Google Play Music

YouTube may have started out as a video-sharing site, but these days a lot of people use it as a source for music. When I'm browsing the internet on my desktop, I usually have a YouTube tab open in the background playing some music. Unfortunately this isn't something you can ...more

Everyone's a music aficionado these days. Whether you're having a party or on a road trip with friends, someone is always complaining about the music. There's no possible way to satisfy everyone, so instead of having your music drowned out by persistent nagging, turn Spotify i ...more

While the iPhone came before the first Android smartphone, every new iOS version seems to include a wealth of features already existing on Android, and iOS 17 is no exception. Apple's currently beta testing iOS 17 with developers, with a public beta coming in July and a stabl ...more

Can't figure out how to give songs star ratings anymore in your iPhone's Music app? That's because Apple removed the ability to do so from the new iOS 10 update, just as I expected they would. It's still possible to rate songs, it's just very irritating. Don't Miss: The 10 M ...more

Fans of rhythm tap games and traditional one-on-one fighters finally have something to bring them closer together. DuelBeats, a fighting game that lets you perform moves by tapping to the beat of a song, has been released as a soft launch for both iOS and Android in New Zealan ...more

Over the years, Kodi (formerly XBMC) has become one of the most popular media players. It provides all the essential functionality needed for any home theater setup while remaining open source and free. However, Kodi is not limited to just your living room. With the Kodi app f ...more

Apple's iOS 11 is finally here, and while they showed off several of the new features it brings to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch back at WWDC 2017, they've only just touched the surface of what iOS 11 has to offer. There are a lot of cool new (and sometimes secret) feature ...more

As technology continues to advance, we as consumers are privileged enough to be able to take higher quality photos and videos and listen to clearer and better-sounding music on our mobile devices. But sometimes we forget that there's a price to pay for that awesome content—eno ...more

If you're having a "Netflix and chill" night, the last thing you want to worry about is finding something to watch—after all, you have better things planned for the night. With so much streaming content now available for cord cutters, settling on just one title to watch can b ...more

You don't need a study to tell you how beneficial music is to helping you fall asleep. Most of you probably have your soothing playlist and SleepPhones queued up and ready to go before you get into bed and count those Zs. But while your eyelids grow heavier as you slowly feel ...more

Samsung's exclusive music streaming service, Milk Music, has been making waves across the web thanks to its peculiar name and ad-free stations. Only problem is, not everyone has a Samsung device. If you want to get in on the action, we've got a way to get Milk Radio on your r ...more

You've probably heard the old joke about how Ford is an acronym for "Found on Road Dead." Well, the Detroit automaker on Monday announced a new and much better way to help you find your parked vehicle, as well as a whole host of other features—just use your smartphone. Ford mo ...more

One of the more talked-about features of Android Lollipop is a new Priority Mode that allows you to mute all notifications except for those coming from starred contacts. As simple as that sounds, this can still be a bit confusing—or at least lead to some unwanted interruptions ...more

Smartphones generally have limited storage, but counter this issue with an always-on internet connection. This led to the proliferation of cloud storage services, which allow us to store and access our large media libraries remotely. The problem here is that most cloud storag ...more

The Galaxy S6 Edge comes with a useful feature called Information stream that allows you to view quick tidbits of info with a quick back-and-forth swipe on the edge of your display while the screen is off. Apparently, Samsung left the door open for third-party plugins to use t ...more

Google announced Android L to the masses at their I/O event, and with it they introduced their new "Heads Up" notification system. These notifications are part of the new Material Design UI and are sure to change the way we interact with notifications on our devices. While Da ...more

There are a lot of great music apps available on Google Play for your Android device, each usually specializing in one feature or another, and we’ve shown a bunch of them. There's everything from floating controls to equalizers to deeply integrated streaming, but what if you w ...more

|Choose Your View: Quick Bullet Points | Detailed Descriptions Android's newest major update is a special one — it's the tenth full version of the world's most commonly used operating system. The latest release, dubbed simply Android 10 (codename Android Q), was first showcas ...more

