10 Silly Tech Pranks to Pull on April Fools' Day

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 31 Mar 2016

It would be a shame to let April Fools' Day go by and not pull a prank on someone. Not only is it a time-honored tradition, it will be deeply satisfying to do it to one someone who really deserves it.

You know, that one friend or coworker who is always on your case and never lets you be? Yeah, we all have one of those in our lives. That being said, here are 10 silly tech prank ideas for April Fools’ Day.

1. Put a sticky note or some tape on the mouse sensor



I’ve pulled this one on several people and the first thing they did was check to see if the cable is unplugged. The first thing they should have done is simply lift the mouse and see if there’s something on the sensor. What they did instead was crawl underneath the desk and check to see if the cable was unplugged.

A word of warning: I found that some people get so pissed off the mouse isn’t working that they start hitting it against the desk. You might want to stop them before they destroy the mouse, especially if it’s something expensive like Logitech’s G900 Chaos Spectrum.


2. Change a desktop shortcut’s target



I pin applications to the Start Menu and the taskbar because I like to keep a clean desktop, with absolutely no shortcuts on it. This way, I can fully enjoy the day’s high quality Bing wallpaper. That’s the only reason I keep Bing Desktop on my PC – for the awesome wallpapers.

But most people aren’t like that. They’ll have a ton of shortcuts on the desktop. And that means you can mess with them by changing a shortcut’s target. Like Firefox for example. They’ll double click on Firefox’s shortcut, expecting the browser to launch. But it won’t, because you set the target to some other application.


3. Create a shortcut that shuts down the PC



Do you know what happens if you change a shortcut’s target with the Shutdown.exe -s -t 00 command? Or if you create a new shortcut using the command? The computer will shut down!

Create a new shortcut, enter Shutdown.exe -s -t 00 when asked to pick a target, name it Firefox for example, and change the shortcut’s icon to Firefox’s icon. When someone double clicks the shortcut expecting the browser to launch, the computer will shut down.


4. Switch the left and right click



Access Mouse Properties and check the box next to “Switch the primary and secondary buttons”. Once you do, the left click will work as the right click, and the other way around.


5. Set the mouse pointer to always look busy



The Windows operating system uses a special cursor animation to indicate that it is busy. From the Mouse Properties window you can set it so that animation is used all the time.

Pick Normal Select, click Browse, and select the Busy animation. This will make the prankee think the computer is always busy and trying to find out why will surely drive him crazy.


6. Flip the screen upside down



Up is down, down is up, everything is upside down. To do that you need to access the Display Settings or Screen Resolution menu and change the screen’s orientation from landscape to landscape (flipped).


7. The dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)



Go to FakeBSOD.com and pick between a generic BSOD or the Windows 8/10 BSOD. Set the browser to full screen by pressing F11, and then wait to see the reaction on the prankee’s face. If you really want them to panic, unplug the keyboard and mouse.

A word of warning: some people might not realize this is a prank and reset their PC, potentially losing whatever they were working on. So you might want to stop them before they do something like that.


8. Upgrade someone to Windows 10



fediaFedia.com has a nice collection of fake update screens, including one that “installs Windows 10.” If the prankee actually wants to upgrade to Windows 10, it will be fun to see his reaction when he realizes it’s a prank. If he doesn’t want to upgrade to Windows 10, it’ll be fun to see him try and cancel the installation.


9. Switch their hand sanitizer with lube



Someone who knows how dirty keyboards get will most likely have some hand sanitizer around. Take the bottle, empty it, and replace the contents with lube.


10. Change all the images to photos of Nic Cage



The nCage extension for Chrome replaces every image the browser displays with a photo of Nicholas Cage. That’ll teach them to use something other than Firefox.



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