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How To: Clear Your Frequently Used and Recent Emoji from Your iPhone's Keyboard

Despite its name, the Frequently Used section on your iPhone's emoji keyboard features both frequently and recently used emoji, and it may contain emoji you've never even touched. If you want to remove all of those recommendations, there's an easy way to reset what you in Frequently Used to the defaults.

How To: Make Siri Say Whatever You Want Every Time You Connect Your iPhone to a Charger

Whenever your iPhone's ringer is on, you'll hear Apple's iconic "Connect Power" chime every time you connect it to a wired or wireless power source, which lets you know that charging has started. There's no way to disable the sound without turning on Silent mode, but there is a way to make Siri automatically say whatever you want after a successful connection.

How To: There's an Easy Way to See All the Unsent Messages in Your iMessage Conversations

While you can quickly see the edit history of a modified iMessage in the Messages app, there's no way to view an iMessage that somebody in the conversation deleted unless you happened to see it before it disappeared. But that's only true if you didn't implement these security measures on your iPhone.

How To: Use FaceTime's Secret Hand Gestures and Reaction Buttons to Add Animated On-Screen Effects to Your Video Feed

Apple's Messages app has long had visual effects you could apply manually after long-pressing the send button, and there are even hidden keywords you could use to trigger full-screen effects automatically. FaceTime can also give you some full-screen effects to play around with during video calls, but the triggers are an entirely different concept — hand gestures.

How To: See Passwords for Wi-Fi Networks You've Connected Your Android Device To

You've probably connected your Android device to dozens of Wi-Fi networks since you've had it, and your phone or tablet remembers each of them. Whether it's a hotspot at home, school, work, the gym, a coffee shop, a relative's apartment — or even from a friend's phone — each time you type in a Wi-Fi password, your Android device saves it for safekeeping and easy access later.

How To: Clone Any Android App on Your Samsung Galaxy Phone Without Using Any Third-Party Tools

Samsung has a cool security feature built into One UI that has an interesting side effect, one that lets you have two separate copies of any Android app on your Galaxy phone. And that's not the only integrated Samsung tool for cloning apps.

How To: Remove Unwanted Objects, People, and Distractions in Photos on Your iPhone, iPad, or Mac

Editing out unwanted objects, people, and distractions from your photos just got a lot easier on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Before, you would have to use apps like Google Photos or Snapseed to erase background distractions or perform spot healing, but it's now a native feature in Apple's Photos app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

How To: 16 Harry Potter Spells for Siri That Turn Your iPhone into a Magical Elder Wand

Your days as an ordinary Muggle are over — as long as you have an iPhone. With just a word or two, you can use your iPhone and newfound Muggle-born powers to cast spells or utilize charms just like Harry Potter and team. Only your "wand" is from Apple, not Ollivanders in Diagon Alley.

How To: 13 Tips Every Apple Pencil User Needs to Know for iPad

While it doesn't come with any iPad models out of the box, the Apple Pencil is perhaps the best iPad accessory you can get. It's a powerful writing and drawing tool with an intuitive design and user-friendliness that makes it easy to take notes, draw sketches, mark up documents, and more. And there's a lot you can do with it — some of which you may not have noticed yet.

How To: Dial These Secret Codes to See if Someone Is Hijacking Calls & Texts on Your iPhone

Malevolent hackers can divert your incoming calls and texts to any number they want, and they don't need to be a criminal mastermind to do it. Even friends and family members can reroute your incoming calls and messages so that they know exactly who's trying to reach you, and all it takes is seconds of access to your iPhone or wireless account. These secret codes can help uncover them.

Warning: Sensitive Info You Black Out in Images Can Be Revealed with a Few Quick Edits on Your iPhone

These days, most images we post online or share with others come from our smartphones. Whenever personal data is in them, such as debit card numbers, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information, it's easy to jump into your iPhone's markup tools to black out the text before sharing. But a digital marker may not hide everything.

How To: Turn Any Website into a Full-Screen App on Your iPhone

Not all websites need a dedicated mobile app, which is why so many don't. Web apps are now designed to scale to different screen sizes, so mobile sites in your web browser are easy to navigate and utilize. Still, there's just something about an app on your iPhone's Home Screen that makes it feel more like an app from the App Store.

How To: Use Apple Intelligence's Image Playground to Craft Custom Drawings and Animations for Almost Anything You Can Think Of

Growing up, I was told that hard work could get me anything I wanted. But with Apple's Image Playground, I can create almost any illustration or drawing imaginable just by typing or selecting a suggestion. This groundbreaking feature in Apple Intelligence lets you generate images from simple prompts, opening up exciting possibilities for creativity.

How To: Your iPad Has a Hidden Built-in Calculator You're Not Using — Here's How to Unlock It

There is no iPad version of Apple's Calculator app (at least, not yet), so you won't find it on your Home Screen, in your App Library, or as a shortcut in the Control Center. But that doesn't mean your iPad doesn't have an official calculator.

