Hot Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: Find Out Which Carriers Are Compatible with Your Smartphone
For those who have never traveled abroad, you may not know that different carriers around the world use different bands of frequency to provide service to their customers. This means that a phone bought in the U.S. may be unable to acquire signal from a carrier in Europe.
How To: Get a Free Fire TV Stick or Roku Streaming Stick for Sling TV
Sling TV, the new over-the-top TV streaming service from DISH Network, is the first to offer live programing for cord cutters. Available for $20 a month with no contract, Sling TV is the easiest way to end the reliance on cable and satellite subscriptions for getting your content as it airs.
How To: Take Window Screenshots Without Drop Shadows on Your Mac
There are many ways to take a screenshot in macOS (previously Mac OS X), but all of the well-known options give you a drop shadow in the picture when snapping application windows.
How To: Get iOS 8's Reachability Feature on Android for Easier One-Handed Use
When Apple released their plus-sized iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models, it only made sense that they would include a one-handed feature to accommodate the larger displays. That particular feature is called Reachability, and with just a quick double-tap of the Home button, the screen shifts to the bottom half of the device for easier use with one hand.
How To: Get the HTC One M8's Camera App on Your Nexus 6
With the Nexus 6, you get a very clean software experience with minimal bloat. While this is generally the main selling point for most Nexus fans, it can be a bit of a detraction for some.
How To: Restart an iPhone Without Using the Sleep/Wake Button
Apple's iPhone is one of the most popular, most expensive smartphones in the world, yet with a broken Home or Sleep/Wake button, it might as well be a doorstop. There are many different DIY ways to fixing a busted Home button, but the Sleep/Wake button (aka Power button) is a little more averse to DIY trickery.
How To: Disable Double-Tap to Wake While Making Calls on Your Nexus 6
The Nexus 6 came with a hidden kernel module that allowed for double-tap-to-wake functionality, essentially letting you turn your screen on just by tapping it. A simple root app allowed us to activate this feature, which meant we were always two quick taps away from waking our device.
How To: Product Chart Makes Finding Your Next Gadget Easy
You didn't have to attend this year's CES to have gadget envy. There are so many great smartphones, computers, laptops, and other gadgets available in the market that the real challenge becomes choosing the right one to fit your needs and your budget.
How To: Get More Bro Time by Automating Loving Texts to Your Girlfriend
Those of us with girlfriends understand that in order for the relationship to run smoothly, you have to keep your woman happy and let her know that you're thinking of her—even when you're not.
How To: Test Your Chromecast's Network Connection
At its core, the Chromecast is essentially a web browser on a stick. When you cast content from your computer or smartphone, all you're really doing is telling the Chromecast which website to load.
How To: Get Letter Grades for College Papers Before Turning Them In
My college days are long behind me, and while I don't necessary miss them, I am jealous of all the countless resources available to students these days. Apps like PhotoMath are something I wish I had access to in my student days, making assignments less strenuous and easier to complete.
How To: Close All Open Apps on Your Mac with a Single Click
Normally, if you want to close all of the open apps on your Mac, you'd have to either quit them all one by one or restart, shut down, or log out while making sure to deselect “Reopen windows when logging back in." The latter option is great, but it doesn't always work in Mac OS X, and what if you don't want to restart, shut down, or log out?
How To: The Fastest Way to Stay Up to Date with Reddit on Your iPhone
Reddit is a force to be reckoned with. What started out as link aggregator has become one of the world's most popular websites, with over 170 million unique visitors and 6 billion monthly pageviews. Whether you're into cute animals, crazy conspiracy theories, sports, or Taylor Swift's armpit, Reddit definitely has something for every taste, interest, and morbid curiosity.
How To: Save Battery Life by Blacking Out the Launcher & Calculator on Your Nexus 6
The AMOLED display on the Nexus 6 wastes no power to show black pixels. This is because pixels on such a screen emit their own light, and black can be easily achieved by simply not lighting any given pixel.
