Hot Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: Change Your Billing & Shipping Address for Apple Pay on Your iPhone
Apple Pay can be used at retail stores, restaurants, markets, and millions of other locations in the US and abroad. It's used to buy everything from clothing to groceries and vending machine snacks, so it's important to ensure that the cards in your Wallet are always up to date with the correct billing and shipping addresses.
How To: Slow Down, Echo, Stylize & Trim Your Boomerangs on Instagram
Boomerangs are perhaps the quintessential story tool on Instagram. Surprisingly, there's never been much to them — point and shoot, and your subject plays forward and backward in a never-ending loop. Perhaps its prolonged simplicity inspired Instagram to give Boomerangs a bit more depth because the company just introduced three new effects to try out.
How To: Choose Who Gets to Reply to Your Tweets for Improved Twitter Conversations
Twitter replies have traditionally acted like public spaces. Once a tweet is out there, pretty much anyone can reply to it. In some cases, that makes for good discussion. In others, it can lead to disaster, abuse, and harassment. Twitter's looking to change that by giving you more control over who can reply to tweets.
How To: Add & Remove Debit & Credit Cards for Apple Pay on Your iPhone
Estimates say that there are roughly 441 million Apple Pay users in the world, but with almost a billion active iPhones in the world, some of you have yet to jump on board the digital payment method. But once you're ready — or if you just need a refresher — adding your debit and credit cards to Apple Wallet is simple.
How To: How Your Smartphone Can Get You Fit in Just 7 Minutes a Day
We all want to be healthy, but in practice, it can be tricky, especially from the fitness angle. Our lives seem busier and busier, which makes hitting the gym quite the challenge. What if we told you there was a real way to work on your fitness in the comfort of your own home — in just seven minutes a day? All you need is a chair, a wall, and a 7-minute workout app.
How To: Trouble Staying Focused at the Gym? Here Are 4 Ways Your Phone Can Help You Get Locked In
New year, new me. You finally committed to working on the best physical you by going to the gym multiple days a week. Except about an hour in, you start getting really tired of it all. Before you run to the exit, pick up your phone.
How To: Check Which Apps Have Access to Your Google Fit Data
There's definitely some malware-ridden apps on the Play Store. When it comes to the third-party apps you've connected to your Google Fit account, some have a crazy amount of permissions they have no business accessing. For example, you probably don't want a heart monitor app having access to your personal location data.
How To: Track Your Heart Rate with Google Fit — No Smartwatch Required
With the rise of smartwatches and wearables, you'd almost expect to need one to get a heart rate reading. While these devices can be helpful, not everyone has or wants to wear a gadget all the time to track their BPM. Luckily, when you combine Google Fit with a popular third-party heart rate measuring app, it will make things easy for you.
How To: The Easiest Way to View Your Step Count, Walking Distance & Flights Climbed on iPhone
Your iPhone tracks how many steps you take, how far you walk, and how many stairs you climb each day. That may seem a bit frightening, but it's all for a good reason: the Health app stores this data so you can view your progress in one place. But interestingly, opening the Health app isn't the easiest way to view this info.
Ranked: The 5 Best Workout Phones for Fitness Fanatics in 2020
A good smartphone can be the perfect workout companion. You have music for motivation, videos for pushing through boring cardio sessions, GPS to keep you on course, and even an array of sensors for gathering data about your workout. But not all phones are created equal when it comes to helping you stay fit.
How To: The Fastest Way to Start a Workout with Google Fit
Google Fit houses all of your essential fitness-related information in the cloud for safekeeping at all times. You can easily let your device detect your workout sessions for you automatically based on a variety of sensors. At the same time, the Fit app makes it easy to manually start a workout as well.
How To: Play Stadia Games on Any Android Phone
Stadia is a lot like an Xbox or PS4, except there's no console — the games just stream from Google's servers to your phone, computer, or TV. But Stadia is limited to Pixel phones for right now, and when Google does expand support, it will still only be for select phones. Thankfully, there's a workaround for that if you're rooted.
How To: Switching Cameras Is Easy with This Simple Gesture on Your OnePlus
Something entirely new for many people is where the future of navigation is headed — gestures. Gesture navigation not only gives you more screen real estate, but it allows for a seamless experience without needing to lift your finger as much. OnePlus knows you want to tap less and do more, so they added a quick camera gesture you should be aware of to make your experience that much better.
