Setting Up Your Home Office

You can customize more on your Mac than you might have realized, and that extends to the file management software you use to browse around your system. Take, for example, Finder: There are a good number of alternatives around that bring with them extra features and different layouts. I've been testing out three of the most well-known and highly rated alternatives to Finder to see what I might be missing. Each one has its own appeal, but the third in the list here is so good that I might switch to it permanently for all my file and folder needs on macOS. Commander One …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. For many of us, New Year's Eve represents not just the climax of a long holiday season, but also a time to simultaneously reflect, and to look forward to what's ahead—sometimes with optimism, sometimes with sheer dread. (Lately, mostly dread.) Movies have frequently recognized the simultaneously hopeful and perilous nature of the time. It can be a period of reassessment, or renewal, or massive change. This selection of choice New Year's Eve movies reflects that range of possibilities, including everything from romance and murder, to comedy and tragedy, to wild sex and heartbreaking loneliness. When Harry Met Sally (1989) …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. To be alive in 2025 is to assume you are being recorded at all times. There are cameras just about everywhere we go these days: Security cameras, video doorbells, and smartphones are frequently recording, and so ubiquitous that I tend to figure that if I go out in public, I'm being watched. But when you're driving, it can be a different story. Sure, there are cameras on the road—either street cameras or cameras built directly into modern cars—but there are plenty of moments behind the wheel where nothing you do is recorded. You could view this as a nice reprieve from the surveillance of modern life, but it also means that …

Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. New Year’s resolutions are all about improving ourselves, right? The same goes for your best buddy—your dog. While your dog can’t physically tell you what they need to feel their best, there are simple things you can do to help set them up for success. Right now, you can save 50% off your first box of human-grade The Farmer’s Dog pet food, so that’s a great start. Check out these pup-centric resolutions and help keep their tail wagging into 2026—and for years to come. The Farmer's Dog Save…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There are two universal truths about tools: They’re expensive, and they take up a lot of space. If you’re trying to maintain a home or perform some DIY work in a small space or on a small budget, stacking up all the tools you might need to get the job done can strain your wallet and simultaneously pose a storage challenge. The solution is actually pretty easy: Buy tools that combine more than one function into a single item. While having the specific tool you need for every job will always be your best choice, if you lack space and/or cash, combination tools like these give you all the capability you need without eating up…

Inbox management, like so much else, is a necessary evil in our day-to-day lives. As such, it’s best handled with the use of a strict system, but those can be tricky to implement and stick to. Also like so much else, finding the right system is time-intensive and adds a new layer of stress onto an already annoying task. Here’s a system that’s simple, doesn’t take a lot of time to start using, and can actually help you get through your unreads without overwhelming you. It’s called “yesterbox.” What is the yesterbox inbox management system?This technique—and its funny name—both come from late Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, who described yesterbox as a way of “relieving email guilt.…

The idea of declaring “email bankruptcy”—just deleting all the emails in your inbox past a certain date—is so popular, it has its own Wikipedia entry. I can see why it's tempting to just blow everything up and start over, and the temptation goes far beyond emails: Declaring a personal bankruptcy and mass-deleting games, movies, and e-books you fear you’ll never play, watch, or read is a practice with proponents far and wide (including some of us here at Lifehacker). But declaring bankruptcy is such a drastic step. What if you tried inbox amnesty instead? What is inbox amnesty?The idea for inbox amnesty comes from Lifehacker’s health editor, Beth Skwarecki, who advocates …

When you're wading through all the emails, Slack messages, and other notifications you get on an average day, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. When that happens, you can might yourself getting distracted and missing important messages—at least, that's what happens to me, unless I have some kind of plan in place. There are a few different approaches you can consider to prevent this, but the "OHIO" technique is the one to try if you need extra help being decisive—though it's important to note that while it can ease your decision paralysis, it does have a few limitations worth considering. What is the OHIO method of time management?OHIO is an acronym for “Only Handle It Once” …

