My phone plays many roles. It's a source of entertainment, a useful tool for work, a way to communicate with people, and more. These different uses don't always play nicely together. When I'm working, I don't want to be distracted by unnecessary calls, messages, and notifications, so I built a one-tap system to stop my phone from stealing my attention.

Android trackers used to lag far behind AirTags, but they've closed the gap considerably. Google's Find Hub now supports crowdsourced location finding, tracker sharing, and Ultra Wideband (UWB) precision finding when using compatible phones and trackers. AirTags still do a few things that Android trackers can't when using Google's Find Hub.

If you need a display for a Raspberry Pi project, the obvious solution is to buy a dedicated accessory specifically designed to work with your single-board computer. For many projects, however, a used $25 Kindle can actually be a better choice.

Phone and watch notifications are one of the most effective ways to share information from Home Assistant. A recent update to the Home Assistant Companion app quietly made these notifications even more powerful.

One of the best things about Waze is also one of the worst. The app lets users report hazards, which are then shared with every other Waze user on the same stretch of road. These alerts can be really useful, but they can quickly get incredibly annoying.

With so much music on streaming services, and more and more being added daily, it's not always easy to find music I really love among the millions of tracks. I use a cheap ESP32 board to make the process much easier.

A jailbroken Kindle can do a lot more than simply allow you to install better reading software such as KOReader. If you combine a Kindle with a Raspberry Pi, you may be surprised at what even an old Kindle is able to do.

It's always frustrating when you can no longer use a perfectly functional gadget because the company behind it shuts down the service or stops developing the software. Thankfully, the open-source community has found plenty of ways to keep using old devices that would otherwise become e-waste.

Cloud-based automation services such as Zapier and Make let you connect different services together to automate tasks without having to build everything from scratch. If you'd rather not have all your personal automations running in the cloud, n8n gives you a different option.

A colleague recently went to see The Prodigy live, and it made me nostalgic about my old PlayStation. Wipeout 2097 was one of the first games I owned for the console, and the song Firestarter still makes me think of the futuristic racing game. I really want to play it again, but instead of setting up RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi, I used an old phone.

The Raspberry Pi was once an easy recommendation for low-cost tinkering projects, running smart home software, and more. Recently, newer models have gotten so expensive that they're no longer low-cost. Here are some reasons why the older Raspberry Pi 3B+ still beats these newer models.

I'm approaching the limit of my free Google storage, and Gmail has started prompting me to pay for additional storage to keep using my account. While paying for more storage is a simple solution, it's not the only option.

We ask our smart home devices to do a lot for us, and rarely spare a moment to think about what life might be like for them. I decided to give some smart home devices personalities and let them loose in their own Discord chat to see what they would say if they could.

Smart bulbs are one of the most common entries into the world of smart home devices, but they're not without their problems. If your internet goes down, you may find that you lose features or simply can't control your bulbs at all. There are several ways to stop this from happening.

Buying digital movies is a risky business. There's no guarantee that you'll always be able to access the TV show or movie that you paid for. While some companies are actively removing people's content, there's one thing you can do to give your collection a better chance of survival.

ESP32 boards are incredibly versatile tools. You can use them for a huge range of purposes, and they can also be an extremely cheap way to help you get started in a new creative tech hobby.

We live in an increasingly digital world, but as Olivia Newton-John said, sometimes you just need to get physical. Here are three projects that let you interact with Home Assistant in a physical way.

Like most of its products, Amazon has locked down its Kindle devices so that you can't easily make changes. Thankfully, some clever people have figured out ways to hack Kindles over the years. These are some of the very best mods of the past and present.

For a long time, the navigation app debate has fallen into two main camps: Waze and Google Maps. Recent events have brought MapQuest back to public attention, so I decided to see if it could genuinely replace Google Maps.

Smart video doorbells can be incredibly useful, but they don't last forever. If you have an old or even broken video doorbell, you don't need to throw it away. There are plenty of ways you can put it to good use.