Smartphones Features
How To: Transfer Your Authy Account to a New Phone
One of the main reasons Authy was able to top our list of the best two-factor authentications apps was its ability to transfer access to a new device. This feature ensures that whenever you get a new phone, you don't lose all your tokens. However, if the process is done incorrectly, you can leave your account vulnerable.
How To: Here's What That 5G+ Icon in Your Status Bar Really Means
When you look at the top corner of your phone, what do you see? Upon upgrading to Android 11 or iOS 14, you'll see either "5G," "5G+," or "5G E" if you're connected to the right network. But what exactly do these symbols mean? They indicate not only if you're using 5G, but also what type you're connected to.
Snapseed 101: Use the 'Healing' Tool to Remove Unwanted Elements from a Photo
Snapseed is an app that you should definitely be using not only if you're really serious about photography, but also if you want to ensure that your online work sets the standard for social media. It's a great companion app to Instagram and VSCO, and it will save your day many times over when you find yourself on your phone, on-the-go, needing to edit an image beyond the typical everyday filters.
How To: Connect Your Nest Products to SmartThings & Trigger Automations with Your Cameras or Thermostats
Samsung and Google have done some amazing work together in the past, particularly with Android related projects. But after years of an inexplicable lack of interoperability, the primary smart home hardware divisions from both companies are finally on the same page — starting right now.
How To: Rename Your Original Sound to Make Your TikTok Video More Shareable
TikTok is a video-platform first, and while visual content is critical to its popularity, what has carried many of these videos to millions upon millions of views isn't only what you see but what you hear.
How To: Video Too Long for Instagram Stories? Here's How to Split It Up
One of the latest trends in Instgram is breaking up larger videos into more digestible clips to use in stories. Stories max out at 15 seconds, making it a pain to show anything meaningful in that short time frame. Fortunately, you can virtually extend the duration of your Stories on both your iPhone and Android phone.
Apple Music 101: How to Clear Your 'Up Next' Queue to Remove Unwanted Upcoming Songs
The "Up Next" feature in Apple Music helps you control which songs you want to listen in the order that you want. However, this list can become messy fast, quickly becoming a collection of songs you never wanted to listen to in the first place. Luckily, Apple has built a way for you to clear Up Next, it's just not very obvious.
How To: Download Entire Maps for Offline Use in Google Maps
Spotty cellular reception is a fact of life that we all have to deal with, especially when you're traveling. For those of us who rely on our smartphones for navigation, driving through areas with bad mobile data service can be a cause for major headaches.
How To: The Specs That Really Count When Buying a Phone
When shopping for a new smartphone, you'll encounter comparisons and spec sheets that are filled to the brim with values like mAh, GB, and GHz. To the average consumer, however, these values are meaningless, so we end up looking at which device has the specs with the highest actual numbers.
How To: Use This Gmail Trick to See When Apps & Sites Sell Your Data
How do spammers get your email? You give it to them. Not directly, no — you sign up for an app or service and happily hand over your email to verify your new account, then that app or service sells your email address to marketers who now know what kinds of apps and services you like.
How To: Can't Dislike Songs in Spotify? Here's How to Really Hide Them from Playlists & Radio Stations
You can block artists no matter where you are in Spotify's mobile app for Android or iOS, but it's not as easy when you want to hide songs from playing. Disliking tracks is possible here and there, but not everywhere, and that's a serious problem if you keep hearing songs you hate.
Signal 101: How to Register Using a Google Voice Number
Signal Private Messenger is famous for its end-to-end encryption, but you can't even use the messaging app without having a real phone number attached to it. Luckily, there is a way around this limitation, so you can use Signal even if you don't have a valid SIM card in your smartphone.
How To: Hack Your Old Phone Line into an Emergency Power Supply for Your Cell Phone
"Ahoy-hoy." If telephone titan Alexander Graham Bell had his way, we'd all be answering phones like Mr. Burns. Thankfully, frienemy Thomas Edison had enough sense to realize we weren't always on the briny. He preferred "hello" as our standard telephone greeting, which he is credited with coining in 1877. Fellow American pioneer Davy Crockett actually used it as a greeting first in 1833 (as compared to an exclamation)—but in print, not over the phone.
