Setting Up Your Home Office

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Pixel Tablet didn't do too well for Google when it came out in 2023, costing more than the entry-level iPad but not offering a better experience. But with its current price of $279 (originally $399) for the 128GB storage and 8GB RAM version, it's matching its lowest Black Friday price, according to price tracking tools. This makes the tablet perhaps what it should've been in the beginning, a very well-priced Android tablet-smart display hybrid. Google Pixel Tablet 128 GB …

If you're out and about with your laptop, or just in a different room than your charging cable, you want to eke out as much time as possible before the next recharge—and an important part of that is knowing which apps are draining the battery the quickest. Once you know who the worst offenders are as far as battery drain is concerned, you can do something about it. Maybe you can use the programs in question less often, enable any battery-saving features (if they're available), or uninstall them altogether and switch to less power-hungry alternatives. Take Google Chrome, for instance—not a program known for its light touch on system resources. If you find it's putting a lo…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’re tired of subscription fees stacking up, this Microsoft Office Home & Business 2021 for Mac deal at StackSocial might be worth a look. It’s a one-time purchase (of $79.95, 63% off its usual $220) that works with macOS Ventura (version 13) or later, and once activated, you’re set for the long haul with access to the full suite—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote (covering all the essentials for work or personal use)—without worrying about monthly or annual renewals. The deal is set for a limited time and ends March 30. You can …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Amazon's Big Spring Sale is back for only the second time, and while it’s not quite Prime Day levels of excitement, it still has a few solid gems tucked in. The event runs from March 25 to March 31, giving you a full week to poke around for deals. You don’t need to be a Prime member to participate, though Amazon claims Prime users will see deeper discounts. If you’re not already subscribed but are eyeing a few things, it might be worth signing up for a free 30-day trial, loading up your cart, and then dipping out before the billing cycle kicks in. O…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I'm Lifehacker's resident marathon runner and senior finance writer. And now, I'm merging my two worlds. Running is often touted as one of the most accessible sports—just lace up and go, right? But as many runners discover, what starts as a "free" activity can quickly transform into a significant investment. Last week I broke down what it looks like to invest in proper running gear. And now, I'm turning my eye to the world of races. You might think you'll never get into races. I was like you, once: a casual runner who scoffed at the idea of paying money to run. Then you get coerced into running a 5k for charity or somethi…

Popular culture for kids has fragmented so much lately that what's familiar to one 14-year-old might be utterly foreign to another. But the progress toward everyone having their own personal culture isn't complete. So I'm taking a look at some of things all (well, most) kids relate to and love, including A Minecraft Movie, Labubus, and the literary techniques developed by Spanish author Jorge Luis Borges in the 1940s (for real). Will A Minecraft Movie become a generational touchstone? I'm writing this on the day A Minecraft Movie comes out, and signs point to the release being one of those vanishingly rare events that capture the collective imaginations (and dispo…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. You know that I love a good running watch, but there’s a soft spot in my heart for the more lifestyle-y Garmin Vivoactive 5. It’s a sleek touchscreen watch with plenty of fitness features, and it’s going for as little as $209 today in Amazon’s Big Spring Sale. The original price of the Vivoactive 5 is $299, and depending on the color you want, you can get it for somewhere between $209 and $219 in today’s sale. It’s available in black, white, navy blue, and orchid purple. Garmin Vivoactive 5 GPS Smartwatch With…

Disney+ has sophomore seasons of two significant series coming in April. The second installment of Lucasfilm's Emmy-nominated thriller Andor—the prequel to Rogue One and set five years prior—tells the origin story of Rebel spy Cassian Andor and the formation of the Rebel Alliance. Diego Luna reprises his role from the film and the first season of the series. A three-episode premiere is set for 6 p.m. PT on April 22, with additional episodes dropping weekly on Tuesdays until mid-May. Also on the April schedule is season two of Doctor Who. Ncuti Gatwa stars as the Doctor, who is on a quest to get Belinda Chandra (played by Varadu Sethu) back to Earth. Millie Gibso…

