How-To Geek

Stop letting old devices rot in a drawer and bring them back to life with the help of an inexpensive microcontroller and some code. The ESP32 is perfect for this task.

Got an old Android phone sitting unused in a drawer? By installing an open-source ROM, you can bring it bang up to date and give it a whole new lease of life. That's what I did with my old Motorola phone. Here's how it went.

The notification pull-down bar on Samsung Galaxy phones has changed quite a bit over the last few years, and not for the better. If you feel like your notifications aren't the same, out of order, and just seem a bit weird lately, you're not alone. The last two One UI updates changed the look and order of alerts, but one quick change in settings can fix it.

Buying digital movies is a risky business. There's no guarantee that you'll always be able to access the TV show or movie that you paid for. While some companies are actively removing people's content, there's one thing you can do to give your collection a better chance of survival.

Back in 1998, four of the biggest names in enterprise computing agreed on something wild. IBM, the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), Sequent, and Intel would merge their separate UNIX systems into one OS for Intel's upcoming 64-bit chips. They called it Project Monterey.

Wi-Fi 7 routers and network cards are finally becoming affordable and commonplace, but if you're a homelabber or someone who just enjoys any sort of self-hosting, you probably haven't had a pressing reason to upgrade to this latest standard.

Sometimes the best Excel projects start with something the program can't do out of the box. Surprisingly, Excel doesn't have a built-in timeline chart. So I experimented with a regular line chart, and 10 minutes later, I had a series of events mapped out in a dynamic timeline. Want to give it a try this weekend? Here's what I did.

Our Samsung Galaxy phones get better with each update, but sometimes the best features are completely hidden or don't get talked about enough. A prime example is the powerful "Finder" app feature that apparently Samsung doesn't want you to know about. Better yet, you can now put it right on your home screen.

ESP32 boards are incredibly versatile tools. You can use them for a huge range of purposes, and they can also be an extremely cheap way to help you get started in a new creative tech hobby.

The great thing about 3D printers is that they can make almost anything these days. The bad thing about 3D printers is that you can make almost anything with them.

I nearly gave up on wearing my Galaxy Watch altogether after a stretch of missed texts and silent calendar alerts. The culprit turned out to be a setting I'd flipped on to squeeze out more battery life.

Putting sensors all over the home and connecting them to Home Assistant is fun, I know, but it isn't for everyone — not yet. Thankfully, there are smart home upgrades that don't require any apps. I may have replaced every light switch in my home with a smart one, but my favorite smart home upgrade doesn't connect to my Homey Pro at all, and it's an improvement my entire family likes as much as I do.

Television’s highest honors will be awarded to several shows at the 2026 Primetime Emmys. HBO led the field with 122 total nominations, including nominations at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, followed by Netflix (111) and Apple TV (89). These three services will be searching for Emmy glory in several of the major categories, including drama series, comedy series, and limited or anthology series.

Two USB-C cables can look identical, cost wildly different amounts, and behave nothing alike. The reason sits inside the connector housing: a chip that talks to your devices before any power moves. It's genuinely useful engineering. It's also a convenient place to hide something nasty.

Conventional wisdom says that if something costs money, it's probably better than a free alternative. However, that logic completely falls apart when it comes to software — especially with free and open-source software (FOSS). The space has matured to the point where many free apps don't just compete with their paid counterparts — they beat them outright. Here are my top five picks for legendary open-source software that give their expensive paid alternatives a run for their money.

I've had problems with Android notifications arriving late for years. Usually, it's not a huge deal—if someone needs me urgently, they'll just call instead of texting me.

One reason that Linux has struggled to gain desktop users is the perception that the Linux desktop is a mess. Apps look too different from each other, and command-line elitists rule the system. The way the Linux desktop is the way it is largely stems from Linux's predecessor, Unix, and some design choices made in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

As we march toward fall, it's time to start thinking about tidying up the homelab and making it a bit safer and more secure. Today's projects include two programs that help keep an eye on your homelab for you, and one that makes your information way more accessible.

If you care about protecting your privacy online, you've probably seen an ad for VPNs. You likely also know to seek out private messaging apps like Signal and Proton Mail. But there's another change you need to make in order to protect your phone's web traffic from prying eyes, and it's a relatively simple fix.

What's the easiest and cheapest way to build your own budget homelab? Arguably, a used Windows 10 PC is a safe bet (most of the time). But the reality is that mini PCs are slowly taking over this segment, and it's true that they have a lot of attributes that make them easy to recommend for that type of job.