Top Tech Tips of 2024 To Make Things Easier

Use AirPods as hearing aids, cleaning your lens and other helpful hands-on advice from Joanna Stern's Tech Things newsletter

- JOANNA STERN WITH CORDILIA JAMES

If you feel like the riptide of fast-evolving technology is pulling you out to sea, let this be a life preserver.

We've pulled out a handful of tips from a year's worth of my Tech Things newsletters, so that you can feel informed and up-to-date without having to master all the tech that might affect you. This list can help you be safer, smarter and even a bit AI-savvy. Heck, it might even make you the nerd at your New Year's Eve party!

Organize your browser tabs

The only thing more impressive than my son's Pokémon card collection? My browser tab collection. At any given moment, I have about 40 tabs open in Microsoft Edge on my laptop. But OneTab, a free extension for Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox, has been a great solution. Install it and add it to your extension bar. Now, every time your tab collection starts to multiply, click the little blue funnel icon. It will convert all your open tabs to a list of links on a dedicated page. Then you can click the links to open them in individual tabs again or even restore them all.

I tend to have privacy concerns about browser extensions, but OneTab says your web history is never transmitted or disclosed to the company.

Try out AirPods as hearing aids

Apple released iOS 18.1 in October. Yes, the update included the long-awaited Apple Intelligence for those with an iPhone 15 Pro or any iPhone 16-sorry, everyone else. Even without the newest phones, you can still turn your AirPods Pro 2 into hearing aids thanks to the update.

After you download iOS or iPados 18.1, head to a quiet room and open your AirPods case near your iPhone or iPad. The quiet part is crucial. I tested this with my dad, and he kept saying the dishwasher hum was throwing him off.