How-To Geek

Passwords are a problem. Not only have they reached a point where a "strong" password is one no human can remember (much less remember dozens of them), but they simply aren't as secure as they need to be. Passkeys combine a public and private cryptographic key pair with local authentication such as a fingerprint or facial scan. The device can prove its identity beyond doubt, and the assumption is that only you can unlock it.

Every gamer has a graphics card they still talk about years later after it left their rig. Most gamers also have that one GPU that got away, the GPU they really wanted to get, but couldn't. Many of these graphics cards have earned legendary status over the years.

Apple Maps was a joke magnet when it first launched, but it's now good enough that one of the world's largest automakers will depend on it. Ford has revealed that Apple Maps will underpin navigation in EVs based on the company's new Universal Electic Vehicle (UEV) platform, including the highly touted $30,000 electric pickup truck.

If you have a relatively new vehicle, it probably has USB-A and newer USB-C ports on the dash, in the center console, and maybe in the back for passengers. They're everywhere, and it makes charging phones fast and easy, right? Nope.

Smart TVs looked like the obvious move when they launched. One less box under the TV, everything built in, nothing extra to buy. A few years later, many people are watching their menus get slower every month, waiting for apps to load, and realizing their TV hasn't seen a meaningful update in years and no longer feels new. A $20 Fire TV Stick doesn't fix the screen, but it quietly fixes almost everything else.

For a very long time, if you wanted to try Linux on a semi-permanent basis, you needed to shrink your Windows partition, install a Linux distro of some variety, and just suffer through any of the numerous problems that can occur with dual booting.

Are you looking for a private, alternative search engine? Google is king, but its rivals are quickly catching up. With the recent general shift toward privacy awareness, perhaps one of them is right for you.

Google just gave you a new account login option to help escape the maze of password resets and recovery contacts. The company has introduced a selfie video sign-in feature that can get you in even when you're locked out or using a different device.

Are you ready for another batch of fun (and useful) homelab projects to try out this weekend? From building your own speed test server to some media server maintenance, here are three projects for you to finish before Monday rolls around.

When it comes to single-board computers, you have other flavors of Pi to choose from than just Raspberry these days. The Orange PI series of competing products might lack the vast community support and software library of the Raspberry Pi, but when it comes to one specific use case, the choice is much less clear.

For a few years, Intel Optane felt like it was cheating. Random reads that beat any SSD on the market. Latency low enough to make a spinning hard drive feel like a relic. And the most interesting side? A whole new memory tier that nobody else could touch. Then it just quietly stopped existing.

For over a decade, Plex was the undisputed choice for anyone looking to self-host a media server. Unlike its alternatives, Plex was polished, feature-rich, and years ahead of the competition.

Buying a used car can save you thousands of dollars compared to purchasing a new one, but it also comes with risks. A vehicle may look spotless on the outside and drive perfectly during a short test drive while hiding expensive mechanical or electrical problems beneath the surface.

Windows is the OS I use every day, even though it does plenty of things I don't like. I've tried switching to Linux more than once, and I keep finding reasons to give it another shot, but I always end up back on Windows. For all its faults, it still works best with the apps, hardware, and workflow that I rely on every day.

I've been tinkering with my smart home for well over a decade, so it's rare that I come across anything that feels truly new. Sometimes, however, I find ideas that I've not seen before, and it's always a breath of fresh air. Quite literally, in the case of one of these projects.

Playing music via the command line is a joy for many Linux users. Besides, who wants to pay for a Spotify membership or any other streaming service, when you can stream files to your computer directly from your phone's local storage? Or just listen from the phone itself? I decided to test it out.

Five router firmware builds have just been deemed majorly unsafe, and it isn't the usual patch-it-and-move-on situation. The web interface on these routers has a hidden backdoor password that hands over full admin access, and the username you type doesn't even matter.

What I want from AI is for it to take the boring and mundane jobs off my hands and free me up to do more fun stuff. Reading my emails before starting work each day is time-consuming and dull, so I decided to hand the task off to Claude.

Do you have Raspberry Pis sitting around not being used for anything? By the end of this weekend, you shouldn't! Here are three fun projects to do with your Raspberry Pis to keep them from rotting away in a drawer.

I love building things in the physical world, but when it comes to software, I have a hard time getting ideas out of my head. Coding is the big barrier—it’s just not something I’ve ever been good at. Recently, however, I’ve been using Gemini in Android Studio, and I’ve made my very first app.