Since macOS Mojave was launched back in 2018, users have been able to take advantage of dynamic wallpapers (originally called dynamic desktops)—backdrop images that shift in color as the time of day changes. So as night falls outside your window, night will also fall on the wallpaper on your desktop.

It's a neat idea, and if you load up the Wallpaper section of System Settings in macOS today, you'll find no fewer than 31 different dynamic wallpapers to choose from, courtesy of Apple—everything from landscape shots of nature to abstract pattern designs, enough to last you more than a year if you swap over to a new one every fortnight.

What you can't do natively in macOS is set up your own dynamic wallpapers. For this job, you need a third-party application, and there are a couple of really good ones you can check out: Equinox and Dynaper. There's also the Dynamic Wallpaper Club website, which features a gallery of many high-quality dynamic wallpapers, plus a tool for making your own through the web interface.

To get started, you need at least two images to make a dynamic wallpaper, and what they show and how you make them is up to you: They can represent the same place at different times, but they don't have to.

Creating dynamic wallpapers with Equinox

You can download Equinox for free from the Mac App Store, and once you've got it running, you need to choose how your new dynamic wallpaper will work: Solar (images change based on sunrise and sunset times in your region), Time (images change based on any other specific timings), or Appearance (images change based on whether macOS is in light or dark mode).

On the next screen, you need to add one or more pictures to form your dynamic wallpaper (if you add one that you later want to remove, right-click on it and choose Delete image). You can drag and drop images into the program window, or click Browse to pick them manually. For the Appearance option you just need two images, but there's no limit to how many you can use for the other modes (click and drag images to change their order once they've been imported).

Equinox can create dynamic wallpapers quickly for you. Credit: Lifehacker

In the Solar mode, you need to supply altitude and azimuth information, the position of the sun in the sky when the photo was taken. Use the Calculator button to work these out based on the time of day and your region, if you're not sure. In the Time mode, you simply need to supply times for each image to appear—Equinox will add some timings automatically, but you can change them if needed.

Click Create, and after a few moments of calculation, your new dynamic wallpaper is created. Equinox gives you plenty of options on the next dialog: You can save the new image to disk, share it to another app, or set the dynamic wallpaper directly inside Equinox. If you want to start again with a fresh batch of images, click New.

Finding and setting dynamic wallpapers

You've got plenty of options when it comes to creating dynamic wallpapers on macOS. You can go out into the real world with a camera and a tripod—maybe even setting up a time-lapse photo that you can pick out a few frames. Alternatively, if you only have one image, you can use your favorite image editor to manipulate the lighting and colors so you've got several versions.

If you'd rather use dynamic wallpapers made by someone else, check out the galleries available through the Dynamic Wallpaper Club website and the 24 Hour Wallpaper macOS app. The latter requires payments—$1.29 per wallpaper or $69.99 for all 125 images—but they're all of an impressive quality. No matter what your tastes are in terms of backdrops for your Mac, you should be able to find something you like.

MacOS recognizes files saved as dynamic wallpapers. Credit: Lifehacker

On the Dynamic Wallpaper Club website, you do have the option of building your own dynamic wallpapers, though you will need to sign up for a free account. Through the web interface you can choose your images and pick your timings. It's not quite as slick as Equinox, but it's there if you need it (make sure you uncheck the Public wallpaper box if you don't want to share your creation with the Dynamic Wallpaper Club community).

Actually setting a dynamic wallpaper is straightforward: Open the Apple menu, then System Settings, then select Wallpaper. Click Add Photo and Choose, then point macOS towards the dynamic wallpaper that you've made. You'll see that the picture type is set as Dynamic in the top right corner, and the pictures will be cycled through automatically, based on the timings you've provided.

As long as you've signed up for the ChatGPT Plus package ($20 a month), you can make use of custom GPTs—Generative Pre-trained Transformers. These are chatbots with a specific purpose in mind, whether it's vacation planning or scientific research, and there are a huge number of them to choose from.

