Of all the meals I make in my air fryer, and the list is long and growing by the day, chicken thighs are safely in the No. 1 spot, and there is no recipe threatening to dethrone. I make some version of this air fryer chicken thigh recipe at least twice a week, often more. 

It often serves as a fast, low-carb lunch when sliced and thrown into a salad. Many evenings, I'll spin it into a more elevated meal, served with rice, noodles or potatoes and some vegetables.

Air fryer chicken thighs aren't just easy, but they come out perfectly every time. And with no shortage of interesting seasonings and sauces to doctor them up -- I often make them blackened, with curry or a gochujang sauce -- the variations are limitless.

Best Air Fryers for 2024 See at Cnet

Why chicken thighs are the perfect air fryer food

Chicken thigh meat has a higher fat content than breast so there's very little chance of your chicken thighs drying out when cooked by an air fryer wild convection heat -- even if you accidentally leave them in too long. That makes them the perfect candidate for cooking in a blazing hot air fryer.

If the only recipe I was allowed to make in my air fryer was chicken thighs, I'd still buy one and give it the space on my counter. That's how much I like boneless skinless air fryer, chicken thighs, and how often they show up in my weekly meal routine.

And as with many of my favorite air fryer recipes, there's almost no mess to cleanup after. Air fryers typically have nonstick baskets that come clean with a few wipes of soapy hot water. 

Here's how to make perfect air fryer chicken thighs in 15 minutes

• Step 1: Preheat air fryer to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Step 2: Toss package of chicken thighs with seasoning mixture or simply with salt and pepper
• Step 3: Cook chicken thighs for 15 minutes, flipping them after 8 (cook longer if you like a crispier outside)
• Step 4: Let cool and serve over salad or with side of rice and vegetables.

Do you need oil when cooking chicken thighs in the air fryer?

I've tried cooking air fryer chicken thighs with and without oil and they turn out great either way. There's enough fat content in thighs to cook without oil. And if you're using a sauce, there's really no need to add oil on top of it. 

If you are planning to add cooking oil, don't use much. About a teaspoon per every four thighs should suffice.

Should you bread chicken thighs before cooking in the air fryer?

Yes, I have and it's excellent for adding texture to this simple recipe. A quick coating of egg wash and breading gives air fryer chicken thighs a divine crunch, but also adds some extra carbs and calories. It also makes for more dishes to wash after and a dirtier air fryer basket, so I often go without. Use this method if you're making air fryer chicken Parmesan or for a fast fried chicken sandwich.

Now Playing: Best Air Fryers: Cheap vs. Expensive

19:24

If you're cooking boneless chicken breast in the air fryer, I recommend breading them to keep the lean meat from drying out.

For more, here's a complete guide to air fryers and seven things I'll never cook in the air fryer again.

Today's Wordle leans heavily on vowels, and one of them is repeated. Don't break your streak, read on for hints and the answer.

If you ever find yourself stumped, check CNET. Our home page always has the answers for Wordle, Connections and Strands.

Here's the Connections answer for today, and here's the answer for Strands. Do you solve the NYT Mini Crossword? Here's today's answer for that, as well.

Also, we've ranked all the letters in the alphabet by popularity, if you want to use this list to decide on your best start words.

Today's Wordle hints

Before we show you today's Wordle answer, we'll give you some hints. If you don't want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today's Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There are three vowels in today's Wordle answer, but one of them is the repeated letter, so you'll see that one twice.

Wordle hint No. 3: Pattern

Today's Wordle answer starts and ends with the same letter.

Wordle hint No. 4: First letter

Today's Wordle answer starts with the letter E.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today's Wordle answer can be used to describe that which follows another event or thing.

TODAY'S WORDLE ANSWER

Today's Wordle answer is ENSUE.

Yesterday's Wordle answer

Yesterday's Wordle answer, Aug. 4, No. 1142, was LOWER.

