5 Hidden Tips and Tricks for Google Chrome On Android

Google Chrome comes as a default browser installed on most Android phones. It is fast, responsive and comes with all the basic features. The only thing it lacks is extensions which are available on Mozilla Firefox Android app.

Android app of Google Chrome has few hidden tricks up its sleeve that can enhance user experience. These are accessible from Settings within the app and through Chrome Flags.

What are Chrome Flags?

Chrome Flags are hidden experimental settings in Android that will allow you to fine-tune your browser. You can try new features in Chrome while they are still in development or are unstable. It opens up a lot of possibilities both in desktop and mobile browsers by allowing you to change default settings.

However, Chrome wiki mentions that these experimental features may change, disappear or stop working at any time. Also, tweaking with unknown settings may compromise your device’s security.

If you find that your browser is crashing down or showing unexpected behavior after you have tempered with Flags, just go to app settings and clear data for Chrome. This will reset Chrome to its earlier state.

Also read: 8 Google Easter Eggs And Fun Tricks That You’d Love to Know

5 Hidden Tips And Tricks for Chrome On Android

1. Move the Address Bar to bottom

Are you not finding it convenient to access the Chrome address bar on your large screen device? Did you know you can change it? This hidden Google Chrome feature can be tweaked easily.

• In your address bar type “chrome://flags” without the quotes.

• Tap on the 3-dot-menu on the upper right corner of your browser and tap on Find in page.

• In the search bar that appears, type “Chrome Home.”

• You’ll notice that Chrome Home is highlighted in red.
• Tap on the tab marked Default below it and set it to Enabled.

• You will see a “Relaunch Now” pop-up. Tap on it. You may have to manually relaunch once again for changes to take effect.

After you relaunch, you will notice that the address bar is now shown on the bottom of the screen.

2. Experience faster browsing speeds.

You can speed up Chrome on Android by enabling QUIC protocol. ‘QUIC’ stands for Quick UDP Internet Connection and is an experimental process. QUIC operates over UDP and is much lower latency than TCP.

• Type “chrome://flags” without the quotes in your address bar.
• Search or scroll down to Experimental QUIC protocol.

• Set it to Enabled.

With QUIC, Google says that mean page load times improve by about 3%. Also, users who used Youtube via QUIC reported having suffered from 30% fewer rebuffers.

3. Always ON Reader Mode

Websites loaded with ads and many banners can distract you and make it inconvenient to read content. That’s when Chrome’s Reader Mode comes into play. It strips off all other elements from a page except the content. Typically, a “Make page mobile-friendly” button is shown on some websites and clicking on it will highlight the content.

• On the flags screen, search or scroll down to Reader Mode triggering.

• Change it to Always, if you want to force every website to display content in Reader Mode.

4. Switch tabs in a compact way

There is a nifty trick for Chrome on Android to switch tabs. Chrome displays tabs like cards stacked over each other. In a scenario when many tabs are open, you may need a considerable amount of time in finding and switching to a tab. “Accessibility Tab Switcher” flag allows a user to switch tabs compactly by displaying only the names of tabs organized as a list.

• Search or scroll down to Accessibility Tab Switcher and tap on Enable beneath it.

• Then tap Relaunch Now.

You will notice that you can now visualize tabs more clearly without a preview of the content.

5. Enable Zooming on any website

Not all websites allow you to zoom in on their content. This can be frustrating when you have to tap on links or copy some text. Thankfully, Chrome on Android has a hidden trick to override this problem.

• Tap on the 3-dot menu and tap on Settings from the drop-down menu.
• Tap on Accessibility.

• Check the option Force Enable Zoom.

Did you find these hidden tips and tricks

How To Repair Corrupted Pen Drive or SD Card In Simple Steps?

Short Bytes: In this article, I am going to tell you about various methods which will help you to repair your corrupted SD card or Pen drive. Very often we face this problem of a corrupted storage device, and using few CMD commands you can perform the fix. If command prompt isn’t your thing, you can also attempt USB drive repair using Windows Explorer.

