How-To Geek

Comfort shows have a unique appeal. Sometimes you don't want to start something new, keep up with a complicated plot, or spend half an hour deciding what to watch. You just want to put on something familiar, settle in, and let a few episodes play in the background. Unfortunately, finding those shows isn't always as easy as it should be.

Having a smart home shouldn’t mean staring at sensors and flashing lights in every room. Some of the best things you can put in a smart home are inconspicuous and sometimes invisible. Best of all, you can go a long way towards hiding them with a few clever tricks.

These days, streaming is the king of movies. But a few of us still enjoy owning a physical Blu-ray disc. You used to need a Blu-ray player for them, but now gaming consoles like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 can do that. Even so, it might be worth it to own a dedicated Blu-ray player.

My new NAS does not stream movies, serve files to every device, run containers, or sit there waiting for the next request. Most of the time, it consumes no power at all.

You're showered, shaved, and dressed to impress. The Uber is two minutes out when your group chat starts pinging like Christmas bells—"Not feeling great, have to bail. Sry." "Something came up. Rain check?" Ugh, there goes your night.

Gemini Spark, which is part of the Google AI Pro and Ultra subscription, is still relatively unexplored by many users. Spark is Google's take on 'Personal AI Agents for Everyone,' letting you create tasks and workflows using simple prompts. No need to worry about data connectors, skill setup, instruction set, etc. The fact that most of us rely on Google products every day, Gemini Spark relies on them — Gmail, Docs, and Drive — to execute complex multistep processes all by itself 24 x 7 on your behalf.

For better or worse, Google Messages has become the de facto text messaging app for Android. I happen to think it's pretty good, but there are a couple of big missing features. Thankfully, there's a third-party app that can fix one of them.

I miss the Windows of the '90s. Microsoft seemed to have a utility for everything, whether you needed to tweak Windows, troubleshoot a problem, automate a task, or simply do something Windows itself didn't make particularly easy. Plenty of those little tools have disappeared over the years, but some survived—and I'm still surprised by how useful they are.

I still believe in pilot episodes. Though the streaming model has changed the importance of pilot episodes, the first episode is still one of the biggest factors in determining whether a viewer will continue watching the show or abandon it. A common theme with the greatest shows of all time is that they have signature pilot episodes.

A 3D printer can open so many doors, especially if you’re a fan of spending your weekend flashing microcontrollers and soldering wires to contacts. While many projects benefit from a 3D printer, these absolutely require one.

While an impact wrench may never get as much love as some of your other handy power tools, like a trusty drill driver, having one on hand can be a game-changer when it comes to tough situations, like stuck-on bolts as you're trying to change your vehicle's flat tire.

Tasker has been around for more than a decade, and the project is still going strong with an active developer and an ever-growing community. No other app matches its flexibility or power. And ten years later, it remains the gold standard for automation on Android.

An old, slow laptop might seem essentially useless. I know I have a drawer that's essentially a laptop graveyard: old laptops that I no longer use or which have been gifted to me ages ago. But some of my old laptops have come in handy over the years.

In my home, Roku is the main streaming platform. I have several Roku televisions and a couple of streaming sticks. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time in the Roku interface. One of the reasons I chose Roku was because it seemed easy to use. The remote is the same on every TV, and even the least tech-savvy people in my home have no problem using it. However, recent changes have started to make my Roku Home screen feel too busy.

Do you envy the Apple ecosystem and wish you had something similar between your Windows PC and Android phone? Or maybe you’ve wanted your phone to show up as a window on your desktop, so you can poke at it with your mouse and type on it with your keyboard instead of picking it up every two minutes? If so, boy, do I have the perfect app for you — and yes, it’s completely free and open source.

Many ESP32 boards come with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a microphone, and Thread or Zigbee support and are very affordable. That makes them great candidates for an experimental DIY smart home device—at worst, you have a board and a failed project that can be used later.

Linux might not be for everyone, but it could be exactly what you’re looking for. If your computing habits align with Linux’s unique strengths, it might be the perfect operating system for you—without you even realizing it. Here are the signs!

Smartphones obviously have tons of sensors underneath the shiny surface. Most of them are extremely common, but one particular sensor is very rare. It's super useful for people who do 3D printing, but it can't be found in modern Android phones anymore.

MacBooks are renowned for their slimline designs and unrivaled power and efficiency. They're among the best laptops you can get, but they have one flaw that can make them frustrating to use. Their slim and lightweight design comes at the cost of connectivity ports. For example, a MacBook Air has a pair of USB-C ports that might be fine for everyday tasks, but they aren't ideal for power users who want to connect memory cards or HDMI monitors.

Bambu Lab represents both ends of the 3D printing spectrum. On the one hand, it’s an incredibly successful company that took the world by storm by making 3D printing easy, accessible, and relatively cheap. On the other hand, it’s a brand that’s taken pages from the Apple and Nintendo corporate playbooks, locking down its ecosystem and throwing its legal weight around.