They're not all high-quality, but several are genuinely useful; I've picked out our favorites below. To find them, just click Explore GPTs in the left-hand navigation bar in ChatGPT on the web. Once you've installed a particular GPT, you'll be able to get at it from the same navigation bar.

These GPTs have replaced plugins on the platform, and offer more focused experiences and features than the general ChatGPT bot. A lot of them also come with extra knowledge that ChatGPT doesn't have, and you can even have a go at creating your own: From the GPTs directory, click + Create up in the top right corner.

Kayak

Travel portal Kayak has its very own GPT, ready to answer any questions you might have regarding a particular destination or how to get there. Ask about the best time to visit a city, or about the cost of a flight somewhere, or some places you can get to on a particular budget. It's great for getting inspiration about a trip or working out the finer details, and when I tested it on my home city of Manchester, UK, the answers that it came up with were reassuringly accurate—it even correctly told me the price you'll currently pay for a beer.

Hot Mods

The Dall-E image generator (another OpenAI property) is built right into ChatGPT, so you get image creation and manipulation tools out of the box, but Hot Mods is a bit more specific: It takes pictures you've already got and turns them into something else. Add new elements, change the lighting or the vibe, swap out the background, turn photos into paintings and vice versa, and so on. The image transformations aren't always spot on—such is the nature of AI art—but you can have a lot of fun playing around with this.

Tweak and transform existing images with Hot Mods. Credit: Lifehacker

Wine Sommelier

Want to know the perfect wine for a particular dish, event, or time of year? Of course you do, which is why Wine Sommelier can be so helpful. Put it to the test and it'll tell you which wines go well with chicken salad, which wines suit a vegan diet, and which wines will be well-received at a wedding. You can also quiz the GPT on related topics, like wine production processes or vineyards of note. Whether you're a wine expert or you want some tips on how to become one, the Wine Sommelier bot is handy to have around.

Canva

You might already be familiar with Canva's straightforward and intuitive graphic design tools on the web and mobile, and its official GPT enables you to get creative inside the ChatGPT interface as well. Everything from posters to flyers to social media posts is covered, and you can be as deliberate or as vague as you like when it comes to the designs Canva comes up with. The GPT is able to produce text for your projects as well as images, and will ask you questions if it needs more guidance about the graphics you're asking for.

SciSpace

SciSpace is an example of a GPT that brings a wealth of extra knowledge with it, above and beyond ChatGPT's own training data—it can dig into more than 278 million research papers, in fact, so you're able to ask it any question to get the latest academic thinking on a particular topic. Whether you want to know about potential links between exercise and heart health, or whale migration patterns, or anything else, SciSpace has you covered. You can also upload research papers and ask the bot to analyze and summarize them for you.

Coloring Book Hero can create all kinds of designs for you. Credit: Lifehacker

Coloring Book Hero

This is a great idea: Get AI to produce custom coloring books for you, based around any idea or subject you like. Obviously you're going to need a printer as well (unless you're doing the coloring digitally), but there's a lot of fun to be had in playing around with designs and topics—you can even upload your own images and have them converted to coloring book format. Some of the usual AI weirdness does occasionally creep in to the pictures, but they're mostly spot on in terms of bold, black lines and big white spaces.

Wolfram

Wolfram Alpha is one of the best resources on the web, an outstanding collection of algorithms and knowledge, and the Wolfram GPT brings a lot of this usefulness into ChatGPT as well. This bot is perfect for complex math calculations and graphs, for conversions between different units, and for asking questions about any of the knowledge gathered by humanity so far. The breadth of the capabilities here is seriously impressive, and when needed the GPT is able to pull data and images from Wolfram Alpha seamlessly.

You undoubtedly know about your browser's incognito mode: a special browser state where the software doesn't keep track of your activities in quite as much detail. Most of us will use our browsers as normal most of the time, and switch to incognito when needed—maybe when we need to search for something that we don't want staying on the record and being included in our browsing history.

