Lifehacker

There’s been a lot of discussion in recent weeks about privilege—what it is, who has it and who is willing to recognize and acknowledge they have it. White parents should be at the top of that list because, as Jen Lumanlan of Your Parenting Mojo points out, our privileges are vast and they run deep:Read more...

Free trial periods are a handy way to test out whether you really want to pay for a streaming service—or to simply binge-watch every season of a particular show and then bail.

I never liked the idea of “rings” for beta releases—especially for Windows 10. I always thought it was easier for regular people to understand the concept of a beta when it was split into “channels,” much as you’d find in your favorite web browser, rather than a “fast” and “slow” ring.Read more...

In our recent episode of The Upgrade on How to Protest, we learned a lot about what the police do and do not have the right to do when making an arrest. One of the most important things we learned is that the police will likely try to get a sample of your DNA, but that you do not have to—and should not—consent to it.…Read more...

Using your Google account to sign up for a website or app is a lot easier than making a new account and password each time, but it’s also riskier. A great alternative is to use an encrypted password manager to keep track of your accounts (and unique passwords), but you still have to make all those accounts in the…Read more...

Since Tax Day has been pushed back from April 15 to July 15, that means the deadline for requesting an extension has been delayed as well. That means you have until July 15, 2020 to request an extension to file your 2019 tax return.

Maybe you’re not into the idea of venturing too far from home yet, but you’re ready for a road trip and a change of scenery. Great—but look twice before you book your accommodations. You may be able to save a bit of money you can put back into your travel budget. The secret, according to Chris Dong at The Points Guy,…Read more...

I’m pleased to announce the return of Lifehacker’s Burning Questions column, in which I answer the health questions that people can’t—or don’t want to—google. As a reminder, this is not medical advice, and I’m not a doctor.Read more...

Yeah, that’s right—I’m one of those people on keto, the low-carb, high-fat diet some of you have lost your minds over. Don’t worry, I won’t sing the keto gospel, with my bullet-proof coffee in hand (that’s seriously disgusting, y’all, STOP IT) ... keto is just what works best for my myriad of food allergies and…Read more...

Just because our kids grow up doesn’t mean we stop being their parent. We still want to protect and guide them and watch them make all the best decisions for a happy, fulfilling life. But how much intervention is too much intervention when it comes to their romantic relationships? One mom asks: “What do you do when…Read more...

There are all sorts of ways to live the Lifehacker lifestyle, and not all of them look like the way I do it, which is usually to encounter a problem in my daily life and then google it (“How to cook murder hornet Lifehacker”).

Traveling with children whose last names are different than yours can get complicated. Maybe you’re a kickass aunt or uncle who likes to take your nieces and nephews to Disney World. Or you’re like me and simply didn’t change your last name when you got married, so your child does not have the same last name as you.

Remember when the coronavirus was brand new, and we were all worried about what its R might turn out to be? R, pronounced “R naught,” is a measure of how many people each infected person tends to pass an infection to. To stop a pandemic, we need to bring that number down to something smaller than 1. A tool called …Read more...

Apple has a new promotion where purchasing various iPads or Macs will score you a free pair of AirPods—regular AirPods, mind you, unless you want to pay an extra $90 for a discounted AirPods Pro (or $40 for regular AirPods with a wireless charging case).

The peaches in canned peaches are technically the same clingstone specimen you can buy fresh at the grocery store, but they are very much their own, unique product. Canned peaches are more supple and slurpable then their fuzzy counterparts, which sounds off-putting but is actually delightful. I could slurp those…Read more...

Using your phone while driving is not only dangerous, it’s illegal in most places. However, most of us rely on our smartphones for directions or for rocking out to music and podcasts in the car. Luckily, Google Maps has tons of hands-free navigation controls and helpful shortcuts and voice-integration for a handful of…Read more...

There are all kinds of ways you could get lost while traveling. You fall asleep on the train and miss a bunch of stops and when you wake up, the train is no longer in service. Your phone dies and Google or Apple Maps is no longer an option. Maybe you’ve lost your phone completely—and there goes your only map.

