How-To Geek

Home Assistant is closing out the year with its 2025.12 release, bringing major quality of life improvements, an overhaul to automation building, and a brand new area for testing preview features. There's a lot coming that should give users more intuitive control over their smart homes.

Family sedans may not dominate headlines like SUVs, but in 2025 they offer some of the strongest value, comfort, and day-to-day usability on the market. With new models prioritizing quiet cabins, improved ride quality, and the latest driver-assist tech, shoppers who overlook this segment may be missing out on vehicles that deliver far more refinement than their price tags suggest.

Microsoft has quietly rolled out a partial mitigation for the high-severity Windows LNK vulnerability, CVE-2025-9491, which multiple state-sponsored groups and cybercrime gangs have been exploiting as a zero-day. This security flaw lets attackers hide malicious commands inside standard Windows shortcut files.

December on HBO Max will see its fair share of holiday content, but as far as new shows and movies are concerned, we’re venturing deep into documentary territory with a plethora of music stories about Paul Anka, Wizkid, Jeff Buckley, and Counting Crows. We’ll also see the debut of three highly anticipated, long-awaited movie sequels, along with the first comedy special from SNL star Sarah Sherman, and a new Hard Knocks series focused on the NFC East.

Raspberry Pi just announced software updates for its growing suite of AI products. This is coming with full support for the AI HAT+ on the Trixie release of Raspberry Pi OS and a brand new debugging feature for the AI Camera.

For the last month or two, we've been hearing plenty about Samsung's next major software update, One UI 8.5, which will still be based on Android 16 and packed with new features. Now, a big leak revealed all the exciting features that are about to arrive.

Home Assistant is a free, open-source, and independent smart home platform, but did you know there’s a company called Nabu Casa chipping in behind the scenes? If you want to pay to make remote access and cloud backup as easy as possible, that’s where your money goes.

Got an old Android tablet gathering dust in a drawer? Wondering if there’s anything genuinely useful you can do with it besides recycling it? Here are seven practical ways to give your old Android tablet a new life and a new purpose.

My parents owned a station wagon only very briefly when I was a child, but I'll never forget how awesome it was to hang out in the back of that wood-paneled beauty with the seats folded down. It made long trips a breeze, and I was sad to see it go.

Do you listen to music on your Jellyfin server but wish you could close the year with a look-back on your listening history like Spotify Wrapped? I thought I was going to have to do without—until I found Jellyfin Rewind.

Google’s new AI coding platform, Antigravity, just executed a catastrophic command that wiped an entire hard drive partition belonging to one of its users. This is a great reason not to give powerful AI agents free rein over a local machine's terminal.

Finding the most efficient route for your travel can be done in a lot of different ways, and having a go-to transit app that takes care of any hitches along the way can be a lifesaver. But you don't have to solely rely on default apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps, especially if your needs call for it.

The way hardware ages can be difficult to judge. You may be using a 10-year-old PC and feeling satisfied, or you may be running last-gen hardware and already looking at another expensive GPU to upgrade with—it's all a matter of mindset.

The Raspberry Pi 500+ is a ready-to-go single-board computer and keyboard combo, with a 256GB NVMe drive, mechanical keys, and Raspberry Pi OS preloaded. It’s the fastest way to get started with a Raspberry Pi, and it’s a highly capable ARM-based desktop computer replacement that runs Linux.

Because SSDs don't use physical storage, it's easy to assume that they don't really suffer from wear and tear. However, you can still digitally run down the lifespan of an SSD if you use certain software utilities with it. If you want to maximize its lifespan, steer clear of these things.

The end of the year means one thing for music lovers—Spotify Wrapped 2025 is here! This fun annual recap is one of the reasons why so many people use Spotify. We'll show you how to find yours.

The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best festive movie ever. We don't need to debate that. When you launch Disney+ this holiday season to watch it, make sure you select the full-length version. It contains a scene you may never have seen before.

The snowy cold weather is here, and that means it's time to get out your winter tools and start preparing and battling the snow. And if you don't have any winter power tools, we have you covered. Here are a few cordless tools you should consider purchasing, like an electric snowblower.

Finding and fixing problems in Microsoft Excel is essential for a fully functioning workbook, but it can take forever. So, I made a note of the keyboard shortcuts that let me trace broken logic, see the dependencies, and fix complex calculations in just a few seconds—and I haven't looked back since.

The team behind Home Assistant is best known for its incredible free and open-source smart home software, but the same team has also produced some hardware products. Nabu Casa, the commercial company set up by the creators of Home Assistant, currently sells a handful of products, including a dedicated Home Assistant hub and a prototype of a local smart speaker.