Setting Up Your Home Office

If you want your iCloud data to be as well-protected as possible, you need to turn on Advanced Data Protection (ADP)— but that's no longer going to be an option in the UK. Apple is pulling ADP from the country, reportedly following a request from the UK government for a backdoor into encrypted iCloud files, and the fallout is likely to have global consequences. What is ADP? ADP applies end-to-end encryption (the gold standard for data security) to just about everything you've got backed up in iCloud, making it virtually impossible for anyone else to access it. If ADP isn't enabled, only certain types of data get this protection, such as passwords and payment info, Message…

Not every Black Friday deal is as sweet as it seems. With electronics in particular, that fresh price tag might mean getting tricked into buying a cheaper model of the thing you actually want. Or, you could be buying last year's model that has actually been on sale since the summer—maybe even at a better price a few months ago. Here’s how to avoid impulse buying a misleading Black Friday “deal” and make sure you’re getting the best bang for your buck. Why you shouldn't impulse buy electronics on Black Friday When you see products like food, clothes, or home goods with a big ol’ Black Friday tag slapped on them, it's probable safe to take advantage of that deal. Chances …

Cardio and strength training are both important, but it's easy to end up only doing one of those and conveniently forgetting to get around to the other. I’ve been on both sides of the fence. As a runner, I would go months without lifting a weight or doing any purposeful strength training, because who has the time? And in my more recent life as a lifter, I’d join in the joking about how more than 10 reps is cardio, har har. But here’s the truth: we all need strength training and real cardio. I think it’s easy to gravitate to one type of exercise because we find it fun or convenient. Then, when we feel like we’re sufficiently challenged, there’s no need to look further, ri…

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. Memory is a tricky thing. Scientists have figured out how many units of information you can store in your short-term memory (around seven, though there are great workarounds for remembering more than that), but if you really want to remember something, you have to go over it a bunch of times until it lodges deeper in your brain. There are quite a few ways to do that if you have some time to devote to the practice of repetition, but if you’re getting ready for a test at school or a presentation at work, …

Manually or automatically wiping your browsing history is a well-established way of protecting your privacy and making sure the digital trail you leave behind you is as short as possible—but it's important to be aware of the limitations of the process, and to understand why deleting your browsing history isn't always as comprehensive an act as you might think. In short, the records of where you've been aren't only kept on your local computer or on your phone, they're found in various other places too. This is why fully wiping away your browsing history is more difficult than it initially appears. Modern browsers typically sync your browsing historyJust about every modern…

If you missed out on a better era of consuming news and other online content, RSS either stands for RDF (Resource Description Framework) Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, depending on who you ask—even Wikipedia includes both expansions of the initialism. Whatever the linguistic details, one of the main roles of RSS is to supply directly to you a steady stream of updates from a website. Every new article published on that site is served up in a list that can be interpreted by an RSS reader. In earlier, simpler internet times, RSS was the way to keep up to date with what was happening on all of your favorite sites. You would open your RSS reader and tap through new…

Remember when hands-free shopping was going to be the next big thing? In 2017, the Echo Dot was the single best-selling item on Amazon during its Prime Day sale, outselling both the Nintendo Switch and Instant Pot. Amazon's goal was partly to heavily discount the device in order to install its voice assistant, Alexa, in as many homes as possible—likely in hopes to capitalize on the voice commerce revolution that industry analysts predicted would be worth over $40 billion by 2022. But something went awry. Despite Amazon's complete domination of the home-voice-thing market, by 2022, Alexa was being called a "colossal failure," 10,000 people were laid off from Amazon, and t…

This week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that Fitbit has agreed to pay a $12.25 million settlement over one of their older smartwatches, which had a battery defect that left some users with serious burns. Meanwhile, Fitbit itself announced that some of its more recent smartwatches—the Sense and the Versa 3—may also have an issue with overheating batteries that could pose a hazard to wearers, and is updating their software to fix the issue. What is the problem with Sense and Versa 3?According to a notice posted on the Fitbit Help Center, some (not all) Sense and Versa 3 devices have a defective battery that could overheat and possibly cause burns. Both o…

