How-To Geek

I've been obsessed with Docker lately. I've been using it for a lot of things. I've also been getting back into Raspberry Pis over the last year or so. I was talking with a fellow writer here at HTG about different things to do with a Pi 4 in my budget home lab, and we got toDocker containers. I wondered if I could get them to work on this older SBC. It turned out I had some success with the project. It unlocked quite a few cool new ideas.

We all know our phones have become powerful enough to replace PCs, but far fewer of us have actually tried it. Well, I’ve embraced the pocket computer lifestyle, and I’ve tried out many accessories to make this possible — including many types of keyboards. If you picture yourself plopping your phone down on a table in a coffee shop and getting real work done, here’s the kind of keyboard you want.

I’m always on the lookout for ways I can use my 3D printing to make life a little easier, usually for minimal filament cost. I’ve been taking more chances and printing more models recently, but one recent print has proved its worth more than others.

To end the month, HBO Max is raising the bar in terms of the quality of its content. One of my favorite new movies of the year, The Invite, is now streaming on HBO Max. It's a comedy for adults, a genre that feels like a rarity in today's Hollywood landscape. Speaking of adults, documentaries are a staple for older audiences, and HBO Max has intriguing options.

Let's face it, GPUs aren't cheap right now. If you own one, be it the RTX 5090 or something from 10 years ago, you want to make the most of it. Unfortunate, then, that just one slider can absolutely wreck your GPU performance, but if you check it out, you might be able to turn things around for the better.

Gmail's inbox used to feel like a chore I could never finish. Newsletters piled up, the same questions kept landing in my inbox, and the one message I actually needed was always buried under everything else. But after tweaking a few free Gmail settings, my inbox now handles the repetitive work for me.

Google does a good job of walking you through your phone during the initial setup. From choosing your language and region to copying data from your previous phone and signing in to your Google accounts, the setup process is meticulously detailed and easy to follow. What's not explained explicitly or concisely, however, is the meaning of all those little icons nestled in your Android phone's status bar.

The latest foldables have incredible designs and outstanding performance, but they usually cost an arm and a leg. Smart buyers can save hundreds of dollars and still get flagship features by buying last year's model, like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, now 33% off on Amazon. It's significantly cheaper than the latest Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra while matching many of its features, and you won't need to worry about a cracked screen.

Unsurprisingly, audiences are loving Nobody Wants This season 3, one of Netflix's new releases in October. The rom-com starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody has been a hit across three seasons, and I expect the show to return for a fourth season. If you haven't watched Nobody Wants This, then consider throwing it into your rotation.

A cluttered Windows desktop, while it could be better with a little bit of discipline, is partly not your fault. It usually comes from too many windows, too many repetitive tasks, and too few tools for managing them. Three Microsoft-made utilities can fix that, and none of them costs anything.

For the past few years, Mistral has tried to carve itself a name as Europe’s answer to Silicon Valley’s AI giants, moving from smaller, open models to heavyweight systems like Mistral Large 3 in late 2025. After raising €3 billion in September 2026, the French start-up has doubled down on its ambition to compete with leading US and Chinese AI developers. Now, the company is trying again to take on the AI behemoths with Mistral Large 4, a massive open-weight model built for coding, complex reasoning, image analysis, and business automation.

Multi-color 3D printing lets you combine multiple filaments into a single object in order to create ready-made items that don’t require painting. Unless you’ve invested in a printer that features a tool-changer nozzle, this can be a wasteful and time-consuming process.

Four years have passed since Bluetooth SIG announced Auracast, and we now have it readily available on the latest Android smartphones. Yet somehow, the average smartphone owner barely uses it. Most folks I know or socialize with haven't even heard of the feature.

A 4-bay NAS isn't cheap—they'll often cost you around $500 before you start including hard drives, which are now quite pricy. Even budget 2-bay NASes come in at around $200.

Using a single charging cable for all my devices was a pain, so I switched to a 3-in-1 charger and never looked back. Acer's 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station for Apple is 45% off and lets you wirelessly charge your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods wirelessly at the same time.

You might often hear Plex and Kodi being mentioned in the same breath, which makes it sound like the two media applications are ones that force you to choose a side.

AI models need huge amounts of data to train on, and researchers are warning that AI companies could run out of high-quality public data to use. Your own data isn't safe; even if you're unaware of it, AI companies may be training their models on your social media posts and more.

I've never been a big fan of physical keyboards on phones, but I decided to give one a try earlier this year. The experiment didn't last long. The phone has been collecting dust on my desk for months — until I turned it into a Game Boy.

Linux has a reputation for being difficult or tedious to work with because it involves using a command-line interface all the time. Today, that reputation doesn't hold up. While some modern Linux distros are still very terminal heavy, many are every bit as approachable as Windows or macOS—you only really use the terminal when you want to use it.

Windows 11’s right-click menu has been cluttered for a long time now. There are delays when opening a file menu and an overload of options added by Windows and installed applications. Now, Microsoft is finally fixing this by rolling out a redesigned context menu and giving users greater control over which commands appear. The update also brings layout choices that make the menu adaptable to individual preferences.