UP
MENU

Digital Citizen

SEARCH

Personalization

How to personalize the operating system you’re using, the appearance of your apps, and their behavior, as well as other aspects of their functioning. In other words, how to make your computers, devices, gadgets, and all their apps look and work the way you want to.

How to disable the system beep sound in Windows

How to disable the system beep sound in Windows

When you press the wrong key on a Windows PC, when an error dialog pops up or when you use the volume control, you hear a beep. After doing this a couple of times, that beep can get quite annoying. Therefore, in this tutorial, we will show you how to disable the system beep sound in all modern versions of Windows, to make sure that
Introducing Windows 8.1: Group Shortcuts On The Start Screen & Name Them

Introducing Windows 8.1: Group Shortcuts On The Start Screen & Name Them

Organization is the key to productivity. Having important stuff you pinned on the Start screen scattered all over the place is not very efficient. Your favourite apps will be hard to find, especially if there's a large number of apps pinned on the Start screen. The best option for Windows 8.1 users is to group the items and label them properly. Besides the utility of
How To Clear Your Personal Information From Your Start Screen Tiles

How To Clear Your Personal Information From Your Start Screen Tiles

If you're a Windows 8.1 user, you surely noticed that some of the tiles pinned on your Start screen gather and display personal information like notifications with messages you receive from others, your meetings and to-dos, your personal pictures and so on. At some point, you may want to clean all that information so that others won't see it. In this guide we will show
How To Set Windows 8.1 To Display More Tiles On The Start Screen

How To Set Windows 8.1 To Display More Tiles On The Start Screen

If you have a high-definition tablet or hybrid with Windows 8.1, like the Surface Pro, you may want to have more tiles on the Start screen so that you don't have to scroll a lot in order to access all your main apps and desktop programs. Luckily, Windows 8.1 has a setting that allows you to do this. However, it is available only on devices
When Is Each Sound From A Windows Sound Scheme Played?

When Is Each Sound From A Windows Sound Scheme Played?

A few days ago, one of our readers asked us an interesting question: "is there a place where I can check when does a Windows sound play?". While we have shown how to customize the sound scheme in Windows, we did not talk about when each system sound is played. That's why we decided to answer this question and detail when each system sound is
How to Customize the Tiles Displayed on Your Windows 8.1 Start Screen

How to Customize the Tiles Displayed on Your Windows 8.1 Start Screen

The Start screen is an important concept in the Windows 8 operating systems. While it may have its share of issues, the principles behind it are good. Also, with each new version of Windows 8, the user experience has been improved. For example, in Windows 8.1 Update 1 Microsoft has further tweaked the way you customize the Start screen. Therefore we decided to share how
Introducing Windows 8.1: Change the Start Screen Wallpaper & Colors

Introducing Windows 8.1: Change the Start Screen Wallpaper & Colors

Windows 8.1 offers more personalization options than Windows 8 and Windows 7 do. One of the things that can be configured in more detail is the Start screen itself. For example, in Windows 8.1 you have more options for setting the wallpaper (background image), background and accent colors. You can even set it to use the same wallpaper as the Desktop, which changes every couple
How to Customize or Disable Search with Bing in Windows 8.1

How to Customize or Disable Search with Bing in Windows 8.1

As mentioned in many other articles, one of the biggest changes in Windows 8.1 is related to Search and its strong integration with Bing. In this operating system, Bing provides you with search suggestions and web results when performing any kind of search, directly from the Start screen. Some users will love this but will want to tweak the way it works while others will
Introducing Windows 8.1: How to Improve Your Privacy When Using Apps

Introducing Windows 8.1: How to Improve Your Privacy When Using Apps

Windows 8.1 brings many welcome changes, some of which have not been communicated very well by Microsoft. One of the lesser known changes is that Windows 8.1 has very good privacy controls for working with Windows Store apps. As you will see in this tutorial, these controls are detailed and really useful. If you want to set which apps use what data, then reading this
Introducing Windows 8.1: What are Quiet Hours & How to Configure Them?

Introducing Windows 8.1: What are Quiet Hours & How to Configure Them?

Windows 8.1 introduces a neat little feature, named Quiet Hours. As the name implies, quiet hours are an interval within the day when you don't want to be interrupted by notifications, by any Windows app, not even the Mail app. You can also set that, during those quiet hours, you won't even take calls through Skype. Here's where to find this feature in Windows 8.1
Where the Desktop & Lock Screen Wallpapers are Stored in Windows 8

Where the Desktop & Lock Screen Wallpapers are Stored in Windows 8

Where can you find the images used by Windows 8 as wallpapers for its default Desktop themes and for the Lock screen? It turns out that they are placed in the same folder and you can copy and paste the images from there with ease. Here's how: The Wallpapers Used by Windows 8 for the Desktop & the Lock Screen Windows 8 has three
Where are the Start Screen Patterns Located & How to Extract Them?

Where are the Start Screen Patterns Located & How to Extract Them?

I like some of the patterns used by Microsoft on Windows 8's Start screen and I thought I could be using them as Desktop wallpapers. But the problem is - where are they located? They are not stored in any of the usual locations used by Windows to store its Desktop wallpapers. It turns out that they are embedded in a special file and you
How to Configure the Windows 8 Apps Inside Which You Perform Searches

How to Configure the Windows 8 Apps Inside Which You Perform Searches

Performing searches in Windows 8 is fast and easy. One important difference versus Windows 7 is that you can perform searches inside Windows 8 apps, directly from the Start screen. You type a search term, select the app where you want to perform the search and the results are displayed inside that app. Pretty cool, isn't it? Also, you can configure the list of apps
Introducing Windows 8: Customize the Look of the Start & Lock Screens

Introducing Windows 8: Customize the Look of the Start & Lock Screens

Changing your Desktop wallpaper in Windows 8 is exactly the same procedure you've seen in Windows 7. While the choice to customize your Desktop is a given, Windows 8 goes farther than previous versions of Windows by giving you two more things to customize: the Lock Screen and Start screen. These settings aren't accessible by right-clicking the Desktop, which is what most new users will
How to Use Special Characters in Windows with Character Map

How to Use Special Characters in Windows with Character Map

What do you do when you have to insert special characters that can't be found on your keyboard? You use the Character Map tool found both in Windows 7 and Windows 8. It allows you to insert scientific notations, mathematical operators, currency symbols and characters from languages like Japanese Hiragana , Katakana, Korean Hanji and others. In this tutorial, I will show how to find
The Complete Guide to Pinning Everything to the Windows 8 Start Screen

The Complete Guide to Pinning Everything to the Windows 8 Start Screen

The new Start screen is by far the most controversial feature in Windows 8. Personally, I view it as a glorified full-screen app launcher, which makes it easy to start any app you want. But, until you see things my way, you will need to learn how it works, experiment and work with it for a while. To help you become productive, I would like
The Geeky Way of Personalizing Windows Themes

The Geeky Way of Personalizing Windows Themes

Did you know that, beyond the basic personalisation of Windows themes, there's a slightly more hidden but more powerful way to customize visual settings? With the help of the Window Color and Appearance window, you can change the background color used by certain applications, you can increase the size of the scroll bar or change the fonts used for menus. This tutorial will show how
Will Austin About His Trip to the Desktop of Millions

Will Austin About His Trip to the Desktop of Millions

One of the great things about Windows 7 is the fact that it has a very strong visual personality. It includes a very diverse set of wallpapers from a long list of visual artists. The funny thing is, the wallpapers which our team likes best are all created by one photographer. His name is Will Austin and we were very fortunate to have him as