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We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Black Friday is nearly upon us. From the day after Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, you will be inundated with deals from stores and companies alike. But even before Black Friday officially begins, stores are putting up discounts. As Lifehacker's tech editor, I've combed through the various tech deals across stores like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart to find the offers actually worth considering. While there aren't a huge number of excellent deals running at the moment, there are some good ones you can take advantage of right now. In fact, many of the deals are on last-gen devices—I've included those that are still worth picking up...

Apple dropped iOS 26.1 on Nov. 3, introducing some small but meaningful changes to iPhones. But after changing how alarms work, and adding options to adjust the look of Liquid Glass, the company is back at it with another update: iOS 26.2.To be clear, iOS 26.2 is not currently available to the public. Instead, Apple is now beta testing this version of iOS, allowing developers and public testers to trial the software against their apps, and report any and all issues back to Apple. If you want to try out 26.2 for yourself, you can, but just understand the risks involved: Beta software is unfinished, so expect bugs and glitches that wouldn't normally be present in the official updates. If you do need to uninstall the beta for any reason, you'll need to factory reset your iPhone, unless you fu...

Not every Black Friday deal is as sweet as it seems. With electronics in particular, that fresh price tag might mean getting tricked into buying a cheaper model of the thing you actually want. Or, you could be buying last year's model that has actually been on sale since the summer—maybe even at a better price a few months ago. Here’s how to avoid impulse buying a misleading Black Friday “deal” and make sure you’re getting the best bang for your buck. Why you shouldn't impulse buy electronics on Black Friday When you see products like food, clothes, or home goods with a big ol’ Black Friday tag slapped on them, it's probable safe to take advantage of that deal. Chances are it is the same exact product you'd find on other days of the year. The same can’t be said for a TV. Many electronics s...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I fell in love with cold weather running while I was training for a spring marathon. It wasn’t a choice at first: Some weeks, the weather was bad for days on end, and if I stayed home I would fall behind in my training. Everybody else in my training group was braving the elements, so I did too—with no regrets.I got to run on quiet mornings while snow was softly falling. I signed up for a winter race that herded finishers into a heated barn for hot chocolate and soup. I set a personal record at a spring race, during which I pushed myself hard without breaking a sweat. I now find it sad when somebody tells me they’re afraid of running in the cold, or that they would run in the winter but don’t know what to wear.No, cold ...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan's new series Pluribus has earned a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. It's just an excellent show, featuring an end-of-the-world science fiction story with a wildly inventive apocalypse: instead of zombies or nuclear bombs, Pluribus' world ends with humanity literally coming together. Through a transmission from space, everyone on Earth is melded into a single consciousness, so there's no more conflict or hunger, but there's no more individuality, either. Mysteriously, a handful of people were left out of the great melting, including Carol (Rhea Seehorn) a cynical, hard-drinking writer who refuses to give in to the collective. The only thing I don't like about Pluribus is that I can't...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The big shopping outlets are gearing up for another Black Friday sale season, and we’ll be on top of all those deals as they become available. Garmin announced several early Black Friday deals that are already live, and Google and Coros have now confirmed discounts on some of their wearables, too. In Google's case, it's a sale on Pixel Watch 4 and Fitbit devices, and Coros has announced a price drop on watches in its popular Pace line. To keep an eye on prices yourself, consider using these deal-tracking tools that can alert you as soon as the price drops, and that can show you the history of price changes when you think you've found a deal. (Our deals writer Daniel Oropeza, who compiled that list, considers CamelCamel...

Good news, Android users: It no longer matters whether or not you have one of Google's latest and greatest devices—at least when it comes to recording calls with Google's Phone app. As spotted by 9to5Google, Google just opened up call recording in its app to Pixel 6 and newer. You won't get access to the Phone app's latest AI features, but if all you want is a reliable way to record phone calls, you'll be set. Google announced this new rollout back in September, calling the ability to record calls a "fundamentally useful feature," even without transcription or automatic note taking. That's certainly true: While the idea of recording phone calls might strike some as nefarious, there are many legitimate applications for recording phone calls, from journalists seeking a record of an phone int...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Amazon’s Black Friday sale officially starts Nov. 20, and early deals are already underway—but keeping track of the best discounts yet to land and figuring out which deals are worthwhile can be a challenge. As an alternative, you can have Alexa give you a heads-up about deals on products you already know you want to purchase, so you don’t have to spend time sorting through the noise.Amazon Prime subscribers in the United States who also have Echo smart speakers can enable deal alerts to receive notifications 24 hours before discounts go live and even have your Alexa purchase these items for you. Here’s how to do it. How to set up Alexa deal alertsFirst, open the Amazon Shopping app or go to Amazon’s website via browser...

Holiday shopping season is ripe for scammers, as consumers rush to find and take advantage of some of the best discounts of the year, and potentially overlook red flags that signal fraud. Security researchers are warning of an uptick in scams capitalizing on the Black Friday and Cyber Monday hype. Fraudsters know that they can prey on shoppers' sense of urgency and excitement for limited-time, exclusive deals—and AI is making these campaigns even more difficult to spot than usual. New data from McAfee suggest that nearly half of Americans have come across an AI-powered scam while shopping, from deepfakes impersonating celebrities pushing promotions to near-flawless spoofed websites that steal your credit card information. Here are the scams to watch for this Black Friday. Spoofed websites...

Amazingly, your Mac has only just gained the ability to show you a full list of what you've copied. macOS has always allowed you to copy and paste items, but if you copied multiple items back-to-back, there was no way to view the earliest items you added to your clipboard. Sure, third-party apps have filled this gap for many years now, but macOS itself didn't allow you to easily view multiple items stored in the clipboard, until now. With macOS 26 Tahoe, your Mac's Spotlight search has added support for clipboard history, which means that you can view pretty much everything you've copied in the past 30 days. Here's how to set up and use clipboard history on your Mac.How to enable clipboard history on your Mac ...