Hot Gadget Hacks How-Tos
How To: No LED Flash on Your Android Device? Use Your Screen as a Flashlight Instead
Using my Nexus 7 tablet as a flashlight to light my path on the way to my room late at night is difficult, and honestly, useless. It doesn't have an LED flash for pictures, so using it as a flashlight is essentially just me brightening the display as high as it can go.
How To: When in Distress, Shake Your Android to Send a Quick SOS Alert with Your Location
I've been lucky enough to never be a victim of street crime, but I have read and seen too many articles and videos to completely rule it out as a possibility. You can do some things to prevent it, but if your life suddenly turns into a scene from Friday the 13th, you'll want to be prepared with some sort of way to let others know you need help. This is where Shake2Safety comes in, a free Android app from Phontonapps.
How To: The Best Way to View & Manage Your iPhone's Cellular Data Usage
Oops... did you forget to connect to a Wi-Fi network before streaming HBO GO on your iPhone? While those episodes of The Wire may have been absolutely life-changing, your three-digit cellular bill is definitely going to hit you a little harder.
Safe Mode Explained: How to Troubleshoot Problematic Jailbreak Tweaks on Your iPhone
Installing tweaks or themes onto your jailbroken iOS device is a pretty fun and exciting experience, but if you do it for long enough, you're bound to come across a bug that will cause your operating system to crash.
How To: Enable Stereo Sound on Your Nexus 5
At $349 off contract, the Nexus 5 has always been one of the best bang-for-your-buck smartphones on the market. In order to keep the price that low, however, Google had to pass up on some of the minor features that other flagship phones offer.
How To: Replace the Boring Apple Boot Screen on Your iPhone with a Custom Animation
With its white Apple logo on a plain black background, iOS 8's animated boot screen isn't very interesting. While there is no built-in way to change this boring animation, you can customize this boot screen animation if you have a jailbroken iPhone, and the process is fairly easy. You can even create your own using your favorite GIF file.
How To: Get a Windows-Inspired Start Menu on Your Android
Windows 8 may have introduced a new, intuitive touch-based interface, but plenty of Microsoft loyalists were unhappy with the absence of the classic start menu that they were so accustomed to.
How To: Prank Your Apple Friends with 1,000s of iMessages in Just One Click
Apple scrubbed the floor clean of all existing text-bombing apps in the iOS App Store, and even though there were once a ton of these apps in Cydia, the go-to store for jailbroken devices, there few and far between these days. If they do exist, they either cost money or don't work as advertised.
How To: Add a Google Search Widget to Your iPhone's Home Screen
Aside from identifying songs with Shazam and using the "Hey Siri" feature while driving, Apple's personal assistant isn't something I regularly use on my iPhone.
How To: Fake Your GPS Location on Android to Trick Apps & Targeted Ads
You wouldn't send your GPS coordinates to a completely random stranger just because he or she asked you for it, right? So why are you constantly sharing your location (and other data) to apps on a daily basis?
How To: 'Halloweenify' Your Photos with Google+ Auto Awesome
With Halloween fast approaching, social media sites are abuzz with ghosts stories and pictures of cool costumes. By contrast, regular photos just seem to be lacking that macabre feel.
How To: Laplock Protects Your MacBook from Thieves in Public Places
Coffee shops are a relaxing place to get work done on your laptop; there's free Wi-Fi, fresh coffee, and people generally leave you alone. Inevitably, those cups of coffee will go straight through you, resulting in a much-needed bathroom break. But while you're attending to your bodily functions, who's attending to your MacBook?
How To: This iOS 8 Shortcut Lets You Toggle Brightness Using Your iPhone's Home Button
Automatic brightness adjustments are supposed to make it easier to maintain good visibility on your phone, but it really never works as intended. It usually doesn't adjust properly, leading you to manually pull up the Control Center to adjust brightness via the slider.
How To: The Fastest Way to Delete Unwanted Photos & Screenshots on Your iPhone
Apple doesn't make it very easy to delete things quickly from your Photos library, mainly for two reasons. First of all, if you delete multiple pictures at once, it's difficult to know the full details of each individual one you're selecting because the tiny thumbnails don't show very much detail. Secondly, if you delete the pictures one-by-one, you'll be able to view them in full screen, but it will take forever. And dealing with a delete confirmation each time is enough to drive anyone crazy.
