Smartphones: Page 9

In Apple Music, loving and disliking songs is a great way to teach Apple's subscription service what type of tunes you like and which you don't. While it also seems like it should be an excellent way to keep track of songs you enjoy in the wild, there's no clear way to view all of your loved tracks in one convenient list. There is a way, however, but easy it is not.

As you might know, Tidal differentiates itself from the competition with its audio quality. Unlike Spotify and Apple Music, it aims to give its subscribers studio quality audio from any device. However, before you sign up for Tidal, be aware there are few steps you need to take in order to stream such high-quality music.

Staying alert to directions and changing the music you're listening to on your smartphone at the same time can be cumbersome, but Google Maps wants to fix that. One of the mapping service's features allows you to control music playing on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music from inside of Google Maps — while you're navigating in the car, on public transport, or even on your bike.

SoundCloud is a great place to gather all your different tastes in music and display them as representations of who you are. You can display things like your own tracks, albums, manually-curated playlists, liked tracks and playlists, and reposted content all from within your profile page.

From XXXTentacion to R. Kelly, many artists have been accused of inappropriate actions, so some of us just don't want to hear their music anymore. However, each time streaming services attempt to ban such artists, they face heavy backlash. Recognizing this, Tidal decided to offer a different solution.

Within the last week, there have been at least three times when someone asked me to play a good playlist. This is always a tough call. What if I play something that nobody likes? I probably will.

Contrary to popular belief, it takes more than just one artist to create the sound, lyrics, and vocals of a song. With most music being enjoyed digitally nowadays, it's harder to know all of a track's collaborators, as this info used to be in the CD booklet. Well with Tidal, you can now easily find this information and more.

SoundCloud is a really interesting alternative to Spotify and Pandora in that it will never really give you the exact mainstream song that you want. If you're looking for new up-and-coming artists that are making some wonderful alternative remixes to mainstream music, then SoundCloud is the right music streaming app for you.

There's nothing wrong with indulging in guilty pleasures on Spotify every once in a while — we all need a little Coldplay and Creed in our lives. The only problem is, all of your friends and family might be watching. Anyone that is following your Spotify account can potentially see what you're listening to, but there are several ways to hide this shameful and embarrassing activity from the world.

Pandora has a simple rating system that works by hitting either the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon on a track that's playing on your station. If you choose the former, the song you like along with others similar to it will play with more frequency, while selecting the latter will prevent that song and others like it from playing in your station moving forward.

The nice part about creating a song playlist is that it's essentially like your own customized album. You can organize all your different music tastes into one large collection or separate them into each of their own genres.

Whether you're out for a drive, commuting to work, or just taking a stroll, listening to your favorite tracks on Pandora takes the legwork out of choosing which songs to play next. After a while, however, you go-to playlist can get repetitive, as the same songs from the same artists seem to play over and over. Luckily, Pandora makes it easy to add variety to your stations in just a few taps.

In the SoundCloud app, when you find an awesome song, you can build off of it by creating one killer music station that will give you like-minded songs you might not have ever discovered otherwise. And finding cool new songs and artists isn't the only reason to create a SoundCloud station — it's a great opportunity to set the tone of your workday or your party without ever worrying about the music ending.

With such a vast selection of music genres available, it's easy to build up a massive list of stations in Pandora that can make your go-to playlists harder to find. Fortunately, the app lets you easily remove unwanted stations to streamline your experience and listen to your favorite tunes in the fewest taps possible.

There are more than a few subscription-based movie streaming apps available for Android and iPhone, each with different benefits and varying pricing plans. Needless to say, it can get expensive fast if you sign up for multiple services because you can't decide on what's best. Hopefully, we can help you out with choosing the right video-on-demand app to spend your hard-earned dollars on.

In general, the internet can be a cruel place, and Instagram is no exception. Most of the time, the platform is a fantastic way to share and view unique and creative content, to reach an audience of both fans and friends. People can step out of line and harass or bully others on posts to the detriment of the entire community. However, this type of commenting won't be sustainable for much longer.

If you've ever traveled to a country where you do not speak the language, you know there are times you need to translate text. Or maybe you just ordered a foreign good that requires text translation. Google Translate can easily solve this with its camera translation feature. It will translate any text you see in the real world into your desired language.

With both iOS 13 and Android 10 around the corner, system-wide dark mode is moments away from hitting your phone. In preparation, many developers have been adding a dark mode to their apps, including the official Reddit app.

Did you know that the YouTube app can tell you how much time you've spent watching videos? If you're like me, you'll be surprised to know exactly how much of your life is spent inside the popular app. You can get a specific breakdown of how much you YouTube you consume.

With iOS 13 and Android 10 adding built-in dark modes, app developers are working tirelessly to make their apps match the rest of your phone. Several are ahead of the curve, such as IMDb, who already offers a dark theme in their app.

Group chats are fun, effective ways of staying in touch with the many people in our lives. Whether it's the local friend chat or the group from work, we rely on these groups to keep connected. Running one of these group chats, however, can be a monster task. If you're feeling overwhelmed with administrative responsibilities, why not pass on that burden to another member of the Telegram group?

