How-To Geek

It’s not just the serial scrollers whose batteries drain daily. With so much of what we do taking place on our phones – communication, music, trail maps, social media, shopping – it’s nearly impossible to reach dinnertime with any battery left. Plus, most of these tasks are juggled on the go, from the city to the great outdoors. So, the need for portable power is no longer a nice-to-have, but an essential part of “everyday carry.”

Apple has been promising an upgrade to Siri for so long that it feels like it will never come. The feature was announced in 2024, and we're still waiting for a smarter Apple voice assistant. I replaced Siri with Home Assistant's own voice assistant, and it's far more useful.

If you work in PowerShell regularly, you've probably retyped commands you forgot, manually checked log files, or logged into servers one by one. That ends up being annoying in the long run, and it's frustrating knowing you have to do it repeatedly. Some cmdlets can fix those problems for you, and end up being very useful for everyday users.

A NAS feels like a solved problem once it’s up and running—files go in, files come out, and everything looks fine. This is exactly why these mistakes go unnoticed for so long. Some of the most common NAS setups out there have quiet, slow-burning problems baked in. To help improve your setup, here are five of the most common NAS mistakes—and how to fix them.

Notion is one of the coolest-looking apps, because it feels like a Wiki you can easily put together. Unfortunately, that idea is exactly why it doesn't work as well as it should. I have found myself wasting too much time on irrelevant information just to make notes work. Now, I can see why the term "Jack of all trades, master of none," exists. Don't ditch your subscriptions just yet, first see if you can handle this overbloated app.

If you’re an Android power user, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually want to do something that Files by Google or Samsung My Files just doesn’t do. Thankfully, one of the best alternatives you can find just happens to be open source and free.

I've been modding Kindles and Fire tablets for several years now. Even old devices have plenty of uses when you're finished with them. Originally, I was going to turn an e-ink Kindle into a secondary display. Just as I was preparing to work on the project, something crazy happened: the dang thing broke down and died on me. It could not be revived. I guess that's what happens when you pick up a Craigslist special for a deep discount.

You probably already know what an ideal day looks like—you just can’t seem to have one consistently. From personal experience, I can testify that closing this gap is a lot more difficult than it seems. That said, what helped me the most was trying to gamify my goals, and these three FOSS apps became the backbone of that system.

For decades, one hybrid hatchback has stood above everything else when it comes to fuel economy. Even as the market has exploded with electrified SUVs, sedans, and crossovers, no rival has managed to dethrone the long-standing benchmark for efficiency. If your number one priority is spending as little money on gas as possible, there is still one clear answer.

I wanted to move my Adobe Lightroom library to a portable SSD so I could use it on both my desktop and laptop. Instead of purchasing a pre-built SSD, I built my own for a fraction of the cost (and I can upgrade it later if I need to).

Few computing-related things seem as straightforward as a simple USB hub. It's there, you grab it, plug it in, plug things into it, and voila: you suddenly tripled the number of your USB ports! Sounds great (and it is), but there's also a reason why USB hubs are often treated as disposable tech. Those extra ports often tend to malfunction and die off one by one.

Apex's reign at the top of Netflix might be coming to an end with the addition of two new movies in May. The first is Swapped, an animated adventure starring Michael B. Jordan and Juno Temple. The other movie is Remarkably Bright Creatures, an endearing drama starring Sally Field and Lewis Pullman. Both movies have the potential to be the No. 1 movie when Netflix updates its rankings.

After a four-year wait, Euphoria has returned to television, but season 3 is providing a major shake-up to its formula. Not only have four years passed in the real world, but the in-universe tale has moved forward, taking the cast of the Zendaya-led teen drama out of high school and into the trials of young adulthood. As such, the series faces a new challenge of whether it can keep up its momentum with this drastic new status quo.

I've owned many portable external battery banks. I typically look at how much power they hold, how fast they can charge other devices, and how big they are—but my latest battery came with a perk I didn't know to look for.

A NAS is a great addition to any homelab setup. It can back up your photos and other files, run a Jellyfin or Plex server, and replace a few of your subscription services.

Popular proprietary voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant make it simple to control your smart home with your voice, but they lack personality. They're more like Computer from Star Trek than J.A.R.V.I.S. from Iron Man or GLaDOS from Portal. Using two tools in Home Assistant, I gave my voice assistant a personality and a voice to match.

If you’re like me, you’re subscribed to many streaming websites, and one of those happens to be Amazon Prime. There are plenty of great shows on Amazon Prime, but one I love dearly and have had for many years is Invincible.

Cloud AI is powerful but not private. Local AI is private but less powerful. That trade-off is real, and trying to pick one over the other is the wrong framework. A better use of your time is to find tasks that require privacy, but not as much model intelligence, and then have local AI models automate them for you. Here are three such tasks that I’ve automated using on-device LLMs.

Power tools are a very personal purchase for a lot of people, and maybe even a sensitive subject. Just like tools in general, there's a lot of personal preference, brand loyalty, and most importantly myths that influence what people use.

The Adobe Suite is a mainstay of creatives everywhere, and one of the most common apps is Adobe Premiere—the video-editing software. However, I've switched to an open-source alternative, and I don't regret it for a moment.