If you are still using the same email address for everything, it’s time to diversify. Don’t make the mistake I made for too long, clogging up one inbox with absolute nonsense unrelated to the things you actually want to receive and read. You likely already have separate emails for your job, school, and personal life, and many of us also have a designated “spam” email to enter into pop-up boxes in a hurry—but you might even benefit from a couple more. Here are the email addresses I advise setting up. You need an email for logging into appsI have a special email address just for my streaming services and random apps, so when Peacock or Hulu mysteriously log out on my TV, I …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Nintendo Switch 2 with Mario Kart World bundle is in stock at Best Buy after running out of stock very quickly on Amazon. The deal includes the new console with the new Mario Kart for the same price as the standalone console. You can get this one for $449 (down from $499)—the lowest price it has reached yet, according to price-tracking tools. (Note that you can only see the price once you've signed in and it's in your cart, as Nintendo restricts retailers from promoting anything below the "minimum advertised price" of $499.) To top it off, Best …

Spotify playlists are a surprisingly big part of my life. I make a handful of new, curated, choreographed ones for the spin classes I teach every week and otherwise meticulously maintain quarterly playlists designed to represent the overall vibe of specific, three-month periods in my life. I only edit those during the 12 weeks of the quarter, then leave them alone so I can revisit them and relive the era. This means I am constantly fiddling with the present playlist to make it just right, searching for songs that feel precisely aligned with however I'm feeling. It's actually a time-consuming hobby—but I stumbled across a feature the other day that has made creating spin p…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Pixel 10 came out in August this year, and at a $799 starting price, it was worth considering. Fast forward a couple of months, and now you can get one for almost half off, at $449. Amazon is discounting the flagship Pixel 10 (128GB) to $549, and there’s a promo code (PIXEL10) that drops it down a further $100. At under $500, this might be the best Android smartphone deal of the year. Google Pixel 10 …

For many students and workers, Windows is just the default way to use a computer. It's where all your apps work as intended, where all your Microsoft Office documents sync easily, and where you play all your games. But if you peel back its layers, Windows can be a lot more than that. Power users can take advantage of hidden features, and utilities from Microsoft and third-parties to not only speed up their workflow, but to improve productivity and fix some of the most annoying quality-of-life issues that plague Windows PCs. Control everything using the Command Palette …

Because it’s Christmas time, I’ve been digging into myths and misconceptions we have about the holiday: Yuletide misinformation is rampant, and I’m setting the record straight. Last week I dug into who Santa Claus really is, with side quests about St. Nicholas bringing children back from the dead and the religious war between Santa and Kris Kringle. One thing I didn't talk about? His elves. Christmas elves feel like they’ve been around forever, and people have strangely consistent ideas of what they’re all about—they’re small, they wear green, they make toys out of some innate magical compulsion, they love shelves— but that variety of elf is a recent invention; “real” el…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. At $749, the unlocked 128GB Google Pixel 10 Pro has slipped into its most affordable price yet on Amazon, down from its original $999 launch price, according to online price trackers. Stack the promo code PIXEL10, and you shave off another $100, which reframes the phone entirely. At full price, it felt like a confident but pricey Android flagship. At this discount, it becomes a far easier recommendation for people who value polish over raw benchmark wins. Google Pixel 10 Pro …

To manage your inbox, you need dedication. You need a plan. You need acronyms. One such acronym is RAFT, which will literally keep you afloat in the sea of emails you receive every day. You can combine it with others, like LIFO and 4D to maximize its benefits, but first you need to know what to do with it on its own. What is RAFT email management?RAFT stands for the following: Read Act File Trash. Easy! With this management system, you take the time to read an email first, then act on it however you need to—if you need to, that is—before either filing it away somewhere or deleting it. That’s basically all there is to it, but it works because it requires you to focus on e…

No matter how dedicated you are to responding to and archiving all your emails, there will always be one thing preventing you from hitting true inbox zero: all of those mailing lists you're subscribed to. These horrors will visit you at all hours of the day, making it harder to spot the truly important messages in your inbox—and it gets worse once you've gotten fed up enough to disable push notifications and they start to really pile up. It’s time to banish these buggers. And, if you're using Gmail, there’s an easy way to do it. Use filters to manage mailing list emails in GmailYou can use a third-party add-on to go through your mailing lists and unsubscribe, saying good…