So you’ve started a new job and the company offers stock options as part of its benefits package. Maybe you have no idea what that means, or you’re not quite sure how to get started. Here are some basics you should know.

As far as meaty cooking projects go, ribs are a fairly easy one. Whether you’re smoking, grilling, baking or sous vide-ing, preparing an impressive rack is something most home cooks can master without too much distress. But there is one thing a lot of newbie rib cookers forget to do, and it can greatly mar an…Read more...

Maybe someday there will be a vaccine or a miracle cure for COVID-19. But if that occurs, it will not be immediately obvious from a news story that’s trumpeted across your TV or your social media feed. Big, important-looking studies come along all the time, and most turn out to be disappointing once you learn the…Read more...

The Five Mile Swamp Fire had been burning for nearly three days in the muddy swamps of Florida’s Santa Rosa County when firefighter Mike Facente arrived. Thick smoke hung over the area, acrid and pungent in the springtime air. High winds and low humidity aided the fire in growing to 2,000 acres by the time Facente…Read more...

We’re still months away from the “holiday 2020” season, which means we’re months away from the Xbox Series X existing in the wild. There’s a new Halo on the horizon, and we’ve all heard plenty about those teraflops, but beyond that, information has come out slower than self-serve frozen yogurt. With the runup to…Read more...

Have you ever walked through a library or bookstore and felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of books out there that you know you will never have time to read? Us too. While there’s always the chance that works of fiction will be turned into an easily digestible movie or TV series (which is not to say the adaptation…Read more...

If you don’t have in-unit laundry, you may find it difficult to find a clean pair of underwear between laundromat visits.Read more...

Google might soon truncate the full address of websites you visit. By only showing the domain name of a website in the address bar rather than the full URL, Google’s move could actually help people increase their security when browsing the web. And you can try this feature out right now.Read more...

Echo Dot w/ Clock | $35 | AmazonRead more...

It’s getting hot outside, the damn virus rates are going down in some areas but up in others, the kids are bored, pools and bikes are sold out, and life is feeling like it will never be normal again. It’s time to bury your kid’s toys in ice.

Google has made it harder to use YouTube as a music player over the last few years, and it’s easy to see why. A number of the extensions and apps that allowed you to stream music from YouTube without watching videos slowly went away into the ether. At the same time, Google started pushing its YouTube Music…Read more...

Coffee can make the world go round for some people. For those of us who run on caffeinated refreshments, it’s hard to imagine summer without cold brew, fall without pumpkin spice, dessert without espresso, and of course morning without hot java. Coffee’s not all just Maxwell House and Folgers; in fact, there are a ton…Read more...

I’ve tried to learn programming languages on my own using a bunch of different apps and online classes, but TwilioQuest might be the most fun I’ve had while trying to learn code. It started out as a game-like tutorial for developers to learn Twilio’s communication APIs, but expanded beyond its premise to become a…Read more...

You might’ve been a nervous flyer pre-pandemic, but there’s no question that getting on an airplane will be far more trepidatious for everyone as air travel slowly becomes a thing people do again. Owing to the health crisis of the past several months, planes around the world have been grounded, leaving us to wonder: W…Read more...

I’ve never been able to keep up a sport or activity without having a driving, maybe obsessive, reason for doing it. I often refer to these reasons as “goals,” but every now and then I have a conversation with someone who, while similarly motivated, doesn’t think of their training as goal-oriented at all. And I…Read more...

Given the need for physical distancing, it’ll be a while before many of us feel comfortable with an in-person personal training session. But given that pandemic life is leaving many of us all a little more sedentary than normal, establishing a fitness routine is even more important—and online personal training…Read more...

I am a fan of pounded meat. Whether it’s a chicken breast that’s been thwacked into tender submission or a crispy breaded pork schnitzel, I am delighted by the flat, supple results one gets from the application of a little violence. Most people prefer to pound their meat with a dedicated meat mallet or tenderizer, but…Read more...

