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This is a thread for anyone to post major tech updates that they know have happened or are upcoming that will impact articles. This way, we can be sure to add the appropriate articles into the Tech Testing tool. 

Please post something like:

YouTube - Removing Play Button - Jan 2020

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I already tagged a bunch of articles related to iTunes because iTunes is not present on macOS Catalina.  Maybe load those in first?

iTunes - no longer present in macOS Catalina, some articles that do not explicitly mention “iTunes” may need to be changed - 2020-02-05 (PST)

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Also @JayneG maybe this could be an announcement so that anyone can post here without “bumping”?

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Forums update: Check Ruby’s post.

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Google Play Music will begin it’s shutdown process this month, and it will be replaced by YouTube music. Articles about Google Play Music should probably be either updated or marked as historical. This Google Help page goes into more detail.

Also, when it comes to other Google products, Google Hangouts, and Google Cloud Print are also being shut down by the end of this year.

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Good call @R2_d2000 , thanks for the heads up! It looks like we have a few articles in the Google Play Music category https://www.wikihow.com/Category:Google-Play-Music - I think they will likely need to be marked historical by the end of the year.

I wonder if anyone’s interested in creating an article on how to transfer a music library from Google Play Music to YouTube music…?:slight_smile:

I think some articles on Google Hangouts might be able to be updated for Google Meet - that could be another project to look into.

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Windows has changed it’s browser from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Edge, and Google will not support flash player after December 2020.

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Thanks @Alan_Silver ! One thing about IE is that it will still continue to be supported as long as Windows 10 is around, so we still do want to keep those articles we have on IE.

As for Flash and Google, that will be a good one to either go through either individually, or put into the Tech Testing tool early next year.

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Minor tech thing here, but Google Photos subscription service for printed pictures shut down on June 30. Photo books are still a thing, but the monthly service has gone away.

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Thanks @That21PilotsFan - perhaps if you get a chance, you could check out if there are any articles about this subscription service that we need to mark as historical?:slight_smile:

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Facebook has started merging Facebook messenger with Instagram direct messages, and soon, Instagram direct messages and all of its users will be moved over to Facebook messenger. It also looks like this will happen with WhatsApp as well at some point in the future. You can read more about it here .

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Wow, thanks @R2_d2000 I didn’t know this was happening. I’m also not sure how I feel about this change lol. It does look like it’s still a test at the moment, so we should keep an eye out for if it becomes standard and we need to update articles.

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@JayneG Looks like there’s no articles on that… but I’ll keep an eye out for any articles mentioning the service, and remove said mentions of the service. : - )

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The non-Chrome version of Microsoft Edge will lose support on March 9th, 2021. That means that it wont receive updates for new web technologies and standards. Also, it won’t receive bug or security fixes. Microsoft will probably remove the old version of Edge from Windows 10 computers before this date, so any articles about Edge may have to be updated for the new version, and the instructions for the old version can probably just be removed. You can read more about it here .

Also, Adobe Flash Player is reaching End of Life on December 31st, 2020. That means that it won’t receive security updates or bug fixes. Also, it will completely disable itself on all browsers and everywhere else after this date. You can read more about it here .

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Just want to post a new update on things that Microsoft is doing.

Microsoft has begun to roll out a new icon for the Microsoft Store, which is the app on Windows 10 that you can download other apps from. You can read about it and see it here . The icon does look very similar to the old one, but the change is noticeable. In response to this, we may want to update the icon that is used on the {{ windows }} template. I don’t really know how to do it (although I may try), but if anybody else does, please feel free to update it.

Also, Microsoft has removed the ability to permanently disable Microsoft Defender with regedit. You can turn it off through settings, but it will turn itself back on when you reboot the computer. In response to this, I removed the old method that described the method that no longer works from How to Turn Off Windows Defender in Windows 10 . However, I have heard that there are ways to permanently disable it, and I’m sure that readers would like to know how to do that, but I don’t know exactly how you would do that or even if what I have heard is true. If anybody knows how (or if) you can permanently disable Microsoft Defender, feel free to update the article with the new Method. If nobody knows of any way, then I will look into it latter.

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(Ahh, no wonder why I was using regedit in cmd the other day it didn’t work.)

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Samsung is going to discontinue Samsung Cloud on all Samsung Galaxy devices. The shutdown will begin on October 5th, and the service will completely shut down and all data will be deleted on June 30th 2021. The feature will be replaced with Microsoft OneDrive on supported Samsung Phones in countries where OneDrive is available. Starting October 5th to April 1st 2021, you will be able to transfer your data from Samsung Cloud to OneDrive. You can read more about this here .

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Tik Tok, and WeChat, are supposedly going to be banned from US app stores on September 20th. Also, on September 20th, Internet Hosting Services and Content Delivery Networks (CDN) will be banned from “enabling the functioning or the optimization” of WeChat. Tik Tok will be banned from the Hosting Services and CDNs on November 12th. This pretty much means that Tik Tok and WeChat won’t work very well in the United States, if at all. I have no idea if the government will try to ban these services at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level by banning ISPs from routing traffic to them, which would pretty much prevent most people from accessing these services, but I would not be surprised if that happened.

This is not set in stone yet, because of ongoing legal battles, but it looks like it’s going to happen at least temporarily. Some articles about downloading Tik Tok or WeChat should probably have some mention that the apps cannot be downloaded in the US, and depending on if access to the apps is outright banned, other articles might need to be updated. Luckily, I do not believe that this order would affect wikiHow in any way, and all of the articles about the apps can stay up.

This also opens up the possibility of writing articles such as “How to Download WeChat (or Tik Tok) in the US” (which will still be possible through a variety of methods). And other similar articles. The order to ban the apps does not punish individuals, so it is still completely legal to use them (and even if the order said different, I would still argue that it would be legal).

You can read more about the ban here . Also, I know that this is a hot-button political issue, and if anybody has any comments on it beyond its affect on wikiHow, please do so in the General Chat category rather than on this thread. We want to keep this thread on topic.

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Here is an update:

A court has issued a preliminary injunction against the ban, thus preventing it from going into affect, so it won’t be happening this weekend. It may or may not go into affect in the future.

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Amazon and Walmart agreed to a $12 million share in the $60 million (self) valuation the company stated. But now with the court injunction against the ban, the proposed buy-in might not happen either.

Not to turn the thread political, but we in the USA know that our president often causes an uproar to divert attention away from another issue that he’s supposedly trying to hide. Hard to pick just one issue; there are many possibilities. So this uproar might not really be about TikToc and not really about China given that even if 2 companies buy in at $12 million, it still would not stop China from access to US citizens’ data as the president had charged. Not much logical reasoning there.