Perhaps receiving a kick in the pants from Apple with its new dark theme for macOS, Microsoft has added its own take for Windows 10's File Explorer, as part of a recent Insider build.

Nothing kills typos faster than predictive text. Just think of how often you go about your day, texting away, using your smartphone's built-in capabilities to predict the big words you're trying to type before you finish them. If you're good, you can compose a decent thought without ever hitting an actual letter. So, why can't you do this on your PC, too?

h264ify is a Chrome extension that's been around for a while. What it does is force YouTube to play videos using the h264 codec, rather than VP9, as the former has wider hardware acceleration support. Unfortunately, if you're still on Windows 7 or 8.1 and use Chrome, it doesn't matter if you bought your GPU yesterday — VP9 won't be hardware-accelerated in Chrome.

The Lifehacker staff sifts through a ton of apps on a regular basis, but a few have stuck with us over the years. Some apps are simply nice to have, while others have become essential in our daily lives. From dealing with irate dragons to counting our mindfulness minutes, each app on this list has a special place in our hearts (and our homescreens). Best of all, they're completely free to download!

There are so many Windows apps out there, that picking a list of the very best, most must-install software for your desktop or laptop feels daunting. We've pored over pages of recommendations, countless forum posts, and lots of comments to come up with this year's Lifehacker Pack for Windows, a list of software champions across four categories: productivity, internet/communications, music/photos/video and utilities.

It's been a long, long time since we talked about the Windows app Sizer, recently rewritten to be more compatible with Windows 10 apps. It's almost embarrassing given the usefulness of this little utility. With the press of a few keyboard buttons, you can reconfigure the size of apps on your screen to any dimensions you want, giving you even more control over how your apps appear than Windows 10's default commands.

Most audio receivers worth their salt come with a tiny microphone that you can use to automatically calibrate your speakers to your room’s specific setup. Easy.

Every week at Lifehacker, we highlight the best new apps and browser extensions that can do something awesome for your devices (or life). If you took an Internet-free sabbatical or went on vacation for a week, you probably missed some gems.

"If you rename a .docx file to .zip you can open it", tweets SwiftOnSecurity, the security professional/Taylor Swift parody account. Then you can grab images and video that were embedded in the document, all as separate files. Swift's followers have more great tips for rescuing data from different file formats. For example, you can use Swift's method to open a corrupted DOCX file.

Windows, Mac: You probably have a few websites that you use all the time — perhaps a special CMS you need for work, a time-tracking site you use to track and bill hours for clients, or a web game you just can’t get enough of. If you’re tired of pulling up your browser each time you need to access it, you have an alternative: Transform it into an app.

Vista was bad. Coming five years after XP, it was heavily anticipated by Windows users who were impatiently awaiting something interesting from Microsoft as Apple's star was on the rise. Yet when the OS dropped publicly in January 2007, it was immediately reviled by, well, everyone (except our expert reviewers).

Windows: When Microsoft debuted its new “Timeline” feature in the Windows 10 April 2018 update, I was a bit bummed to find that this feature — which you can use to see what you were up to on any given day — isn’t very helpful unless you’re using the Edge browser.

Windows: The phrase “package manager” sounds a bit ominous, but if you’re smart, you’ve already used one to outfit your Windows PC with all the basics: Ninite. The site couldn’t be any simpler. You pick the programs you want, it creates one installation file for everything, and double-clicking on it installs everything you selected at once.

You’re typing an email, you paste in some text from a Word doc and suddenly half your email is a different font. Or you paste a headline into a Google doc and it shows up in giant 48pt text. This annoying paste behaviour is the default in most Windows, macOS and web apps. In outgoing docs and emails, it makes you look sloppy. Here’s how to fix it.

With Windows 10, Microsoft has slowly been working towards a more streamlined way of sending updates to users (when it's not forcing them down your throat). To this end, by February 2019, "express" patches will be the dominant update method.

If you've spent any time around Apple products, you know that "compatibility with hardware made by rival manufacturers" isn't high up on the company's priority list. But using your iPhone with a Windows PC can be a smoother experience than you might think.

If you own a phone or a computer (and we're assuming you do) there are bugs and annoyances that you just have to learn to live with. On the flip side, there are also problems that hint at something much more serious going on with your device-issues you shouldn't learn to live with, but should address at the earliest opportunity.

Windows: Even if you're the world's biggest Microsoft fan, you have to admit that Apple's "Quick Look" feature for macOS is pretty convenient.

If you're such a purist that you haven't even touched a Mac in the last decade or so, here's a brief introduction: You click on a file. You press the space bar. A preview of the item pops up - such as a photograph, the contents of a PDF, and so on.

It's a great way to take, well, a quick peek at something without wasting time loading an actual app.

You probably spend more time than you realise copying, moving, renaming, and otherwise organising files on your Windows hard drive — so knowing how to do all of this faster and smarter can claw back a serious amount of time. Here are 20 of our favourite hacks and tricks for mastering File Explorer and file management in Windows.