Author: Martin Brinkmann

When I was young, I studied German, History and English at Essen University in Germany. I worked in computer support for several years at the time to help other computer users when they ran into issues. Writing started out as a passion project, as I wanted to help more users and not just the ones that I handled in support. This lead to the founding of Ghacks Technology News in 2005. First, as a side-project, but shortly thereafter as a full-time project as the site's popularity exploded. I sold Ghacks to Softonic some years ago, but stayed on as Editor. You can still read my articles on the site. I do publish on Betanews as well. In recent years, I started to write and publish technology books, including my latest book "Windows 11 From Beginner to Advanced", which is available on Amazon. I'm also a freelance writer for the German publisher Gamestar. Chipp.in is my newest project. I want to use it to talk about my book projects, sell my books directly, and write about technology, as this is what interests me.

Use Split View in Chrome to view two websites side-by-side

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Split View is quite the handy option. Supported by many browsers, such as Vivaldi or Brave, for some time, it allows you to display two websites next to each other in a single tab in the browser.

Quite handy for comparison, playing a game or watching a YouTube video, while doing something else.

It took a while, but Google is now offering Split View functionality in the desktop version of its Chrome web browser as well.

As is the case with features these days, they are rolled out gradually. This means that while your neighbor may have access to a feature already, that you have to wait until the mighty overlords over at Google decide that it is your time.

However, you can enable this feature in the experimental options right away, if you want to.

Split View in Chrome

Here is how that is done:

  1. Load chrome://flags/#side-by-side in the Chrome address bar.
  2. Change the value of Split View to Enabled.
  3. Restart the browser.

You should see the new Split View option when you right-click on an open tab in the browser after the restart.

The selected tab and the next tab will be displayed next to each other. Google Chrome displays both titles in a single tab and you can switch between them easily. Doing so displays the address of the active website, which you can change to load a different site.

Google Chrome Split View example

You can also right-click on links to get an open in Split View option.

Note that Chrome does not retain the Split View when you restart the browser. It displays both websites in separate tabs in that case.

All in all, it is a handy feature, especially on smaller screens that do not have enough room for displaying two browser windows side-by-side.

Now You: does your favorite browser support Split View? If so, do you use that mode at all? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Firefox

Mozilla should test Firefox with best-in-class ad blocker and privacy

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The future looks quite grim for Mozilla and its Firefox web browser. The average monthly user count continues to drop while the browser of its ex-CEO is reporting new heights regularly. Then there is the looming death of Google and its impact on Mozilla’s finances to consider.

Mozilla’s reaction came as a surprise. It started to add features that users requested for years. Firefox supports vertical tabs now, tab groups, and a lot more.

It also took a look at its assets to figure out what to keep and what to terminate. This resulted in the termination of recent acquisitions, such as Fakespot, and long-standing staples, such as Pocket.

While these help free up resources and reduce expenses, it is likely that they won’t prevent the Mozilla-ship from capsizing, if things take a turn for the worse.

What to do? Here is an idea!

Why is Brave gaining users and Firefox losing them? You could say that it is all because of the different underlying platforms that the browsers use. Brave, after all, uses the same core as Google Chrome. Firefox uses Mozilla’s own engine. It has advantages, as it gives Mozilla full control over the engine. However, all development weight is on Mozilla whereas Brave and others reap what (mostly) Google developers and others work on.

It would be shortsighted to focus solely on this. Brave includes a content blocker by default. It also includes lots of privacy enhancements. While some criticize the browser for its integration of crypto-stuff, the combination of Chromium with its integrated content blocker works really well most of the time.

Firefox users can install uBlock Origin or another content blocker, but they have to do so manually.

Why is not Mozilla integrating its own content blocker or establishing a partnership with Raymond Hill, the creator of uBlock Origin? Mozilla never revealed the answer, but the most likely answer is because of its search deal with Google.

An ad blocker would prevent Google ads from showing up. Google would rightfully so want to pay less to Mozilla, as it would not make enough revenue anymore to justify the price that it pays Mozilla each year.

But what about running a test? Create a special version of Firefox. Install an ad-blocker and enable it by default. Distribute it, maybe ask for donations in the same way that the Thunderbird team is asking for them.

See how it goes. Just make sure that privacy is excellent for users, that they won’t see any sponsored content or other paid content in Firefox, and that their privacy is always valued more than anything else.

It might work. Users might pick Firefox as it would keep them safe and private while using the browser. It might not work, but Mozilla would at least tried something.

