Like an operating system reinstall, resetting your web browser can fix all kinds of problems and improve performance at the same time — squash annoying bugs, clear out dodgy and outdated extensions and get a browser that's good as new with a hard reset. Here's how to carry it out on all the major browsers.

Android/iOS: I have a reasonable but not overwhelming amount of media: Mostly books, followed by video games, followed by some collectable vinyls and CDs that I keep around. I also have friends who have rooms full of stuff: Stacks of books and floor-to-ceiling bookcases that are nearly bursting from overuse.

All of us could benefit from checking out Libib, a free service you can use to scan and catalogue your books, movies, music and video games.

Chrome wasn't the only browser to get a visual overhaul this week, because the privacy-focused Tor Browser was also given a new lick of paint, as well as a host of under-the-hood upgrades, and refinements to make it easier to use for newcomers. There are now more reasons than ever to make Tor your daily browser of choice.

Chrome fans might have noticed a little change in their browsers today. Assuming you’re running Chrome’s latest iteration, version 68, you’ll now see a big “not secure” button in the address bar whenever you pull up a website that starts with http:// instead of https://. (For what it’s worth, I’m using Chrome version 67.0.3396.99, and it pops up there, too, whenever a page has a data entry field.)

Sometimes, the best and only way to unwind is to pop open a bottle (or can) of your favourite beverage, dim the lights a little bit (or light up a candle or two or 20), and fire up some Bob Ross videos.

Browser cookies are useful in some instances; unpleasant in others. While they can save you from having to go through a complicated authentication process whenever you're trying to access your favourite sites, they can also store data on what you've done on a particular website -- which can then be used to serve you more "relevant" advertising at a future point.

All the cool services are getting data dumps - that little link you click somewhere in a settings menu that triggers the service to send you all the data it collects from you (and everything you've used it to do, theoretically).

Suppose you're trying to troubleshoot a family member's computer, you want to show a friend some issue you're having with your system, or you want to make a quick recording of some crazy thing you're about to do in a game. With the Chrome extension Loom, it's incredibly easy to capture and share a quick recording of your screen right from of your browser.

Google's latest update to Chrome came with big changes about how the browser treats autoplaying videos, but it's now causing a lot of audio issues with various web apps and games.

If you want to find some jams that were popular in Canada in the 1950s to kick off your weekend - or just want a random assortment of trending songs by era and location - the website Radiooooo is a great interactive trip.

Big fans of the cloud as we are, there's no doubt relying solely on keeping your stuff stored remotely is a risky strategy. Accounts get hacked. Companies fold. And if you don't have backups of your most precious Snapchats and Gmails, then they can disappear in a puff of data center smoke. Here's how to make sure you've got local copies of everything.

These are troubled times for SoundCloud, with staff lay offs, changing CEOs, and talk of emergency investment securing its future for the time being. As with any service that's looking shaky, users will be (and should be) worried about getting their stuff out -- you may have years of playlists, uploads, and podcasts collected on the service. Here's how to get all that audio and data into safer locales.

If your efforts to track down long-lost relatives and obscure musicians (or anyone else you're looking for on the web) stop at Googling their name, you've come to the right place. Here's how to seriously go about searching for people online, including some advice from the professionals who do it for a living. Oh, and if you'd rather not be found yourself, than read on to understand exactly how the pros go about finding those who'd prefer to stay hidden.

You may attempt to obfuscate your browsing by creating random noise. Sadly, that isn't going to do much.

Google Photos is getting a tweak that will automatically adjust the white balance on your photos. While this seems small, it can significantly improve your yellowish indoor shots.

Web/iOS: Travel planning typically includes a lot of research. When you're planning a trip with stops in different cities, the research can be even more time-consuming. Eightydays can help.

Google's Chrome browser has a neat history erase tool that lets you blitz your browsing logs from the last hour, day, week or month -- or from the beginning of time. However, that history can be useful to search back through, and if you only want to exorcise one site from Chrome's memory, here's how to do it.

Google Photos is pretty killer for managing all your photos, but it sure would be nice if you could share entire albums, right? Now you can. Better yet, you can even choose to let other people submit their own pictures to a shared album.

Running a home web server and need to lock it up? Want to set up standard hosting for multiple sub-domains? Don't worry about tinkering with Apache server's arcane .htaccess file, just tell the .htaccess Editor webapp what you're looking for. The site's interface is a good deal better than many of its ilk, meaning you can usually guess what it's asking for and why. For budding web tinkerers and those with their own storage space, .htaccess Editor is a time-saving tool worth checking out.