A computer can be used in a lot of ways, it was born for military purposes, it evolved as a work tool and then it became a tool for having fun and spending time. This last function of a PC is certainly the one that involves more people given the infinite possibilities of playing, watching movies, listening to music, reading news, discovering funny sites, editing photos and many other things that are described among the pages of this blog.
All these recreational activities are done at any time of the day and even when you shouldn't like it when working in the office .
Already in another article we had seen the best ways to surf the internet without being noticed by the boss, so that the screen seems to be doing a serious job.
On this occasion, however, we cut the bull's head and use a program that hides in one fell swoop and closes, with a single click, all the open windows and all the programs that are being used.
There are 4 very similar alternatives:
1) Don't Panic, a small opensource software designed to quickly close (or hide) specific programs and software, so that the boss (office manager, colleague troublemaker, a supervisor, mother or father, girlfriend) cannot see on the computer screen what was being done.
The important thing is that you do not even create suspicion and do not hesitate to ask "what you were looking at on the computer"> The initial configuration of the program is the most important part after installation.
In the options you decide the group of programs and windows that must close or start with a click of the mouse.
An unlimited number of programs can be selected which should be closed when the panic button is pressed.
Don't Panic can also be used for less fraudulent reasons, not only to hide what is being done on the PC but also to start a group of programs all together without opening them one by one individually.
Up to six programs can be selected to be started at the same time.
Practically then, by pressing the emergency button, the games and the non-serious sites are closed and then the word or Excel worksheets are opened instead.
The additional options concern the way in which the processes must be terminated, whether to close the programs or just hide them from the screen and the possibility, if you are browsing on sites that can embarrass you if discovered, to clean the traces of Internet Explorer, delete the temporary Internet files, empty the recycle bin and the list of recent programs.
To activate the anti-panic you can choose to see the button in semi-transparency on the screen or to use a combination of keys on the keyboard and close everything without messing up and without making movements that can be suspicious.
Don't Panic uses approximately 2 megabytes of computer memory when running.
2) Dad's Around does the same thing as Don't Panic and is used to immediately close all programs and pages open at that moment visible on the screen.
Always with a view to defending one's privacy and preventing mom, dad, girl or office manager from discovering the rough things that are done on the computer, Dad's Around allows you to hide everything on the screen.
There are 4 types of closure that can be configured on the program: one concerns the silencer to the audio useful if you see a movie or if you listen to music; one that closes only the program that is in the foreground on the desktop so, if instead there is the excel sheet on which you are working, you will make the figure of the assiduous worker who is never distracted; a third brings up a black screen and the fourth minimizes all open windows .
This time the emergency button is activated by pressing a customizable key combination which, by default, is WIN-Z.
Dad's Around is a portable program that does not install (it must be opened with 7Zip) which consumes about 5 Megabytes of memory and remains in the background.
3) A portable program, which does not require installation, Clickygone, allows you to hide Windows windows with a combination of keys.
You can hide and close with a key, one or all the windows from the Windows desktop, so that they do not even appear iconic at the bottom, they will be completely hidden from the PC screen.
4) One that is really comfortable and fast is Close All .
Close All is an executable file that is used to close all programs together in one go and make them disappear from the screen.
It does not require installation, you extract the Closeall.exe file from the downloaded .zip archive and move the file wherever you want, even in the desktop application bar.
To close all running programs, all you have to do is click on the Close All link that you have created.
If you don't want to close everything but you want to leave something open, perhaps the excel sheet or the working document, then you must create a link to Closeall and create exceptions.
Right click on the link, go to properties and, in the Destination field, add, after the quotes, a space and then -x = "program.exe"
With, instead of program.exe, the name of the program that must not be closed, such as, for example, firefox.exe or explorer.exe.
You can also exclude two or more programs from closing by separating the names of the .exe files with a | (Pipe); for example: -x = "explorer.exe | firefox.exe"
The article continues in with other solutions, to hide active windows on the desktop without closing them and to hide tabs of web pages in Chrome and Firefox.
Not bad as a solution for those who are forced to use the computer with the paranoia of not being noticed by the boss!
