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.

I didn’t expect a calendar app to wow me, but this one genuinely transformed my workflow.

If you use Gmail, you probably also use Google Calendar. It's free, available on your phone and the web, and does the basics right. But if you do anything more than keep tabs on expiry dates and bill payments, Google's offering is, again, very basic.

Those tiny USB symbols reveal more than you think.

You know that moment when you discover something obvious and suddenly wonder how you missed it for so long? That was me with USB ports. Like most people, I use USB ports on all my devices, including laptops, monitors, TVs, routers, and everything else. But I didn’t pay attention to the icons and symbols printed beside them.

The most useful Windows tool is also the one everyone underestimates.

If you are like most Windows users, you probably only open Task Manager when something goes wrong. Maybe an app froze, or your PC fans suddenly started spinning loudly. But Task Manager is far more than a tool for emergencies.

I feel like a bigger movie buff now.

Independent film fans unite! One of the better movie theater-going experiences one can have is heading to an indie film house and seeing a movie not many people are going to see at the same time as you. You go to an independent film to be impressed with the story and the acting rather than the overall spectacle of going to a film.

Most people skip LAMBDA, but it's simpler than it looks and can streamline your everyday Excel work.

You've probably heard about the LAMBDA function by now. Maybe you've seen it mentioned in Excel updates or stumbled across articles explaining how powerful it is. Yet here's the thing that nobody wants to admit outright. Most people still don't use it. The function sits there in Excel, available and ready, but it feels like something meant for someone else. Someone more technical. Someone with more time to figure out yet another Excel feature.

The setting that makes my connection more stable and private.

Whenever I set up a new Android phone, I change one setting before I start using it normally. I update the Private DNS provider hostname, so the phone uses an encrypted server instead of the one assigned by the network. This keeps my lookups private on shared Wi-Fi and helps avoid the unreliable or slow resolvers you sometimes find on public networks. Setting this up early also limits what the network can see and makes it harder to track which domains I access.

The clue was printed right there… and I still burned through stacks of AAs.

I pulled my camera out last week to shoot a few photos, and I instantly remembered why I don’t like using this thing: it takes AA batteries. My wireless mouse takes one AA. I have three Xbox controllers that all take AAs. Over time, constantly swapping dead batteries and watching devices chew through them has given me an actual “ick” for anything that relies on AA cells.

A simple free converter rescued my 1,000 Evernote notes and made switching to Obsidian painless.

A lot went wrong with Evernote before I dumped it for Obsidian. However, migrating from Evernote to another note-taking app is a bit tricky. Evernote doesn't offer a one-click export option and only exports in its proprietary ENEX format or the web .html format, which honestly isn't very useful.

A tiny 4MB tool unexpectedly replaced my clipboard manager, text expander, automation scripts, and more.

On my PC, I run aText as a text expander, AutoHotkey for task automation, PowerToys FancyZone for window management, Ditto for unlimited clipboard history, and a few other Windows tools that I install on every machine. These apps work fine, but they clutter my system tray, and managing them all gets tedious.

Five contenders, one winner—and yes, Spotify should be nervous..

I've hit my breaking point with Spotify. Between the relentless price hikes and its annoying AI-generated music, I couldn't justify the monthly bill anymore. So I went hunting for alternatives. Not the usual suspects like Apple Music or YouTube Music, which would just swap one subscription for another, but free options that wouldn't nickel-and-dime me into submission. In the process, I discovered an ecosystem of open-source music streaming apps, all of which are YouTube Music clients that deliver ad-free streaming without subscriptions, logins, or guilt trips about premium features.