How To: Get Spotify Premium Features on Android Without Paying a Dime
When you think of an online music service nowadays, Spotify is probably near the first that come to mind, and for good reason. Being able to create, share, and take all of your playlists anywhere, across all of your devices, is something that I couldn't live without. Unfortunately, nothing this good is free, and with Spotify Premium, users of their free service are left with very limited features when streaming on their mobile devices.
How To: Rename Multiple Files at Once in Mac OS X Yosemite
With the sheer amount of photos, videos, and miscellaneous files we place on our computers, proper organization becomes necessary. Not only so that we can quickly get to a file when it's needed, but also to declutter folders and keep them from looking like random file dumps.
How To: Browse Reddit at School or Work Without Getting Caught
During class or while at work, it can take an immense amount of self-control to resist navigating over to Reddit. The link-aggregator and meme-warehouse makes it too easy to kill time... most of which you should be spending on various other tasks.
PhoneExpander: A Faster, Easier Way to Free Up Space on Your iPhone
Deciding what to remove from your iPhone in order to free up space isn't the easiest thing in the world. You've got to decide which apps, videos, and photos are worth keeping, even though in a perfect world, you couldn't have to part with any of them.
How To: Replace Android's Voice Dialer with Google Now for Better Bluetooth Dialing
When you press the "Call" button on most Bluetooth headsets, the majority of Android devices will launch a built-in Voice Dialer app. This app has been around since the dawn of Android, and has received very few interface or functionality updates.
How To: Enhance Your iPhone's Stock Camera App with These New Features
We use the cameras on our phones to become Instagram-famous, direct Snapchat videos, and post pictures for all our Facebook friends to gander at. Needless to say, camera technology in smartphones has come pretty far in a fairly short amount of time. In fact, a film shot entirely with an iPhone 5S was just accepted into the Sundance Film Festival.
How To: Turn Gmail into an Instant Messenger for Faster Emailing on Your iPhone
If you've had your Gmail account for awhile, it's probably a cluttered mess thanks to unread messages, out-of-control newsletters, and never-ending email threads. This is one of the main reasons for the creation of Google's streamlined Inbox service, but the adoption rate for it hasn't indicated a huge shift over for most of us yet (partly because it's invite-only still).
How To: Install HTC's Sense Browser on Any Lollipop Device
Many manufacturers add a custom skin on top of their Android builds, but none are more widely praised than HTC's Sense UI. The general consensus among Android users says that HTC's visual tweaks are done in good taste, and the features they add are both functional and warranted.
How To: Use Reachability to Access Music Controls & Album Art on Your iPhone from Any Screen
There is no built-in way, or any options in the iOS App Store, to customize the vacant top half of the screen that appears when the newer Reachability feature is triggered in iOS 8. However, there are many Reachability tweaks for jailbroken iPhones, one of which lets you use the feature on devices other than an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.
How To: Return a Lost iPhone to Its Owner Using Siri
I misplaced my iPhone 6 just a few weeks ago, so I know firsthand that losing an iPhone sucks. Luckily, my tale didn't have a bad ending.
How To: Clear All Items from Your Nexus 5's Overview Screen in Just One Tap
Android 5.0 brought a lot of changes to the world's most popular mobile OS, but few were more central to the user experience than tweaks made to the "Overview" menu (more commonly known as the "Recent Apps" menu). Aside from a visual overhaul, Chrome tabs now exist as separate entries in this list, as do Google searches and a few other activities.
How To: The Fastest Way to Share Clips of Your Favorite Movie Quotes with Anyone
The Oscars are just around the corner, so it's the perfect time to remind people of your favorite movie moments, even if they're not exactly Oscar-worthy. But don't just settle on sending GIFs that don't include any of the fun audio, or resort to scouring YouTube for that one specific movie clip. Instead, take a look at Qwotes, a new mobile app from developer StudyUp.
How To: Watch the 2015 Super Bowl XLIX Commercials Online Right Now
Super Bowl Sunday is just around the corner. With 111.5 million viewers tuning in last year (112.6 if you count streaming), which broke another record that it previously set for the most-watched television event in U.S. history, it's safe to say that most of us will be watching Super Bowl XLIX on February 1st, 2015, whether via TV, web, or mobile.
