Hey-hey, it’s a tech-tacular Saturday! By popular demand, I’m starting with trivia seven days a week. Here we go — When you set up your iPhone, invisible dots create a detailed map of your face so you can open your phone by looking at it. How many dots are used to map a face? Is it … A.) 7,500, B.) 18,000, C.) 30,000 or D.) 50,000? You’ll find the answer at the end of this newsletter.

☄️ Since you have a little more time on the weekends (I hope), let’s fix something that probably annoys you — all those junk photos and duplicates eating up space. You’re really gonna love me for this! — Kim

I remember my parents saying, "Kim, stop wasting the film." Oh, yes, back when we’d put film in a camera, take up to 36 pictures, then wait for the roll to get developed to see if any of the shots were good. Those days are long gone, fortunately.

Now, the average American takes around 20 photos every single day. And I’ll bet many of those are duplicate (or triplicate) shots of the same thing. So, how do we tackle the deluge of doubles?

This is a perfect weekend project. Whether you're a Windows aficionado, an Apple enthusiast, an Android buff or a Google Photos pro, there are steps and tools to help streamline your collection. Let's dive in.

Cleaning up your photo libraries

For Windows:

• Get the right tool: Windows doesn't have a built-in duplicate finder, so you'll need to download a third-party app like Duplicate Cleaner.
• Scan your library: After installing, the app will review files by size, content and similarity, catching those pesky near-duplicates.
• Review and delete: The app will present you with a list of duplicates. Review these to make sure no photos are incorrectly marked and delete any copies to free up storage.

For Apple:

Lucky you! The Photos app on your iPhone, iPad, iMac or MacBook has a built-in "duplicate photos" tool. It's so easy to use. Here's how:

• Open the Photos app and select Albums.
• Scroll down and choose Duplicates. (I just looked at mine and had 2,933 duplicate photos and 49 videos!)
• Hit Select > Select all, then tap the Trash icon to delete them. You can also select Merge, which will combine all the dupes into one great shot.

For Android:

Rather than manually locating and deleting everything you don't need, open the Files by Google app, then select Clean. If you don't have the app, download it for free from the Google Play Store.

• Next, tap Confirm and free up > See junk files and select what you want to clear.
• When you’re ready, tap Clear > Clear. That's all it takes to remove screenshots, memes, duplicates and other junk hiding among the important photos.

For Google Photos:

Bummer, there isn’t a built-in tool to find duplicates in Google Photos. You can clean things up manually, though. Here’s how:

• Log in to Google Photos.
• Click on Photos in the left panel.
• Find the duplicates, select the photos that you don't need and click on the Delete option.

If you have thousands of duplicates, though, this process could take forever. A third-party app like Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro is a quicker solution.

💡 One more thing: My husband, Barry, and I were out to dinner with our friends, Jim and Janie. Barry wanted to show Jim pictures of our boat. He was scrolling through his photo library. I leaned over and said, “Type ‘boat’ in the search bar.” He did, and bam — there was the one he wanted. Jim said, "I didn't know you could do that!" Now, you do, too. Just type a word or two and find a certain pic fast.

🥖 I saw a long stick of bread posing for a photo. Apparently, it was a roll model. (That one even hurt me as I wrote it.)

Musk-y mystery: Today, Elon is rolling out his AI startup’s xAI model to a select group of people. He says, “In some important aspects, it’s the best that currently exists,” but he didn’t give details about how it works or who gets to try it. He also said AI will make it so “no job is needed.”

🛠️ Ace Hardware says a cyberattack threw a wrench into its IT system: As I write this, no one can make online or local purchases, but I’m sure they’re working to restore operations. If you shopped at Ace, watch for strange charges on your cards and beware of phishing emails.

Cheap hack: The $200 Flipper Zero lets anyone — seriously, you need very little tech know-how to use one — mess up radio signals badly enough to set smartphones into a reboot loop. The only protection: Turn off your phone’s Bluetooth. No doubt these devices will be banned soon, but at least there’s an easy fix in the meantime.

