What's New

A clean installation of Windows 10 or Windows 11 may enable Bitlocker drive encryption automatically. The main system partition and all fixed drives will be encrypted in this case after the out-of-box experience.

Bitlocker protects data on the PC against unauthorized access by encrypting partitions and drives.

Mozilla confirmed a recaptcha issue in the organization's Firefox web browser yesterday evening.

Affected Firefox users see a spinning animation when they try to solve the captcha, which means that they are unable to do so. The result is that they cannot access the website or service. A workaround is available.

The issue affects all major versions of Firefox for Windows that are supported  by Mozilla as well as older versions. This includes Firefox 125, the current stable version of Firefox, the development versions 126 and 127, and also Firefox ESR 115.

Microsoft is celebrating World Password Day by announcing a new feature. All Microsoft consumer accounts now support Passkeys.

Microsoft has officially confirmed that it will not fix the KB5034441 0x80070643 error on Windows 10. Users ran into the error in January this year, when the company released the first set of security updates for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Bitwarden has released a first public version of Bitwarden Authenticator, a two-factor authentication app for Android and iOS.

The app generates codes for services, which are then required to sign to accounts. This second step of authentication improves account security. Attackers would need access to the username and password, and the time-based code to gain access to the account.

Arc Browser, a Chromium-based browser, is now available for Windows. The browser was previously available as a waitlist-restricted beta version. If you added your name to the waitlist, but never received an invite, now is your chance to give it a try.

What you need to know about Arc Browser

Arc Browser is only available for Windows 11. You cannot install it on Windows 10 or any other version of Windows.

Netflix has started to ask basic plan customers to pick another plan to continue using the service without interruption. The streaming company has been at war with the Basic plan for some time.

Microsoft has announced that it is adding an offline mode to OneDrive on the web. The feature is only available for work and school users.

The Redmond company began updating OneDrive in October with new features, enhancements with a new UI design. The new offline mode is part of those plans, to allow users to access their files in web browsers, even while they do not have an internet connection.

Will every PC sold in 2030 be an AI PC? Analysts at Canalys predict that every PC sold by 2030 will have on-device AI capabilities.

WhatsApp has announced that it is rolling out Passkeys support on iOS. The Meta owned messaging company originally introduced the passwordless login option for Android users in October last year.

Users of the password management solution Bitwarden are one step closer to full passkeys support.

The organization launched new beta apps for Android and iOS earlier this month that introduced limited passkeys support.

Good to know: Passkeys is a new authentication standard. It uses generated keys instead of passwords for authentication. These are considered more secure, as they cannot be guessed and are resistant to password attacks such as phishing.

Sniptool is an impressive screenshot program that we reviewed over a year ago. The program has been updated to version 2.0, which brings support for GIF recording among other options.

Let's take a tour of the new iteration.

If you visit Google's YouTube website in private browsing / incognito mode, you will get the company's cookies and data prompt each time you do so. The reason for that is simple: since private browsing modes don't save cookies across sessions, YouTube cannot read cookies set previously and assumes that you have not given your agreement yet for cookie handling on the site.

Google has been working on new tab preview functionality in the company's Chrome web browser for quite some time. Chrome displays the page title and URL in a card currently when you hover the mouse cursor over a tab in a browser windows. Coming soon, Chrome may also display a thumbnail preview of a webpage when you hover the mouse over a tab.