How-To Geek

Recently, I had the realization that phone cases are underdeveloped real estate. Few things are with us as often as our phones, and that includes anything attached to them. So, why not have a phone case that can also be used as a tool?

Above all the other streaming services out there, Netflix has a penchant for delivering a consistent stream of compelling and interesting documentaries and docuseries. And U.S. subscribers to the service keep eating them up, proving they'd rather watch something true than something invented—Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, which we covered last week, is still in the Top 10, and Untold: The Testimony of Vince Young, my top pick this week, sits at No. 2 as I type this.

There's a generally accepted rule when it comes to Excel alternatives: if you need to do something complicated, you need Excel, but if you're only doing basic spreadsheet work, a free, open-source alternative should be perfectly adequate. But after spending a week in ONLYOFFICE Spreadsheet, I'm not convinced it's that simple.

We live in a creative world. Apps, books, hobby kits, and everything in between all exist to help streamline the creation process. Making things should be easier than it is sometimes. Printing, laminating, and cutting, as well as other processes that contribute to a project’s completion, can be labor-intensive, especially when you have to use three or four different machines.

Remote access rarely starts as a complicated problem. You have a server somewhere, you need to reach it, and a VPN seems like the obvious answer. Then the number of machines grows, networks change, and suddenly the simple solution has accumulated enough configuration to deserve its own documentation.

Netflix has no shortage of award-winning movies that capture your attention and leave you breathless with their storytelling and premise. I save these for when I want to watch something that feels a little more substantial than whatever happens to be on my watchlist or usual radar.

Ryobi makes a ton of excellent tools at affordable price points. In fact, there are over 350 Ryobi 18V ONE+ tools to choose from, and you probably already own some basics, like a drill or a sawzall. That said, there are multiple excellent Ryobi tools that aren't recommended too often, but that you'll absolutely love.

Apple TV is officially getting a price hike. On paper, it doesn’t sound like a huge jump, but the company’s pricing history makes the latest increase more noticeable. Now, at $14.99, Apple TV costs roughly three times what it did at its initial launch. In 2019, Apple TV cost just $4.99 per month. Since then, the streaming service has been hit by three price increases in 2022, 2023, and 2025.

Looking for a way to detect presence in your smart home? You could buy a ready-made presence sensor, or you could build something yourself that’s powered by the mighty ESP32 microcontroller.

If you love Home Assistant and you love music, then you will almost certainly have tried out Music Assistant. Music Assistant is an open-source music server that lets you play music from a wide range of sources over your different speakers and audio systems and is designed to integrate perfectly with Home Assistant. Music Assistant continues to develop, and there are some awesome things you can do with it.

Google and Amazon are particularly good at selling the smart home vision, but these platforms have some big drawbacks, too. Consider switching to or starting out with a more capable and reliable alternative, which will save you money and frustration in the long run.

Long gone are the days when learning Linux meant coping with the steepest of learning curves. Today, a distro like Ubuntu or Mint makes picking up Linux just as easy as Windows or macOS.

Buddy might feature a bright orange unicorn on educational TV, but it's the furthest thing from a kid's movie. Imagine if Barney snapped on the set of his show and went full Ghostface from Scream. That's essentially what happens in Buddy, Casper Kelly's new horror comedy about the dark side of children's television.

One of the things I appreciate about Samsung is that it’s stuck with the same charging puck for several generations of Galaxy Watch. That being said, the charger itself isn’t my favorite. My watch tends to easily slide off, but I found a very simple fix.

Your bookmarks say a lot about you—mostly that you're optimistic enough to believe you'll revisit that article from 2021. I was the same, hoarding a pile of "I'll read this later" links that never saw daylight. Then I finally organized them, and it was surprisingly freeing. A few simple habits turned that cluttered list into something I actually enjoy using.

If you’re building a homelab, the price can quickly add up. Though there are bargains to be had in the form of second-hand mini PCs and salvaged drives, if you have a 3D printer you can save even more money by making your own components where possible.

My home server runs more than a dozen services I use regularly for work and for my personal life. Wake-on-LAN is great when it works, but it isn't foolproof. Sometimes a BIOS update breaks your settings, the network card gets put to sleep, or the PC is completely offline. When WOL fails, someone has to physically push the power button on the PC. If I'm away from home, that can be a problem.

Windows 11 is rife with features enabled by default that you'd be better off disabling. While some degrade the experience of using the most popular desktop operating system in the world, and others take up precious resources and can have a negative effect on performance, there are a few that simply have no place in Windows anymore and that no one should have enabled in this day and age.

I've watched Excel go from a program where I had to know exactly what to type to one where I can describe what I want and have AI build it for me. After some resistance at first, I've embraced it. But there are still times when I look at what AI has produced and think, "I'd rather just let Excel handle this."

Can any show stop Reacher? The action show continues to sit atop Prime Video's top 10 in the U.S. None of the three shows below will be in the top 10 right now, but they are all popular in their own right. The first show on this list is a Prime Video original with two seasons out and a third one on the way.