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How To: Disable Your Mic & Camera Automatically When Joining Zoom Meetings to Slip into Chats Quietly
By default, as soon as you join a meeting on Zoom, both your microphone and camera turn on, sharing your audio and video to the other chat participants. While that isn't usually a problem, it can be an issue if the meeting hasn't started or you're entering in the middle of a class, and you don't want to disturb the video conference.
How To: Change Your TikTok Username to Something Besides the Random One It Gave You
Many of us install TikTok just to see what it's like, but most of us stay for good. Inevitably, that involves creating an account. The problem is, TikTok assigns you a username, usually based on your email address — an odd choice for a platform made for self-promotion. If you're not happy with your random TikTok handle, you can change it.
How To: Slow Down Telegram Group Chats to Catch Up & Follow Along
The bigger the group chat, the harder it is to follow. Messages start flying one after the other, and before you know it, you're hopelessly lost in the conversation. With most chat apps, there's nothing you can do, other than telling your friends to slow down a bit. But on Telegram, you can make them slow down.
How To: Unhide a Disliked Song on Spotify to Hear It in Playlists & Radio Stations Again
When you dislike or hide a song in Spotify, you'll never hear it again in the playlist or radio station that you blocked it from. If you bury it for the entire app, it won't play anywhere. But that doesn't mean you can't get it back if you change your mind.
How To: Dance TikTok's Footshake Challenge in 3 Different Ways
Whether you call it the foot shake or foot dance, videos of people tapping their feet together have been and still are blowing up all over TikTok. If you want to get in on the action but can't follow along with all of the fast-paced TikToks, we'll slow it down a bit for you and a friend.
How To: Make Text Pop in Instagram Stories with 3D-Like Drop Shadow Effects for Any Font
There are tons of apps to help you create unique and compelling posts and stories on Instagram, but you already have the tools you need to make something eye-catching. You can insert line breaks in captions, create translucent overlays for photos, rainbow-up your story font, and even add a 3D text effect to your stories.
How To: Make Twitter Less Awful by Muting Words & Usernames from Your Feed
Twitter can be a wonderful place for people to express their emotions and chat with each other in brief. However, it can also be a breeding ground for hateful comments, foul language, and a whole lot of political talk.
How To: The 5 Best Phones for Social Media Addicts & Influencers in 2020
The top five apps of the 2010s were all social media apps of some kind, and the fact that's not surprising to you says a lot. We may use them for other reasons here and there, but our phones are social media machines at their cores. The thing is, some make better machines than others.
How To: Find Everyone Who Quoted a Specific Tweet Using the Twitter App
If there's an influential tweet, you can see what people are saying about it by reading its comment thread. But what about quote tweets, aka tweets someone posted on their own timeline that quote the initial tweet? These don't show up in comment threads, but there is a way to find them.
How To: Everything You Need to Know About Pinning a Tweet
Pinning a tweet is a great way to get the point across because it's the first post people see when they visit your Twitter profile. When you pin a tweet, reply, or retweet, it sticks to the top of your profile, whether you create new tweets or not. It's the perfect spot to place one of your more popular tweets, a fantastic blog you wrote, or even just a joke that shows your personality.
How To: There's a Super-Fast Way to Redial the Last Phone Number You Called
If you need to call someone back in a hurry, don't bother redialing the number. In fact, don't bother digging through your phone app to tap on the number in the call log. Instead, use this simple trick to quickly redial the number, whether you have an iPhone or Android.
How To: This Sneaky Trick Lets You Post Empty Tweets & Pin Retweets to Your Profile
On Twitter, you can pin one of your tweets or replies to your profile, so it's the first post people see when they visit your page. However, Twitter prevents you from pinning someone else's tweet. You can't even pin something you retweet. There is a clever workaround, though, and it also works for posting empty tweets.
How To: Slow Down, Echo, Stylize & Trim Your Boomerangs on Instagram
Boomerangs are perhaps the quintessential story tool on Instagram. Surprisingly, there's never been much to them — point and shoot, and your subject plays forward and backward in a never-ending loop. Perhaps its prolonged simplicity inspired Instagram to give Boomerangs a bit more depth because the company just introduced three new effects to try out.
