How-To Geek

It's rough out there for mobile app developers. The Play Store is filled with millions of apps to compete with, and most of them are free. Yet, even with so many free apps to choose from, I gladly pay for many of my favorites, and I enjoy my phone much more as a result.

Free and open-source software gets a lot of praise thanks to how good it ends up being, especially compared to proprietary software. For years, I thought LibreOffice was the best option, especially with its new update this year. However, its push for feature parity and constant interface changes, which often mimicked the commercial rivals it wanted to replace, eventually made using it more of a hassle than a help. This evolution, while technically impressive, means sacrificing some stability and workflow consistency. I found my answer in Apache OpenOffice.

When I'm creating automations in Home Assistant, I always strive to make them work as well as possible. For a long time, however, I was trying to achieve perfection with my presence-based automations. I felt much happier when I stopped aiming for the impossible.

Soldered RAM is widely seen as a disadvantage, even as a pain point, on some laptops and compact PCs, including the MacBook. The thing is, it's usually seen as a solution only when you need to save space—like on a compact device, or a thin laptop.

I'm the tech guy in my family, which means I'm usually the one getting the call when something "isn't working right." Over the years, I've learned that half the battle isn't fixing the problem, it's figuring out what's actually going on in the first place. Windows gives you plenty of tools, but they're scattered, simplified, or buried behind menus that don't always tell the full story. That's a big part of why I've leaned so heavily on PowerShell, and why I've written before about commands and built-in tools you should try before jumping straight to a full reinstall.

I could go on talking all day about Fedora being one of the best "mainstream" Linux distros. It's great with updates, and it packs a lot of stuff usually considered bleeding-edge on other distros. But it also has a greatly useful tool that you probably didn't know you had.

The automotive world is currently split. On one side, there are people who love fully electric vehicles and can’t wait to see manufacturers improve their models. On the other side, there are those who won't even consider a vehicle without an internal combustion engine. Sure, EVs are fast and efficient, but without the sounds and vibrations of a traditional engine, an EV simply doesn’t measure up.

You can never have too many tools, right? While all the big-name brands like Milwaukee, DeWALT, and Ryobi are busy releasing new tools for 2026, they're not the only ones. Harbor Freight has capable new tools on the way from its in-house brands, including Hercules, Bauer, and more. If you're on a budget, here are some great tools coming in 2026 that you might want to wait for.

Have you been searching for a way to ditch Kindle and build your own eBook library? I have, and Calibre makes it easy to self-host your eBooks, read them anywhere, and even still send them to your Kindle—no subscription required.

As a developer, I constantly run into tiny problems that interrupt my flow. Formatting a messy JSON response, decoding a Base64 string, or testing a quick regex. The usual solution is opening a browser tab and pasting your data into one of countless online utilities, often cluttered with ads and questionable privacy practices.

Bentley offers many expressions of the Continental GT, from the wellness-oriented Azure to the athletic nature of the GT Speed. Yet the new Continental GT S and GTC S, available as both a coupe (GT S) and convertible (GTC S), might be the most driver-centric variants yet.

One of the big reasons people choose Netflix Premium is the promise of 4K streaming, which gets millions of subscribers to pay a bit more each month for the best picture quality out there. When you, a paying customer, sit down at your desktop computer and see that "Ultra HD 4K" badge on a movie, you'd reasonably expect to get the sharpest, most vibrant visuals possible.

Keep is one of Google's better products. It has a great UI, and you can capture notes with just one tap. Despite using it for years, however, I have wanted an alternative. So why bother replacing it? I can give you two reasons and a free, open-source app that does what Keep can't.

Fedora is, for many, one of the best Linux distros out there, if not the best. It's safe and secure, and it's pretty snappy. And perhaps more importantly, the way it manages updates—which is something I personally haven't seen in a lot of other Linux distros.

Looking for the best way to put that old Raspberry Pi to good use? Why not install one of the following open-source projects and use it to save money? Ditch a premium service you’re already paying for or use one of these tools to improve your finances today.

Paramount+ isn't just Taylor Sheridan's playground for Yellowstone-like dramas, scripted thrillers, and comedies; it's actually an untapped resource for great documentaries and docuseries to enlighten and entertain. You might have to dig a little, but they're there.

Like many people using Unix-like operating systems for the first time, I was introduced to the concept of the pipeline. Here's how a single character on the command line changed everything.

One of the main reasons to choose a Home Assistant smart home is the freedom you get to choose accessories, brands, and integrations. But not all devices work well with the platform. Some are notoriously unreliable, and others don’t play nicely with the kind of local control that the platform offers.

Streaming services are expensive. I enjoy and collect music in both physical and digital formats. I own CDs, LPs, DualDiscs, DVD-As, and SACDs. I've even written about physical media formats extensively in the past. If you spend as much time as I do thinking about different audio formats, you might remember something called Vorbis (or Ogg Vorbis), a music format that doesn't get the attention it deserves nowadays.

My parents have discovered the wonders of ChatGPT, and have been gleefully using it for everything they can think of. I've had "the chat" with them about the reliability of LLMs, but like most people they do indulge in social media fads from time to time. Whether it's using ChatGPT to turn you into an action figure, or cartoonizing yourself, they're now well-versed in uploading photos to a chatbot as part of a prompt.