Now You: do you use Firefox or another browser? Let me know in the comments below.

PicPick

PicPick screen capture tool update adds WebP support

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

PicPick is an excellent screen capture program for Windows. It is free for personal use and you can support the developers by subscribing or buying a lifetime license.

The personal version has a few limitations, mainly that you can’t use it commercially, that it does not support automatic updates, and that it may display ads (you may have a hard time finding them though).

Updates are released frequently, sometimes multiple per month, sometimes less. The most recent update, released today as PicPick 7.4.0, adds support for an image format that is becoming popular on the Internet: webP.

When you capture an image in PicPick after the upgrade, you may now save the capture as a webP image. May be useful to users who need the format or prefer it.

Another handy addition is the ability to scroll horizontally with the mouse wheel by holding down the Shift-key on the keyboard. So, mousewheel without Shift scrolls vertically, mousewheel with Shift horizontally.

The update fixes two bugs next to that. The first fixes an issue that caused PicPick to fail to detect specific windows when capturing. The software supports window captures among many other capturing modes. The second fixes a focus loss issue when using the delayed active-window capturing feature.

You can check pout the entire changelog here. There you also find download links and options to buy the software.

Now You: which screen capturing software do you use and why?

YouTube Experience Interruptions

Is Google delaying videos on YouTube for users with ad blockers?

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Watching videos on YouTube is the favorite pastime of many Internet users. Those without YouTube Premium have to sit through ads before they get to see the video that they clicked on. The main way around this is to use an ad blocker.

Good ones block video ads on YouTube so that the actual video plays right away. Google is constantly tweaking and adjusting things on YouTube to make ad blockers less effective.

From displaying banners to users with ad blockers that they have to turn off the content blocker to watch the video to manipulation.

Reports emerged this month that Google may delay videos on YouTube for users of ad blockers. There is this thread on Reddit talking about the change and also one at the Brave forum.

All describe that Google may display “Experiencing interruptions?” in the lower left corner of the browser window on YouTube, if an ad blocker is used.

This delays the initial playback of the video by seconds, up to ten according to reports. Quick test in Brave confirmed that YouTube showed these on some videos that I tried to play. The delay was not as large, maybe a second or two for all the videos that showed the notification.

The issue is not limited to a single browser or a single content blocker. Brave is affected, as is uBlock Origin in Firefox. Updates seem to have fixed the issue for some time, but the issue seems to have reappeared.

There is not really a fix for that at the time of writing. If you are affected, you may have to wait until the filter lists get updated or the issue resolved in another way. Still, even with the delay added, it is not as bad has having to sit through the video ads that YouTube displays when you turn off your ad blocker.

The only other solution that I can think of is to download the videos instead and watch them this way.

Now You: do you watch videos on YouTube? Did you notice the delay in the past couple of weeks?

Chrome

Windows 11 blocking Google Chrome? A security feature may be responsible

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Reports about problems to run Google Chrome on Windows started to emerge in early June 2025 on the official Chrome forum. Users claimed that they could not run the Google browser anymore on their Windows devices. Chrome would not start or close itself immediately after start; attempts to fix the issue, e.g., by uninstalling and reinstalling the browser, were unsuccessful reportedly.

The issue affects Chrome on Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices according to the reports. While Microsoft has not published an official response to the claims yet, Google did.

A Google community manager confirmed the issue on the official support forum. According to the notice, Google’s support team investigated the issue and discovered that Microsoft Family Safety was responsible for the unintended behavior.

Microsoft Family Safety is a parental control software. Chrome may not start if the child safety software is enabled on the device.

Google provided a suggestion on resolving the issue. The company said that unblocking Chrome in Microsoft Family Safety would resolve it and allow affected users to run the browser again on the Windows machine.

Here is how that is done:

  1. Open the Microsoft Family Safety website, or the mobile app.
  2. Select the affected child.
  3. Go to Windows tabs > Apps & Games.
  4. Unblock Chrome there.

Chrome should run again on the Windows devices after the changes have been made. Note that a parent or legal guardian needs to make the change, as minors do not have access to the administrative options.

Microsoft did provide the same solution to Windows users who reported the issue to the company’s support team.

It is unclear why the parental controls software started to block Google Chrome for some Windows users. Microsoft has not confirmed the issue officially. It is likely caused by a false positive or a bug, one that has the pleasant side-effect of pushing Chrome users to other browsers, for instance Microsoft’s own, Microsoft Edge.

