How-To Geek

Do you, like me, use Claude every other minute as your go-to thinking partner? If so, you probably already know how annoying it is to keep opening the Claude app every time you want to fact-check something, proofread an email draft, or bounce ideas off it. Sure, you could keep the app open all the time, but then you'd have a different problem, with one more app window cluttering up your desktop.

That Ryobi lithium-ion battery for your tools rarely dies without warning. You'll start seeing little hints, like a slight loss of power, or a battery that gets way too warm, and before you know it, you're reaching for a new pack every 15 minutes. While there are several little things to watch for, three main signs will tell you that it's time to head to Home Depot soon and get a new battery.

Solid-state drives last a long time, but not forever. Some familiar utilities, and stuff you do on the daily without giving much thought to it, quietly write far more data than most people realize, shortening the usable life of the drive. Here are three kinds of software that deserve a second look before they become a regular part of your routine, or if they already are.

If you feel like you can't be as productive on your iPad Air, there's a simple solution to start maximizing your productivity, and it's as easy as adding a detachable keyboard. Apple's Magic Keyboard for the 13-inch iPad Air is now over 20% off on Amazon, and even though it has been at this listed price for some time, it's still the lowest price it has ever been on Amazon.

I was one of those people who bought into the promise that our phones were about to change overnight thanks to 5G. The carriers promised instant downloads, zero lag, and full coverage everywhere. It was hard not to feel like someone sold us an expensive upgrade that did not deliver. There's more to it than that, but the user definitely did not win this one.

The 1990s were one of the most important decades for personal computing. During the '90s, PCs finally became affordable enough to enter many homes, we saw the rise of the internet and mobile phones, Intel released its first Pentium CPU, and Microsoft released Windows NT in 1993 and Windows 95 just two years later.

There are so many new things to watch on Netflix this month that the scroll could eat your whole evening. Russell Crowe's Unabomber and a Tyler Perry movie are still dominating the Top 10, and the rest of the month looks amazing with documentaries about Mike Tyson, Norm Macdonald, and Matthew Perry on deck, right up to Halloween.

Managing a home involves plenty of little tasks that are easy to forget, from keeping unwanted ads off your devices to finding an appliance warranty or backing up family photos. You can automate many of these responsibilities with Docker containers, turning a computer or home server into something that quietly takes care of everyday jobs.

Have you ever noticed a small key icon suddenly appear in your Android phone’s status bar and wondered what it means? While it might look like a warning or suggest a problem with your device, you usually don't need to worry. The little key symbol has a specific purpose, and it isn't to let you know that something is wrong.

Move-in day usually settles one thing fast: whatever laptop you bring to campus is going everywhere with you for the next four years. It rides in a backpack between buildings, sits open through back-to-back lectures, gets propped up in a dorm room for a video call home, and somehow still needs enough battery left over for a late study session in the library. That is a demanding, unglamorous job, and it is exactly the job the Dell XPS 13 was designed to accomplish.

Linux has never been short on alternatives, but some Windows programs simply don’t have a true replacement. Or you might just want the actual Windows version—that's fine too. If you pick the right method, though, you can run almost anything. Here's a nice rundown of some apps you might have been missing from Windows.

Walking into Home Depot usually gives you the feeling that you've seen every cordless tool Ryobi makes. Ryobi has a deal to only sell its tools at Home Depot in the United States, so it's hard to find them anywhere else. The thing is that other regions get heavy yard equipment that never touches domestic shelves, and some of it is amazing and worth the money.

Major cable providers often broadcast a second network from an ISP-provided router, and you might not even realize it's happening. These secondary networks might not detract from a home's primary network, but they can definitely give your phone a bad connection. Here's what's going on and how you can fix it.

If you like original direct-to-streaming movies, then this week's list is for you. Four of the five movies on this list are streaming releases. Prime Video occupies two spots on the list: a crime caper starring Stanley Tucci and a romantic drama starring Margaret Qualley.

Google is giving you a reason to pay attention to fitness trackers again. Today, the company has announced the Fitbit Edge, a new wearable that sits between the screen-free Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch lineup. The timing is interesting as Google has spent recent months expanding its health-focused features and wearables. The Fitbit Edge also arrives after a lengthy gap in the brand’s conventional fitness tracker lineup as the successor to the Fitbit Charge 6 that debuted in 2023.

Are you finally getting around to building your personal portfolio website? Wondering which AI coding tool you should trust with the job? I was in the same boat a few days ago, so I tested Claude Code and Codex CLI to see which one did a better job. As it turns out, neither was perfect, but one built a noticeably better portfolio landing page than the other.

Whether you’re a homeowner, home improvement specialist, or a commercial contractor, drills help get jobs done, no matter the task or project. Anyone can grab a drill and start using it, but understanding its capabilities and how it works is essential if you want it to last.

Backups are one of those jobs everyone knows they should do, but almost nobody does consistently. You mean to copy your files somewhere safe regularly, and for a while you do, until a busy week gets in the way and the habit quietly lapses. Then a laptop dies, a drive fails, or a file gets overwritten by mistake, and the backup you meant to have is three weeks out of date or doesn't exist at all.

You probably already know that you can use a VPN to circumvent regional blocks on content by making it look like you're in a different country or region, but have you thought about whystreaming services work so hard to prevent this practice? Is it actually illegal?

Getting a new Samsung phone is exciting, but I never use it straight out of the box. Before installing my usual apps or showing it off to my friends, I head into Settings and make a few changes. Some are small tweaks that make everyday tasks faster, while others fix things that have annoyed me on previous Galaxy phones.