How-To Geek

Planning a trip and making sure you hit every destination or restaurant can be stressful, which is why a lot of people use travel planners or itinerary apps. But did you know you can build a trip itinerary on Google Maps? Not only that, but all the most memorable stops on my last vacation came from two Google Maps habits.

I had spent months refining my Linux desktop environment. Every config file had a place, my command line tools were selected for the way I worked, and my desktop shortcuts, panel layout, themes, and custom scripts were configured exactly the way I wanted.

I love portable power stations so much that my wife and I have backed up our home with Anker SOLIX batteries instead of an automatic gas generator or a built-in home battery. Here's what I've learned after having just experienced three power outages in the span of two weeks.

A new tablet can be great for typical uses such as browsing the internet or watching shows and movies. If you're thinking about buying a new tablet for another purpose, then it's worth considering whether an old eReader could do a better job.

Waze is good at what it does, but what it does comes with the cost of privacy. Companies love to claim you need to lose privacy to get certain features. That's not true. There are plenty of features that you can keep without needing Waze or its way of sending information to servers. You can pick open-source alternatives to Waze and Google Maps and have the same features.

Fire TV is built around streaming services, but my favorite app does something more. NOVA Video Player lets me build a polished, Netflix-style library from my own local files, without needing to run a Plex or Jellyfin server. It makes a Fire TV device so much more powerful.

You can protect your home server against many different kinds of failures if you're smart about it. But how can you protect yourself against losing your internet connection when the ISP is at fault?

Finding the perfect app in the Play Store can sometimes feel impossible. You’re trying to fit your specific needs with solutions that were made for other people’s needs. Now, with AI-powered coding in Android Studio, it’s remarkably easy to simply make your own app. Let me show you.

When Windows XP arrived in the early 2000s, desktop wallpaper became a PC status symbol. Two decades later, however, I've gone the opposite way: my Windows desktop is a flat shade of gray. It might look boring, but I've got good reason to keep it that way.

3D printer filament is hygroscopic, which means it’ll suck moisture out of the air. So-called “wet” filament can cause all manner of problems with your prints, including stringing, adhesion problems, and total failures.

I got tired of movie recommendation engines that I used never working right. They never actually captured why I liked a movie, or how to best recommend a new movie to me. So, that's when I decided to build my own with AI and my Plex watch history, and I wish I had done this sooner.

Microsoft's downfall in the 2000s and 2010s is well-known. The company's obsession with PCs left it blind to the rise of smartphones, reducing it to one player in a larger computing world. Windows still dominates the computer on your desk, but not the one in your pocket.

It can be tricky to get your head around the concept of an “immutable” operating system; if you don’t care too much for nuance, you can think of it as simply more secure and more stable.

If you're a PC gamer gearing up to start your college journey, you're looking at your desktop gaming tower and trying to decide whether it's a good idea to take it with you. If you're going to be living in the dormitories, you might want to think twice about that.

You don't have to spend sports-car money to get genuinely exciting performance, especially if you're willing to shop the used market. Depreciation has turned some overlooked performance cars into surprisingly affordable bargains, and one particularly unusual crossover now costs less than many basic new compact cars. Despite its practical shape, it packs enough power to deliver seriously quick acceleration and the kind of driving character that's increasingly rare.

While Windows, Mac, and maybe Linux are the dominant OSes today, there are others that never made it. Here are some of my favorite OSes that never had a chance in the marketplace.

As technology continues to evolve, I take privacy very seriously, especially given growing concerns about identity theft and data collection policies. My phone number is also part of that identity profile, which means yours is too. Sure, I can control which apps I download and who I give my number to, but many things require my smartphone's number.

I had higher hopes for the 2026 Genesis GV60 Performance AWD when the automaker recently loaned me one for a week here in Detroit. It was a sharp-looking vehicle that's for sure, finished in Uyuni White over a Sky Blue and Prussian interior, with all the hallmarks of a luxurious electric SUV listed on the window sticker.

Google Maps feels like an app that's perfectly suited to a phone, but with its growing number of features, it's becoming increasingly cluttered. I recently switched to using my laptop whenever I wanted to plot a route in Google Maps. It turns out it's so much better.

So you've finally got gigabit broadband and Ethernet and Wi-Fi to match. Just a few years ago, this would be an impossible dream, but it's becoming the norm for more and more people. Now, at last, you can stop worrying about how fast your home network is and relax—just kidding!