Gog’s PC Games Summer Sale 2025 offers big discounts for thousands of games

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

As you may know, I prefer to buy my PC games on Gog. While I do not buy that many anymore, due to a lack of time mostly, I sometimes have the desire to replay a classic game or try a new independent game that I heard about.

Gog holds sales year round, but the Summer Sale is always one of the largest. A good opportunity to purchase one or two games that have been sitting on my wishlist for some time.

Gog says that the Summer Sale 2025 offers over 8,000 deals with discounts of up to 95 percent. Here is the main link to the sale. It is probably a good idea to use the excellent filters on the left side of the page to reduce the 161 pages of games that are on sale.

You can, for example, hide DLC and extra listings, set a price range, or pick genres, features, or tags.

As always, here are some of my suggestions:

Into the Breach

One of my all-time favorites. A turn-based strategy game with lots of variety, short but intense levels, lots of replayability, and fun.

You control three units and are tasked with defending cities and the earth population against an alien threat. Each of your units, mechs mostly, have different unique abilities, that can be expanded as they gain levels and new equipment.

FTL: Advanced Edition

Faster Than Light plays in space. It is a strategy game that gives you command of a ship and a diverse crew of aliens. You can upgrade the ship, encounter enemies and wondrous things. It is randomized and rogue-lite, and if you do not mind the graphics, one of the best experiences you can have while playing a game.

Day of the Tentacle Remastered

The remastered edition of the 1993 sequel to Maniac Mansion. It is a classic adventure game by LucasArts that has lots of humor. Unlike Maniac Mansion, which asked you to pick three characters out of a selection, you always play the same three characters in the game.

Your task is to prevent that an evil mutated purple tentacle is taking over the world. Involves time traveling, lots of fun.

Now You: have another pick? Let me know in the comments below.

Did Microsoft just announce PC-Xbox consoles?

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft confirmed today that Xbox is not dead. In fact, the company announced Xbox consoles, a partnership with AMD, and what sounded like support for PC gaming stores and games on the next Xbox devices.

Xbox-chief Sarah Bond made the announcement in a video on YouTube. It is just a minute in total playtime and while short, includes some major announcements.

But first, here is the video.

The big announcements are the following ones.

About the partnership with AMD, multiple Xbox consoles, and a potential Xbox handheld:

I’m thrilled to share we’ve established a strategic multi-year partnership with AMD to co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices including our next-generation Xbox consoles, in your living room, and in your hands.

Xbox will support multiple stores. The mention of Windows is a strong hint at support for Windows gaming stores such as Steam.

[..] delivering you an Xbox experience not locked to a single store or tied to one device. hat’s why we’re working closely with the Windows team, to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming.

Xbox will include AI features and will be backwards compatible.

Together with AMD we’re advancing the state of art in gaming silicon to deliver the next generation of graphics innovation to unlock a deeper level of visual quality and immersive gameplay and player experiences enhanced with the power of AI, all while maintaining compatibility with your existing library of Xbox games.

Closing Words

Microsoft will release new Xbox consoles in the near future, likely around the same time that Sony will release its PS6 (console and handheld) to the public. It is too early to tell if the next Xbox will indeed support PC games.

Now You: do you play games at all on consoles or the PC? Would you buy an Xbox console or handheld that can play PC games?

Vanderplanki

Email Backup Software Vanderplanki 3 adds Microsoft Email support

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Do you create backups of your email accounts? A popular solution for that is MailStore Home, which is free and cross-platform. The original founder of MailStore Home has created Vanderplanki, which serves the same purpose.

Vanderplanki can backup email accounts so that you may read messages offline, search across accounts, and more. It lacked some of the advanced features of MailStore Home up until now, namely support for Microsoft email accounts, such as Outlook or Microsoft 365.

The new release, Vanderplanki 3, adds the support. The release notes confirm the addition of support for Outlook.com mailboxes, including Hotmail, Live, and MSN, and support for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Exchange Online accounts.

The feature removes one of the main shortcomings of the email backup solution. Now, with Microsoft email support, it is capable of backing up emails from all major providers.

The new release adds another useful feature. The app fills out configurations for most major IMAP email providers automatically. This improves the process further.

There is still one downside to Vanderplanki at the time of writing. The software is only available in German. In fact, you may be blocked from downloading it, if you do not come from a German-speaking region. It is probably only a matter of time before other interface languages will be supported.

