How-To Geek

Every room in your house can benefit from some smart switches and plugs, but some rooms are better-suited to more specialized accessories. Here are some accessories you might want to add to your bedroom, and the ways they can make your life a little easier.

Your NAS is often home to your most important files. Whether you use it for backups or to host your own Plex server, it's crucial that your NAS is private, and stays that way. For many people, that means never exposing it to the internet. But those who do take their NAS online often neglect a crucial security-related step that can make it that much safer.

Thermometers are some of the cheapest and most effective sensors you can add to your smart home. They can be used in automations to make your heating and cooling more effective and cheaper to run, and most have displays so they function as standalone devices.

According to RepairPal, the average annual repair cost for an Audi is $987. For a Chevrolet, the cost is $649. The Audi is 52 percent more expensive on an annual basis. That is a significant difference!

Every time you open your browser you see the Start Page, and you probably click right past it without giving it much thought. However, it is a great place to put something useful—so I did. Here's how.

Spotify is probably far from the first app you think about when it comes to messaging, but it was added last year as an easier way to share content with friends. Now, the service is expanding on that with the ability to create group chats.

Mainstream cars are stepping up, and some interiors are starting to feel downright luxurious. Prices are creeping higher too, sometimes rivaling actual luxury rides.

What is the formula for the ideal New York City movie? For starters, the movie should be filmed in New York City. That sounds obvious, but you would be surprised to learn how many movies use other cities as a stand-in for NYC. Not every scene has to be filmed in New York City, considering many interior scenes are shot on a sound stage. At the very least, there should be some action captured in the busy streets of the Big Apple.

Gmail is one of Google’s oldest apps, and it might be the most widely used. Tons of features have been added over the years. The good news is that many of these things can be turned off—if you can find them in the messy settings.

Got a shiny new Android phone? Take some time to make these nine quick changes—they'll let you hit the ground running with a smooth, reliable Android experience.

I’ve had a smartwatch on my wrist for over a decade. That's why I’ve been very skeptical of smart rings, but I recently decided to give one a fair shot. My opinion has changed, though maybe not how you’d expect.

There's nothing worse than having to dig around the couch cushions or delay your Netflix binge session because you can't find the remote. It's a common problem we're all familiar with, which is why I absolutely love the hands-free voice controls on my 85-inch TCL with Google TV. Well, when the voice controls actually work.

Excel's XLOOKUP is great for finding a needle in a haystack, but what if you want all the needles? While XLOOKUP stops at the first match, the FILTER function is built for the dynamic array era, allowing you to pull entire lists of data with a single, elegant formula.

Not all SSDs are the same. And depending on the brand, this might even be true for different SSD units sold on the same retail listing.

Wearable cameras have become a practical option for creators capturing daily life, travel moments, and POV footage without holding a phone or carrying a full-size camera. When filming is part of the experience rather than the focus, hands-free recording can make content feel more natural and less staged.

Wearable cameras have become a practical option for creators capturing daily life, travel moments, and POV footage without holding a phone or carrying a full-size camera. When filming is part of the experience rather than the focus, hands-free recording can make content feel more natural and less staged.

They just don’t make them how they used to. Older phones had microSD card slots, removable batteries, and were actually designed to fit in a human hand. Even as companies started to do away with all of that, phones were still exciting. They were innovating, and it wasn’t yet settled how smartphones would end up. Yet no matter how fondly we think back to some of our favorite phones from yesterday—they were not as good as we tell ourselves.

Excel handles numbers beautifully, but it's frustratingly picky about text. When you treat cells like a Word doc, like manually typing units or ignoring hidden spaces, you're onto a loser. Here's how to handle text in Excel without ruining your spreadsheet's logic.

Have you recently switched to Linux? Or are you one of the hardcore, anti-terminal users? I've seen plenty of loathing for the terminal these past few years, but I think it comes from a place of misunderstanding. New users view it as an insurmountable mountain of commands, but it's far simpler than that. If you're keen on moving forward, I have four key steps to guide you.

How often have you reacted to recent Windows feature updates with "who asked for this?" It seems like every time we learn about new and upcoming features for Windows, AI-based or not, that's a question we have to ask because it's far from obvious. It's something I've been thinking about recently, and I have some glimmer of a theory.