Hot Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: The Secret to Typing in All Caps on Apple Watch
There's no default keyboard on the Apple Watch, but watchOS has another way to let you type text out for emails, messages, music searches, and more on the small display, and that's Scribble. With it, you simply draw letters and other characters on the screen with your finger, then your watch converts that into plain text. However, it's not perfect, and getting the nuances of regular typing can be tough.
How To: Automatically Clear Nagging System Notifications on Android
If you're using a VPN-based ad blocker with full HTTPS functionality on a Samsung phone, you'll get a notification informing you there's a third-party security certificate in use. No big deal, except it shows up every time you restart the phone. Samsung isn't alone in this type of annoyance, either.
How To: Safari for iPhone Lets Advertisers Track Your 'Clicks' — Here's How to Disable It
Apple wants to support the advertising economy, but its primary focus of late has been user privacy and security. In Safari, cross-site tracking, which lets content providers track you across websites and apps to show you more targeted ads, is disabled by default. However, content providers can get around that using less privacy-invasive ad measurements, but you can stop that too in iOS 14.5.
How To: Hide the Gesture Pill in Android's Navigation Bar
Google switched to gestural navigation in Android 9, and in removing the back/home/recents buttons, they were able to greatly reduce the size of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. However, there's still a white line, aka "The Pill," taking up space to show you where to start your gestures.
How To: Get the iPhone's System Font on Android
For the first time in twenty years, Apple created its own custom font in late 2014. Dubbed "San Francisco," it combined elements from Helvetica and FF DIN to create a crisp, elegant, and highly legible font that is now used in iOS, macOS, and tvOS.
How To: Unlock Developer Options on Your Pixel 5
Android's hidden Developer Options menu, sometimes called "Developer Mode," has a ton of cool settings inside of it. You can enable wireless ADB, spoof your geolocation, make the Pixel 5's screen always run at 90 Hz, or even force incompatible apps to work with dark mode.
How To: Quickly Find Your Google Pixel Buds if They Get Lost or Stolen
One thing about the small round little Pixel Buds — they might get lost easily if you have a terrible habit of misplacing stuff. Or worse, imagine someone taking a liking to them a little too much and stealing them when you aren't looking. Google thought ahead about these issues, so just like your smartphone, you can track your wireless earbuds from anywhere with ease.
How To: Disable FaceTime's Creepy Eye Contact Feature in iOS 14 So You Don't Look Like You're Staring Awkwardly
It's incredible what technology can do these days, but sometimes, it gets a little scary. For instance, FaceTime's "Eye Contact" feature, which Apple beta-tested in iOS 13 but released with iOS 14, makes it appear like you're looking right at the camera, even when you're actually looking at your friend on the screen. If you find this artificial trick a bit creepy, rest assured you can turn it off at any time.
How To: Use Custom App Icon Images to Modify Your iPhone's Home Screen Look
One of Apple's key features for iOS was always its "what you see is what you get" philosophy. Sure, there were small tweaks and complicated workarounds to customize an iPhone, but, for the most part, all iPhones felt similar. These days, however, changing up your iPhone's look is much easier. In just a few steps, you can change one of the most visual parts about iOS — home screen app icons.
How To: Tag Contacts in iMessage Group Chats on Your iPhone in iOS 14
Directing a message at a specific person in a group conversation, or to a select few people in the group, can be difficult if you're in a particularly active or hectic chat. Notifications and badges on your iPhone can help you keep track of important messages, but it's still easy to miss one meant for you and not the entire group — which is why you can now mention contacts, or get tagged, in Messages on iOS 14.
How To: Skip Intros, End Screens & Other Annoying in-Video YouTube Distractions on Android
Even if you pay for YouTube Premium, you are not exempt from ads. YouTube will stop adding pre-roll and interstitial ads, but content creators still have their own advertisements baked into videos. These product placements can be even worse than ads, and they're not the only annoyance embedded into videos. To put it nicely, YouTube is starting to have a problem with distractions.
How To: Manually Switch to a Different 5G Band on Your Samsung Galaxy
Thanks to the Snapdragon X55 modem, the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Note 20 are among the most compatible 5G phones on the market. There are few bands they don't cover, as the modem supports both Sub-6 GHz and mmWave. But even with such broad support, the Galaxy S20 doesn't get the best 5G reception.
How To: Add Passes, Tickets, Rewards, Coupons, Gift Cards, IDs & More to Apple Wallet for iPhone
The Wallet app on your iPhone can be used to store and access event tickets, loyalty cards, boarding passes, gym memberships, airline miles, gift cards, coupons, and more — all in one centralized place. Before doing so, though, you must add your passes to Wallet, and there is more than one way to do it. However, not every pass can be added using all of the available methods.