Wearing a protective face mask is a crappy but necessary part of life right now—and that annoyance is perhaps strongest for wearers of glasses. The mere act of breathing (something that most experts consider to be quite important) shoots hot, wet air directly upward out of the mask and onto one’s glasses, rendering…Read more...

We previously showed you a hack that unlocked custom backgrounds for your Microsoft Teams video chats—allowing you to put yourself in front of an island, a static image of a room in your house or your favorite video game. Well, you can ignore that advice now, because Microsoft has officially rolled out this feature to…Read more...

The tech industry has a lot of work to do in the fight for racial justice and equality. But while hiring black employees and other under-represented minorities in the field is crucial, there are subtler issues that need to be addressed, too. That includes reflecting on and changing the racially insensitive terminology…Read more...

When I was in high school, I had a notebook that I passed around with two friends. We’d each take turns writing in it, handing it off in the hallways between classes like one endless spiral-bound note—texting before there was texting. We’d draw pictures, we’d complain about how boring biology class was, we’d make…Read more...

Cordless vacuums may be the wave of the future, but not all of us have upgraded to the fancy cord-free model that seemingly the entire Lifehacker staff swears by. For us plebeians stuck vacuuming with a machine plugged into the wall, the one constant drawback is the cord itself.

The old maxim that bigger is better hasn’t been true in the tech world for some time—especially in the realm of photography. Cameras have gotten smaller, better and more powerful with each passing year—so much so that the mini camera rigs built into our phones are able to produce images that rival some professional…Read more...

You don’t need to sanitize your groceries, you definitely shouldn’t wash your produce in disinfectants, and I really hope you’re taking our advice to not inject bleach. It’s time to add one more thing to the list of Things I Didn’t Think I’d Have to Say: Please do not use cleaning products on your skin or any other…Read more...

Last week, two black trans women were murdered. Friday, June 12 marked the fourth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, during which 49 people were shot and killed at an LGBTQ venue in Orlando. Friday was also the day the Trump administration announced it was rolling back an Obama-era regulation providing…Read more...

When workplaces around the country closed abruptly due to the coronavirus outbreak, a lot of people had to get used to working from home fast. In a best-case scenario, your employer volunteered to cover the costs of a faster internet connection, or a desk chair for your temporary home office.

What are our rights when it comes to protesting? How do we protest safely and effectively during this pandemic? We answer these questions and more this week with help from activists L.A. Kauffman and Charlene Carruthers. L.A. is a veteran grassroots organizer with over 35 years of experience in political activism and…Read more...

I have about seven bottles of cocktail bitters on my bar cart, but I really only use two—Angostura and orange—when making cocktails. It’s not that the other flavors are bad, it’s just that I rarely want an old fashioned made with grapefruit or lavender bitters. But a lemonade is an entirely different story.Read more...

After months spent at a standstill, travelers are finally starting to move about the globe again—or at least starting to think about it. And as government offices begin to ramp up operations once again, passport services are reopening in phases. If you’re planning ahead for a trip outside the country, here’s what you…Read more...

So you adopted a dog (or cat or bird). You’ve got the food, the bed and the toys, and now you’re wondering whether pet insurance is a good investment. What if your new companion gets sick or hurt? Could pet insurance help save their lives—and protect your wallet?

New versions of macOS usually mean better performance on Apple’s latest hardware, but your experience on older Macs—especially if you’ve installed the latest macOS on an unsupported model—might be spotty.Read more...

This week Netflix is dropping a ton of new content including several original films including “Feel the Beat” the story of a woman that fails on Broadway and returns to her hometown to train a group of young dancers for competition.

If you’re one of the millions of people who have either lost their jobs during the pandemic, or have had your hours or workload reduced, you may have considered applying to be a contact tracer. If this is the case—or if you’re just curious about how the process works—you can now enroll in a free online course on…Read more...