Dealing with a corrupted SD card or pen drive is a tedious task. We spend hours to get back our storage into working condition but get nothing. You might have seen online forums full of questions like “My pen drive is corrupted” or “My SD card is not working.” This article comprises of various methods which will help you repair your corrupted pen drive or SD card.

For SD card, you will have to insert it into the slot provided in your computer or by using a card reader. Use an adapter, if you have a microSD card. It will not work if you connect some device having the SD card like a smartphone or a camera. For attempting pen drive repair, you don’t need any such accessory. Check out these different methods.

Different methods to repair corrupted pen drive or SD card:

Change the drive letter

Sometimes your computer is unable to assign drive letters (like C, D, E) to your storage media. Due to this reason, the files on it can’t be accessed. To resolve this issue, you can assign the drive letter to your device.

Here are the simple steps to fix the corrupted pen drive or memory card by assigning a correct drive letter:

1. Connect your storage media to your computer.
2. Right Click on My Computer/This PC. Click Manage in the drop down menu.
3. Click Disk Management in the left side and wait for a few seconds so that Windows can load the Virtual disk service.
4. Right Click on your storage media and click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click the drive letter (it will turn blue) and click Change.
6. Select the drive letter from the drop-down list. Click Ok.

Try to use it on another PC

Maybe the issue is specifically on your PC and that’s why you are finding trouble in running the USB flash drive. Try connecting your SD card or pen drive to another computer. Hopefully, it may work and you’ll be able to backup your data from it.

Reinstall the drivers

There are times when the drivers that run your pen drive get corrupted and our PC will not be able to detect your storage media. You can reinstall drivers by these simple steps:

1. Right click My Computer/ This PC. Click Manage.
2. Click Device Manager on the left side.
3. Double-Click Disk Drives in the list. Right Click on the name of your pen drive.
4. Click Uninstall. Click Ok.
5. Disconnect your storage media and restart your PC.
6. Connect your pen drive again. Your PC will detect it.

Also Read: Speed Up Internet Using CMD (Command Prompt)

Repair corrupted SD card or Pen Drive using Windows Explorer

This is the most commonly used procedure to repair a connected storage media to your computer.

1. Open My Computer or This PC.
2. Select the corrupted drive and Right Click.
3. Click Format in the drop-down menu.
4. Click Restore Device Defaults in the popup window.
5. Click Start to begin the format process. You can uncheck the Quick format option if you want the computer to deep scan the drive/card for errors but this will take time. So, uncheck it only if you fail in the first attempt.
6. Click Ok in the next dialog box which will warn you that the data will be lost. The format process will complete in a few moments, and you will have your error-free SD card or pen drive.

Repair corrupted Pen Drive or SD card using CMD

This process involves Windows command prompt which is commonly known as CMD. In this, you have to enter some CMD commands and Windows will forcefully format your corrupted pen drive/SD card.

1. Connect the corrupted pen drive or SD card to your computer.
2. Hover your mouse on the Start button and Right Click.
3. Click Command Prompt (Admin). A CMD window will open.
4. Type diskpart and press Enter.
5. Type list disk and press Enter. A list of all the storage devices connected to your computer will be displayed.
6. Type select disk <the number of your disk> and press Enter. (Example: select disk 1). Important: Make sure you enter the number correctly. Otherwise, you may format your internal hard drive. You can type list disk again to check whether you are going correctly. There will be a star (asterisk symbol) before the name of the selected disk.
7. Type clean and press Enter.
8. Type create partition primary and hit Enter.
9. Type active.
10. Type select partition 1.
11. Type format fs=fat32 and press Enter. The format process will finish in a few minutes. You can write NTFS instead of fat32 if you want to carry files larger than 4 gigabytes. Don’t close the CMD until the work is finished.

SD card and USB drive repair by removing bad sectors

Our storage devices store data in different sectors. Due to different reasons, these sectors become unusable, giving rise to bad sectors. By using some steps and running simple commands, you can perform a USB drive repair. Read more about it here in detail.

