How-To Geek

A lot of gamers are understandably concerned when they first boot up their new gaming PC and discover that their expensive graphics card is hitting temperatures north of 80°C.

Most of us sit on our couches to watch movies or shows, just to get out of our routine lives bound by work, household chores, tasks, and duties. And what better way to do it than watching a thriller that keeps us hooked until the end? I love the genre, especially the thrillers that play with my mind.

Running out of storage usually means one thing—hovering over the downloads folder with increasingly desperate intent and looking for anything you can move to an external drive. But unless you’ve genuinely run out of files to delete, the problem likely isn’t what you have; it’s how much space Windows is quietly using behind the scenes. It turns out that a surprising amount of storage is tied to temporary files, recovery data, old updates, and system clutter. The good thing is that you don’t need another PC cleaner because Windows already has a capable cleanup kit built-in.

LED strip lighting is all the rage, and for good reason. It’s cheap, versatile, easily integrates with smart home platforms, and it’s easier than ever to make your own.

Me? I'm a hardcore anime fan. You've probably never even heard of the anime I like. You? I guess you're not really into this anime stuff. It's all spiky hair, big swords, and too much fan service. Right?

As a tech journalist, it's easy for me to go ahead and criticize RAM and SSD makers for price hikes, and ignore the reasons as to why that might be happening.

I realized I didn't have a single place where I could see all my subscriptions, so I built a simple Excel tracker to bring them together. Since I set mine up, it's helped me cut more than $1,000 from my recurring expenses by showing me what I was paying, highlighting overlaps, and giving me time to act before renewals.

Android Auto can be frustrating if you don't want it to do anything more than the basics. It quickly fills up with apps, it bombards you with notifications, and generally feels bloated and cluttered. All I need is for it to tell me where to go and play some music until I get there. And by changing a few key settings, that's exactly what it does.

As the popularity of 3D printing has grown, the prevalence of so-called “torture tests” for 3D printers has waned. This is not a coincidence; these two trends are interlinked (and it’s a good thing).

Dell has another answer to the MacBook Neo just months after unveiling the redesigned XPS 13. The PC maker has introduced a new, overhauled 14S laptop that it claims is a better pick than Apple's most affordable model—if you're willing to make a few tradeoffs.

I wear a smartwatch so that I almost never have to hear my phone. My watch tells me when someone's calling, when someone's texting, and other important things. Just as importantly, my watch can know when not to tell me as well.

It's 2026. Who on earth is buying RAM right now?

Most of the vibe coding projects I encounter are written in high-level languages like C, C++, or Python. However, Claude can also write decent MicroPython—you just need to be a little careful.

I don’t know about you, but the main reason why I wear a smartwatch is for notifications. It allows me to pull out my phone less often, which is always a good thing. On my Pixel Watch, though, there was one setting that made the experience more cumbersome than it could be.

August is kind of the year's runt of the litter when it comes to streaming—it's often a slow stretch between summer tentpoles and the wave of new and exciting programming coming in the fall. But it appears that August 2026's documentaries didn't get the memo. Over the past four weeks, HBO Max, Netflix, Paramount+, and Hulu each came to the table with some compelling and fascinating nonfiction, some of which may end up on best-of-the-year lists.

Your internet router has a very specific job, and it's perfectly reasonable to assume that all it's doing is that job and nothing else. The reality, however, is never that simple.

Linux phones have come a long way from the days when that meant installing rough software and hoping for the best. You can now get polished devices that largely work as well as their Android and iPhone counterparts, just with truly open-source code.

The Amazon Fire TV series of sticks and (literal) televisions has been popular for years thanks to low price points for decent-quality hardware.

Google is rolling out its Android feature drop for September, and it will be ideal if you need help in a store or just get queasy on a road trip. The release notably adds a Motion Assist feature that, like the iPhone's longstanding Vehicle Motion Cues.

There are some things I do in Windows so often that I can't believe they don't have keyboard shortcuts. After clicking through the same menus over and over every day, I decided to stop waiting for Microsoft and use AutoHotkey to make my own.