Lifehacker

If you’ve ever been furniture shopping, you might know that you can take samples of upholstery fabric you’re considering home with you before you make a final decision on whether to buy. Much like you would with paint samples from a hardware store, these swatches can better help you envision how your new chair or…Read more...

About 10,500 units of stainless steel cups and bottles have been voluntarily recalled by Green Sprouts, a manufacturer of reusable baby products, over a possible lead poisoning hazard. The recalled Green Sprouts bottles have been sold at major retailers, including Whole Foods stores nationwide, and online at Amazon,…Read more...

If you’re shocked to learn the internet isn’t a great place when it comes to your privacy, welcome to your first day online. Companies track everything you do when browsing the web, sometimes down to your individual keypresses and mouse clicks, and gobble up as much of your personal information as they can get their…Read more...

Crumbs and dust have a nifty little talent for refusing to actually slide into your dustpan with a broom. However, there’s an easy way to collect them up that you probably never thought of. This hack has been all over TikTok for some time now and has, since its revelation sometime last year, spawned a number of …Read more...

Spotify and Apple Music may be great for music discovery, but they don’t do a great job telling you more about who you’re listening to. You could know every lyric to “Don’t Stop Believin’,” but if you don’t know what year it came out, you’re going to let your trivia team down. (It’s 1981, by the way.)

Last year, it wasn’t even Thanksgiving and my 7-year-old had already let it spill. We were driving home from school with her 5-year-old brother our 6-year-0ld neighbor when out of the blue, she said it: “Santa isn’t real.”Read more...

It would almost be too easy to forget about Thanksgiving and move on to December’s festivities—if it weren’t for that bowl of cranberry sauce that keeps getting moved around in the fridge. It’s great with turkey, but after the last bits have been devoured, the crimson sauce seems to be an outcast. There is absolutely…Read more...

There’s never a bad time to switch to a browser that respects your privacy more than Chrome does. For most people, Firefox or Brave (along with a few settings changes) is good enough. But if you’re after a browser designed entirely with privacy in mind, you have even better options than those, too.

Ever opened up a package only to find that the sturdy, beautiful item you ordered is tissue-paper-thin, or far larger (or smaller) than it looked online? We have a few tips to help you make sure that what you receive isn’t going to be a disappointment—whether you’re buying it as a gift or for yourself.

Imagine Trainspotting without “Lust for Life.” Do the Right Thing without “Fight the Power.” Shaft without...”Shaft.” You can’t. The perfect song choice can make a good cinematic moment great, and a bad one can ruin an otherwise decent scene.

Cold winter nights, drafty homes, and differing temperature preferences are a recipe for discomfort when you’re trying to get a good night’s sleep. A heated mattress pad is one option to dial in temperature for maximum coziness, and as a bonus, it generally requires less energy than your central heating.

Whether you’re taking a long vacation away from the cold winter temps or your employer is sending you on an extended trip overseas, you need to pack and you need to do it smartly. Living out of your suitcase seems fun for a while, but it can get old fast. I once did it for four weeks and was miserable by the time I…Read more...

Do you feel like you’re breaking down boxes every day and running them out to the recycling bin every night? Especially this time of year, the convenience of having goods delivered straight to your home is unparalleled—but the boxes can quickly stack up in overwhelming ways, both in terms of how unsustainable they…Read more...

If you celebrate Christmas, you probably have a decorated tree set up somewhere in your house. As a kid, the tree in my house was a dusty old artificial model that had to be assembled branch by branch. We always kept it in the basement, stuffed into a cardboard box, and every holiday season, unboxing it was a game of…Read more...

Sounding confident and knowledgeable at work is a good thing, but sometimes we can say things that we think highlight our value as employees, but actually give the impression that we’re pretentious or insecure.Read more...

Looking to save money on holiday decorations this year? Along with reusing (or repurposing) pieces you have from previous years, you can freshen up your festive decor with a little help from nature. Here’s what to know.Read more...

Children can be fickle creatures. A toy they wanted more than anything else could lose its appeal in a matter of minutes. But through fads and trends, one item has kept kids entertained for generation: A (large) cardboard box.Read more...