It's been a little over a week since Discord said it will take its age verification mandate global, and despite promises that most users wouldn't need to verify, the company is still in hot water with gamers. Most recently, Discord's been discovered to have worked with Peter Thiel-backed company Persona, which itself is embroiled in multiple scandals. These include allegations that it was keeping personal identifying data from Discord users longer than was initially stated, and a reveal that the company accidentally left some of its data available to view on the open internet. Discord now says it's backing away from its partnership with Persona, but is it worth sticking …

On Thursday, Google rolled out a number of previously-paywalled Gemini features to free users. You can now use Gemini custom chatbots, which the company calls "Gems"; Deep Research, which runs AI models that "think" through each step of a problem; and upload files to Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, whether you pay for Google's AI services or not. But that's not all: The company also introduced new experimental feature for Gemini—Gemini with personalization. This feature, which runs on Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking model, connects Gemini to your Google apps and services, with the goal of offering you a more personal AI assistant. The idea is, by connecting your Google Acc…

When you're planning a trip with friends, there's a good chance your group chat will be full of links to and screenshots of places you want to visit or cafés you want to hit. To help you keep track of all that, Google is now rolling out a new feature to add multiple locations to a Google Maps list for you using screenshots. This feature scans your phone and uses Gemini AI to work out the places mentioned in your screenshots. It's starting out first first on iPhones (which is odd for Google), and it's limited to the US for now. However, Android and global releases are planned for the future. How to automatically add places to Google Maps using screenshots …

Making a pizzeria-quality pizza at home is completely achievable, but it does take a little bit of know-how to make this happen. You can read my nine tips to get started, but you should know that there’s one very special tip on that list. Doing this one thing makes a huge impact on your pizza, requires literally no work on your end, and costs no money. In short: You should be aging your pizza dough. I do it every time I make pizza now and I haven’t looked back. Homemade pizza makes for a fun, shareable family dinner, but I actually love making personal pizzas for lunch. I’ll buy a pound of pizza dough from Trader Joe’s or Shoprite and cut it into four equal parts. I wra…

While apples and broccoli have become basic—constantly on the grocery store shelves year-round—rhubarb is a vegetable unicorn. It only appears for a very short and magical window. I'll spot it in the market for maybe a month and before I know it, I’ve missed it. That’s why I buy bundles of it when I do happen to catch it, and I get right to work. Not cooking it down in a pot with a cup of sugar, no: My favorite way to prepare rhubarb for pies and cakes is roasting. Roasting keeps things from getting soggyMy first time working with rhubarb was right out of culinary school, making dozens of miniature strawberry and rhubarb tarts. It was actually my first time eating it to…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. No sooner do you dive into the DIY home repair and maintenance rabbit hole (a hole lined with all the money you'll save!) than you start to collect tools. Some of them will be single-use items that you'll store in your garage or toolshed for decades like a museum exhibit. But sometimes even these tools can surprise you by being way more useful than you might initially imagine. For me, the mini chainsaw was one of those tools. This one, specifically (I considered others, but I really wanted a one-handed, cordless option because I live in a small, urban house, not a sprawling farm that runs on firewood and steam). I bought i…

Google search has steadily been getting worse, but most of its free alternatives just aren't as good at surfacing the things I'm looking for. Since Google makes money through advertising, its primary incentive is to boost revenue by showing you better ads. Of late, this has resulted in a noticeable decline in the quality of my search results. That brought me to the idea of using a paid search engine instead of Google. Enter Kagi. What is Kagi?Kagi is a paid search engine developed by the people behind the Orion browser. It lets you make 100 searches for free, but after that, you can pay between $5/month and $25/month for different tiers of its service. Thanks to search gi…

At this late stage in the streaming era, we're all overwhelmed by more digital subscriptions than we can keep track of, from fitness apps to cloud storage. Still, it certainly feels as though Netflix is one of the subscriptions that people are least likely to ditch—and that's backed up by the numbers. Perhaps it's because Netflix was the first company to really make streaming work, or perhaps it's the vast catalog of content it's amassed, or perhaps it's just because of Stranger Things and Squid Game. Whatever the reason, Netflix's churn rate is impressively low. Subscribers stick with it. Certainly it's always something I've long considered a mainstay on my streaming dev…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Garmin Forerunner 255 is on sale right now for $229.99, its lowest price ever. That’s about half the price of the Forerunner 265 ($449.99), which is the current generation (and my personal favorite running watch). The two watches have nearly identical features—I’ll explain the differences below—making the 255 an incredible bargain. Garmin Forerunner 255 GPS Running Smartwatch (Gray) …

