I switched to Edge (and Bing) a few years back, mainly so I wasn't relying on Google for *everything*. But the browser is getting increasingly annoying ... highlight text => AI popup ?? Turn that off >

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/how-to-get-rid-of-the-copilot-rewrite-feature-on-microsoft-edge/ar-AA1nVpUC

Also gonna give this a try, although annoyingly, it looks like you need to create an account from the off.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/30/24144183/arc-browser-windows-launch-features-availability

I've been using Firefox to browse and DuckDuckGo to search for years. I'm not very aware of what alternatives there are out there (I hadn't heard of Arc) but I'm happy enough with them, they do what I want.

The only thing I don't like about DuckDuckGo is the name - in conversation about net searches I reluctantly resort to 'I googled...' simply because the truth would be 'I duckduckwent'.

It sounds like we might be getting ads, forced into Windows - if so, this might be useful >

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1chnr6j/i_got_tired_of_windows_11_ads_so_i_made_a_tool/

From reading the comments, I'm not so sure. I think we'll be safe from them here. I'm also using AdGuard Home as my DNS servers.

My twitter feed is full of google-bashing - tldr;

Turn off Google's annoying AI overviews and just get search results

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/google-chrome/bye-bye-ai-how-to-block-googles-annoying-ai-overviews-and-just-get-search-results

Some people moving to KAGI search, but (1) you need to login, and (2) only 100 free searches/month.

Still worth the occasional try, if you're increasingly frustrated by poor search results and cluttered screen crap.

Advantages: customisable, fast, and very clean.

https://kagi.com/

Ooh ... this could be a better option than the EVERYTHING win search app, LISTARY >

https://www.listary.com/

And an alternative to Tree-Size is WizTree >

https://www.diskanalyzer.com/

* EDIT - oops, the latter already recommended back in 2022 by @chrisjlocke

For my work, I need to be able to extract all images from quite large PDF.

I've used NITRO for 10+ years, but a series of enshittification updates means they now want me to subscribe (and I could no longer find any old versions).

Googling, my specific requirement is confused with saving 1 image from a PDF, and saving 1 page (or the whole PDF) as PNG/s.

I found lots of online tools, many of which are crippled or strict trialware.

After way too long searching, I finally found 'PDF Candy Desktop' (for Win11) from IcecreamApps (been going a long time, based in Cyprus).

The reviews state the app might start limiting me to 1 task per hour (!) after an unspecified trial period. So annoyingly vague - this whole side of the industry is an absolute mess (second worse only to the online QR code generators!)

Anyway, it's working well for now, for several tasks (!) and is the only method I currently have.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/395003/pdf-candy-pdf-editor-review.html

O&O ShutUp10 - Big new update in v2.x - Win declutter tool, now removes copilot.

Use with caution and always create a restore point. May break some convenient features to improve privacy.