Setting Up Your Home Office

The YouTube TV app has been disappearing for some Roku users. Luckily, if you are among those affected, there are a few fixes you can try for this issue. Starting this week, several users on both Reddit and Roku's forums have separately reported issues opening the YouTube TV app or even locating it on their Roku devices. Those who tried reinstalling the YouTube TV app were able to see an Open App button, but pressing it simply resulted in an error. What's worse is that the issues seem isolated to Roku, with users of devices like the Google TV Streamer 4K not issuing the same complaints. Luckily, this issue only seems to be impacting people with dedicated Roku devices and…

Plex has been rolling out a new user interface for a while now, and to say it's been divisive among users would be an understatement. Users on Reddit regularly complain about the interface being confusing and slow; others wish the application would focus on personal media servers instead of things like movie rentals. Plezy is an alternative Plex client that solves these issues. The application, which is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, focuses entirely on personal media servers. Plez has a simple user interface, but the real advantage over the official Plex app is its speed. Everything about Plezy is faster than the official Plex app—it launches fast…

When it comes to note-taking apps on the Mac, it's hard to look past Apple Notes, as it has a lot of features and has proven itself to be quite reliable. But in my workflow, I sometimes miss having a scratchpad on my Mac, something akin to Notepad on Windows. I like using tools like this for outlining my articles, jotting down notes that can turn into story ideas, or simply creating quick to-do lists for routine tasks. macOS has a built-in app called Stickies that does some of these things, but it's desperately in need of an update, as the design looks outdated and it's not ideal for handling multiple notes. I recently discovered Antinote, a beautifully designed app that…

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. I'd be willing to bet the one thing most of us want from our iPhones is quite simple: more battery life. Apple can keep adding new features and designs with each new smartphone iteration, but if the company just announced a new iPhone with record-breaking battery life, customers would be thrilled. While we may have to wait for a time when the iPhone can go a couple days in between charges, Apple has added a new option to iOS 26 in an effort to help extend your iPhone's battery life. The feature, Adaptive Po…

There's chatter on TikTok right now about going "monk mode," but if you watch enough videos on the subject, you'll realize this means different things to different people. At its core, though, the idea of engaging with your work in a distraction-free environment is timeless. In fact, even "monk mode" has been around as a specific concept since the early 2000s and has experienced periodic surges of popularity on Google over the years. Here's how to make it work for you. Define what your "monk mode" isWhen you're in monk mode, you're approximating what monks do, or at least part of it. Imagine a monk in your mind. What is he doing? Whatever it is, it's probably calm and fo…

Max may be adding the "HBO" back into its name, but don't let that fool you into thinking that streaming is getting any better for classic film fans in 2025—great movies older than a few decades are still hard to come by on popular subscription services like Hulu and Netflix. Sure, you could sign up for The Criterion Channel, the streaming service from the boutique media label dedicated to highlighting the best in classic and contemporary films (if you are any kind of film history geek, it's practically a moral imperative). But you actually don't need to pay anything at all to enjoy a substantial library of Criterion-approved gems: As spotted on Reddit (and possibly insp…

Converting between currencies when you're traveling can make it difficult to know exactly how much you're spending when you're making a purchase—which, along with conversion fees, can lead to surprises when you see your card or bank statement. Uber now has a feature that'll show you the cost of your ride in your preferred or home currency—but you'll pay a conversion fee for the convenience, so you may not want to have this enabled. Regardless of which currency your Uber account is set to, the actual fare for your trip is the same. But if the price of your ride is shown and charged in your home currency rather than the local currency, Uber tacks on a 1.5% conversion fee. …

There are likely occasions in your day-to-day life in which you allow someone else to use your phone, whether it's letting your kid play a game or sharing content with a friend. You may do this without thinking about the privacy implications and what might happen if another person has access to everything on your device and—accidentally or on purpose—uses it to view your search history, scroll through your photos, or send messages to your contacts. If you're an Android user, you should enable app pinning to keep others from snooping around your device. This feature keeps the user in the pinned app until you enter your PIN, pattern, or password. (On iOS, you can achieve a…

Your phone is a one-stop shop for a lot of your personal information, from day-to-day activities logged in your calendar and email to financial data accessed via banking apps. If you let someone else use your device—whether you're showing a friend a collection of photos or allowing a stranger to make an emergency call—there's a lot you don't want them to be able to see. If you're an iPhone user, there are several features you can enable to prevent others from snooping around your device. Use Guided AccessIf you don't want someone using your device to see anything else on it, you can turn on Guided Access, which limits them to a single app (such as Phone or Photos). This…

With all this talk about spring cleaning, you could be forgiven if you focused on, well, just cleaning in the spring. But the real beauty of spring cleaning is that it can be a jumping-off point for a clean year. Yes, you can put in extra effort right now, restocking and upgrading your cleaning supplies and doing all those intense annual tasks, but if you don't keep up with your tidying all year round, you'll be stuck doing another exhausting round next spring. Use this as a starting point for a big year of your cleanest home ever. First, commit to a cleaning scheduleWhile you're undertaking spring cleaning this year, keep track of what tasks you enjoy (or just hate less…