Apple Music's selection is exceptional, but I've never enjoyed using its Mac app much. It's slow, buggy, and lacks the razor sharp focus on albums that I sometimes desire. On my iPhone, I often turn to the excellent Albums app to scratch that itch, which is why I'm excited to say that the same app has recently arrived on the Mac as well. I'm always looking for excuses to avoid opening the Music app on the Mac, and Albums has arrived at exactly the right time for me to make the switch. While I do enjoy listening to individual songs or playlists, I am going through an albums phase right now. For this, the Albums app is perfect. Its sole focus is on playing whole albums from…

I love finding new ways to use apps to make my life easier, but sometimes, I find that I'm using so much tech in my real life that I get a little bogged down. That's been true with my workouts and health for a while: I weigh myself in the morning on a smart scale, which distributes the data to a nutrition app, Apple Health, and Peloton. I go to the gym and use my Apple Watch's Workouts feature to track my cardio, then open up Strong to track my lifting. At home, I use Peloton to track my cycling workouts, stretching, yoga, and much more. It all gets to be a little much! That's why I was pumped when I found an overlooked feature on my Peloton app recently: I can track my n…

I've been getting relentless Instagram ads for AI-powered home gyms lately. You've probably seen them, too—sleek wall-mounted screens with impossibly toned instructors, testimonials promising "the future of fitness," and before-and-after transformations that make it all look effortless. The smart home gym equipment market is booming. According to Business Wire, the industry was valued at $3.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $4 billion by 2030. The numbers show plenty of people are investing in fitness technology that offers personalized, convenient, and effective home workouts. Fitness is yet another way to feed the AI beast, transforming boring old equipment in…

This week, OpenAI announced its new ChatGPT Health feature, which will let users upload their medical records and ask health related questions. However, I certainly won't be making use of it, it might not be the best idea for you to do it either, for both reliability and privacy reasons. The new ChatGPT Health feature will be a sandboxed tab inside the app that is isolated from your conversation history in other conversations with the chatbot. This tab also allows users to connect a variety of health-tracking apps like Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, and Peloton, as well as uploading medical records directly. …

Need some help writing your emails? Through the wonders of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), you can now get messages composed on your behalf in Gmail, in Apple Mail, in Outlook, and in many other email clients. Most of the time, the AI option pops up straight away, ready to give you however much assistance you need. The pitch is that you can offload the drudgery of dealing with email to AI, and move on to other tasks that may be more interesting and important. Anecdotally, I've spoken to quite a few people who now use AI chatbots in this way. But it's not something I'm ready to embrace, and I don't think I ever will. These are my reasons, which may or may not resonate…

I am a frequent user of Google's NotebookLM, an AI tool that functions similarly to ChatGPT and other LLMs, but only pulls from sources and materials the user inputs. I noticed a few days ago that it has a new feature: A research function divided into "fast research" and "deep research." After playing around with it a little, these new features seem to completely defeat the purpose of why I started using NotebookLM in the first place—with one big exception. What the new "fast research" and "deep research" options in NotebookLM doIn short, "fast research" and "deep research" make NotebookLM work a lot like other AI tools—they pull information in from the web on your beha…

Microsoft has announced that it's pulling the old Microsoft Remote Desktop tool that you could get in the Microsoft Store. The company is advising users to move over to the shiny new Windows App instead, which takes care of a lot of the same functions—including connecting to PCs remotely, and accessing Windows 365 computers in the cloud. The Windows App provides several improvements over Microsoft Remote Desktop, Microsoft says, such as multi-monitor support, dynamic display resolutions, customizable home screens, and a more unified interface. It's designed so you can access the same Windows machines remotely across multiple devices. If you're a user of Microsoft Remote D…