For most, buying a new smartphone is easy—you just get the latest version of whatever it is you’ve been using. If you’re dissatisfied enough, or you don’t want the latest Galaxy, Pixel, or iPhone (to name a few), then it’s time to go shopping, and you’ll have a sea of smartphones to wade through in order to find the…

Every now and then, I find myself needing an Amazon add-on item, and only an add-on item, which puts me in a bit of a shopping struggle.

If you can charge your smartphone wirelessly, congratulations. You have arrived at the future, a time when the Herculean process of fumbling with a cable, inserting it into the bottom of your device, and waiting for the satisfactory tone feels archaic and silly. With one convenient, reasonably priced power pad, you…

Hi! In this week’s edition of Tech 911—the column that attempts to answer all of your emailed questions (please email us your questions)—we’re taking a look at an issue that affects more people than you might think at first: updates. Specifically, should you really update your device to the latest and greatest version…

There’s a special corner in Tech Hell reserved for app developers who try to sucker people into paying obscene amounts of money for an underwhelming product.

When’s the last time you sat down and thought about how many apps automatically launch whenever you fire up Windows 10 on your desktop or laptop? You probably can’t remember, because it’s not really a thing most people do. But you should, because you don’t need a bunch of unnecessary apps eating up your system’s…

Should you install a public beta of iOS on your primacy iPhone or iPad? Most people caution against it—especially when a beta is in its earlier stages, since you never know what kind of bugs might brick that-which-you-use-your-iPhone-to-do (or your favorite apps).

Last week, we asked you to tell us about the camera apps—for iOS or Android—that you can’t live without. Our Hive Five hunt was prompted by my work on the iOS and Android Lifehacker Packs, when I noticed that there are a ton of different third-party camera apps you can grab for your device. I thought I found some…

If you’re the kind of person who uses a little creativity when organizing the apps on your iPhone or iPad—by icon color, for example—it might be time to take your device’s look to the next level. Sure, you can name your folders something descriptive and/or witty, like “yellow” instead of the category of the apps found…

For whatever reason, Apple launched iOS 12's Shortcuts app without offering users any kind of centralized hub for storing and sharing the useful shortcuts they create. So, this happens: You find a neat shortcut online, you pull up Safari on your iOS device and install it via some shared iCloud link, and it sits on…

We check out a lot of apps at Lifehacker, and we’ve recently written pretty big roundups of the must-haves for Android and iOS. Still, there’s a lot out there, and that can make it difficult to find the best app for whatever it is you’re trying to do.

Tracking numbers? Old school. Sure, they’re useful to see where your package is in a pinch, but there are plenty of better ways to see what’s shipping to your home or apartment—and when—without having to click on links, copy and paste complicated alphanumeric codes, or anything like that.

I’m not big into the crazier Apple Watch faces—the ones that try to fill your watch’s face with the time, data points, and other icons you tap to access this or that. But even though I’m a purist, I’ve installed the third-party complication Better Day ($2) and switched to a slightly more data-heavy face, because this…

There are way too many camera apps for iOS and Android. And if you’re anything like my friends, you just stick with the basics: the stock app your smartphone shipped with. Good enough for silly selfies, shots of your pet being lazy, and Instagrams of your food, right?

Networking can be a little confusing, especially when something you’ve done (or not done) doesn’t make any logical sense whatsoever. You set up a new cable modem and wireless router, and have worse speeds than you did than when you used your older gear. You wire your house with gigabit Ethernet, only to watch your…

We are scratching our collective heads as to how the Windows 10 October Update ever made it past Microsoft’s QA teams. According to numerous reports, something about the update could delete the contents of your Windows 10 user folders—you know, your documents, photos, music, videos, et cetera.

Microsoft’s big October update for Windows 10 is here. If Microsoft hasn’t rolled it out to your Windows machine yet, you can force a manual update by simply clicking on your Start button, typing in the word “check,” and selecting the “check for updates” option. Click on the gray “Check for updates” box under Windows…

It’s been a while since I’ve had to type in some stupid answer to a made-up question when creating an account on a new service. You know what I’m talking about: Forget your password, and you can regain access to your account by typing in the name of your first pet (Mr. Mrglglrm), your favorite sports team (Saskatoon…

It’s safe to say that this recent Facebook access token hack is a complete mess—much more than a simple inconvenience that might have forced you to log back in to your Facebook account on your devices. And while the company is still sorting out the details and working on ways for developers to mitigate the effects of…

I have a reasonable but not overwhelming amount of media: mostly books, followed by video games, followed by some collectible vinyls and CDs that I keep around. I also have friends who have rooms full of stuff: stacks of books and floor-to-ceiling bookcases that are nearly bursting from overuse. All of us could…