How-To Geek

When I first planned out my home theater setup, I knew there was one thing I didn’t want: a bunch of wires running all over the room. Having fewer wires reduces the tripping hazard and the chance of them getting caught on something and pulling what they are connected to down.

Nothing beats the experience of unboxing a brand-new phone, removing the protective sheets, and turning it on for the first time while you're gliding all over it with your fingers to get a feel for the case's texture. After unboxing dozens of phones in my life, this still hasn't gotten old.

Everyone says Linux is technically complicated, intended for tech-savvy users who like to dwell in the terminal. However, as someone who has used Linux as my daily driver for 10 years and nudged plenty of friends and family toward it, I can tell you that reputation is a myth—at least on modern Linux desktops. To prove my point, I put my mother-in-law—a completely non-technical user—on Linux. And spoiler alert: it went better than her time on Windows ever did.

An old Kindle can do far more than you might imagine. The only thing holding it back is Amazon's locked-down software. By jailbreaking my Kindle, I was able to turn it into a useful second monitor in less than an hour.

If you're new to the world of cordless power tools, it can be rather confusing. There are brushless tools, older brushed motors, different voltages, battery capacities, different output types, and so many brands to choose from. Ryobi is popular with the DIY crowd, but you'll also hear people everywhere suggesting buying Milwaukee. And while there's a lot to consider in that decision, don't go by voltage alone.

While I don't have the built-in MSN Weather app on my Windows 11 PC (I deleted it ages ago), I decided to reinstall it to see whether those recent reports about the app using more than 1GB of memory on Windows 11 weren't overblown. And, well, I was indeed surprised, and not in a positive way.

After seeing several videos of drivers getting out of trouble because they had dashcam footage, I finally bought cameras for both my SUV and my wife's car. She drives about 15 miles each way to work, much of it on the highway, and I'm always thinking about how quickly a normal commute can turn into a mess if there's a crash or some other incident.

A clogged nozzle can mean anything from inconsistent print quality to total 3D printer shutdown. While the latter usually involves a long needle and some elbow grease, the former is arguably best solved with a gentler approach known as a “cold pull.”

Modern smartwatches are essentially miniaturized phones on our wrists, and Samsung watches are no exception. Fortunately, if you want to enjoy that beautiful Galaxy hardware on your wrist but aren't keen on sharing loads of data with Samsung, you aren't without options. I have a Galaxy Watch 8, and here's what I'd recommend.

One of my favorite things about self-hosting is that it isn't just limited to running a Plex server or hosting your own website. Self-hosting can actually take hobbies you already have and make them so much better. Here are five tech-focused hobbies that get better when you start self-hosting things for them.

A long time ago, in smartphones that looked very different, there were SD card slots for expanding storage. That’s a long-lost feature, but it’s still surprisingly easy to use external physical storage with your iPhone or Android phone.

I'm lucky enough that my current car has a built-in dashboard infotainment screen that supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. So all I have to do is plug a cable into my phone, and leave it down in the change bowl, or even secure inside the armrest storage, which has enough of a gap in the lid for a USB cable without pinching it.

The glory days when every Android phone had expandable storage are long behind us. The first to go out were flagships and high-end options. The rest of the market slowly followed suit, starting with upper-mid-range offerings and trickling down to lower price brackets.

I discovered the joys of homelabbing and self-hosting earlier this year when I turned an old laptop and a hard drive into a home server. It started out as a simple NAS, but quickly turned into a full-blown hobby.

How old is your oldest spool of 3D printing filament, and where do you store it when it’s not in use? The idea that filament might go “bad” over time might seem odd, even though we don’t have the same long-term durability expectations for the items we print.

After upgrading my Steam Deck's SSD, I threw the handheld's original 256GB drive into the bottom of one of the tin boxes I keep all kinds of knickknacks in and quickly forgot about it. The SSD had gathered dust there for years until I remembered I had it and decided to do something useful with it. So I went to Temu, ordered a 2230 external SSD enclosure, and a few weeks later, I ended up with a teeny-tiny DIY external SSD that blows all of my USB flash drives out of the water.

I have spent years switching Linux distros for practical reasons such as hardware support, package availability, performance, and documentation. This time, my motivation was entirely superficial: I saw Pop!_OS with its new Frosted Glass interface and thought it looked incredible.

A Kindle is primarily intended for reading eBooks. While you can use one to browse the internet, it's nowhere near the experience of using a smartphone. You may be surprised to learn that it's possible to stream video on a Kindle.

I switched to Linux as my daily driver several years ago, but sometimes Windows is still necessary. When that happens, I'm stuck using a workflow that feels oddly clunky. I found myself reaching for programs and tools that didn't exist and trying to use window management options that didn't exist.

I spent years repeatedly rearranging the same Excel worksheets for different tasks: I'd hide columns, change filters, adjust the zoom, and then undo everything later. Then I discovered the overlooked Custom Views option, which lets me save those layouts and switch between them in seconds.