How To: Every 5G Phone That Works on AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon in the US — An Always-Updated List
You will likely have a 5G-capable phone within two years. Each carrier is working hard to improve its coverage for the next standard in mobile networks, and though the technology is fairly new and only a handful of phones support it right now, this will change very soon.
How To: Redial Busy Numbers Automatically on Your iPhone So You Don't Have to Keep Calling & Calling Manually
Even under normal circumstances, it's almost impossible to speak to a representative for a government agency or company in just one try. Many systems will put you on hold for long periods or ask to call you back when someone is available, but there are still some out there that just give you the busy signal over and over again. In those cases, there's a jailbreak tweak that can help.
How To: iPhone Too Bright at Night? Don't Just Use the Brightness Slider
Even with your iPhone's brightness slider down all the way, your display will probably still be too bright at night with all the lights dimmed or turned off. So if you want to continue scrolling through Instagram in bed or enjoying a late-night TikTok binge without hurting your eyes, there's a quick trick you can use to make your screen even dimmer and prevent strain on those peepers.
How To: Force Restart Your iPhone SE (2nd Generation) When It's Frozen or Otherwise Acting Up
Your brand new iPhone SE packs the latest A13 Bionic chip into the form factor of the iPhone 8. With all that modern tech, you'd expect your iPhone to be unstoppable. That said, no smartphone is perfect, and sometimes, the iPhone SE will give you trouble. If your device is frozen, bugging out, displaying the wrong data, or won't shut down the usual way, you might want to try a force restart.
How To: Netflix Missing on Android? Here's How to Sideload the App
If you have an Android device that Netflix does not support, you can check the Play Store and it simply won't be there. But just because you're unable to download it through official means doesn't mean you have to live without Netflix since there's a way you can sideload it manually.
How To: Migrate Your First-Gen Google Wifi Pucks to the Google Home App
Google is known for merging older products into a new one's ecosystem for ease of use. The transition can take time, and that's the case with the old Google Wifi system now that Nest Wifi is out. Google is working on phasing out the dedicated Google Wifi app in favor of using the Google Home app for all your IoT needs.
How To: Stop Incoming Calls from Taking Over Your Galaxy's Entire Screen
With all the things you can do with your Galaxy, it's easy to forget it's still a phone at heart, and incoming calls that take over your entire screen serve as a rude reminder of this fact. Thankfully, Samsung handsets like the S10 and Note 10 come with a setting built-in that aims to keep these interruptions to a minimum.
How To: Track Your Sleeping Habits with Google Fit
When trying to get fit, something that can easily be overlooked is your overall sleep quality. Your body needs sleep to recharge and it helps to maintain a healthy lifestyle, there's no denying it. Luckily, Google Fit can help you track your sleeping habits without having to jump through any hoops along the way.
How To: Set Reminders to Alert You on a Particular Day & Time on iOS 13
The Reminders app has always lacked the oomf that would make a person switch from a powerful third-party task manager. But Reminders has received quite the makeover in iOS 13, including a revamped UI and several new features, such as timed reminder alerts, which make the app a worthy to-do list option for the iPhone.
How To: Prevent Thieves From Turning off Your iPhone
The prospect of loss or theft is something we constantly live with. Stolen iPhones fetch a premium price on the black market for parts like OLED display assemblies, frames, and charging ports. Making matters worse, if someone were to steal your phone, they could simply turn it off to avoid anti-theft features like Find My iPhone.
How To: The Best Phones for Rooting & Modding in 2020
According to a study done by Kaspersky, 7.6% of Android users root their phones. That may not sound like a lot, but with over 2 billion Android devices out there, the math works out to over 150 million rooted phones — more than the total population of Russia, Mexico, or Japan — so root nation is an important demographic that deserves being catered to.
How To: The Easiest Way to Keep Your Lock Screen from Blinding You at Night
Picture it: you wake up in the middle of the night and check your phone. Maybe you want to check the time (your phone is your alarm clock, after all) or see if that person ever replied to your message. You double-tap or lift to wake it, and the screen lights up. You flinch at the bright light, squeezing your eyes shut. It takes a few moments to adjust, even if your screen's brightness is as low as possible.
How To: iOS 13 Makes Bulk-Deleting Emails in Apple Mail Easier & Faster on Your iPhone
One of my biggest gripes with the Mail app on iOS is that it makes it super hard to select multiple emails quickly in a search. For instance, if you want to delete all emails from one sender, it could take a seriously long time to do it the usual way. A bug in iOS 12 and older helped make the process faster, but it's no longer around in iOS 13, but Apple did include a faster way to select multiple emails.
