Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: Block Contact Request Spam on Skype Automatically
Skype is one of the most popular messaging and video chat services for a good reason—it's packed to the brim with tons of cool features. But one bit of functionality that Microsoft left out is the ability to block friend requests from people that aren't in your contacts, which can lead to a lot of unwanted notifications from spammers and bots.
How To: Hide Home Screen Text Labels on Your iPhone or iPad in iOS 10
There's not much you can do to customize the look and feel of your iPhone's home screen, at least when it comes to official options provided by Apple. But thanks to a new bug discovered by YouTuber iDeviceHelp, you can now hide text labels for app icons and folders on your iPhone or iPad, and this hack doesn't even require a jailbroken device.
How To: Install TWRP Custom Recovery on Your Pixel or Pixel XL
When it comes to modifying Android, the single, most powerful tool available is TWRP custom recovery. It's even more capable than simple root access when it comes to changing the look and feel of your software, and you can even use TWRP to root your device in a few simple steps.
How To: Create a Contextual Smart Folder on Your Home Screen That Always Knows What Apps You Want
An app from the development team at ts-apps has the potential to make your Android device smarter than it's ever been. At first glance, you'd think it's just an ordinary home screen folder—but depending on what you're doing at a given time, the folder can show a completely different set of apps.
How To: Add a Google Photos Shortcut to Your Android's Camera App
If your Android phone was made by Samsung, LG, HTC, or any other manufacturer that likes to apply skins on top of stock Android, then your camera app is tied to the custom gallery app that was preinstalled on your device. In other words, when you tap that little image preview icon after taking a picture, you'll be taken to a camera roll interface that was made by an electronics manufacturer.
How To: Get a Boot Animation That Shows Donald Trump Flipping Off the Whole World
There are two things you're not supposed to talk about in a social setting: religion and politics. When it comes to the latter, though, a certain orange-hued reality TV star has made it all but impossible to stay mum about the goings-on in DC.
HoloLens Dev 101 : How to Build a Basic HoloLens App in Minutes
Now that we've got all of our software installed, we're going to proceed with the next step in our HoloLens Dev 101 series—starting a fresh project and building it into a Holographic application. Then we will output the application to the HoloLens Emulator so we can see it in action.
How To: Stop Sites from Tracking You on Your iPhone with Firefox Focus
When you do an internet search, you'll see ads that are relevant to your query mixed in with the rest of your results. Nothing surprising there—it's how the internet is funded. But then, when you click one of the search results, you'll also see ads that are related to your initial search. Now that's a bit creepy, because it demonstrates that one webpage knows what you typed into a different webpage.
How To: Get Paranoid Android's Halo & Pie Controls on Any Phone
Paranoid Android has always been one of the most popular custom ROMs because of the inventive features its developers add to Android. Two of the biggest draws in particular have to be the "Halo" notification bubble, and the "Pie" navigation buttons, which can both fundamentally change the way you interact with your device.
How To: Use Your Fingerprint Scanner to Do Almost Anything with Tasker
We recently covered an app called Fingerprint Quick Action that let you use your fingerprint scanner to expand your notification tray like the Google Pixel, along with a few other actions. It's definitely a useful mod, but there's a similar app can make your fingerprint scanner do almost anything—literally.
HoloLens Dev 101: How to Install & Set Up the HoloLens Emulator
Don't let the lack of owning a HoloLens stop you from joining in on the fun of creating software in this exciting new space. The HoloLens Emulator offers a solution for everyone that wants to explore Windows Holographic development.
How To: New iPhone Exploit Lets You Bypass Someone's Lock Screen Using Siri & FaceTime
With the recent news that New York County's District Attorney's office is trying to get into over 400 locked iPhones for use in criminal investigations, you can see why it's important to keep other people away from your personal data. The fact that it can and will be used against you in a court of law is just one reason to protect your phone, because even if you make sure to stay above the fray, identity theft and bank fraud are still very real threats.
How To: Set Volume Levels to Change During Scheduled Times on Android
Different times call for different ringtone volumes. When you're at work or school, you need your phone to be quiet so it doesn't make a disturbance—but when you're at home or out and about, the volume should be turned back up so you don't miss any important notifications.
How To: Test for Adups' Spyware on Your Phone—& Disable It
Mobile security researchers at Kryptowire recently uncovered spyware preinstalled on hundreds of thousands of Android smartphones by FOTA provider Adups which was gathering personally identifiable information (PII) such as call logs, app usage data, and even the full contents of text messages and sending these to a third-party server—all without the users' knowledge.