However, you can also choose to start up your browser in incognito mode right from the start, on both desktop and mobile. It means you leave less of a digital trail behind you, and might suit you better as your default way of working.

How incognito mode works

Any time you use incognito (or private) mode, you need to be aware of what is and isn't being tracked when it comes to your online activities. Simply put, your incognito browser won't log the sites you've visited or the searches you've run. Cookies aren't saved either—those little data files that websites use to remember who you are (if you clear your browser cookies, you'll find you need to log into all of your online accounts again).

So, if you close down a tab while in incognito mode, you can't do the usual trick of bringing it back again: Your browser has already forgotten it existed. It's best used for those times when you don't want searches and site visits to show up again later—whether you're researching a sensitive medical issue or shopping for a secret and surprise present for a loved one.

Pay attention to the information displayed when you launch incognito mode. Credit: Lifehacker

However, incognito mode doesn't stop your internet provider from seeing what you're doing (you need a VPN for that). If you're at work, your employer can still see the sites you're loading up. And if you sign in anywhere—Google, Amazon, Facebook—then your activity is still being logged by those sites pretty much as normal. It's not something that makes you fully anonymous.

If you don't want your web activity being remembered at all, then you need to take other steps besides using incognito mode—like using the tools Google provides to automatically wipe away evidence of where you've been and what you've been up to. As long as you're clear about how incognito mode works, it's a useful option to have.

Starting in incognito on the desktop

To start Chrome or Edge in incognito mode in Windows, you first need to create a desktop shortcut—the easiest way to do this is to drag the application icon from the Start menu to a blank part of the desktop. Then, right-click on the newly created shortcut, and choose Show more options and Properties.

You'll see the path to the browser program in the Target field. All you need to do is add some text (what's known as a flag) to this path to tell the browser to launch in incognito mode. With Chrome, add "-incognito" at the end, without quotes, outside of the quotes pointing to the actual browser file. With Edge, it's a space and then "inprivate" (without quotes) at the end of the quoted file path.

Editing the Google Chrome shortcut properties on Windows. Credit: Lifehacker

Firefox makes this little easier: Click the three horizontal lines (top right), then Settings and Privacy & Security, then check the Always use private browsing mode option. On all three browsers, you can also right-click on the browser icon on the taskbar to launch an incognito window—so if the browser is pinned to the taskbar, this is another way to start it up in its private mode.

Over on macOS, in Safari you can open the Safari menu, then click Settings and open the General tab to find the relevant option: Make sure the Safari opens with drop-down menu is set to A new private window, and every time you launch the browser you'll see a private window first of all.

Setting the options for Safari on macOS. Credit: Lifehacker

For other browsers on macOS, you need to make use of the Script Editor, which you'll find in the Utilities folder from the Applications pane in Finder. Choose New Document, and you need to enter a particular line of text: For Chrome it's "do shell script "open -a /Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app --args --incognito"", and for Edge it's "do shell script "open -a /Applications/Microsoft\\ Edge.app -n --args --inprivate"" (with Firefox you can use the setting we've already mentioned).

Pick File and Save, give your new file a name with the ".app" extension, and make sure Application is selected as the File Format. This new browser shortcut shows up in the Applications pane, and from there you can put it in the dock, drag it to the desktop, or put it anywhere else you like.

Starting in incognito on mobile

If you're wanting to launch your browser app of choice in incognito mode on your phone or tablet, the secret is a long press. On Android, the majority of browsers—including Chrome, Edge, and Firefox—will show some kind of option to launch an incognito tab if you press and hold their icon on the home screens or in the app drawer.

Launching Microsoft Edge on Android. Credit: Lifehacker

Those of you on an iPhone or iPad device will also see an incognito mode option when you long press on the icons for most browsers on the home screens or in the app library, including Safari, Edge, and Firefox. With Google Chrome, the option actually says Incognito Search, but it opens a normal incognito window—you can run a search, but you can also just type in a website URL or do whatever you need to do.

