How-To Geek

You now have a modern, practical option to use iMessage on your Android phone. Sunbird has revived its namesake Sunbird Messaging app after three years of relatively dormant test releases, letting you chat with your iPhone friends without breaking threads or appearing as a green bubble outsider.

Notification fatigue is a real problem. I was sick to death of having so many notifications filling up my phone. Even after culling many of them or moving some to the Notification Summary, I was still getting more than I wanted. I decided it was time to get rid of some of my Home Assistant phone notifications and move them elsewhere.

Your computer's USB ports can be confusing. Some are color-coded; some are super fast; some are super slow. But beyond all that, they're pretty flexible: if the cable fits, you've got yourself a connection.

People everywhere use Android Auto for its excellent traffic and navigation tools, streaming music, and more. But for some, the experience is a little slow and laggy. You don't need to replace your phone or stereo to try and fix things; instead, change these settings or enable a few features, and you'll be all set.

It's difficult to find affordable open earbuds that you genuinely want to wear all day, but Nothing might have your answer. It just followed up its iconic Ear Open buds with its CMF brand's first open models, the Clip Pro, and there are a few reasons to pick them over pricier alternatives when you want to let in sound from the outside world.

Netflix is wrapping up summer with a nice mix of returning fan favorites, literary adaptations, and nail-biting thrillers. Whether you're in the mood for one last beach-town hooray, a haunting crime mystery, or the conclusion to one of Netflix's best series, August has plenty to offer to your watch list.

Google Assistant is going away after a stay of execution last year. Google is emailing customers to let them know that its original voice assistant will be "discontinued" in favor of Gemini on Android and Wear OS starting September 4.

It's safe to say everyone wants a little more privacy and battery life when it comes to our smartphones. But did you know there are two little Samsung settings hiding on your phone that can deliver a bit of both?

I have the great honor and misfortune of being the designated techie in my social circle. Everyone I know funnels their network misery to me, and it didn't take long before I started bringing a few little tools with me to speed things along.

A Raspberry Pi is a great device to start your journey into the world of self-hosting. You can run single services such as Home Assistant or Pi-hole, or run multiple services on the same device. There may come a point when you’ve outgrown your Raspberry Pi, and there are usually some telltale signs.

In 1978, Formula 1 team Brabham showed up to the Swedish Grand Prix with a car that had a giant fan bolted to its tail. The fan pulled air out from underneath the BT46B and sucked the car onto the track, generating downforce without the drag caused by a wing.

Most people know Canonical for Ubuntu, but the company has quietly built an entire ecosystem of open-source tools around it. As someone who runs a small homelab, I went down the rabbit hole of Canonical's project catalog, and found three tools stood out: Multipass, MAAS, and MicroCloud. They solve very different problems at very different scales, so let's start with the one you can actually use today.

Photography can be a real money pit, even though it doesn’t need to be. Gear acquisition syndrome is real, and the pursuit of more lenses, bodies, and accessories haunts amateurs and professionals alike.

For years, freezing panes was one of my first moves whenever I opened a large spreadsheet. It kept headers visible, stopped me from losing my place, and made scrolling through thousands of rows much easier. But over time, I realized I was using one feature to solve several different problems—and modern Excel already has better tools for many of them.

HBO Max's flagship releases for August—I’m looking at you, Lanterns, Mother Mary, and Conan O’Brien Must Go—are still a couple of weeks away, but U.S. subscribers to the prestige streaming service still have options. If you’re into reality TV, this week brings two brand-new series for you, as well as a recently launched comedy that's still rolling.

Android Auto makes it easier (and safer) to use your phone while driving—it also uses a lot of battery in the process. This is especially true for wireless Android Auto, but it can even cause the juice to drop while plugged in, too. One easy automation helps—and it makes a lot of sense.

There are hundreds of Linux distros out there, and most of them are genuinely good—as long as they're used by the people they're designed for. The whole point of a Linux distro is to package the Linux kernel with a particular desktop environment, package manager, and system defaults fine-tuned for a specific type of user or workflow.

August just might be the hottest month on the calendar for HBO Max. House of the Dragon wraps one of its best seasons ever this coming weekend, Lanterns finally lights up mid-month with Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, Anne Hathaway does something decidedly non-Devil Wears Prada-ish in Mother Mary, and Bob Odenkirk keeps his ass-kicking movie career going with Normal.

I run a NAS at home, and for a long time, I've been dragging and dropping files with almost zero wait time. So when my transfers started crawling for no obvious reason, I was pretty puzzled.

Google's teased notification LED for Pixel 11 phones might not be as transformative as you think. A leaked product image of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold indicates that the new feature, HiLight, will only have two functions.