Lifehacker

Bathrooms are notorious for being one of the most expensive rooms in a home to renovate. Between tiling, plumbing, storage, and fixtures, the costs can add up faster than you’d probably like. However, if you want to enhance the look of your bathroom without spending big bucks on a full-scale renovation, a few minor…Read more...

This is year is my first year as a gardener. I think it’s going well, especially when you consider I have a history of killing every house plant I have ever attempted to keep alive (even air plants). Soon I will have nurtured into existence corn, tomatoes, and a truly absurd amount of tomatillos, and I am excited.Read more...

In the wake of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, AirPods Pro have joined the ranks of Apple devices getting beta updates. Apple will now release regular beta updates for AirPods Pro that can be installed by anyone using an Apple Developer account.

It’s no secret that professional athletes hit the weight room hard. If you search YouTube for your favorite (male) athlete’s name, plus “workout” or “gym,” you can probably find video evidence of them crushing a 495-pound deadlift or pressing huge kettlebells like they’re nothing. But that kind of training is overkill…Read more...

The “continue watching” section is the first thing you see when you open your favorite streaming service, and it often has a helpful list of series that you want to keep streaming...but it can also be filled with shows that you’ve given up on, or shows that you have completed but still show up because you didn’t…Read more...

Laundry stripping is a method of removing detergent buildup, as well as any fabric softeners, body oils, or hard-water minerals that have built up in your clothes over time. Although laundry stripping is a long-standing technique, it’s been in the spotlight again due to some viral social media videos. And although t…Read more...

The post-vax slutty summer is happening all around us, but some participants aren’t actually post-vax. The vaccine has been free and widely available for months now, but about half the population still isn’t vaccinated against COVID-19. A portion of those unvaccinated people is still interested in dating and if you’re…Read more...

The 2020 Olympics—which are taking place in 2021—have gotten off to a questionable start, beginning officially today against a backdrop of athletes testing positive for COVID-19 and a climate of unrest as many Japanese citizens have expressed that they don’t want the Games to continue.

There are multiple approaches one can take to remove the round, slippery pit from the creamy flesh of an avocado. You can squeeze everything—pit and all—out into a bowl, but that only works if you need mashed avocado. If you want pretty wedges or slices for aesthetic toast, though, you need to get that thing out…Read more...

The Smith machine is probably the most polarizing piece of gym equipment. Every cheap commercial gym has one, and it’s many folks’ introduction to squats and other barbell lifts. But it’s not a barbell, or anything close to one, and hardcore gym bros scoff at it.Read more...

The second season of Apple TV’s fan-favorite comedy, Ted Lasso, premieres tomorrow, July 23 on Apple TV+. Ted Lasso is one of those rare TV series beloved by fans and critics alike within its first season, one that everyone swears you “have to watch” even though it’s exclusive to a premium streaming service many…Read more...

Not all advice need be professional. Sometimes your problems merit a bit of unvarnished honesty from a dude equipped with nothing more than a computer and a conscience. Luckily for you, I’m that guy. Welcome back to Tough Love. (If you’d like to seek my advice, email me at sblum@lifehacker.com)

With aeration, watering, mowing, and weeding, it can be a lot of work to keep a pristine grass lawn. But there are alternatives to traditional grass, like desert-style landscaping that takes minimal attention and watering, or rain gardens that have plants and shrubs designed to collect rainwater and filter toxins.Read more...

With the federal student loan forbearance period expiring in October, most borrowers will have to start paying off their student loans for the first time since March 2020—if that deadline stands. But will the moratorium be extended again? Here’s a look at the latest on student loan forgiveness.Read more...

Back in February of this year, during a brief hotel stay, I made the mistake of granting my 4-year-old son unfettered access to the television. This meant that he spent the greater part of a day watching Nickelodeon, a network very invested in creating the next generation of PAW Patrol enthusiasts, as judged by the…Read more...

YouTube’s music collection is unparalleled—so many songs and albums missing from every other service are often available on YouTube. That’s why, if you find yourself in a situation where you want an offline copy of an obscure song that you can’t find anywhere else, downloading songs from YouTube might be your only…Read more...

Spoiler alert! This video will keep your food from going bad.Read more...