There are plenty of good reasons to get your home kitted out with some of the best security cameras on the market: These devices are (usually) affordable, packed with features, and simple to set up and use. Once they're in place, you can see what's happening at your property 24/7, and get alerts of suspicious activity sent straight to your phone.

Only a few years ago, putting a camera system like this in place would've cost a lot more money and required professional help—so we're definitely moving in the right direction. However, these security cameras can come with strings attached.

Many cameras on the market—including those from Arlo, the Amazon brands Ring and Blink, and the Google brand Nest—require a monthly subscription. These subscriptions usually enable cloud storage for your video recordings, so you can get at them for days or weeks afterwards.

Having an archive of footage in the cloud is convenient, but not everyone will want to sign up for yet another digital subscription to keep their security cameras working properly. What's more, having your videos in the cloud leaves you open to data breaches and requests from law enforcement and government agencies.

There is another way, fortunately—Pay up front for your security camera kit, and keep your video recordings saved locally.

Subscription options

Before we get into cameras that don't offer any subscriptions at all, you might be wondering if it's worth buying cameras from the more well-known names but without signing up for a monthly (or yearly) subscription plan. The details of these plans vary between companies and cameras, but a lot of them are pretty similar.

In most cases, being able to check a live feed from your camera, and getting motion alerts when something happens in front of it, won't cost you anything extra. Sometimes extra features like motion zones (only getting alerts about activity in certain parts of the frame) will be free as well. It's the video archives and cloud storage that typically have a price attached.

Nest cameras work best with a Nest Aware subscription. Credit: Google

Let's take Google's Nest Aware subscription as an example: yours for $8 a month or $80 a year. It means clips are stored in the cloud for 30 days (compared with three hours if you don't pay), and you also get smart face detection, so your cameras can tell the difference between a family member and a complete stranger. Smart alerts, for sounds like breaking glass and smoke alarms, are also enabled with a subscription.

Other security cameras offer similar plans, so check before buying—just make sure you factor in the cost for every camera in your home. Some companies require you to pay a separate monthly fee for each camera, though Google Nest Aware is one of the plans that covers all of the cameras you've set up at home.

Choosing a camera

Almost every home security camera on the market now comes with a subscription plan of some kind, mostly to enable cloud backups. If you don't want cloud storage or monthly fees then, it's not a question of finding a camera without a subscription option—it's about finding a camera where the subscription option isn't essential, and where local storage for your videos is offered as an option.

One of the most popular brands in this regard is Reolink. It offers a bunch of different cameras with support for saving footage to a memory card in the camera itself, or to a central storage hub on your network. Advanced features like high-resolution 4K footage, motion zones, and person and vehicle detection are available, and the company even offers advice on when the police can request recordings from you.

Reolink offers cameras and local storage hubs. Credit: Reolink

Another manufacturer worth a mention is TP-Link. Its cameras include the all-important local storage option, so you can simply slot a memory card into the back of a camera and save your footage directly to it. As with Reolink, there's plenty of subscription-free functionality built in: the ability to tell the difference between people and vehicles, motion zone support, night vision, two-way audio, and more.

It's also worth considering cameras from Lorex. There's support for local storage and no need for any subscription—and these are key selling points by the company. As well as offering cameras with memory card slots, Lorex will also sell you recording boxes to connect to your local network, so you can keep footage from multiple cameras together in one place.

Accessing footage

While cloud video storage comes with its problems, as we've already discussed, it certainly has its advantages too. You can easily access footage from anywhere in the world, and it means that if thieves make off with everything in your home—including your security cameras and their memory cards—you've still got a backup.

Any security camera you buy that saves footage locally can still be monitored over the web in terms of its live feed—but getting at the video archive when you're away from home might be trickier, depending on the camera model. That's why Reolink and Lorex offer network-attached hubs for your recordings, so that you can log into them from anywhere (some router reconfiguration may be required).