How To: Add Unsupported Cards and Passes to Apple Wallet for Quick, Easy Access on Your iPhone

Apple's Wallet app lets you store boarding passes, concert tickets, gym memberships, vaccination cards, movie stubs, rewards cards, insurance info, student IDs, and more in one place on your iPhone, and you just double-click the Home or Side button to access them. Unfortunately, many cards and passes are not officially supported — but that doesn't mean you can't add them.

How To: Lock and Hide Apps on Your iPhone or iPad — The Official Way

You can lock practically any app on your iPhone or iPad behind biometric or passcode protection. And we're not talking about using any funky workarounds, either. There's now an official Apple way to protect sensitive apps and their data. It even safeguards your personal information, keeping it out of sight across the system. You can even hide apps, making it harder for others to know they're there.

How To: Boot Your Galaxy S8 or S8+ into Recovery Mode or Download Mode

Samsung devices have two pre-boot menus that every Galaxy owner should know about: recovery mode and download mode. The recovery screen allows users to wipe cache files or perform a factory reset, which can help save the phone from a soft brick. Download mode, on the other hand, allows you to flash firmware files using utilities like Odin and Smart Switch, which can truly be a lifesaver.

How To: Your iPhone Has a Hidden Text-to-Speech Tool That'll Read Articles, Books, News, and Other Text Out Loud to You

You may prefer reading news stories, web articles, and books on your iPhone over listening to them in spoken form. Still, sometimes it's necessary when driving, walking, cycling, cleaning, working, or performing other activities requiring a little multitasking. To help you out, Apple has a text-to-speech service on your iPhone — you just need to know how to find and set it up.

How To: Remove or Add 'Where from' Metadata in Files on macOS

When you download files from certain apps like Safari and Chrome on your Mac, those files are tagged with the "Where from" metadata attribute. Depending on where the file was downloaded from, this attribute may refer to the host's URL, a sender's email address, or another piece of identifying information. While not obvious, you can delete or even change this attribute.

How To: Prevent Thieves from Turning On Your iPhone's Airplane Mode, So You Have a Better Chance to Track It Down

When an iPhone is lost or stolen, it's imperative to start tracking it via Find My as soon as possible, whether that's from a computer, tablet, or someone else's phone. However, if it's stolen, there's a good chance the thief or robber turns on Airplane Mode, blocking all communication with the iPhone. If this is a scary thought, you can prevent thieves from accessing Airplane Mode altogether.

How To: 23 Things Your iPhone's Volume Buttons Can Do Besides Volume Adjustments

The volume buttons on the side of your iPhone can do more than just adjust the volume levels for media, ringers, alerts, Siri, and other sounds and voices. You can use them to perform different actions in certain apps and even create custom actions using the Shortcuts app. It's not exactly button mapping, but it's as close as you'll get without jailbreaking iOS.

How To: If You Keep Valuable Information in Apple Notes, You Need to Read This

Apple's Notes app has an important feature many users overlook, yet it's arguably the most crucial thing you should use for all your notes synced across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and iCloud.com. And Apple makes the feature much easier to use than years before, so there's no reason you shouldn't be using it.

How To: Set Up Wireless Debugging on Android 11 to Send ADB Commands Without a USB Cable

From booting into Fastboot mode with a single command to installing mods without root access, there's no shortage of reasons to use ADB. The catch, though, you had to be tied to a computer with a USB connection. However, a new feature in Android 11 finally allows you to run ADB commands over Wi-Fi instead of being tethered.

How To: Create and Manage Reminders Without Ever Leaving the Calendar App on Your iPhone, iPad, or Mac

Multitasking often seems like a good idea until you find yourself exhausted from all the back and forth between apps. In the latest software updates for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, Apple has streamlined the process for its Calendar and Reminders apps — making it easy to create and manage both calendar events and tasks from a single location.

How To: Generate Professional Drawings in Seconds Using Image Wand on iOS 18.2 or iPadOS 18.2

Drawing in Apple Notes can be fun, but our sketches may not always turn out as polished as we'd like (cue the "my 5-year-old can draw better than that" jokes). Thankfully, Apple's new Image Wand feature in iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 aims to make creating professional-quality visuals a breeze, even if you lack artistic skills.

How To: Use Google Maps or Waze with Siri Instead of Apple Maps

When driving, you can get directions hands-free by asking Siri. You can also make general map searches, show a location's details, call a query's phone number, and view traffic details. However, Siri defaults to Apple Maps for all those. If you prefer Google Maps, Waze, or another third-party navigation app, the map-based Siri commands won't work. But that doesn't mean you can't still use Siri.

How To: Find the Version Number for Any App on Your iPhone or iPad — Even Stock Apple Apps

From time to time, you may need to locate the version and build number for a particular app on your iPhone or iPad, but it's not at all obvious where you can find the information. Well, there's more than one place to look on iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, but none are perfect solutions. Knowing each method will ensure you can always find any app's real version number.

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