After a year of rising prices resulting from inflation, many families are cutting back on their holiday spending—including when it comes to gift-giving. Making a rule about not giving presents to other adults is one thing, but you probably want to give your kids a holiday experience to remember (for something other…Read more...

Most houseplants need to be potted in a container with some type of drainage. If water doesn’t have a way of exiting the pot, it will settle at the bottom, causing the roots to rot, and eventually killing the plant.Read more...

Want to do something with the kids for the holidays, but can’t afford breakfast with Santa or the Polar Express train ride? Or perhaps you’re looking for something festive to do with your friends or on a date, but tickets to the Nutcracker aren’t in the budget. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.Read more...

At the end of a year that saw inflation reach a 41-year high, there may not be much (or anything) left in your annual budget to spend on holiday gifts for friends and family. If that’s the case, and you haven’t already done so, now would be a good time to talk to loved ones you usually exchange gifts with, and come to…Read more...

‘Tis the season to dig out the decorations and trim your tree, and any other parts of your home that you think could use some holiday cheer. But if rising energy costs have you hesitant to plug in multiple strings of lights, an inflatable snowman, or your blow mold nativity scene, you may be rethinking your design…Read more...

If you’ve ever wanted to travel to a galaxy far, far away, now’s your chance to get at least a peak at some on a map—around 200,000 galaxies, to be more specific. But this isn’t just any interactive map of the universe: It’s the first to display “the span of the entire known cosmos with pinpoint accuracy,” according…Read more...

So, you’ve decided to bring a live tree into your home for a few weeks. How festive! Now, it’s time to determine what type of Christmas tree you’d like—or, more accurately, what qualities you’re looking for in an indoor evergreen. A particular look? A certain price point? A robust fragrance?Read more...

Whether you’re drinking or cooking with wine, you may not go through the entire bottle at one time. Sure, you could use a wine stopper to keep your wine fresh(ish) until you’re ready to finish it, but what if you don’t have one? As it turns out, there is a proper way to recork a bottle of wine. Here’s what to know.Read more...

Even the most like-minded families don’t agree on everything, and holiday dinners are often the setting of heated discussions on controversial topics. Of course, we don’t plan for that to happen, but when you think about it, the timing makes sense, given that people who may not otherwise see each other are gathered…Read more...

Lifehacker’s senior health editor and official holiday-myth-debunker Beth Skwarecki recently truthfied nine lies you were told about the first Thanksgiving, but I thought I’d take a look at some more recent myths surrounding the holiday. Here are the truths behind eight hoaxes that have been circulated widely on the i…Read more...

Goncharov is the best film you’ll never see. Billed as “The Greatest Mafia Movie Ever Made,” this Martin Scorsese-produced 1973 gangster epic stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Cybill Shepherd, and was directed by Matteo JWHJ 0715. Wait, who? Also: It isn’t real.

Midway through my efforts to turn savory stuffing into French toast bread, I imagine what the person creating the first Scotch egg must have thought. “This is crazy, but it just might be fantastic,” I bet they whispered to themselves in a lilting brogue. Well, they were right, and I’m right this time, too: Reforming…Read more...

You may have heard of people—elderly folks in particular—getting a heart attack from shoveling snow. But what’s so dangerous about shoveling? And is everybody at risk, or is this pretty rare? Here’s what you should know.

If you have a great Apple Music playlist for holiday-themed parties but it includes a few tracks that aren’t appropriate for ears of all ages, you don’t have to worry about making your mixes family friendly anymore. Forget about painstaking recreating it yourself using “clean” versions of explicit songs…Read more...

When you’re a player in the gig economy, budgeting can be tough. However, a budget is most important for anyone working with an irregular income. Even if you don’t consider yourself living paycheck to paycheck, it’s a challenge to craft and stick to a budget when you don’t have a predictable salary to base your…Read more...

Add another to the list of TV shows that no one in New York City even realizes exist: In December, Paramount+ will launch its second spinoff of the massively popular Succession-meets-Hey Dude! hit Yellowstone called 1923, not to be confused with its first Yellowstone spinoff, 1883, also not to be confused with 1899,…Read more...

