How to Change the Color of Lights in the Home App for iPhone and iPad

You can do all kinds of great things to make your home look, sound, and feel just how you like with the Home app. If your home has color-changing light bulbs, here’s how to pick the right color for your mood.

After a somewhat slow start, HomeKit is starting to show some of the promise we always knew it had. Its logo is now starting to crop up on the boxes for smart home products from many manufacturers both large and small. That’s great for consumers, but smart homes can be costly. Smart bulbs are a great way to get started without breaking the bank.

Because HomeKit ties into your light bulbs at a deep level, you can use the Home app on your iPhone or iPad to control not just whether the light is on or off, but also what color it is, too.

Using the Home app to Change the Color of Your Lights

To start, open the Home app and locate the light that you want to interact with. If you just want to turn the light on or off, tap it. If you want to change the color, tap and hold, and then choose the “Color” option at the bottom.

 

The next screen shows a collection of color options, but if you’d prefer more fine-grained control over the color, tap the “Edit” button.

There are now two options to choose from, both at the bottom of the screen. If you’d like to select a color temperature, tap “Temperature.” If you’d rather select a color, tap “Color.” Either option will show a color wheel that can be tapped to select a new color.

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How To Use YouTube’s New Creator Studio

YouTube’s new Creator Studio has left beta and is now set the default studio for all users. It’s laid out much differently and has a lot more features and analytics for you to peruse.

The Dashboard

The dashboard isn’t too useful in its current state. Right now, it just shows how well your latest video is doing, as well as an overview of your channel is doing. There are more cards for YouTube news and its Creator Insider newsletter, which feels like it’s just taking up space.

Hopefully, YouTube will add more cards and the ability to customize the dashboard in the future. Until then, you’ll likely want to move further down the sidebar to find anything useful.

The New Analytics Page

Perhaps the biggest and best change in the new studio, the Analytics page is a significant upgrade from the awful analytics YouTube used to have. The old analytics were not very detailed and took a day or two to update. The new analytics update mostly in real time, faster than the video’s view count. Anything that isn’t real-time updates by the hour, except for revenue which usually takes a day to figure itself out.

The overview page is the first thing you’ll see. This shows basic stats about your channel in a graph over time. The default period is “Last 28 Days,” but you can change the timeframe from the menu in the top right corner.

The graph itself is split into four tabs, which you can switch between as you choose. All of the other analytics pages are laid out the same way, with multiple graphs about each topic. You can also hover over the graph to view the specific stats for that day.

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Geek Trivia: For Their April Fool’s Day Prank In 1965, The BBC Claimed They Could Wirelessly Transmit What?

For Their April Fool’s Day Prank In 1965, The BBC Claimed They Could Wirelessly Transmit What?

Beatles' Concert Tickets Candy Smells Shillings Think you know the answer?

What’s the Best Way to Back Up My Computer?

Everyone loses data at some point in their lives. Your computer’s hard drive could fail tomorrow, ransomware could hold your files hostage, or a software bug could delete your important files. If you’re not regularly backing up your computer, you could lose those files forever.

Backups don’t have to be hard or confusing, though. You’ve probably heard about countless different backup methods, but which one is right for you? And what files do you really need to back up?

It’s All About Your Personal Data

Let’s start with the obvious: what do you need back up? Well, first and foremost, you need to back up your personal files. You can always reinstall your operating system and redownload your programs if your hard drive fails, but your own personal data is irreplaceable.

Any personal documents, photos, home videos, and any other data on your computer should be backed up regularly. Those can never be replaced. If you’ve spent hours painstakingly ripping audio CDs or video DVDs, you may want to back those files up, too, so you don’t have to do all that work over again.

Your operating system, programs, and other settings can also be backed up. You don’t have to back them up, necessarily, but it can make your life easier if your entire hard drive fails. If you’re the type of person that likes to play around with system files, edit the registry, and regularly update your hardware, having a full system backup may save you time when things go wrong.

The Many Ways to Back Up Your Files

There are many ways to back up your data, from using an external drive to backing up those files on a remote server over the Internet. Here are the strengths and weaknesses of each:

• Back Up to an External Drive: If you have an external USB hard drive, you can just back up to that drive using your computer’s built-in backup features. On Windows 10 and 8, use File History. On Windows 7, use Windows Backup. On Macs, use Time Machine. Occasionally connect the drive to the computer and use the backup tool, or leave it plugged in whenever your home and it’ll back up automatically. Pros: Backing up is cheap and fast. Cons: If your house gets robbed or catches on fire, your backup can be lost along with your computer, which is very bad.

• Back Up Over the Internet: If you want to ensure your files stay safe, you can back them up to the internet with a service like Backblaze. Backblaze is the well-known online backup service we like and recommend since CrashPlan no longer serves home users, but there are also competitors like Carbonite and MozyHome. For a low monthly fee (about $5 a month), these programs run in the background on your PC or Mac, automatically backing up your files to the service’s web storage. If you ever lose those files and need them again, you can restore them. Pros: Online backup protects you against any type of data loss–hard drive failure, theft, natural disasters, and everything in between. Cons: These services usually cost money (see the next section for more details), and the initial backup can take much longer than it would on an external drive–especially if you have a lot of files.

• Use a Cloud Storage Service: Backup purists will say this isn’t technically a backup method, but for most people, it serves a similar enough purpose. Rather than just storing your files on your computer’s hard drive, you can store them on a service like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or a similar cloud storage service. They’ll then automatically sync to your online account and to your other PCs. If your hard drive dies, you’ll still have the copies of the files stored online and on your other computers. Pros: This method is easy, fast, and in many cases, free, and since it’s online, it protects you against all types of data loss. Cons: Most cloud services only offer a few gigabytes of space for free, so this only works if you have a small number of files you want to back up, or if you’re willing to pay for extra storage. Depending on the files you want to back up, this method can either be simpler or more complicated than a straight-up backup program.

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