How-To Geek

Replacing your phone's operating system with an aftermarket alternative has always come with compromises, but it used to feel like a hacky solution. That has changed. You can now install the latest version of custom ROMs like LineageOS and walk away with a phone that looks and feels as high-end as any other—without any AI gimmicks to boot.

If you’re like me, you’ve turned nearly everything in your house into a smart device. Whether it’s through a smart plug, a smart USB adapter, or replacing an appliance with its smart equivalent, almost everything in your home can be controlled remotely or with your voice.

When people are looking to take on a home improvement project, many are concerned about their return on investment (ROI). Do you want to invest in new windows, a bathroom remodel, or a kitchen project? Which one will add the most value to your home?

If you're using your Samsung Galaxy Watch for notifications, health tracking, and calling it a day, you're missing out on a lot of what it can do. That said, I don't necessarily blame you—many of these features are buried deep in accessibility menus, hidden behind obscure toggles, or tucked away in your phone's settings, making them genuinely hard to find. That's why I've rounded up five underrated Galaxy Watch features that deserve far more attention.

Proxmox VE has earned its reputation by bringing enterprise virtualization features into the homelab. You get KVM virtual machines, LXC containers, snapshots, clustering, and support for filesystems like ZFS. On paper, it looks like the perfect foundation for every self-hosted setup.

While my first experience of home audio was via vinyl records, the miraculous CD, or Compact Disc, was the gold standard music format of my childhood. I never liked how vinyl sounded or how annoying it was to operate. The first time I put on a pair of headphones and listened to a CD blew my mind. Crystal-clear stereo audio like I'd never heard it before practically suffused my soul.

Spinning hard drives have to spin those platters at some sort of speed, measured in RPM or Revolutions Per Minute, but they all seem to have standardized to a small group of specific numbers: 4,200 RPM, 5,400 RPM, 7,200 RPM, 10,000 RPM, and 15,000 RPM(!).

It's hard to believe it, but the Google Pixel series has been around for nearly 10 years now. The Pixel 11 is just around the corner—and unfortunately for Google, early impressions aren't looking great.

While every 3D printer owner loves the “fun” projects, it’s the ones that make your life easier that have the most impact. These range from repairing household items and making chores easier, to providing cost-effective bespoke storage to help keep your house tidy.

Bear Grylls has a gift that few possess. The popular survivalist knows how to push people beyond what they think is possible. What's even more impressive is that those same people then open up to Grylls with complete honesty, revealing their most vulnerable selves.

Amazon's Kindle dominates the market, but that doesn’t mean that they are the best eReaders. There are other companies who are free to experiment with their products in ways that Amazon will not. The DuRoBo Krono is one of the more intriguing options to come out in the past year, and there is enough uniqueness here to capture even the most devout Kindle reader’s eye.

The days of every Android phone including a microSD card slot are ancient history. Of course, it’s possible to plug external storage into your phone’s USB-C port, and portable SSDs are becoming more common. However, they have one fatal flaw that people love to point out. I wanted to solve it.

When I first picked up a 5070 Ti, I did so with gaming in mind. I didn't anticipate constantly running into the VRAM ceiling.

Home Assistant is packed with so many features that it can be hard to keep track of them all. Some features work smoothly in the background so that you never think about them until you need to use them, or until something goes wrong. That's exactly what happened with one of Home Assistant's best features, and it brought my whole smart home down.

I used to think that buying cheaper filament was a compromise to print quality. After testing both first- and third-party filaments, my stance has changed. Here’s why I stopped buying name-brand filament and what I do instead.

I love having a vintage CRT to watch older content and play retro video games. I love it so much, apparently, that I now have six of the darn things taking up space.

You can’t just stick a Canon lens on a Sony body, nor can you use a lot of the old glass that predates your modern camera. Doing so requires a lens adapter—one for every lens mount and camera body combination you own—which can get expensive fairly quickly.

Security cameras are great at recording what's happening inside and outside your home, but on the whole, you still need to look at the video yourself to understand what's going on. Some cameras have object recognition that can detect people, animals, cars, or packages, but there's an open-source tool that can do a whole lot more.

I spent much of the past couple years quite enamored with both the hardware and software of Samsung's book-style foldable phones. That changed with the release of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and I've since switched to the Motorola Razr Fold. I'd be lying if I said every aspect of this phone is better, but I'm quite surprised by the extent to which most of it, frankly, actually is.

Family SUVs have become the default choice for buyers who want practicality, comfort, and efficiency, but that convenience often comes at a steep price. With many new compact crossovers now pushing well past $35,000, a growing number of lightly used alternatives deliver the same everyday usability, better fuel economy, and a more refined driving experience while costing thousands less.