Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: Use Handoff on the Apple Watch to Continue Tasks on Your iPhone
Continuity, introduced back when iOS 8 and Mac OS X 10.10 were released, lets users seamlessly connect all of their Apple devices together. With it came a feature known as Handoff that "hands off" an app or task from one Apple device to another, like starting an email on your iPhone and completing it on your Mac.
How To: Silence Notifications & Shutter Sounds in Your Galaxy S6's Camera
Some variants of the Galaxy S6 will allow you to silence the camera shutter sound with an option in the app's settings menu. But this is not true of all models, plus there's an additional annoyance—when you're filming video and you get a notification, you'll actually hear this tone on the final recording.
How To: Move Any Screen Freely for Easier One-Handed Use on Android
With smartphone screens getting bigger by the generation, one-handed mode mods are becoming rather prevalent. Most of these function by shrinking the screen to a more manageable size, but this is actually kind of boring when you think about it.
How To: Help Loved Ones with Alzheimer's Preserve Fond Memories Using This Android App
Modern medicine utilizes cutting-edge technology more than ever, so it would only make sense that the powerful handheld computers we all carry around these days could play a big role in wellness.
How To: Personalize Sound Quality for Headphones on Your Galaxy S6
Chances are your hearing isn't the same as the person next to you. Personally, I have moderate hearing loss, so I tend to turn the volume nob towards the loud side. For others, it may be that one ear is slightly better or worse than the other, not only in perceiving volume, but tone as well. Considering this, is it possible for smartphone manufacturers to ensure the best sound quality on their devices?
How To: Stream Music & Videos from Cloud Services on Android
Smartphones generally have limited storage, but counter this issue with an always-on internet connection. This led to the proliferation of cloud storage services, which allow us to store and access our large media libraries remotely.
How To: Change the Layout of Apps on Your Apple Watch
Depending on how many Watch-compatible apps you have, the Home screen on your Apple Watch is either insanely clean or absurdly messy. When I first synced my Watch with my iPhone, I was attacked with a huge honeycomb of apps, strewn across my Home screen in no particular order.
How To: Force-Close Running Apps on the Apple Watch
It probably doesn't happen much, but occasionally you'll run into a frozen or bugged-out app on your iPhone or other iOS device. That's where force-closing comes in, allowing you to close any app manually through a few clicks and swipes.
How To: Clear All Notifications at Once on the Apple Watch
Functioning as an extension of your iPhone, the Apple Watch makes monitoring and receiving notifications convenient with just a glance, leaving your iPhone in your purse or pocket. But just like on your iPhone, these notifications can begin to stack up, so let's show you the one-touch method for clearing them all at once.
How To: Change Emoji Colors on the Apple Watch
On the Apple Watch, along with the conventional emojis we've grown to love, there are new animated emojis that add a new dimension of fun for you and your friends. Unbeknownst to many, these animated faces also include a feature that allow you to change their color.
How To: Quickly Switch Between Apps on the Apple Watch
Apple Watch doesn't include a multitasking feature like its iPhone companion, so there's no way to show active apps or swipe up to force-close one. Watch is an extension of the iPhone, not a replacement, so including a fully-functional multitasking feature seems impractical.
How To: Customize the Face on Your Apple Watch
Customization helps your device stand out from the rest, and that sentiment is no different when it comes to the Apple Watch. Unlike every other Apple device before it, the Watch allows you to customize the information that appears on the UI—without the need for any jailbreaking.
How To: Reduce Eye Strain When Using Smartphones
The smartphone has become one of the basic reasons for sore eyes. If you are addicted to your beloved smartphone, there is a fair possibility that your eyes will be paying off its expensive price. If you use your smartphone, tablet, laptop or any other similar gadget consistently, you may experience tired, dried, itchy eyes and also severe headache. Your vision can also become blurred by the time, which it means it is affecting your eyesight. However, you can lower down your eye strain by mak...
How To: Bypass Snapchat's Caption Character Limit on Your iPhone
Snapchat developers insist that the app stay true to what its always been: a service for snapping and sharing self-destructing images. This belief is further hit home with their strict 31-character text limit, which some people refuse to abide by. Namely, Snapchatter Shayne Skellett.
