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Pivot tables let you analyze large amounts of data and narrow down large data sets to see the relationships between data points. Google Sheets uses pivot tables to summarize your data, making it easier to understand all the information contained in your spreadsheet. What Are Pivot Tables? Pivot tables are handy for analyzing massive amounts of data. Where a regular spreadsheet uses only two axes—columns and rows—pivot tables help us make sense of the information in your spreadsheet by summarizing any selected columns and rows of data....

The Windows 10 Creators Update—which you can get manually if it hasn’t rolled out to you yet—brings with it a new “Game Mode” that focuses on improving performance for game applications. RELATED: What’s New in Windows 10’s Creators Update The gaming press has been talking about Game Mode a lot, but we’ve still heard relatively few details from Microsoft itself—perhaps because the feature isn’t quite the obvious boon to gamers that the name implies....

Bits vs. Bytes If you’ve shopped for a plan from an internet service provider (ISP) recently, you might have noticed that the company promoted its broadband speeds in terms of mega- or gigabits per second. On the other hand, most mobile or internet plans with data caps measure your maximum usage in terms of mega- or gigabytes. You might think these two figures are the same. However, a “bit” and a “byte” are distinct units of measurement that are used for different things....

If you’re a Linux user, you’ve probably seen references to both sudo and su. Articles here on How-To Geek and elsewhere instruct Ubuntu users to use sudo and other Linux distributions’ users to use su, but what’s the difference? Sudo and su are two different ways to gain root privileges. Each functions in a different way, and different Linux distributions use different configurations by default. The Root User Both su and sudo are used to run commands with root permissions....

The first iPhone was announced in 2007, and we’ve slowly been consumed by smartphones ever since. This oversaturation has made people feel like they can’t simply go back to a “dumb” phone when the smartphone becomes too much. A new type of device has attempted to solve that “problem.” RELATED: Nothing Beneficial Comes From Mindless Scrolling What Is a Minimalist Phone? As magical as smartphones feel sometimes, they’ve become pretty utilitarian—similar to owning a car in certain parts of the world....

What’s a Snap Package on Linux? “Snap” refers to both the snap command and a snap installation file. A snap bundles an application and all its dependents into one compressed file. The dependents might be library files, web or database servers, or anything else an application must have to launch and run. The upside to snaps is they make installations simpler because they avoid the heartache of dependency hell. This is what occurs when a new application can’t run either because a required resource isn’t available, it’s the wrong version, or its installation overwrites files required by existing applications so they can’t run....

How Good Are Integrated Graphics? So what do you do if you aren’t interested in shelling out for a graphics card, but you’d still like to play the occasional session of Civilization VI or The Witcher 3? All is not lost. You can get usable, or sometimes even outstanding, performance from your CPU’s built-in or integrated graphics. It all depends on which games you want to play, what graphics settings you can accept, and how old your CPU is....

Sometimes you may end up with unexpected results when running commands, so learning the “why” behind the results can be very interesting. With that in mind, today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a curious reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Luu Vinh Phuc wants to know why dir ....

For the Kiddos: Kid-Friendly But Still Fun There is an art to designing a game that is accessible to children but still enjoyable to play for adults. If you’ve ever been stuck playing a dusty old copy of Candyland with your nephew and crave a game that’s actually fun for everyone at the table, these are the picks for you. Beautiful to Behold: Judge a Book by Its Cover Not every board game is lovely to look at, but these ones are....

With Universal Control, you can use your Mac’s keyboard and mouse with an iPad just by placing the two devices next to each other. Apple often talks about how its devices feel like magic during its press events, and this is one of those instances where it does seem somewhat magical. The feature was initially planned for a Fall 2021 launch. However, perhaps due to the complexity of getting the two devices to work together, it was delayed to Spring 2022....

Every device—smartphone, tablet, or laptop—seems to come with its own charger. But do you really need all these different cables and charging blocks? Can you re-use the same charger for multiple devices? While this used to be a far more complex topic, standards have (finally) started to come into play that make it much easier to manage. Let’s talk about it. The Different Types of Chargers While chargers are becoming more standardized over time, there are still a variety of different charger types in wide use:...

Smart thermostats are not only convenient, but they also come with a handful of settings that can potentially save you money. The Nest Thermostat is one of the most popular options, and it comes with a whole handful of settings that you should take advantage of if you’re looking to dial down your utility bill. RELATED: How to Install and Set Up the Nest Thermostat Despite their marketing, smart thermostats won’t save you any more money than a regular programmable thermostat, but they are way easier to set up and program....

A new year has brought new changes to how Adobe Acrobat Reader DC’s settings and preferences work, which means relearning how to tweak things to get the UI setup you prefer. With that in mind, today’s SuperUser Q&A post shows a reader how to get rid of that pesky sidebar. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites....

What does it mean when you have two identical files with identical time stamps, yet Windows says that one file is newer than the other one? How can that be? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post helps a confused reader solve a time stamp mystery. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader WBT wants to know how Windows decides which of two files with identical time stamps is newer:...

First, Let’s Establish Some Basic Premises Anytime you’re diving into a bit of movie forensics, you always have to establish the basic premises you’re working with because without that, the combination of suspension of disbelief and movie magic can make conducting any calculations nearly impossible. So what do we know about the Griswold home, the mid-century Colonial-style house that serves as the primary set of the popular 1989 film? We know that the home, within the context of the movie, is located in a suburb of Chicago (although in real life, the house is actually located on Blondie Street, an outdoor backlot set located on Warner Brothers Ranch in Burbank, California)....

If you find yourself frequently accessing the Windows Control Panel, why not put it where you can get to it the quickest? Right on the context menu. Even with the new Settings interface taking over most of its duties, the old Control Panel is still a tool you’ll need to rely on pretty often. Sure, you can pin it to your taskbar—or even to your File Manager window—but having it right on your context menu means it’s always just a right-click away....

Windows 10 uses your ISP’s DNS server by default, but it is possible to change it. Other DNS servers offer additional features like added security and privacy, website filtering, and they may even improve your speed. When you enter a domain name — like facebook.com — into your browser, your computer doesn’t know how to connect to the website. It needs an IP address first. To get the IP address, it queries a DNS server for the domain name you entered, and the DNS server gives it the IP address that corresponds to the domain name....

Want to easily control your Hue lights? You don’t have to pick up your phone or yell across the room at Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri. Here are some easy ways to control your Hue lights right from your Mac. We’ll cover a few solutions here: The built-in smarthome features in macOS and a convenient third-party utility for controlling Hue lights from your Mac’s menu bar. Option 1: Use the Home App Your Mac has a version of the same “Home” app you can use on iPhone and iPad....

The take-for-granted features we enjoy when using an on-screen keyboard—like auto-corrections and auto-capitalization–quickly become a hindrance if you’re using a physical keyboard with your iOS device. Let’s look at how to quickly turn off those features so your physical keyboard acts the way you expect. Note: This feature is only available on iOS devices running iOS 10 or above—older versions of iOS use the same settings for both on-screen and physical keyboards, with no ability to differentiate between the two....

By default, Windows 10’s Mail app displays the first line of each email in addition to the subject line. If you don’t want this preview text to show, you can easily turn it off. Maybe you work in public places, or maybe you have nosy family and friends. Whatever the reason, if you don’t want others seeing the content of your emails, we’ll show you how to hide the preview text....