Lifehacker

Whether you’re a seasoned real estate pro, or someone who casually scans the listings from time to time, you’ve probably noticed that the 2022 housing market has been a little hard to follow at times. Like 2021, most experts have indicated that this year has largely been a seller’s market, but what’s in store for 2023?Read more...

More than almost anything else in your kitchen, the cabinets can make the room feel outdated—especially if you painted them a color that was trendy one year, but not as much after that. Fortunately, giving your kitchen an updated look doesn’t necessarily mean you have to replace your cabinets completely. Instead, many…Read more...

With temperatures around the country plummeting over the past few days, any air leaks in your home have likely become particularly noticeable. Perhaps you knew these cracks and crevices were there, but hadn’t gotten around to dealing with them yet. Or maybe, you did take the time to properly seal your home, and…Read more...

Whether you shop primarily online or in person, you’ve likely been asked to make a donation to some kind of charitable organization as you’re checking out. Sometimes it’s rounding up the total of your order to the nearest dollar, and donating the change. Other times, you have the option of donating $1, $2, or another…Read more...

As 2022 comes to a close, and yearly budgets have been stretched beyond their limits, any type of discount or freebie is appreciated. And if you like your free food in the form of Popeyes chicken sandwiches, you’re in luck, because the fast food chain has a promotion offering precisely that. Here’s what to know.

Between ongoing product shortages, supply chain issues, and stores left with excess inventory, 2022 has been unpredictable when it comes to retail. So what does that mean for the traditionally deep discounts offered at the end of the year? Here’s what to know about 2022's after-Christmas sales, including when they…Read more...

No matter where it happens—whether it’s at a family holiday gathering, the office, or among friends—being on the receiving end of a highly personal question can be jarring. Sure, the person asking the question could be well-intentioned, but their request for information that you’d prefer not to share can catch you…Read more...

General Motors has issued another recall for its Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle (EV) line—this time for 140,000 of them because “the carpet could catch fire after a crash where a front seat belt pretensioner deploys,” according to a report from Reuters. The recall includes about 120,000 cars in the United States and…Read more...

When making my Christmas (shopping) lists and checking them twice, I often forget to consider ice, which makes some amount of sense. Depending on where you are in the world, ice is probably not at the forefront of your mind in the days leading up to Christmas, especially if you’ve been shoveling snow, driving through…Read more...

Family is complicated—a fact that is never more apparent than this time of year, a time of obligatory family gatherings and forced dinner conversation. If the thought of dealing with an overly nosy aunt or rude cousin makes you want to avoid family gatherings altogether, there are ways of salvaging the holidays that…Read more...

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When it comes to health and fitness trends, we’ve seen some doozies this year. Some are silly and ineffective; others are potentially lethal. Let’s reminisce about the worst of them, and promise ourselves we won’t fall for any of their ilk in the new year.

Right now, Costco is selling Xbox gift cards for 20% off, and you can get a maximum of $400 worth of them per member (or more if you have other authorized members on your membership). That means you can get $400 worth of gift cards for a total out-of-pocket cost of $320, which you can use for anything from the …Read more...

The traditional yule log, or bûche de Noël, is a chocolate Swiss roll cake. It’s delicious, but making a Swiss roll isn’t easy and, if you’ve ever watched a holiday baking challenge, you’ve probably seen the one vanquish some pretty talented bakers. Instead of fighting with cake, you can use the humble HoHo into an…Read more...

No one likes cleaning a toilet. First, there’s the dust that clings to the porcelain with surprising tenacity, especially if the porcelain happens to be damp. (I think it should be illegal for bathrooms to get dusty. It’s just not right.) But the bigger problem is the toilet brush. It’s not the scrubbing part—that’s…Read more...

In 2022, much of Lifehacker’s personal finance coverage navigated a year of record-setting inflation, the promise of student debt relief, the threat of a housing crash, and of course, an ever-looming recession. Throughout this economic uncertainty, we’ve offered out best tips and advice to get through the still-shaky…Read more...

Keeping your home clean and welcoming for other people is all fine and well, but doesn’t really matter much if your house isn’t safe. From burglars to fires, there are safety threats all around our homes, and this year, we worked hard to help you identify and avoid them. Here are our best home safety tips from 2022.