You know it's important to prioritize your to-do list, and may have tried various methods to do so, from the Eisenhower Matrix (to determine how timely and urgent each task is), to the Pareto principle (to decide how to allocate your time to maximize your results). The problem is that determining what's actually a priority can be an abstract problem. Some people work best when dealing with cold, hard numbers—and there's a way to take a more quantitative approach to prioritizing your to-dos. Why prioritize your to-do list?The Pareto principle, mentioned above, suggests that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your work, so you have to be picky about what you focus o…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Elgato Stream Deck sits on the desk of your favorite Twitch and YouTube streamers, just off camera. It's there, trust me. I know, because using its customizable LCD buttons is one of the easiest ways to launch and manage apps without disrupting what you're doing. In other words, what makes the Stream Deck useful for streamers also makes it a powerful productivity tool. I've been advocating using gaming peripherals for productivity for—is it already almost a decade?—and the Stream Deck takes that advice to the next level. It's is much more customizable than your typical gaming keyboard, allowing you to assign common tas…

I have a lot of apps on my phone. Many of these are there because I want them to be; some are there because I test them out for work; and others are a total mystery. What's worse, some of those—and even some of the ones I enjoy, but don't need—pull money out of my bank account monthly, quarterly, or annually ... and I have no idea. For me, agreeing to a "free trial" is ultimately just a guarantee that I'll lose money because I'm never going to actually check on that app's subscription status again. Or, at least, I didn't used to. I thought it was too hard to scrape through my bank statement, identify recurring charges that only show up as "Apple.com," figure out what app…

Not every productivity method works for every person. That's why there are so many out there, and it's also why you need to spend time figuring out which ones might work for you, even if you have to alter or adapt them a little bit. When you're facing down an unusually big or overwhelming task, the traditional methods that you usually rely on may not be helpful. Why not try a one-two punch, combining two I like a lot to make it easier? The "one bite" techniqueFirst, let's try the one-bite technique. This takes a little pre-planning, but can help you out when a task feels daunting. Grab a piece of paper (or use a digital document) and write down your task. Let's say it's l…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Like any surface, a wood floor can get stained and dirty, but you have to be really careful with how you clean it. You shouldn't use harsh chemicals, whether your floor is sealed or unsealed, because you don't want to damage the wood itself, but that leaves you with fewer options. I tried two—well, three, but we'll get to that—simple techniques that didn't require any intense chemicals today and they both worked well. Remove stains from wood floors with vinegarFirst, I assessed the stains I was dealing with, which I noticed while cleaning under my couch earlier in the week. They appeared to be leftover from a project I di…

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 …

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a great way to boost the security of your accounts. But even with that added layer of security, malicious actors are finding ways to break in. So-called adversary-in-the-middle attacks take advantage of weaker authentication methods to access accounts. Your two-factor and multi-factor authentication (MFA) may be weak, but, luckily, there's something you can do about it. How multi-factor authentication worksMFA uses two or more checkpoints to confirm a user's identity for accessing an account or system. This is more secure than relying on just a username and password combination, especially given how easy many passwords are to crack, and…

If you're a Windows user, this is your monthly reminder to ensure you install all available security updates. Microsoft's November Patch Tuesday release fixes one zero-day vulnerability that has been actively exploited in the wild, with 63 flaws patched in total. As reported by Bleeping Computer, the November Patch Tuesday update addresses 29 elevation of privilege vulnerabilities, 2 security feature bypass vulnerabilities, 16 remote code execution vulnerabilities, 11 information disclosure vulnerabilities, 2 denial of service vulnerabilities, and 3 spoofing vulnerabilities. (Note that these figures do not include patches for Microsoft Edge and Mariner.) In addition to t…

There's a new Apple security issue in town, and this time it's Airborne. Or, well, that's what the security researchers are calling it. As cybersecurity firm Oligo revealed on Tuesday, a collection of security vulnerabilities are now affecting the AirPlay feature in Apple products, and the AirPlay SDK used in third-party gadgets like TVs, speakers, receivers, and more. As reported by Wired, the vulnerability lets hackers take over the AirPlay protocol to inject malware into and take control of impacted devices. This is a zero-click attack, so it works even if you don't click on anything. AirPlay is a widely supported protocol, and a popular way for Apple devices to share …

On Friday, Apple dropped iOS 26.2. Despite being the third update in the iOS 26 era, 26.2 still adds some interesting and useful new features, like alarms for reminders and refinements to the Sleep Score on Apple Watch. Updates aren't all about the features, however. Apple typically includes a number of security patches with its software releases as well, which makes each update important to install. You don't always need to install the latest version of iOS or macOS to benefit from these security patches, either: Apple usually releases important security patches for some older versions of its software. iPhones running iOS 18 can install the same security patches as tho…

There was once a time when LG was among the major smartphone manufacturers. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case for a while now: LG gave up on the phone business in April 2021, reducing the choices Android customers have—especially in the United States. It was a shame, since LG made some cool phones back in the day. The V20, for example, included a thin secondary display along the top of the device, while the LG Wing sported a full-size second display that swiveled out—a design that is still unique in the smartphone market (if not particularly practical). The company produced a number of smartphones in its time—some good, some great, some forgettable—but over the las…

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. When you’re assigned a text, you’re supposed to take away the big-picture ideas. The problem is that sometimes, you can miss the forest for the trees, skimming passages just to get it all over with. To get to that broad understanding you need, you should use a method that is all about being detail-oriented. It’s called “close reading,” and it will help you grasp whatever you read so you understand not only your assigned passage or chapter, but the concept …

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. When you learn and use a studying method, you’re making it easier for your brain to synthesize new information. Great. Now think of how much more you could learn and retain if you could double up on the methods you’re using. Why, you could learn twice as much. You can do that, but it takes a little pre-planning and patience. It’s called “dual coding,” and it’s a popular teaching and studying technique that’s proven to help you retain more of what you’re learning. Study twice as hardThe dual-coding theory…