Hot Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: Make App Icons the Same Size & Shape on Android
Google's Material Design guidelines have finally brought some consistency to the look and feel of Android apps, bringing most of the user experience on par with what you would see on iOS. However, some developers are still using non-compliant home screen icons, even though Material Design calls for specific padding, size, and layouts.
How To: Instinct, Mystic, or Valor? How to Pick Which Pokémon GO Team to Join?
To become a tried-and-true Pokémon master in Pokémon GO, there's an incredibly important decision that needs your attention: Team Instinct, Team Mystic, or Team Valor?
How To: Use Your Android Smartphone as a Real-World Search Engine
When you're browsing the internet on a computer, you just need to hit Ctrl F (or Command F) and type something out to find all instances of that word in the webpage. It's a handy feature baked into most browsers (nearly all mobile browsers have a "find" feature, too), but unfortunately, it doesn't work with real-world documents, signs, and menus—or at least it hasn't, up until now.
How To: Turn Your Android Phone into the Ultimate Fitness Tracker
It seems like everyone is getting in shape these days (or at least trying to improve their fitness), and as a result, there's an endless supply of fitness trackers and smartwatches hitting the market. This is all very wonderful, unless of course, you're broke and can barely afford a decent pair of running shoes.
How To: Tap into the Reddit Hivemind's Comments on Any Article
When you want to read product reviews, you go to Amazon—regardless of whether or not you intend on buying the product from their website. By the same sense, when you want to read discussions about certain topics you come across on the internet, there's no better place than Reddit.
How To: Turn Your iPhone into a Pokémon Radar for Pokémon GO
The only way to know which Pokémon are in your area in Pokémon GO is the cryptic "nearby" list, which sometimes doesn't work—and also doesn't tell you which direction to head off to hunt that Pokémon you're looking for.
How To: Get the Galaxy Note5's Air Command Feature on Any Android
With every flagship device they release, Samsung makes sure to add in at least a few little software goodies. Last year's Galaxy Note5 was no exception, because among other things, Samsung included a revamped version of their useful utility called Air Command that gave users quick access to tools and common functions with a small floating bubble.
How To: Why & When to Evolve Your Pokémon in Pokémon GO
Like previous installments in the Pokémon series, as you progress through Pokémon GO you'll be able to evolve your Pokémon into more-powerful monsters with new and more-damaging attacks. However, unlike older entries in the series, your Pokémon won't simply evolve when they reach a certain level. Instead, you'll have to "feed" them a certain amount of character-specific candy to induce the transformation.
How To: iOS 10 Lets You Edit, Crop & Add Filters to Live Photos on Your iPhone
The iPhone 6s models introduced Live Photos in iOS 9, a cool new camera feature that takes a GIF-esque moving image every time you snap a pic, but the cool factor pretty much stopped right there. You couldn't take them on older iOS devices, share them with non-iOS users, or even edit them.
How To: This App Saves Battery Life by Toggling Data Off When You're on Wi-Fi
One of the biggest causes of smartphone battery drain is the mobile data connection—particularly if you live in an area with poor reception. But, chances are, you don't actually need this connection most of the time, because you're probably connected to Wi-Fi for a good chunk of the day, which uses far less battery life.
How To: Use This Map to Find PokéStop Locations in Pokémon GO
If you want free Poké Balls and eggs when playing Pokémon GO, you can find them at PokéStops in variation locations around your city, which are marked with towering blue icons on your map. Once you're at Level 5, they'll also grant you Potions and Revives to help you in your battles against other trainers, so they're definitely something you should be visiting whenever you can.
How To: What Do the Leaves Mean in Pokémon GO?
While wandering around in Pokémon GO, you'll occasionally see what appears to be leaves fluttering around nearby. This is actually meant to be Pokémon "rustling in the grass," but whatever the intention, it means that there may be a wild Pokémon in that area. While there's no use in tapping on the leaves (it does nothing), they can be helpful in your search for Pokémon to catch.
How To: The Ultimate Guide to Hatching Eggs in Pokémon GO
Finding Pokémon in the wild isn't the only way to add to your collection in Pokémon GO—you're also able to hatch your own from eggs that you've gotten from PokéStops.
