How-To Geek

I've recently come to the realization that my decade-long love affair with the flagship phone has come to a necessary end. Mid-range phones are now better than I need them to be, so there's no reason to pay the asking price for the best phones on the market.

Have you ever wondered if there was an easier way to check if your TV remote batteries were dead besides replacing them? There is, and you have had the tester in your pocket for years at this point.

Apple shocked the smartphone world with its choice of colors in the new iPhone 17 and 17 Pro lineups. Chief among them is the vibrant Cosmic Orange color in the Pro phones. Other manufacturers are to follow suit, so brace yourself for a rise of orange phones in 2026.

Luxury sedans often compete on performance, design, and technology, but when it comes to safety, only a select few truly lead the pack. In 2025, one midsize luxury sedan managed to stand out by earning the IIHS Top Safety Pick+ rating, the organization’s highest honor for crash protection and advanced driver assistance.

If you’ve looked at other people’s desktop setups online, you’ve probably seen some people set up their secondary monitors vertically. I’d never tried it myself, but when I got my new secondary monitor and arm, I went for it immediately, and it turned out to be quite the experience.

The Rich-Communication Standard, known as RCS, was originally promised as a replacement for SMS that offered all the perks of modern chat platforms without being locked down. But so far, its walls are nearly as steep as in any other walled garden.

What do Pinterest, Microsoft Edge, TikTok, and Instagram have in common? They all try to access your contacts. In fact, many games and apps available on the Google Play Store request the same permission, even when they seemingly have no reason to. Here’s why you should be careful when granting this permission.

I like chatting with my friends on WhatsApp. To make launching chats with them easier, I have created and added their WhatsApp chat shortcuts to my Android phone’s homescreen. Here’s how you can do that, too.

We live in an era where the lines between our physical and digital lives are increasingly blurred. Smartphones are indispensable companions, seamlessly integrating into nearly every facet of our daily existence. However, that comes with a significant trade-off in the form of location tracking. Many of us operate under the assumption that we control our digital footprint, especially when it comes to our whereabouts, but that’s not very accurate.

Thanks to the built-in Recorder app, my Google Pixel 9 Pro XL takes better notes than I could ever do in my meetings. It gives me full transcripts for all my meetings, and all it requires is just a tap of a button. Here’s how you can do that, too.

Toyota’s built more underrated cars than just about anyone—which makes sense when you’re the world’s biggest automaker. Between the everyday Toyotas and the posh Lexuses, they’ve cranked out everything from bulletproof commuters to sneaky-quick performance machines.

Are you looking for an alternative to Docker that’s fully open source and doesn’t have any vendor-lock in? Well, there are four tools that you can use which are completely free of Docker’s influence.

As TV technology has improved over the years, Mini-LED TVs, once considered a premium product, have become much more affordable. You can buy some budget Mini-LED TVs from brands such as Hisense and TCL for under $500.

You probably have used Spotify's "Add to Queue" feature countless times. While a bit clumsy, it gets the job done. But did you know that the app also supports a much faster queue feature, allowing you to add songs to the queue with just one swipe? Here's how it works and why you should start using it.

In just a few short months, George R.R. Martin fans will find themselves back in Westeros with HBO’s new, highly anticipated series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The upcoming show marks the third installment set in the author’s beloved land of fire and ice, following the mainline Game of Thrones series and its successor, House of the Dragon. So, will this new series bring more magic, dragons, and drama? Let's find out!

Your computer stores the time in a hardware clock on its motherboard. The clock keeps track of time, even when the computer is off. By default, Windows assumes the time is stored in local time, while Linux assumes the time is stored in UTC time and applies an offset. This leads to one of your operating systems showing the wrong time in a dual boot situation.

In iOS 26, Apple finally introduced custom iMessage background wallpapers. Not only are these fun and almost infinitely customizable, they serve a practical purpose in helping you quickly identify who you’re currently chatting with.

Found-footage horror was all the rage in the 2010s, starting with the small film Paranormal Activity. The low-budget horror movie about a recorded spooky house became a franchise and spawned a series of similar horror films, ranging from the claustrophobic AsAbove So Below to the screenlife terror of Open Windows. While Paranormal Activity fizzled out, another found-footage horror franchise enthusiastically marches onward.

The bat program describes itself as “a cat clone with wings,” which is a fun analogy, but a slightly misleading one. bat is a tool with two main purposes: highlighting syntax and marking git diffs.

Google Messages is constantly adding new features that enrich its interactivity, safety, and spam protection capabilities. Through recent iOS updates, Apple's Messages app, too, has been leveling up with new features.