All posts tagged: how-to

What ChatGPT Thinks It Knows About You Is Affecting Its Answers. Here’s How to Change That

What ChatGPT Thinks It Knows About You Is Affecting Its Answers. Here’s How to Change That

Published by skeptic

A memory of some kind is now a standard feature for an AI chatbot. The chatbot stores all of your interactions in its memory, enabling you to refer back to previous conversations, and giving the tool some useful context to frame its answers with. For example, if you tell it you’re vegetarian, it won’t recommend recipes with meat in them. This comes with privacy considerations as more of us share more of our lives with these apps. But it also has the potential to affect the responses you get from the AI in ways that you don’t necessarily want. Perhaps you’ve spent a week researching how to replace a light switch and ChatGPT thinks you’re a DIY enthusiast. Or you’ve been looking up places around a certain location that you’re heading to for vacation, and the AI thinks you live there. All the bot’s answers come with memory context now. Here’s how it works, and what you can do about it. How ChatGPT Memory Works Memory settings in ChatGPT on the web. Screenshot: David Nield …

A Deal Hunter’s Guide to Amazon Prime Big Deal Days (2026)

A Deal Hunter’s Guide to Amazon Prime Big Deal Days (2026)

Published by skeptic

Amazon Prime Day events are some of the most confusing shopping occasions in existence: It’s not even a single “day” anymore. Amazon promises “millions of deals”—but the displayed discounts are often misleading, and while it’s advertised as a members-only event, some deals are available to people who don’t subscribe to Prime. Add in the frenzy of limited-time Lightning Deals and you’ve got a perfect recipe for spending too much money on stuff you don’t even really want. Fear not! I’ve been covering deals for over a decade and am here to help. WIRED’s Reviews team is familiar with common shopping pitfalls, and we closely track the best Prime Big Deal Days prices. What time do sales start and end? How do you tell whether a deal is actually a deal? We pooled our collective expertise to get you prepared for the latest Amazon Prime Day Event, which is technically dubbed “Amazon Prime Big Deal Days” and will be on October 6 and October 7 this year. Table of Contents AccordionItemContainerButton When Is Amazon Prime Day? …

Try These 3 iOS 27 Safari Settings to Get More Out of Apple’s Browser

Try These 3 iOS 27 Safari Settings to Get More Out of Apple’s Browser

Published by skeptic

At Apple’s recent hardware event, the software powering its foldable iPhone Duo stood out, with translucent Liquid Glass effects and vertically stacked icons. But you don’t need to snatch a folding smartphone to reap the benefits of Apple’s iOS 27 updates. When iOS 27 leaves beta on Monday, Siri AI’s standalone app and smartphone search integration will likely be the most immediately obvious change for many iPhone users. But it’s worth digging even deeper to uncover helpful additions to key apps, like Apple’s Safari browser, as well as revamps to underutilized apps, like Shortcuts. The version of Safari available in iOS 27 looks fairly similar to the last iteration, with a few key updates tucked away in the settings. These Safari features are powered by Apple Intelligence, which requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer (they’re also available on iPadOS 27 and macOS 27). Notify Me Photograph: Courtesy of Apple If you’re shopping online and want a quick price-drop notification, you can use the “Notify Me” feature to scan a webpage on a certain cadence …

Every Samsung Galaxy Phone Comes With This Unique Add-On

Every Samsung Galaxy Phone Comes With This Unique Add-On

Published by skeptic

If you opt for an Android phone over an iPhone, there are certain features you get as standard as part of Android. Then there are other features specific to certain manufacturers, as each Android phone maker puts its own spin on the software. Pixel phones, for example, get the Now Playing widget on the home screen and lock screen that works like an instant Shazam. It’ll tell you the name of the song playing in your environment before you’ve even searched for it. With Samsung phones, one of the best perks isn’t as widely known about or used as it should be. It’s called the Edge Panel, and it works like a customizable shortcut bar that gives you speedy access to the other parts of your phone. If you own a Galaxy device and have never come across the Edge Panel, or you used it once but have since forgotten about it, here’s what it’s capable of now—and how you can make the most of it to optimize your mobile experience. How the Edge Panel …

Create Custom Windows 11 Notifications to Remind Yourself of Anything

Create Custom Windows 11 Notifications to Remind Yourself of Anything

Published by skeptic

While there are plenty of ways to limit notifications on our digital devices and avoid distraction overload, there’s nothing inherently wrong with these alerts. They just need to be well managed and kept in their place. Keeping notifications useful and timely can help you get more done in the day, not less, and Windows 11 comes with built-in tools for setting up custom notifications that run on a schedule you specify. You can use these scheduled notifications however you want. Maybe you need reminders to take breaks, or you want to make sure you devote specific blocks of time to certain projects, or you need alerts for when it’s time to go and pick the kids up. However you want to use these custom notifications, here’s how to set them up—plus some extra apps that can help too. Custom Notifications in Windows 11 Task Scheduler gives you a clean, simple way of creating alerts.Screenshot: David Nield If you want to set up custom notifications in Windows 11 without turning to an app, the Task Scheduler …

