As mobile apps and games get more sophisticated, smartphones require higher hardware specs in order for them to function properly. Whether your smartphone is brand-new or showing its age a bit, you can probably squeak out better results. Tweak your phone or tablet’s display settings, and you’ll be able to achieve better performance in your games and graphically intensive apps — and maybe even save some battery life, too.

Last week, we suggested that you turn a hidden wall of your house (in a basement or laundry room, for example) into an “art wall” to display all of your kid’s masterpieces.

One commenter, known as “Ja’mie Lannister, Private School Kingslayer,” jumped in with another idea we love: Pick a wall or door in your kid’s room and paint it with magnetic primer.

I have a Trenta-sized amount of love of the Mac app Amphetamine, because it’s a great way to keep your MacBook from sleeping (or kicking on the screen saver) for any particular reason. And I’m ashamed to admit that it’s taken me a year, if not years, to realise that I haven’t installed a similar kind of app on my Windows desktop and laptop.

In this week’s edition of Tech 911 — the column that addresses any and all technological troubles or questions you have — a Lifehacker reader is dealing with one of the more annoying problems you can face after building your brand-new desktop system: something not working right.

It's been a long, long time since we talked about the Windows app Sizer, recently rewritten to be more compatible with Windows 10 apps. It's almost embarrassing given the usefulness of this little utility. With the press of a few keyboard buttons, you can reconfigure the size of apps on your screen to any dimensions you want, giving you even more control over how your apps appear than Windows 10's default commands.

Mac: Your Mac’s Night Shift and True Tone modes are great and all, but they can be fussy at times, and they might not work (or work very well) with an externally connected display. Separately, it’s also annoying to have to tap buttons and fumble through on-screen displays just to adjust your monitor’s brightness and contrast to your liking.

Remember the Apple 'Error 53' issue where iPhones were bricked after having their screen repaired by third-parties? Initially, Apple said the problem was that it couldn’t trust the TouchID sensor hadn’t been tampered with but then followed up saying the build of iOS that caused the issue included a checking feature that wasn’t intended for mass deployment.