From The Tips Box: Paper Towel Dispensers, Firefox Downloads

Lifehacker readers offer their best tips for using automatic paper towel dispensers, bringing back the old Firefox Downloads window, and a handy gesture in iOS.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using the contact tab on the right.

Get Better Control Over an Automatic Paper Towel Dispenser

Platypus Man avoids wasting paper towels:

Okay, so maybe I’m just behind the times, but I recently discovered something interesting. In my office we use the automatic paper towel dispensers in the bathroom. Unfortunately, one paper towel usually isn’t enough to fully dry my hands, but two is too much. At least here, I’ve found that giving the paper towel a very slight tug as it’s coming out stops it from dispensing any further, so you can get as much smaller than a regular towel as you want.

Picture: Nick Gray/Flickr

Get Firefox’s Old Download Manager Back

Vampyrbyte discovers a trick to get a real Downloads window back:

Firefox recently updated their download manager. You can get the old manager window back by changing browser.download.useToolkitUI to true in about:config.

Re-Lock Your iOS Screen After Using the Camera

Iamdesi shares a handy gesture for iOS users:

iOS: Some people (like me) prefer to shoot photos from the lock screen using the camera icon. It’s quick and easy; you just gesture to open camera from lock screen is swipe up holding the camera icon.

Now the tip: To re-lock the phone, you can use the same thumb to lock the iOS device, by swiping down from the top of the screen with camera open (just like you do for notifications) and wham! The phone is locked!

You could, of course, use the lock button on the top, but you already have your thumb out for opening the camera and shooting photos, so this is faster.