Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: Give Each Home Screen Page Its Own Unique Wallpaper
When you swipe from page to page on your home screen, the contents on your screen change, but the wallpaper always remains the same. And while Android does include plenty of ways to customize your device, setting a unique wallpaper for each home screen page isn't one of them.
How To: Record Streaming Music, FaceTime Calls, Skype Audio, & More for Free
Piracy, it can be argued, is the scourge of the internet. But when it comes to music, sometimes it's best to give a listen to a track or album before deciding to spend your hard-earned money on fully supporting it.
How To: 15 Reasons to Unlock Developer Options on Your Android
In case you didn't know, Android has an awesome hidden settings menu called "Developer options" that contains a lot of advanced and unique features. If you've ever come across this menu before, chances are you just dipped in for a minute so that you could enable USB debugging and use ADB features.
How To: Extend Battery Power on Your Windows 10 Laptop or Surface
Historically, battery life has not been a strong suit for machines running Windows. Poor decisions by hardware manufacturers combined with the resource-hogging behavior of Windows are to blame. However, Microsoft is trying to resolve this issue, once again, with the release of Windows 10.
iOS 9 GM Leaked: Here's How to Download iOS 9 on Your iPad, iPhone, & iPod Touch Right Now
Apple's unveiling of the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, Apple TV, and iPad Pro dominated the news today, but at the end of their special September 9th event, they quietly released the final version of iOS 9 to developers, called the Gold Master (GM) build.
How To: Get the 6S's New Front-Facing Selfie Flash on Any iPhone Right Now
Apple revealed the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus at their September 9th event, and there are two particularly awesome features built in just for selfie photogs. The first is 3D Touch, which gives you a quick shortcut to taking selfies just by pressing the screen in a certain way. The second feature is a front-facing flash to help illuminate your face in dark lighting.
How To: New iPhone 6S, Apple TV, iPad Pro, & More—Everything You Need to Know
Apple's special September event just wrapped up with the company unveiling several new products, including the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPad Pro, and the new Apple TV set-top box. In addition to hardware, Apple also discussed a couple of its latest software platforms, iOS 9 and watchOS 2. Check out everything that Apple unveiled below.
How To: 'Undelete' Content on Your iPhone
Accidentally deleting important files can happen as easily as swiping left on something and watching it disappear into the ether. Of course, Apple allows automatic backups through iCloud, which ensures that your data is always stored safely in the cloud in case of emergency.
How To: Don't Use OneDrive? This Is How You Disable It in Windows 10
OneDrive, formerly known as SkyDrive, is a free online storage solution developed by Microsoft. If you're a fan of using cloud-based storage systems, then OneDrive offers you plenty of benefits. It's also heavily integrated into Windows 10, including the new File Explorer, in an effort to make utilizing OneDrive easier for you.
How To: 3 Ways to Find & Save Old Photos in Your Gmail Account
After my hard drive crashed recently, I lost everything. Old college essays, half-written stories, short films, and most importantly, all of the photos that I had saved from the past five years... all gone.
How To: Disable Annoying Software Update Notifications on Your Mac
Software update notifications are meant to be a reminder to keep your operating system and apps up to date, but that doesn't mean that they never get annoying.
How To: Install the Region-Locked Firefox Browser on Your iPhone
Initially reluctant to port Firefox over to iOS, Mozilla has finally released the first public preview of their famed web browser. While this is great news for all Firefox users, the bad news is that the browser is currently available for download only in New Zealand.
How To: Block Porn Sites on Your iPhone
There are many reasons to keep adult websites off your iOS device. They can pop up accidentally at the least opportune moments, can give your device malware, and are not welcome in a kid-friendly home.
Android Basics: How to Install ADB & Fastboot on Mac, Linux & Windows
ADB and Fastboot are probably the most essential tools for any Android aficionado. They can do everything from backing up your device to unlocking your bootloader with a few simple steps. This paves the way for many new tweaks and customizations that weren't possible before. The required platform works with the three most popular computer operating systems, too, which is good news for everyone.
