How-To Geek - For Geeks, By Geeks.

What Is YouTube TV, and Can It Replace Your Cable Subscription?

It seem like everyone is jumping on the streaming live TV train these days, and with Google getting YouTube on board, it’s worth a closer look. While there are things to like about YouTube TV, I feel like Google still has a lot of work to do to make this a legitimate option for everyone.

Screen Savers Haven’t Been Useful For Decades. Why Are They Still Here?

I was walking through the dorms in 2003 when I saw it: a desk with three computer monitors, all with a Matrix screen saver scrolling green text. It’s laughable in retrospect, but I thought it was just the coolest. Don’t lie, you would have too.

How to Stop and Restart Applications On Your Synology NAS

Just like desktop applications, the application packages on your Synology NAS need an occasional restart—but unlike desktop applications, it’s a little less clear on how you do so. Let’s dive into the why, when, and how of restarting application packages.

How to Enable Auto-Lock for Your Kwikset Kevo Smart Lock

If you ever forget to lock your door on the way out, The Kwikset Kevo can make your life easy by doing it automatically whenever you leave the house. Here’s how to enable it.

How to Securely Send Large Files to Anyone With Firefox Send

We may be living in the future, but sending large files over the web remains…complicated. Email is a terrible way to send files over 1GB, and using cloud-based services like Dropbox or Google Drive means filling limited space on a service, and you’ve got to manage permissions or accept that your link might be handed off to third parties.

What Is Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, and How Is It Different?

Microsoft has announced Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. This is a higher-end version of Windows 10 Professional for expensive PCs with powerful hardware. The included features are already available on Windows Server, but are being brought over to a desktop version of Windows.

Why Are the PCI Express Ports on My Motherboard Different Sizes? x16, x8, x4, and x1 Explained

The PCI Express standard is one of the staples of modern computing, with a slot on more or less every desktop computer made in the last decade. But the nature of the connection is somewhat nebulous: on a new PC, you might see a half-dozen ports in three or four different sizes, all labelled “PCIE” or PCI-E.” So why the confusion, and which ones can you actually use?

How to Add Attachments in Gmail for the iPhone

While email is still an incredibly popular form of communication, it’s not always a part of everyone’s daily life. And if the time comes when you need to send a document, picture, or some other file using Gmail, you’ll need to know how to attach it.

How to Use Snapchat Without Sharing Your Location

Snapchat’s new Snap Map feature is incredibly creepy—it shares your location with all your Friends every time you open Snapchat—and might make you want to consider blocking Snapchat from seeing your location at all. This will affect a few Snapchat features, so let’s look at what you lose.

A Brief History of BonziBuddy, the Internet’s Most Friendly Malware

If you had a computer in the early 2000s and didn’t have a ton of common sense (or proper antivirus software), you probably ended up with an allegedly helpful purple ape named BonziBuddy crowding your desktop. He could talk, tell jokes, “sing,” and generally annoy you. He promised to help you use the internet, but mostly he just got in the way.

How to Install a Wired Security Camera System

If you’ve decided to get a wired security camera system instead of a Wi-Fi camera, the setup is a bit more involved, but you’ll end up with a better system in the end. Here’s how to install wired security cameras.

What Is opendirectoryd, and Why Is It Running On my Mac?

You’re checking Activity Monitor, seeing what’s taking up resources on your Mac, when you notice a process called opendirectoryd. What does that even mean?

How to Set Up Your Wi-Fi Connected Roomba

iRobot has a few different models of Roomba vacuums, but the Wi-Fi connected Roombas are definitely some of the most convenient. You can start or schedule cleaning jobs from your phone, ring your Roomba from your phone if you can’t find it, and even start cleaning using Alexa or Google Assistant. If you just got a Wi-Fi capable Roomba, here’s how to set yours up.

How to Use Safe Mode to Fix Your Windows PC (and When You Should)

Windows’ Safe Mode is an essential tool. On computers infected with malware or crashing because of buggy drivers, Safe Mode may be the only way to start the computer.

Is Now a Good Time to Buy a New NVIDIA or AMD Graphics Card?

A few years ago, people were predicting the death of PC gaming as we know it. Those people are feasting on an abundance of humble pie, as PC games remain a cornerstone of the industry: digital delivery gives us more variety than ever before, and even the relatively niche market of performance gaming hardware has never been more healthy. But even the most humble of PC gamers needs a graphics card (well, sort of), and it’s one of the most frequent upgrades gamers make. But is now a good time to buy one?