The Find My Device app for Android is getting an update: The new Find My Device app is now split up into two tabs, one for Devices, and one for People. With it, you can easily coordinate meet-ups with friends or check that your kids have safely arrived home. You'll find the app preinstalled on Pixels, and it's a free download for other Android devices. It's also available on the web, but there's no iPhone app. Despite that, you can still keep tabs on the real time locations of your contacts if they have iPhones—more on that in a moment. The new People tab in Find My Device. …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Mac mini has always been about packing a surprising amount of power into a tiny shell, and the Early 2023 Apple Mac mini M2 sticks to that idea. Right now, you can grab the refurbished 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD model on sale for $459.99 at StackSocial (down from $599), or the 256GB SSD version for $359.99. Both are rated “Grade A,” meaning they show little to no cosmetic wear and ship free across the contiguous U.S. Powered by Apple’s M2 chip, this mini desktop quietly handles everything from daily multitasking to heavy-duty tasks like 8K video editin…

It's been clear for some time that the Gemini AI app would be replacing Google Assistant, once it had learned all the necessary tricks and been granted all the required hooks into other apps. Now, Google is in the process of actively dismantling the features available in Google Assistant ahead of its retirement. As per Google's official support document (as spotted by 9to5Google), seven more Google Assistant features have recently been pulled across Android devices and Nest smart speakers and displays. These deactivated features add to a bunch of other capabilities that were taken away last year. On smart displays, you can no longer use your voice and Google Assistant to …

The Nintendo Switch 2 is quite a bit different than the OG Switch: The Joy-Cons are beefier and connect via magnets; when docked, the console supports 4K 60fps output; and you can finally charge the console when playing in tabletop mode. But at the end of the day, what matters most about a new console like the Switch 2 is the games: If there's nothing new to play, what's the point? Of course, Nintendo shared a number of Switch 2 exclusives during its big Direct on Wednesday. This isn't a repeat of the Nintendo 3DS launch: There are games to play if you buy a Switch 2 on day one. But there are also a number of interesting titles coming soon and later this year. (There's ev…

Reddit is giving users more control to choose which activity other users can see on their public profiles. A new "curate my profile" feature allows users to selectively show or hide posting and commenting activity, as well as follower counts and NSFW content and communities. What's changed with Reddit profile settingsWith new "Content and activity" settings, Reddit users can choose to hide all public posts and comments or selectively display activity from some subreddits on their profiles while keeping others hidden. Users can also hide follower counts as well as NSFW content and communities from their profiles. Previously, all posts and comments were visible on a user's…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Peppers are one of the best vegetables to grow. They are expensive to buy, even when in season; they don’t take up a lot of garden space; and although there are a limited number of peppers available in stores, there are thousands of varieties are out there that you can grow. Plus, you can choose precisely when to harvest them. The pepper most people choose to grow in their garden—full size bell peppers—are a waste, though, in my opinion. Each plant only yields a few peppers, and because of their size, bell peppers take a while to grow and then to ripen. In that time, the pepper is susceptible to pests and disease. Even in…

The speedy progress of AI development continues to dominate headlines, but the latest story to hit the news cycle is more bad press than good press: It turns out that Google's latest Gemini 2.0 Flash image editor is rather adept at automatically removing watermarks from images. Google pushed out the experimental native image generation capabilities a few days ago, promoting its capabilities in terms of combining images and text, editing images through conversational prompts, and improving its "world understanding" to give users AI-generated pictures that are more realistic overall. As TechCrunch reports, the newly upgraded tool was quickly put to one specific and …

Max still goes by Max for now, but the return to the original HBO Max branding is expected sometime this summer. In the meantime, the third season of HBO Original series The Gilded Age is set to drop in weekly installments starting June 22. The period drama, set in 1880s New York, stars Carrie Coon, Christine Baranski, and Cynthia Nixon, among others. On the movie slate, there's A24's Parthenope (June 6), a Paolo Sorrentino coming-of-age film set in Naples and starring Celeste Dalla Porta and Gary Oldman, and Cleaner (June 13), about radical activists in present-day London who take hostages at an energy company's annual gala in an attempt to expose corruption. …

