Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: Force Apps Like Netflix to Show the Screensaver on Your Nexus Player
For some odd reason, the Netflix app likes to disable the Nexus Player's built-in screensaver. It doesn't use its own, it simply keeps your screen on indefinitely, which of course can lead to screen burn-in. This is not just an Android TV issue, as the Netflix app does the same thing on Roku and smart TVs.
How To: Automatically Add Your Shazam Songs to a Rdio or Spotify Playlist
We recently showed you how to recover your Shazam history from Siri, which is a lot less intuitive than finding the songs you've tagged directly in the Shazam app. But with a subscription to Rdio or Spotify, there's no need to even locate your history. You can Shazam songs and have them automatically added to a newly created playlist titled "My Shazam Tracks."
How To: Theme Instagram with Any Color You Want on Android
There aren't many complaints I can think of when it comes to the Instagram interface, and finding one would just be nitpicking. But like with most things in life, if given the opportunity, why not take advantage? "When in Rome," as they say.
How To: Color Your Status Bar to Match Any App in Android Lollipop
A new API in Android Lollipop allows apps to color the status bar to match their overall theme. Google billed this as a more immersive user experience that allows app developers to extend their color branding even further. It certainly seems like a win-win on the surface, but unfortunately, not many apps are using this feature yet.
How To: Move App Icons Anywhere on Your iPhone's Home Screen Without Jailbreaking
Your iPhone's home screen is a tricky thing. You can sort your collection of apps in any order you'd like, but where you place those apps is a totally different story. App and folder placement follows a strict grid on iOS from left to right, top to bottom. No exceptions, and that's how Apple wants it. So you might think without a jailbreak you're stuck with this layout — but you're wrong.
How To: Install ColorOS's Camera on Your OnePlus One for Improved Photos All Around
The 13-megapixel camera on the OnePlus One is capable of taking some pretty impressive shots, but the stock CameraNext app doesn't do the hardware justice. When compared to the camera app that ships on the ColorOS version of the One, you can immediately see an increase in clarity and low light performance.
How To: Make iPhone Navigation Prompts Play Over Your Car Speakers When Listening to the Radio
Maps is great for making sure you always get to your destination, until you miss that critical turn because you couldn't hear the turn-by-turn directions.
How To: Get a True "Silent Mode" on Android Lollipop
The biggest complaint I hear about Android Lollipop is the fact that the new Priority Mode notification system has effectively killed off "Silent Mode." Sure, you can still put your phone on vibrate, but that's not truly silent. Selecting "None" as your notification mode isn't a perfect solution either, since no notification icons will be shown in your status bar and your alarm will not go off in the morning.
How To: Turn Your iPhone into a Fully Functional Samsung Smart TV Remote
After I traded in my Samsung Galaxy S5 for an iPhone 5S, the one feature I truly missed was the Smart Remote app. My television remote was broken and the S5 saved me from, you know, actually having to get up and change the channel.
How To: Make Android System Menus Easier to Use on Lollipop
Lollipop brought a complete visual overhaul to Android, and while the vast majority of changes have been met with praise, some UI tweaks missed their mark.
How To: Trivia Crack Cheats Your Friends Are Probably Using Against You
When my girlfriend told be about a Trivia Crack cheat she discovered, I was a little dubious. Then, after witnessing her trick in action and trying it out myself, my faith in the popular trivia game was forever tainted.
How To: Unlock Your Android with a Secret Sequence of Volume Key Presses
Yes, they're called volume keys, but they can do much more than adjust your volume. With minimal effort, you can do some amazing things with these physical buttons, like secretly record videos, toggle on your flashlight, scroll through pages, control your music, and much more. And while using them to wake your screen is useful, let's take it a step further and show you how to use them to completely unlock your device, even if the screen is off.
How To: Install the Classic Windows 3D Pipes Screensaver on Your Mac
Back when CRT and plasma monitors were still a thing, screensavers served a purpose beyond just aesthetics: the moving images and patterns prevented static images from being burned into the display.