How To: Set Up & Use Apple Pay on Your Apple Watch
As you're probably well aware by now, the Apple Watch isn't just for sending text messages and checking Instagram—you can also use it as your wallet. With Apple Pay compatibility, you can use your Watch to make purchases at any retailer that accepts the payment service.
How To: Use Siri on Your Apple Watch
If you have an Apple Watch, it's easier than ever to ask Siri for directions, send a quick text, or locate the nearest Chipotle—because you don't need to pull out your iPhone anymore. Luckily, Apple made it fairly painless to get Siri up and running on the Watch, so let's go over the two quick activation methods.
How To: Find Your Misplaced iPhone Using Your Apple Watch
Your Apple Watch is a fantastic tool that can help you perform daily tasks on your iPhone. Notifications get filtered through it, you can respond to messages on it, and you can even use Apple Pay to purchase goods and services. Your Apple Watch is also a valuable asset when it comes to finding your lost iPhone, too.
How To: Launch Apps While the Screen Is Off on Your Galaxy S6 Edge
Samsung has a long-standing reputation for packing their devices with lots of added functionality, and the Galaxy S6 Edge is no exception. It comes with a nifty feature called "Information stream," which allows you to get quick, at-a-glance information by swiping the edge of your screen back and forth while the display is off.
How To: Secure Photos, Videos, & More on Your Galaxy S6 Using Private Mode
If you have a smartphone, chances are you have something on it you don't want others seeing. Whether it be photos, videos, or documents, some things are best left private. Not everyone is a saint, after all.
How To: 9 Ways to Lock Your Android Without Using the Power Button
Given how much use it gets on a daily basis, the power button is always one of the first hardware features to call it quits on an Android phone or tablet. So if your power button is acting up, or you don't want it to, you can extend its lifetime by simply finding ways to use it less.
How To: Add & Delete 'Friends' on Your Apple Watch
Accessing and getting in touch with your favorite contacts has never been easier thanks to the "Friends" feature on the Apple Watch. However, this only applies to users who are running watchOS 2.2.2 and lower. When Apple issued watchOS 3, the "Friends" option was completely removed. So if you're running watchOS 3 or higher, you won't be able to follow these instructions.
How To: Use the Apple Watch as a Remote Shutter for Your iPhone's Camera
There's a built-in timer feature on the iPhone's Camera app that helps you set up your device, step back, and take a photo before time runs out. This feature is useful when there isn't another person around to take a photo of you, or when you don't want to be missing from a memorable group picture. Unfortunately, timers don't always work well. With a timer, no one can sit behind your iPhone to see if the picture is perfectly focused and framed, but that's where your Apple Watch comes in.
How To: Turn Your Apple Watch Case into a Charging Dock
For all that money spent on a new Watch, Apple could've given us more than just a charger and its case. I mean, the case is nice and all, but what realistic use is there for it? In all honesty, it'll probably find its way onto a shelf high above in the closet—but it doesn't have to.
How To: Find & Delete Dumb, Offensive Posts on Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter
One tweet can get your fired from your job. At least, in the cases of Gilbert Gottfried, Rashard Mendenhall, Ozzie Guillen, and Mike Bacsik, who were all either fired or forced to resign from their jobs after posting regrettable tweets online.
How To: Swap the Back & Recents Keys on Your Samsung Galaxy S6
The buttons on most Android devices are laid out (from left to right) in a Back, Home, Recent Apps format. Samsung is the lone exception to this rule, which flip-flops them, so this can make for an inconsistent experience if you own multiple Android devices.
How To: Uninstall Apps from Your Apple Watch
Regardless of the size and metal-type you purchased, storage and space are limited on the Apple Watch, so stuffing it full of apps like you'd do on your iPhone may not be in your best interest. If you went app crazy when you first set up your Apple Watch, don't worry—it's easy to uninstall some of them. Just know that you can only delete third-party apps, which means stock apps like Photos or Workout are there to stay.
How To: Fix a Frozen or Malfunctioning Apple Watch by Restarting It
The Apple Watch may be a much simpler device than your iPhone, but that doesn't mean it's free of bugs, glitches, and crashes just like your other devices. A common problem that you'll run into is a frozen screen due to a malfunctioning app. While this can be frustrating, the solution can be as simple as a quick reboot.
