How-To Geek

Every developer has a setup ritual before they start their day. Mine went unquestioned for almost two years – they were four terminal commands, typed in the same order every morning. It didn't feel like a problem until I recently measured it; the time, missed steps and debugging that followed all added up. So I wrote a python script to replace them, and it became the most useful thing in my development environment.

Following the latest round of cumulative updates to Windows 11, some people lost the ability to open the C: drive on their PCs. This time, it's not actually Microsoft's fault—a Samsung app seems to be the cause of the problems.

JetBrains has several integrated development environments (IDEs) for various programming languages, including IDEA for Java/Python, PhpStorm for PHP, PyCharm for Python, and others. Soon, they’re all going to lose ‘Code With Me,’ a feature that allowed collaborative editing in shared workspaces.

As good as Google Maps is, I've long found it cluttered and bloated, offering features that I never use. And since I'm also becoming increasingly aware of how much data Google has on me, I decided to find an alternative. After testing out six of the best, with hundreds of millions of downloads between them, there's one that I really recommend.

Bloat is the bane of modern computing. Have you ever uninstalled apps or disabled services just to put your system on a diet? i3 is like a desktop on a diet, a lean, simple, yet powerful system that improves my workflow efficiency dramatically—and it's not just for experts either.

In Excel, unnamed things work, though nobody knows why. But as soon as you give all elements of a workbook identifiable labels, you suddenly become a developer, not a mere user. Proper naming reduces mental load, keeps formulas tidy, and makes debugging 10 times faster. So, stop guessing and start coding.

Your monitor has a DisplayPort input, your computer has a DisplayPort output, and you've been told that's the best connection to use. So you've bought the requisite cable and plugged it in. Everything seems to be working, but is that it?

Smart security cameras can make your home more secure, but they can also pose security risks of their own. If your security camera stores video in the cloud, there's no telling who may be able to see it. Thankfully, there are plenty of options that don't need cloud storage, keeping your recordings more secure and saving you from paying for a cloud subscription.

Microsoft's built-in applications are slowly changing from simple, dependable tools into intrusive, resource-heavy freemium services. The apps you once depended on for basic things now frequently become a way for aggressive upsells, unwanted ads, pushing AI, and wasting background resources. It's a fundamental breakdown of your experience and privacy. While things can go wrong if you're not careful, the good news is that for each of these problematic apps, you'll find a better solution, often free and privacy-respecting, ready to take its place.

If you spend enough time in storage forums or Reddit threads, you will eventually encounter the same piece of advice repeated with quiet confidence: if you want speed, use RAID 0. The reasoning seems obvious because RAID 0 stripes data across multiple drives, so instead of one disk doing the work, two or four disks share it. In theory, that means double or quadruple the throughput and benchmarks often reinforce the idea. But the moment you step outside synthetic benchmarks and look at real workloads, the story becomes more complicated (not boring).

Luxury sports cars are often designed with performance as the top priority, delivering thrilling acceleration and razor-sharp handling. But that focus can sometimes come at the expense of reliability and everyday usability, making many of them better suited for weekend drives than daily commuting. Finding a sports car that blends excitement with long-term dependability isn’t always easy.

You've heard for years about browser tracking, fingerprints, and cookies, but what do they all mean? How and why do tracking companies identify you? And more crucially, what is the most straightforward way to protect yourself? I cover all of these so you can resist intrusions into your digital life, and it's much easier than you think.

The Raspberry Pi 2 is now more than 10 years old, but that doesn't make it useless. You won't be able to self-host 10 demanding services simultaneously, but as long as you're selective, there are a huge range of useful projects you can run.

WIndows popularized GUIs on the PCs, but it's always had a command-line interface lurking underneath the surface. Windows Terminal is the latest way to harness the power of the command line. It's much more powerful than the old "DOS box," letting you tap into Linux and PowerShell as well as the classic Command Prompt. Here's what you're missing by ignoring it.

In recent weeks, there's been an increasing number of people posting their own Home Assistant integrations and custom components on popular forums. Many of these vibe-coded tools are closed-source and lock key features behind a subscription. This worrying trend is the exact opposite of the ethos of Home Assistant.

One of the most basic things you do on a computer is copying and pasting. Yet somehow, it’s still more annoying than it should be. That’s exactly why I started looking for a better clipboard manager and found ClipShelf.

Ugreen started out as a charger company, but quickly took the NAS world by storm a few years ago when it started releasing NAS units. Now, its moving from entry-level and mid-range storage servers to professional units. The Ugreen iDX6011 Pro is the first truly pro-grade NAS from Ugreen, and I was quite surprised with just how great it worked for me.

In the end, it was always One Battle After Another. Following its dominant awards season, One Battle After Another took home Best Picture at the 2026 Oscars.

The Lincoln Navigator, one of the early originals in the full-size luxury SUV category, is entering a new era. Nearly three decades after helping establish the segment alongside the Cadillac Escalade, the 2026 Navigator is showing off a bold new exterior, a capable powertrain, and a tech-forward interior that Lincoln is positioning as a "sanctuary on wheels."

Modern NVMe SSDs are insanely fast. They can move tens of gigabytes of data in minutes, but all that speed comes at a cost: heat. Adding a heatsink is an excellent way to protect a fast NVMe from overheating, but you don’t need to go overboard by getting a model with a tiny cooling fan.