You might love essential oils, but there are good reasons to avoid putting them inside of your humidifier.

After a year of tumult at Warner Bros. Discovery, we can be thankful for at least one streaming blessing this holiday season: David Zaslav hasn’t kicked Doom Patrol to the curb...yet. Despite a raft of cancellation rumors this past summer, the weird-as-shit series following DC Comics’ weirdest band of anti-heroes will…Read more...

The United States Department of Agriculture might not be the first place you think of when you’re unsure whether it’s okay to stuff the turkey the night before, but they have a hotline built to answer exactly these sorts of questions. Add 1-888-MPHotline to your contacts to be the hero everybody needs for Thanksgiving…Read more...

When working with teams, I hear a lot of complaints about bosses. One of the most common is about a manager who doesn’t hold people accountable. Someone (or maybe a couple people) on the team consistently perform poorly in their jobs, and the boss doesn’t do anything about it.Read more...

Terrible weather can make a winter home search uniquely stressful. We can’t make it any warmer out there, but here are a few things to consider if you’re buying a home in the winter months.

For all the talk about how the world today is “entirely digital,” it sure doesn’t feel that way sometimes. I still receive a ton of paper documents, from bills to insurance info to dog license applications. We don’t deal with as much paper as we used to, but it’s still a mess if not meticulously organized. And if…Read more...

Black Friday brings some of the deepest discounts of the year for all sorts of tech products—and apps are no exception. If you’ve been holding off on buying any pricey paid, it’s worth taking another look this week. It might just be the perfect time to tap “Buy.”

If you’ve been holding out for a cheaper price on a major streaming service, now is a good time. Most major streaming platforms have Black Friday deals on offer, from several months at a reduced rate to discounts on annual subscriptions.Read more...

Shopping for techie friends is the worst, so maybe you shouldn’t even bother trying to pander to their most obvious interest. Instead of fighting that battle and second guessing what tech they might like or already own, get them something they wouldn’t buy themselves.

President Biden’s sweeping plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of Americans is stuck in the courts (we cover those legal troubles in more detail here). For borrowers, the most visible consequence of these legal blows thus far is that applications for Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan are not currently…Read more...

I confess I’ve only come into the holiday TV movie fold within the last few years, as the advent of the gay Christmas movie spurred me to explore other classics of the genre. What one immediately discovers, when delving into these worlds of small town values overcoming big city cynicism, is that a suspension of…Read more...

Psychology-related words and phrases tend to creep into our everyday vocabularies. Unfortunately, many of them have been twisted in our minds, and we now use them to refer to the wrong thing—or, in some cases, science has moved on and we’re talking about something woefully outdated. Here are some of the worst…Read more...

Back in my day, TV shows had the decency to return from hiatus every September, like clockwork. In the streaming arena, that clock is broken. Shows return whenever they feel like it. Two half-length seasons six weeks apart? A full year between seasons, with all episodes dropping on the same day? Sure, why not. Take…Read more...

Thanksgiving is almost here, which means you’re probably already cleaning your house and prepping the meal. It’s a lot of work...but then you get to enjoy the eating. Yay! But then you have to focus on cleaning again. Boo!

It’s true iOS isn’t as customizable as Android, but the gap is much narrower than it used to be. These days, your can personalize your iPhone’s Lock Screen, change your app icons to anything you like, and even add a digital pet to the Dynamic Island. If you’re in the market for yet another iPhone customization hack,…Read more...

I’m not trying to bullshit you. If you have a Samsung Galaxy—virtually any one of them—then you have a hidden chihuahua on your phone. You would never stumble upon it, which is why you’ve likely never seen nor known about it, but it’s there, lurking, ready to greet you at a moment’s notice.

Octavia Butler, the venerable science fiction writer and futurist, died unexpectedly in 2006. That spared her from witnessing just how terrifyingly prescient was her 1993 post-apocalyptic novel The Parable of the Sower. But it also robbed her of seeing her work, once relegated to the fringes of genre fiction, embraced…Read more...