How-To Geek

Ask any hobbyist or DIYer about the goodies in their toolbox, and they'll happily talk your ear off about Milwaukee drills, DeWalt impact drivers, or that oscillating multitool that changed their life. That’s totally fair, and I have a few of those essential tools, too, for my endless puttering. But the items I reach for most often don't have a motor, a blade, or even a moving part.

If your PC has been feeling slow lately, you've probably already tried the obvious restart fix. Sometimes that works for a while, but the same slowdown creeps back within days. There are a few things you can do that go beyond random online tips. I have done these, and they work really well.

Home Assistant has its very own voice assistant called Assist. It comes with some pre-trained wake words you can use for voice commands, including "Okay Nabu," "Hey Jarvis," and "Hey Mycroft." I wanted to create my own custom wake word, and doing so was far easier than I expected.

The Tundra has been Toyota's full-size truck offering in the United States since 1999, competing in a segment long dominated by the Detroit Three. The third-generation Tundra arrived in 2022, the beneficiary of a complete redesign that underpins the current 2026 model year truck.

In an attempt to learn more about my sleeping habits, I purchased an Oura Ring at the end of last year. After wearing the ring to bed for nearly half a year, I didn’t feel like the information was worth burning $6 every month. So, I switched to RingConn—a company that doesn’t keep charging you after you buy its product.

Even if you’re not the biggest Android fanatic, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the legendary Developer Options menu. It’s a treasure trove of secret settings, some of which are genuinely useful to anyone. Well, your Galaxy Watch has this hidden menu, too.

Soundbars are not a cheap piece of tech, so why ruin the sound quality of your expensive equipment by hiding it in an entertainment unit or blocking its path with furniture?

I've used AI chatbots for a long time. While standard chatbots can be useful, there are plenty of other useful things that you can use AI for. One of my most useful AI tools works completely in the background.

Home Assistant tracks all sorts of useful things, from presence in the home to energy usage. So why not add deliveries to that list and build some useful automations around them?

Proxmox is a special operating system designed for server machines. Unlike your standard server OS, Proxmox can spin up virtual servers inside it, each working in isolation just like a regular server operating system. It has a nice web interface to easily manage those virtual machines, but spinning up new machines using that same interface is a lot of busywork. The community around Proxmox builds and maintains free Proxmox scripts that automate all that busywork for you. Allow me to explain.

3D printing was once the pursuit of the most dedicated nerds on the internet. These people built machines from scratch using off-the-shelf parts and 3D prints, figured out what materials they could repurpose and extrude by experimenting, and improved the process piecemeal by swapping out components.

As summer starts approaching fast, you have probably gotten your backyard all ready for people to come and hang out, or just for yourself to spend some time in the sun. However, even when everything is set up, you may realize your Wi-Fi signal strength isn’t the best out there.

Google packs every new Android update with a huge number of useful features, many of which fly under the radar while the spotlight stays on the big stuff. As we move towards the 17th major Android release cycle this year, it’s easier than ever to lose track of just how much has been added over time.

At its core, a router simply directs network traffic between devices and networks. In other words, it doesn't need internet access to be useful. If you've got a spare router around, you can put it to good use in a number of ways, even if you never connect it to the internet.

Luxury cars often come with an unspoken cost beyond the sticker price: maintenance. Premium badges may promise upscale cabins and refined driving dynamics, but keeping them on the road can be surprisingly expensive. According to CarEdge, BMW owners can expect to spend an estimated $5,145 on maintenance during the first five years of ownership, a figure that quickly adds up when compared to some of its rivals.

When you live in a detached single-family home, a few yard tools feel like essentials. You'll probably get a lawn mower and a string trimmer. Maybe you'll get a leaf blower. I'm here to tell you, after a decade of homeownership, that a mini chainsaw deserves as high a place on that list.

"What movie do I want to watch" is the million-dollar question that I constantly ask myself every day. Sometimes, I'm ready to go. I know exactly what I want to watch and when I want to stream. Unfortunately, that only happens about half the time. The other half of the time, it can be a struggle to narrow my choices to a single movie. I even have difficulty getting my list down to three movies, let alone one.

Buying based on size alone usually leads to one of two problems: you either overspend on massive capacity you won't use for a decade, or you underbuy and find yourself shopping for more storage in less than a year.

I know what you're thinking. "But the Raspberry Pi is way too expensive now." and "there are so many other alternatives." I will admit right off the bat that there's some truth to both of these statements.

Covering free and open source software has always had a degree of fun, but there was a time when we were starved for choice. These days, it's just the opposite. There are many excellent open source apps out there, but without marketing budgets, it's easy for these gems to fall through the cracks. Here are some of the ones I've been genuinely impressed by recently.