Dongle

A dongle is a small piece of computer hardware that connects to a port on another device. It helps the device work better or lets it connect to other tools that add new features.

At first, the word "dongle" was mostly used for special pieces of hardware called software protection dongles. These helped protect computer programs. A program would only work if the right dongle was plugged into the computer.

Now, the word "dongle" is used for many small devices that look similar. These include adapters that change one type of connection to another, like turning a DVI connection into a VGA one. They can also be wireless adapters for Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, small USB flash drives, or tiny digital media players that fit into an HDMI port.

Etymology

There are different ideas about where the word "dongle" comes from. One idea, from a paper in 1999, says it might be a changed version of the word "dangle" because these devices hang from a port on a computer.

In 1992, an advertisement in Byte magazine by Rainbow Technologies said that dongles were invented by and named after a person named "Don Gall." However, linguist Ben Zimmer explained that this story was likely just a fun marketing trick, and the company later admitted it was not true when asked about it by Eric S. Raymond, who keeps the Jargon File, a collection of computer slang words.

Examples

Copy protection

Software protection dongles help prevent unauthorized use and copying of certain software. They were first used with ports like serial or parallel ports, but now most are in USB format.

Small peripheral appliances

In the mid-to-late 2010s, dongles were used for digital media players with a small, stick-like shape—such as Chromecast and Fire TV Stick—that plug directly into an HDMI port on a television or AV receiver. These are powered through a Micro USB connection to the television or an AC adapter, instead of being a larger set-top box. Single-board computers, like the Intel Compute Stick, were also made in a similar way.

Adapters

Very short cables can connect large jacks to smaller plugs, making it easier to install and remove them from equipment with limited space for connectors.

Other

• Cassette adapters let cassette-radios play audio from an iPod, MP3 player, smartphone, or portable CD player.
• Personal FM transmitters let you hear audio from a portable media player, portable CD player, smartphone, portable cassette player, or other portable audio system on an FM radio.
• IDE/PATA connectivity can be changed with some dongles. For example, floppy disk and hard disk drives have been copied onto solid-state "dongles" so that SD cards can send software to old Commodore 64 and Apple II computers.
• The Nintendo DS has a slot for Game Boy Advance games and also for add-on dongles like the Rumble Pak.
• USB host connectivity gives more flexibility to computer-based devices, such as connecting Bluetooth, legacy game controllers, GPS receivers, SD card readers, Flash drives, Mobile broadband modems, and Network interface controllers.
• Older cars that moved their CD players and changers away from the main unit can now use "emulators" that let USB and SD cards with MP3s and other audio files be recognized as "tracks" by the CD control unit.
• Adapters that change small versions of an interface to the full-sized one, or that provide the right electrical and mechanical connections for expansion cards that are too thin to fit a standard connector (such as PCMCIA, Compact Flash, and ExpressCard expansion cards). Some people in the IT industry call these "Pig-tails" because they look like the tail of a pig, with a full-sized connection and a short, thin wire extending from it.