Lifehacker

The server drops off your bill after you treat yourself to a big restaurant dinner. You pat your pockets for your wallet, mentally calculating the tip in your head—but you’re still patting your pockets. And you’re coming up empty. You don’t have your wallet. What now?

Moon fans and casual lunar observers: If everything goes according to plan, the full moon in March will rise on Friday, March 18. Known as the Worm Moon, it will be brightest at around 3:20 a.m. ET. This is the last full moon before spring begins on March 22, and thus it marks the end of an interminable winter.

It’s the time of year when gardeners are itching to get some plants in the ground—but if you live in a climate zone where it’s still too early, there’s another project you can tackle now to kick-start this year’s garden. If you’re looking to maximize your space, take advantage of more direct sunlight, or just design…Read more...

During Apple’s big “Peek Performance” event yesterday, the company unveiled a bunch of new products and chips coming this year. One of them was the third-gen iPhone SE, offering customers the essential iPhone experience at a reasonable price. What could be better? Well, the phone, for one. It’s good, but it’s not…Read more...

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We’ve already covered why you should stop using dryer sheets—now it’s time to vanquish the next unnecessary step in your laundry routine: fabric softener. I know, you like how it makes your clothes feel! (And smell.) If you’re a longtime user, you’d be forgiven for thinking in fabric softener’s absence, all your…Read more...

A lot of people daydream about starting their own garden. Whether it’s in your yard or in containers on your deck or windowsill, the idea of growing fresh vegetables and fruits seems like a delightful use of your property and time. It’s also a potential budget boon, as growing your own food can be a lot cheaper than…Read more...

Windows 11 shipped with a “dark mode,” but not a good one. It’s more like a dark theme, missing features you’ve come to expect from other platforms. Dark mode should automatically kick in at sunset, or an hour of your choosing. It should be easy to turn on and off, preferably from a quick settings panel. Neither of tho…Read more...

Windows PCs and laptops are designed to automatically go to sleep when you aren’t using them. This is a good thing: It helps save battery life and extends the life of your computer. But sometimes, you don’t want it to go to sleep, maybe because you want to run a background scan overnight, or you want to download a…Read more...

Want to hide parts of a screenshot that contain personal information, such as your home address or credit card number? That’s a good idea, but you should stop using tools that pixelate, blur, or use other cool effects like swirls to hide this information—it’s almost like baiting strangers into trying to see what’s…Read more...

Fan of March Madness? Or watching several sports at once? Firefox has a built-in picture-in-picture mode that lets you pop out an unlimited number of videos in floating browsers. That means you can watch multiple videos, and you can have each of them on top of every other window on your computer. If you have a second…Read more...

Blueberries are a popular pancake inclusion. They’re a very breakfast-y fruit—there is literally a cereal called “Blueberry Morning”—and they add a nice pop of color to an otherwise beige dish. Also: They just taste good. They’re sweet and slightly sour, the perfect counterbalance to sweet, buttery pancakes. But…Read more...

At long last, winter is almost over, and it’s nearly spring planting time—in fact, there are some vegetables you should start planting right now. As you return to the soil this season to (hopefully) be dazzled by your very own homegrown tomatoes and basil this summer, consider using an unorthodox—but effective—trick…Read more...

Organization can make or break any travel experience. Sure, it’s tempting to romanticize the life of the rugged backpacker, but there’s probably room for a laptop or phone in that backpack. And if you have a laptop or phone, then you can and should make yourself an ultimate travel spreadsheet to help you manage your…Read more...

Apple CEO Tim Cook took the digital stage today, March 8, to announce a host of new products from the company. The presentation was heavily focused on performance, highlighting how all of Apple’s new devices sported powerful Apple silicon processors at their core. From the A15 to the M1—and even to a brand new chipset…Read more...

Windows 11 doesn’t just come with a new coat of paint. There are many new features and redesigned elements here, from the widget panel, to the quick settings, to dedicated virtual desktops. And they all come with their very own, brand new keyboard shortcuts.