How To: Load Music Directly onto Your Apple Watch to Play with Bluetooth Headphones
As someone who loves to run around my neighborhood, the Apple Watch feature that excited me the most was the ability to go out and exercise while listening to music, all without having to lug my iPhone around.
How To: Turn Your Apple Watch Gold (Without Spending $10,000)
With the first wave of Apple Watches being received today, you're probably busy setting yours up and playing with all its features.
How To: Get Cyanogen OS 12 to Work with Your 5 GHz Wireless Router
No one is perfect, and this goes double for software developers. All of the quality assurance testing in the world does nothing when you put a new OS in the hands of everyday users, since we all use our devices in different places and for different reasons. Recently, Cyanogen released their version of Android Lollipop, Cyanogen OS 12, and with it came a whole lot of great features, but some bugs also slipped in.
How To: Take Screenshots on Your Apple Watch
Whether it's to flaunt your new digital face on Instagram or to show off a unique app to your friends, you'll ultimately need to know how to take a quick screenshot with your shiny new Apple Watch. Turns out, it's not that much different than taking one on your iPhone.
How To: Pair & Set Up Your Apple Watch with Your iPhone
The Apple Watch is finally here! We'll have loads of guides and videos for you guys to check out in the following week and beyond, but we thought it'd be best to start off showing you how to set up and pair that brand new beautiful Apple Watch of yours to your iPhone.
How To: No Data, No Problem—Use SMS to Connect to Your Favorite Web Services on Android
Recently, a group of Duke University students got together to tackle an age-old problem with mobile devices. You see, mobile data coverage isn't exactly ubiquitous, and many folks have restrictive mobile data plans, which means internet connectivity is not always an option.
How To: Launch Apps from the Side of Your Screen (A Perfect Mod for the Galaxy S6 Edge)
With the Galaxy S6 Edge, the curved display is mainly an aesthetic feature. Unlike the Galaxy Note Edge, Samsung didn't include many software features to take advantage of its unique design, outside of the scrolling tickers and night clock. For instance, with the Note Edge, you can launch apps from the curved portion of the screen—but this isn't true for the S6 Edge.
How To: Get Back the Old (& Better) Bookmarks Manager in Chrome
Chrome has been pushing out a lot of new changes lately, but not all of them are as good as they think they are. Earlier this year, there was an update that changed how user profiles worked, which made it harder to actually switch profiles. Luckily, there was a way to get back the old profile management interface, but now there's another "improvement" that you might want to change—Chrome's new Bookmarks Manager interface.
How To: Make Google Play Music's Interface Better on Android
Google Play Music is an awesome app—even if you don't subscribe to their $9.99/month All Access service, you can still use it to store and stream up to 50,000 of your own songs for free. Add to that the fact that it's a pre-installed app on most Android devices, and there aren't many reasons not to be using Play Music.
How To: Facebook's New Hello App Makes Your Android's Dialer & Contact List Smarter
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If a person makes calls but doesn't have a Facebook account, are they even really a person? Yes, of course they are, but it just makes life easier when you're part of the world's biggest social network, as proven with Facebook's latest application, Hello - Caller ID & Blocking.
How To: Install Cyanogen OS 12 on Your OnePlus One
They might be a little late to the party, but the Cyanogen team has finally released their newest ROM for the OnePlus One, Cyanogen OS 12. The launch had to be pushed back a few times due to some technical issues, but now we finally get to see what the Cyanogen team has cooked up for Android Lollipop.
How To: Change Backlight Duration for the Back & Recents Keys on the Galaxy S6
For some strange reason, not all variants of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge have a menu option for changing the backlight timeout for their capacitive keys. According to user reports, only the AT&T variant of these phones has such an option.
How To: The Easiest Way to Send ADB Commands to Your Android Device
Android Debug Bridge (or ADB for short) serves as a remote terminal interface for executing shell commands on any Android device. Put simply, ADB lets you send commands from your computer to your phone or tablet, some of which would require root access if they were performed on the Android side of the connection.