Setting up a NAS is another option. Credit: Synology

If you're really dedicated, you can set up your own custom system, using a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive to collect recordings from your cameras and put them in a place where you can always find them (even if you're connecting remotely over the web). Some (but not all) Reolink, TP-Link, and Lorex models support this form of recording—just double-check in the listings.

There are plenty of other options out there, but some technical know-how may be required: Certain cameras are easier to set up this way than others. This list of compatible cameras from NAS manufacturer Synology is a good place to start, which lets you filter models based on the features you're looking for.

One of the more interesting and useful AI features recently introduced to Google and Samsung phones is Circle to Search: You just circle something on screen (or tap it, or scribble on it), and you get matching Google results back. It's perfect for getting details of a landmark or finding shopping links for something you're interested in.

The underlying technology is actually based on Google Lens—Circle to Search just makes it easier to access, from whatever app or website you happen to be looking at—and because of that, you can replicate the feature on an iPhone (more or less).

This is all made possible through an iOS shortcut developed by Minsang Choi, who is a design manager at Google Lens. It replicates most of the functionality of Circle to Search, only there's no actual circling (or tapping or scribbling)—instead you take a screenshot to activate the visual search in Google Lens.

Set up Circle to Search on iOS

First, you need to install the Google app for iOS, if you haven't already. This brings a variety of Google tools to your iPhone, including the standard search engine, the Discover page of links, the Gemini AI bot, and the Google Lens search functionality relevant to what we're trying to do here.

Next, open up a web browser on your iPhone, and grab the Search your screenshot shortcut (just tap Get Shortcut). If you're not familiar with shortcuts, they're automated routines you can execute on Apple devices, and we've written before about how much time they can save you (and how to do more with them).

There are two simple steps to the shortcut. Credit: Lifehacker

When the Shortcuts app opens, tap Add Shortcut to confirm the action. This adds the new Search your screenshot routine to the Shortcuts tab in the Shortcuts app, and you can tap on the three dots on the shortcut thumbnail itself if you want to see the actions it takes (or even add some of your own).

All that remains is to pick a way to launch the shortcut. If you've got an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max, you could use the new Action button (which mutes and unmutes your phone by default): From iOS Settings, pick Action Button, then swipe left to get to Shortcut, then pick Choose a Shortcut.

Alternatively, you can use a double-tap or triple-tap on the back of your iPhone, gestures that can be set up as part of the Accessibility settings in iOS. Open Settings, then select Accessibility, Touch, and Back Tap: You can pick either Double Tap or Triple Tap, then select Search your screenshot.

Google Lens takes over when the shortcut is launched. Credit: Lifehacker

With that done, you're ready to launch Circle to Search for iPhone (sort of). Press and hold the Action button, or double-tap or triple-tap the back of your iPhone, to take a screenshot of whatever's on screen and send it directly to Google Lens (the first time you do this, tap Always Allow to confirm you're okay with the sharing between apps).

Google Lens runs a visual search on Google based on what's in the screenshot. It may already select the part of the image that it thinks is the most relevant, but you can adjust this using the four white corner handles. You'll see results underneath, together with a text box for adding to your search (you might want to ask where a particular place is, for example, or what other foods go well with the food in the image).

Your IP address is something you usually don't need to think about—in fact you might never have heard of it before—but it's an important little piece of information attached to every device on your home network. Knowing the ins and outs of IP addresses can be useful in configuring the wifi network in your home, troubleshooting connection problems, and keeping your devices safe while they're online. Here's where you can find them, and what they do.

What is an IP address?

Every connected device has at least one IP address. Credit: Lifehacker

An IP address is an Internet Protocol address: It works a bit like a postal address does for the place where you live, enabling websites and web servers to find you and maintain a working connection. It's an essential bit of code in making the internet work, and it looks like a series of numbers and letters with a bit of punctuation thrown in.

Every device connected to your router at home will have a local (or private) IP address, which helps the router figure out which gadget is which and keep everything running smoothly. In addition, your router has an external (or public) IP address it broadcasts to the world, which helps everything else on the internet find you.