How To: 20 Free Games You Can Play on Android Without Any Internet
Whether you're riding the subway on your way home from work, or stuck in the backseat of the car on a long road trip, there are times when you need to entertain yourself without a mobile data connection. A good mobile game would pass the time perfectly, but not every game works without an internet connection.
How To: Get the Pixel's Navigation Buttons & Google Assistant Animation on Your Nexus
The Google Pixel and Pixel XL have an exclusive set of navigation buttons that you can't get on any other device without some tinkering. But aside from just being solid, filled-in shapes, the real treat in the Pixel's nav bar is the Google Assistant animation that gets activated by long-pressing the home button. The four colored dots that animate outward give you some visual feedback for triggering the Assistant, but really, it's just a nice little touch.
PSA: If You're Having Auto-Focus Issues on Your Pixel, It's Probably Your Case's Fault
According to multiple users on Reddit, the Pixel and Pixel XL's camera can have some serious auto-focus issues if you're using a certain type of case with Google's new flagships. When the problem occurs, your camera app will refuse to settle on a focus point, making almost everything in the frame blurry. Redditor HeshoMike uploaded a video of the phenomenon, and you can see it in action here:
How To: Google Actually Has 4 Different 'Assistants'—Here's the Best One for You
The new Google Assistant is only officially available on three platforms—newer Android phones (Pixels and those running Marshmallow and Nougat), the Google Allo app, and Google Home. However, most of the Assistant's basic functionality is also bundled into the Google app for Android and iOS, which used to go by the name Google Now, but is now referred to only as Screen Search or your Google app's Feed.
How To: Get the Pixel's 'Zero Shutter Lag' Camera with HDR+ Features on Your Nexus
Everyone's been raving about the Pixel's top-notch camera, and the acclaim is well-deserved. The main difference between Google's new camera software on their Pixel phones and the older software on their Nexus devices is that the Pixel has almost no perceptible lag between tapping the shutter button and the image being captured—even with HDR+ mode enabled.
How To: Google Now Is Banned in Several Countries—Here's How to Enable It
For some strange reason, Google Now is unavailable in several countries across the globe. Users from Albania, China, Cyprus, Malta, Nepal, Puerto Rico, Tunisia, and many more big countries have reported for years that the service doesn't work in their area, mostly likely because Location Reporting is not available in their region. This is really a shame, because Google Now has some great features.
How To: Don't Wait for Google—Get Night Mode Right Now on Android Nougat
It's now common knowledge that the blue light emitted by phone screens makes it harder to get a good night's sleep. Apple's Night Shift in iOS and its steamrolled predecessor, f.lux (still available for desktop computers), are attempts to combat these harmful effects by limiting the amount of blue light from the screen at certain times of day (nighttime, say). For Android users who installed the Developer Preview build of Android 7.0 Nougat, the included "Night Mode" feature was all set to do...
How To: Brighten Your Google Pixel's Display by Up to 20%
The Pixel XL reportedly uses the same exact display panel as the Galaxy S7 Edge, but according to third-party testing, Samsung's flagship gets at least ten percent brighter than Google's. The same can be said of the regular Pixel, which tops out just shy of its bigger brother's brightness rating.
How To: A Security Bug Just Made It Risky to Open Links on Your iPhone—Here's How to Protect Yourself
A new hack has reopened an 8-year-old iPhone security loophole that Apple thought it had fixed back with iPhone OS 2.2. This is not one of those times when a theoretical attack gets identified and blocked quickly by Apple. On the contrary, it's a hack that actually exists right now, and it can have some serious real-world repercussions, so this is something all iPhone users need to be aware of.
How To: Get Facebook's Geo-Restricted Snapchat Clone 'Flash' on Any Android Phone
Facebook released a new app in November 2016 that aimed to compete directly with Snapchat, but it was only officially available in Brazil—and still is. The app, called "Flash," is so much like Snapchat that it's not even the slightest bit of a stretch to call it a clone.
HoloLens Dev 101: How to Install & Set Up the Software to Start Developing for Windows Holographic
In this first part of my series on getting started with Windows Holographic, we are going to cover everything you need to get set up for developing HoloLens apps. There are many pieces coming together to make one single application, but once you get used to them all, you won't even notice. Now there are different approaches you can take to make applications for HoloLens, but this way is simply the fastest.
How To: Tell if Someone Has Read Your WhatsApp Message—Even if They Have Read Receipts Turned Off
We've all been there... admit it. You sent a couple messages, but your friend had the "Read Receipts" option turned off in WhatsApp, so after a few minutes, you start wondering if they're away from their phone right now or just flat-out ignoring you.
