Setting Up Your Home Office

Over the past few months, I felt overwhelmed by all the changes going on in my life—and the things I need to do because of and for them. I've been providing administrative help to my partner as he opens a new business, managing professional expansions of my own, studying for a certification exam, overseeing renovations to my apartment, and restructuring my finances while still keeping up with my regular jobs and responsibilities. For a while, I was waking up tired before the day even started despite the fact that most of these boil down to never-ending, tedious, but little tasks like "send that email," "return that phone call," "confirm that account number," and "pick a p…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. It's impressive when new flagship TVs that came out this year drop in price months after their release, but when they also happen to be the best OLED TV your money can buy, it becomes a bargain (well, if you can afford it). The 65-inch LG G5 OLED TV is $1,996.99 (originally $2,496.99), the lowest price it has been since its recent release, according to price-tracking tools. The bigger 77-inch and 83-inch series are also at their lowest prices right now. …

I run marathons. I post about running marathons. But you won't see my sweaty face mid-stride, my pace per mile, or the unglamorous truth of what 26.2 miles does to a body. No shots of my form breaking down at mile 20, no documentation of the new insecurities that crop up when you realize your running gait is asymmetrical or your breathing sounds like a dying dog. I share the accomplishment—the medal, the bib number, maybe a scenic shot from the course—but I carefully curate out the messy reality. Is this humility? Self-protection? Or am I just bragging with plausible deniability, performing health while refusing to actually perform it? After all, isn't social media fundam…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Everyone's talking about AI, but smart glasses are quietly breaking big in 2025. With Meta, Apple, and Google vying for dominance, and the hardware finally powerful enough to be practical instead of mere gimmicky, smart specs are transitioning from awkward face computers for tech-heads, into something potentially useful for everyone. If you’re thinking of jumping in, the sheer range of styles, features, and price points can be daunting, so I put together this guide to help you find your perfect pair. What smart glasses can do The term “smart glasses” is almost too broad to be useful. It's been applied to everything from A…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Amazon is having a big Google sale right now while retailers are churning out early Black Friday deals. The standout deal is the Google Pixel 10, with the 128GB going for $599 (originally $799) and the 256GB for $699 (originally $899), both at record low prices, according to price-tracking tools. Google Pixel 10 - Unlocked Android Smartphone with Gemini, Your AI Assistant - Advanced Triple Rear Came…

Losing something you spent time working on, or photos that you can't replace, is devastating. You might think this is a problem of the past because of cloud storage services like Apple's own iCloud, but that's not completely true. For one thing, users sometimes get locked out of their cloud accounts, which makes it impossible to retrieve their files. For another, not everything on your Mac is stored in iCloud. Things like settings, applications, and customizations aren't easy to recover should something happen to your Mac. It's also a lot faster to retrieve files from a local backup than a cloud one, which is important if you're backing up things like videos or photo libr…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. If you've ever tried to tackle a DIY project with just the hammer and screwdriver you bought at a convenience store, you’ve already learned the most important lesson: The right tools make all the difference. The difference in effort it takes to complete a job when you have exactly the tool you need for it is startling. There are plenty of fancy power tools that you probably didn't know about, but the humble hand tool can be transformative, too. If you’re planning some work around the homestead, consider picking up some of these simple but powerful specialty tools that will make your project easier. Cabinet jackI’m a solo …

I’ve been enjoying Shuffalo, a quick daily word game from the New Yorker that I can’t help but compare to the New York Times’s Wordle, which is so popular we publish hints for it every day. But it really feels like an improvement on a different New York Times game, Spelling Bee—quicker and with more useful hints. What is Shuffalo? Shuffalo lives on the New Yorker games page, with a different puzzle each day. For each day’s puzzle, you get a collection of letters that you have to form into a word. First you get four letters, and you need to use them all to make a four-letter word. Once you do that, a fifth letter is added, then a sixth, and so on up to eight. Get that fa…

Google's AI Mode has new agentic capabilities for booking event tickets and beauty and wellness appointments, so AI will do most of the work to find and curate the best options based on your inputs. Google first launched agentic capabilities for AI Mode in August: The initial feature could help locate restaurant reservations based on inputs like party size, location, cuisine, and preferred dates and times. For example, you can enter "find me a table for 8 people next Saturday for a birthday dinner ... thinking outdoor rustic garden vibes with live music" and AI Mode will return suggestions with links to book. While they won't actually finalize the reservation for you, Go…

As Lifehacker’s smart glasses and virtual reality expert, I spend a lot of time flooding my eyes with bright light. Last night, I was testing a pair of soon-to-be released display style glasses that blast out 1,200 nits of light. That’s roughly car-headlight-bright, squeezed into a postage-stamp-sized image projected on glass about a half inch from my eyes. I thought to myself, “Wait, am I frying my eyeballs?” So I called up Dr. Sunir Garg, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and professor of ophthalmology at Wills Eye Hospital, and asked him point blank: What am I doing to my eyes with this stuff? “We think not much,” Garg replied. “If the light is …

When you think about the tech companies leading the AI race, Apple is pretty much at the bottom of the list. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned. From where I'm sitting, many of us couldn't care less about the latest AI features companies are shoving into their products—we just want the products we actually use to work, and work well. But strictly focusing on AI progress, Apple is far behind rivals like Google and Microsoft. While Android and Windows are full of AI features, either through Google's Gemini or OpenAI's GPT models, Apple's first-party AI advances are much more limited. Both Google and Microsoft promote their AI assistants as a corner…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Amazon just marked down the Nothing Phone 3 to $678.99, its lowest price yet, according to price trackers. That’s about $120 off the usual $799 tag for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage base model. Nothing Phone 3 Cell Phone $678.99 at Amazon $799.00 Sa…