You'll come across both the older, simpler IPv4 addresses and the newer, more complex IPv6 addresses for your devices. Most current hardware makes use of both, but eventually it's expected that IPv4 will be phased out, albeit very slowly—IPv6 was introduced all the way back in 1995 because the internet was quite simply running out of addresses to use.

All of this is handled behind the scenes by your wifi router and your internet provider, fortunately. In fact, most routers and internet providers give dynamic IP addresses for local and external use, which are changing all the time (it's a bit easier and more cost-effective that way)—but your connection to the internet at large isn't affected.

You'll only really need to know your IP address for specific scenarios, usually involving some change in network configuration: Maybe you're connecting up a network drive to the web that you need to access remotely, for example, or you're trying to get online multiplayer features working on a games console. Here's how to find out what your IP addresses currently are.

How to find your external IP address

There's no shortage of websites around to tell you your IP address. Credit: Lifehacker

A host of different websites will tell you your IP address: It's a piece of information you give to every site you visit in exchange for connecting to them, though you can switch to a different external IP address by setting up a VPN. Remember, too, that as we've said, most internet providers give you a dynamic IP address that regularly changes.

VPNs will broadcast the IP address of one of their servers somewhere in the world, which means your external IP address stays hidden from the sites you load up. If you want to get at your external IP address, make sure you're not currently using a VPN.

With that check completed, all you need to do is visit a website such as the aptly named WhatIsMyIPAddress and you'll get both your IPv6 and IPv4 addresses on screen. (Depending on how the network you're using has been set up, across both hardware and software, you may only see an IPv4 or an IPv6 address.) You can also just type "what is my IP?" into Google and the search engine should tell you (though it might not be the top result).

How to find your internal IP address

Getting your IP address on Windows. Credit: Lifehacker

On a Windows computer, go to Settings from the Start menu, open up the Network & internet page and click either wifi and then the network name, or Ethernet, depending on how you're connected. Your local IPv6 and IPv4 addresses are then included in the information on screen, with a handy Copy button next to the details.

Over in macOS land, you need to open the Apple menu, then choose System Settings and Network. Pick wifi or Ethernet, depending on how you're currently connected to the internet, then select Details next to the network you're on. The Mac's local IP address is listed on the next screen, together with your router's IP address.

Next, the iPhone. From the main iOS Settings screen, tap wifi, then the small blue information bubble next to your current network to see your IP addresses. Note that phones will often have several listed—sometimes for extra privacy protection, and also to account for both wifi and cellular connections.

As usual for Android, the exact menu names and structure vary depending on your phone: On Pixels, open Settings and tap Network and Internet and Internet. Next to the network you're currently on there will be a gear icon: Tap this, then scroll down to see the IP address of your device.

With Samsung Galaxy phones, open Settings and select Connections, wifi, and then the gear icon next to the network you're currently hooked up to. Choose View more to see the relevant IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. If you're not using a Pixel or Galaxy phone, you should be able to find something along these lines through the internet options in Settings.

Most of us are likely to accept most computer settings as they are without varying too much from the default configuration that comes out of the box—but sometimes, a little digging can help you get more out of your hardware. That's certainly true when it comes to monitor settings: This depends on the monitor you've got, of course, but you may have more options to play around with than you thought. If you're going to be spending a lot of time staring at your screen, it's important to get it set up in the best way for you.

Whether you're looking to make the most of the display you've got, or you're simply baffled by some of the options you've come across, we'll guide you through the key monitor settings you need to know about—both those you'll find in Windows and macOS, and those available on your actual monitor.

Windows and macOS

You can find your monitor settings in Windows by going to Settings from the Start menu, then choosing System and Display. You get the fundamentals here: first and foremost, the Display resolution, which is simply the number of pixels on show. Look for the option marked Recommended in the drop down list, as this will be the native resolution for your monitor—the one where text and graphics look the sharpest.