How To: Go Retro with These Classic-Style Start Menus for Windows 10
Windows 95, which introduced the Start menu to the world, recently celebrated its 20th birthday! The feature was an instant hit, becoming a core component of Windows operating systems. Well, it was removed in the mistake that was Windows 8, but you should know by now that the Start menu has been reincarnated for Windows 10.
How To: Unlock Android Pay on Your Phone Right Now
In response to the success of Apple Pay and an attempt to stave off the appealing Samsung Pay service, Google is completely revamping Android's mobile payments system. Instead of just using Google Wallet as an app to make payments with your phone, a new service called Android Pay, with an extensive underlying framework and API, will soon make its debut—and maybe even sooner than you'd think.
How To: Swap Android's Boot Animation for Google's 'Evolved' Logo
On September 1st, 2015, Google made headlines by introducing their new logo. It may not seem like huge news to some, but as I write this, there have been 2,167,914,729 searches on Google so far today. So there's a large amount of people who see their logo when browsing the Web.
How To: Find Old Songs You Absolutely Love (But Never Knew About)
Spotify has a feature called Taste Rewind that claims to know what you would've listened to back in the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, and oughts ('00s), all based on your listening history and favorite artists. You can essentially time travel into the past and already have "favorites" songs to listen to! While I was skeptical at first, I tried the feature out for myself and was pleasantly surprised with the results. So if you want to create uniquely tailored playlists from the past five decades, st...
How To: Set Up & Use an Android Wear Smartwatch on Your iPhone
Google now has an iOS version of Android Wear, so if you own an Android smartwatch (Moto 360, ASUS ZenWatch, Huawei Watch, LG Watch Urbane, Sony SmartWatch, etc.), you can finally connect it with your iPhone.
How To: Add Ambient Background Music to Any App on Your Android
Newer gaming systems like the PlayStation 4 have a nice, subtle feature that goes a long way towards helping create a more immersive experience. Any time you're on the main menu or home screen, an ambient background music track is playing, which adds an aural appeal to an experience that would otherwise be all about the visuals.
Energy Saver 101: How to Control When Your Mac Starts, Sleeps, & Shuts Down
Work, school, and everything in between keeps us pretty busy—so much so, that sometimes we run out of the house with our shirts on backwards, our headphones misplaced, and our computers running all day long.
How To: Should You Use Twitch or YouTube Gaming for Live Streams?
Dropping upwards of $60 on a new game can really break the bank, and being a struggling college student leaves me having to decide whether to pick up the latest title or, you know, eat. But often my more primitive urges win out, meaning the only way to enjoy the latest and greatest games are vicariously, using increasingly-popular live streams.
How To: Reset Your iPhone's Home Screen Layout
Time takes its toll on your home screen. Before you know it, your clean app pages start filling up with social media, music streaming, video, and dozens of other kinds of apps. And let's face it, a lot of those apps are never touched after the first few times you use them.
How To: Protect Yourself from the Biggest Jailbreak Hack in History
Hackers have stolen over 225,000 Apple user's account information from countries all over the world—including the United States, China, and France—in what many are reporting to be the biggest known Apple hack in history.
How To: Disable Twitter's Annoying Autoplay Videos
It's bad enough that we have to deal with autoplaying video advertisements all over the Web, so why do we have to be subjected to autoplaying videos on Twitter, too? Autoplay video are muted by default, but that doesn't make them any less annoying, especially if you have a small data plan on your phone.
How To: Uninstall Malware from Your Android Device
Let's say you got a little careless while installing apps from unknown sources, and now your Android device has been infected by malware. Or perhaps your friend has come to you for help after they had haphazardly installed random apps until their phone was filled with popups and garbage like that.
How To: Watch Netflix in Sync with Friends Remotely
If you want to watch a movie on Netflix with a friend, family member, or significant other, but can't meet up in the same living room, the next best thing is doing it remotely from the comfort of your own homes.