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 i…

Back in 2021, Apple announced a new feature for the Wallet app, that allowed users to add their driver's licenses or state IDs to their iPhones. To me, it sounded like the beginning of the end for physical wallets. In reality, it was anything but: Not only are the applications limited, but even after all this time, only 12 states and Puerto Rico actually support the feature. While the rest of us wait for our respective states to get on board, many might have another option for these virtual documents. On Wednesday, Apple announced "Digital ID," a new initiative that lets you create an ID in the Wallet app using your passport. This bypasses the waiting period for the 38 s…

Holiday shopping season is ripe for scammers, as consumers rush to find and take advantage of some of the best discounts of the year, and potentially overlook red flags that signal fraud. Security researchers are warning of an uptick in scams capitalizing on the Black Friday and Cyber Monday hype. Fraudsters know that they can prey on shoppers' sense of urgency and excitement for limited-time, exclusive deals—and AI is making these campaigns even more difficult to spot than usual. New data from McAfee suggest that nearly half of Americans have come across an AI-powered scam while shopping, from deepfakes impersonating celebrities pushing promotions to near-flawless spoof…

Google is bringing back its free year of Google AI Pro for U.S. college students, after releasing its new Gemini 3 Pro AI model today. Because so many of the new model's biggest features are hidden behind paywalls, it's not a bad deal, even if it's not the first time Google's done this. The deal follows similar promotions from April and August, although the most recent one ended in October. That this offer is coming so soon after the last one means Google might plan to keep rolling out these trials on a regular basis. How to claim your free year of Google AI Pro as a U.S. college studentTo get your free year of Google AI Pro, first head over to gemini.google/students and …

If you and your friends have iPhones, you might use AirDrop to send pictures and files. If you all have Androids, you might use Quick Share. But if you have a mix of both platforms, suddenly file sharing isn't so easy. You could email the pictures, but, shoot, there's a data limit. You could text them, but if your friend isn't on RCS, videos are going to look horrible. You could use a cross-platform chat app, but good luck agreeing on which one to use. If only AirDrop was available on Android, and Quick Share on iOS. In a Thursday announcement on The Keyword, Google made history: Quick Share now works with AirDrop—starting with the Pixel 10, anyway. If you or a friend has…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. It turns out the “lifestyle logging” feature introduced with Garmin’s Venu 4 watch announcement isn’t limited to that watch—it seems to be available to all Garmin users, which means the app has made a huge stride in catching up with competitors like Whoop. What is lifestyle logging? This feature lets you track different habits, behaviors, or factors that might impact your health metrics. For example, you can log when you have caffeine or alcohol at night, and see how this affects your sleep. (Garmin tends to refer to these as “behaviors,” even though some of them are more like environmental factors or states of being—ill…

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. The right headphones or earbuds can make or break a run. Whether you're grinding through mile 20 of a marathon or just trying to make it through a Tuesday morning one-miler, your earbuds need to be up to the task. My all-time favorite running earbuds were the Plantronics BackBeat Fit 2100. Comfortable, secure, sweat-resistant, and with just the right amount of ambient sound awareness. Tragically, they've been discontinued, leaving runners like me searching fo…

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. It's been a tumultuous year and a half for TikTok in the U.S. In April of 2024, President Biden signed a law forcing the app's parent company, ByteDance, to sell its majority stake to an American company, or face a ban in the U.S. ByteDance never did, and so, in January, the app went dark. It was mostly performative, however. Then President-elect The President had already assured TikTok that his incoming administration would not enforce the ban, as did the outgoing President Biden. As such, once The Presiden…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. As far as tablets go, the Amazon Fire Max 11 is a well-designed crowd-pleaser with a large, vibrant display. Right now, you can get it for 38% off as part of the Amazon Fire Max 11 Productivity Bundle, which includes a keyboard case and stylus pen that transforms it into a fully functional laptop complete with essential accessories for design, studying, and everyday use. Amazon Fire Max 11 Productivity Bundle …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. 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 been top dog in the premium tablet space for years, and the iPad Pro with an M4 chip released last year solidified their dominance. If you've been waiting for a discount on the best-performing tablet you can get, the iPad Pro 11-Inch M4 is down to $1,499.97 (originally $1,999) after a 25% discount for Prime Members during October Prime Day. This deal brings the iPad down to a…

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. October Prime Day is nearly here, and with it comes a surge of discounts and savings. While Amazon wants you to think each and every deal you come across is worth your time and attention, the truth is that few of these deals are actually that great. All the chaos overwhelms even the most seasoned online shopper, making it hard to know if you’re really saving money at all. But there’s one category that will undoubtedly stand out on Prime Days by design: tech m…

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. To make the most out of next week's Prime Big Deal Days, you need to be an Amazon Prime member, which costs for $139 per year or $14.99 per month. Being a Prime member comes with a lot of perks, like faster shipping on many items and access to Prime Video streaming, but a lesser-known feature is that you can share all those membership benefits with your family and only pay one membership fee. You can add one other adult and up to four kids to your Amazon …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. 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 we get closer to the big sales from Walmart, Target, and Best Buy that October Prime Day brings, early deals start popping up. Right now, you can find many early deals on Amazon and Amazon-owned brands, many of which are matching Prime Day prices (and you don't need to be a Prime Member to take advantage of them). The Active Noise Canceling (ANC) Amazon Echo Buds are one of the best…