How To: Your Photo Texts Might Be Giving Away Your Location (Here's How to Prevent It on iPhones)
Location Services, a native feature on iPhones since iOS 6, is used to pinpoint your approximate location using a combination of GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cell tower information. Apple uses this on their smartphones for many useful reasons: so that you can tag locations in Instagram, get better directions in Maps, and check for matches based on your location in Tinder.
How To: Stop iPhoto from Automatically Launching When You Plug in Your iPhone
By default, whenever you plug your iPhone into your Mac computer, iPhoto automatically launches alongside iTunes. While this can be useful for those who like syncing their photos with iPhoto, it's annoying to those who don't. Even if you do sync with iPhoto, chances are you don't want it popping up every time you want to charge your iPhone or sync with iTunes.
How To: The Easiest Way to Make Calls from Your iPhone's Lock Screen
Before phones became mobile-gaming, music-playing, app-downloading devices, they were used simply to make convenient, cordless phone calls. There's so much on phones these days that a passcode is needed to keep everything secure, and making calls is now more complicated.
How To: Change Reddit's Interface in Chrome for a Better Browsing Experience
Reddit's overall design has stayed relatively unchanged for as long as I can remember. It's easy to use and is as popular as ever, so why mess with a good thing, right? Well, everyone's different, and if you're looking for ways to beef up your Reddit experience, try out the Chrome extension SHINE.
How To: Launch Apps & Custom Actions with Screen-Off Gestures on Android
If you're a fan of double-tap to wake gestures, you're going to love the newest app from ElementalX developer Aaron Segaert. On supported kernels, it allows you to associate custom apps and activities with each of the wake gestures you've set up, which will immediately be launched even with the screen off.
How To: Connect a Mouse to Your Nexus Player
If you've sideloaded apps on your Nexus Player, you're surely aware that not very many are optimized for use with a remote control. This can make navigating such apps a pretty big hassle, since they were designed with touchscreen input in mind.
How To: Turn Off Your iPhone's Flashlight Faster in iOS 8 Without Using the Control Center
I've used the flashlight feature on my iPhone more times than I can count. It's an invaluable tool that's super easy to activate; just pull up the Control Center and hit the flashlight icon. However, turning it off isn't always as easy, especially when you're on the lock screen.
How To: Search Google & YouTube Directly from Spotlight on Your iPhone
Spotlight makes finding apps, contacts, emails, songs, and old messages extremely easy on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You can even search for Wikipedia articles online, as well as perform general web searches.
How To: The Easiest Way to Free Up Storage on Your Android Device
The more we use our smartphones, the more storage space becomes occupied—it's an inescapable fact. But as the data accumulates and chokes off our storage, it can become difficult to identify exactly which files are occupying the most space.
How To: Lock Your Android with a Quick Shake Instead of Pressing Power
These days, using the power button to lock your Android seems a little old-fashioned. Thanks to third-party apps and mods, you could seamlessly lock your device using a double-tap, a swipe, and even gravity, or you could just throw it in your pocket, all of which help prevent additional wear and tear on your power button. Now, we've got another method for you—just shake.
How To: Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite iPhone Emojis to Switch Keyboards Less
If I told you that people who use emojis in their conversations have more sex than plain-text users, would you believe me? According to a recent study launched by Match.com, men and women that use emojis have more sex than those who do not. If you were looking for an excuse to increase your emoji output, you may not find a better one than that. To make your emoji typing as smooth and seamless as possible, I'm going to show you how to create shortcuts in iOS 8 for all your favorite use cases. ...
How To: Access & Organize Your Contacts from Any Screen on Android
Contacts on your phone can be messy. Keeping all of those numbers, emails, and addresses organized takes time and, even then, they still may not be be as accessible as you want them to be.
How To: Make a Secret Car Compartment
Nowadays, protecting your valuables can be challenging especially when you're on the go. That's why I decided to make a little secret compartment inside my car. Only you'll know it's there because nobody will be able to find it. Not only that, but you'll have easy access to it. It's fairly cheap and the total cost was under $5.00. Let me show you how to make it. You can watch the video or scroll down below for the written guide.
