Tomato-based pasta sauce can either be incredibly simple or very involved. Whether you're making Marcella Hazan's three-ingredient sauce or a loaded-up bolognese, it's all about creating that perfect balance of flavours. Tasting, tweaking and tasting again is key, as is having a little lineup of extras you can toss in to bring that special something.

Windows 10's interface is pretty slick, but if you're not a fan of bright colours on your screen, it might be a little hard on the eyes. You can switch to a darker theme for many system apps with a little tweak.

If you're shelling out hard-earned cash on a laptop, then you want to make sure you get years of service out of it. Some wear and tear (both physical and digital) is inevitable along the way, but if you take good care of your machine you can keep it running smoothly for longer -- just like a well-maintained car or bicycle. Here are four tips and tweaks that will extend the life of any laptop.

If you're planning on settling in for a weekend movie night over the next few days, you want to make sure that you're not having to change the volume every minute as the scenes change between quiet dialogue and REALLY LOUD action sequences. Here's how to fix that problem in a few different ways.

The new volume slider in Windows 10 is pretty, but if you're hankering for the old look or that handy link to the full Mixer, you can get the old one back with just a bit of Registry hacking.

Windows isn't huge on the eye candy these days, but it still contains a lot of superfluous animations. Here's how to turn them off.

Once upon a time, iOS "just worked" out of the box. But over the years, Apple's introduced all kinds of features to iOS that most of us don't want to use. I've been an iOS user since the start, and for the first time recently decided to do a clean install instead of loading my settings from a backup. I forgot how many default settings I had to change just to make iOS useable

OneDrive comes installed with Windows 10 and is enabled by default if you sign on with a Microsoft account. If you don't use OneDrive, however, and you don't want it running in the background, there are some hoops you can jump through to disable it or get rid of it everywhere in Windows 10.

Like previous versions of Windows, File Explorer has a space-wasting OneDrive icon in the left sidebar. If you don't use OneDrive, you can remove this icon with a simple registry tweak.

With Windows 10, settings are split between the Control Panel and the Settings app. If you'd like an all-inclusive starting point for Windows commands, enable God Mode.

If your Windows chops extend in any capacity beyond novice, you've no doubt encountered the ever-cryptic Windows Registry, DLL files, User Account Control and other tools with seemingly dark and mysterious powers. Here, we'll explain some of Windows' most confusing features, so you know exactly what's happening when you go to edit them.

Windows 10 resolves a lot of the annoyances left over from Windows 8, but it also comes with a few of its own -- minor as most of them may be. Here's how to tweak a few of the OS's new features and fix its little quirks.

If you type out an old emoticon like :) into OS X, a lot of apps will autocorrect that to an emoji. If you're not a fan of this behaviour and prefer to keep the older emoticons around, all you need to do is change a toggle in the app.

The newest version of Chrome features a fancy new bookmark manager and interface that's all about thumbnails. If you're not a fan of that snazz, Techdows points to a flag you can switch to get the old interface back.

Yosemite's new look is great on new Macs, but older Macs struggle with some of animations, especially when pulling up Exposé. iDownloadBlog talked with a Genius at the Apple Store who suggests turning on "Increase contrast" to speed up those animations.

HDTVs come with all kinds of advanced settings designed to "improve" the picture, but most of them are just marketing gimmicks. In fact, your picture will actually look better with some of them off. Here are some of the settings you'll find in the advanced menu, and what you should do with them.

When you resize a window in OS X, there's a nice little animation that shows the window expanding. If you don't like this animation (or it's just choppy and slow on your older Mac), OS X Daily shows us how to turn it off and make the resize instant.

Now that we've had some time to hang out with the iOS 8 jailbreak, new apps and tweaks are coming out made specifically for the new operating system. Let's take a look at the best.

Not every app has a Settings menu that's easily accessible. Sometimes, developers hide away debug menus, secret settings and more. With them, you can unlock additional features or just get some crazy stats. Let's take a look at some of the most useful among them.