How To: Set Cross-Fade Animations in iOS 13 for Smoother Lateral Transitions in Menus & Apps
Beyond spotlight-grabbing features like Dark Mode and computer mice support that iOS 13 contains, Apple has also made its mobile platform more user-friendly for people that exhibit sensitivity to on-screen animations. If you've always found the transitional effects between app pages jarring, your iPhone now has a setting to help with that, preventing possible motion sickness and anxiety.
How To: Stop a Show from Continuously Autoplaying Episodes in Apple Podcasts
Introduced to Apple Podcasts back in iOS 11.2, whenever one episode of a show ends on your iPhone the next one begins right away for an uninterrupted experience. While the continuous playback feature for each show or station is incredibly useful for lengthy commutes, long drives, or to catch up on what you've missed, it may not be ideal for other situations.
How To: Change the Background & Chat Bubble Colors in All Your Telegram Chats for a Customized Look
One of the more competitive aspects to chat apps these days is customizability. It seems every messenger wants to offer the largest number of options for users to make the app feel like a truly personal experience. Telegram is no stranger to this customizability, offering tools where you can select backgrounds and chat bubble colors.
How To: You Can Still Swipe to Open Side Menus with Android 10's New Gestures
Android 10 goes all-in on gesture navigation. Unlike Android 9, all three buttons which made up the navigation bar are replaced with gestures, with the biggest change being the back button. The problem is this same gesture is already used within apps to access the side menu, so in Android Q, this has been changed.
How To: Make Texts & iMessages Stand Out on Your iPhone with Bold Subject Lines
The subject line is a crucial part of an email, but you don't see it very often in texts. That's mostly because many people don't even know it can be done, and even if they do, why would they use it? Just like with emails, subject lines can make iMessages and SMS texts seem more important and more professional. Plus, they can help with organization and searching past messages, as well as make text bold.
How To: Change Your Home Screen Icon Shapes on Android 10
For those of you who like to frequently change the icon shapes on your home screen, the process has changed in Android 10. The setting is buried and now applies to more than just home screen icons.
How To: Turn Your iPhone into a Real-Time Interpreter
Nothing beats a human translator, but Google Translate and other software-based solutions have developed into decent alternatives for help with basic translations. Need an English word translated into German? No problem — but what if you need to have a conversation with someone who doesn't speak your language? Is Google Translate capable of doing that? The answer is not really.
How To: 8 Must-Have Magisk Modules for OnePlus Phones
The idea of a perfect phone is a myth. There are lots of pros when it comes to OnePlus devices, but there are also a few things that could be better. And even if there were a phone without flaw, there are still things that you might want to customize for personal preference. That's why we set out to find the very best tweaks for OnePlus phones, and to make it easier for you to apply them.
How To: Unlock the Bootloader on the Essential PH-1
Although the Essential PH-1 got off to a rocky start, thanks to steady updates, it has slowly become one of the best Android phones to come out in recent years. For $499, the Essential Phone is a cheaper Pixel, receiving updates almost as soon as the Pixel lineup does. What's more, you get a phone with an easily unlockable bootloader, which is the first step to rooting.
How To: Disable iOS 12's Annoying Password Creation Feature on Your iPhone
Maybe you prefer writing passwords in a notebook. Maybe you like creating your passwords yourself. Whatever the case, you don't like iOS 12's new automatic password generator, and you don't need it to pop up every time you enter a new password in Safari or a third-party app. Lucky for you, iOS 12 lets you disable the feature altogether. Unfortunately, that perk comes with a catch.
How To: This Tweak Gives You iPhone X Gestures on Any iPhone Running iOS 11
The on-screen gestures on the iPhone X have taken touchscreen interaction to a whole new level. While they're needed due to a nearly bezel-less display and lack of a Home button, you can actually get these iPhone X-exclusive swipe gestures on any other model iPhone. The only catch is that you need to be jailbroken.
How To: 5 Ways to Improve the Bluetooth Experience on Your Samsung Galaxy
Many of us rely on our smartphones for all our media needs. Now more than ever, we're using Bluetooth connections to play audio over speakers, headphones, car sound systems — the list goes on. If you own a Samsung smartphone like the Galaxy S9, there are a number of Bluetooth tweaks and hidden tricks that can maximize your audio experience.
How To: Add Descriptions to WhatsApp Group Chats to Coordinate Discussions Better
There's a fine line between order and chaos in group chats. With all the cross-talk, threads can easily devolve into a random mess that has nothing to do with the original discussion topic. WhatsApp group chats certainly aren't immune to this problem, but they've recently taken a step in the right direction.
How To: Get ALL of Your Data onto Your New Android Phone
Setting up a new Android phone can be a pain. Although Google has some automated features, it does not restore everything. When it comes to transferring certain types of data like files and SMS logs, it's even trickier. By following our steps, you can be sure that you all your data will follow you to your new device.