Advertisements—sometimes prompts to do something that would financially benefit Microsoft and sometimes actual paid advertisements—are showing up all

Microsoft is investigating reports of the latest April Windows 11 update breaking some VPN apps for users. The update, titled KB5036893, introduced se

One of the most under-appreciated Mac features is the services menu, which you can find by right-clicking just about anything—highlighted text, say, o

One of the better recent features in macOS is Live Text, which allows you to copy text from images on your Mac in Preview, Quick Look, or Safari. It's

While it's still the butt of some jokes, Microsoft Edge is actually a solid browser—especially when you configure it right. That said, you shouldn't b

Like almost every other major operating system currently available, Windows 11 offers users light and dark mode interface options. Light mode is turne

Every once and a while you find an app that does one very specific thing very well. Timestory is just such an app: It allows you to quickly visualize

The Windows 11 taskbar gets worse with every release, and the widget popups, copilot button, and expanded Search bar aren’t helping. Here’s an idea, W

Microsoft is updating the Windows 11 Snipping Tool, which is the platform's default option for capturing and annotating screenshots. Soon, you'll be a

Ever wish a certain window could be pinned above all other ones? Or that you could see through a window to whatever's behind it? A free and open sourc

Most things are faster to do with the keyboard than with the mouse, but not every app is built with the keyboard in mind. That's where where Shortcat

Since macOS Mojave was launched back in 2018, users have been able to take advantage of dynamic wallpapers (originally called dynamic desktops)—backdr

The Windows 11 taskbar is one of the new operating system’s best features—elegant, minimalist, and visually distinct. Even still, it could use some im

Microsoft has officially announced that it's ending support for Android apps on Windows 11, but you don't have to be deterred by that. If you have bee

When you think of a computer that's both powerful and efficient, you might think first of a MacBook. However, think about a computer that's made to wo

Like it or not, Windows 11 is here to stay. If you want to continue using Microsoft's operating system, you're going to be forced to embrace it sooner

Text expansion tools are essential for anyone who finds themselves constantly copying and pasting the same information multiple times every day. Over

Windows 10 is slowly on its way out, as Microsoft has announced it'll stop issuing free software updates after Oct. 14, 2025. At the same time, there

Remember when Dropbox synced your files and that was it? These days Dropbox does a lot more than sync files and it wants to remind you—and upsell you—

If you're in the market for a new laptop, Memorial Day sales include some good options from HP, Lenovo, Best Buy, Walmart, and other retailers. I've r

AMD CEO Lisa Su took the stage at Computex 2024 yesterday to reveal the company’s long-awaited Zen 5 CPUs, which include both powerful new desktop pro

A strange quirk of AI computers, from Chomebook Plus to Copilot+, is that most of them so far have been laptops. There’s no reason desktops couldn’t r

If you've recently updated your Windows 11 PC, you might be surprised to see three new widget boxes at the bottom of your lock screen, where there use

Balancing which apps automatically start up when you open Windows is more of an art than science. You'll want to disable heavy apps that will slow dow

It doesn't matter whether you're test driving Linux or installing Windows—making a bootable drive is an annoying process. What if you could format a h

We take the search function for granted—when it goes well. If you search for a particular email, photo, or document on your PC, and it pops right up,

So, you installed Windows 11 on your PC—or you bought a machine with the OS pre-installed—and now your computer looks like everyone else's. There's no

Samsung's Odyssey series has consistently been one of the industry's most sought-after and well-rated gaming monitors. Back in January, during CES, th

Ultrawide monitors can help you save space and (sometimes) money compared to having two separate monitors. The 29-inch LG UltraWide monitor can do bot

Notifications are an inescapable part of modern life at this point, but they can vary from the important to the irrelevant. Striking the right balance

I listen to a lot of music while working and love to quickly check what's currently playing, which is why I checked out MediaMate. It's an indie app f

Most of us will have all kinds of audio pumping out through our Windows PC speakers (or headphones)—but you don't necessarily want your background lo-

When LG released the 45GR95QE UltraGear OLED gaming monitor in early 2023, it served as a statement that the company was serious about competing in th

The whole point of cloud-based devices like Chromebooks is to give you a window on to the web that's as uncluttered and straightforward to use as poss

Adobe has been in the news for the wrong reasons lately, so it only makes since to see the competition swooping in to make the most of the opportunity

Spotify might be the least keyboard-friendly music player ever made. I spend so much time clicking around in this application when I'm trying to find

At some point, macOS became boring. What was long ago a quirky operating system, today feels sterile and corporate. You can add a bit of humanity back

It is far too easy to fill the Mac menu bar with clutter. This can be a problem on modern MacBooks, which have a notch in the middle of the menu bar f

When there's no external display connected to your MacBook, closing it puts the entire laptop to sleep. That's straightforward enough. When there is a

Want to quickly power through a lecture or educational video, but don't want to distort the speech of the speaker? The browser extension Jump Cutter c