If you're using a high-end, high-resolution monitor, using the native resolution can make Windows text and menus seem tiny, which is where Scale comes in. Use this to scale up on-screen elements without affecting the resolution. If your monitor supports the feature, you can also choose between Landscape and Portrait for the Display orientation, enabling you to use your monitor vertically if needed.

Display settings on Windows. Credit: Lifehacker

Most monitors now support a High Dynamic Range or HDR mode, which you can enable by clicking Use HDR. HDR can work wonders in terms of contrast and color range—it essentially means details in very dark and very light areas of the screen are kept visible and not lost. Imagine a person standing with strong sunlight behind them: HDR would mean that person wouldn't just be a black shadow.

Head to the Advanced display screen and you're able to set the refresh rate, if your monitor supports multiple refresh rates: This is a key monitor spec, measured in Hertz (Hz), that tells you how often per second the display is refreshing itself. A higher refresh rate typically means smoother playback for games and movies, because you're seeing more frames per second.

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Over on macOS, you're able to get to your monitor settings by going to the Apple menu and choosing System Settings and then Displays. As on Windows, you'll see a choice of resolutions, represented in pixels—the native resolution for the monitor will be labeled as Default, and that should give you the best experience.

Display settings on macOS. Credit: Lifehacker

Then there's Color profile, which essentially manages how colors and contrast are handled by the monitor (there are more ways to do this thank you might think). This setting is of most use for creative professionals who need full color accuracy in their work—most of the rest of us won't need to change this setting, but you can certainly experiment with what's available.

The other settings here match those that we've previously covered for Windows. You're able to specify a refresh rate (how quickly the screen refreshes each second), and enable HDR (for better management of color and contrast extremes). Finally, Rotation lets you turn your monitor into a portrait or landscape orientation, if your monitor supports it.

On-board settings

That's the Windows and macOS settings, but you may also find a bunch of options available on your monitor. Obviously this will vary from monitor to monitor, so you might need to check on the web to see what exactly your model is capable of and how you get to the settings (it's usually done via buttons on the monitor itself).

Besides the basics of brightness and contrast, something you'll often see are presets, which will have a variety of names like Movie or Gaming: These presets will adjust settings like contrast, color saturation, and sharpness all together to work best for certain scenarios. The scenario should be made clear by the preset name, but you can always look it up if you need to.

On-board presets on a BenQ monitor. Credit: Lifehacker

There's nothing wrong with the standard preset that's enabled by default, by the way—this will work well for most use cases. However, if you're doing something specific, you may get better results with a preset. You can always tweak presets further by adjusting the individual settings for color and contrast yourself, if needed.

One of the individual settings you'll see on some monitors is Gamma, which controls how smoothly black transitions into white, and affects the balance between the lightest and the darkest areas of the frame. There might also be a Color temperature setting, which affects how 'warm' or 'cold' colors look on screen.

Gaming monitors will often have something called an Overdrive feature (though it might have a different name). This boosts the monitor's ability to transition between colors, and it can reduce 'ghosting' (or color trails) in fast-paced games with a lot of motion. It can also cause other noticeable artifacts though, so it's something that's best set on a game-by-game basis, depending on your personal preference.

In-game settings for Red Dead Redemption 2. Credit: Lifehacker

You might also see a mention of Nvidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync, features that sync the monitor refresh rate to the number of frames being outputted every second by your graphics card: With this enabled, you should see less stuttering and screen tearing (where two halves of a frame don't match up). It has a variety of other names depending on the monitor, so look out for something mentioning "sync" or "variable refresh rate."

Finally, don't neglect the settings inside your apps and especially your games. Most games will come with a stack of options you can adjust to control the monitor resolution, refresh rate, latency (the delay between your input and the screen response), and frame sync settings—these will vary between games and between monitors, but they should be labeled in a way that makes them easy to understand.