How To: Adjust WiFi Video Quality on Your iPhone in iOS 10
If you're watching videos over Wi-Fi on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, iOS 10 lets you adjust the quality for when you want to save data or need help watching a movie or TV show on a poor connection.
How To: Get Android Nougat's New Boot Animation Right Now
Android Nougat came with a lot of new features, including a futuristic and sleek circle animation. When this article was originally published, it was rumored that the circular design would be used as the new boot animation in Android 7.0—but as it turns out, you'll only see this screen while you're installing a firmware upgrade or working with ADB.
How To: Cheat at Pokémon GO Without Getting Banned
Gotta catch 'em all, right? That's easier said than done, considering that Pokémon GO has region-specific characters that you may never get a chance to see. Sure, you can spoof your GPS location to make the augmented reality game think you're at a different spot on the map, but Niantic Labs seems to be catching on to this method, and some users have been soft-banned for a few hours after trying it.
How To: Your iPhone Will Automatically Add Events to Your Calendar in iOS 10
iOS 10's Calendar app comes with a new Found Events feature, which scans Mail and Messages on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch for events and lets you add them to your calendar. This one is easy to set up, because it's automatically enabled and on all the time, so you don't have to do anything.
How To: Change Flashlight Brightness on Your iPhone in iOS 10
There has been a built-in flashlight on iPhones and iPod touches ever since the release of the Control Center in iOS 7, but it has stayed exactly the same since then. In iOS 10 and higher, you can actually adjust the brightness from the toggle if you have 3D Touch.
How To: Add a Special Swipe to Access Your Favorite Android Widgets from Anywhere
The widget selection on Android is one of the main things that set it apart from other mobile operating systems. You can get quick, at-a-glance information for topics like weather, news, music, and much more, all without ever leaving your home screen.
How To: Make Your Own Battery-Saving 'Lite Apps' for Android
Several major web services—most notably Facebook—have horrendous Android apps that occupy way too much space and drain battery life at an alarming rate. Such issues have led to a new trend where third-party developers create minimalist "lite" apps that are essentially the mobile website bundled into a native Android wrapper, freeing up storage space and saving battery life without sacrificing many features at all.
How To: Watch Viral Videos on Your iPhone Without an Internet Connection
The internet, as I understand it, is a wonderful, magical place where people congregate to share memes and viral videos. Well, okay... there's a lot more to it than that, but let's just focus in on the good stuff.
How To: Get iOS 10 on Your iPad or iPhone Right Now with Apple's Public Beta
The official release of Apple's iOS 10 mobile operating system is still a few months away, but starting today, June 7, the public beta version is available to download if you'd like to get a head start on checking out all the cool new features included in Apple's latest mobile OS.
How To: Pick Your Own Status Bar Icons for Wired or Bluetooth Headphones
The skinned versions of Android that come with Samsung, LG, and HTC phones usually have a feature that displays a small icon in your status bar when you connect a pair of headphones. It lets you know that your earbuds are plugged in or connected properly, and offers assurance that your music won't be blaring out of the loudspeaker—but mostly, it's just a nice little touch.
How To: Get the Best One-Handed Swiping Keyboard for iPhone
Swipe keyboards such as GBoard, SwiftKey, TouchPal, and Swype are handy for quick one-thumbed typing on an iPhone, but Microsoft upped the game with its experimental Word Flow Keyboard. In short, the keyboard fans out to occupy the natural range of your thumb, where you can type or rely on predictive swiping.
How To: The Best Way to Make GIFs Out of Anything on Your iPhone
The internet has officially been taken over by GIFs—they're everybody's favorite method of communication these days, and nary a meme would exist without them. But even with the abundance of GIF-sharing websites, and even GIF keyboards, we're still a bit lacking in regard to creating GIFs on a mobile device.
How To: Get Android Nougat's New Navigation Keys Right Now
The new Google phones, which are rumored to ditch the Nexus moniker for Pixel, will most likely come with an Android feature that 7.0 Nougat doesn't currently have—a new set of navigation keys.
