Lifehacker

Mere weeks ago, in the Before Times, I got an email from a reader asking whether it could be worth using your tax return to buy a mobile phone.Read more...

At the beginning of this week we asked you what you think airlines should change, once the pandemic is over and life returns to something close to normal. We received over 60 comments, with many of you noting that it’s unlikely airlines will change (at least for the better). Which may be true, but hey, we’re trying to…Read more...

There’s a belief that you can use your smartphone to accurately measure your SpO2—that’s your blood oxygen level. And while it would certainly be handy right now to have easy access to that figure—the same one you get when your doctor sticks your finger in that little clamp during a checkup—I have the sad duty to…Read more...

I have been FaceTime-ing and Zooming my ass off recently, and I have found it helps to have an activity, a theme or some point of focus to orient the calls around. Other than simply a shared low-key—but still crushing!—feeling of existential dread, anyway. Virtual happy hours are fine and good, but not everyone…Read more...

When my husband’s parents returned from a trip to Florida back at the beginning of March, I picked them up from the airport and my son and I elbow-bumped them in greeting in place of our usual hugs. We haven’t been within six feet of them since that night, despite the fact that they live a mere seven-minute drive from…Read more...

It’s Wednesday, which means we’ve officially made it through half the week. Why not reward yourself by streaming something new and timely tonight? We have a few suggestions on what to watch.Read more...

We’ve now been sheltering at home long enough that many of us are starting to wonder what to do about ongoing dental care. Some of us are dealing with aching wisdom teeth, unfinished root canals, implants and cavities, as well as aching teeth or gums. Others are wondering about the risks associated with postponing on…Read more...

Accidentally summoning an AI helper like Google Assistant by inadvertently speaking the wake word (or something that sounds enough like it to fool a computer) has become a fact of life ever since Siri was first introduced. It can be a chronic problem too, depending on your living situation and how you use your smart…Read more...

The government has granted a temporary reprieve to student loan borrowers paying back federal loans. But while it’s nice to not have to pay your loans for a few months, it’s a confusing situation for one group of borrowers in particular: those looking to get their remaining loans wiped out by the Public Service Loan…Read more...

Summer is traditionally a time for conquering your fear of rollercoasters or jamming out on the lawn with your crew at a music festival—but not this summer. The coronavirus pandemic hasn’t slowed nearly enough to make large scale summer gatherings seem advisable, or even possible, and many major events have already…Read more...

My home office is tucked into the corner of my studio apartment that’s farthest away from my west-facing windows—but as the coronavirus quarantine has progressed, I have found myself less and less interested in sitting down at my tax-deductible desk and more and more interested in completing my work while standing at…Read more...

May is right around the corner, and when it arrives it will bring with it a ton of new content to Netflix.

“Just stay home” is not as relaxing as it sounds. Some of us are performing our actual jobs from our couches and kitchen tables, and many of us have taken on additional labor like schooling children, or cooking three entire meals a day. We’ve also had to become our own bartenders which, as it turns out, is a job I do…Read more...

Deciding when to try to conceive a baby can be complicated during the best of times. Even when your jobs are stable, are you sure you’re really financially ready? Even if you’d like to wait a little longer, is your age starting to creep up enough that you worry your window may be closing? What about sibling age gaps…Read more...

In these crazy, quarantine-addled days, I give extra credit to companies giving their communications software a second look and concluding, “That’s not enough.” It’s why Microsoft Teams now supports up to nine people on a video call, and why WhatsApp is currently testing group voice and video calls that support up to…Read more...

Full Motion TV Wall Mount | $35 | Amazon | Use code RGLKNST8Read more...

I know that my Fitbit isn’t meant to be used diagnostically, but I’m also sure I’m not the first person to have noticed a correlation between, say, an increase in my resting heart rate a few days before the onset of a winter cold. That’s why I was very excited (and personally validated) to learn that Fitbit is now…Read more...

Linksys is currently forcing password resets for anyone with an account on its “Smart Wi-Fi” service. This behavior might seem random, or even alarming, but it’s part of an effort on Linksys’ part to mitigate malware attacks that targeted its users earlier in April.

They say rules are made to be broken, but you have to understand the rules before you can break them effectively. Cocktailing has a lot of rules, and a lot of rule breakers, but Stanley Tucci is breaking Negroni rules in a way that has me questioning if I really understood the drink in the first place. (I am,…Read more...

When everything sucks, you might as well get up and dance. Or curl up and cry. You know what helps with both those things? Music. That’s why I turned to my Lifehacker coworkers to find out what songs have been getting them through the last few weeks. Here are a few highlights—plus the entire playlist on Spotify—for…Read more...

If you’ve spent your days in quarantine interacting with friends and family via Animal Crossing or bingeing every season of your favorite show, you’re not alone. Retreating to simple pleasures seems like a natural response to the stress we’re all living through—and according to new research, indulging in these …Read more...

Looking for something fun to watch tonight?

Word on the street is a lot of you are playing Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square Enix’s dramatization of An Inconvenient Truth. And if you are, you know it’s mostly linear. Sure, some sections let you direct Cloud and friends off the main plot for a sojourn into side-quest suburbia. But Final Fantasy VII Remake is…Read more...

It’s always annoying when you are watching a movie on your phone and accidentally stop or skip through it when you adjust your grip and touch the wrong part of the screen. Netflix seems to have heard our collective irritated groan and has added a helpful screen-lock function to its Android app that will make those…Read more...

