Home Office Setup & Equipment

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. I acquired a "magic circle" Pilates prop for personal use in my ever-expanding quest to get better at working out at home. I wanted to put it into action right away, so naturally, I turned to my beloved Peloton app, where I figured I'd load up a Pilates workout and get to work. Weirdly, though, that wasn't as easy as it is when I, say, want to follow along with a yoga or stretching class. Eventually, I figured it out and the Pilates workout (which did inco…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. With all the apps and digital tools available to enhance your studying, plus how fast and easy it is to type notes compared to how long it takes to write them, it seems like a no-brainer to bring your laptop with you to class. But there’s good reason to believe taking notes by hand helps your brain retain more. Here’s why you should try leaving the laptop behind at home and how to make the switch to the old-school way easier. Digital note-taking isn’t …

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. Summer and fall are the perfect time to prepare for standardized aptitude tests. Prepping through summer will help you be ready for a fall exam, giving you enough time to retake for a higher score it in the spring, if needed, or you can prep through fall and target that spring test. Even if you studied all summer, fall is the ideal time to review and cram down to the last minute. And no matter how you tend to learn, an app can probably help. Here are some of the best ones available on iOS and Android (s…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. In Lifehacker’s series, “A Guide to Automating Your Entire Home,” we’re highlighting all the ways you can power your home with autonomous technology, room by room. Whether you want to build a smart security system, turn a “dumb” device smart, or simply control your lights from your phone, this guide will help walk you through it. Temperature is crucial to your comfort at home, and smart tech can help you find that perfect balance—starting with smart thermostats, but extending to other devices and apps to help through the summer and winter months. Not only does a smart tech overhaul like this mean more precise temperature c…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. Apple has reportedly paused its plan to revamp its Vision Pro headset in favor of speeding up development of smart glasses. According to Bloomberg, Apple internally announced last week that it was shifting employees and resources away from the next iteration of the Vision Pro and towards developing two models of yet unnamed Apple-branded smart glasses. The first Apple glasses, codenamed N50, are audio-and-AI-focused spectacles designed to pair with iPhones, similar to the first generation of Ray-Ban Meta…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. To take the best notes in class, you need a system. There are a lot of great note-taking techniques that can help you identify the key elements of any lesson and organize them in a way that will help you study—but one of the best ways to actually learn and retain what the notes say is by color-coding. It's easy and even kind of fun to work this technique into your existing study structure, so here's what to do. How color-coding your notes helps you study Using color can improve the performance of your …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. Doing things the old-fashioned way and hand-writing your notes is better for retaining what you’ve learned, but it definitely has drawbacks that can make typing notes more appealing. Hand-written notes aren’t searchable on your phone or laptop, for example, and unlike your phone, your notebook probably won’t always be with you for a quick study session on the bus or train. That’s why you should take advantage of both methods: once you’ve written them o…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. As someone who's completed six marathons over six years, I approached Garmin's marathon training plans with cautious optimism. After all, Garmin dominates the running tech space, and their watches are virtually ubiquitous among serious runners. Surely their training plans would reflect the same attention to detail and runner-focused design? Plus, I’m already a huge fan of racing with my no-nonsense Garmin Forerunner 165. After months of following the program …

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. While sometimes there's a big piece of misinformation that a lot of people latch onto—like The Rapture or the existence of "MedBeds"—the fractured nature of the information sphere has all but killed the overarching conspiracy theory. No longer do big ideas like "we never went to the moon" unite the dumbest minds; instead, the algorithm creates bespoke conspiracy theories. So instead of joining the Flat Earth Society, you might think the actual year is 1728, or that AI secretly imagined a British comedian f…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. Sometimes, Apple hosts grand presentations to announce new products and services. Other times, the company simply drops the news on a random Wednesday morning. This Wednesday morning is one such example: Following a preview on social media, Apple has announced the M5 chip, as well as three products that will kick off this new era of Apple silicon: the M5 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pros, and Vision Pro. The M5 chip The big news that unifies all updated Apple products today is the M5 chip. As the name might…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. For a while there, the “blurting” method of note revision was all over TikTok, making it somewhat of a studying trend. Whether or not it's still popular on social media is irrelevant; it's still a solid retention technique that can help you entrench information in your long-term memory. There are actually two ways to blurt when you’re studying, and both are helpful for retrieval practice and overall retention—but only if you’re doing them instead of scrolling, so read this, put your phone down, and get …

Wikipedia is a treasured online resource that, despite massive changes across the web, has managed to remained truly great to this day. I, alongside millions of other users, visit the site daily to learn something new or double-check existing knowledge. In an age of non-stop AI slop, Wikipedia is something of an antidote. If you look at Wikipedia and think "this is alright, but an AI version would be a lot better," you might just be Elon Musk. Musk's AI company, xAI, just launched Grokipedia—yes, that really is its name—an online encyclopedia that closely resembles Wikipedia in name and surface-level appearance. But under the hood, the two could hardly be any more differ…

It will soon be time, once again, for our clocks to “fall back.” Nov. 2 is the date most places in the U.S. quit daylight saving time for 2025 and go back to standard time. We're still on this clock-changing treadmill, despite legislation that was supposed to eliminate it a few years ago, and despite medical professionals warning that these clock changes are bad for our health. For example, a recent study out of the Stanford School of Medicine found that switching the time back and forth every year probably contributes to increased rates of stroke and obesity. Permanent daylight saving time would be an improvement on that, and permanent standard time would be even bette…

If you've joined a private Facebook group—counting on your membership and posts to be visible only to those approved to join—and receive a notification that said group is about to go public, you don't need to panic. While Meta is now allowing admins of previously private Facebook groups to change the status to public, it is also assuring users that past activity will remain private. Private Facebook groups can be made publicAccording to Meta's post announcing the update, the option to transition from private to public allows small groups to grow into larger communities that are more easily found, with content visible to anyone (even people who aren't on Facebook). Any ad…