Now You: Do you back up your email accounts regularly? If so, how do you do it? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

WhatsApp: Ads in status, promoted channels, and channel subscriptions on their way

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Meta-owned WhatsApp announced new features for the messaging service’s updates tab designed to “help” WhatsApp users find more channels and businesses on the messaging platform.

All three features are added to the tab updates in WhatsApp. They are:

  • Channel subscriptions – WhatsApp users may support channels by subscribing to them for a monthly fee. May also receive exclusive updates as part of the subscription.
  • Promoted channels – Allows channel owners to increase the visibility of their channel through promotions. Pay Meta for that privilege.
  • Ads in Status: Businesses may promote content in their Status.

The primary purpose of these changes is to increase monetization on the platform and thus Meta’s revenue. Channel owners may pay Meta to increase the visibility of their channels. They may then get some recurring revenue going through subscriptions, of which Meta will likely also get its share. Ads in status are also likely not for free, which means that channel owners pay Meta for the privilege of displaying ads there.

Good news for WhatsApp users who do not use updates: if you do not access updates, you do not see the changes.

When you access updates right now, you see the subscribed channels and status updates. With the update, that is not going to change, but you may see other content under updates when you open it in the future.

Privacy remains top priority, says WhatsApp

WhatsApp says that privacy remains a top priority for the service. Means, messages, calls, and status are end-to-end encrypted, so that they remain accessible only to the user and the user’s contacts.

To show relevant ads, WhatsApp is using “limited info”, including the user’s country or city, language, followed channels, and interactions with advertisement on the platform. Furthermore, users who have added WhatsApp to Accounts Center will also have their ad preferences and info used from across their Meta accounts.

To be fair, this approach to advertising appears fairer than the tracker-based advertising that is the norm on today’s Internet, if true.

Now You: do you use WhatsApp at all? What about the Updates tab? Or do you prefer an alternative? Let me know in the comments below.

Where is AI getting its content from when many publishers stop publishing?

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mainstream AI tools rely on large sets of data that they are trained on. This data, often websites, posts, comments and the like, has been created by humans (for the most part).

Reports suggest that part of the Web population is shifting towards using AI first for any of their tasks and there are good reasons (and some not so good ones) for that.

On the positive side, it is dead simple. You get an answer right away and do not have to wade through different websites in the hope that they offer the answer. Links are provided to verify the claims. And this works reasonably well for many requests.

The downside to this is that AI is still hallucinating. In plain terms, AI may return information that is inaccurate, plain wrong, or created out of thin air. That is bad, especially if the information could end up in disaster. My bet is that most users are unaware of this and take information at face value. It is also changing how the Web is used.

The consequences are severe for website publishers who rely on ads, at least those who do not have the pull to sell their data to AI companies. Traffic will drop. Google is pushing AI overviews, and this leads to less visits. Google says that this is not the case, that searchers click on links in AI overviews, but this appears exaggerated.

In the next couple of years, websites will receive less and less traffic from search. All search engines move to AI content and the reason is simple: this keeps users on their site. Means, they get to keep all the ad Dollar.

Google just introduced its AI into Chrome Canary. This too will keep users inside Chrome and Google’s vast network of services.

Granted, some sites will not be affected by this. If you offer a service that AI can’t replicate, you are likely golden. Think of downloads, streaming media, good journalism, user interactions, games and more.

The traditional newspaper or blog will have a hard time, unless it is very special. Other services, too. Think of all those flight and hotel booking sites. Agentic AI might do that directly in the browser or on a website, no need to go through dozens of sites yourself.

Yes, aggregators like Booking or Trip exist already, but AI can replicate that without issues.

Many will stop publishing or be pulled from the Internet entirely. Less traffic means less ad Dollar means less money for paying writers, hosting and administration. It is a downward spiral.

AI won’t know that certain “things” exist

But this also means less content that AI can vacuum up. If no one writes about a certain topic anymore, AI won’t know about it. It will be as if it does not exist at all.

So, when the last independent games review site shuts down, AI may not have any info about the latest games anymore. Yes, this is a bit exaggerated, as there may be reviews on Reddit or other community sites.

Still, less content means less nuanced information about a topic.

Closing Words

If you operate a website, unless you are a big corpo with AI deals already, then you might want to search for different monetization options. Reliance on ads may not cut it anymore in the future. Expect more sites to go subscription-based. Some might ask for donations. Fatigue will kick in and money can only be spend once on something.

Again, I may be a bit too pessimistic about the outlook, but the Web as we know it is changing dramatically.

Now You: what is your take on AI taking over the world and destroying the Internet as we know it? Let me know in the comment section below.