How-To Geek

I'm lucky enough to have a handful of hobbies that all seem to leave broken gear in their wake. I'm a musician, a video gamer, a pinball enthusiast, and a homeowner. I deal with bad cables, loose wires, scratchy jacks, questionable connections, old electronics, and gear that looks dead long before it really is.

When Encanto was released, it was something of a cultural phenomenon. You couldn't escape the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno," and the soundtrack went to the top of the charts. If you loved Encanto, there's another overlooked Lin-Manuel Miranda animated musical on Netflix that's better in many ways.

Google is doing more at I/O than introducing Android 17's AI overhaul — it's also transforming how you create apps. The tech giant has launched a slew of AI-powered programming tools at its conference, including a simple way to write code for native Android apps.

Android has been around for nearly 20 years, and it’s overwhelmingly the most popular mobile OS worldwide. Yet, apps still occasionally launch first on the iPhone and take months to arrive on Android—if at all. Google is hoping to change that with a new Migration Assistant tool.

Sometimes hotel Wi-Fi is insecure, limited, or an outright hassle to join. Fortunately, there is a way around all of those issues—the humble travel router.

If you own an external SSD, you're already ahead of the curve when it comes to following the 3-2-1 rule for backups. But while using an external SSD is as easy as just plugging it in and drag-and-dropping some files, you might be hindering its performance by plugging it in at the front.

I've been tinkering with my smart home for well over a decade. My obsession began with trying to control my smart bulb with my voice. All these years later, I'm right back where I started.

Sometimes, we encounter real events that feel like fiction. Other times, we're faced with stories too insane to be true. How Hollywood captures these moments and brings real-life stories to the screen is what draws our attention, encouraging us to reflect, question, and feel different emotions.

It's that time of the year again for tool fans. I'm talking about "Ryobi Days," Home Depot's annual sale with big discounts, freebies, and other deals you don't want to miss. If you have DIY projects around the house that need attention, now is the perfect time to get new gear. Here's what you need to know.

You spend time setting up a smart home, and then someone walks into the room and flips a wall switch like a normal button. Suddenly, the device loses its power, and the ‘smart’ setup becomes useless until the switch is turned back on again. This exact problem is what Zunzunbee Slate Switch is trying to solve, and now, it has joined Home Assistant’s official certified device program.

Sony wants to not only challenge Apple's AirPods Max 2 in audio quality but in design as well. It just unveiled 1000X The Collexion, a luxury set of over-ear wireless headphones that promise a premium build as well as key audio upgrades over the WH-1000XM6.

Plex has decided to increase the price of its lifetime subscription to Plex Pass. Instead of a slight bump, however, it’s a massive increase that effectively triples its price. Currently, the Plex Pass is available for a lifetime subscription for $249.99, but not for long. Starting July 1, 2026, a Plex Pass lifetime subscription will cost users $749.99.

There's something hugely satisfying about giving an old laptop a second life, especially when that second life turns out to be more useful than its first. I had a dusty machine sitting in a drawer for years, too slow for daily work but too functional to throw out. So I wiped it, slimmed it down, and turned it into my dedicated PC repair laptop.

Cordless power tools are expensive, especially Milwaukee tools. Have you ever gone to grab a new Milwaukee tool, only to take one look at the price tag and instantly walk away? While Home Depot is a go-to store for many, there are other places to shop with better deals and lower prices while still getting a warranty.

I loved my Nokia Lumia 520. It's one of the best phones I've owned, and while I've been on Android for the past decade, the Windows Phone Metro UI still has a special place in my heart. Microsoft had some really clever ideas back then, with Metro still having the edge over the latest iteration of Android when it comes to home screen design and the ability to have all your important apps and widgets easily accessible on a single, scrolling screen.

One of the best quality-of-life and security upgrades you can make to your network doesn't require you to buy any new hardware or install any software—it relies on DNS filtering instead.

Microsoft has unveiled major Surface Laptop and Surface Pro updates that it says can outperform the M5 MacBook Air, but the highlight is a feature from the Android world: the Surface Laptop 8 has a privacy display similar to that of the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

If you've spent any time with Python, you've probably used it for data work, scripting, or maybe some automation—but image editing likely wasn't on your radar. It turns out Python can handle a surprising amount of what Photoshop does, and with way less code than you'd expect. This includes resizing or cropping, removing backgrounds, or even animating a still image into a GIF. Here are seven ways I use Python to edit and animate images. I'm also sharing the code snippets to help you get started.

Open-source software is literally crucial to the modern world. Without it, many technologies we take for granted couldn't interoperate, and the biggest machine ever built—the internet—simply wouldn't work.

Most people assume their work is safe as long as they save often enough, but saving manually only protects you when you actually remember to do it. RAM doesn't hold onto anything the moment power cuts out or an app crashes, and that gap between making a change and the system writing it to the drive is where work disappears. Windows has a hidden tool called File History that handles this automatically in the background, and most people have never touched it despite it being right there the whole time.