How To: The Right Way to Clean Your Dirty Phone or Tablet
I record close-cropped videos and take macro still shots with my smartphones on a daily basis, so as you would expect, I spend a lot of time cleaning these devices. Over the course of a couple years, I've fine-tuned my cleaning regimen, and at this point, it's down to a near-science.
How To: 6 Easy Ways to Increase Battery Life on Your Android Device
Smartphones have otherworldly specs these days, so it's relatively uncommon that you hear someone complaining about display resolution, build quality, or general speed and performance. At best, these are secondary concerns, with the number 1 issue almost unilaterally being battery life.
How To: Reinstall Apps Faster After Resetting or Installing a New ROM
If you've switched ROMs before or flashed quick mods on your Android device, you've probably used TWRP or another custom recovery to install them. But another great purpose for flashing through a recovery is to install your own custom .zip file filled with everything a fresh ROM needs—namely, all your apps.
How To: Add Documents, Downloads, Pictures, & Other Folders to the Windows 10 Start Menu
The Start menu has definitely seen many changes over the years—from the traditional menu that was present from Windows XP to 7, to the Start screen in Windows 8, to the hybrid of the two in Windows 10. And while the return of the Start "menu" has received near-universal praise, there are still some aspects old Windows 7 users will miss. Namely, the User folder and content folders (like Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos).
How To: Don't Like CyanogenMod? Here Are 4 Great Alternative ROMs for Your OnePlus One
I've been involved in the Android scene for a very long time and have grown to develop a love/hate relationship with CyanogenMod. While I do like the stability they offer in their custom ROMs, they don't always include the flashy features on top of their vanilla Android base.
How To: Check Your Heart Rate on Any Android Phone
Samsung created quite a buzz when it debuted a built-in heart rate sensor on the Galaxy S5 back in 2014, but amazingly, not many other manufacturers decided to follow suit. It's really a shame, too, since data from a heart rate sensor would go perfectly hand in hand with the increasing fitness- and activity-tracking features that most smartphones sport these days.
How To: These 9 Tips Make Gaming on Your Mac Not Suck
When most people think of "gaming computers," they're probably thinking of Windows-based PCs. They offer a huge variety of devices with better equipped software and hardware for a cheaper price, and there are more available games than there are for OS X-based systems.
How To: Fast Search Gives You Quick Access to Everything on Your Android
Google Now is great for looking up movie times or finding your parking spot, but if you need to track down a file you downloaded, you're relegated to using a file explorer and, depending on your organizational skills, this can either be extremely easy or a huge pain in the ass. Unfortunately I land in the latter category, which is why I started using Fast Search by developer Mohamad Amin.
How To: Easily Tweak, Mod, & Customize Windows 10
Every time Windows gets a significant update, the vast majority of existing tweaking utilities become obsolete. For every option that you fine-tuned with one of these tools on Windows 7 or 8, there's a change in the registry or system settings that cause your tweaks to now point to a dead end. This was definitely the case with Windows 10, since there were so many sweeping changes that very few existing options carried over.
How To: Fully Control Your Android Device from Any Computer
Have you ever been using your computer when a friend randomly decides it's time to start up a text message conversation? You usually have to stop what you're doing on the desktop, then go pick up your smartphone and respond to the text. Then, if your buddy replies with another message, you have to juggle back and forth between your mouse and keyboard and your handheld device.
How To: 6 Useful Android Gestures You Might Not Know About Already
People like to cite the iPhone as the device that started the smartphone craze, but the truth is, smartphones had existed for years by the time Apple got into the game. The real groundbreaking feature that this device brought to the table was a multi-touch screen to go along with its "smart" functionality, and this is still the main method we use to interact with our devices today.
How To: Color Code Android Notifications Without Root Access
Theming is one of the many facets of Android that gives it a leg up on its iOS competition. With the right home launcher and icon theme, you can completely change the look and feel of your device in just a few minutes.