How-To Guides from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

Apple calls Finder the home base of the Mac: the tool for organizing and reaching almost everything on the system, from documents to a connected iPhone. Most people use about a tenth of it. This collection of Finder tips and tricks for Mac users covers the rest: the browsing, previewing, editing, and search tools sitting in the same window you already open dozens of times a day.

Google Photos still has a setting that restores date headers in the grid. On Android, the redesigned Photos view switched those headers off by default and replaced them with a floating date indicator that appears while scrolling.

The word "reset" gets stretched to cover three unrelated jobs when an Apple TV remote acts up, and that stretching is where most of the confusion starts. Learning how to reset an Apple TV remote really means figuring out which of three things applies: restarting a frozen remote, re-pairing one that's lost its Bluetooth connection, or wiping the entire Apple TV back to factory settings. Only the last of those erases the Apple TV's data.

Firefox for iOS now has a built-in ad blocker. Mozilla shipped it off by default, though, and you can now enable the feature from the app's main settings or the Site menu on a webpage. If you're trying to figure out how to enable ad blocker in Firefox on iPhone, the process itself is short. What takes longer to explain is what the feature actually filters once it's on, and where it stops.

iOS 27 gives Apple Wallet two new jobs that have nothing to do with each other: reading a restaurant receipt and settling it through Apple Cash, and turning a barcoded loyalty or membership card into a pass you build yourself. This guide covers how to split bills with Apple Cash in iOS 27, how to create a custom pass in Apple Wallet, and the availability gaps worth checking before you hand either one a real tab or a card you actually need at checkout.

There's no single subscription that gets you every NFL game in 2026. Before picking a setup, answer three questions: do you need your local team's games, an out-of-market team, or the national exclusives that land on Thursdays, holidays, and international windows? The answer decides whether this season costs $55 or several hundred dollars (Marketplace, about a month ago).

A large photo library stops being something anyone scrolls through to find one shot. OneDrive Photos has a Favorites feature built for exactly that problem: mark the images worth keeping close, then pull every favorited photo into one filtered view inside Gallery. This guide covers how to add or remove favorites in the OneDrive Photos app on Windows 11, using Microsoft's documentation, with one clearly labeled comparison to the separate Windows Photos app.

A microphone icon just showed up next to the system tray, and nothing obviously running should need one. This guide walks through how to see which apps are using your microphone in Windows 11 right now, which ones used it over the past week, and how to shut off access once something looks off.

Search "my Roku remote won't pair," and most of what comes back isn't a pairing failure at all. If the remote can already move through Roku's menus and pull up voice search, pairing has succeeded, and the real issue is that the TV hasn't been set up for power and volume control yet, which is a separate step handled independently of pairing.

Not every Galaxy Watch 9 health feature behaves the same way out of the box, which is exactly why deciding which Galaxy Watch 9 settings to enable on day one matters. Hard fall detection is a genuine toggle, and it ships off by default, doing nothing until someone switches it on (Samsung Support). Vitals and Sleep Coach aren't toggles in that sense. Vitals needs seven nights of overnight wear to build a baseline before it can flag anything unusual, and Sleep Coach needs at least seven days of...

In late January 2026, Banjo: Recompiled launched for Windows, Mac, and Linux as a standalone native app. Not an emulated N64 game running inside a simulated console, but its own application, built with remappable controls, a second-stick camera option, and mod support. It's one entry in a growing scene that lets players play classic console games natively on Mac without touching an emulator.

Apple took away the iPad's old job. It can no longer act as a Home hub; that role now sits strictly with HomePod and Apple TV. A small independent app called HomeDeck bets there's still a use for a spare iPad in a smart home: not as the brain, but as a HomeKit dashboard for iPad that displays an Apple Home someone has already built out. HomeDeck's own pitch is a dedicated screen, not a replacement for the hub sitting underneath it.

This guide walks through how to fix Apple CarPlay problems by matching your specific symptom to its most likely cause. By the end, you'll know which of six failure modes you're dealing with and have a clear fix to try, rather than cycling through generic tips that don't apply to your situation.

Screen mirroring an Android phone to a Roku takes only a few taps, but only if both devices support Miracast, the wireless display protocol Roku relies on. Pixel owners should skip mirroring altogether and lean on in-app casting instead, since Google built its phones around Google Cast and DIAL rather than Miracast. That one branching decision, Miracast or not, determines almost everything else in this guide.

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Every Mac includes Preview, Apple's app for opening PDFs and images. Double-click a supported file, and it will usually open without another download, subscription, or setup process.

If you're trying to watch The Open 2026 without missing a shot, here's the short version: USA Network carries live coverage every round, NBC joins on the weekend, and Peacock is the streaming layer that connects all of it. No single cable channel covers the whole event, but the rights structure is more logical than it first appears once you understand which platform owns which window.

Google has been replacing Google Assistant with Gemini in Android Auto, with the rollout expanding to 45 languages globally, per Google's announcement. If your phone already runs the Gemini app, you likely have access or will soon. The change matters more than a typical assistant update: Assistant frequently failed to register voice input at all, something a Tom's Guide tester called a near-daily occurrence. Gemini also removes the rigid syntax problem, so you can speak naturally and hold a...

iOS 27 doesn't reinvent CarPlay. What it does is remove friction, the kind you encounter every single drive. Reaching playback controls from the wrong screen, repeating yourself to Siri, asking for directions without being able to specify "avoid toll roads."

