Winamp is ready to make its triumphant return to your desktop - and your tablet, and your smartphone. Of course what most people don't realise is that Winamp never really went away, people just stopped using it because there were better options on the market. Now it's being redesigned for the modern media age.

The best way to get your kids into LEGO is to hand them a tub of LEGO bricks and say, "Here, go wild." But eventually, they may want to think even bigger and work with more bricks than they own. This free tool lets them build virtual LEGO models with about 10,000 different parts, and then purchase the bricks to assemble their creations in real life if they want to (and yes, they will want to).

Trying to find the perfect iOS apps can be tough, and we’re willing to bet that your iPhone or iPad is full of pages and pages of apps. There’s just so much out there, it’s hard to come up with a short list of favourites. We understand. Allow us to help you with our freshly updated Lifehacker Pack for iOS.

Which Android app is worth a spot on your new smartphone or tablet? Trying to find the very best of the best is a challenging process, because there are millions of apps to pick from on the Google Play Store. Even if you just scan Google’s “top free” or “top paid” list on a daily basis, you’ll miss out on a lot of digital gems. Allow us to help you out with our freshly updated Lifehacker Pack for Android.

Windows: While you might be wedded to your desktop wallpaper — be it a picture of your family, your favourite Internet pet, or something else amazing — there's no reason you can't have a little variety each day. All those Apple fans might get macOS Mojave's dynamic wallpaper, but you can do even better in Windows, thanks to a fun little utility called Chameleon.

There are so many Windows apps out there, that picking a list of the very best, most must-install software for your desktop or laptop feels daunting. We've pored over pages of recommendations, countless forum posts, and lots of comments to come up with this year's Lifehacker Pack for Windows, a list of software champions across four categories: productivity, internet/communications, music/photos/video and utilities.

Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards are the talk of geektown lately. And while we have yet to really see how they perform in real-world benchmarks — at least, beyond those provided by Nvidia itself — you can at least figure out whether it’s time to upgrade your own ageing graphics card by testing its capabilities.

Many of us will have worked in places where installing a piece of software is an exercise in frustration. One Lifehacker reader was faced with just that situation yesterday. They needed to attend a video-conference but the required software wasn’t available on their desktop PC. Rather than give up, our intrepid reader came up with a creative solution involving sticky tape and a smartphone.

If you're a presenter or trainer and you like to use iOS devices to show things from your screen off to a broader audience, it can be challenging. Perhaps you're a developer and what to see how things look on different mobile devices. Or, if you are responsible for providing AV facilities to visiting presenters, ensuring you have all the right cables and connectors for connecting smartphones and tablets can be annoying. Reflector 3 is a solution to those challenges. Here's how it works.

There are a bunch of things we take for granted each day. We pick up our smartphones to check messages or play games. We get in our cars and drive off trusting that it will work as we expect and the building we work in won't collapse. In the past, the designs of those, and thousands of other objects and devices we take for granted, would have been drawn with the complex calculations undertaken by engineers. Today much of that legwork is carried out in software. And it turns out many of the things we depend on where designed using an application called Altair.

Mac: It makes us sad that Apple has basically abandoned the App Store on macOS. Just take a look at the experience you get on your smartphone or tablet compared to the one you get on your laptop - it's night and day. That's OK, though; we're more than happy to provide recommendations for amazing macOS apps even if Apple doesn't want to do it itself.

Mac: Just because we love symbolic links on Windows so much - thanks, Steam Mover - we're going to show you a handy macOS app that lets you set up symbolic links on Apple's operating system as well.

Android/iOS: What's on your network? You can always pull up your router's web interface to get a sense of which devices are connected, but you're probably just going to get a list of MAC addresses and assigned IPs - not very helpful. The app Fing - Network Scanner is a great, free way to get a better idea of all the devices your router has to deal with.

We talk a lot about software designed to attack our smartphones and computers, but it turns out your router might also be at risk. That's right. Some dangerous new malware is going after the box you use to beam internet around your home or office.

You really shouldn't preorder video games. Getting some shiny, exclusive item when the game arrives isn't worth gambling $80 or more for an experience that's buggy on launch day or not as fun as you thought it would be once you start playing.

I'm busy. You're busy. We're all busy. Sometimes, the sheer amount of crap you have to deal with can almost feel overwhelming, but a good way to get control of your chaotic to-do list without going crazy is to make sure you're getting enough downtime, too.

Mac: As much as we'd love it, Clipy is not a macOS version of Clippy, that little animated Windows paperclip that asks you how you're doing and gives you useful life advice. It's a must-have utility that makes your macOS clipboard 10 times more powerful, if there was any way to measure that sort of thing.

Android: Android P comes packed full of exciting new features, but it also introduces a huge change in how you'll navigate your smartphone. Google is replacing the virtual navigation buttons we know and love with a single pill-shaped icon and a whole bunch of swiping.

Google and Android are typically a package deal. Even if Samsung or Sony makes your phone, you'll still find it loaded with Google Maps, Gmail, Chrome, YouTube, and all the other apps that makes up Google Play Services. But it's possible to totally "de-Google" your Android device - strange as that sentence is to type - though it's not exactly easy.