Past Wordle answers

July 31, No. 1138: PENNE

Aug. 1, No. 1139: CHALK

Aug. 2, No. 1140: FLAKE

Aug. 3, No. 1141: SCALE

Everyday Wordle tips

I've written a lot about Wordle -- from covering its 1,000th word to my list of the best starter words to a helpful two-step strategy to news about controversial word changes. I've even rounded up what I learned playing the hit online word puzzle for a full year. If you're rethinking your need for the actual answer, you might try tips from one of those stories.

Still need a starter word? One person told me they just look around and choose a five-letter object that they've spotted to use as their starter word -- such as COUCH or CHAIR. I tend to stick to starter words that have the most popular letters used in English words. I like TRAIN as a starter, though I have a friend who uses TRAIL. I've read that people use the financial term ROATE, but I like to use words I actually know.

What is Wordle?

If you read this far, you know how to play. You have six chances to guess a five-letter word, and the game gives you feedback as to whether the letters you've guessed are in the puzzle or not, and if they're in the same spot where you guessed they are. The New York Times bought the game from creator Josh Wardle for seven figures in 2022. Wardle famously created the game for his partner, and let her narrow down the 12,000 five-letter words in the English language to just 2,500, creating the database of answers. It was convenient, too, that he has a name that plays off "word."

A Times spokesperson told me it lists the very first Wordle as appearing on June 19, 2021, and the paper celebrated the game's 1,000th word on March 15. Spoiler: That 1,000th word was ERUPT. As in, "Dad will erupt if the Wordle is so tough he loses his streak."

Is your email inbox overflowing? Maybe you haven't unsubscribed to those newsletters you stopped reading, or you forgot to delete a few spammy emails, and suddenly you've used up the 15GB of storage that comes free with your Gmail account. These days, it doesn't take long to fill up your inbox with thousands of unread messages.

Maybe you've been meaning to clean out your Gmail inbox, but the thought of sifting through countless old messages feels daunting. Fortunately, there's an easy way to free up storage in your Google account while keeping all your old email. 

All you need to do is create a second Gmail account to store all of your current messages. There's no restriction on the number of free Google accounts you can own, which means you can set one up as a dedicated archive account, then transfer all your old emails to it. 

Transferring your Gmail messages is also a great strategy if you have a school or business Gmail account that you won't be able to access permanently. Most universities and businesses will deactivate your account once you are no longer a student or employee, so if you want to view your old messages and files, you'll have to port them to a personal account before you lose access.

Completing the whole process of transferring your Gmail messages to a new account doesn't take too long, but it will be dependent on just how many messages you have. We'll walk you through the simple process of transferring your emails from your old account to a new one (including the important step of backing everything up first).

For more about Gmail, learn about its new AI summaries or how to use emoji reactions.

How much data can you store on Gmail? 

15GB of free storage may sound like a lot when you make a Gmail account, but it gets filled up quickly. For starters, the 15GB isn't just used for email: it also includes the files you've saved in your Google Drive and Google Photos. 

If you frequently send or receive messages that contain large files such as videos, or if you find yourself uploading a lot of pictures and videos to your Google Photos, then it won't be long before you'll see the "Account storage is full" notification. This means that you will no longer be able to send or receive emails on this account, so you'll want to do something ASAP.

The quickest solution is to upgrade to a Google One account. But even if you opt for the least expensive plan -- 100GB for $20/year -- you'll still end up paying money to store old emails that you might not even need anymore.

If you don't want to buy more storage, you can always delete your old emails. You can get back a surprising amount of storage space by putting large files in the trash. Gmail makes it easy for you to identify and delete files by size. Even so, that option might seem tedious; maybe you don't want to spend hours sifting through correspondence from a decade or more ago, deciding which memories to keep and which to get rid of forever. 

There's always the option to download large files to your desktop before you delete them from your Google account; but at some point you'll probably run into the same issue with your local files and have to manage the storage space on your device.

Which brings us to our "nuclear option": Transferring all your emails to a new Gmail account.

How to transfer your Gmail messages to a new email account

Before you start the Gmail transfer process, we recommend that you back up your emails. You can do this by downloading your emails either to your computer or an external hard drive. You can delete the backup after you finish transferring the emails to your new account if you like, but it's always a good idea to have an extra copy stored locally.