How To: Remove Amazon's Lock Screen Ads from the BLU R1 HD & Moto G4—Without Rooting
It just got a whole lot easier to decide whether or not saving $50 on Amazon's new ad- and bloatware-subsidized smartphones is worth the headache of having to see an advertisement on the lock screen every time you wake the device.
How To: Perform the Air Tap Gesture Correctly on the HoloLens
Microsoft's HoloLens has two gestures: bloom and air tap. While the two might not seem like much to learn, some people struggle with the air tap because the headset can be a bit particular. The easiest way to learn the proper form is to look through someone else's eyes while they do it, so we've captured that for you.
How To: Use Chrome Flags to Prevent Page Load Jumps
Google's Chrome browser comes pre-loaded on the vast majority of today's Android devices, and it's one of the fastest, most stable, and useful browsers out there. But it does have one major annoyance—while a page is loading, you'll see a link, then reach to tap it, but an element further up the page will load, and the link will jump out from underneath your fingertip.
How To: Auto-Mute Group Chat Notifications Before They Get Annoying
If you have any group chats going, you're surely familiar with this scenario: One person sends a picture, then, within 30 seconds or so, all other participants chime in with one-word responses like "Cute," or "Awesome." It's a social nicety, so you have to expect this behavior, but that doesn't make it any less annoying when your phone randomly beeps and vibrates ten times in a row because of it.
How To: Get Sony's Feature-Packed Xperia Keyboard on Any Android Device
North American users get a raw deal when it comes to Sony devices. For some reason, the critically-acclaimed Xperia lineup of smartphones is hardly ever available here, whereas in Europe, the Sony Xperia Z series is one of the most popular flagship devices around.
How To: Keep Your Android's Screen On All the Time Without Killing Your Battery
Samsung's latest flagship devices, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, as well as the Note7, have a useful feature called "Always On Display." With this one enabled, the clock and some other information will continue to be shown on the screen, even when you lock your phone or turn your screen off.
How To: Browse Your Mac's Hard Drive Using Your iPhone
When it comes to sharing files between a smartphone and a computer, there are several solutions available for a Windows and Android pairing. But for those of us with Apple devices, the selection of apps in this category isn't quite as great. You can use AirDrop to quickly share files, but searching for files is not so easy.
How To: Get the Nextbit Robin's Launcher on Any Android
We recently covered a set of ported apps from the new cloud-based smartphone, the Nextbit Robin. These ported APKs brought two of the Robin's slick new stock apps—Camera and Gallery—to any other device, but the launcher was conspicuously absent.
How To: Share Photos & Videos with the Microsoft HoloLens
Microsoft's HoloLens comes with helpful features for capturing video and photos, but sharing whatever you record isn't as straightforward as you might expect. So here are the many ways to get your media off the device to share with the world.
How To: Find Out When Your Nexus Will Stop Getting Android Updates
The beauty of Nexus devices is they receive firmware updates faster than any other Android phone, and keep getting updates for years longer than most of the competition. This means that you can always use the great new features that come along with an Android update, and even more importantly, your phone gets monthly security patches to keep hackers and malware at bay.
How To: Prepare Your Phone for a Trip Abroad with These Tips
So you're finally ready to head out on that big trip you've been planning for months, huh? It's an exciting time, but there are plenty of things you'll need to prepare before you head out. For instance, it's hard to imagine life without a smartphone these days, and with useful traveling apps like Google Translate and maps, you'll almost have to make sure that you have a working smartphone when you arrive at your destination.
How To: 10 Reasons You Need to Switch to Google Inbox
Gmail has been the email standard for quite some time now, and for good reason: it's a free service provided by one of the largest tech companies in the world that offers users an amazing feature set to manage, send, and keep track of all their important emails.
How To: Send GIFs with the Messages App on iOS 10
In the revamped Messages app in iOS 10, you can now send animated GIFs from your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch without a third-party keyboard like Giphy or GIF Keyboard.
How To: Shuffle All Songs in Apple's Music App in iOS 10
With each update, Apple Music continues to become a bigger part of iOS. It's gotten to the point where you have to fend off multiple requests to subscribe to the streaming music service before you can listen to your own songs on an iPad or iPhone, but as it stands in iOS 10, maintaining your own MP3 library is still possible. Just barely.