MakeUseOf

I turned off Samsung's default gestures and built my own — now my phone is way faster

Digvijay Kumar — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 22:00:18 GMT

When you get a new phone, you probably customize the things you notice first — your apps, wallpaper, maybe even your ringtone. Navigation gestures are different. They come preconfigured, and most of us assume they’re already doing their job. I thought the same thing until I moved to a larger phone.

I freed gigabytes on my Android phone by deleting what Files never showed me

Sagar Naresh — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 21:00:18 GMT

One of the things that I do, when I am not doom-scrolling past my social media feed or sitting in front of my laptop, is clear junk files from my phone. My Samsung phone was down to its last 4GB, and no amount of clearing the gallery or uninstalling apps made the low storage warning go away. Turned out it wasn’t the usual files eating up the space, and once I dug deep, there were a few issues that were the bigger storage eaters than my photos.

I tested Windows Game Mode on and off for a month — here’s what the benchmarks actually showed

Afam Onyimadu — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:00:17 GMT

Game Mode is controversial. Some say it wrecks your frame rate, while others praise it for saving their setup. After several years of being undecided about this feature, I personally put it to the test, leaving it on for two weeks and off for two weeks. During that time, CapFrameX helped me log the experience.

The "HDMI 2.1" label on your TV might be lying, legally

Oluwademilade Afolabi — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 19:30:18 GMT

If you buy a TV with an "HDMI 2.1" badge on the box, it is perfectly reasonable to expect the features people now associate with that label, including 4K at 120Hz, variable refresh rate, and the 48Gbps maximum bandwidth commonly used to advertise the generational jump.

After 20 years, GIMP finally fixed everything people disliked about it

Yadullah Abidi — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 19:00:18 GMT

If you've been using Linux for a while, or if you've dabbled in open-source image editors, you likely have a complicated relationship with GIMP. It's by far one of the most popular free, open-source image editors that anyone will recommend, but it always comes with an asterisk — it's not Photoshop.

I stopped hunting for subtitles online after finding this buried VLC feature

Shaheer Khan — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 18:30:18 GMT

Watching a movie or TV show without subtitles is unsettling for me — it isn't that I have hearing issues; I've just found subtitles to be a reliable way to follow the dialogue because I may miss bits and pieces due to mixing issues or a hard-to-catch accent. However, not every release comes with subtitles by default; for example, older films and TV shows, as well as those in foreign languages, do not.

My Samsung felt more bloated every month until I changed these settings

Tashreef Shareef — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 18:00:17 GMT

My Galaxy A55 has been feeling more and more bloated since the latest One UI 8.5 update. The new UI looks great, and the device feels fresh on the surface, but the performance has taken a noticeable hit. In contrast, my Z Flip 6 and S24 Ultra still work as well as they did when new.

I stopped organizing tabs the old way once Zen showed me what browsers could actually do

Yadullah Abidi — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 17:30:17 GMT

I didn't use to think much about how browsers handled tabs. I'd have maybe five, six tabs open at the same time, and Google Chrome would happily cruise along. Then I grew up, and my tab count grew with me. Before I knew it, I had dozens of tabs crammed into a horizontal strip at the top of the screen, each one shrunk to a favicon, and all of them a disaster to manage.

I made my Wi-Fi channel narrower, and my whole house got faster

Sagar Naresh — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 17:00:18 GMT

When you think of more lanes, you think of more cars to accommodate and more speed, simple math. I assumed the same for Wi-Fi. I thought that more Wi-Fi channels were always better, and I always used my 2.4GHz band Wi-Fi with a high channel width. The result was not favorable. My smart home devices kept dropping, and even after running a channel scan to eliminate interference on my network, the issue wasn’t resolved.

SD cards are insanely fast now — but most people buy the wrong speed

Christine Persaud — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 16:30:17 GMT

SD cards are great for when you need extra storage, whether that's in a content capture device, security camera, handheld gaming system, some phones (though the selection of phones with a microSD card slot is limited nowadays), or other product that accommodates them. When you're looking to buy, you might want to get one with the fastest possible speed, especially since SD cards are insanely fast right now. But not every device supports the fastest speed, which is where you need to be careful.