How To: View Calendar Events & Invites in Edison Mail While Checking Your Email
Edison Mail's big Assistant update means more features and functions for you in a convenient, efficient package. One of the most significant changes to come with the 1.17.0 (iOS) and 1.12.0 (Android) updates is calendar functionality for all connected email accounts. Other apps, like Spark, have had this for some time, but we're excited that Edison has finally jumped aboard the bandwagon, too.
How To: Make YouTube Videos Fill the Whole Screen on Any Phone
Fullscreen isn't always fullscreen, especially on your smartphone. As screens get taller and bezels get slimmer, more phones end up with an aspect ratio that doesn't match most YouTube videos. Luckily the video-sharing app has a nifty workaround to fill your screen.
Gift Guide: Must-Have Smartphone Accessories for the Traveler
Smartphones are vital travel companions. While you're on the go, they connect you with loved ones back home, help you find tickets and passes for tourist attractions, and make it easy to find your way through foreign roads — but even the most powerful smartphone could use help from travel accessories.
Best TV Streaming Apps: Disney+ vs. Apple TV+ vs. Netflix vs. Hulu vs. Amazon Prime
Who here binges TV on a regular basis? I know I do. Never before have we had so many options for watching our favorite shows, especially when you consider how easy it is to stream from anywhere on a mobile device. But sometimes, all that choice gets a little overwhelming. What services are really worth the money? Where should you be investing your Friday-night binges?
How To: Switch Accounts in Google Apps with One Swipe
Between school, work, and your personal life, there's a good chance you have multiple Google accounts. Most Google apps let you log into all of them simultaneously to receive applicable alerts when they arrive. Well, there's a dead-simple way to switch between these accounts, and it just takes one swipe
Keep Your Chats Private: How to Hide Images & GIFs on Slack for Mobile
Slack is meant for business, but it's inevitably used for personal reasons too, or even just to goof off with colleagues. However, you never know who's looking over your shoulder (nosy coworker? boss?), and you could get in trouble for something sent to you. That's why you might want to hide images and GIFs to help keep your conversations private.
How To: Get Dark Mode on Instagram for Less Stress on Your Eyes When Browsing Pics & Videos
When you're checking out photos and video on Instagram, its default bright white layout can literally be an eyesore, especially in dimly lit settings where the bleached UI feels blinding. Luckily, there's a really simple way to switch from the normal light mode to a dark mode look in the iPhone and Android app.
How To: Make a Picture Black & White Using Google Photos
Editing photos on a phone, while not as good as editing on a desktop, is getting better and better with powerful tools to whip photos into shape. But sometimes you just want a simple edit, like making a color photo black and white. Instead of downloading a separate app to fine-tune the picture, you can just use Google Photos.
Coming Soon: Notification Filters in Instagram Will Help Organize Your Activity Alerts
Does your Activity page on Instagram feel cluttered? You're not alone. Instagram lumps all alerts into one long, chaotic timeline, so if you want to see comments or likes, you have to weed through everything else including shares from other users, memories, recommendations, and new follows. Instagram knows its a mess, and the company plans to add notification filters to sort things out.
How To: Send Reminders to Your Family Members' Phones with Google Assistant
The Google Assistant is available almost everywhere. It powers smart speakers like the Google Home, it's built into Android phones, and it can even be installed on iPhones and iPads. So when Google adds a feature like the ability to send reminders to other people's Assistants, it's far reaching.
How To: Top 5 New Shooter Games for iPhone & Android in 2019
When it comes to shooting games, battle royale titles like PUBG and Fortnite have come to dominate the scene, leaving other sub-genres like top-down and third-person shooters living in the shadows. They're far from irrelevant, though, as evidenced by all the great games released just in 2019 alone.
How To: 9 Ways to Improve Your Mobile Gaming Experience
While the portability of mobile phones makes gaming convenient, it isn't a perfect playing experience. With touch controls, small screens, and limited specs, smartphones lack the comfortability of dedicated gaming devices. But with a few tips, you can enjoy games as if you were playing on the Nintendo Switch.
How To: 10 Must-Play Free Action Games for iPhone & Android
We've already shown you our favorite new action games that have come out this year, but now it's time to share our all-time top ten list. These games are available for both Android and iPhone, they don't have intrusive ads or freemium schemes, and most importantly, they're all completely free to play.