How To: Save Pandora Stations & Songs for Offline Playback
Tuning into a favorite station on Pandora has become part of a routine for many, and it's easy to see why. The app automatically plays songs tailored to your tastes to ensure a relatively hands-free experience. And if you're a subscriber, Pandora even has you covered in moments where there's poor cellular service by letting you keep listening to your go-to tracks uninterrupted.
How To: The 5 Best Two-Factor Authentication Apps for iPhone & Android
When it comes to cybersecurity, one layer isn't enough. A complex password (or one created with a password manager) does a good job of protecting your data, but it can still be cracked. Two-factor authentication strengthens this by adding a second layer of security, giving you even more protection against online threats.
Coinbase 101: How to Refer Friends & Family to Earn Bonuses
Every dollar that comes your way is a blessing, especially when it comes to trading in the volatile world of bitcoins. Thankfully, Coinbase rewards you for sending much valued customers their way, giving you more money to feed your cryptocurrency trading needs.
How To: View & Manage Your Location History on Google Maps to Track Where You've Been & What You Were Doing
With so much stimuli in today's world, it can be hard to keep track of all the places we've visited and the events we've attended. Thankfully, a great feature in Google Maps lets you view a detailed log of your phone's location history to help you remember where you were at almost any given point in time.
How To: 12 Quirky Accessories You'll Actually Want to Use with Your iPhone or Android Phone
There is a whole world of smartphone accessories out there, some of which are more quirky than others and don't get the recognition they deserve. But these sometimes strange, sometimes embarrassing products can really make life easier on your iPhone or Android phone.
How To: Can You Bring Your Phone to a New Carrier? This Is How You Tell
If your current cellular provider costs too much, has poor reception in your area, or doesn't support features you'd like to use, switching to another carrier is the obvious move. But can you bring your current iPhone or Android phone?
How To: Improve Gboard Accuracy by Deleting Suggested Words You'd Never Use
Predictive text is a common feature in most mobile keyboards these days. However, many times, its guesses are way off, sometimes hilariously so. As absurd as it can be, predictive text can also continuously suggest the same wrong word over and over. Thankfully, Gboard offers users a way to quickly remove these suggestions for good on both iOS and Android.
How To: Improve Your Pokémon's Stats in Pokémon GO
In Pokémon GO, having an in-depth understanding of your Pokémon's stats and abilities is crucially important to becoming a better player. Not all Pokémon are created equal; as such, it's critical that you look at each of your Pokémon—even duplicates—with a keen eye.
Pocket Camp 101: How to Use Market Boxes to Buy & Sell Items with Other Animal Crossing Players
Market boxes are an integral part of the player experience in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, but using them effectively can be a tricky task. The item-trading tool between human friends is the locale for both junk and diamond-in-the-rough deals, and it can greatly increase the number of bells you earn if you play your cards right.
How To: Share Your Friends' Instagram Stories in Your Own Story
Instagram has long-resisted easily resharing content. While it's been testing a "regram" feature for a long time, it still lags behind apps such as Twitter and Facebook when it comes to resharing content. But while Instagram is a bastion of original material, there is a feature in place for you to reshare stories from those you follow. Your friends can reshare your stories too.
News: The Weather Channel Forecasts More Augmented Reality for Its Live Broadcasts with Unreal Engine
Just weeks after being acquired by comedian turned producer Byron Allen for $300 million, The Weather Channel has tapped augmented reality studio The Future Group to integrate immersive augmented reality experiences into its broadcast content.
Google Assistant 101: 70 Easter Eggs & Interesting Voice Commands
Despite a rocky start with plenty of feature disparity, the Google Assistant now provides a pretty consistent experience regardless of what device you're using it on. Be it Android, iPhone, or Google Home, the AI behind the Assistant is virtually identical — including its quirky commands and funny responses.
How To: 10 Helpful Tools You Can Unlock Using Google Search, Google Assistant, or the Google App on Your Phone
Google has a few hidden tools you might not have discovered yet, and they work in Google Search, in the Google app, and with Google Assistant — on both iPhone and Android phones.
How To: Transfer Bitcoin, Ether & More from Coinbase to Binance
The most convenient way for US users to buy Ripple (XRP) or Stellar (XRM) is through Binance. However, you can't deposit money directly into this app, but you can deposit cryptocurrency like ether or bitcoins to buy other alt-coins. The easiest way to do that is by using Coinbase, the most popular cryptocurrency app.
