How-To Geek

In case you haven't heard the horns honking outside at all hours or seen all the flag-adorned cars driving around everywhere, the biggest World Cup in history is underway (I live in one of the host cities, Toronto, and it's non-stop). The 2026 edition is the first with 48 teams, 104 matches, and the first event to be co-hosted by three nations: the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

In case you haven't heard the horns honking outside at all hours or seen all the flag-adorned cars driving around everywhere, the biggest World Cup in history is underway (I live in one of the host cities, Toronto, and it's non-stop). The 2026 edition is the first with 48 teams, 104 matches, and the first event to be co-hosted by three nations: the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Cloud subscriptions for smart home services offer a lot of convenience. You can access things such as the video history of your security cameras from anywhere in the world whenever you need to. The trouble is that the prices of these subscriptions keep rising, and the likelihood is that they're going to rise even higher in the near future.

There's a Wi-Fi trick floating around tech forums that promises to dramatically boost your wireless speeds. I tried it, and came away with more questions than answers—most of them wondering about why it keeps getting recommended.

An age-old rhetorical question has plagued everyone’s favorite open-source operating system from the very beginning: Is Linux ready for the desktop? Of course it is! In the early days, when users were forced to use the terminal, battle with device drivers, or even compile their own kernel, things were different. But nowadays, we have clean, attractive desktop environments that are every bit as capable as Windows or macOS.

Most of us use Android phones for the same handful of things every day: scrolling social media, watching videos, playing games, and chatting. What many people don’t realize is that modern smartphones are packed with sensors that can do a lot more than just power GPS navigation. You see, with the right apps, you can use your phone’s sensors to unlock a new set of capable measuring tools.

I've used my Kindle for many years. Until recently, I was still using Amazon's Kindle ecosystem for buying and uploading books to my Kindle. I finally decided to cut ties with Amazon, and doing so was easier than I expected.

Do you remember when storage used to be cheap? It's a little hard to do that right now given that every type of computer component seems to be undergoing price surges from unending data center demands, but ten years ago I was on a storage buying spree that lasted a few years.

I've been creating content for more than 20 years, and the tools have changed a lot in that time. In many ways, they're better than ever. It's easier to record a screen, capture video, clean up a rough audio track, cut together a simple edit, and get a file into the format I need. The problem is that many of the tools built for that work have also gotten more expensive, especially as more companies have moved toward subscriptions.

You’ve probably noticed that your monthly subscription costs keep creeping up. Within the last few years, most of my favorite services hiked their prices.

Linux desktop environments have never been better. Modern distributions offer polished graphical interfaces, excellent software stores, and user-friendly applications that make it possible to accomplish almost anything without touching a terminal.

Several months after the first peek, the Google Home Speaker is finally on sale. It promises to be a good deal and a much-needed update to the company's smart speaker line, although you might need a Gemini subscription to make the most of it.

For a few years now, I've been getting into physical media like it's nobody's business. I had a small collection that I got rid of (and partially lost) leading up to the first time I subscribed to Netflix, but I felt no pressure to own anything in physical form during the streaming honeymoon phase.

Devices that once shipped with awkward barrel plugs are now switching to USB-C, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s now something I look for whenever I buy everyday gadgets that I know I’ll have to plug in and recharge regularly.

I write about tech for a living and spend much of my life being tech support for various family members. That’s why I was completely ashamed about how long it took me to figure out how to solve a basic volume issue in both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

YouTube is the streaming platform I use the most, both as part of my job and just for my own entertainment and education.

"Just install Linux" is popular advice when someone needs to squeeze a little bit more life out of an old PC. It also leads many to believe that any old computer, no matter how ancient, can be revived by simply installing any Linux distribution on it. However, that isn't really true—lightweight options exist, but a large share of modern distros are actually fairly demanding.

Devices that once shipped with awkward barrel plugs are now switching to USB-C, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s now something I look for whenever I buy everyday gadgets that I know I’ll have to plug in and recharge regularly.

Giving up dedicated productivity apps sounds like chaos, but switching to Excel replaced my entire task management setup. I built a personalized to-do system that recreates the core features of premium task apps using Excel's built-in tools, with no extra subscriptions.

Telemetry apps that log throttle position, brake pressure, and lap times have mostly lived in the sports car world. Porsche's Track Precision app and Chevrolet's Performance Data Recorder both built loyal followings among enthusiasts who wanted hard proof, not just a feeling, when it came to lap times, G-forces, braking points, and cornering lines.