Recover your lost data

You can use Sandisk Rescue Pro to recover your data in case you have deleted your files or formatted your SD card/Pen Drive by mistake. The SD card needs to be in working condition to perform the recovery process. Other notable data recovery software is Recuva by Piriform. For more information on data recovery, check out our list of the top data recovery software.

Tools provided by pen drive and SD card makers

You might not be aware but many storage device makers like SanDisk, Kingston, Samsung, Sony, etc. provide their own low-level utilities for formatting and other repair purposes. You can find these tools by visiting the websites of the device makers or by contacting their support. In my own personal experience, such alternative SD card and USB drive repair methods have turned out to be more useful.

A little advice

There are chances that the warranty of your corrupted USB drive or SD card is still valid. So, if your storage device is giving you problems again and again, it’s advisable to invest some effort and go for a refund or replacement. I’m recommending this as it’s not worth putting your faith in a USB drive that’s showing signs of unreliability again and again.

Note: Please note that the SD card and USB repair methods described above are general ways to fix a device. Due to some device-specific issues, there could be cases when these steps might not be useful.

Just in case you’re looking for methods to repair corrupted hard drive as well, you can follow our hard drive repair guide.

Do you know any other method to repair corrupted pen drives? Let us know in comments below.

8 Best WiFi Hacking Software And Analysis Tools You Should Use In 2018

ecurity analysis and penetration testing is an integral part of creating any kind of secure network. This brings us to the WiFi hacking software that could be used for ethically testing a wireless network and make amends. In the past, we’ve already covered the top wireless security apps for Android and now it’s the turn of such tools for your PC. In case you’re looking for a more diverse collection of tools (not for just wireless analysis), you can refer to another list.

Important: Trying to tamper someone’s wireless or ethernet network without prior permission is a criminal offense. This list has been prepared for educational purposes and you’re advised to test these software on the device you own.

Top WiFi hacking tools for your Windows/Linux/Mac device

1. AirCrack

If you have a basic knowledge of ethical hacking or you’re interested to make a career in this field, chances are that you might have heard of AirCrack. Written in C language, this WiFi hacking software is a combination of lots of tools to access the security of a WiFi network. The different tools available as a part of the AirCrack suite can be used for tasks like monitoring, attacking, pen testing, and cracking. With the Aircrack-ng software, you can crack 802.11 WEP and WPA-PSK keys after capturing enough data packets. To make the attack faster and efficient, standard FMS attack, KoreK attack, and new PTW attack are implemented.

This cross-platform, command line tool is available for Linux, Windows, OS X, Windows, and BSD platforms.

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2. Cain and Abel

In case you’re looking for a password recovery tool specifically for Microsoft’s Windows operating system, look no further than Cain and Abel. Named after the sons of Adam and Eve, this tool recovers the passwords using different methods like network packet sniffing and performing attacks like brute force, dictionary attack, and cryptanalysis. That’s not all, using this Windows WiFi hacking software, you can record VoIP conversations, decode scrambled passwords, get caches data, and get hold of routing protocols for ethical hacking purposes. One of the new features added to this useful tool is ARP support for sniffing on switched LANs and MITM attacks.

As said above, Cain and Abel is available for different versions of Microsoft Windows operating system.

3. Fern WiFi Cracker

As the name suggests, Fern WiFi Cracker tool is meant for analyzing your network, finding the loopholes, and plugging them to ensure maximum security. Written in Python programming language, this ethical hacking program can run different network-based attacks on ethernet and wireless. Its major highlights are WEP/WPA/WPA2/WPS cracking, session hijacking, MITM attacks, brute force attacks, etc.

You can use Fern WiFi Cracker on any Linux machine with different dependencies mentioned on the project page.

4. Reaver

If you know the actual strength of your WiFi security, you can take some actual steps to make it more secure. That’s where Reaver comes into play. It’s an open source and free WiFi password finder software that can crack most of the current routers’ passwords. Reaver uses a brute force attack against WPS PIN and gets back WPA/WPA2 passphrases. In case you’re wondering about its efficiency, it can recover a plain text passphrase in 4-10 hours. In practical situations, you can get results even sooner.