Apple’s magnetic MagSafe Battery Pack for iPhone 12 costs $99. It charges the iPhone using the MagSafe magnets at the back of the iPhone. It’s a typical Apple accessory. It only comes in white, works out of the box, and charges using Lightning.

We say we hate reboots. We’ll happily go on and on about how we’d much rather have something newer, fresher, more original. And yet—remakes and re-dos remain reliably big business.

It’s notoriously difficult to gauge tone when you’re communicating in a written format. Because of that, people often use exclamation points to inject their prose with an air of levity, but it’s easy to get carried away: Use too many exclamation points and you’ll come off as overzealous, but if you fail to use any at…Read more...

Clamps are an important tool for temporarily securing wood together during carpentry, woodworking, furniture making, and other projects—and there are as many different types of clamps as there are uses. fusing pieces of wood together and making a strong bond. If you don’t have the right clamp for the job, though,…Read more...

A new security vulnerability has been discovered in the latest versions of Windows that hackers could use to remotely install programs, steal data and passwords, and even lock users out of their PCs. Microsoft says that all versions of Windows newer than Windows 10 version 1809 are affected—including the Windows 11…Read more...

Now that we’re halfway through 2021, it’s a perfect time to revise your budget and see if you’re on track with your financial goals. With all the pandemic-related tax credits, consumer price inflation, and looming expiration of the pause on student loan payments, it’s quite possible that your spending and expenses will…Read more...

Andrew Zimmern has eaten a lot of food, much of which most of us will never get a chance to try, but I sincerely believe he wishes we could taste it all. With a stated goal of “promoting cultural acceptance, tolerance, and understanding through food,” Andrew’s body of work has a common theme: getting people interested…Read more...

You might think to switch out light fixtures or upgrade your entryway when you’re planning home improvements, but another way to update your deck, railings, and floors is to add a new wood stain. Picking the right one is everything, though, as too dark can make a room look smaller, and too light might not match your…Read more...

After spending some time in the sun, you’re supposed to reapply your sunscreen—every two hours, according to FDA guidelines. But what if you aren’t in the sun that whole time? And what if you use a mineral sunscreen, which doesn’t get “used up” the way some kinds of chemical sunscreens do? It turns out you still need…Read more...

It’s been about five years since the release of Suicide Squad, the DC Extended Universe’s attempt to make a “funny” superhero film in response to the success of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. That didn’t exactly work—though the film made bank, director David Ayer objected to the studio’s attempt to lighten the tone…Read more...

I’m sure I need not remind you of the Murder Hornet Saga of 2020, but you should know that 2021 is trying to top what seemed uptoppable—by gifting us (or at least Texas) with the emergence of a type of arachnid some folks lovingly refer to as “acid-spitting ‘land lobsters.’” To be fair, that’s not a totally accurate…Read more...

A recent LendingTree survey revealed that 41% of Gen Zers have relied on TikTok for financial advice in the previous month, and indeed, hashtags like #FinTok or #Money have hundreds of millions of views. But are these bite-sized videos actually giving out good advice? Often not—even comically so. In many cases, the…Read more...

I’m told I have a terrific smile when there are no cameras around, but the second someone points a lens my direction, I turn into a robot who cannot muster a genuine grin. I look like I’m being held hostage and forced to send a false signal of comfort back home with a ransom note. It’s this “this is fine” meme…Read more...

Instagram recently reminded everyone it is “no longer a photo sharing app or a square photo sharing app,” and indeed, parent company Facebook wants it to be the hub for sharing videos of all kinds, from TikTok-style Reels to YouTube-like longer videos on IGTV. As the number of videos on Instagram grows, so does the…Read more...

When I committed to skateboarding in June, I had ambitions for it to last longer than my one-month Lifehacker Fitness Challenge. I mostly kept my goals to myself, though, as not to jinx my probability of getting through the month successfully. Even so, comments came in from older skaters sharing their experiences…Read more...

Baseboards serve a pretty basic purpose, and they serve it well: hide the part of a room where the drywall meets the flooring. Sometimes, though, they’ve got to go, whether it’s because you need to remove them to complete another project, or whether they’re outdated and you’re looking to replace them altogether. …Read more...

