MakeUseOf

Chrome’s new memory-saving feature made my laptop worse

Kanika Gogia — Sat, 16 May 2026 14:30:18 GMT

Chrome is known to be fast and convenient, but it takes up a significant amount of RAM. So, when Chrome rolled out the Memory Saver feature, I was optimistic and excited to try it. On paper, this feature sounds like a lifesaver. Memory Saver promises to free up RAM by putting your inactive apps to sleep so they don’t eat precious system resources in the background. This is supposed to make your system a lot smoother.

Windows 11 copied a phone feature it never needed — here’s how to turn it off

Tashreef Shareef — Sat, 16 May 2026 14:00:18 GMT

Our phones have a smart feature where the brightness adjusts automatically based on the lighting around you. It brightens the screen when you step outside and dims it when you walk into a dark room. Sounds great, until Microsoft tried to do something similar for our PCs with Windows 11.

I love Claude, but these mistakes were painful

Yadullah Abidi — Sat, 16 May 2026 13:30:18 GMT

Claude Code is one of my favorite AI tools available at the moment, and for good reason. Watching it build a project, catch its own bugs, and reason through a messed-up API integration or convoluted documentation is genuinely impressive, not to mention all the time it saves me. Claude Code can even be a great photo editor if used correctly.

Please don’t buy a Googlebook before reading this

Afam Onyimadu — Sat, 16 May 2026 13:00:18 GMT

I read Google's announcement about the Googlebook, and I couldn't help but be impressed by how promising this device looks. The three features that grabbed the headlines were the Magic Pointer, the Glowbar, and the seamless Android integration, which only reinforces the fact that the Googlebook will be released on premium hardware from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo.

The smart TV OS nobody recommends but everyone should know about

Amir Bohlooli — Sat, 16 May 2026 12:21:18 GMT

There's a reason why self-hosted media servers like Jellyfin and Plex are popular. There's a reason why some people would rather buy Blu-rays and rip them rather than stream. And there was a reason why I attempted to build my own streaming box with Android TV on a Raspberry Pi: The smart TV market is one of the most aggressively monetized product categories in consumer tech.

I took 100 photos with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Razr Fold — the camera fight was closer than I expected

Brady Snyder — Sat, 16 May 2026 11:00:18 GMT

Foldable cameras are historically neglected — only with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 did Samsung finally bring a 200MP camera sensor fit to match the Galaxy S26 Ultra to its top folding phone. Even then, the phone's secondary cameras are closer in quality to a base-model handset like the Galaxy S26. Innovation from companies like Google and Motorola are starting to give Samsung a run for its money. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold offers a telephoto camera with a low resolution but a long 5x optical zoom length. Now, the Motorola Razr Fold is here with a standout camera characteristic of its own: all three of the Razr Fold's rear cameras are 50MP sensors.

I turned my browser into a worldwide radio scanner, and I wasn’t ready for what I heard

Gregory Gibson — Sat, 16 May 2026 10:00:19 GMT

I used to think internet radio just meant streaming commercial stations, podcasts, or audio feeds of breakfast shows someone else had already packaged. If I really wanted to hunt through the world of live radio signals myself, it meant buying expensive equipment and putting a big, ugly antenna on my roof.

Don’t replace your slow Fire TV Stick until you try these fixes

Pankil Shah — Fri, 15 May 2026 23:00:18 GMT

Streaming devices aren’t meant to last forever, and your Fire TV Stick is no different. But that doesn’t mean you have to replace it the moment things start feeling slow. In most cases, it’s the cache buildup, unused apps, and outdated software that’s responsible for the slowdown rather than the hardware.

6 Linux distros that were huge once, but barely matter now

Oluwademilade Afolabi — Fri, 15 May 2026 22:00:20 GMT

Linux was the Wild West of computing in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hundreds of distributions emerged with bold ambitions: to dethrone Windows, make open-source software accessible to everyday users, and redefine what a personal computer could be. As floppy disks gave way to LiveCDs, each new distro carried the promise of a better, freer operating system.

ChatGPT's new banking feature sounds convenient, but the privacy cost is steep

Josh Hawkins — Fri, 15 May 2026 21:06:32 GMT

It was only a matter of time, but now OpenAI is asking you to trust ChatGPT with access to your financial records. While the newly revealed feature utilizes a secure platform called Plaid to make the handshake between your bank and the AI, there are a lot of privacy concerns lying in wait beneath the surface.