Tweaks & Hacks

The new iPhone SE packs the power of the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max inside the chassis of the iPhone 8. But that's not all that's new on the 2020 SE. Apple has also included six new wallpapers, exclusive to the Special Edition model, but the internet makes it tough to make anything truly exclusive anymore.

In previous Android versions, you lost about an inch of screen real estate to the status bar and navigation bar. But if you enable Android 10's new navigation gestures on your Samsung Galaxy, you can regain the bottom part — and with the help of ADB, you can reclaim the top portion as well.

OnePlus releases some unique and exciting features before they start catching on with everyone else. Their OxygenOS is often considered the cleanest and most useful variant of Android. However, there are still a few key features OnePlus has yet to bring to their devices. This includes a proper lift to wake option.

Checkra1n is by far the best way to jailbreak A7- through A11-powered iPhones on iOS 13 and later, but it's not without its downsides. Besides the lack of Windows support, the tool limits your choices to Cydia alone. With a little elbow grease, however, you can easily replace the app with Sileo for a more streamlined jailbreak experience.

With every new Galaxy flagship release comes the age-old dilemma: do I choose great hardware or great software? For years, Samsung has given users the best components available on any smartphone. The problem is the software is an acquired taste. But there is something you can do about it.

Every Galaxy S20 sold in the US — even the S20+ and S20 Ultra — simply can't be rooted. With the bootloader permanently locked, you miss out on the world of rooting and the customization it opens up, but modifications are still possible.

You're halfway through reading an article on your iPhone, when the display just turns off. Frustrated, you open the article again, only for the display to go black again. You shouldn't have to keeping touching the screen to keep your iPhone from going to sleep. Luckily, you can delay or even stop your iPhone from doing so with just a few taps.

If running out of battery while out and about weren't bad enough, the experience is a lot more painful if your iPhone has a semi-untethered jailbreak. With that kind of jailbreak, when the iPhone dies, all of the mods will be disabled after the device powers back up. Fortunately, instead of restoring your jailbreak and tweaks manually after recovering from a critically low battery, you can avoid it altogether.

LineageOS is great and all, but custom ROMs were at their peak when CyanogenMod reigned supreme. It had all sorts of innovative features that have since been copied by Google and Samsung and the like. But one thing that still hasn't been adopted into stock Android or One UI is CM13's easy way to adjust screen brightness.

Despite Android's flexibility in regards to customization, the options available in stock Android are pretty barebones. It is only with the help of third-party apps that we can entirely transform sections of the UI to our liking. And thanks to a new app, we can modify another part of the OS, the status bar.

Black lights come in all shapes and sizes, and they're useful in a variety of ways. They can help you spot fake currency, urine stains, interesting rocks, and deadly scorpions, and they can even help you view cool fluorescent artwork.

If you're a root user who has played Pokémon GO over the years, then you're probably familiar with the detection methods used to spoil your fun. The game's developer, Niantic, has publicly mentioned their ongoing battle with rooted Android phones and are unwilling to let up. They have a no-nonsense approach to try and keep you from playing, and they've stepped their game up once again.

One vital part of Android 10's new navigation system is the "QuickStep" gesture. Swipe up from the bottom of your screen, then pause. You'll see your recent apps along with a dock containing a handful of icons for quick access. This dock is provided by the phone's launcher, which means your home screen is now integrated into the multitasking UI. So what happens if you change your home screen app?

Google's push for your safety gained some much-needed attention when it released the Pixel 4 smartphone. It has an app called "Personal Safety," which uses the array of built-in sensors on your phone to detect if you've been in a car crash. The futuristic safety feature was exclusive to the Pixel 4 initially but is now available to all Pixel owners as well.

Spotify lets you use Siri commands to play and control music on your iPhone, but it wasn't always like that. It only applies in iOS 13 and later, so if you're on an older iPhone model with an older iOS version, you can use a really complicated workaround in iOS 12 or try a jailbreak tweak on older firmware.

In iOS 13 and later, Spotify supports Siri commands, something we've wanted ever since Siri and Spotify were things. But if you're on iOS 12 still, you're missing out. All you can do is open the Spotify app, then pause and skip tracks with Siri after you start playing a song manually. There is a workaround, however.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite has gained quite the fan base since its launch, but not without a few bumps along the way. Niantic, the game's developer, has a long-running history with trying to block all root users on Android. The methods will vary for each game, but this time around with Wizards Unite, they appear to have a new detection feature at play from the recent 2.9.0 update. Let's find out what's going on.

There once was a time in the Android rooting scene where we couldn't rely on using a custom recovery for all of our modding needs. Manual file flashing was very popular in the early days of Android before custom recoveries started taking over. With the rise of TWRP, it seemed like there was almost no need for manual file flashers; however, they appear to be making a welcomed return in a big way.

The biggest new feature in Android 10 is the system-wide dark mode. Both Samsung and Google phones have it, so third-party support is everywhere. The only problem is OnePlus forgot to include a way to quickly toggle dark mode on and off.

According to a study done by Kaspersky, 7.6% of Android users root their phones. That may not sound like a lot, but with over 2 billion Android devices out there, the math works out to over 150 million rooted phones — more than the total population of Russia, Mexico, or Japan — so root nation is an important demographic that deserves being catered to.