How To: Enable True Stereo Sound on Your Galaxy S5
With all of the top-notch specs that the Galaxy S5 sports, the only minor quibble users have had with its hardware is the speaker situation. A front-facing earpiece is used for phone calls, but all other media is restricted to a single rear-firing speaker.
How To: Make Interactive Heat Maps from Your Android Device's Location History
With an Android device left at its default settings, your location history is automatically recorded. You can view and manage this data, but the simple interface of points plotted on a map leaves a lot to be desired.
How To: Hunt Down Space-Hogging Files on Your Mac with Disk Inventory X
I love my MacBook Air, but the fact that it runs on only 128 GB of flash storage causes me to move most of my files to the cloud. I don't mind having to be connected to the internet in order to access my files, but it's definitely a hassle trying to figure out which files I should move in order to save the most space. Usually, I don't even bother even trying until I see the dreaded "Your startup disk if almost full" warning. Currently, the only real way to find your biggest files in Mac OS X ...
How To: Get Total Control Over Android's Volume Slider Precision
On most Android devices, the various volume levels are comprised of either 7 or 15 steps between minimum and maximum. For voice-call volume, alarms, and notifications alike, 7 presses of a volume button will bring you all the way from silent to full-blast. With media controls, you get 15 steps between mute and max.
How To: Free Up Space on Android by Moving Large Game Files to an SD Card
Many Android games use large, storage-heavy OBB files to store supplemental data. Generally, games with high-end graphics download these extra files when you install them from the Google Play Store.
How To: This Setting Makes It Easier to Locate Your iPhone When It's Dead or Offline
When your iPhone can't be found, Find My iPhone is a true lifesaver. When you use the feature, you can ping your iPhone and even see its current location on a real-time map. But what happens when your iPhone runs out of battery? Find My iPhone can't locate a dead iPhone, can it? You might be surprised to know it can, to a certain degree.
How To: Handy Google Search Tips and Tricks Part 2
This video will show you handy tips and tricks about Google search engine. These tips will help you to speed up your computing or browsing experience. This video contains tricks like Search by location, Filter image search, how to see sites that aren't online, movies running in a city theaters etc. This video is the 2nd part of the serial. You could also watch the part 1 here vimeo.com/104089915.
How To: Shazam for Mac Makes Collecting New Songs Easy
Shazam has ushered in an age where any song we like, but don't recognize, can be almost instantly identified. While the whole process is easy enough—just pull out your phone and hit a button—there are still moments where we might miss those quick and fleeting tunes.
How To: Connect to Protected Wi-Fi Hotspots for Free Without Any Passwords
Depending on who you ask, internet connectivity should be a basic human right. With Google recently embarking on a project to provide internet capabilities to remote corners of the world using balloons and satellites while Facebook attempts to do the same with unmanned drones, the concept of free web access is steadily gaining steam.
How To: Get Apple's RSS Visualizer Back as a Screensaver in Mac OS X 10.8 & Higher
Back in the day when computers relied on CRT monitors, having a static image displayed for too long actually resulted in the image being burned into the screen. For this reason, screensavers were developed, which display animated images in constant motion to prevent burning in when you stepped away from your computer.
How To: 5 Hidden Features That Make the OnePlus One Even Better
While most are still fighting through a somewhat ridiculous invite system, OnePlus is starting to ship out a decent number of their One flagship devices to those who were able to obtain one.
How To: Draw & Send Messages to Your Friend's Lock Screen from Your Nexus 5
The level of customization that Android has to offer is insane. You can replace the stock keyboard and home screen with any third-party app of your choosing, allowing core experiences to be tailored to fit your needs.
How To: The Easiest "One-Click" Root Method for Your Samsung Galaxy S3
Rooting an Android device used to be a nightmarish labyrinth of .zip files and command prompts, confusing seasoned modding veterans and newbies alike. Thankfully, the process has gotten simpler over the years, with various "one-click" rooting tool kits surfacing and working for nearly every major Android flagship on the market.