How To: 4 Tips to Improve YouTube Music Recommendations — Make 'Discover' & 'Your Mix' So Much Better
Now that the transfer tool for migrating your Google Play Music library to YouTube Music is rolling out, more fans of the former, which will meet its end in 2020, are giving its replacement a try.
News: The Weather Channel Uses Broadcast AR to Warn Residents in the Path of Hurricane Florence
If you've gone anywhere near a television in the US in the last 48 hours, you've probably seen some of the reports of Hurricane Florence and its devastating wind and rain making its way toward the Carolina coast.
How To: Work Around the Copy/Paste Bug on the Samsung Galaxy S3, Note 2, and Other TouchWiz Devices
If you have a Samsung Galaxy S3 or Galaxy Note 2, you might not have noticed it yet, but there's an annoying little bug that centers around your clipboard. If you tend to do a lot of copy/pasting on your device, you've probably seen it happen—your phone crashes.
News: Google Researchers Develop Method for Capturing 'Relightable' Volumetric Video
As the demand for realistic volumetric video for AR experiences begins to grow (along with the available facilities and services for capturing it), researchers at Google have figured out how to improve upon the format.
How To: We Tested the Best Burner Phone Apps for iPhone & Android — Here's Our Top 4
A burner number isn't just for criminals and cheating spouses. In this digital world, with many of our interactions being conducted online, a throwaway phone number acts as a buffer — it lets you enjoy the web without having to give out your personal information, such as real name or phone number.
How To: Change Slack's Default Browser to Chrome, Firefox, or Safari
Slack's in-app web browser works fine, but it just doesn't offer the functionality and features that a dedicated browser such as Chrome, Firefox or Safari can. Features like the ability to bookmark a page, search for specific text, or request the desktop site are missing. Luckily, Slack makes it easy to change your default browser.
Telegram 101: How to Send Self-Destructing Messages in Chats
While using end-to-end encryption may be enough security for most of your messages in Telegram, you can go a step beyond this by sending messages that disappear after an allotted amount of time. This prevents you from having to manually delete the message at a later time, so you can send it and forget it without worrying about whether or not it's still out there.
Outlook 101: How to Customize Notifications & Alert Sounds for Individual Accounts
With email, one size does not typically fit all. You have multiple email accounts, each for different purposes and with varying levels of importance, so it only makes sense to customize the way your phone alerts you to each account's incoming emails. Luckily, Outlook allows you to do just that.
How To: Hide Facebook Messenger Groups Without Letting Other People Know You Left
Group chats in Facebook Messenger can devolve into outright noise pollution as people chit chat randomly and bombard you with distracting notifications. Unfortunately, leaving the group outright alerts everyone inside, so if you want to get out of the thread unnoticed, what exactly can you do?
How To: Hide Stories in Your Facebook Feed on iPhone or Android
When Facebook introduced Stories in 2017, many users despised the Snapchat-like feature on their main page. However, despite the outcry, Facebook doesn't plan to let you remove it. But you don't have to settle for this. With the help of some third-party apps, you no longer have to deal with Stories.
How To: Invite People to Messenger Group Chats with a Link So They Can Join Right Away or Wait on Approval
While some of our group chats should probably remain private and closed off, others will only get better with more people. Whether you're organizing an event and need a headcount or you want to share a funny YouTube video with a large crowd, you can add all the friends you wish to on Facebook Messenger by sending them a unique link.
How To: Tell if Someone Has Read Your WhatsApp Message—Even if They Have Read Receipts Turned Off
We've all been there... admit it. You sent a couple messages, but your friend had the "Read Receipts" option turned off in WhatsApp, so after a few minutes, you start wondering if they're away from their phone right now or just flat-out ignoring you.
How To: Silently Send Messages in Telegram to Avoid Waking Up or Disturbing Friends with Chats
You know the drill. You need answers, and your friend has them. The problem? It's way too late to text them. Maybe they have Do Not Disturb enabled. Perhaps they don't, and you wake them up, ruining their entire Monday. Don't be that friend. Instead, send a message silently with Telegram.