MakeUseOf

You can now stream The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (but you shouldn't)

Dan Selcke — Tue, 26 May 2026 23:00:18 GMT

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie dropped into theaters on April 1, 2026, and immediately became a smash hit. In fact, it looks like it's going to be the first movie of 2026 to make over a billion dollars at the box office.

YouTube Music's newest feature should have been there a decade ago

Dave Schafer — Tue, 26 May 2026 22:18:11 GMT

YouTube Music appears to be getting a major update to playlist sorting that should solve one of users longest-standing complaints. While that's great news, the fact that this wasn't a feature before is baffling — and it's not the only obvious feature that's missing from Google's music streaming platform.

I found Android's hidden resource monitor and stopped installing cleanup apps

Rob LeFebvre — Tue, 26 May 2026 22:00:36 GMT

I used to have three cleanup apps on my Android phone. Clean Master (an old habit and since pulled from the Play Store), AVG Cleaner, which a friend recommended, and CCleaner, which I grabbed once when my phone felt slow. I uninstalled all three after spending 20 minutes in Android's own Developer Options. Everything those apps were pretending to show me, Android already tracks in better detail and without a background process.

I didn't know VLC could do this, and now I've ditched 6 other apps

Oluwademilade Afolabi — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:00:19 GMT

I have confidently recommended VLC to people. And that's with the energy of someone who really knows what they are talking about. "Just use VLC," I would say, as if that settled the matter. What I failed to mention, because I had no idea, was that I had been using roughly 50 percent of what the application could actually do. I was the equivalent of someone who owns a cooker and only ever uses it to boil rice.

I finally found a reason to leave Chrome — and it's not Brave

Afam Onyimadu — Tue, 26 May 2026 20:00:17 GMT

I've read more articles about leaving Chrome than I'd like to admit. In each of those, the common reasons cited were privacy and Chrome's heavy resource usage. These are valid, especially when you consider Google's monopoly and use of data. However, leaving Chrome is just one part of the puzzle. The bigger part answers the question: for what?

I thought my browser downloads were slow — Windows Defender was actually the problem

Afam Onyimadu — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:30:17 GMT

I had a problem where large downloads kept slowing down halfway through. I tried most of the usual troubleshooting steps — restarting my router and computer, checking for outages, running speed tests, and switching browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave) — but nothing worked. This problem never occurred with smaller downloads, making it trickier to diagnose.

I cancelled ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini — Claude does everything I need

Yadullah Abidi — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:00:18 GMT

If you're looking at your monthly expenses and feel that your AI subscriptions are getting out of hand, you're not alone. I thought I'd never pay for AI again when I started using local LLMs, but cloud-based AI companies keep releasing features that keep them ahead of their local counterparts, and if you want to use them, you'll have to buy that $20 subscription.

I turned off GPU shared memory in BIOS and my PC finally felt like 16GB again

Shaheer Khan — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:30:19 GMT

It's nice to have tons of customization options as a PC owner, but the lack of plug-and-play simplicity is too big an inconvenience to ignore. Most of the time, your PC's initial setup holds it back from reaching its full potential, and you have to dig deep into your system's settings to unlock the true performance.

4 NVIDIA App improvements we want to see now that the Control Panel is gone

Quentyn Kennemer — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:19:18 GMT

NVIDIA has officially retired its legacy Control Panel app for Windows. With the release of Game Ready Driver 610.47 (which adds optimization profiles for the newly released 007: Last Light, among others), the 20-year-old utility is being phased out in favor of the modernized NVIDIA App.

I found a hidden Android list of every app I haven't touched in months, and it freed up gigs of storage

Brandon Miniman — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:00:18 GMT

Ever since phones stopped having expandable storage around 2010, we have to live with a fixed amount of storage space on our phones. Whether 128GB, 256GB or more, space is at a premium, and once you start storing RAW photos or 4K video on your phone, your space fills up fast (especially if your phone is taking invisible backups).