How To: Dual Boot Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9 & Yosemite 10.10
For those of you who've already gotten Beta Preview or Developer Preview access to Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, I highly recommend installing it on a separate partition on your hard drive.
How To: This Secret iOS 8 Feature Gives You Quicker Access to Apps Based on Your Location
Location-based app shortcuts in iOS 8 work at places like Starbucks, the Apple Store, as well as train stations, banks, hospitals, grocery stores, and more. When you're in the vicinity of these locations, a small notification appears at the bottom left of the lock screen. You you can slide up on these icons (as you would on the camera icon on the lock screen) to access specific apps based on where you're located, making it easy to access your Starbucks account when you're buying coffee or che...
How To: Save Pics from Webpages Directly to Dropbox Without Downloading Them to Your PC
I am a graphic designer, so I have to collect massive pics from webpages to provide me with inspiration. But sometimes I need to use them everywhere, even if I've no access to computers or laptops, so I have to resort to mobile devices.
How To: See Who's Trying to Unlock Your Galaxy S4—And Where
There's a lot of personal information residing on your phone, possibly even more than on your computer, so it's only a matter of time before someone tries to access it.
How To: These Clever Gmail Hacks Will Stop Spam from Sites Who Sell Your Email Address
I rarely receive spam mail, but every now and then I’ll get an email from Cat Fancy Magazine. I’ve never read an issue of Cat Fancy Magazine or been to their website. Actually, I’m allergic to cats. So how did they manage to get my information?
How To: Unlock the Bootloader & Root Your HTC One M8
As with most OEMs, HTC would like you to think that you can do virtually anything with your new HTC One M8, but as a softModder, you know that isn't true. To actually unleash the full potential of that device, you need access to the whole system, not just the parts that HTC deems okay for you to mess with.
How To: The Ultimate Guide to Freeing Up Space on Your iPhone in iOS 7
Running out of storage space on your iPhone is annoying, but trying to free some up is downright aggravating. Until they figure out a way to throw a terabyte of flash memory in there, you're going to have to do some spring cleaning every now and then, especially if you're trying to update to iOS 8.
How To: Convert a Micro SIM Card to Fit the Nano Slot on Your HTC One M8
The new HTC One (M8) is a large phone, no doubt about it. Still, with those BoomSound speakers, 5-inch display, and 2600mAh battery, it's a wonder they managed to cram everything in that gorgeous, unibody metal shell. By that logic, it makes sense that the M8 makes the switch from a micro-SIM card to nano-SIM to save as much space as possible.
How To: Patch the SSL Bug Without Updating Your Jailbroken iPad or iPhone to iOS 7.0.6
Last week, Apple issued an iOS 7.0.6 update that fixed a serious security vulnerability that could allow hackers to steal passwords, read emails, and get info from other SSL-encrypted communications.
How To: Beautify the Weather Forecast on Your Samsung Galaxy S3 with Solar
Living in Los Angeles so long has perhaps spoiled me a bit. The only time I check my weather apps is to send screenshots of my 70 degree Decembers to my friends in Chicago and New York. So for these bragging occasions, I like to have a good looking app.
How To: Make the Touch ID Fingerprint Sensor Work Perfectly on Your iPhone Every Time
Since its introduction on the iPhone 5S, Touch ID has made unlocking Home button iPhones quick and secure. The second-generation iPhone SE brought back the beloved feature in 2020 but didn't take any steps to improve on the technology. So if you're rocking Touch ID and having trouble getting it to read your fingerprints, there are some things you can do to fix it.
How To: Root Your Samsung Galaxy S4 (Or Almost Any Other Android Phone) In One Easy Click
For new Android users, rooting an Android phone can often be an intimidating process, especially since there are so many different ways to gain root access, depending on your model and firmware version.
How To: Stop Your Battery from Draining After Updating to iOS 7 (iPad, iPhone, & iPod touch)
Now that iOS 7 has rolled out to the general public, with an overwhelming fit of mass hysteria, it's only custom for people to start bitching about battery drain—and I don't blame them. I was experiencing some rapid battery drain after first updating my iPhone 5, as well.