How-To Guides from Gadget Hacks

YouTube just dropped another AI bombshell, and spoiler alert: it's not all sunshine and seamless video discovery. The platform is testing AI-generated search carousels that surface video clips before you even click play—and content creators are already seeing dollar signs disappear.

Apple's shiny new CarPlay Ultra promised to transform your entire dashboard into an iPhone-powered command center. But three years after its grand debut, most automakers are delivering a collective "thanks, but no thanks" to Cupertino's most ambitious in-car takeover yet. What you need to know: Apple's next-gen CarPlay goes way beyond mirroring your phone to control A/C, speedometer, and radio — but major brands like Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Volvo are saying "don't invade our systems."

Apple's next big software updates for iPhone and iPad — iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 — are ready to test out. If you're willing to live on the bleeding edge, the iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 betas let you explore the new features months early — just be prepared for the occasional bug or app crash along the way.

Your iPhone has a powerful feature that can keep your secrets hidden from other people. With it, you'll never have to worry about sharing or showing someone something embarrassing or incriminating ever again.

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. 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.

It can feel pretty chaotic when you have a lot of open windows on your Mac that are different sizes, but there's an easy way to organize the mess in just a few seconds.

Pinned tabs in Safari lock your most-frequented sites to the very top of each Tab Group, so the pages you rely on are never more than two quick taps away.

Speech-to-text technology can be seen on your iPhone in various places, from the Dictation tool to Apple's new behind-the-scenes, auto-created transcripts for podcast episodes. Your iPhone also has some pretty impressive text-to-speech capabilities. With them, your iPhone can read webpages, documents, or whatever text is on the screen out loud to you — only some of these tools aren't easy to find.

Your iPhone's Mail inbox may look a little different lately — with faces, initials, brand logos, and even icons like an airplane, shopping bags, storefronts, or a heart with an ECG waveform on it showing up beside emails. That's by design, and if it's not your thing, you can turn it off.

Turn your Mac into a powerful transcription machine using the same AI that powers OpenAI's ChatGPT. With just a few Terminal commands, you can convert audio and video files into accurate text in minutes.

Safari on iOS just got a little nosier — and it could unintentionally expose more than you'd like. With Apple's latest update, your recent searches appear front and center whenever you open a new tab or tap into the address bar.

Samsung has a cool security feature built into One UI with an interesting side effect 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.

Safari has a hidden feature for your iPhone that will change how you share, receive, and interact with links — and barely anyone knows about it. The feature works on the latest iOS software, as well as the latest iPadOS and macOS versions. Still, you won't find any information about it in Safari's app or settings, so it's pretty hidden if you haven't seen it by accident yet.

Chromebooks offer multiple ways to share files with other devices, whether you're transferring to another Chromebook, an Android phone, or even a Windows PC. Each method has its own advantages, depending on whether you want something quick and built-in or a more feature-rich third-party option.

One of the most significant changes to iPhone that came with iOS 18 lets you text Android users in the Messages app with iMessage-like features such as typing indicators, read receipts, large file sharing, high-quality photos and videos, and even emoji reactions.

Although your iPhone does not offer an option to upgrade internal storage space using a memory card, as some Android phones do, there are plenty of things you can do to clear up storage so you can put everything you want on your device and stop getting those Storage Almost Full alerts.

One of the coolest aesthetic features of iMessage is its animated message effects. If you're like many users, you might even have discovered them by accident, where wishing your friend a "Happy Birthday!" or congratulating them on a promotion unexpectedly flooded your screen with balloons or confetti.

Night Shift, Dark Mode, Reduce White Point, and Zoom's Low Light Filter all help reduce the harmful effects on your body's clock that bright iPhone and iPad screens have at night. But there's another option on iOS and iPadOS that turns your entire display red, and it's useful for so much more than just late-night browsing in bed.