Reaver can be installed on Linux distributions. This tool also comes preinstalled in many ethical hacking distros, including Kali Linux.

5. Wireshark

Wireshark is undoubtedly the most famous network protocol analyzer around. While it won’t directly help you in recovering the plaintext passphrases, it can help you sniff the packets in the best possible manner. This software gives you the power to inspect hundreds of protocols and get the best results with the help of live capture and offline analysis. Not just wireless, Wireshark can capture live data from Bluetooth, Ethernet, USB, Token Ring, FDDI, etc.

Wireshark tool is available for all major platforms, including Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, BSD, etc.

6. Infernal Twin

The #6 entry on our list of best WiFi hacking software has a very interesting name. Called Infernal Twin, it’s an automated tool that can be used for wireless pen-testing. You can use it to automate Evil Twin attack, which creates a fake WiFi access point to sniff wireless communications. By using this tool, one can eavesdrop users using phishing and run man-in-the-middle attacks to target the intended user. Using this WiFi password hacker tool, one can target WPA2/WEP/WPA security, wireless social engineering, automatic report generation, etc.

This GPLv3 licensed security tool, written in Python, can be installed on Linux distros and used for a network audit and pentesting.

7. Wifisher

Wifisher is a WiFi security tool that has gained popularity in recent years. It could be used by hackers for carrying out automated and customized phishing attacks to infect the victims or obtain credentials. Please note that Wifisher doesn’t use attacks like brute force; instead, as the name suggests, it relies on social engineering techniques. This is done by redirecting all HTTP requests after carrying out a MITM attack using KARMA or Evil Twin attack.

While Wifisher can be used by most of the Linux distros, Kali Linux is the officially supported OS and all the new features are supported on this platform.

8. Hashcat/oclHashcat

While Hashcat is known as the world’s fastest CPU-based password cracking tool, it can be used perfectly to brute force WPA/WPA2 security. Before doing that, you can use tools like Reaver to collect shared keys and decrypt hashes. In case you are willing to make the WiFi hacking faster, you can go for oclHashcat to use the modern GPUs. This tool can be used with or without a wordlist for cracking.

It’s a cross-platform tool that can be used on Linux, Windows, and macOS for fast password recovery.

Honorable mentions:

That’s not all. There are tons of other WiFi security tools that you can use and make sure that your network is secure. Some more notable tools are: Wifite, KisMac, Bluepot, coWPAtty, Ghost Phisher.

So, which WiFi Hacking Software are you going to use in 2018, let us know in the comment section below.

“The Future Of Coding Is No Coding At All” — Did GitHub CEO Predict Traditional Programming’s Death?

GitHub, also called “Facebook for Programmers,” has completed a decade this year. Today, it has become a go-to place for developers to share their code with others, indulge in collaborative approaches, etc. It’s now home to 24 million total users and 1.5 million organization.

At the company’s annual GitHub Universe user conference, company’s CEO Chris Wanstrath made his final keynote address on Wednesday. Earlier in August, he announced that he’d step down as company’s CEO as soon as a worthy replacement is found.

Also Read: 15 Top Programming Languages Used By Coders On GitHub

Future Of Coding: End of programming as we know it

The increased innovation in the field automation with the help of AI and machine learning has resulted in increasing tension in the traditional job markets. It’s a common perception that robots will steal our jobs and intelligent machines will ultimately rule the humanity.

Earlier this year, we told you about an artificial intelligence system created by Microsoft and the University of Cambridge researchers. Named DeepCoder, this system can write code after learning from a huge code database. Overall, whatever might be the final outcome, we also need to analyze the impact on programming world in the upcoming years.

Addressing the same issue, during the keynote, Wanstrath said that coding could also become another job for the advanced robots (Via: The Register).

“We think the future of coding is no coding at all,” he said. But how would change take place? Have AI techniques advanced so much?

He outlined the fact that people are writing lesser code as a lot of functionality now comes from libraries. Further down the road, people will write even lesser, thanks to machine learning and community expansion efforts. This will make software development process more mechanized and accessible.