Today and tomorrow, McDonald’s is offering a deal that could quench your thirst—if that thirst happens to be of the double cheeseburger variety. From Dec. 22 through Dec. 23, you can buy as many double cheeseburgers as your heart desires for 50 cents each. (A double cheeseburger usually costs about $3.79, depending on…Read more...

From iOS 16 to the iPhone 14, the iPhone had a big year. We started 2022 with iOS 15.2, which gave us features like Apple Music Voice and legacy contacts, and end the year appropriately with iOS 16.2, with Apple Music Sing and end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups. In between, we discovered a lot of hacks that make…Read more...

For many workers, 2022 kicked off with various degrees of return-to-office mandates. It was the year of “quiet quitting” and it’s more insidious counterpart, quiet firing. The continuing pandemic has, on a grand scale, made many reexamine how we tie our careers to our identities. On a smaller scale, it’s made us…Read more...

Cranberries are often the only source of precious, richness-cutting acid on the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables, which is why I’ve always insisted that they belong on the equally rich dessert table, too. This year, I finally gave in to a recurring pie-based intrusive thought: What if I made lemon meringue…Read more...

Nepotism is the most natural thing in the world. Most of us would use our connections to help our family get jobs if we could, whether it’s calling your boss to ask about that third shift for your son or hooking them up with a spot on the board of directors of a multinational energy firm. It’s particularly noticeable…Read more...

A huge winter storm is making its way across the country this week, bringing with it heavy snow, high winds, and single-digit temperatures as far south as Louisiana. Conditions are expected to significantly affect holiday travel, and similar storms have recently challenged power grids and other infrastructure even in…Read more...

Eggnog is as Christmas as chunky, colorful lights–it’s not for everyone, but some households are all about it. Whether you have a yearly event concocting your family’s secret recipe, or buy liters of the store bought variety, try adding it to your pancake mix and make the most Christmassy breakfast of your life.

You’re likely familiar with the usual way to look for a job: Type the job title you want into a career site like LinkedIn or Indeed, add few details, and then spend hours scrolling down a list of thousands of potential jobs. When you finally get to the bottom, more load in. It can often feel like a numbers game, just…Read more...

It has not been a good year for those shows you like. If you mostly watch crime procedurals like CSI, NCIS, and Blue Bloods, or Yellowstone-adjacent shows, then you’re probably fine; otherwise, there’s a good chance you’ve felt the loss of a favorite show.

If you’re going home for the holidays with your partner, you might think that your sex life has to be put on pause. After all, you’ll probably be crammed in a guest room—or your childhood bedroom—right next to your parents’ room and, well, sex can be loud for all sorts of reasons. But what if your sex life doesn’t…Read more...

2022 was a big year for Android. We saw Google release both the Pixel 7 and Android 13, injecting new features and hardware into the Android market. Now, after another full year of using Android OS, keeping up with Google news, and reading about other users’ experiences on forums, we found quite a few Android hacks to…Read more...

For some people, it just doesn’t feel like Christmas until you’re curled up by the fire, eating Christmas cookies, or hanging your favorite ornaments on the tree. For me, the holiday season doesn’t feel real until an overwhelming state of panic sets in and I’m feverishly typing “last-minute gift ideas” in the hours…Read more...

The past year saw a number of cleaning trends, hacks, and tips come from across TikTok, Facebook, Reddit, and, of course, us. Some were wack, but others turned out to be great. Here are ten of our favorites, for the next time you need to do a massive clean-up.

As 2022 turns into 2023, it’s prime time to set up your work schedule for success in the new year. Previously, we reminded you to start planning your travel around long weekends in 2023—the logic being you can maximize your paid time off by working around federal holidays. For both saving money on travel and managing…Read more...

After watching a TikTok on pancake flipping, I got to thinking about whether or not I had been doing it wrong my whole flippin’ life. I turn with my wrist but I don’t get a horrible splash, like in the video. It turns out, it’s more about the power behind the move than if you’re using the correct part of your arm. A…Read more...

Traditions surrounding the Christian religious holiday of Christmas may seem to be age-old and time-honored, but many are newer than we’d think. What’s even more surprising is that the stories we tell each other about the traditions are also, themselves, a bit mixed-up. Read on for several myths about Christmas…Read more...

