How-To Geek

Hard drives rarely announce their flaws on day one. A new disk can sail through setup, then fail weeks later with your data on it. That's why I spend a fair amount of time stress-testing every new HDD first before I put it somewhere important. Here's what burn-in is, how it works, and whether you should bother.

For a long time, if you needed to do any video editing, it felt like you only had two real options: pay for software or settle for a free but incomplete replacement. Adobe's move to a subscription model has only aggravated the problem; Premiere now costs you at least $20 per month, usually more.

I’ve installed plenty of apps over the years simply because my phone couldn’t do something I wanted it to do. Need to identify a song? Download an app. Want to send a file to someone nearby? There was an app for that, too. But Android has come a long way, and many of those once-essential apps are no longer necessary. Modern Android phones now have built-in tools for just about everything.

Home Assistant is free, open-source software that costs nothing to download and install. But the software is only the beginning. Running Home Assistant involves plenty of costs, many of which can be higher than you think.

ESP32 boards can be incredibly cheap. They're so cheap that it's easy to fall into the habit of using a new board for each project that you build. Doing so may be wasting the capabilities of your ESP32s, which can handle more than one job at a time.

I never planned to explore the open-source Android world. It started with a simple thought: what would my phone look like if I stopped reaching for Google’s apps for everything?

Who would have thought that cheap microcontrollers would become such a booming business? The ESP32 is the culmination of years of enthusiasts making awesome stuff with single-board computers and microcontrollers like those from the Arduino family, and now you can buy a fistful of powerful ESP32s for very little money.

Netflix's U.S. movie chart seems like it's gone into full recruitment mode, with Guy Ritchie's WWII caper flick The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare perched atop the pile at No. 1 and Top Gun: Maverick on loan from Paramount sitting pretty in the third spot.

A full-sized 45L gaming desktop and a 32-inch 4K OLED monitor — that's been my go-to setup for a long time, and the one I always return to between reviews. With the Lenovo Yoga All-in-One i 32 Gen 11 Aura Edition (my goodness, what a name, Lenovo), I feel the desire to return to my trustworthy gaming desktop less than ever. This may be the hero All-in-One PCs should look up to.

The great thing about Android is how many choices it provides. You can swap out the home screen, dialer, keyboard, and even app stores. F-Droid is one of our favorite alternatives to the Play Store, but it's never been very pretty to look at. That's finally changing.

Every year, millions of phone numbers get reassigned to strangers, and the accounts tied to them often stay behind. If you're switching numbers or carriers, a short audit now can save you from handing someone the keys to your email, bank, and messaging apps.

Handing your phone over to a repair technician can be surprisingly uncomfortable. Even if you trust the person working on it, your Galaxy probably contains years' worth of photos, messages, accounts, documents, and other personal information that you don't want a stranger casually browsing. The problem is that a repair technician may need access to the device to diagnose or fix it, leaving you with an awkward choice between protecting your privacy and giving them the access they need.

The more you get into using Linux, the more likely you are to start using the Terminal for various tasks. Now, I'll admit that you don't need to do everything in the Terminal. But I truly believe knowing your way around it is pretty vital to the Linux experience (for me, anyway), whether it's learning basic short commands or playing video through the Terminal. Sometimes, though, it's nice to automate various Linux chores. So I use bash scripts to run commands for me, and to have a bit of fun along the way.

Receiving a power adapter with every tech purchase is a thing of the past, but the same can’t be said of cables (thankfully). With almost everything now charging via USB-C, you’ll quickly amass a collection of cables that have seemingly universal compatibility.

Some of us are still driving around in vehicles without fancy infotainment displays. There are several methods for bringing Android Auto into a car, but what if you just want to use your phone? I came up with a way to optimize my phone for the car without custom launchers or emulators.

Lots of people use Wi-Fi extenders, but is that truly the right thing to do? It's the easy way, that's for sure, but whether it's the right way is debatable.

It's now clear which Motorola phone will be the first to support GrapheneOS. The development team behind GrapheneOS has confirmed that the U.S.-bound Signature 27 can run its privacy-oriented take on Android.

There's no getting around the fact that modern flat-panel TV sound is usually pretty awful. The thin bodies of these devices don't leave much room for decent speakers and audio components, so many manufacturers do the bare minimum to avoid having the device classified as a computer monitor for lack of speakers.

I've lost count of how many times someone has sent me an Excel spreadsheet that technically contains everything I need, but makes me work far too hard to find it. Maybe the data is crammed into the wrong columns, duplicate records are lurking everywhere, or the formulas look like they were designed to confuse the next person who opens the file. Over the years, I've settled on a handful of Excel tools that help me turn someone else's mess into something I can actually work with.

Samsung is rolling out its One UI 9 update in earnest, if later than expected. The custom take on Android 17 is starting to reach Galaxy S26 devices in the U.S. roughly a week after the launch was supposed to start.