How To: 10 Free Must-Play Shooting Games for iPhone & Android
There's something extremely satisfying about hunting down your online adversaries and knocking them out with a well-placed shot, which probably explains why shooting games are still one some of the most popular time killers for iOS and Android.
How To: Transfer Your Apple Music Playlists to Spotify from an iPhone or Android Phone
Switching from one popular music streaming service to another shouldn't have to be a hassle, but it is if you want to transfer all your favorite music over. No popular service offers a built-in feature to export or import playlists, so if you want to move your favorite Apple Music playlists over to Spotify, you'll have to use a third-party service.
How To: Undo a Thumbs-Down Rating for a Song You've Grown to Like on Pandora
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.
How To: Share Songs from Pandora with Friends on WhatsApp, Twitter, or Facebook
One of the best parts of Pandora is its personalized stations that auto-generate songs within the specific style or genre you've chosen. Not only does this play your favorite tracks with regularity, but it also opens your ears to previously unknown songs or artists — ones you may fall in love with and want to share with others.
How To: The 4 Best Phones for Making Actual Phone Calls in 2019
While our smartphones are many things, one of their primary functions is to make calls. Many of us try to avoid ever having to make calls, but there are situations when it's a must, such as wishing your grandma happy Birthday or calling 911 — and in those times you want stellar call quality.
How To: Prevent Others from Sharing Your Telegram Account Link When Forwarding Your Messages
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.
How To: Auror, Magizoologist & Professor — Which Profession Do You Pick in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
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?
How To: Get Data Directly from a Paper Table into an Excel File on Your Phone with This Neat Feature
Creating a digital spreadsheet by hand can certainly be tedious, especially if you're copying a printed paper table word for word, number for number. Instead of typing information that's already there, however, use Microsoft Excel on Android or iOS to snap a photo of that printed chart and import it directly into your digital one.
How To: Use Color Adjustments in Photoshop Express for More Vibrant Images
Imagine an Instagram feed filled with a wild array of vivid color. Beautiful right? But when you look at the photos in your iPhone or Android phone's albums, they're all just too dull to pull off that dynamic look. There's no doubt that colorful images are more eye-catching than dull ones, so how do you get your photos to overflow with vibrant color? The answer: Add it in post.
How To: Turn Your Phone into a Teleprompter to Record Selfie Videos Without Breaking Eye Contact
If you record yourself for a vlog or story post using your selfie camera, it can be challenging to stay on message. You might worry too much about the way you look or sound to focus on what you want to say. Using a script can help, but looking away from the camera to read is unprofessional, even on social platforms like Instagram. What you need is a teleprompter, and there are apps for that.
How To: Change FPS in Filmic Pro to Shoot & Play Frame Rates from Standard Cinematic to Super Slow-Mo
The days of bad smartphone videos are long gone. Your iPhone or Android phone is a capable video recorder, even offering different frame rate options in the native camera settings. Filmic Pro makes things a little simpler, however, and adds additional controls you wouldn't find on your device alone.
How To: Get Taylor Swift's 4.26 Instagram Filter Right Now
Is there a bigger name in pop music than Taylor Swift right now? Her 116 million followers on Instagram would probably argue, "No." As such, if you're one of these many followers, you might have seen Taylor advertising a new "4.26" filter on her story. Problem is, there's no clear instruction for actually using the filter. That's where we come in.
How To: Use Snapchat to Figure Out What Song Is Playing Around You
Say you're sending a snap to a friend at a restaurant, bar, store, what have you, but you're curious about the song that's playing in the background. You could leave the app to Shazam it, or you could ask screen-hogging Siri or Google Assistant what the track is, but why not just have Snapchat do the work for you? With its built-in scanner, you can discover a song without ever leaving the app.
How To: Change Online, In-Store, Google Pay, Samsung Pay & PayPal Cash Card Payment Preferences for PayPal
Making a purchase through PayPal is great because you have the option to pay using your account balance, a bank account, debit card, credit card, rewards balance, or even PayPal's own credit product. You need to pick one to be your preferred payment method for each in-stores and online but, unfortunately, changing these preferences can get a bit tricky on your iPhone or Android phone.