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iOS 18 Tips, Tricks, How-Tos, News

How To: Download Your 2018 Apple Music Listening History Just Like on Spotify

Around the end of each year, Spotify offers a year-in-review service so its users can see what they listened to the past year and share their listening histories in fun infographics. Apple Music does not have such a feature, unfortunately, but there is a way to curb that FOMO feeling this holiday season by downloading your listening history not just for 2018, but for the entire lifespan of your account.

How To: Snag Hulu & Showtime with Spotify Premium for Just $5/Month

Media subscriptions are all the rage these days. Between Netflix, Apple Music, HBO Now, and countless more, your TV, movie, and music options have never been better. Unfortunately, all these choices weigh heavily on your wallet. So, when there's an opportunity to snag not just Spotify but Hulu and Showtime as well, all for just a tad bit over five dollars a month, how could you turn that down?

How To: Customize the Back & Forward Skip Button Lengths in Apple Podcasts from 10 to 60 Seconds

Apple's stock Podcasts app in iOS remains my go-to for all of my podcast-listening needs, but skipping around during an episode can be frustrating. Scrubbing audio along the timeline is often an imprecise maneuver, which is why the skip buttons can be so useful and efficient. Without customizing skip lengths, however, you may find yourself tapping far more than you need to.

How To: Same Song Starts Playing in Your Car When Connecting Your iPhone? Avoid the Problem with These 6 Tips

A majority of iPhone users, including our whole staff here, have an irritating issue with media playback from car stereos: The first song alphabetically in the iPhone's library will play automatically when connecting to the head unit either via USB cable or Bluetooth. CarPlay is even affected sometimes. If you're tired of your first "A" song playing all the time, there are a few things you can do.

How To: Find Songs by Lyrics in Apple Music for iOS 12 — With or Without a Subscription

Has this ever happened to you: You're singing a song in your head and want to look it up on Apple Music but you just can't think of its name or even who recorded it? In iOS 12, if you can sing it, you can search for it, as the update lets you find songs in Apple Music by lyrics alone. It's like Shazam, only instead of identifying music by sound, it uses the lyrics in your head.

How To: Enable Dark Mode on Overcast for iPhone

We all listen to podcasts differently — on the way to work, at the gym, when drifting off to sleep. If you're in the latter group and rely on Overcast to help you with your nightly routine, you're probably sick of its blinding light theme keeping you up. That's why the app features a dark mode, to keep things easy on the eyes while picking out or playing an episode.

How To: Share Audio & Video Clips in Overcast to Show Off Your Favorite Podcasts

In a world of seemingly endless streaming services, podcasts continue to offer free, unlimited entertainment for all. When you find a podcast that's just too good to keep to yourself, sharing it with family and friends is inevitable, but how you share may determine whether or not they listen to it or not. Links alone aren't enough. Audio and video clips are how you get them sucked in.

How To: Disable Those Annoying Looping Videos When Playing Songs on Spotify

Back in 2018, Spotify began testing a new mobile feature that has grown very tiresome: three to eight-second looping videos that take over the entire screen. Known as Canvases, they effectively hide the cover art and lyrics of the current song — and they're still very much around to annoy and distract the hell out of you. Thankfully, Spotify has also included a way to get rid of these things.

Spotify 101: How to Save Cellular Data When Streaming Music on Your iPhone or Android Phone

While I love Spotify, I don't like it devouring my data plan when streaming music away from a Wi-Fi network. If you have the foresight or time to download Spotify tracks for offline playback later, great. For those of you who like to listen to your music more randomly like I do, based on your current mood, streaming is the only way to go, and there are settings you can tweak to use up less data.

Apple Music 101: How to Download Songs & Other Media from Your iCloud Music Library for Offline Playback

For most carriers, "unlimited" data plans aren't really unlimited, and they still cost more than data limited plans. So while subscribing to music streaming services and storing your own music library in the cloud may be more convenient, it may eat your data up like candy. To keep that from happening, try downloading tracks from Apple Music for offline playback.

Spotify 101: How to Easily Share Music to Friends from Android & iPhone

If you're anything like me, when you first find a good song, album, or playlist on Spotify, your initial reaction may be to share it with your family and friends. While there are the usual share methods available in Spotify that are available in other streaming music services such as Apple Music and Google Play Music, Spotify goes one step further with QR-like codes users can easily scan.

Apple Music 101: How to Automatically Download Tracks for Offline Playback That You Save to Your Library

When you've exhausted your data plan, streaming isn't an option unless you want overcharges. While Apple Music makes it easy to download songs for offline listening, you need to add the music to your library first. This creates an extra step in downloading music, but it doesn't have to — Apple Music lets you automatically download any song, album, or playlist that you add to your library.