Exercise offers any number of benefits, helping to prevent or lessen the effects of chronic health conditions like anxiety, depression, heart disease, and high blood pressure, among others. It is, in so many ways, an essential component of good health.Read more...

This may be a wildly unpopular opinion, but cooking on a gas grill is cheating. There is something both primal and humbling about cooking over an open flame that you started yourself, but you have to let go of a small portion of your ego, and accept that the fire is the one that makes the rules here. (Let’s be…Read more...

We don’t really have action movie stars these days—not like we did in the ‘80s and ‘90s, anyway. Who hath begat the likes of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone? No one comes to mind other than lower-tier (and certainly lower budget-commanding) actors the likes of Jason Statham and, somehow, Liam…Read more...

There are times Apple knocks it out of the park with its accessories. AirPods, for example, provide a better experience than other Bluetooth headphones. But there are times that Apple’s own first-party accessories fall short of what’s available from third-party manufactures, like the case of Apple’s $99 magnetic …Read more...

It’s no secret that financial literacy is a problem in the U.S., as less than a third of adults understand basic financial literacy topics by the time they hit their forties. But you don’t need to be an expert to get by, either, as knowing some of the basics can go a long way. Fortunately, there are plenty of online…Read more...

We’ve all seen it: a professional acquaintance searching for a job, publicly and dramatically venting on social media for someone to hire them. We may have been that person ourselves. In my case, I have an acquaintance who, every week, would update LinkedIn with a reminder that, yes, they were still unemployed—with an…Read more...

Depending on when you were born and how much TV your parents let you watch, your first introduction to paprika might have been through the Nick Jr. show Blue’s Clues. Born to Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper (so glad she kept her name), this baby spice was the youngest member of the Blue’s Clues household until her brother…Read more...

We’ve often discussed how to exercise in the morning, from how to actually get out of bed to what you eat once you do. But it’s also worth taking a minute to ask why. What do morning runners know that the rest of us don’t? Do they actually enjoy it? And how can you and I harness that enthusiasm?

Chrome OS users have reported a severe bug in the latest system update that locks them out of their Chromebooks. For some reason, Chrome OS fails to recognize users’ Google account passwords when they attempt to log in after installing version update 91.0.4462.165. The botched update may also be causing other serious…Read more...

Feeding the birds can be fun—the problem is that feeding ducks and geese at the pond is much more detrimental than most of us think. Giving your local aquatic wildlife food from your pantry not only alters their diet, but changes the environment, too. Here’s why we should just let the ducks get by on their own.Read more...

A proliferation of well-intended, remote “check-in meetings” during the pandemic has only made work more difficult. According to surveys, most workers say they want fewer meetings, and that those meetings are making them less productive, but there are ways to rein in all the “touchpoints” gumming up your calendar.…Read more...

Not everyone who needs help will ask for it, and not everyone who asks for help will do it in the same way. Sometimes, what we know as a “cry for help,” won’t exactly seem like it’s coming from a point of desperation. This is why it helps to know the ways in which someone in a vulnerable state might be pleading for…Read more...

Thoroughly learning a subject takes more than just reading about it, or watching videos. It helps to discuss and apply your new knowledge, which is why it’s so smart to pair up with a classmate to study together. What if you’re studying on your own, though? It turns out you don’t need your study buddy to be…Read more...

I only got my two most impactful jobs, each of which opened a number of other opportunities, because I contacted the right person at the right time. One job was at a genetics lab, and the other was a science writing position, and neither was previously advertised; I got them both after sending out lots and lots of…Read more...

Unlike some services (looking at you, iCloud), Gmail is pretty lenient with its free tier. You get 15GB of storage between Gmail and Google Drive, and for many people, it’s good enough. But a lot of people have been using Gmail for a decade or more now, and it’s not hard to accumulate 15GB of data over that kind of…Read more...

Buying a new laptop—a good one—is a costly endeavor. Even base model MacBooks costs more than a thousand dollars, and it’s much the same story for a Dell XPS.

Finding mold in any part of your home can be cause for concern, but it’s also a fairly common occurrence—anywhere there is dampness, there is a chance for mold to grow. While mold can be harmful to your health, expensive professional removal isn’t always necessary; it can often be removed safely with the right…Read more...