alternate Textbrowser

For Windows

Download Now

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ImBatch is a versatile bulk image converter for Microsoft Windows devices that is free for non-commercial use.

Image batch processors can be useful tools to automate repetitive processes like converting image file types or changing other parameters like image resolutions or optimizing images for web publishing.

While most image viewers and editors support the processing of images, many do lack batch optimizing options or the versatility that ImBatch offers.

ImBatch

Installation is straightforward; you can select to create a regular installation or create a portable installation instead.

Version 6 of the program comes with an interface refresh that brings it to the modern age of computing without sacrificing functionality in the process.

Load individual images or all images of a folder in the program for processing on launch. Each image is displayed with a thumbnail and parameters such as its name, location, dimensions, or DPI values. Images containing EXIF data are highlighted specifically; great if you want to remove EXIF data to prepare an image for web publishing or sharing.

ImBatch supports a wide range of formats including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIF, Adobe Photoshop PSD, Camera RAW formats, and more.

Sort options and search are available; useful if you load lots of images in the application. You may switch from thumbnail view mode to list view mode also.

Select one or multiple tasks in the second step. A task modifies the image, e.g. resizes it or removes EXIF tags from it. A strength of ImBatch is its ability to create groups of tasks that are applied to all loaded images.

A click on a task displays configuration options. The resize options include setting fixed or percent values for an images width and height, new DPI values, and filters.

You could create the following task list:

1. Remove all EXIF and IPTC tags from all images.
2. Resize the image to select dimensions.
3. Modify the brightness or contrast.
4. Add a watermark.
5. Save the image in a specified format.

The application processes tasks one after the other from top to bottom. You can move tasks up or down in the hierarchy and need to make sure that tasks are in the right order, e.g. that save is at the end or that resize comes before adding a watermark to the image.

A preview of the selected image is displayed automatically after you have added the first task in ImBatch. The program lacks a side-by-side view that places the image preview next to the original image.

You may save task groups to re-use them at a later point in time. A click on the play button processes all images using all tasks added to the task lists.

ImBatch includes a number of additional tools that you may run. Click on Tools to select any that is available:

• Image Monitor - monitors folders to apply tasks to images placed in these folders automatically.
• Context Menu Editor - to enable the Windows Explorer context menu and add specific items to it.
• EXIF/IPTC Editor - add, remove or change data of the selected image.

Closing Words

ImBatch is a powerful image processing tool for Windows. You can use it to process any number of images, save tasks for re-use, and even process new images in select folders automatically.

The application could use an option to display source and processed image side-by-side in the interface; advanced users may notice that it lacks support for advanced compression algorithms such as Google's Guetzli algorithm. A program like File Optimizer supports this.

Now You: Do you use a program to convert images?

Ghacks needs you. You can find out how to support us here or support the site directly by becoming a Patreon. Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post ImBatch Image Batch Processor: Convert Images In Bulk appeared first on gHacks Technology News.

I’m really excited about this because fire cider is something that I’ve wanted to make for a long time, but for some reason haven’t… until now!  I was inspired to finally make it this season because it’s one of the recipes in the online Intermediate Herbal Course that I’m taking at the Herbal Academy.  There...

Read More »

The post How to Make Fire Cider appeared first on Grow Forage Cook Ferment.

Windows 10 Updater Disabler is a new program for Microsoft's operating system that turns updates on or off reliably.

Windows 10 offers less UI control over the updating behavior of the operating system than previous versions of Windows.

If you check the settings application for instance, you only get options to defer feature updates if you run Pro or Enterprise, but no longer an option to switch the updating process to manual, or to deactivate Windows Update.

If you want control over the update process, you have to look elsewhere for these settings. One reliable way of disabling updates is to disable the Windows Update service.

This requires that you open the Services manager, locate the service and change its startup parameter and status.

You would then have to enable the service again whenever you want the operating system to check for updates.

Windows 10 Updater Disabler

Windows 10 Updater Disabler is a program for Windows that installs a service that blocks Windows Update from installing updates on the computer.

The service does not make use of Registry options to block Windows Update, as they may be modified by updates eventually (e.g. reset).

It runs checks for Windows Update's status regularly and terminates it when found to be running.

Instead, it uses an undocumented system call to check the current state of Windows Update and tries to terminate it immediately.

The service disables all scheduled tasks that are related to Windows Update on top of that when installed on the system.

