How-To Geek

Vibration sensors are just another tool in your smart home arsenal for building useful and entertaining automations. These wireless, battery-powered helpers can stick to virtually anything and sense movement or changes in angle that you can use as triggers.

The first time I held a 512GB microSD card in the palm of my hand, I was duly impressed, but that was a long time ago. Today, the biggest SD card you can buy is 2TB in size.

The first time I held a 512GB microSD card in the palm of my hand, I was duly impressed, but that was a long time ago. Today, the biggest SD card you can buy is 2TB in size.

A smart home is never done evolving, for all it takes is one new addition to make many of your older products feel fresh. One of my most recent upgrades was a cheap, wall-mountable remote that breathes new life into the lights in my home.

A smart home is never done evolving, for all it takes is one new addition to make many of your older products feel fresh. One of my most recent upgrades was a cheap, wall-mountable remote that breathes new life into the lights in my home.

If you're like me, you spend a lot of time watching YouTube in order to learn as much as you can about your hobbies. For me, that includes videos about 3D printing, which is a technology that fascinates me and I want to know as much as possible about it.

Modern smartphones are more powerful than ever, but almost every Android brand plays it safe. The cost of creating a new smartphone is so high that experimenting rarely makes sense.

Everyone has their own selection when it comes to installing apps on a fresh Windows installation. However, there are a few apps that every power user should have on their Windows PC. Allow me to share my Windows essentials.

Following a seven-year wait, 2026 will finally see Earth's Mightiest Heroes assemble once more for Avengers: Doomsday. The MCU's most iconic figures will join forces to defend existence from the machinations of a plot by the long-anticipated villain Doctor Doom, played by Robert Downey Jr. Avengers: Doomsday will mark the beginning of the end of the Multiverse Saga that began in 2021.

This was another busy week for tech news, with the arrival of the Google Pixel 10a phone and KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop, an impressive update for the Dolphin emulator, new EVs from Polestar, and much more. Here are the biggest stories you might have missed.

Python is awesome because it's one of the easiest languages to learn and lets you prototype incredibly fast. However, that convenience often hides major inefficiencies that can seriously slow things down. That clean script you wrote might quickly turn into a huge performance bottleneck if you're not careful.

Mesh networks are a low-power alternative to Wi-Fi for connecting smart home devices like plugs, switches, and sensors to your server. While Zigbee is a longstanding favorite and Thread is the hot new thing, Z-Wave offers an alternative to both with some notable upsides (and a few drawbacks).

Do you have a mass of music files that are disorganized and hap-hazardly labeled and tagged? Fixing that can be a pain, and it may not even seem worth it—for now. But I found a super helpful app for folks who enjoy listening to an offline digital music collection.

I love in a rural area where losing power also means losing access to water, and being snowed in means being cut off from help. When combined with the need to stay warm, these challenges make winter storms particularly scary—but at my house, we face them with confidence using batteries as our only source of emergency power. Let me tell you how.

Luxury sedans are often synonymous with high ownership costs, especially when it comes to maintenance and repairs. But one Italian-built four-door upends that stereotype in 2025 by delivering premium refinement and surprisingly sensible upkeep compared with many rivals. While its competitors can come with hefty service bills and expensive parts, this luxury sedan’s maintenance profile keeps long-term costs more manageable, a rare combination in a segment known for costly ownership.

The monitor you choose for your gaming PC is one of the most important decisions you’ll make for your setup. It’s your window into the virtual world, and it directly affects how much you can get out of your PC’s rendering power.

Most developers reach a point where a few Git commands start to feel almost unfair. They clear hours of confusion in minutes and provide a level of control that seems impossible the first time you see it in action. My own introduction to these commands explained why experienced Git users describe the tool as both intimidating and strangely reassuring. You break something, you feel the panic rise, you run a short sequence of commands, and the entire mess dissolves as if it never existed.

Pickup trucks are known for strong resale values, but one model consistently outpaces nearly every rival when it comes to holding its worth over time. The Toyota Tacoma doesn’t just retain value, it dominates depreciation charts, often selling for far more on the used market than comparable midsize trucks years after they were new. That resilience makes it one of the smartest choices for buyers who care about long-term ownership costs as much as performance and capability.

Netflix hosts an impressive collection of award-winning films and shows, spanning genres, languages, and themes. But when it comes to these films, you can't leave out Oscar winners from the conversation. Next month, Netflix has one movie, Train Dreams, nominated for Best Picture at the 2026 Oscars.

If you've ever put too much faith in a storage device, you're not alone. We've all been there. It doesn't matter if you're buying a portable SSD, an NVMe drive that goes inside your PC, or even a good old HDD—the risk of data loss is always real, and always mildly scary.