Tax season can reduce even the most organized individuals to stressed-out procrastinators. And if you're anything like me, you're not exactly the most organized individual in the first place. The complexity of gathering documents, understanding deductions, and meeting deadlines creates anxiety that many of us dread each year. But with a well-designed tax preparation checklist, I've been able to turn my taxes into a manageable (maybe even even satisfying?) task well before the April 15 deadline. Here's how you can, too. A tax preparation checklist serves as your personalized roadmap through the filing process. Luckily, I've create this template to get you started. It inclu…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. If you find running intimidating, know that there is another way to get some fresh air while doing a reasonably intense workout. It’s called interval walking training (IWT), or sometimes "Japanese walking" or "3x3 walking." It’s a form of HIIT, but it won’t end in you collapsing on the floor, hating your life. Here’s how to do it. How to do the 3x3 "Japanese walking" workoutThe original protocol for this exercise, as published here in 2007 by Hiroshi Nose’s team at Shinshu University in Japan, used a lab test to help people determine how fast they should walk during the workout. Since that’s not practical for most of us,…

Google's Gemini AI is going beyond Android phones, the company officially announced today, prior to its Google I/O 2025 conference later this month. Specifically, Google says it will bring the AI assistant to smartwatches, cars, TVs, and even mixed reality headsets. This is a significant step forward for its Gemini push, as it'll allow people to use the service on almost all devices in the Google ecosystem. Gemini on Wear OS devices Credit: Google The goal of Gemini on your smartwatch is to ensure you've always got your AI ass…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. While I was a total pizza hater as a child, I've come around as an adult—maybe a little too far around. It's one of my favorite things to make at home. I use pizza as a vehicle for using up leftovers, and as a way to save money on lunch. Through years of pizza trials, I've collected some sure-fire tricks that ensure the best homemade pizza possible. Flavorful crusts, balanced toppings, and even browning—you don’t need to have a home kitchen outfitted with a giant stone kiln to reach pizza perfection. But you do need to know a few things. Ferment the dough …

The following content is brought to you by Lifehacker partners. If you buy a product featured here, we may earn an affiliate commission or other compensation. We're all tired of receiving text messages and calls from random marketers on our personal numbers. Whenever you give out your number to sign up for stuff online, your information is very likely sold to a marketing company, then sold again—until your phone is blowing up in the middle of the night with texts from who knows. Surfshark Starter Package Generate a virtual number, mask your email, and take advantage of other VPN …

When venturing out into the wilds of the modern web, many people now make use of a VPN, or a Virtual Private Network. These software packages have been around for decades as ways of securely connecting to private networks remotely, but the term is now more commonly used to refer to third-party VPN services that act as intermediaries between your devices and the internet at large. The idea behind VPNs is they keep you and your data safer while you're browsing, with a trade-off in terms of speed (though the best VPNs will aim to minimize the hit on download and upload transfer rates). If you're wondering what exactly a VPN is, how these services work, and whether or not you…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Hulu doesn't always get the recognition of competitors like Netflix and Max, but the streamer has an unfailingly reliable and rotating selection of theatrical films, as well as some impressive original releases. These are some of the best, buzziest, and/or most fun movies currently streaming on the service, across a variety of genres. Anora (2024) Writer/director Sean Baker (Tangerine, Red Rocket) has a long run of impressive film credits to his name, but comedy-drama Anora was the film that put his name firmly on the map, winning him a Best Director Oscar and the film a Best Picture prize. Mikey Madison (who also …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Most of us aren’t great at hunting down cheap flights—we just hit refresh until the prices stop hurting our feelings. That’s where Matt's Flights Premium Plan comes in. It’s like outsourcing your flight anxiety to someone who actually enjoys digging for mistake fares and limited-time deals, and from now through April 27, StackSocial is offering a lifetime subscription to this deal-hunting service for $79.99 with the promo code SAVE10—but only for new users. And yes, it's truly lifetime: Pay once, and you get access to every jaw-dropping, typo-priced…

When it comes to chickpeas and aquafaba, the liquid and the legume are two very different residents of the same can. Just because you used garbanzo beans in your salad doesn’t mean that you’re craving these fluffy pancakes on the same day—but you might on Saturday. In the event that you have leftover aquafaba—or really, any time you’re eating chickpeas and find yourself about to drain out the liquid—stop your hand. It freezes incredibly well. How to use aquafaba Aquafaba has gained a lot of traction since it was discovered in 2014 as being a surprisingly effective replacement for making a fluffy and silky meringue (read more about the history here). However, it has more a…