Installation

To install the Service, do the following:

1. Download the Updater Disabler archive from the WinAero website, and extract it once downloaded.
2. Open an elevated command prompt. Tap on the Windows-key, type cmd.exe, hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys, and hit the Enter-key.
3. The title of the command prompt window begins with Administrator if it is elevated.
4. Navigate to the folder you have extracted the Updates Disabler program to (use cd folder name for that, e.g. cd c:\users\martin\downloads\updaterdisabler
5. Run the command updaterdisabler.exe -install.

If things worked out fine, you should get the following echoes on the command line:

UpdateDisabler is installed.

Service Start pending ...

Service started successfully.

You can verify this in the Services configuration interface as well.

You should see the Update Disabler Service listed in the interface when you open the Services management console. It should have the status of running, and the startup type of automatic.

If you try an update check after installing the service, you will get an error message which confirms that Windows Update is disabled: We couldn't install some updates because the PC was turned off.

Uninstallation

Uninstallation works pretty much like installation, only that you need to run the program with a different parameter.

You do need to open an elevated command prompt window again and navigate to the UpdaterDisabler directory.

1. Run the command updaterdisabler.exe -remove

The program echoes steps of the process that indicate that the service is stopped and then removed.

To verify that this is indeed the case, check Services. The service should not be listed there anymore. Also, you will notice that update checks are working again just like they did before.

Closing Words

Updater Disabler requires more testing on many more devices. It did work well during tests, but it is highly suggested you back up important data before you run the software.

Anyway, the program offers another option to block Windows Update from doing its job. If you prefer to wait days, weeks or months before you install released updates, this is an reliable option to achieve that.

You can download the program from WinAero, but it has been published originally on the My Digital Life forum.

Ghacks needs you. You can find out how to support us here or support the site directly by becoming a Patreon. Thank you for being a Ghacks reader.

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Windows: A Sharper Scaling is a single-purpose app that increases the size of an image while preserving an impressive amount of detail. Compared to conventional image upscaling methods, A Sharper Scaling almost pulls off a magic trick.

Read more...

Android: One of Android’s claims-to-fame is true multitasking. Pintasking is perhaps the best example of this, letting you seamlessly switch between apps in a way that I wish came built into Android.

Read more...

Chrome: Amazon Prime customers can save an unlimited amount of photos to Amazon Cloud Drive , which makes it a good spot for images. With the Save to Cloud Drive Chrome Extension, you can save any image to Amazon with a right-click.

Read more...

Daala is the codename for a video compression technology project that Mozilla is working on in collaboration with Xiph.org. It is one of many research projects at Mozilla that could shape the future of the Web in significant ways.

Mozilla revealed Daala back in mid-2013 and has been working on the video compression technology ever since.

Mozilla and Xiph published blog posts recently with information about the progress made in 2014.

The team spend time on improving still image coding, the building of tools to evaluate performance against other codecs and video performance in general.

You can test the still image quality of Daala on the Xiph website. There you can compare it with other popular codecs using a slider that you move with your mouse.

You can use the test to compare Daala with JPEG, VP8, VP9, x264, x265 and the original image. The smaller sample image used on the main site is not ideal though and you find the full resolution image and others on this.

While still not perfect, as size information are not provided for example, it is easier to notice differences in quality. There you can also load other test images.

The project team is aware that Daala's quality needs to be improved to surpass HEVC which offers the best quality currently.

Below is a quick demo that characterizes the difference in the codecs. As you move the slider back and forth, especially notice how the details change in the trees, sky, and sand. Daala preserves texture well like JPEG, but doesn't suffer from JPEG's blocking artifacts. VP8 avoids blocking artifacts, but blurs all but the strongest edges and textures. H.264 makes an especially strong showing in this image, though it oversharpens fine edges while losing lower contrast edges and texture. Daala and HEVC are the most visually similar, with consistent treatment of features across the image. HEVC is still the clear winner for now, though that's not to say HEVC is flawless; oddly, it manages to 'trim' the trees shorter in the background! Currently, Daala's primary fault is ringing, which also impacts overall coding efficiency.

The main page holds another interesting option: it allows you to upload an image of your own selection to compare it to the Daala version.

A slider is provided that you can use to change the quality of the Daala image. The size of the resulting image is displayed on the screen as well which you can compare to the size of the original image.

It is unfortunate that source and destination image are not displayed on the screen at the same time as it would make the comparison easier.

Still, it can be used to compare the output size and quality of popular image formats used on today's Internet with the current Daala implementation.

The post Check out the image quality of Mozilla’s Daala codec right now appeared first on gHacks Technology News.