There are a lot of bad decisions you might make if a deer appears in front of you in the road while you’re driving. You’ll be startled, it will freeze, and your brain will sound the alarm that you should do something now—but please, avoid the urge to swerve around it.

I do not know if you are aware, but I recently traveled from Portland to New York City to participate in a little collective action. While acting collectively, I also ate collectively with co-workers both old and new. One evening, after a day of marching and chanting, we went out for Korean BBQ, which (naturally) led…Read more...

Anyone who’s bathed with a loofah knows: Its lathering skills are legendary. No other soap carrier can hold a sud to the loofah’s ability to generate copious, instantaneous foam at the slightest brush across your skin. And the volume! A wash cloth could never.

Like the Trash folder on a Mac, the Recycle Bin seems like a pretty important part of Windows. If you accidentally delete something, you can always get it back (unless you’re a Shift + Delete person). But it’s time to question the need for a Recycle Bin on your Windows machine, because far too often, it becomes yet…Read more...

Ever wanted to merge a few different PDF files into a single document? You might have googled third-party apps or found sites to do it online, but your Mac actually has a built-in tool that allows you to merge PDFs instantly. It’s built right into Finder, and it’s been hiding in plain sight for a while.Read more...

Across much of the world, WhatsApp is now the default messaging app (except, of course, in the U.S.). And that’s mostly for good reason—it’s free, it’s fast, and it’s end-to-end encrypted. But one side effect of WhatsApp’s popularity is it compresses the hell out of every photo and video you share. Sometimes, you have…Read more...

Gardening is power. Sure, you might think of gardening as the hobby of grandmotherly types, but gardening is all about mankind’s endless battle to dominate and control the world. We see a plot of land covered in happy native flora and we decide, “Nope. Today you will do exactly as I say, no matter how much time,…Read more...

I don’t know why, but it’s undeniably easier to believe something you hear in the middle of the night. “Sure,” you think, sitting in the lonely glow of your TV, probably drunk, “maybe I could lose 20 pounds a month by taking an herbal pill,” or “maybe I can keep food from slopping all over my chest when I eat.” So you…Read more...

Getting ready in the morning sucks. You’re groggy, light hurts your eyes, you’re stumbling around, and you’re suddenly thinking about all the stuff you have to do in the coming hours until you can crawl back into bed. How are you supposed to look put-together under these conditions?

You can be a successful, high-functioning adult and still not know how to ride a bike. Or how to roll a joint. Or whether certain animals are mythical or real. That’s why I recently asked Lifehacker readers to share those lessons they learned embarrassingly late in life.

I love iceberg lettuce. It may not taste like much, but the cool, crisp crunch it brings to meat-and-cheese-heavy salads (such as the glorious wedge) and salty, mayo-y sandwiches (such as a tuna salad situation) is iconic. I know romaine has more “flavor,” but that “flavor” is “leaf,” and you should be seasoning your…Read more...

Spring is my favorite time for gardening. Nobody else has gotten their plants in the ground yet, so you feel like an overachiever; you don’t need to toil under the hot sun (although you might get a bit muddy); and I’m always amazed at what can thrive amid the frost.

The Oculus Quest—now known as Meta Quest—is lots of fun, but without a screen you can watch with them, it’s hard to know how your kids are using it. VR parental controls are lacking, but you can still set up some restrictions using other features and devices.

With mask and travel restrictions lifting, you may be considering a long-distance vacation with your family. If you’re planning to fly to another country, everyone will need a passport, including your children. But don’t expect to get it done quickly (without paying a pretty penny, and even then, “quickly” is…Read more...

When the U.S. government announced in January that every household would be able to request four free tests, we noted that four tests don’t go very far. (My own household, for example, contains five people.) While that’s still true, the offering has doubled: You can now request a second order of tests.

Hairspray is a tricky devil: It can be suffocating, it can make you feel itchy and stifled, it can make your hair crunchy and painful to brush. And yet, when you’ve put in serious time with a curling iron and would rather not see all your effort go to waste by lunchtime, hairspray is your savior. Some of that bad…Read more...