How to Escape Group Chat Hell

How to Escape Group Chat Hell

Published by skeptic

A specific cadence for contemporary group chats eludes me. The rapid-fire tempo of texts combined with custom stickers, often based on inside jokes, leaves me behind. My digital fate: the silent lurker. As I let the notifications wash over me, I am a ghostlike figure haunting the group chat, a silent watcher who rarely responds without a specific invocation. Group chats are dominating the social lives of younger Americans. In a recent YouGov poll, 34 percent of adults under 30 said they are in at least four group chats, whether via text or other messaging app. Power texters are spending hours juggling multiple message threads—3 percent of adults under 30 said they are in more than 20 distinct group chats. These group chats are not just for the young folk, though. All attempts at social interactions now spark a new group message. A WhatsApp thread for our monthly book club. An Instagram group for that weekend getaway. A bulbous iMessage chat with random cousins attempting to plan a family reunion. Group chat hell is everywhere …

How to Run a Chatbot on Your Own Computer

How to Run a Chatbot on Your Own Computer

Published by skeptic

It’s no exaggeration to say the large language models that power AI bots like ChatGPT and Gemini are changing the world. Many of us are now relying on them for coding, writing, summarizing, and searching the web. Whatever directions AI goes in over the next few years, LLMs will be part of that future. If you use ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or any of the other AI platforms, then you’re using an LLM. What’s less commonly known is that these LLMs can be run locally, on your own computer. The key benefits are offline access and greater privacy, because you’re not sending anything to the cloud for anyone else to analyze or review. You’re also not paying any AI companies a monthly subscription or hitting any usage rates. Numerous LLMs are available to download for free, including from big names like Meta and Google. Though they tend not to be as advanced or as speedy as the LLMs inside the apps you have to pay for, they’re capable enough for everyday use, and you can pick …

The Easiest Ways to Share Anything Between Android and iOS

The Easiest Ways to Share Anything Between Android and iOS

Published by skeptic

Whisper it quietly, but certain bricks in Apple’s walled garden might be getting taken away. Thanks to some recent upgrades added to Android by Google, it’s now easier than ever to share files between an iPhone and an Android phone, without installing any new apps (though that’s still an option too). So if you need to send a photo, contact card, web link, or anything else, these are the options you have available. As is often the case with Android, they may vary depending on the make and model of your handset, though you should find at least one of these methods works for you. Share Files via AirDrop This is the big one: Google recently figured out a way to add support for AirDrop—Apple’s previously closed-off, device-to-device sharing protocol—to newer Pixel phones. It doesn’t appear that Apple was involved in the process, but the company hasn’t gotten in Google’s way since, and the functionality has been rolled out to other phones (including the recent Pixel and Galaxy handsets). Some prep work may be required. …

7 Basic iPhone Tricks I Built With iOS 27’s Revamped Shortcuts App

7 Basic iPhone Tricks I Built With iOS 27’s Revamped Shortcuts App

Published by skeptic

I’ve never used Apple’s built-in Shortcuts app before, despite owning an iPhone for years. While automating tedious tasks sounded nice, the necessary scripting to trigger actions and thread them together felt overwhelming when I first opened the app. But my experience with the iOS 27 beta has completely changed my perspective on Shortcuts. What was previously clunky and forgotten now feels streamlined and essential. When iOS 27 lands this fall, Siri AI might be the most tangible change for many users, with its improved capabilities and stand-alone app. Even so, Apple Intelligence integration into the Shortcuts app has me humming “Zero to Hero” from Disney’s Hercules. Called “Describe a Short,” it lets you say what you want it to do conversationally, then the app generates an automation flow. You can also tweak it by sending a follow-up prompt in the app; the manual scripting option remains available for power users. Since I was testing this app through the iOS 27 beta, I experienced a couple of glitches where the automations didn’t generate perfectly. Even so, …

Set Up a Separate Work Profile on Your Android Phone

Set Up a Separate Work Profile on Your Android Phone

Published by skeptic

Our phones have become do-it-all gadgets. They enable us to keep in touch with one another, track how many steps we’re taking each day, snap photos of everything, and access the collective knowledge of humanity. All that universal functionality extends across both our work and personal lives. The gadget that pings you on Slack when your colleague has a question is the same one that alerts you when your friend has just outscored you at Wordle. That blurring of boundaries can be a problem. There is actually a solution to this, at least if you’re using an Android phone. Android supports the use of multiple profiles (based on Google accounts), so you can switch between two different ones as needed. The most obvious use case for this is to split up your work and personal usage. It’s essentially like having two phones on the same physical device: The profile that’s active dictates the apps you can use, the notifications you see, the browsing history you can dig into, and the files you’ve got access to, …