I think everyone with an iPhone should be making every purchase they can with Apple Pay. I also think everyone who uses Apple Pay should open the Wallet app ahead of time, instead of simply tapping their iPhone to the card reader. But there's a much faster way to open Wallet than slogging through the sea of apps on your iPhone. You can open it right from the lock screen.

OnePlus has always pushed the boundaries with specs. They give their phones the premium treatment, which, yes, includes the camera nowadays as well. But even though they have become pretty solid in the photography department, it could always be better.

I hate folder names, especially the one Apple shoves down our digital throats. On a computer, they make total sense, but on my iPhone, it's just more clutter on the home screen. You can tell what folder is what just by looking at the app icons within it, so why are we forced to label them? Technically, we're not, since there is a workaround in iOS 12 and iOS 13 to make those labels disappear for good.

When your bootloader is unlocked, your phone shows a screen that tells you the bootloader is indeed unlocked and how software integrity can't be verified. But if you're the one who unlocked the bootloader in the first place, all this message does is slow down the bootup process dramatically.

OnePlus has purposefully made their devices easy to root so that you can spend less time waiting and more time doing. These phones are a solid choice for anyone looking to dive into the rooting and modding scene. Using the same principles that Google has with the Pixel line, you can always be sure your OnePlus 7 Pro will get first-class treatment from launch day and beyond.

Black Desert Mobile is one of the hottest new smartphone games around, but there seems to be something missing in the frame rate department. Gamers quickly noticed many Android phones are stuck on a 30 FPS cap when it comes to performance. It's not that the phones are too weak to handle higher frame rates, but that there is a particular list of approved devices that can achieve this.

The Google Phone app is one of the best dialers for Android today, especially with all of the unique and exciting features it brings to the table. Unfortunately, without owning a Pixel phone, you are unable to officially download the app, making a modified version your only option. However, this version of Google Phone is missing a few key features, such as spam protection and business search.

Pixels and other near-stock Android phones have the Google Feed baked into their home screen, but sadly, the default OnePlus Launcher doesn't. Even more disappointing is the fact that the OnePlus Launcher actually has the Google Feed code built into it, but it's not activated. Let's change that.

Apple hasn't refreshed its text tones on iPhones since iOS 7. That's six years of the same sounds. And while text tones like Bamboo and Hello have undoubtedly aged like fine wine, that's still too long to live with the same old sounds day after day. Let's take matters into our own hands — let's make our own text tones, right in Music on macOS 10.15 Catalina.

Have you ever heard someone else's iPhone ringing and thought it was yours? Of course you did. iPhone ringtones are iconic, but not varied. If you're using one of the more popular iOS sounds, you'll likely encounter it in the wild multiple times. Why bother, when you can create your own custom ringtones right on your Mac.

Whether you love Motion Sense or think it's a gimmick, one thing we can agree on is that its functionality is limited. It's currently limited to switching tracks on a playlist, snoozing alarms, silencing calls, lowering the volume of alerts, and checking notifications. But a new mod will help you do so much more with it.

The Pixel 4 comes with a new "Styles and wallpapers" app that lets you change icons, accent colors, and more. But if you're on a first-gen Pixel, a Pixel 2, or a Pixel 3, you don't get this feature. On the bright side, there's still a way to use it.

The Pixel 4 is one of the most talked-about phones of 2019, and it has many things going for it, especially in the world of rooting and modding. Just as with previous Pixel generations, unlocking the bootloader is the gateway to realizing your device's true potential. It can make way for such things as TWRP, Magisk, custom ROMs, and many other device-specific mods just the same.

Castlevania ranks up there with Super Mario as one of the most memorable video games ever, and a new iteration of the side-scrolling action RPG has been soft-launched in Canada ahead of a worldwide release. If you want to try out the game on your iPhone before everyone else, there's a simple hack to try.

With the files on our devices getting more important as the years go by, the need to keep things organized continues to rise. The longer you have a device, the messier the internal storage might become. Having a file manager would be extremely useful in this situation. You could also reorganize the folder structure as well, just like you could on a desktop computer.

Cases and stickers are always great, but they aren't the only way to customize an iPhone. The software on your device is full of customization options, from a better-looking home screen and cooler lock screen wallpapers to app icon changes and a system-wide dark mode. There's literally over 100 ways to make iOS on your iPhone genuinely unique, some of which are hiding in plain sight.

Removing unwanted apps from your iPhone is a straightforward affair — long-press an app's icon, then hit the delete button once it appears. Unfortunately, the same can't be said when it comes to uninstalling tweaks from a jailbroken iPhone.

Restarting your iPhone can cure software glitches, but it should only be done as a last resort if your device has a semi-tethered jailbreak, because it will disable any tweaks you've applied. Luckily, your jailbroken iPhone has a faster alternative to rebooting to help you troubleshoot and make changes on the fly.

Incoming phone calls and FaceTimes, whether you want to answer them or not, will take over your entire iPhone's screen — no matter what you're in the middle of doing on the device at the moment. You could be browsing the web, playing a game, or chatting on social media. It doesn't matter, you'll get interrupted. But you don't have to put up with it anymore.

Sometimes you might find that a certain app keeps sending you notifications. What are you to do? There are plenty of useful apps that might send one too many push notifications, but that doesn't mean you should dump them. Luckily, Android gives you complete control over how each installed app handles notifications.