It’s a bad time to buy a new car—if you can even find the vehicle you want, you’ll probably be paying above sticker price to get it. But it’s a very bad time to lease a new auto. According to Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, it is, in fact, a “staggeringly poor time to be leasing,” and…Read more...

The promise of the smart home is usually about what you can do while you’re there. You can set the lights to turn on as you walk in the door, or program the thermostat to begin to cool things down when it knows you’re leaving work. But you might not think about how all your smart devices can be configured to work for…Read more...

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We’ve already covered what you should never put in your dishwasher—but are you aware of the many unexpected items you can put on its magical racks? Not only can it sanitize your glassware, it can also clean the heck out of other household items and personal gear you may not be washing enough, either because you’re…Read more...

The need for roofs is universal. No matter where or how you live, having a roof over your head is vital to protect you from the elements and give you a secure home. If you own your roof–or, rather, the home it’s attached to—you know it can be a source of anxiety in spite of its necessity. If you’ve ever woken up in…Read more...

Too many interesting articles, and not enough hours in the day—that’s the problem many of us have struggled with as long as we’ve been online. You come across something you want to read, but you don’t have the time to do so right now, and you know you won’t remember where to hunt it down again later. Back in the late…Read more...

Fitness tech manufacturer Fitbit has issued a voluntary recall of roughly one million of their Ionic smartwatches sold in the United States following reports that the product’s battery overheats to the point of burning the wearer’s skin, according to an announcement from the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC).…Read more...

Modern MacBooks feature exceptional battery life, but like most batteries, they will degrade over time. Around a year after you buy a MacBook, its battery begins to show some performance issues, and their ability to hold a charge diminishes the longer you use them. There’s not much you can do to stop this process from…Read more...

A lot of people talk about saving veggie scraps for stock (as they should), but too many sleep on the sauce scrap bag. Functionally, the process is similar: Gather your vegetable peels, butts, and other assorted ephemera and put them in a freezer bag; put the bag in the freezer; retrieve it the next time you make stock…Read more...

It’s always hard to know when the right time is to buy new tech. It feels like something new is always around the corner, but it only comes out after you drop some cash on a now-obsolete paper weight. Luckily, this is your alert, your red flag, your sign from God to not buy these Apple products today. Why? Because the…Read more...

Tile is beautiful, durable, and the perfect material to sleep on when you’re hungover. It’s a natural choice for damp areas like kitchens, bathrooms, and mudrooms because it tolerates water well and is easy to clean. Tile is so durable and seemingly impervious to dirt and grime, in fact, that we sometimes make the…Read more...

Back when it was first released, we called Live Text the best new feature in iOS 15, and it’s not hard to see why—the tool can recognize any text in any photo (or within the camera view) so you can copy and share it. But the more we use it, the more annoying we find it can be. When you’re in the camera view, for…Read more...

In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Americans have called for boycotts of Russian goods in order to show their support for the Ukrainian people. Republican and Democratic leaders alike have specifically called for the removal of Russian vodkas from shelves; one tavern owner in Bend, Ore. went so far as…Read more...

Deciphering and understanding your partner’s likes, dislikes, and interests in the bedroom can often feel like you’re both speaking a foreign language to each other. For example, you might prefer to cuddle before and after sex to show how much you care while your partner might prefer positive (and even dirty)…Read more...

The first time you heard about critical race theory, you were probably being told that it was under attack. Or perhaps that it is being used to brainwash your kids in school. At the very least, it’s anti-American, right? Local headlines from all over the country continue to stoke the debate over the term. But when you…Read more...

Hulu is building up a library of excellent limited series which already includes the likes of Dopesick and Pam & Tommy. Now you can add another one to your list with another new series based on a true story, The Dropout.Read more...

This week we are welcoming another episode of one of the spiciest new television shows to our screens. Pam & Tommy is bringing us the true tale behind actress Pamela Anderson and drummer Tommy Lee’s famous sex tape scandal.Read more...

After years of waiting, Matt Reeves’ dark and gritty reboot of The Batman has finally hit screens. For those heading out to see the 3-hour extravaganza this week, you may be wondering if The Batman follows in the comic book movie tradition of having a post-credits scene? We’re here to answer that question.