How To: Send Links from Your Android to Any Computer
In today's world, we're constantly switching back and forth between all of our internet-connected devices. A PC may be great while you're at your desk, but the living room couch is tablet territory, and nothing beats the portability of a pocket-sized smartphone while you're on the go.
How To: Find Anything on Your Android Device by Drawing, Not Typing
We use our smart devices for pretty much everything these days, from getting directions to playing games just to kill time. They're extremely important to our daily routine, and as we use our devices more and more, things get a little bit messy.
How To: Automatically Pause Music During Spoken Maps Directions on Your iPhone
Maps is great for getting turn-by-turn directions in unfamiliar territory, but how many times does your favorite song have to be rudely interrupted by that navigation voice telling you to turn left or right? Yes, you need those spoken directions to get to where you're going, but you also need to hear every part of your song, right?
How To: Boost Performance & Battery Life on Your Nexus 6 by Lowering the Display Resolution
The Nexus 6 is one of the few devices on the market that sports a 1440p "QHD" display. This means that the amount of pixels displayed is higher than almost any other smartphone, which sounds great on the surface, but is not without its drawbacks.
How To: Add New & Improved Features to Your OnePlus One's Camera App
The camera in CyanogenMod, CameraNext, takes some pretty impressive shots when compared to those offered by HTC Sense and Sony Xperia, but it doesn't have many of the features that make it a real competitor. Even the Color OS version of the OnePlus One has received better reviews when comparing low-light shots, which implies that it's not the camera sensor that's lacking, but the software.
How To: Turning Video Clips into High-Quality GIFs Is the Easiest Thing Ever with Imgur
Imgur has just released a brand new feature to make GIFs better than they ever have before. Video to GIF is a tool that allows you to quickly paste any video link, easily select a clip from that video, and turn it into a very high-quality GIF, called a GIFV.
How To: Roadie App Lets You Ship Things Cheaper & Make Money While You're Traveling
The next time you plan on going on an adventurous road trip, get paid for it! With the the new mobile app called Roadie, from developer Marc Gorlin, you can get paid to go where you're already going.
How To: Watch the 2015 Super Bowl XLIX Live Stream Online from Anywhere
2015 is quickly shaping up to be the year of the cord cutter, with various media companies finally warming up to the concept of offering live streaming content. In the wake of Dish Network announcing a streaming cable service called Sling TV and Sony unveiling a similar platform in PlayStation Vue, NBC has decided to stream the Super Bowl and all of its festivities online. Before we get to all of the many ways you can stream Super Bowl 49 between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks ...
How To: Get Early Access to CyanogenMod 12's Theme Engine on Your OnePlus One
CyanogenMod has always been on the forefront of ROM customization, and its newest release, CyanogenMod 12, is no exception. In the newest nightlies, they have included an updated version of their Theme Engine, which allows you to effortlessly change the way your entire system looks.
How To: Save Locations in Google Maps for Offline Use
Before heading out on a hike, or any excursion for that matter, it would be wise to take a map with you just in case you get lost while on your quest.
How To: Connect Your iPhone to Your Mac Like Never Before with Pushbullet
With Apple's Yosemite build of Mac OS X came Continuity, a feature that has allowed us to connect our mobile devices to our computers, letting us access apps, send text messages, answer phone calls, and more while seamlessly switching from one device to the other.
How To: Launch Any Navigation App Directly from Google Search on Android
When you search for a specific location or business with the Google app, a Knowledge Graph card is usually the top result. This card displays a handy mini-map and offers a quick link for directions to the location of your query, but it has one irksome flaw—these links can only be opened by the Google Maps app.
How To: Control Music Playing on Your Mac Using a Quick-Access Widget on Your iPhone
Using shortcuts to control the playback of your music on your computer makes life just a little bit easier. Instead of needing to open up an app, we've shown you how to use keyboard shortcuts, a Notification Center widget, and even Siri to control music on your Mac. Now we're going to show you how to use your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch as a remote control.