Lifestyle

MUO is your guide to modern tech. Learn how to make use of the tech and gadgets around you, and discover cool stuff on the internet.

Notes Migrator lets you transfer notes from Google Keep to Apple Notes in just a few clicks.

After daily driving Android phones for over a decade, I made the switch to the iPhone 16 Pro last year. I didn't completely commit to Apple's ecosystem, though, and replaced several iOS stock apps with Google apps on my iPhone. However, after learning that Apple Notes was widely regarded as a better note-taking app than Google Keep, I decided to give it a try. After using it for a while, I am extremely happy I did.

What I thought was bloat turned out to be the key to a faster, smarter laptop.

Windows laptops come with a variety of preinstalled apps, some from Microsoft and others from the manufacturer. Like many people, I used to ignore the manufacturer's apps, assuming they were just unnecessary bloatware taking up space. I never imagined they could actually be useful—until I tried the Lenovo Vantage app.

I use these 6 Alexa routines to help protect my home.

My neighborhood's pretty safe. Crime isn't really a thing here. But I'm still not leaving my front porch open season for package thieves, and I'm definitely not rolling the dice on a break-in. The thing is, I wasn't about to drop thousands on a fancy security system.

Stay connected with your peers with this amazing messaging app on Android Auto while driving.

There are many good messaging apps out there, but most of them prevent me from reading or replying to messages while I am in the car. In fact, this is a good thing, as staying focused on the road is essential for our own and others' safety. But this has caused me to miss out on important texts from my office, family, loved ones, and friends.

This open source app helped me kick Google Keep to the curb.

My cousins and I, along with a neighbor, started using Google Keep to coordinate our weekly gaming sessions and movie nights. We'd create shared notes, post strategies, tips and tricks, game suggestions, and vote on movies. But as weeks went on, the app just didn’t feel adequate for the type of note collaboration my group needed. Google Keep was good for personal use, but it just felt a bit rigid for collabs.

I was surprised to find that these time travel movies had the science right.

While the science fiction genre can often get lost in the latter part of that term than the former, sometimes you get some movies that really try to bring the science. It's not really a dealbreaker for me either way, but I know certain fans want a little realism in their fiction rather than sci-fi that makes you question reality. This is part of why shows like The Expanse were so acclaimed; they tried to make living and traveling in space grounded in science as much as possible.

It’s free, open-source, and gives your router superpowers.

Once you go down the tinkering rabbit hole, you start questioning every piece of technology around you with, “I bet I could tweak this to work better.” And when you realize how powerful and customizable open-source software can be, that thought turns into, “I bet there’s a better open-source alternative for this.”

This Linux distro balances its lightweight size with features perfect for daily use.

Lightweight operating systems can make a slow PC fast, but searching for the absolute smallest ISO or highest synthetic benchmark may be the wrong approach. Rather, you want to focus on tangible elements, such as how quickly the distro boots, how fast a web browser launches, and whether drivers and media codecs work without requiring stressful hacks or fixes.

If you're tired of syncing subtitles on Plex, you need this plugin.

Although I still believe Plex is totally fine and usable without resorting to add-ons, I can't help but feel better that I have several I can rely on when the library is acting up, especially when my family is having problems with Plex. Subtitles not syncing, for example, was not a problem I thought I'd ever have, but here I am fixing the problem.

These apps aren't practical, but they sure look great.

Some apps are built to organize your life, boost your focus, or turn your phone into a productivity powerhouse. Then there are others that exist purely because someone, somewhere, thought it would be funny, oddly satisfying, or just plain beautiful to make them.