How-To Geek

I find it fascinating that Android Auto can be amazing for a long time, but then I suddenly notice something going subtly wrong. Maybe it's the sudden appearance of Gemini trying to get me to write songs with it while I drive. Or the cable comes loose a bunch of times, and I lose connection (I switched to Android Auto Wirelessbecause of this issue). Sometimes, it's a navigation issue. It can be hit-and-miss. Recently, I was using Android Auto and noticed some dips in audio quality. I looked into it and found an app that took care of the issue for me.

Windows 11 has long baked Bing into local search, and escaping it meant editing the registry. Version 26H2 finally adds a proper toggle. Here is what search looked like before, how much faster it feels now, and whether switching Bing off is worth it.

Picking a music-streaming service can invite a little peer pressure, especially since I pay for YouTube Music Premium. I get it. Spotify and Apple Music dominate these conversations. My friends who use Spotify give me a look that says they feel slightly sorry for me, while the Apple crowd assumes I’m just defaulting to whatever Google bundles into Android.

Google Fi is now trivially inexpensive, provided you take advantage of a rare deal. Google has a limited-time promotion that cuts 75% off plan prices for a year, but only if you meet certain conditions.

Modular 3D-printed models are designed with customization and future expansion in mind. By adding additional modules or printing just the parts you need, you can expand on a project in the future or make something that feels tailored to you.

After almost two decades of using gaming mice, I switched to an ergonomic mouse about a month ago. The move is already paying dividends because my Logitech MX Master 3S is super comfortable to use, but I still decided to keep my Logitech G305 and switch to a dual mouse setup. Here’s why.

Skyrocketing, unprecedented RAM prices have changed the entire way we have to think about RAM for our PCs. When RAM was cheap, I would always recommend buying a matched pair and installing them in a dual-channel configuration. You get double the memory bandwidth, after all. So why not?

Everyone is short on time these days, and typing on your phone screen isn't exactly fast. Managers, founders, product specialists, and those who need to communicate a lot throughout the day are often short on time. Stopping to switch or find the right app, or work through the process manually, can really slow things down.

Microsoft is making it easier to have AI do your drudge work — even when you're not there. The company has launched a redesigned Copilot app that finally ties into Office and streamlines the whole experience, including the do-it-while-you-sleep Autopilot feature.

Fall is officially upon us, and as September winds down and we prepare for the changing of the leaves, Netflix's flashy conveyor belt of new documentaries and series has slowed. But that's OK, a couple of great series are still going strong on the Netflix U.S. charts—Death of the Pastor's Wife and I Survived a Serial Killer—and, as we're about to get into, it's not over yet.

Blu-ray discs remain one of the few ways to keep high-quality home movies on physical media you control. Windows 11 barely includes basic support to make a playable one, though — which might surprise some of you, considering native burning tools for formats like DVD have been a staple on Windows for almost 20 years now. Here's the hardware and software you need, how burning works, and whether it's all worth the effort.

I've seen plenty of posts online saying you absolutely need to buy a name brand, but they always assume you're running tools all day on a job site. If you're not, that advice doesn't apply, and following it will cost you money you don't need to spend. Off-brand power tool batteries have a bad reputation that made more sense when third-party manufacturing was less reliable than it is now. You need to consider whether your situation actually calls for a name-brand battery.

While you may be waiting for Amazon’s highly anticipated Big Deal Days to go live in two weeks, now may be a better time to shop, as the mega retailer just quietly slashed pricing on tons of gear, including some of its most popular power tools, like DeWalt's no. 1 bestselling 20V Max XR Oscillating Tool Kit—and right now, it's under $100.

You've likely noticed that your Windows computer tends to slow down after it's been running for a while. This can happen even on brand-new laptops and powerful gaming PCs, yet few people understand why this happens. The good news is that I have a solution.

While the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the iPhone Duo may be grabbing all the headlines, the Motorola Razr Fold is the sleeper hit book-style foldable of the year. This phone undercuts the alternatives on price while outperforming them in many of the areas that matter most. Yet, just like other Motorola phones, it’s the software that attracts me, and it’s the software that pushes me away.

My first "big-screen" TV was a 51-inch Samsung Plasma, which I held on to for such a long time that I made the leap from 720p straight to 4K in 2016, when I purchased a 55-inch Samsung LED LCD TV. Coming from CRTs, I already thought these TVs were enormous, but standards have changed.

For months, right-click menus and legacy context options on my Windows 11 machine felt like they were lagging half a beat behind my mouse. The delay wasn't imaginary — it's baked into several layers of the operating system, and untangling it revealed fixes that take mere seconds.

Hard drives rarely announce their flaws on day one. A new disk can sail through setup, then fail weeks later with your data on it. That's why I spend a fair amount of time stress-testing every new HDD first before I put it somewhere important. Here's what burn-in is, how it works, and whether you should bother.

For a long time, if you needed to do any video editing, it felt like you only had two real options: pay for software or settle for a free but incomplete replacement. Adobe's move to a subscription model has only aggravated the problem; Premiere now costs you at least $20 per month, usually more.

I’ve installed plenty of apps over the years simply because my phone couldn’t do something I wanted it to do. Need to identify a song? Download an app. Want to send a file to someone nearby? There was an app for that, too. But Android has come a long way, and many of those once-essential apps are no longer necessary. Modern Android phones now have built-in tools for just about everything.