How-To Geek

Google has a reputation for shutting down some of its most useful and well-loved apps. Over the years, countless users have watched services that became part of their daily routines suddenly get pushed aside. It’s a running joke at this point: just when a Google app or service finally gets some momentum, Google is ready to pull the plug.

It can be painful to change password managers on your phone, not to mention insecure — you might have to download files that expose your passwords in plain text, and recreate all your passkeys. Google now claims to have fixed this with a new "transfer experience" that helps you switch password managers on Android, including passkeys.

It’s no secret that offline maps are one of the best features of Google Maps. That doesn’t mean it’s the best overall, though. OsmAnd Maps is an excellent open-source alternative with a lot more to offer when it comes to offline navigation.

Linux is famously smaller and lighter than Windows, but that understates just how small Linux distros can really be. There are complete, general-purpose operating systems that only take up 200MB of storage—truly tiny by the standards of 2026.

Are you putting up with pesky household problems? The ones you’ve almost forgotten about, but that make a massive difference to your quality of life when they’re finally fixed?

If you have a multi-gig NAS, one of the most obvious (and yet, somehow, still easy to miss) network bottlenecks is plugging it into a gigabit network. So, naturally, you look at your router, hunt down the 2.5Gbps or 10Gbps Ethernet port, and go for the fastest option available on your hardware. Makes sense.

What a difference a few weeks make for the state of television. During the final days of August, it was a struggle to find new and returning shows debuting on streaming services. Once the calendar hit September, it was a television overload, and this week continues that trend. HBO Max kicks off our countdown with a headline-grabbing true crime documentary.

Paperwork used to be annoying, but at least there was an obvious place to put it. You bought a filing cabinet, labeled a few folders, and hoped you could remember where you filed something when you needed it. Today, most of that paperwork is digital. My wife and I have bills, receipts, records, manuals, and other documents scattered across our PCs, and finding a specific file isn't always as easy as it should be.

I added my Bambu Lab 3D printer to Home Assistant as soon as I realized I could, but it wasn’t until after doing so that I realized what I’d been missing out on. How you go about this depends largely on which printer you own, but there’s an integration out there for most printers.

At this point, you're probably pretty used to the idea that your smartphone tracks what you do and shares that information with various companies. It's a little depressing, but it's become a fact of life. However, what about your TV?

The first 24 hours with a new device are always exciting as you set things up and check out new features. But it's after using it for several weeks that you start to find the hidden gems. And while the Pixel 11 series is getting a lot of negative attention for being so similar to the outgoing model, there's a lot that's new. Here are four features I haven't seen mentioned enough.

Smart TVs have been around for a while at this point, which means there's a good chance that there's an aging TV somewhere in your home that doesn't have the smarts to be a TV anymore.

I've been in the Windows camp for decades, and for years I thought Linux was simply harder to use. That was a pretty common view among Windows and Mac users, and for a long time, it was fair.

How careful are you when it comes to your PC's Ethernet ports? Because I gotta say, I've abused my fair share of both ports and connectors. I've yanked cables sideways, left them plugged in for years (even though they would've benefited from an upgrade), moved hardware around without disconnecting them first, and generally just taken them for granted. Most of the time, I got away with it.

The web looks very different from when I first started using it. Browsers have changed, websites have become more complex, and I've picked up countless keyboard shortcuts along the way. Most have come and gone from my daily routine, but there's one I still turn to pretty much every day: Ctrl+Shift+D.

More than ever, people are trying to get the most out of their phone’s storage. If you want more storage, it will cost you — literally. But what actually happens on your Android phone if you hit the storage limit, or even just get close? I ventured to find out.

Do you have a Raspberry Pi that isn't being used to its fullest? Well, this weekend, I have three projects for you to check out from homelab infrastructure to automatically feeding your pets when you're on vacation.

If you type a lot of commands in Bash, it can be time-consuming to navigate, correct, and add strings to achieve the desired output. I've found my fair share of typing errors, multi-instruction commands, and complex interpreters. There are ways to speed up the typing process without wearing you out or giving you headaches, from short codes and hotkeys to cool shortcuts and hidden features.

I am happy to pay for Android apps, but everyone should be able to do certain tasks regardless of budget. These features once required paid apps, but now you can enjoy them for free — often with a better experience than money can buy. Once you know which apps to download, you too can stop paying for these types of apps.

We live in an increasingly digital world, but as Olivia Newton-John said, sometimes you just need to get physical. Here are three projects that let you interact with Home Assistant in a physical way.