From the first moments of booting up Harry Potter: Wizards Unite to the hours of walking you're bound to experience, one thing is clear — encountering Foundables and defeating their Confoundables is a significant plot point of the AR game. While you receive rewards each time you retrieve a Foundable, the real treasure comes from completing parts of the Registry, called "Families."

Forwarding messages is a helpful Telegram feature that makes it easy to share funny and entertaining content with other contacts. However, for the privacy-centric, forwarding poses an issue, as messages of yours that are delivered elsewhere carry a tag back to your account. Luckily, you can make your messages anonymous, so anyone receiving messages of yours that are forwarded won't be able to see you originally sent the message.

One of the more competitive aspects to chat apps these days is customizability. It seems every messenger wants to offer the largest number of options for users to make the app feel like a truly personal experience. Telegram is no stranger to this customizability, offering tools where you can select backgrounds and chat bubble colors.

For some of you, whether or not to delete Facebook is a daily struggle. One reason you might not have pulled the trigger on your Facebook account yet could be because of Messenger, which provides millions of people with different devices an easy way to communicate with each other. But here's a secret you might not know: you don't need to have a Facebook account to use Facebook's popular chat app.

Niantic's Harry Potter: Wizards Unite offers players an augmented reality look into the world of witchcraft and wizardry. The Wizarding World and Harry Potter novel series is full of unique and interesting characters, which is why it makes sense that Wizards Unite offers you to take the role of one of three "Professions" — Auror, Magizoologist, and Professor. The question is, which one do you pick?

For all of its advantages, Facebook Messenger isn't the best for people who like their privacy. The popular app lets all your Facebook friends know when you're online by default, as well as how long you've been idle, making it impossible to check up with one person without leaving yourself vulnerable to your entire friends list. Luckily, this feature is one you can turn off.

WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Facebook, has several important privacy and security-related features, including end-to-end encryption, screen lock, read receipts, and two-step verification. If you're an avid WhatsApp user, you'll be happy to know there are more privacy features you might not know, such as hiding your profile photo from other users.

As the premiere app for chatting and video calls, it only makes sense for Skype to provide a dark theme to help prevent eye strain and minimize battery drain. Not only that, it has to also keep pace with popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger that also have the feature built-in.

There are a number of reasons you'd want to delete your Skype account. You may have decided to move away from the app in favor of another service like WhatsApp or FaceTime, or perhaps you want to erase your account due to an online hack. Regardless of why you might want to delete your Skype account, doing so isn't quite as straightforward as it appears.

Unless you're a WhatsApp pro user, you may be surprised to know that there are text formatting options that you can apply to your messages. Markdown characters can help you emphasize certain words or phrases by making them italicized or bold, and it'll even let you cross out words and change the font. It's one of those nice touches that isn't available in most other messaging apps.

How many times have you sent a message on Facebook Messenger that you immediately wanted to take back? Most email services have an unsend option, as well as Instagram Direct, and Messenger has caught on to this convenience with a take-back button for any chat you're in — even in groups. Plus, you can also remove other people's messages.

Let's say you want to send out a message to all of your friends. Normally, you'd have to put all of the recipients into one giant group thread to do this. But when people started responding to your message, everyone in the group would get a notification, so your friends would probably be annoyed that you started the group thread in the first place. Luckily, if you're using WhatsApp, this isn't an issue.

For the most part, people use real names on Facebook. That's all fine and well for keeping tabs on those you know, but it can make friendly Messenger chats feel oddly formal. Skirt around this stiffness by giving your friends nicknames in Messenger for Android and iOS, so your conversations reflect the way you and your friends communicate in real life.

Whether gabbing via cloud chat or Secret Chat, there's no denying that private messaging is one of Telegram's strengths. Communications can often occur at night, where Telegram's default bright white theme can be a bit uncomfortable to use, but Telegram supports dark mode on Android and iOS — with a few different themes to match any late-night chatting style.

For quite some time, popular messaging apps like Snapchat have had features that let you place stickers on photos and videos to add time and location-based information. To catch up, WhatsApp has now added the same functionality to its messaging platform in an effort to remain among the most well-rounded messaging apps available.

For years, Skype has been synonymous with video calling and messaging. However, as the industry moved toward encryption and privacy, Skype usage was discouraged by experts due to its murky encryption. To combat this, Skype has introduced true end-to-end encryption.

If you're looking to keep your conversations private, look no further than Telegram. Its cloud-based chats are secure and its optional end-to-end encrypted chats even more so, but you can't really prevent someone in the conversation from sharing your messages. However, you can lessen that chance by taking back your messages, deleting them for both you and the other end of the discussion.

Blue has defined Facebook's color scheme since its inception. Both Facebook's main app and Messenger theme are blue, which means your chat bubbles, like emoji, and menu bar items are also. While certainly a satisfying color for chat, you may get sick of it after a while, especially when it's in every thread. Luckily, Facebook lets you customize the color of individual Messenger chats.

Your Skype contact list might contain a sea of names that make it tough to find a specific person you're trying to reach. The same goes for your loved ones and colleagues, especially if you have a common name like Jennifer or John. Knowing that, you might want to change your Skype display name to set yourself apart.