How-To Geek

When a call comes in from a number you don't recognize, it can be hard to know whether to answer or not. I missed several calls from my Dad, who was ringing to tell me he had a new number, because I assumed it was a spam call. I tried Apple's call screening features, but they felt too restrictive and meant that I missed important calls from genuine callers, so I decided to build a shortcut to check numbers while the call is still coming through.

Cloud storage is as useful as it is seamless, at least these days. Most of us use some form of cloud storage; after all, those photos you take with your phone end up somewhere, and there's a reason why you can easily access them across many devices.

My phone is full of life-tracking apps, but it became increasingly apparent that they don't talk to each other. So, I decided to try logging my sleep, spending, routines, food, and work in Excel for a week to see whether consolidating everything would make the data easier to understand. By Sunday, patterns had started to emerge that I wasn't previously aware of.

It's always been hard to really stand behind any one brand when recommending a networking setup to friends or family—especially those without a ton of technology experience. UniFi has changed that though, and it's now the only network that I recommend to anyone who asks me.

Paramount+ is where many of us look for the loud, boisterous stuff—Sly Stallone running the Tulsa underworld, the latest Star Trek voyage, and, apparently, UFC fights at the White House. But quietly tucked away behind Taylor Sheridan's cowboy hat sits an excellent documentary library that's easy to scroll right past.

Google has dominated smartphone AI for years, with Assistant and Gemini having pulled well ahead of Siri. Well, Apple just upended this narrative with the introduction of Siri AI in iOS 27.The new assistant uses Gemini as a teacher, but has customizations that make it do things Android users have wanted for years

OneDrive is integrated into every corner of Windows 10 and Windows 11, and it seems very likely that integration will only increase as Microsoft pushes more and more cloud features into Windows. If you want to get rid of OneDrive but don't want to give up the convenience of a cloud service app on your desktop, you have options.

A lot of the everyday stuff on our devices quietly runs through someone else's servers. None of it feels like surveillance, but each one is a stream of pretty personal data flowing out of your hands. The good news is that for each of these, there's a free and open-source (FOSS) alternative that does the same job while keeping your data on your hardware. Here are three such FOSS apps worth setting up this weekend.

Want to try an Arch-based distro but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’ve already been distro-hopping and still haven’t found the perfect fit? Here’s my personal ranking of the nine Arch-based distros I think are worth your time—based on real-world testing and my own preferences.

It's easy to lose an entire evening on Netflix. One more episode of that reality show you've been obsessed with (looking at you, Outlast: The Jungle), or getting lost in that thriller movie you didn't mean to start watching after Kimmel. More and more frequently, however, Netflix's documentary machine pumps out a true story so compelling that it lodges itself in your brain and won't leave.

If you drive a Honda Accord, Civic, or CR-V, you may have a reason to take a quick look at your VIN. American Honda Motor Co. has issued a safety recall for nearly 100,000 vehicles across its Honda and Acura lineups due to a component defect that can cause the front passenger airbags to deploy at full force during a crash, even when a child or infant seat is in that position.

It’s hard to believe that Android Wear arrived over a decade ago. Google had great ideas for the platform that would eventually be renamed to “Wear OS,” but somewhere along the way, they were abandoned. To this day, Android Wear got a lot right.

For most of us, when we think of enterprise hardware, we think "expensive." No wonder. Enterprise hardware, including HDDs, is built for servers, data centers, heavy workloads, and 24/7 use. You'd naturally expect them to cost more than consumer-friendly options.

Completing any project comes with a sense of accomplishment, but there’s no denying that some are more impressive than others. Whether it’s functionality you never thought possible, the culmination of months of work, or a particularly inventive way of circumventing limitations—these ESP32 projects have it all.

Ryobi makes a ton of cordless 18V power tools with a collection of over 350 products, and even though I've been buying them for nearly 20 years, there are a few essentials that I can't live without. Whether it's to make a DIY repair or project around the house easier, or just a must-have tool, here's what you need to know.

In a television landscape overcrowded with ambitious storytelling, few shows have risen above the noise to earn both critical acclaim and Emmy recognition. From richly imagined worlds where power, identity, and survival collide in strikingly different ways, for example, to a modern mythological battleground where ancient gods clash with new beliefs, they push the boundaries of genre television, and that's why we love them.

I've spent years pushing back against the way Microsoft wants me to use Windows. I usually change the default browser, clean up the Start menu, keep OneDrive from taking over my files, work around Windows Search, and generally try to make Windows feel like my computer instead of another doorway into Microsoft's services. On my main work machine, I even run MSEdgeRedirect because I'm tired of Windows sending certain system links to Edge after I've already chosen a different browser.

We live in a disposable world, but there are plenty of ways to reuse or repurpose the devices in our smart homes. Even old or broken devices that seem like they may be of little use can be adapted into something awesome. Here are three Home Assistant projects that can help you do more with what you've got.

Open-source applications are a great way to cut a few subscriptions and save yourself some money, especially if you own an old PC that you can put to work as a server. There are hundreds, if not thousands of different open-source projects out there, but these are 5 of my favorites that aren't super common.

Phrases like "Domain Name System" and "DNS sinkhole" can make setting up Pi-hole sound like something complicated that requires a lot of technical knowledge. In fact, Pi-hole is fairly simple to set up, and you can have it up and running in 15 minutes. It's one of the best introductions to the world of homelabbing.