MakeUseOf

I love my new Pixel, but I don't get why these features are off by default

Pankil Shah — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 21:00:17 GMT

I managed to grab the Pixel 10a just before Google hiked the price by $100, and I’ve been messing with it non-stop ever since. And while doing that, I realized that there are plenty of useful features that aren’t enabled out of the box. Some of them are honestly too useful to be buried like this, which is exactly why I had to put together this list.

I tested every Wi-Fi adapter setting in Device Manager during real video calls, and only 3 made a difference

Manuviraj Godara — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 20:30:17 GMT

On paper, I have the ideal setup for taking video calls: an excellent internet connection, a Wi-Fi router that's close to my laptop, and a dedicated mic, so everyone can clearly hear me say "Am I audible?" twenty times before I get to the point. In practice, however, my video calls were taking way longer than intended, and I could sense the mild annoyance of everyone else on the call when I asked them to repeat themselves for the umpteenth time. This was all thanks to the constant stuttering, audio-video sync issues, and random drops I was facing while video calling.

I connected Home Assistant to Android Auto and the automations are insane

Yadullah Abidi — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 20:00:18 GMT

Android Auto can put Home Assistant controls on your car's dashboard. But toggling light bulbs when you're in your car isn't very useful. The more interesting feature is something that you don't have to tap: a sensor that tells your home when your phone connects to the car.

Your phone stores an emoji very differently from a letter

Oluwademilade Afolabi — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 19:30:18 GMT

Type the letter A into a message, then add 👨👩👧👦 next to it. To you, that’s two characters. To your phone, it’s a much bigger job.

Battery degradation is real, but I won’t stop charging my phone to 100% every night

Brady Snyder — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 19:00:17 GMT

I wasn't paranoid about preserving the battery health of my electronics until I started driving an electric car. Suddenly, I had a (depreciating) asset worth tens of thousands of dollars, and I could degrade its pricey battery by improperly charging it. But does that same logic apply to smartphones, which have lithium-ion batteries that similarly degrade faster or slower based on my usage habits? That's the question I briefly pondered, before quickly realizing it doesn't make much sense to limit my phone charging at all.

I replaced Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with free vibe-coded apps, and they hold up better than expected

Mahnoor Faisal — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 19:00:17 GMT

Watching an LLM spit out lines and lines of code in seconds that would've typically taken a developer hours, if not days, to write still feels a little dystopian to me. As a computer science major who's spent countless hours trying to get even the simplest programs to work, it's honestly a little terrifying to think about just how much these tools are capable of.

TV's best sci-fi show is finally coming back to life, and no one is ready

Dan Selcke — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 18:30:17 GMT

The remainder of 2026 should be interesting for fans of sci-fi and fantasy on TV. In November, Amazon Prime Video will air Blade Runner 2099, its TV version of the iconic sci-fi series, as well as the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. And in December, HBO will air its Harry Potter show, which will adapt J.K. Rowling's book series from scratch.

I almost bought a MacBook Neo until I saw what $600 buys used

Dipan Saha — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 18:00:17 GMT

The MacBook Neo was a wake-up call for Windows laptop manufacturers, and showed that you really didn’t need to compromise on the core experiences to deliver a perfectly balanced machine for the vast majority of users.

I finally have a proper inventory of every tool, battery, and accessory I own

Jonathon Jachura — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 17:30:17 GMT

I’ve added Ryobi tools one project at a time since we bought our first house, and the collection now tops 20 cordless tools across two battery platforms. A handful are the ONE+ tools I’d buy first if I started over. The trouble was I could no longer picture them all at once. Choosing a tool meant opening cabinets until I found something useful, and the first thing I found usually won over the right thing.

This OS isn't Linux, isn't Windows, it runs on any PC you have lying around, and I used it for a month

Dipan Saha — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 17:00:17 GMT

Operating systems go beyond just the big three (macOS, Linux and Windows), and many of the world’s computers have been silently running on another, different kind of UNIX-based OS all this time. I’m talking about BSD (and its many derivatives), of course. BSD powers many systems, including the likes of the PlayStation 5, and many major servers across the globe.