Vickipinz

circular avatar of my fursona, a grey fox girl with pink eyes and dark grey hair, over a red background

Digital notes

A work-in-progress computer survival guide.

See also

Clean your downloads folder

The Downloads folder is likely what's taking up your whole disk. It's probably full of installers for programs you've already installed, go ahead and delete those. You can also use a tool like WizTree to see which folders and files take up the most space.

Your Desktop/Documents folder is likely syncing to OneDrive/iCloud by default

Apple and Microsoft want to upsell you on cloud storage subscriptions, so upon setting up your device these folders are automatically set up to sync to OneDrive/iCloud. These folders grow far too quickly and have no place in the cloud, especially Documents.

I recommend looking up how to disable this, as you may not even realize it's enabled. You can still use iCloud and OneDrive without syncing these folders, and instead copy things you want to backup into those drives manually.

"This page looks better in the app"

Why does every website say this? Because you can't block ads in the app. You don't need the apps for Google, YouTube, or Twitter because the website exists and you can block ads when using a browser. Using apps also takes up storage and drains battery in the background. Are push notifications worth it?

Most companies are lazy and use the same code for both the app and the website, anyway.

Block web ads on iOS

Every iOS browser is just a Safari skin except without extension support, so delete that shit and use Safari. You can then use 1Blocker or AdGuard to block ads. Additionally, you can add Userscripts for additional extensibility such as this Twitter unfucker.

Block web ads on Android

Since Chrome for Android doesn't support extensions and Firefox for Android is very unreliable, you'll have to use some kind of Chrome fork. You'll find a more up-to-date list on this page.