How-To Geek

Compact crossovers have basically become the default new car for Americans. They’re easier to live with than larger SUVs, cheaper to run, and now come packed with tech and comfort features that used to feel reserved for pricier vehicles.

Now that Memorial Day weekend has passed, let the summer festivities begin. For many of you, that will include a vacation that might involve a plane ride. Some people love to sleep on planes, while others prefer to pull out a book and read. For me, I use my time on a plane to watch movies and TV shows. If I'm stuck on a plane for several hours, why not catch up on some shows I missed?

Are you looking for a new satisfying hobby to pick up? Let me introduce you to laser engraving. I've been laser engraving for many years, but there's never been a better time to pick up the hobby than now.

For years, most of us have treated Linux display scaling as one of those problems you learn to work around rather than solve. You buy a high-resolution monitor, set scaling to something reasonable like 125% or 150%, and then wait for the compromises to appear. One app looks sharp, another looks slightly smeared, and you can’t read text.

Samsung Galaxy Watches offer a wide array of options that put them a rung above other Wear OS devices. The only bad thing about this is that you might be missing some of the best features that aren’t enabled by default. This is especially true when it comes to notifications.

YouTube is doing more to fight the wave of AI slop on the streaming video service. The Google brand says it's using "new internal signals" to automatically label photorealistic AI and theoretically discourage abuse of the technology.

DNS is one of those things where many people aren't aware that it is something you can adjust. Those who are, may end up overdoing it in the other direction. Tweaking custom DNS settings across every phone, laptop, console, TV, and whatever else lives inside your house may sound tempting if you belong in that second camp, but hold up a second.

Smart video doorbells are one of the best examples of a dumb device that has been improved enormously by adding smart features. You can use one to see who is at the door even if you're on the other side of the world, you can talk to visitors through the doorbell, and you can get notifications when someone is detected on the doorbell's camera.

If you have spent years working with editors built on Electron, you already know how heavy they feel, and VS Code is no exception. If your project is big enough, the interface starts to stutter. It is a performance tax that we have come to accept as the cost of doing business in modern development. Zed changes that by stripping away the web stack entirely. Now, I think VS Code is too slow compared to Zed.

Makita fans know the company makes all sorts of products, from battery-powered coffee machines to capable 18V LXT power tools. And while most of you own the basics, like an impact driver, drills, and saws, there are several lesser-known Makita tools you'll want to check out.

I've been using optical audio for over a decade, but I had no idea what I was missing out on. I intentionally avoided using HDMI ARC because of issues that I had early on with it, but it seems like eARC fixed all the gripes that I originally had with ARC.

Smart homes are increasingly becoming a crucial part of a functioning modern household, so I've decided to take the plunge and create my own smart home.

Logitech's MX Master series of mice has become a common sight in YouTube videos or photographs of tech-savvy people's desk setups, but what makes this now-iconic mouse so special?

You've probably heard of God Mode—the folder trick that's supposed to put every Windows setting in one place. It sounds exactly like what a power user would want, which is why it's so disappointing when you realize that it no longer includes every setting in one place—at least not on modern Windows devices.

Most monitors and TVs have a set of mounting holes on the back that follow the VESA standard. This is the mounting system that allows you to wall-mount your TV or put your monitors on special monitor arms.

My son is a big Plex fan. I was on the fence about it. I had some concerns about certain features being paywalled, among other things. I ended up quite liking Jellyfin for some of my media, so I switched over to it. I'm still going to try Emby at some point and see how it integrates into my setup as well, but Jellyfin has been my daily driver for a while now.

The debate between Microsoft and Google is an old (and divisive) one. For many, it might look like there's an obvious winner, based on their preferences, but when it comes to productivity, the answer may be a bit more complicated.

While Google has owned Waze since 2013, it only started incorporating Waze's best features into Maps in the last few years. Now, both navigation apps do many of the same things, but that doesn't mean they're the same. Here are a few of the differences, and why I still prefer Waze.

Before smartphones, keeping passengers entertained on a long road trip meant packing a case of CDs, hoping the AC held out, and answering "are we there yet?" every 45 minutes (or seconds).

Personally, I use Winhance to create a custom Windows 11 ISO free of Windows bloatware, so I don't have to spend hours disabling and deleting superfluous apps and features after installing Windows. You can use Rufus instead if you'd like, since the utility not only allows you to install Windows 11 with a local account, but also to disable unwanted Microsoft apps and features such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Copilot, and so on.