The more you work out, the fitter you'll get. Your VO2max, sometimes described on wearables as a "cardio fitness" score, is a number that tends to be higher among people who are more cardiovascularly fit. But it's not the only measure of fitness, and you should know what it really means. What VO2max really is (as measured in a lab)Smartwatches and fitness trackers don't actually measure VO2max; they just estimate it. To actually find your VO2max, you'd need to go to an exercise lab and do a test on a treadmill or cycle while hooked up to equipment that measures your heart rate and the air you're exhaling. I did exactly this kind of test to compare my real VO2max to the n…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Once you start down the path of DIY, you'll soon realize that any time you find yourself wishing someone had created a tool to serve a specific purpose, someone probably has—no matter how narrow the use case. Case in point: The cordless blower/inflator. This tool is exactly what it sounds like. Shaped like a power drill, it simply...blows air (though sort of like a handheld leaf blower, these tools typically come with an array of nozzles to give you a bit of precision with the flow of your forced air). You might think this sounds like a tool you’ll never actually need, because you have lungs. But I'm here to convince you t…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Though the Kindle Scribe is already on its third generation, the first-generation model still has a place for anyone looking to nab one of these note-taking e-readers for less. Released in 2022, the original Kindle Scribe is still relevant in 2025 simply for its price. Right now, the 16GB version of the 2022 Scribe with the Premium Pen is discounted to $221.99 (originally $369.99), the lowest price this reader has seen since its release, according to price-tracking tools, and a great opportunity to snatch one for a bargain. The newer 2024 version i…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. One of the often unspoken truths of being a tech reviewer is you get to test out, recommend—and sometimes even keep!—gadgets that you would never buy for yourself, because you can't justify what they cost. This is why I tend to spend large portions of my reviews talking about price: I love a cutting edge gadget as much as the next nerd, but I have two kids and I live in the most expensive city in America. As much as I admire the Boox Palma 2 Pro, my budget doesn't really have room for a niche $400 e-reader. That's why the Xteink X4 e-reader, a minimalist 4.3-inch e-reader, is my tech upgrade of 2025: Here's a device that h…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Who knew that, here in the mid 2020s, a show involving gays in the military (even a relatively pro-army one) would prove its own relevance by drawing a fierce, angry denunciation from the current administration—a response strong enough that it maybe, just maybe, got the show cancelled in spite of high viewership and buzz. But then again, given the precariousness of the streaming landscape, it's best to treat everything like a miniseries these days. Based on a memoir from Greg Cope White, the Netflix series stars Miles Heizer as Cameron Cope, a closeted gay teen who follows his bestie into the Army in the era before "Don't…

When Spike Jonze's movie Her dropped back in 2013, I thought it was a great work of total fiction. Who would actually befriend an AI bot, let alone fall in love with them? Fast forward 12 years, and I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only do people love chatting with AI bots, they are actually developing deep connections with them. I still don't get it, but I can't deny it: People like these chatbots a lot. Part of what people like about conversations with generative AI is the "personality" of each bot—or, at least, its perceived personality. After all, ChatGPT isn't a monolith: You can adjust the bot to sound wildly different than it does on someone else's app, which r…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Roku Sticks have useful features that can make your dumb TV smarter (or replace the interface on your smart TV), and they are seeing great discounts right now. In particular, the Roku Streaming Stick 4K with HDR and Dolby Vision is $24.99, the lowest price it has ever been after a 50% discount, according to price tracking tools. It's also my personal favorite option, and the one I would recommend to most people. …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. 2025 was a fun year to review fitness devices. We saw three companies introduce devices that could have been Whoop killers, and one definitely came closer to the mark than others. One running watch gobsmacked me with its accuracy, one device was so inaccurate it sent me down an investigative rabbit hole to figure out why, and two devices delighted me with how well they solved a real problem no other device even tried to tackle. Read on for the winners of my very subjective award categories. Most accurate: Garmin Forerunner 570 …