In order to innovate at the same pace, GitHub is taking some steps on its end as well. The company has recently launched Dependency Graph to show packages and apps linked to a particular repository. It’ll tell a developer when the code relies on an insecure package.

In near future, we’ll surely witness more tools from leading organizations to help the developers automate their tasks and change the software development workflow.

Are you a developer? What are your views on future of coding automation? Whatever might be the final outcome, the demand for skilled coders isn’t fading anytime soon. Here are some programming courses for you:

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Kotlin Programming Language Will Surpass Java On Android Next Year

At Google I/O 2017, Google announced the newly added support for Kotlin programming language in Android, along with the existing languages Java and C++. As per the experts, Kotlin came as a breath of fresh air in Android development ecosystem to make “Android development faster and more fun. But, what about the numbers? How many developers are making a shift to Kotlin? Let’s find out.

Realm, a mobile development platform, has shared its latest edition of the quarterly report. This report offers useful insights of current mobile development ecosystem.

Will Kotlin surpass Java on Android?

In case you look at the major programming languages being used for mobile developments, you’ll find languages like Java, Swift, Objective-C, C#, JavaScript, and Kotlin. As you can see in the graph below, Swift is making strides at a faster pace and making Objective-C disappear. This wasn’t the case too long ago. Android is about to undergo a similar change.

Image: Realm.io

Since Google I/O 2017, Kotlin’s growth rate has entered into a new dimension. The percentage of developers learning and shifting to Kotlin is increasing as no one wants to be left behind.

In geographical terms, in Android ecosystem, Asia leads the pack. However, as the developers in Asian countries are more conservative in pursuing new technologies, this huge shift in Android development is expected to benefit the American developers in future.

The year of Kotlin: 2018

As per data, 20% of the apps built with Java before Google I/O are being built in Kotlin, which is a fast growth given the timeframe of 4-5 months.

“Kotlin may even change how Java is used on the server, too. In short, Android developers without Kotlin skills are at risk of being seen as dinosaurs very soon,” the report states. As per predictions, Kotlin will overtake Java in December 2018, which would be about 17 months after the official support announcement.

Why choose Kotlin? How to learn it?

As said above, Kotlin is expected to make Android development a faster process and make it fun. The language is interoperable with Java. A major benefit of Kotlin is the lesser number of lines of code. Its compiler can automatically infer types in variable declarations which can save time and improve productivity. You can read about major features of Kotlin in our dedicated “Why learn Kotlin” article.

There are tons of useful Kotlin courses available on the web. For instance, you can check out this cost-effective beginner course available on Udemy. Further, feel free to visit Fossbytes Academy and start learning with the help of following hand-picked Kotlin bundles at attractive discounts:

Parrot 3.9 “Intruder” Ethical Hacking Linux Distro Released With New Features — Download Here

In mid-October, The Parrot Project announced that it’s going to be releasing the latest Parrot Security 3.9 operating system for ethical hacking and penetration testing in the upcoming weeks. The team also released its beta release for testers. After the wait of a couple of weeks, the final Parrot 3.9 release is here.

While the official release announcement and release notes are nowhere to be seen on the website of Parrot OS, the team has made the announcement on their Facebook page. “Parrot 3.9 (codename intruder) is now available for download,” the team wrote.

Prior to that, in another announcement, the team revealed their plans to bring Firejail sandboxing “with additional AppArmor, SELinux and Tomoyo support on Parrot 3.9.”

As per Parrot Security 3.9 download page, its flagship edition is available on both 64-bit and 32-bit platform. Powered by Linux kernel 4.13, Parrot 3.9 is based on Debian 10 Buster. Out of the box, you get MATE 1.18 desktop environment.

Images: Parrot OS Facebook Page

The major software shipping with the OS are LibreOffice 5.4, Firefox 56, etc. The full version includes AnonSurf, TOR Browser, Cryptographic tolls, Security Pentesting tools, Digital Forensics Tools, Development Tools, Electrum Bitcoin wallet, Wine support, and UEFI support.

You can go ahead and follow this link to find the torrent and ISO links of various Parrot Security 3.9 versions. Give it a try and let us know your feedback.