Dimas Maulana

Nextcloud is a powerful self-hosted cloud platform that includes built-in support for contacts and calendars via the CardDAV and CalDAV protocols. If you’re looking to keep your contact groups synced across Android and iOS devices using Nextcloud, this guide will show you how to do it with the help of DAVx⁵—a popular open-source CardDAV/CalDAV sync app for Android.

Why Sync Contact Groups?

Syncing contact groups ensures better organization and smoother communication across devices. If you maintain separate personal, business, or family groups in Nextcloud, syncing them helps keep things consistent across your mobile devices.

Transferring files between iOS and Android devices has historically been complicated due to ecosystem limitations. LocalSend offers a straightforward, local network-based solution for seamless file sharing across platforms without relying on cloud services or internet connectivity.

What is LocalSend?

LocalSend is an open-source, cross-platform application that enables direct file transfers between devices on the same local network (Wi-Fi). It supports iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. All transfers are encrypted and occur without sending data to external servers, preserving privacy and speed.

Scrcpy is a free and open-source tool that allows you to mirror your Android device’s screen to your computer. It provides high-performance, low-latency screen mirroring and works over USB and Wi-Fi connections. This guide explains how to set up and use Scrcpy efficiently.

Prerequisites

• Android device with USB debugging enabled
• Computer (Windows, macOS, or Linux)
• Scrcpy installed on the computer

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Install Scrcpy on Your Computer

• Windows: Download and run scrcpy.exe from the GitHub release page.

While Time Machine is traditionally used with an Apple Time Capsule or another Mac, it’s possible to set it up with a Windows machine as the server. This guide outlines the steps involved.

Prerequisites

• A Windows machine with sufficient storage space.
• A Mac running macOS Monterey or later.
• Basic familiarity with file sharing and network settings on both platforms.

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Setting Up the Windows Server:

Many Mac users experience slowdowns on their hard drives (HDDs) when they are partitioned with APFS and reach full capacity. This is because APFS, while efficient, doesn’t offer defragmentation capabilities like HFS+.

The Problem with APFS

APFS (Apple File System) is a modern file system designed for speed and efficiency on solid-state drives (SSDs). However, it doesn’t have built-in defragmentation, which can lead to performance issues when the drive becomes full.

Sometimes, when working with VirtualBox on Windows, you might encounter an issue where your virtual machine list doesn’t update correctly, even after making changes like unlocking an encrypted drive. This can be frustrating when you’re trying to manage your VMs.

This article will guide you through a solution to refresh your VirtualBox VM list via the command line interface (CLI) accessed via SSH.

The Problem

Let’s say you have a virtual machine stored on an encrypted drive. When Windows starts, the drive is locked. You can unlock the drive via SSH, but when you try to list your virtual machines using vboxmanage within your SSH session, you might still get an “access denied” error.