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Now that so many of us are signed up to cloud storage services, USB drives aren't as ubiquitous as they once were, but they still have their uses. One of those uses is running an entire computer system entirely on the USB stick, which you can then bring anywhere. Your files and apps are always with you rather than being left at home or at the office, and if you're at a new desk you don't have to spend time getting everything set up the way you want—just plug in the drive, and you're up and running.

How it works

Of course you can't take an entire PC around with you on a USB stick—you need a monitor, a keyboard, a motherboard, and everything else. That said, all of the software and storage can be handled on a portable USB drive: As long as you have access to a computer with a spare USB slot, you can run your portable PC.

There's no interference with the existing setup on the computer you're using either, so you can borrow one from a colleague or a friend without causing them any hassle. You reboot the PC, tell it to load up your USB stick rather than what's on the internal drive, and your operating system appears. When you're done, shut down the computer, unplug your USB drive, and you've left no trace behind.

All you need to set this up is a USB drive. Credit: Lifehacker

It's great if you're always moving between locations, and want to have access to the same desktop interface wherever you go. It can also be useful if you're trying to troubleshoot problems with your hardware setup, or if you want to try out different operating systems without installing anything permanently on your computer.

You do need to bear in mind some caveats, though. A USB drive isn't as fast or as capable as a full desktop or laptop system, so you're limited to basic computing tasks. This doesn't really work on Macs either, because of their different architecture—if you need to run a separate system on macOS, the best approach is setting up a virtual machine.

Choosing an OS

When it comes to picking an operating system for your USB PC, you can use Windows if you'd like to—via a third-party tool such as WinToUSB—though you will need a paid license for it, and the user experience isn't the best. A better idea is to go for a flavor of Linux: Not only is the software free to use, it's also more lightweight, which means you're not putting as much stress on the USB drive and everything should run more smoothly.

If you're new to Linux, it's an open source desktop OS that comes in a wide variety of flavors known as distros. It doesn't offer the same kind of broad software selection or hardware support as Windows or macOS, but all the core computing apps are covered: You can browse the web, check your email, do some work, edit images, and plenty more on Linux.

Puppy Linux is one of your options here. Credit: Puppy Linux

When it comes to choosing the distro you want to use, it's really up to you: Just about any version of Linux can be run fairly easily from a USB stick. Make sure you look for a feature called "persistence" in the distro documentation, though—this means you're going to be able to save settings and files to the USB drive, rather than starting up fresh with a clean slate every time you boot it up.

Ideally, you want to choose a distro that's lightweight and basic, to give you the smoothest operation possible. Puppy Linux and Linux Lite are often recommended for this particular purpose, while Tails is great if security is a priority—it automatically connects to the Tor network when you go online. Ubuntu is an excellent choice too, offering a polished interface and plenty of help documentation.

Getting started

Head to the official website for your Linux distro of choice, then look for an ISO download—this is essentially the operating system in its entirety. Downloads like this can often run to several gigabytes in size, so you might have to wait a while. It's also worth checking in the distro's documentation to see if there are any notes or recommendations regarding USB installation.

Next, you need a program to put the ISO on the USB drive for you—not just to copy over the file, but to make the drive bootable. There are a few options here, including Rufus, but we've gone for Etcher for this guide: It's really simple to use, and you can run it on both Windows and macOS (and, indeed, Linux).

Etcher can flash a drive for you in minutes. Credit: Lifehacker

Fire up Etcher, and you'll see there are three stages: Pick Flash from file to pick the ISO from disk, then Select target to choose a USB drive connected to your computer, and then click Flash to complete the operation. As far as USB drives go, a capacity of at least 8GB is recommended, plus the fastest read/write speeds you can find—you might find more requirements listed on the pages of the distro you've chosen.

With all that taken care of, you can use your USB drive by putting it in a spare USB port on any computer, then restarting the computer and choosing to boot from the USB stick. How this is done varies, but it usually involves pressing a key to choose a boot device while the computer's starting up—look for a message on screen or check the documentation that came with the computer, if you're not sure.