Most of the time, using your face to unlock your phone is a seamless way to access your device. However, now that we’re all wearing masks while we’re out and about (right?) that feature is more of an annoying nuisance than a great hands-free way to use your device.Read more...

Now that we’re all doing more Zoom calls, Google hangouts and FaceTime sessions, we’ve started to run into that awkward moment where we might be ready to end the conversation, but the other person isn’t picking up the hint—and since most of us are physically distanced and sheltering in place right now, it’s not like…Read more...

We are now at a point where the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States number in the hundreds of thousands, while the death toll is in the tens of thousands. Although these numbers are grim, the rate of increase is slowing down, a sign that all of our hand-washing, staying at home and physical…Read more...

With everything going on in the world right now, it may feel impossible (or even selfish) to try to be happy. Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, joined us from her home to share some of her tips on how to try to be happy (or at the very least, cope with sadness) at this difficult time.Read more...

Due to the surge in fancy home baking, it’s still quite hard to find flour, eggs, and yeast, but mixes remain abundant, pancake mix being among them. I—renowned lazy lady—was already a fan of the complete, just-add-water pancake mix, particularly since I discovered I could use it to create not quite authentic, but…Read more...

If you don’t typically file a tax return, you’re running out of time to request the $500-per-child coronavirus relief payment for your kids.

It sounds like yet another sibling argument. Or stomping feet followed by a slammed door. It sounds like loud voices and defiance or those two particularly whiny words parents everywhere love: I’m bored. It sounds like a lot of different things, but what it actually might be is sadness.Read more...

As part of our new pandemic preparedness lifestyle, many of us have turned to gardening, to the point there are now widespread seed shortages. Given that seeds also need nutrient-rich soil to grow in, you might be wondering about how to turn your food scraps into compost. After all, who wants to pay for compost when…Read more...

Let’s say you’ve started your first job. Or, maybe, you’ve simply started to think about saving for retirement. Your employer offers a 401(k), but you don’t know where to get started (or even what that is).

By default, your Samsung Galaxy smartphone saves screenshots as crappier .JPEG images. Nothing against the good ol’ JPEG, especially if you need to save as much space on your device as possible. They just don’t look as good as the alternative that (almost) every other Android device uses as a default—the mighty, …Read more...

Each week in this crisis seems to have a theme to it. There was the week in early March when many of us experienced lockdown for the first time, an innocent week of home workouts and sourdough loaves and hope that this would all blow over pretty quickly. Just a little while back, there was the week that we were all…Read more...

Say what you will about Bing as a search engine, but it does have some gorgeous wallpapers that make the entire experience almost worth it. There are plenty of websites you can use to see the pretty pictures Microsoft posts to Bing daily, and Microsoft even offers its own tool to bring make Bing wallpapers your…Read more...

If you have a Nintendo account, now’s a good time to make sure that you have two-step verification set up on that account to keep it secure.

The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic is the perfect backdrop for scammers to try and sucker you with schemes. We’ve seen fake coronavirus tracker apps and fake charities, and now coronavirus-related phishing scams are on the rise, too.Read more...

Like most baking, crafting the perfect pot brownie is practically a science. You gotta de-carboxylate the bud, infuse the butter and (ideally) calculate the dosage. But once they’re baked and divided into responsibly-portioned squares, there remains one final, expert move: a quick press with the waffle maker.Read more...

Back in your college days, a crusty bong with caked-on resin and brown bong water might have seemed fine (it wasn’t), but in the middle of a pandemic, cleaning your bong is actually really important, though you may want to switch to edibles for the time being so you’re less at risk of contracting Covid-19. But if you…Read more...

Oil companies will now pay you to take their damn oil. No, you are not that high. Well, maybe you are because it’s 4/20, but you’re still reading that correctly.

When you apply for a new credit card or decide to take out a loan, you read the fine print—or at least, you’re supposed to read the fine print. You probably check the interest rate and the fee schedule, then let your eyes glaze over for the rest.

We’re heading into another week of travel restrictions, lockdowns and searching out more creative ways to get comfortable with staying home around the clock. Yet as hard as it may be to believe, we will eventually return to something like normal life. We’ll eventually be getting on flights again, whether for work or…Read more...

Another week means a new search for things to watch and do online.Read more...

Back in the days when kids actually went into classrooms to learn, Netflix made much of its educational documentaries available for free to teachers who wanted to stream them in their classrooms. With the pandemic forcing most kids back into the home for some indefinite “remote learning,” Netflix has dropped many of…Read more...

The last time I got groceries, it only happened after a solid seven days of refreshing my cart periodically, sometimes constantly, in order to secure a delivery window. A new web-based tool could make the process a lot less painful for you, provided you live in an area where curbside pickup is an option.

Deglazing a pan after searing is an obvious, almost reflexive part of cooking a steak or a pork chop, but it’s not so common when frying bacon. But like chops and steaks, bacon is just a piece of meat, and deglazing—aka scraping all those delicious browned bits up with the help of little liquid—ensures you don’t leave…Read more...

Apple’s upcoming second-generation iPhone SE is available for preorder from several online retailers, but if you’re a Verizon or AT&T customer and your account is eligible for an upgrade, Walmart’s preorder deal can save you half the price of the device.

50% off Dawn To Yawn CBD | Sunday Scaries