If you, like me, were a teenager in the 2000s, I bet you have memories of the Windows XP login window. Me and my four siblings all had our own account

In a recent update, Netflix retired its dedicated Windows app, and now offers a web app instead. This new "app," however is essentially a shortcut to

Working with text is annoying sometimes, especially when you're copying-and-pasting something with wonky formatting. Boop is a free and open source Ma

There's a lot of helpful and time-saving Windows features hidden behind the middle mouse button, which you can click by pushing down on your mouse's s

When you're using a Windows laptop, setting up and managing your power modes is an essential tool to maintaining battery life. Up until now, you had t

Like most people, I've been using search engines to do math for some time now. It's just ridiculously easy for basic calculations or unit and currency

The volume mixer is one of the most useful tools built into Windows 11. It allows you to set a custom volume level for each app on your PC. You can us

Whether you’re on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, you likely take screenshots all the time to share information with friends, coworkers, or the wider

Windows gives you plenty of ways to take quick screenshots of anything you want. You can use keyboard shortcuts and built-in tools to capture, annotat

A lot of people are unhappy with Spotify's user interface right now. Some of this is just the inevitable complaints that come after a redesign, but a

Running low on hard drive or cloud storage space? Your images might be taking up space they don't need. A free Mac app called ImageOptim, which I foun

To say that we’ve covered a few Pomorodo timers over the years would be a pretty dramatic understatement, but some ideas are flexible enough to be don

Want to check if a particular internet handle you encountered online (or created yourself) is being used on any other social networks or websites? She

Ever wish Windows worked just a little bit differently? You're not alone. Windhawk is a free and open source application offering dozens of community

There is no end of productivity applications you can pay for, if that's what you want to do. What's rare is finding a totally free and high-quality ap

On Tuesday, Google announced the new Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, which, at just over 2.5 pounds, is the company's thinnest and lightest Chromebook

Every once in a while on PC, I have no choice but to just quit an unresponsive app. Usually, closing the app does the job, but sometimes a frozen app

Chromebooks are already quite cheap compared to Windows laptops, but you can usually sweeten the deal even more during sales, like Amazon's October Pr

Amazon's October Prime Day event is now underway, and that means major discounts on tech across multiple categories—including, of course, laptops. If

If you missed out on Prime Day savings in July, don’t sweat it. Amazon is back with its October Prime Day, and I've scoured through the options to fin

If data is important to you, whether that be photos, videos, or documents, you should keep multiple copies of that data on hand. Ideally, one of those

Few components have changed how I use my computer as much as an SSD has. A few years ago, I finally got a PC with an SSD as the boot drive and now my

With the increase of people still working from home after the pandemic, finding the perfect monitor has likely been a task on many people's minds. If

Recently, my Windows PC stubbornly decided to refuse to boot up, and so I turned to the traditional troubleshooting approach that's served me well for

I've struggled to find much use for AI. It's not that I'm not motivated—it's my job to try out new technology and point out useful ways to use it—but

Using a computer is a lot faster if you become a keyboard shortcut ninja instead of doing everything with your mouse or trackpad. The problem: browsin

Presentations over video conferencing apps like Zoom and Google Meet work best when you share your entire screen but anyone with a 4K display knows th

Looking to get photos off an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone and onto your Mac, without using cloud storage or the Photos app? You'd be forgiven if, af

Obsidian has long been one of the best alternatives to Evernote. It's powerful, works great as a journaling app, and offers lots of great plugins. The

Have you ever tried to make a flowchart, or any kind of diagram for that matter, using image editing software or a word processor's embedded tools? It

One of the key selling points of the Apple Vision Pro is how easy it is to connect it to a Mac and use it as a large external monitor. Now, Microsoft

Searching for files on Windows isn't exactly speedy. Listary is a free app with great indexing that allows you to find any file on your computer in ju

Every once in a while a seemingly pointless computing question of mine becomes an obsession. This week, that question is, "Whatever happened to music

For app developers, there's a lot of benefit in having their software start up with macOS: It means the program is available at a moment's notice, can

We all have a few go-to calculations that we find ourselves doing often, like converting ounces to cups or miles to kilometers—that sort of thing. Whe

Amazon has kicked off its Black Friday sales well before the day itself, but that isn’t stopping it from delivering some absolutely wild discounts. Th

Sometimes you're in the middle of typing something, see a notification make its way across your screen, and want it to go away. Immediately. Unfortuna

Prime Day 2025 is here from Tuesday, July 8 to Friday, July 11, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and pr

Apple Silicon Macs don't support Boot Camp, meaning you can't install Windows and boot it up directly. That doesn't mean you can't get Windows 11 up a

Whether you're setting up a virtual machine for testing or attempting to restore macOS on a device that won't boot, sometimes you need to download a s

Everyone needs fast storage and a solid state drive (SSD) provides just that. You can get internal SSDs for your laptop or PC to reduce boot up times,

Roku streaming sticks and boxes are clever little devices that can get all kinds of streaming content up on your TV screen—and if you invest in an act