Explorer-4

I have a personal rule when it comes to an app's interface: If it doesn't follow Android's design guidelines, it was probably written with Apple's iOS in mind first and foremost. And if that truly is the case, I almost take this as a personal insult. I'm not a second-class ci ...more

With the release of various new and updated Samsung Galaxy S6 apps and features, like Smart Switch, Smart Remote, and wallpapers, something that's a home screen staple for most Android users was still missing. While we may have to wait a little longer for an extensive system ...more

The stock AccuWeather widget on the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is great if you want a super quick way to see the current time, date, and weather forecast for your area, but personally, its design just doesn't do it for me. It's big and bulky and I find that the background weather i ...more

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. Developer langeveld ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! In this continuing series on Metasploit basics, let's next look at a module that many aspiring hackers find useful—autopwn. Generally, when we are trying to hack a target, we want to know as much as possible about the target through reconnais ...more

Sense 6 is great, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I start to miss the vanilla Android experience that comes with Nexus devices. You can always convert your M8 to the Google Play Edition, but then you'd have to ditch all the Sense exclusive features, and we wouldn't want that ...more

Step 1: What Exploit Development Is and Why Should I Be Interested on About This Topic An exploit is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or a sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur ...more

The more we use our smartphones, the more storage space becomes occupied—it's an inescapable fact. But as the data accumulates and chokes off our storage, it can become difficult to identify exactly which files are occupying the most space. So the development team at Nexrad S ...more

After the Galaxy Note 3 firmware updated to NF4, Samsung decided to remove the option to hide apps in the app drawer, replacing it with an uninstall/disable feature instead. Before, with the hide feature, you could simply hide third-party apps that were barely used or that you ...more

If you're like seventy percent of America and find it hard to focus on just one thing at a time, the Xbox One had you in mind. If you ever thought that being able to watch The Walking Dead while playing The Walking Dead video game would be awesome, you're in luck. How about lo ...more

The Windows 10 desktop and microphone can be livestreamed without using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) software and without opening any ports on the target computer. A hacker with low user privileges can monitor and exfiltrate a target's every move and private conversation in r ...more

Android's new Material Design language is truly a thing of beauty. Slated to make a full debut alongside the upcoming Android "L" release, the vision and simplicity of this UX design recently won Gold Prize at the annual User Experience Awards. Many developers have already st ...more

The Xbox One is pinning its success on the fact that is much more than just a video game console. Microsoft is looking for the Xbox One to become the centerpiece for family entertainment, which is why they included features like multitasking, TV controls, and apps. These app, ...more

The build.prop file in an Android device is home to many system-level values and settings. Everything from screen density to video recording quality is covered in this file, and people have been editing these entries to get new functionality and better performance since Androi ...more

What is Internet Download Manager? Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 10 times, resume and schedule downloads. Have you ever wanted to increase you download speed form 4kps to 80kps? If you answered yes then you need Internet Downlo ...more

You may not know what HTTP is exactly, but you definitely know that every single website you visit starts with it. Without the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, there'd be no easy way to view all the text, media, and data that you're able to see online. However, all communication b ...more

On-screen navigation buttons offer many distinct advantages over physical buttons—they can change orientation along with your device, they're capable of visually morphing to indicate secondary functionality, and the user experience is more consistent when buttons and app eleme ...more

The LG V20 went on sale on September 29, 2016, and is the second flagship phone in the V series to be released by LG. Both the V20 and its predecessor, the V10, have been audio-oriented phones from the start, but the V20 has a much nicer Hi-Fi Quad 32-Bit DAC, which makes the ...more

I may be a bit weird, but I enjoy listening to music at night as I fall asleep. Sure, you could create a playlist of songs so that it stopped after all the songs finished playing, but I have a rather extensive database of music and I enjoy listening to them randomly. Also, I l ...more

Lover it or hate it, Android 10 is a big improvement over Android 9 Pie. Based on previous versions, most flagships released in the last two years will get Android 10, but the question is when. So while you wait for those cool new gestures, how about I show you an app that giv ...more

By trial and error, I have found a good way to remove the door panel from a 2002 Ford Explorer (and other similar years). The first two steps can be done in either order, but doing them in the order I have listed below will prevent damage and scratches to the paneling. Remov ...more

The Nexus Player is one of the most robust set-top streaming devices on the market. This is mainly due to the fact that the base software it runs is a direct fork of Android, which is a very powerful operating system itself. Much like an Android smartphone, apps and games can ...more

Need to clear you cache? This guide details how on any web browser (Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Internet, and Dolphin) for any platform (Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, and Android). What Is the Cache Exactly? The web cache stores certain information (HTML page ...more

As fellow softModders, I'm sure you strive to find any and every way to make your phone unique. Wallpapers and icon packs are great to get started, but to really stand out from the rest, try changing your HTC One's boot animation. A new boot animation for your phone can be in ...more

After the limited initial release of the massively popular game on the Android platform, many users have been stuck waiting to play Fortnite. That's because, initially, Epic Games only released the game to Samsung Galaxy devices, and asked non-Samsung users to join an invite l ...more

We've previously shown you how to get your Samsung Galaxy S4 looking more like its successor by installing the revamped S Voice app and the new Quick Settings. Now, we're taking it a step further by giving you the Galaxy S5's stock Settings app. After this mod, it'll be pretty ...more

Welcome back, my amateur hackers! With Halloween right around the corner, I thought you could have a little fun with your newfound hacking skills using a hack that is guaranteed to freak out your boss, teacher, coworker, friend, etc. Any time someone's computer seems to act ...more

Thanks to a recent back-end update to Google's Search app, every KitKat-running device can use "Okay, Google" from within any app—even the lock screen. However, the default settings for the OnePlus One's mic leave it unable to detect your voice unless you have it right up to y ...more