To back up your Gmail messages, go to Google Takeout. Using our test Gmail account that held about 75,000 messages, we got a download from Google Takeout in about 2 hours.

Once you've saved a copy of your emails, you're ready to begin transferring them. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Start by logging into your original Gmail account, clicking the "gear" icon in the top right and clicking See all settings. 

2. Select the Forwarding POP/IMAP tab, and then select the option Enable POP for all mail (POP stands for Post Office Protocol).

3. You'll have several options under When messages are accessed with POP. To automatically delete the emails from your original account after the transfer, select delete Gmail's copy.

4. Select Save Changes.

Now it's time to create your new account and transfer all your messages there: 

1. If you haven't already done so, create your brand new, inbox-zero Gmail account -- we'll call this your archive account. 

2. Login to your new archive account, click the gear icon at the top, and select See all settings. 

3. Select the Accounts and Import tab at the top, and then select Add a mail account next to Check mail from other accounts.

4. In the pop-up window, enter in the name of your original Gmail account. Select Next. 

5. Select Import emails from my other account (POP3), andselect Next again.

6. Enter the password of your original Gmail account. You might also be required to create a Google app password (see note below). 

7. Select 995 under Port.

8. Check these 3 boxes: Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail, Label incoming messages, Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)

9. Select Add Account.

You'll probably need to create a Google app password to transfer Gmail messages

We tested this Gmail message transfer process twice, and both times the standard password for the Gmail accounts did not work. After a bit of research, we determined that we'd need to create a temporary "app password" to sync the accounts.

Google app passwords are 16-digit passcodes created for "less secure" apps or devices to access your Google account. They work exactly like your Google password.

If your regular Google password doesn't work for syncing Gmail accounts, visit https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords to create an app password. Simply create a name for the password -- we used "Transfer Bulk Email" -- and then hit the Create button. You'll get a pop-up window with your new 16-digit passcode.

Once you've created the app password, return to step 6 of the instructions above and use that new app password instead of your usual password.

Important: Google will only display your app password once. After you've created it, you can't ask to see it again, so be sure to write it down or otherwise record it after it's been created. 

Google's own Help Center mentions that "app passwords aren't recommended and are unnecessary in most cases". So once you're done transferring your Gmail messages, we recommend deleting your app password.

What happens after my Gmail accounts are synced?

Once you've successfully linked your new Gmail archive account to your original account, your emails should begin to transfer automatically. The process could take several hours or days, depending on how many emails you have.

In our test account with about 75,000 messages, we found that it took Gmail about 2 full days to transfer all of them from the original account to the new archived mail account.

Important: After transferring your Gmail messages to your archived mail account, your original Gmail account will place all those messages in the Trash folder, which you'll need to empty manually. Clearing out those 75,000 messages from the Trash took about an hour.

Before transferring Gmail messages, our test account was using a little more than 12GB, or 80%, of Google's free 15GB. After transferring, the account was only using 0.66GB, of which 0.06GB was from Gmail.

What Gmail messages won't be transferred? 

We found that Gmail transferred all of our messages except for two categories -- Drafts and Spam. 

You'll need to decide what to do with your Drafts manually. Spam messages are automatically deleted every 30 days, so you can let Gmail handle that, or go into the Spam folder yourself after transferring your mail and delete or forward those messages.

Once all of your emails have been imported to your new account, enjoy the experience of inbox zero. You've given your original account a new lease on life. 

At this point, there are two last steps: you'll want to stop the automatic transfer process so that you can continue using your original account, and you'll want to delete that app password if you had to make one.

1. Login to your new account, go into your Settings and select See all settings.

2. Select the Accounts and Import tab, and then select delete for your original account (under Check mail from other accounts.)

3. When prompted to Confirm delete mail account, select OK. 

If you had to create a Google app password and want to delete it now, go back to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords and click the trashcan icon next to the password you created.

Congrats, you're done!

One important final note: Google will delete accounts that have been inactive for more than two years. So make sure you don't completely ignore all your old emails after transferring them. If you don't plan to regularly use your archive account to send email, you can still keep the account active by signing in at least once every two years.