How To: Google Photos Has an I'm Feeling Lucky Button & It Totally Rocks
Smartphones have made us all photographers in a sense, and with the sheer amount of pictures we take, it's become too easy for memorable moments to be overlooked. Thankfully, a feature in Google Photos makes it easy to revisit forgotten images and recordings.
How To: Cardio Is Dreadful, Here Are 5 Ways to Make It Better with Help from Your Phone
Let's be honest, nobody enjoys doing cardio — they tolerate it. That dreadful, loathsome feeling you experience when you're doing cardio workouts isn't unique to you, it's almost universal. Sure, it gets easier the more you do it, but there are some ways to make it better now.
How To: Take Slo-Mo Selfies (AKA 'Slofies') on iPhone 11, 11 Pro & 11 Pro Max
Will the name "slofie" ever catch on? Probably not. But that won't stop the feature from being a hit. Slo-mo selfies aren't new in the smartphone world, but they are new to iPhone, arriving for the first time on iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max. Here's what you need to know before you start shooting your first slofie.
How To: Tweet Live Photos by Converting Them to GIFs in Twitter
While Apple's Live Photos feature was introduced back on the iPhone 6S, the rest of the world hasn't entirely caught up. Many apps don't accept the feature, making it difficult to share your fun memories with friends, family, or followers. You can strike Twitter off that list, though, as the app now completely supports Live Photo sharing.
How To: Cut Down on Email Spam with Edison Mail's Unsubscribe Assistant
Edison Mail's big 1.17.0 (iOS) and 1.12.0 (Android) updates introduce a new, powerful Assistant to the mix. Aside from the fresh calendar integration and extensive customizability, you'll probably be most interested in the Assistant's unsubscribe feature. It helps to locate and cut down on your inbox's ever-growing jungle of spam. Here's how it works.
How To: One UI 2 Can Automatically Crop Screenshots on Your Galaxy
When an app like Instagram won't let you save an image, your best bet is to take a screenshot. But then you're stuck with the rest of whatever was on your screen, so you have to go in and crop it down to just the image. Starting now, your Samsung device can do this for you automatically.
How To: Colorize Black & White Photos on Your iPhone via Shortcuts
We might never truly know all of the colors behind old and classic black-and-white photos, but thanks to technology, we can get a pretty accurate colorization. Although Photoshop is a popular way to colorize these images, you can now use your iPhone, along with a nifty shortcut, to transform and give new life to vintage photos.
How To: See Your Android Notifications on Your Windows PC
One of the biggest reasons to go with an iPhone over an Android device is Apple's interconnectivity. iPhones, iPads, and macOS devices are all connected in a way that allows seamless transition between devices. Android lacks such a feature by default, but that isn't the end of the story.
How To: Sign Up & Unsubscribe to Apple News' Hidden Daily Newsletter
While the App Store is filled with news aggregators, Apple News is a solid choice when it comes to keeping up with current events. Apple recently made it easier than ever to stay informed, thanks to a daily newsletter sent straight to your inbox. The problem? It's unclear how to sign up for this newsletter, and it's equally unclear how to unsubscribe.
How To: All the New Features & Changes in Samsung's One UI 2 for Galaxy Devices
Update (Fall 2020): Samsung's version of Android 11 is already in its testing phases! One UI 3.0 is expected to hit recent flagship Galaxy devices towards the end of this year, so check out the new list of features:
How To: Toggle Adjustments in Your iPhone's Photos Editor to Compare Effects Before & After
The Photos app on iPhone has long offered basic editing features for quick edits to pictures, but iOS 13 greatly expanded them and gave the same love to videos. One of the best additions offers the ability to turn off photo and video edits without undoing them, so you can preview how your shots look with or without an effect.
How To: Run 2 Facebook Accounts at Once on Your OnePlus
The Facebook app only supports one account being logged in at a time — but what if you need one for work and one for your personal life? That would normally involve logging out and logging in every time you need to switch accounts, but your OnePlus device offers a much better solution.
How To: Make the Power Button Launch Google Assistant on Your OnePlus
You might prefer a dedicated button, whether physical or digital, to bring up your digital assistant. Pixel phones have the squeeze function to bring up the assistant, but what about OnePlus phones? Luckily, OnePlus has included a feature that uses your power button to act as your assistant button of sorts.
How To: There's an Easy Way to Change Flashlight Brightness on Your Galaxy Phone
Before all the fancy night mode settings in phone cameras, we used the LED flash to take low-light photos. While it's not used for pictures as much anymore, the LED on the back of your Galaxy is still pretty handy as a flashlight. But did you know there's an easy way to adjust the brightness of this flashlight?