Ever been in an argument, only to have the other person cop out by saying "I never said that," when you know full well they did? Or how about one of those times when you're sitting in the lecture hall, half dozing off to your professor's monotone ramblings, when your ears perk ...more

Update: The installation process for Xposed Installer is now dead simple—check out our updated guide! Xposed is a framework created by XDA developer rovo89, which allows the end user to customize their stock or custom ROM without having to modify any system applications or fi ...more

The newer Graph Search in Facebook can help you find friends in specific cities, photos of a particular subject, restaurants that your friends liked, and a whole lot more. One thing it can't help you with just yet is searching public posts on Facebook, which you could do in th ...more

Mobile service providers have an uncomfortably strong grip on the Android platform as a whole. For instance, all four U.S. versions of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge play their carrier's obnoxious jingle every time they boot up. You don't get any say in the matter—if you buy your p ...more

SoundHound's new virtual assistant application, Hound, is gaining a lot of buzz in the tech world—especially after a demo video showed just how awesome it works (it has amassed over 1.6 million views in under a week). Don't Miss: Amazing New Digital Assistant Shames Siri & Go ...more

Located at the bottom of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 lies the speaker from which music, notifications, and most other audio comes from, which provides warm and clear sound when needed. When you need the audio to be louder, that's where third-party speakers come in handy, which ...more

PowerShell Empire is an amazing framework that is widely used by penetration testers for exploiting Microsoft Windows hosts. In our previous guide, we discussed why and when it's important to use, as well as some general info on listeners, stagers, agents, and modules. Now, we ...more

Google has finally announced the newest flavor of its mobile OS, Android L (Lollipop?), and I couldn't be more excited. While we won't see its official release until the fall, there are still some features we can get our hands on right now. Most of the Google Apps require you ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! New hackers often ask me the same question: "What is the easiest platform to hack?" My response is always the same—it is not a platform, but rather a particular piece of software that is easiest to hack, which is on nearly every client-side sy ...more

The Xposed Framework offers many great customization options for your Galaxy S5. S Health, with its ability to read your heart rate through a built-in monitor, is one of the main selling points of the GS5. Trouble is, the two don't seem to play nice together. Many users (myse ...more

What is DansGuardian? Schools, offices and universities often tend to use a software like DansGuardian to prevent people from accessing certain websites - websites like Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, and so on. However, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to ...more

Not too long after getting a new device, you probably start installing any and all apps that seem fun and interesting. But after having used the device for a considerable period of time, those extraneous apps begin to take their toll. These could be apps you've used once or t ...more

Alright, I'll admit it, iOS can be quite nice. Android loyalist that I may be, I'm not so stubborn that I can't recognize a good thing when I see it. Apple's iOS has a lot of strengths, and our Nexus 4s, god bless 'em, are growing a little long in the tooth. But the Android p ...more

Samsung bucked the trend and threw hard keys onto the Galaxy S3 while most manufacturers are going the soft key route. This hack will add on-screen buttons to your TouchWiz-based ROM. You'll need a root file manager with a system writable text editor—I recommend ES File Explor ...more

The Samsung Galaxy S III is undoubtedly a great phone, but still has some minor issues to work out. One involves buggy Wi-Fi roaming, where the Galaxy S3's Wi-Fi signal strength will increase when getting closer to a Wi-Fi access point, but then completely disappears when att ...more

When WhatsApp first came out in 2010, it quickly gained notoriety as a great way to meet new people all over the world thanks to group chats, which allow multiple admins for each group that can all add participants from their own contacts lists. As a repair tech, I would buy ...more

Root, TWRP, Xposed, Magisk, custom ROMs — before you can have any of these, the first thing you should do is unlock your bootloader. Thankfully, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are some of the most modder-friendly phones out there, so you only need to send a single fastboot command ...more

If you have a custom recovery installed on your Nexus 5, you're able to flash custom ROMs and lots of other cool Gadget Hacks. But when it comes time to receive and Over-the-Air (OTA) update directly from Google, having a custom recovery installed can be a fairly big hindrance ...more

I'll give Samsung credit where it's due—the stock keyboard on the Galaxy S5 is actually pretty nice. There's a dedicated number row that resides at the top (something that the Google Keyboard needs a hack to achieve), and various settings exist to make switching between langua ...more

Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! I recently began a new series on digital forensics to help tenderfoot hackers from being detected and ultimately, incarcerated. In this installment of that series, we will look at recovering deleted files. This is important to hackers beca ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! We've done a number of tutorials using one of my favorite hacking tools, Metasploit. In each of them, we've used the msfconsole, which can be reached through either the menu system or through simply typing "msfconsole" from the terminal. This ...more

This article will teach you how to make an error similar to this one (also by me). This error message though, is a yes or no question. Clicking yes and no will give different results. Like the previous error message, this is 100% harmless. Works only on windows. Notepad is ne ...more

The beta firmware for OnePlus devices lets you record calls from the stock Oxygen OS dialer, but this feature is never included in official updates. This is likely due to legal issues with recording calls in some jurisdictions, but thankfully, there's a way to get this feature ...more

Copying files from a computer to your Android device has always been pretty straightforward—just connect the two devices with a USB cable, open your desktop file explorer, then move the files over. But what if you didn't need any wires at all? A new app from developer AppCube ...more

YouTube's main player interface got a pretty big makeover recently, but chances are, the new UI hasn't made it your way just yet. Google has a habit of slowly testing the waters as they roll out new features, so cool tweaks like this can take some time to reach all users. But ...more

We're a little butter-obsessed here, and that includes topics on why butter should always be browned, the rationale behind clarifying butter, and even how to make a DIY butter candle. And while some may consider the problem strictly one for the first world, we're always very i ...more