How To: Rock Harder on GarageBand with a DIY Pringles Can Drum Kit
Damn right, you don't just eat 'em. When you're done with your next Pringles can, you can turn it into a kaleidoscope, a pinhole camera, and even a solar hot dog cooker. But Instructables user TheSpodShed may have just created the most awesome way to upcycle empty Pringles cans—use them as a mini MIDI drum kit for your mobile device. This tiny drum kit will let you rock your face off without pissing off all your neighbors.
How To: Get Motorola's Active Display Features on Your Pixel or Nexus
Regardless of what they call them—be it Pixel or Nexus—Google's line of smartphones have a cool feature called "Ambient Display" that wakes your screen in a low-power black and white state when you receive a notification. This feature was added back when Google owned Motorola, as Moto's phones had a similar lock screen effect called "Active Display."
HoloLens Dev 101: How to Get Started Creating for Windows Mixed Reality
Many new developers are diving right into the Microsoft HoloLens, but augmented and mixed reality are fairly big subjects in terms of learning. There's a lot to cover and, unfortunately, very few places for someone brand new to Windows Holographic to begin lessons.
How To: Message, Take Notes & Tweet Directly from Android's Quick Settings Panel
Creative thoughts are fleeting, so when an idea strikes, you have to jot it down as quickly as possible or risk forgetting it altogether. Let's say you randomly think of a perfect tweet while you're using your phone. You exit whatever app you were using, head to the home screen, dig through your app drawer, open Twitter—and by the time you make it to the "What's happening?" screen, you totally forgot what you were going to say.
How To: Everything You Need to Know About RCS Universal Profile
Google is on a mission to bring a better messaging experience to Android users. We've seen them try and fail over the years with various messenger apps, but this time, they're taking a different approach by working with industry leaders to create a new messaging standard. The result is RCS Universal Profile, or simply Chat, and it's finally catching on.
How To: Iterate Faster Inside Unity Using Holographic Emulation
In recent weeks, Unity has made a few great leaps forward for HoloLens development. These new features will increase iteration speed inside Unity and quickly increase the output of applications in the mixed reality space. Of these new features, let's take some time to talk about Holographic Emulation and why this will do so much for the development community.
How To: Enable True Stereo Sound on Your Pixel XL
One of the only downsides to the Pixel XL is that Google's flagship phone does not have stereo speakers. But if Android's awesome development community has taught us anything over the years, it's that limitations like these can be bypassed with some creative software tinkering.
How To: 20 Google Home Easter Eggs & Fun Commands
With the holidays over, a lot of people with shiny new Google Homes are getting their first chance to explore the new Google Assistant. Before the Google Home's release, the Assistant was only available for the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, or in a text-based form with Google Allo—but now it's gone mainstream.
How To: Install the ElementalX Custom Kernel on Your Pixel or Pixel XL
When it comes to modding an Android device, a custom kernel can take you farther than almost anything else. Most offer the ability to overclock your processor for performance gains, change your CPU governor, or even under-volt to increase battery life, among other features.
How To: Get Rid of Google Assistant on Your Android Device & Switch Back to Google Now
Now that Google Assistant is coming to all devices running Android Marshmallow or higher, roughly one out of every three Android users will no longer be able to access the old Google Now interface. The Assistant, which was previously exclusive to Pixel devices, takes over your home button long-press gesture and completely replaces all of the old Google voice search functionality.
How To: Root Your Google Pixel or Pixel XL
There were some new hurdles to clear, and then there were a few more, but legendary root developer Chainfire has created a fully-functional root method for Google's Pixel and Pixel XL flagships. Like past devices, this method relies on the SuperSU ZIP, but now, there's an additional file that needs to be flashed in order to bypass issues with Android Verified Boot (AVB).
How To: This Snapdragon-Optimized Chrome Is Faster Than the Official Build & Adds Gesture Support
The Google Chrome browser for Android is packed with many great features, but it definitely has a bad rep for being slow and laggy on low-end or midrange devices. Without a top-notch processor, you'll likely notice some stutter with choppy scrolling, and pages can take too long to load in general.
How To: Make Google Assistant Control Almost Anything with IFTTT
Google Assistant just got a lot more powerful thanks to IFTTT. The automation platform, whose name stands for If This, Then That, connects your favorite online services and smart devices to one another, allowing for a seamless experience with many different gadgets—and Google Assistant is officially supported.
How To: Unlock the Bootloader on Your Google Pixel or Pixel XL
As we reported first here on Gadget Hacks, the Google Pixel and Pixel XL have unlockable bootloaders, with the exception of models purchased from Verizon. This means that once the TWRP custom recovery is installed, you can flash ZIPs and even root your device in a few taps—as long as you unlock the bootloader beforehand.