How-To Geek

Have you ever opened Blender hoping to create something, only to get overwhelmed by the interface and close the app a few minutes later? If so, you’re in good company. A lot of people, myself included, have wanted to use this powerful software to create something beautiful, especially after hearing about Flow — the animated film that won the 2025 Oscar for Best Animated Feature and was entirely created using Blender. However, as soon as you open the app, all the panels, modes, menus, submenus, and hundreds of settings make it seem like an insurmountable learning curve, leading many of us to give up on the idea.

I used to think Samsung’s edge panels were one of those features that sounded useful in theory but didn’t really have much practical value. After spending some time with them, though, I’ve changed my mind. The retractable shortcut drawer gives me quick access to a ton of things I use a lot without forcing me to leave whatever I’m doing or hunt through a cluttered app drawer. For something that’s always sitting quietly at the edge of the screen, it can make everyday tasks noticeably less frustrating.

On an average workday I spend about 10 hours at my computer and that's before you count the many hours I spend on my PC doing things that I enjoy. When you sit behind a keyboard that much, you realize how many simple things you do require too many clicks. Sure, they might only take a couple of seconds in the moment, but at the end of the day all that time adds up.

Buying things online is the best way to save money, but it can be hard to know if you’re buying the right size or measuring properly. Getting this wrong means dealing with returns, which is inconvenient and best avoided. Luckily, these 3D prints can help boost your chances of success the first time around.

Difficulty settings in video games aren't always perfect, and many games still struggle to provide options that aren't too easy or too difficult. While some games like Elden Ring and Monster Hunter Rise forgo this choice altogether, there's a better approach to difficulty settings that too many developers are ignoring.

For most PC gamers, the first instinct when building or upgrading a gaming PC is to look at the latest and most popular GPUs. But with graphics card prices shooting up, you’re unlikely to get great value for your money when buying new, especially from NVIDIA.

It’s been a couple of years since I turned my back on the organic light-emitting diodes and quantum dots of modern TVs in favor of my beloved ultra-short-throw projector. Its bright and clear image beamed onto a big 100-inch ALR screen has turned my living room into a movie theater that rivals some of my city’s repertory cinemas, and it’s the best home theater experience I’ve ever had.

In the movies, robots are often human-shaped, mainly because to have a robot in the movie at all, you had to use the "dude in a suit" method. However, since we're also watching a story to entertain people, it's easier to make them care about a robot that looks like a person. The big exception might be R2-D2 and C-3PO. No one likes the latter and people adore the former.

Ryobi is one of the most popular brands for cordless power tools, and a big part of that is its hundreds of budget-friendly products. Better yet, it's not just the tools, but everything else that you can do or power with your Ryobi batteries.

Have you ever found yourself on a system that's lacking the necessary tools? Maybe it was a rescue or installation environment, an unfamiliar system you were repairing, or a Docker container you were debugging. If you've used Linux for a while, you've likely encountered these scenarios, and installing the required tools can be a hassle when all you want is to finish the job. That's where a convenient toolkit becomes a lifesaver, and I have one that fits the bill perfectly.

Quentin Tarantino's love letter to Hollywood's Golden Age is back on streaming. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is now available to watch on Prime Video.

You finally bit the bullet and bought a fast charger for your Samsung, but for some reason, you're not getting anywhere near the advertised charging speeds. As it turns out, there's a surprisingly well-hidden option in the settings that needs to be switched on before your phone can take advantage of its fastest charging speeds.

The term "smart home" can often be something of a misnomer. I have plenty of automations in Home Assistant that work when I'm outside of my home. There are several open-source smart home devices that you can use to extend your smart home to your car.

Almost every Linux distro makes certain decisions for you in the interest of "completeness." That usually means that you'll wind up with a bunch of apps that you'll never use, taking up space on your PC. Worse yet, some of them are basically redundant.

We tend to spend a lot of time chasing the latest and greatest in PC hardware. Each new generation of CPUs promises a new architecture, more cores, and higher clock speeds, which ultimately result in better performance.

There's no denying that VLC is one of the most powerful video players on Windows. On the surface, it's simple enough, but once you dig in, you'll find a deluge of hidden features, such as viewing and recording your webcam feed or converting media files. Most of these features, though, are superfluous for regular users who just want to watch videos.

If you use an Android phone, you’re probably using Gemini as your default AI assistant. Google made it the natural successor to Google Assistant, and while it’s not completely superior to the original, it does integrate deeply with Android, letting you control much of your phone with natural-language commands. However, because it’s Android and not Apple, you aren’t necessarily locked into using just Gemini. Android allows you to change your default assistant and use something else entirely.

Do you prefer working from a sheet of instructions and a box full of parts, rather than assembling everything yourself from scratch? Just because a project is straightforward doesn’t mean it can’t be complex or challenging in all the right ways.

I'm almost certainly going to move into a new place next year, which means that familiar dread of having to pack up everything is starting to creep in. But as I'm staring at my table full of 3D printers and considering how I'm going to transport them, it occurs to me that maybe these machines could actually help make the whole moving process easier.

The average battery capacity of an Android phone has increased from around 3000 mAh in 2015 to 5291 mAh in January 2026, with certain Chinese OEMs now reaching up to 10,000 mAh in mainstream smartphones. While battery capacity and tech are growing at a rapid pace, so is the power consumption of Android apps. In fact, I charge my device about as often as I did in the old days.