MakeUseOf

6 Excel habits I had to unlearn to get good at it

Adaeze Uche — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:31:17 GMT

There are only a few people who learn Excel in an academic setting. Most of us pick it up as we go, learning just enough to get through whatever task is in front of us. That usually means relying on search engines like Google and Bing, websites, and YouTube tutorials to figure things out.

I built my own Raspberry Pi streaming box and it broke my heart

Amir Bohlooli — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:00:18 GMT

I thought I finally had it figured out. If the smart TV is bad, and Android TV streaming boxes and sticks are bloated, then I’d just make my own streaming box. That’s what I did. I installed Android TV on a Raspberry Pi 4 and plugged it into my TV.

Windows Search was silently eating gigabytes of my SSD and I didn't know I could stop it

Afam Onyimadu — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 12:00:18 GMT

I noticed my SSD appeared to be shrinking, even though apps and downloads hadn't changed significantly. What made this a bit worrisome was that clearing temp files and removing installed apps didn't really help.

I paired Claude Code with Obsidian CLI and it finally organized five years of notes

Bryan M. Wolfe — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:00:18 GMT

After years of good intentions and a vault full of chaos, one afternoon with Claude Code did what no plugin ever could.

Your Windows 11 PC has a built-in packet analyzer — and it's more powerful than most people realize

Afam Onyimadu — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:01:15 GMT

Any Windows packet analysis guide that starts with "download Wireshark" may be skipping a very important step, especially since Windows already has a built-in packet analyzer. It's called PktMon (Packet Monitor). Even though you most likely haven't heard of it, it's far more robust than you'd expect.

I didn’t realize how much of Amazon's Fallout set was actually real

Dan Selcke — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 23:00:17 GMT

Fallout, a TV show based on the post-apocalyptic video game series, has been running on Prime Video for two seasons now, and people are lapping it up. The show is set in the ruins of what used to be the United States, where mutants, outlaws, and even Roman centurions have cropped up where there used to be civilization. The show does a great job of capturing the dark humor of the game series, staying true to the demented 1950s aesthetic, and serving up great drama.

I replaced my entire Windows workflow with Linux apps — and only hit one wall

Tashreef Shareef — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:00:18 GMT

Over the past few months, I've been using Ubuntu on my secondary devices. I use it for personal projects, testing self-hosted apps, and helping friends set up machines where all they need is a browser, email, and YouTube. It's not my primary OS, but I spend enough time in it that I need my everyday tools to work.

This free tool does everything Snipping Tool does and about ten things it doesn't

Manuviraj Godara — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 21:00:17 GMT

I write about tech every day, and taking screenshots in Windows is a big part of my work. And for the longest time, I relied on the Windows Snipping Tool for taking screenshots and doing basic annotation. It's actually not that bad, and recent Windows updates have made Snipping Tool even better: it now includes Quick Markup, a color picker, and screen recording. However, it still falls short compared to my current favorite, Greenshot, a lightweight, free, and open-source screenshot tool.

Google Messages still can't do the one thing that makes iMessage actually useful

Brady Snyder — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:30:16 GMT

iMessage is one of Apple's best offerings, and a big reason why iPhones dominate North American smartphone sales. It's easy to reduce the success of iMessage to superficial reasons, like people wanting blue message bubbles on their iPhone instead of green ones. There's slightly more to the story than that — iMessage beats out Google Message in real, practical ways. Most importantly, you can use iMessage without an active SIM using your Apple Account instead.

I spent 20 minutes reviewing my Windows 11 app permissions and changed 6 settings right after

Rob LeFebvre — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:00:17 GMT

I don't tend to think of myself as someone who ignores privacy settings, but when I actually sat down and spent 20 minutes or so going through Windows 11's app permissions, I found six things I should have changed a long time ago. None of these require any technical knowledge and is pretty straightforward to check on your own PC. Here's what I found, where each setting lives, and why it's worth the 20 minutes.