Do you find that you're getting false positives for your smart home automations? It can be frustrating when automations trigger when they shouldn't. If this is happening to you, setting up a Bayesian sensor may help.

A lot of smart devices are far superior to their dumb equivalents. Smart plugs, for example, can do so much more than traditional plugs can. Sometimes, however, there are occasions where only a dumb device will do.

Some smart home tech feels like it's solving a problem that doesn't exist. Does your fridge really need to be able to tell you when you've run out of milk? Used well, however, smart home tech can help to solve some of the problems you face every day.

After getting annoyed with having to switch between so many different remotes for my AV equipment, I ended up investing in a Logitech Harmony Hub and the Harmony Companion remote. I was able to replace all my existing remotes with just a single remote. Sadly, Logitech stopped making these products, and after mine broke, I was forced to find an alternative option.

Enshittification is an inescapable fact of life. Apps and services that were once good fall foul of the constant need to maximize shareholder profits, which comes at the cost of user experience. Very few apps escape the march of enshittification, but there are some that have gotten significantly worse this year.

Notifications are one of the most useful tools in Home Assistant. You can use notifications to alert you that motion has been detected at your front door, that your washing machine has finished running, or that the battery needs changing on one of your smart home devices. Notifications can do so much more than just send you messages, however.

One of the downsides of Home Assistant is that, because it can do so much, it's all too easy to completely miss some of the most useful features. You may never have ventured into the "Developer tools" section, for example. If so, you're missing out, as it holds some incredibly useful tools.

This year, I've been trying to purge subscriptions that I don't really need. I've managed to replace a lot of my paid subscriptions with free alternatives that can do the same job. I've kept hold of my Home Assistant Cloud subscription, however, and there are plenty of good reasons why.

There are several reasons why you might prefer using web apps over desktop apps. You don't need to install anything, you can access the apps from anywhere, and it doesn't matter which operating system you're using. Many web apps offer a very similar experience to the desktop versions, but here are some desktop apps that are simply better.

The introduction of Spotify Wrapped back in 2016 made the concept of an end-of-year app-usage review go viral. Since then, many other apps have jumped on the bandwagon. One app that doesn't have its own "Wrapped" yet is ChatGPT. Thanks to a genius idea posted on LinkedIn, I got ChatGPT to create my own ChatGPT Wrapped 2025, and it's incredibly easy to do.