How To: You Can Add Chrome's Address Bar Directly to Your Home Screen
Most Android phones have a Google search bar somewhere on their home screen. But did you know you can replace this with a different widget that actually functions as the address bar in your Chrome browser?
How To: Use 3D Touch or Haptic Touch to Quickly Open Apps Inside of Folders on Your iPhone
Folders are great for organizing apps and removing clutter from your home screen. But once they become overfull, it's not as easy to find and launch an app. If you have a jailbroken device, however, there's a tweak that will lessen the hassle of rummaging through folders and make it easier to open the apps they contain.
How To: Open Previous Drafts Faster in Your iPhone's Mail App — From Any Mailbox or Folder
All of your partially written, unsent emails live in your "Drafts" folders, in limbo until the day they are sent off or deleted. In Apple's Mail for iPhone, you can access all drafts from all accounts in a combined "All Drafts" folder from the app's main Mailboxes list — but only if you added it manually. But there's an even better way to access all of your drafts in Apple Mail in iOS; it's just not obvious.
How To: Make Your Pixel 4's Notifications Auto-Expand When You Look at Your Lock Screen
When using face unlock on the Pixel 4, your lock screen notifications are bypassed by default to help you unlock your phone instantaneously. This is different than Face ID on the iPhone, which shows the lock screen until you swipe up, but only shows notifications when you've been authenticated. If you want to do it Apple's way, there are settings you can adjust on your Pixel.
How To: Navigate to Home or Work in 1 Tap with Google Maps
Even if you're totally familiar with all the routes you can take to go home or work, you'll still want to use Google Maps to find the fastest route in current traffic conditions. If you're on Android, there's an extremely fast way to do this.
How To: Disable Auto-Rotation in Your iPhone's Messages App
Having your iPhone's display orientation go from portrait to landscape while lying down in bed can get pretty annoying, especially while chatting with others within Messages. If you have a jailbroken device, however, you can easily remedy this headache by way of a free tweak.
How To: Type to Siri Without Changing a Setting in iOS 13
One of my favorite iOS hacks is Type to Siri. This lets you type your queries to the iPhone digital assistant without needing to use your voice. Unfortunately, Type to Siri replaces the typical Siri voice prompt on the Home or Side button, meaning you need to choose between one or the other. That is, until iOS 13.
How To: Use 'Sign in with Apple' on iOS 13 for Better Security & Privacy
We've all seen the login pages that allow you to log in to third-party accounts using your credentials from Facebook, Google, or Twitter. It saves you the trouble of creating another account and remembering more passwords — but it can also become a privacy and security issue, which is why Apple created the "Sign in with Apple" feature for iOS 13.
How To: Get to the 'App Info' Page for Any App Faster
When an app is acting up, the first thing you should do is head to its App Info page. Here, you can force stop the buggy app or delete its data and cache. It even lets you manage permissions and notifications, quickly uninstall the app, and more. So you should definitely know about the easy new way to get to this page.
Best TV Streaming Apps: Disney+ vs. Apple TV+ vs. Netflix vs. Hulu vs. Amazon Prime
Who here binges TV on a regular basis? I know I do. Never before have we had so many options for watching our favorite shows, especially when you consider how easy it is to stream from anywhere on a mobile device. But sometimes, all that choice gets a little overwhelming. What services are really worth the money? Where should you be investing your Friday-night binges?
How To: Remap the Soli Motion Sense Gestures on Your Pixel 4 — No Root Needed
Whether you love Motion Sense or think it's a gimmick, one thing we can agree on is that its functionality is limited. It's currently limited to switching tracks on a playlist, snoozing alarms, silencing calls, lowering the volume of alerts, and checking notifications. But a new mod will help you do so much more with it.
How To: Make Your Phone Pass SafetyNet with EdXposed Installed
One of the longest-running cat and mouse games in Android has to be that of Google's SafetyNet feature and specific apps that can trip the flag. Many developers have resorted to using Magisk to create their modules since it can systemlessly pass SafetyNet in most cases. However, EdXposed is having some issues passing SafetyNet right now, which affects more than just your mods.
How To: Play Apex Legends on Your Phone Right Now
With EA chief executive Andrew Wilson stating the official mobile version of Apex Legends won't arrive until the 2021 fiscal year, fans have to wait at least another year to enjoy their favorite battle royale game on the go. But for those who can't wait, there are ways to play the game on iPhone and Android right now.