Quick Tip: You Can Swipe Cards Away in Android Auto to Dismiss Them

Android Auto is a highly useful tool in the car. It provides music, navigation, traffic notifications, and quick access to calls and messages. The trouble is, some of these things generate cards on Auto’s home screen, and that can get annoying after a while.

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The Smallest Fox Species In The World Is The?

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What’s the Best Antivirus for Windows 10? (Is Windows Defender Good Enough?)

Windows 10 won’t hassle you to install an antivirus like Windows 7 did. Since Windows 8, Windows now includes a built-in antivirus called Windows Defender (which used to be available separately as Microsoft Security Essentials). But is it really the best for protecting your PC–or even just good enough?

18 Things You May Not Have Known Google Photos Can Do

Google Photos may seem like a simple image hosting service, but it’s actually quite powerful. Google Photos bridges the gap between cloud storage, image hosting, and image sharing services, giving stiff competition to Flickr, iCloud, Dropbox, and OneDrive.

Wi-Fi Security: Should You Use WPA2-AES, WPA2-TKIP, or Both?

Many routers provide WPA2-PSK (TKIP), WPA2-PSK (AES), and WPA2-PSK (TKIP/AES) as options. Choose the wrong one, though, and you’ll have a slower, less-secure network.

How to Fix Windows Update When It Gets Stuck

Windows Update is supposed to work silently in the background, but it may refuse to continue if it can’t install an individual update.

10 Handy Uses for Your Old iPad or Android Tablet

Tablet sales are slumping at the moment, probably as a result of big smartphones and convertible laptops chip away at a tablet’s usefulness. But if you have one or more tablets at home gathering dust while you happily poke away at your giant smartphone, there are probably some good ways to put them to use rather than selling them or recycling them. Here are a few ideas.

How to Change Microsoft Edge to Search Google Instead of Bing

Microsoft’s new Edge browser uses Bing as its default search engine, but if you prefer something else you can change that. Edge can use any search engine that supports OpenSearch as its default.

How to Turn Your Windows PC Into a Wi-Fi Hotspot

Windows can turn your PC into a wireless hotspot, allowing it to share its wired or wireless Internet connection with other wireless devices. But how you set it up that depends on what version of Windows you’re running. Here’s how it all works.

Everything You Can Do With Windows 10’s New Bash Shell

Windows 10’s Anniversary Update brings a “Bash on Ubuntu on Windows” environment to Windows 10. But don’t be deceived: This is more than just a Bash shell. It’s a full compatibility layer for running Linux applications on Windows.

How to Find and Remove Duplicate Files on Windows

Duplicate file finders scan your hard drive for unnecessary duplicated files and help you remove them, freeing up space. Here are our picks for the best duplicate file finders, whether you’re looking for something easy to use, an application you may already have installed, or a powerful tool with the most advanced filters.

Amazon Echo vs. Google Home: Which One Should You Buy?

Amazon blew the industry wide open with its release of the Echo back in 2014, and has since become the company’s most popular hardware product. However, Google has since gotten in on the fun with the Google Home, a direct Echo competitor that aims to reign supreme. But which one should you buy if you’re in the market for a virtual home assistant? Here are some key points to know about both devices to see which one might be best suited for you.

Did You Know

Despite the long held belief that eradicating mosquitoes would cause severe ecological consequences, research into the matter indicates that doing so wouldn’t hurt the environment and would save millions of lives (as mosquitoes transmit many blood borne pathogens).

Daily Tech Term

File Extensions

File extensions are a type of metadata appended to the end of computer file names to indicate to the operating system what format the file is in. It is by this mechanism that Windows knows to open File.txt with Notepad, File.doc with Microsoft Word, and to attempt to lauch File.exe as an application.

Changing the file extension on a file can render the operating system unable to open the file. Many modern operating systems hide file extensions from the end user by default for this very reason. Although in most instances changing file extensions is not recommended, there are situations where renaming power tricks can yield interesting results. From Word 2007 and forward, for example, Microsoft introduced the .docx format. The .docx format is essentially a .zip file filled with XML-based documents and the media embedded in the Word document. Armed with that knowledge, you could rapidly extract all the images embedded in a Word document by simply renaming File.docx to File.zip and opening up the document as you would a zip file.