This guide covers whether turning off Google Play Protect is the right call for your situation, how to do it if it is, and the specific steps to take immediately after. Skipping that last part is where most people get into trouble.

iOS 27 adds something Wallet has never had in fourteen years: the ability to build your own pass. Tap the "+" button you use to add credit cards or pass emails, and a new "Create a Pass" option appears alongside the existing options. It lets you digitize a paper ticket, membership card, or loyalty pass directly from your iPhone, with no developer account, no Pass Type ID, and no certificate signing required (Michael Tsai, May 2026). This guide walks you through how to use Create a Pass in Apple...

If you only want the key to open something else, PowerToys is enough. If you need it to act like Right Ctrl, skip straight to AutoHotkey. That's the whole decision, and getting it wrong means spending an hour on a remap that half-works.

A quick reality check before you start: This guide works best for households in urban and suburban areas within range of broadcast transmitters. Rural readers, apartment dwellers with no exterior placement options, and anyone whose primary goal is free live sports coverage will hit real limits, spelled out at each relevant step. Go in with accurate expectations.

After a month of daily use, MacStories described a visual-identification task that would have taken 20 to 30 seconds in ChatGPT but took roughly five seconds in Siri AI. The difference was workflow friction: Siri mode was built directly into the Camera app, eliminating the steps of taking a photo, opening ChatGPT, and uploading the image.

This guide is for local administrators and technically capable users on unmanaged or lightly managed Windows 11 Pro systems whose executable, batch, or PowerShell script files have stopped running after installation or a feature update. Corporate devices enrolled in Intune or joined to a domain with Group Policy are a different situation those paths are called out explicitly below.

Samsung Messages shut down on July 6, 2026. If you're a US Galaxy user on Android 12 or newer, the app can no longer send or receive messages except to emergency numbers, per Samsung's discontinuation notice. The text field is greyed out, and that's a permanent state.

U.S. viewers with a digital antenna can watch USA vs Belgium for free tonight on FOX at 8 p.m. ET. No account, no trial, no credit card. No antenna? FOX One's 3-day free trial covers the match with no upfront charge, as long as you cancel before it renews. UK viewers have the cleanest deal: BBC One on TV or BBC iPlayer online, free and in 4K. Australians can watch on SBS at no cost. India is the one exception ZEE5 holds the official rights at approximately ₹799 (around $8 USD), with no free...

The safest way to troubleshoot Gemini Error 1099 is to match the workaround to the specific way the error is appearing, because the same error code has appeared in at least three different patterns reported by users. Reports span multiple Reddit communities, affecting both free and paid users across Android, the web, iOS, macOS, and Chrome. The fix for a single stale conversation is not the same as the fix for an error that fires every time you press the Pixel side button, and neither applies...

Best Uses for an Old Chromebook: Server, Desktop, or Sandbox

Plug your Fire TV Stick into an HDMI 2.0 port. Save the HDMI 2.1 port for a gaming console or PC. If you have a soundbar, that goes in the ARC or eARC port, not the streaming stick. That single paragraph covers the setup most people get wrong when figuring out the best HDMI port for Fire TV Stick use, and everything below explains why it works this way and how to confirm you've got the right port on your specific TV.

The culprit behind soft, degraded Hulu streams is usually not your router. Both the iOS and Android Hulu apps ship with a mode called "Data Saver" enabled by default, which reportedly actively caps stream quality to reduce data consumption. Most users never touch it. Turning it off takes about 20 seconds and is the right first move before running speed tests or resetting hardware.

Your work Google Calendar and your personal iCloud Calendar don't talk to each other. Accept a dentist appointment on the personal side, and your work calendar still shows that hour as free. Accept a last-minute team meeting at work, and anything checking your personal availability has no idea.

This guide walks through how to run a ChatGPT PC health check using only the system telemetry Windows already exposes to IT support. No personal files, documents, or passwords involved. Two paths, depending on how deep you need to go.

Turn off Autoplay Next Episode in your Netflix profile's Playback settings. That single change stops the continuous playback pattern that leads to the "are you still watching?" prompt, which fires after three consecutive episodes or about 90 minutes of uninterrupted viewing, per Engadget. The steps below walk through exactly how to do it on a browser and on mobile, and what to expect once you have.

If you've ever walked away from your desk and wondered whether your PC is still unlocked, your phone can help — but the best method depends on the phone you use.

Here's how to use Visual Intelligence on macOS Golden Gate, what the keyboard shortcut actually does, and where the beta still falls short. This guide walks through both entry points, explains what each popout action does in the current developer beta, and tells you when the feature is worth reaching for and when to skip it.

This guide gets you to three decisions: which robot vacuum fits your specific home, whether Matter integration is worth paying for in your situation, and how to wire everything into a maintenance system using Apple Home, the vendor app, and a few targeted utilities. The best robot vacuum for Apple Home is not necessarily the one with the best Apple integration and that distinction shapes every recommendation below.

Close your MacBook mid-download and it goes to sleep. Open it again and the task is dead. Most people's first response is to install a "keep awake" app, and most of those apps won't help, because they're solving the wrong problem. If you're searching for how to keep MacBook awake with lid closed, the answer depends on which of three distinct problems you actually have: open-lid idle sleep, Apple's supported closed-lid desk mode, or an unsupported battery-only workaround.

If you want to keep using an Apple Time Capsule after upgrading to macOS 27, you have three options: stay on macOS 26, install a community tool called TimeCapsuleSMB, or replace the hardware. This guide covers all three, including step-by-step setup for TimeCapsuleSMB, so you can make the right call before the upgrade window closes.

By the end of this guide, you'll know how to create a shortcut using the iPadOS 27 shortcut builder's new plain-English prompt tool, how to inspect what Apple Intelligence generates, and how to decide whether the result is safe to run unsupervised. That last part is where most coverage stops.