Technology

Get on Top of Your Tech in 2021

By Erica Manfred Monday, January 4, 2021 11 Comments Share This:

Getting organized has become trendy during these stuck-at-home pandemic days. People are busy going through closets and drawers to toss the junk. But how about your phone and computer? Chances are those have collected lots of junk as well.

Here’s how to make 2021 the year you put your electronic house in order.

Clean out the cache on your computer and browser to make them run faster. (The cache is where your browser saves copies of previously visited Web pages.) Never fear, you can just delete history not cookies, so you don’t lose your passwords. How to do it: Use the Windows 10 disk cleanup utility. Follow the steps in this article to clean the cache on Chrome as well as Windows or get instructions for your Mac in this article. While you’re at it do the same for your phone by purging old texts and clearing your phone’s cache.

Unsubscribe from email lists and paid subscriptions. You’re probably getting tons of unwanted emails. Every day pick a few out and scroll all the way to the bottom looking for the hard-to-find unsubscribe link. While you’re at it here’s how to cancel paid subscriptions you don’t want anymore.

Put your emails in folders. If you often forget to answer emails, you’re not on top of your inbox. Use a label system such as the one Gmail offers. The same FAST system recommended for snail mail works with emails. File, Assign (or forward), Store, or Trash. This article will help.

Put your photos in albums. First, get in the habit of deleting duplicate photos as you take them. Google photos will organize photos and screenshots on your Android phone. iCloud photos will to the same on your iPhone. For photo organizing on your computer check out this YouTube tutorial for step by step instructions.

Back up your files. There’s a techie joke that there are two types of people: Those who have lost data, and those who are about to. If you’re not in the first group, you will eventually be in the second. If you have anything on your computer or phone you don’t want to lose, back it up, preferably in the cloud. Recommended: Dropbox Basic or Google Drive for free backup. Google will back up your phone as well.

Organize your hard drive. If you’re feeling truly ambitious check out this tutorial on how to create a useful system for your email, hard drive, and the files and folders within it.

That’s it! Six simple steps – call it housekeeping for your tech – that will make 2021 a sleeker, faster, more organized year for your personal technology.

COMMENTS

11 responses to “Get on Top of Your Tech in 2021”

Erica Manfred:

Wednesday, January 6, 2021 at 7:52pm

Thank you all. Glad I could help. To save emails, if you have Gmail, create a label and save them under that. Gmail will save emails automatically anyway.

For backup I highly recommend Google Drive. It’s free. https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/googledriveanddocs/getting-started-with-google-drive/1/

Reply to Erica Manfred
Adrienne Butler:

Wednesday, January 6, 2021 at 9:31am

We have to remember not to unsubscribe from span because it lets them know someone is reading their emails and they will send even more. Only unsubscribe from mail you have signed up for.

Reply to Adrienne Butler
Lisa:

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 9:01pm

Hi,
Thank you for this and the links to various “how-to” articles. Is there a tutorial you can share a link about how to back up your files?

Reply to Lisa
Dorothy:

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 5:41pm

A wonderful place !

Reply to Dorothy
Anna Reifman:

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 4:33pm

Thank you! I am technically knowledgeable but didn’t know that I could clean my phones cache. Thank you for the easy step by step instructions. I also discovered several documents that I thought were deleted hidden here. I will save this article to delve deeper into some of the tagged articles when I have time.

Reply to Anna Reifman
1. Ed Shapiro:
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 5:57pm
  
  Thank you for your comment! You gave me a heads up and I have now backed up my iPhone which I have been trying to figure out how to do!!!
  
  Reply to Ed Shapiro
Julia Martin:

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 3:57pm

I keep loosing my emails, from my mail box, on my I pad #6 , I would like to save important Emails. The info sometimes goes into All Mail, I send it to important, but very little gets saved. Do you have any suggestions? I tried to send info, but it did not go thru at first

Reply to Julia Martin
Julia Martin:

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 3:56pm

I keep loosing my emails, from my mail box, on my I pad #6 , I would like to save important Emails. The info sometimes goes into All Mail, I send it to important, but very little gets saved. Do you have any suggestions?

Reply to Julia Martin
1. Lawrence Grant:
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 4:40pm
  
  Julia,
  Save your email to “archive.”
  
  Reply to Lawrence Grant
  1. Linda:
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 11:51pm
    
    I am so very thankful for this bit of advice…I will take care of this asap…I am hoping for more tech classes in 21. Need to buy a computer, but clueless what to look for..over the holidays bot 4 printers to connect to my chromebook. Had no luck, so returned them and bot 3 laptops that I didn’t know how to use and took them back too. Couldn’t get anything hooked up together. I am so seniorly-frustrated !
Mireille Samson:

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 9:29am

I have always wanted to do the very items you suggested in this article.However, due to my lack of computer skills,I never wanted to try.Thanks to you, I am going to start by following some of the steps in your article.

Reply to Mireille Samson

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