How-To Geek

I'm not a fan of Wi-Fi—Ethernet all the way. But for some devices, it just makes no sense (or is impossible) to connect via cable, and on those devices, when Wi-Fi is sluggish, it's a massive nuisance.

Android smartphones have become so powerful that they can now run mobile games that look a lot like console games. In some cases, phones can actually run older console titles. So, if you want to experience console-grade graphics on your phone, here's a list of our favorite Android games.

If the last couple of weeks have been any indication, Netflix subscribers in the U.S. are definitely into documentaries—Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes and The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare are still holding court in the streamer's top 10. But don't be surprised if one of this week's newest releases (and my top pick this weekend) might just muscle its way into the mix as well.

Bluetooth trackers are one of the best modern inventions—anyone who's ever lost something and promptly recovered it thanks to a tracker will strongly agree. As someone who loses stuff on the regular, I've invested in some inexpensive Bluetooth trackers, and I've been putting them to work since acquiring them.

Whether you admire it or despise it, Windows’ style is often imitated by competitors, including some Linux distributions. A familiar look and feel can help new users adapt to a new system, and this is especially important when changing such a fundamental part of the experience as an OS.

The Toyota RAV4 is already an easy SUV to make a case for. It's practical, efficient, and built around the kind of everyday usability that families tend to value, but its biggest advantage might not show up until you've owned it for a few years.

Tap-to-pay with phones didn’t take off in the U.S. as quickly as in other countries, but it’s now available at most retailers. There’s been one massive hold-out the entire time, though: Walmart. Finally, that’s about to change, and it’s happening very soon.

Did you know that Milwaukee's M12 tool lineup has a lot more than just drills, drivers, and saws in it? I didn't either. Here are five fun tools that you'd never have expected to be part of Milwaukee's lineup.

Most people think building your own apps takes months of learning or a computer science degree. It really just takes a free weekend and a few conversations with Claude to get tools that work exactly the way you want, without ads, without subscriptions, and without features you never asked for. I've built versions of all of these myself, and the gap between what you can make for free and what you'd download from an app store isn't as big as people think.

And so begins the closing out of summer on Netflix. As the world's biggest streaming service basks in the month's standouts like Don't Say Good Luck and The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, there's still a bit more to squeeze out of it, including Adam Scott's horror film The Whisper Man and one topping this weekend's bingeable list: the fifth season of Outer Banks.

With development boards like the ESP32-CAM and ESP32-S3 Sense, you can easily integrate a camera into your microcontroller projects. These can be useful in the home or at work, or just plain fun when integrated into more adventurous projects.

The writing has been on the wall from the moment Nvidia introduced DLSS, and then followed up with DLSS Frame Generation. The company is all-in on AI, and ever since we got frame gen, hardware upgrades have stopped being the sole focus of every new release. Instead, DLSS and Multi-Frame Generation drive the hype.

Google has been my favorite Android manufacturer for a long time. I've used Pixel phones for nearly a decade, and before that, I used Nexus phones and tablets. But that run is coming to an end. Next time I upgrade, I'll be switching over to the Samsung Galaxy side.

Being born in the '80s and growing up with computers from the mid-80s and onward, some of the earliest computer lessons that were drilled into me involved a warning about magnets: keep them far away from any computer!

Some smart home projects put your devices in the most obvious places. If you're building your own video doorbell with an ESP32-CAM module, there's really only one place you're going to put it. There are other projects that can put smart home devices in places that you might not expect.

Do you have a Bluetooth speaker that sounds great on everything except your Android phone? Why would this happen? Is it the speaker? Is it your phone? The answer is probably the Bluetooth codec they've decided to use.

Ten years of fixing other people's computers teaches you patterns fast. The same handful of problems show up again and again, and most of them aren't hardware failures or anything dramatic. Those small decisions seem fine at the time, but they snowball. By the time someone calls me for help, I usually assume it was a user error, not some unfixable Windows issue. There are plenty of common culprits I've traced back to those habits people tend to have, but there's usually an easy fix.

Have you ever installed a new drive or bought a new phone, only to find that you're missing a few gigabytes from your storage. Granted, it's only a few gigabytes—you'll get 476GB out of the 512GB you're supposed to have. But it's an important enough difference to just ignore it.

If you’re lucky enough to have a garage, you’ve not only got a place to park your car but a place to keep things you don’t want in your house, like tools, bikes, and other outdoorsy items.

It's no secret that Ryobi gets a lot of hate on forums and social media, but for the average homeowner or DIYer, they're more than enough. There's a reason it's one of the most popular power tool brands in the US. That said, there are instances where your Ryobi tools could be holding you back.