You have probably never heard of device drivers, but without them, you would not be able to use your computer.

So picture your computer

— you can see the keyboard, the touchpad, the power button, maybe a fingerprint sensor, and a touchscreen. For all of that hardware to function (for the keyboard to actually put letters on the screen, for the mouse to actually move and click items, for your touchscreen to work), something has to bridge the gap between the physical components and the operating system. That something is called a device driver.

Device drivers are essentially the compatibility layer between a device's hardware and its software.

On Windows, the graphical interface for managing drivers is called Device Manager.…