It’s not the Corolla-virus: A whopping 1.9 million Toyota RAV4s are dangerous to drive. In certain models (2013 to 2018), the battery can shift during hard turns and short-circuit. Toyota’s still working on a fix, so take those turns slowly.

🦠 Airplanes are gross: Researchers found airplane seatback screens, tray tables and pockets only get wiped down when something truly disgusting happens. Same for seats and seatbelts. Use your hand sanitizers. On my flight from Lima, Peru, to Houston, Texas, one of the attendants handed me a coffee pod. Why? He told me to hold it up to my nose when I went into the restroom because of the foul smell. Fun times.

Forget Netflix and chill: Stop buying games; you have a ton available for free. Netflix just put two new games on its mobile app — Slayaway Camp 2: Netflix and Kill and Dead Cells: Netflix Edition. Yep, it's not just for movies anymore. Grab your smartphone, download the Netflix app and head to Mobile Games > Get Game.

Every morning, brush your teeth to my Daily Tech Update. You get fresh breath and fresh tech know-how in a minute.

Choose your platform below to listen:

• Check the medicine cabinet: Yikes, 27 different OTC eye drops could lead to infection or blindness. Toss ‘em, folks!
• Less is more: When’s the last time you used that budgeting app you downloaded two years ago? My guide to removing the junk and making your phone easier to navigate.
• “Taylor Swift Eras tour:” Turns out that’s a dangerous search term. Hackers are targeting kids with these malware-laden searches.
• Let me upgrade ya: It’s not safe to use a phone that doesn’t get security updates anymore. See when yours bites the dust.
• Bot or not? Did AI write that article you just read? It’s tricky to tell, but there are signs.

Every Friday, I sit down with the A-Gang (Allie and Andrew) to talk all things tech. It’s a fun podcast full of laughs and tech-smart info — hey, just like this newsletter!

This week, DoorDash is cracking down on bad tippers, plus my tips for finding all the photos of yourself online, spotting AI pics, and Apple’s new commercial that inspired me to write and sing a song. Two words: Throat singing. You gotta hear it.

📵 Opt out: I didn’t want to get a video or voice call when it was Twitter, and now that it’s X, I still don’t. You can switch off this option altogether if you want. Open the X app > Settings and privacy > Privacy and safety > Direct messages. Toggle off Enable audio and video calling.

We all love a deal: But what if the 2TB hard drive you just purchased only holds 50GB? It happens, folks. There’s a free tool you can use to check if what you bought is what you got. Go to my site for steps. Do this with every drive!

Before your next binge: Pop into your streaming app settings to optimize your viewing quality and data usage. Say you’re always going over — drop the quality down a peg. If your data’s unlimited, set all your shows and movies to the highest quality you can. Crispy!

Quick privacy tip: Task Manager on a Windows PC and Activity Monitor on a Mac can give you an overview of everything happening on your machine. On a PC, hit Ctrl + Shift + Esc. Click the Processes tab. On a Mac, hit Cmd + spacebar to open Spotlight Search. Then, type Activity Monitor and press Enter. See anything weird? Google it before you panic.

🤑 Amazon’s secret 25% discount: Send your old tech to Amazon through its Trade-in Program and get a gift card for the value. They’ll take just about anything, but if you trade in Amazon gear like a Kindle, eero router system or Fire TV Stick, you get 25% off a new qualifying device. Nice.

The plot chickens.

The answer: C.) 30,000 dots. Each scan completed in milliseconds converts your facial dot pattern into a mathematical model. This lets you open your phone with sunglasses or a mask. Pretty amazing, right?

☀️ Follow me on social! I’m on Instagram, X, YouTube, Facebook and everywhere else!

See you in your inbox bright and early tomorrow. If there’s something you wish I’d write about, reply to this email and let me know. I aim to please. And be sure to rate this issue below. Thank you for being here! — Kim