How-To Geek

Wireless Android Auto adapters promise a cleaner dashboard and a more seamless driving experience, eliminating the need to plug in your phone every time you get behind the wheel. On paper, it sounds like the perfect upgrade, especially for drivers who rely heavily on navigation, music streaming, and hands-free communication.

The price of the average new car now exceeds $50,000. As a result, many Americans are holding onto their current cars longer than ever. A study by S&P Global Mobility found that in 2025, the average age of a vehicle in the U.S. was 12.8 years.

A long time ago, in the burgeoning smartphone era, Google launched Android 4.2 Jelly Bean on the Nexus 4. Along with it came a brand new camera mode called "Photo Sphere," which allowed for taking full 360-degree photos. It was a big hit, but Google removed the feature in 2023, and that's a shame.

Linux Mint has been a popular Linux distribution based on Ubuntu and Debian for years, with new versions coming (roughly) every six months. That might change in the future, though.

The winter doldrums are almost behind us, and that means new Android phones are on the horizon. Samsung has announced the date for the first Galaxy Unpacked event of 2026, which is when the Galaxy S26 series will be officially shown off. The company has also shared information about pre-order promotions.

Home Assistant is incredibly powerful, but there are so many features that navigating your way through all the menus can be a chore. You can do things much faster if you stick to using your keyboard.

I have a lot of storage for my Plex server—over 60TB, actually. However, even I sometimes run into space issues and have to find ways to free up hard drive storage without deleting things. That’s where Tdarr comes in, and here’s how I used it to free up over 7TB of space on my server.

The third-generation AirPods Pro come with several upgrades over the previous model, especially in sound quality and noise cancellation. While those improvements may not sound dramatic on paper, they do make a noticeable difference, whether you’re listening to music alone or in public.

Years before I started buying Samsung phones, you could unlock your phone by scanning your eyes. This went away with the release of the Galaxy S21. Now iris scanning is back, not on the latest Galaxy phone, but on a device where it inherently makes sense.

The first major release of Windows 11 for 2026 has arrived, as Windows 26H1. However, it won't be rolled out to any existing PCs, and it will only exist as a starting point for specific new PCs.

There aren't many mainstream sedans that come to mind when you think luxury, but one affordable midsize four-door delivers comfort, refinement, and premium features once reserved for upscale brands, without the luxury-brand price tag. While many shoppers settle for basic transportation in this segment, this model’s higher trims bring near-luxury appointments and thoughtful touches that feel a level above the mainstream.

3D printing gives you a way out of boring mass-market limitations, letting you create custom solutions and enjoy being completely self-sufficient. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm often means people rush into neat projects that everyone sees circulating online, without thinking about how usable the end result really is.

Android phone in a bit of a lull? Before you give it a kick and toss, a small change here and some optimization over there can dramatically improve the speed, performance, and efficiency of your smartphone.

CrossOver, the Windows app compatibility layer for Linux and Mac, just got a massive upgrade. The latest update is now based on Wine 11, allowing Borderlands 4, Helldivers 2, Starfield, and other games to finally work on Mac.

NVMe SSDs are all the rage because they're small, cost-effective, and blazing fast. Unfortunately, if you've built or purchased a PC in recent years, you may have noticed that there aren't nearly as many M.2 NVMe slots on your motherboards as you might like. That is where PCIe bifurcation comes in.

Most of us think of YouTube as a place where the content is made by regular people, rather than professional outfits. For the most part, this is still true, but fundamentally, YouTube is technically no different from any streaming service. Which is why you'll also find honest-to-goodness movies on YouTube that are both legal and free to watch.

You can run pretty much any popular Linux distribution on your Android phone in a few simple steps. With the right scripts, you can even install a fully-featured GUI distro with the desktop environment and window manager of your choice. Let me show you how.

Home Assistant Analytics shows that the MQTT integration is used in nearly half of all active Home Assistant installations. This places it eleventh on the list of the most installed integrations for users of the smart home software. What is it that makes this integration quite so popular?

Before there was Apple Silicon, before there were Intel-powered Mac computers, there were PowerPC Mac computers. If you still have a PowerPC G4 or G5 Mac, it could potentially use the modern web again, thanks to the PowerFox project.

Do you love Linux Mint but think that the desktop looks a bit too plain and boring? Well, if you’re using the Cinnamon edition, you can easily make the desktop more functional using Cinnamon Spices. Here’s a quick overview of what they are and how they work.