How To: Remove the Orange Bars in Battery Saver Mode on Android Lollipop
Android Lollipop has an awesome feature called "Battery saver" mode that reduces power consumption through various tweaks in order to squeeze in an extra hour or two of standby time when your battery is running low. It does this by disabling background processes as well as location services and transition animations, so the phone is essentially running at half-throttle.
How To: Get More Out of Your Apple EarPods with These Tricks
Whenever you buy a newer iPhone model, you get a set of Apple EarPods with remote and microphone built-in. Aside from their comfortable design and high-quality sound they provide, these headphones offer additional functionality beyond just pausing and playing music.
How To: Our Top 5 Chrome Extensions for YouTube
Google's Chrome Web Store is packed to the brim with extensions that do everything from letting you customize Facebook to improving your Google+ experience. While there are thousands of extensions for basically anything you can think of, the problem is sifting through them all.
How To: Swap Heads Up Notifications for the Old-Style Ticker in Android Lollipop
With Android 5.0, Google introduced a new "Heads Up" notification system for incoming calls and messages. While the new incoming call interface seems to be a rousing success, the rest of the Heads Up system has been met with much less enthusiasm from users.
How To: Hide or Uninstall System Apps on Your Nexus Player for a Cleaner Home Screen
When Google announced its new Android TV platform, one of the features they advertised was a home screen that automatically reorganized your apps based on how frequently you used them. Unfortunately, this feature either didn't make the cut, or is still under development, since the home screen on the Nexus Player always remains static.
How To: Breakdown Your iPhone's Music to See What Albums, Artists, Songs, & Genres You Listen to Most
There are songs that we love, songs that make us sad, and songs that change the way we view the world—and that's something that Steve Jobs knew all too well.
How To: Turn Your Favorite Websites into Home Screen Shortcuts on Android
As one of the most frequently used Android browsers, making Chrome work faster and more efficiently is something we can surely all appreciate. And just like its computer-based counterpart, there are experimental flags for the mobile app that can speed browsing up significantly.
How To: Sideload Apps on the Nexus Player
The Nexus Player is one of the most robust set-top streaming devices on the market. This is mainly due to the fact that the base software it runs is a direct fork of Android, which is a very powerful operating system itself.
How To: Stop Google Play from Adding Icons to Your Home Screen for Newly Installed Apps
After installing an app from the Google Play Store, its icon will appear on your home screen, creating a shortcut for you to easily access it without needing to look very far. But if you've installed as many apps as I have, these shortcuts begin to add up and eventually make your home screen look like an iPhone, turning it into just another app drawer.
How To: Customize the Login Window Background on Your Mac
Macs, like pretty much all Apple products, are notorious for not having a highly customizable UI. They do this to keep a consistent look and feel across all of their devices, but I've grown bored of it over the years.
How To: Get Stock Lollipop Sounds on Custom ROMs for the Nexus 6
Most custom ROMs are built from the freely-available source code of AOSP, so they share a lot of common ground with stock Android. The difference, though, is the fact that Google adds many minor tweaks and finishing touches to AOSP while creating the version of Android that ultimately comes pre-installed on Nexus devices.
How To: View All the Songs You Shazamed with Siri on Your iPhone
When you hear a song you like but can't quite catch enough of its lyrics, it can be nearly impossible to search for it online. That's where Shazam comes in. For the past decade, they've been making music easier for us to identify by analyzing a track's acoustic footprint, requiring only a few seconds of audio for accurate identification.
How To: Take, Edit, & Send Photos Directly from Your Android Lock Screen
While shortcuts to your Camera and third-party apps like Snapchat are great for capturing fleeting moments, it still takes a few seconds to open them and snap a photo. That means you could potentially miss a great shot if you're not quick enough. But now there's a super-fast way to capture and send photos without having to waste time unlocking your device.
How To: Mute Individual Tabs in Chrome Without Leaving Your Current Tab
It's been over a year now since Google introduced a visual way to track down which tabs are playing audio in Chrome, something that was previously only available using third-party extensions. However, they still didn't give an easy option for shutting those tabs up without having to stop what you're doing.