Like a narrative embodiment of one of those “do you want to feel old?” memes, That ‘90s Show—the decades-later followup to the hit Fox sitcom That ‘70s Show (which actually premiered in the ‘90s)—arrives on Netflix on Jan. 19. As I was basically an adult throughout the entire run of the original series, I am not OK…Read more...

There’s an old saying that “the internet is forever,” but it’s a damn lie. Ideas, memes, and subcultures can proliferate online and seem to be everywhere, only to disappear forever when someone deletes their account or stops paying their web hosting for a day. The following trendlets caught on briefly in 2022—…Read more...

When your smartphone starts to slow down, you may wonder whether it’s the beginning of its end. However, it could just be digital junk accumulated throughout the year gumming up the works. As 2022 comes to a close, now’s as good a time as any to clear the clutter from your Android and start the new year with faster…Read more...

It seems like just yesterday we were anticipating all the high-profile video game adaptations coming to movie theaters and streaming services in 2023, and one of the biggest is already almost here: HBO Max’s The Last of Us, based on the 2013 PlayStation post-apocalyptic zombie-adjacent survival adventure...thing.Read more...

Menorahs can get messy. And on top of whatever dusting you need to do for a decoration that spends most of the year in a box, candle wax is just a pain to clean up. Here’s how to clean all the different kinds of menorahs.Read more...

I used to think Paramount+ would only be defined as the home of Star Trek—in addition to the catalogue series, it’s the only place to see newer spinoffs like Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Picard, and Prodigy. But over the past year, another burgeoning franchise: The Tyler Sheridan Television Universe.Read more...

When most people plan for retirement, they’re making plans around their 67th birthday. Proponents of the FIRE movement, however, believe that retirement can be achieved decades earlier than the official retirement age. Here’s what to know about the elusive promise of Financial Independence/Retire Early and what it…Read more...

The other day, I got to introduce my father to babka, a delight he had never experienced before. “I like that pretty well,” he kept saying, which sounds like faint praise but—for him—is actually rather enthusiastic. The babka loaves (one chocolate and one cinnamon) were sent by a friend as an “I hope your bones heal”…Read more...

With more than 400 national parks scattered across the United States, it can get pricey to try to visit them all. While some are free, about a quarter of them charge from $10 to $20 per person to enter, which can add up for a family. But if you’re planning to hit up the parks next year, there are several days when…Read more...

It’s less than a week before Christmas, which marks the official start of “Amazon and Starbucks gift card” season. There’s nothing wrong with gift cards per se, but these two in particular are so commonly gifted that they practically scream “I panicked and got this at the last minute”—which is exactly what you don’t…Read more...

It’s a classic holiday scene: You unwrap a brand new game console, complete with all the games on your wishlist. After weeks of waiting, it’s time to sit back, cocoa in-hand, fire up the machine, and...wait for all of the updates to load. Maneuvering through setup screens and software updates is the worst part of…Read more...

Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game—and never let the fear of donating the wrong thing keep you from giving generously whenever you can. Truly, when you’re giving from the heart, there is no “wrong” donation, but there are certainly some that are more useful than others, so if you’re…Read more...

PlayStation 5 DualSense wireless controllers are selling for $50 right now at Walmart, and it’s the lowest price since their release. If you’re the only PS5 player in your family, consider this your Christmas present for yourself. You deserve it.

We all fell in love with Wordle this year, and by “we” I mean all of us nerds who have five minutes to kill over coffee each morning and choose to do so with a word game. I’ve personally spent most of the year perfecting my Wordle strategy, and finding alternative games to occupy me once I’ve completed that day’s…Read more...

As one year end and a new one begins, there’s always the resolution to vaguely “travel more.” I’ve never known anyone to resolve to “travel less,” but when it comes to sticking to your resolutions—including those related to travel—specificity is key. If you’re going to “travel more,” you need to plan ahead now and…Read more...

When you’re moving from Windows to Mac, it’s a challenge to get used to macOS’s way of quitting apps. On Windows, you click the red X button in the window to quit most apps. On your Mac, it’s a crapshoot. The red X may close the app, but it could also just close the window, leaving the app running in the background.…Read more...

Pickling is an ancient art of preservation. Without it, many of our ancestors would’ve died of starvation or malnutrition, especially in the dead of winter. That’s particularly true in the Baltics where freezing temperatures wreak havoc on the soil and vegetation as early as November. So it’s no surprise that some of…Read more...