How-To Geek

As the name suggests, Home Assistant was designed for smart home automation. It's a powerful tool for automating all the smart devices in your home. To my surprise, some of the best ways that I use Home Assistant have nothing to do with my smart home at all.

National Vehicle Safety Recalls week is March 2nd through the 8th here in the United States, raising awareness of the importance of checking for open recalls on our vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) organizes the campaign, which coincides with the spring-cleaning season, but it's good practice to check for recalls on your car year-round.

With so many Linux distros out there, and each maintaining unique and not-always-consistent release cycles, it can be hard to keep up with what's new. To keep you in the loop, here are some of the major Linux releases from January 2026.

The entire internet has been buzzing about this new AI assistant OpenClaw, but is it really worth the hype? OpenClaw definitely delivers on the AI-powered future that I’ve wanted for a long time, but it comes with some negative side effects that you might not realize up front.

Wi-Fi is convenient and it's everywhere. Maybe it's because I grew up with only wired networks for my early years of computing, but I've always felt that Wi-Fi is a big compromise. The best Wi-Fi technology is, of course, pretty great, and in day-to-day use I have no complaints. However, there are still many things that the humble Ethernet cable is just so much better at doing.

For almost 27 years, One Piece fans have joined Monkey D. Luffy on the voyage of a lifetime as he searches for the fabled treasure of Gol D. Roger. The long-running animated adaptation of Eiichiro Oda's beloved manga series has been a mainstay of the medium, surpassing 1100 episodes, releasing 15 movies, and now having been brought into the realm of live-action with a hit Netflix adaptation in 2023. If you love anime, One Piece is instantly recognizable, no matter whether you have seen the series or not.

Your Home Assistant server may be haunted. Not by actual ghosts, but by ghost devices and entities that show up in Home Assistant even after the device or integration has been removed. The good news is that you can bust those ghosts without needing to wear an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on your back.

Microsoft Excel's dynamic arrays are a game-changer for automatic updates, but their unpredictable size can ruin your dashboard's formatting. Using the EXPAND function, you can lock your layouts in place and keep your spreadsheets looking ship-shape. Here's how.

There’s a secret layer of protection on your iPhone or Android phone's screen that keeps fingerprints and smudges at bay. It’s called an oleophobic coating, and it’s something you probably won't think about until it's gone. Let’s keep that coating in tip-top shape.

There is an idea that if you want powerful features and a huge audience, like the kind you find on Discord, you just have to surrender your data and tolerate the constant upselling. Just because something is self-hosted or open-source does not mean it is automatically difficult to use, complex to set up, or somehow lacking in essential features.

I’ve had a NAS for about 10 years now and have heavily used one for the past half a decade. With my NAS, I’ve been able to cancel many subscriptions to save money, including Netflix, Audible, and more.

Netflix's 2026 slate is jam-packed with films and shows that will keep you entertained throughout the year. If you're looking for an enticing update this month, Netflix has you covered with new movies spanning comedy, action, and drama.

Modern computers, laptops in particular, have really slashed the number of ports you get for plugging in peripherals. Following the example of MacBooks, some slim and light Windows laptops have just a pair of USB-C ports, forcing you to use a USB dongle hub to connect more than one thing, or dock your laptop with a desktop setup.

3D printing can be anything from a fun hobby to a serious business. No matter what sort of 3D printing you do, there's always a cost involved. The costs range from small to quite large, but whatever you're spending it's always better to avoid wasting money when you don't have to.

Thankfully, I don't have to buy a new soundbar often, but having bought two in the last year, I had to change exactly the same set of things on both right out of the box after hearing them just once. Soundbar manufacturers sure like packing in the gimmicks, especially for the more affordable class of soundbar that suits my budget!

New versions of Android and iOS come every year, making it hard for developers to keep mobile games up and running on that newer code—especially for titles that aren’t bringing in enough revenue to justify the expense. With that said, let's pour one out for these top-notch mobile games that couldn't survive the hustle and are no longer available on Google Play or the Apple App Store.

These days, with the rise of SSD prices, it might be tempting to go to a shady website and get yourself a cheap "SSD." Don't.

You probably scoffed when you read the title above, and I don’t blame you. But the more I thought about it, the more I considered that the freedom offered by a platform like Home Assistant is something that many of us wield without a second thought.

Reliability is everything when buying a used car. A sweet deal can vanish fast if the drivetrain acts up, electronics act finicky, or warning lights start blinking, turning a bargain into a wallet-busting headache.

Times have changed, and third-party antivirus software is no longer a necessity. Here's why I only use Windows Security, plus some things I've learned about the free, built-in antivirus platform.