Google's NotebookLM, by far my favorite AI tool, rolled out two new features this week. The app that can turn your notes into a podcast can now generate an educational video based on your study materials. It can also create a report or document from suggested, pre-made templates. How the new NotebookLM tools work If you're unfamiliar, NotebookLM is a large language model akin to the better-known chatbot ChatGPT, but instead of pulling information from all over the internet (with all the risks of inaccuracy that creates), it relies only on material you input directly. You can upload PDFs, links, YouTube videos, plain text, and more, then ask the chatbot questions and it…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. This Lenovo ThinkCentre M90q Mini PC (2021) is on sale for $455.99 on StackSocial right now, offering business-grade performance in a compact form factor small enough to hide behind a monitor. Inside its 7-inch frame sits a 10th Gen Intel Core i5 processor with six cores, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD. That’s enough muscle for multitasking, large spreadsheets, or running several browser tabs at once without slowdown. It’s not built for heavy graphics work or gaming, but for office productivity or remote setups, it’s more than capable of k…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. When I put the new Viwoods AiPaper Reader through its paces for my review, published yesterday, I made the mistake of trusting the company's own statements when I described its capabilities. According to Viwood's website, the phone-shaped device has mobile data functionality (specifically, 4G/Wi-Fi 2.4G), which I tested using a data-only SIM card. Nowhere does Viwoods advertise that its new e-reader call make and take phone calls. But it can. I'd love to say I figured this out on my own, but I actually first saw a post about it on Reddit shortly before I went to bed last night. By the time I woke up, I had an email in my…

Smart glasses maker Even Realities today released its latest model, the Even G2 Display Smart Glasses. Featuring a monochrome display, stylish frames, and a unique ring controller, G2s are available now for $599. In contrast to Meta Ray-Ban Displays' "do-everything" approach, G2s are designed to do one specific thing: provide a smart display that only the wearer can see. Instead of a camera and speaker, the G2s feature a suite of basic apps, like a teleprompter and a map that you can see with a tilt of your head or a touch of your ring, packed into a pair of light, slick-looking designer frames. The idea is to create cool-looking everyday glasses that are useful instead …

Shopping online? Google wants you to trust AI to click the buy button for you. Rolling out today, Google's new "agentic checkout" adds onto the company's existing price-tracking feature, so it's not something you'll see all the time. Instead, when you get a price drop notification on an object you've been tracking, you might now see a new "buy for me" button that will send all the necessary information to the store's website and make the final purchase for you. Credit: Google Google says the AI will always ask your permission…

If you have multiple Android devices, you might like to keep the experience about the same across them. If you download an app that's useful on your phone, there's a good chance you'll also want that app on your tablet, or even your Chromebook. Likewise, if you no longer find an app useful on one device, you likely won't want to keep it on your other devices, either. It can be annoying, however, to uninstall the app from each of your devices individually. Maybe you're using the app on your smartphone and you decide to delete it, but forget to delete it on your other devices. It might live on your tablet or Chromebook for a while before you realize you want it gone. That…

Amazingly, your Mac has only just gained the ability to show you a full list of what you've copied. macOS has always allowed you to copy and paste items, but if you copied multiple items back-to-back, there was no way to view the earliest items you added to your clipboard. Sure, third-party apps have filled this gap for many years now, but macOS itself didn't allow you to easily view multiple items stored in the clipboard, until now. With macOS 26 Tahoe, your Mac's Spotlight search has added support for clipboard history, which means that you can view pretty much everything you've copied in the past 30 days. Here's how to set up and use clipboard history on your Mac. Ho…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I fell in love with cold weather running while I was training for a spring marathon. It wasn’t a choice at first: Some weeks, the weather was bad for days on end, and if I stayed home I would fall behind in my training. Everybody else in my training group was braving the elements, so I did too—with no regrets. I got to run on quiet mornings while snow was softly falling. I signed up for a winter race that herded finishers into a heated barn for hot chocolate and soup. I set a personal record at a spring race, during which I pushed myself hard without breaking a sweat. I now find it sad when somebody tells me they’re afraid…

My concentration is shot. I know this because I've checked my phone four times while writing this opening paragraph. I'm addicted to my phone in a way that feels both embarrassing and completely normal, which is perhaps the most damning part. My phone feels essential for everything: my job requires Slack and email responsiveness, my hobbies live in apps and group chats, and even my downtime involves scrolling through feeds I don't actually enjoy. These days, we tend to think of upgrades (in life, in tech, wherever) as adding features, but sometimes the real upgrade is eliminating. So I did something a little radical this year: I bricked my iPhone. Well, sort of. And it's …

The holidays are for rest, relaxation, and eating your weight in cookies shaped like reindeer. Your fitness goals can absolutely wait until the new year. But if you find yourself trapped in a house where someone just said, "well, actually" for the third time in ten minutes, and you need to escape to your old bedroom before you say something you'll regret—here's a quick (and quiet) bodyweight circuit you can do surrounded by your high school participation trophies. The circuit workoutThese are my favorite beginner-friendly exercises to efficiently blow off some steam. Hopefully you have some floor space next to your twin bed. Tactical door-closed push-ups (10-15 reps)Thes…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. As we head into 2026, many people are setting fitness goals and signing up for gym memberships. But if you have the space at home, it’s a lot more convenient to get your cardio in with an at-home treadmill and skip the crowds. While this is by no means the most advanced model on the market, the NordicTrack T Series 5 treadmill is an entry-level smart treadmill for walkers and runners, offering reliable performance and a smaller-than-average footprint. Right now, it’s 20% off at $479 (originally $599). …