Apple just pushed out the iOS 10.3 update to everyone on March 27, so if you haven't installed it yet, make sure to do so by going to Settings -> General -> Software Update. Trust us, you'll want to. iOS 10.3 is a fairly major update, and will succeed iOS 10.2.1 on your iPad, ...more

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. Having tons of apps, contacts, ...more

When it comes to automation apps on Android, Tasker is still the king of the hill. For a price of $2.99 on the Google Play Store, it's a great buy for any would-be tinkerer that would like to get into automating actions on their Android device. Then, when you consider that the ...more

Apple's iOS 16.3 update for iPhone had impressive new features, but iOS 16.4 might impress you even more. The latest iPhone update was released on Monday, March 27 — a day earlier than Apple Music Classical, Apple's new classical music streaming service — has at least 30 more ...more

After six betas, iOS 11.4 was officially released to everyone with a compatible iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Some features are ones that Apple promised over eight months ago when iOS 11 was first pushed out. This update makes sense since iOS 12 will be announced at WWDC on Ju ...more

Newer gaming systems like the PlayStation 4 have a nice, subtle feature that goes a long way towards helping create a more immersive experience. Any time you're on the main menu or home screen, an ambient background music track is playing, which adds an aural appeal to an expe ...more

After much hype and even more leaks, the HTC One M8 has finally been unveiled at the company's New York release announcement. Video: . While specs for the new device have been known for a while, the announcement did shed light on a few interesting features. But before we get t ...more

One of the biggest gripes we always hear about is the changes OEMs make to Android's notification shade. Icon styling and home screen layouts can be fixed with custom launchers like Nova and Action, but we're stuck with the tacky Quick Settings theme our phones came with. Toda ...more

With each update, Apple Music continues to become a bigger part of iOS. It's gotten to the point where you have to fend off multiple requests to subscribe to the streaming music service before you can listen to your own songs on an iPad or iPhone, but as it stands in iOS 10, m ...more

If you have a large media library, you should definitely have the Plex server installed on your computer. If you do, you can just install Plex for Android or iPhone, then you'll have access to all of your music, movies, and TV shows anywhere. By default, Plex does a great job ...more

Spotify launched an experimental feature in early-2018 called Spotify Voice, a voice assistant that lives right in the app. It lets you speak to quickly find and play your favorite songs, albums, artists, videos, and podcasts on the music streaming service. Although the featur ...more

Having the ability to decipher any song that plays over the radio or during a commercial is a must for any music-loving fiend. That's what made Shazam so popular. Well, the Google team took a few notes from Shazam and created their Google Ears widget for Android devices. The ...more

After everyone updated their shiny Apple devices to iOS 6 a few months ago, they were shocked to find that their beloved YouTube app was missing. As it turned out, Apple decided to kick YouTube off their list of pre-installed stock apps. The new YouTube app (found in the iTune ...more

The new iPhone 5 was just revealed yesterday, and it's 18 percent thinner and just 1/5 the weight of its 4S predecessor. It's also taller with a larger screen, which gives you a fifth row for apps now. As far as speed is concerned, it has a speedy A6 chip and can tap into wire ...more

If you're new to Plex, there are a couple of things you should know up front. First is how to use it — simply install the Plex server app on your computer and point it to your media library, which you can then access anywhere using the Plex app for iOS or Android. All of this ...more

Despite a rocky start with plenty of feature disparity, the Google Assistant now provides a pretty consistent experience regardless of what device you're using it on. Be it Android, iPhone, or Google Home, the AI behind the Assistant is virtually identical — including its quir ...more

One of Android's biggest strengths, when compared to other mobile operating systems is its open file structure. Google introduced a built-in file manager with Marshmallow that provides basic file management, but like with most apps on Android, there are alternatives. Third-par ...more

While iOS 11 is ready to take over your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, let's take a step back and check out all of the new features that iOS 10 brought to the public when it was released to everyone in Sept. 2016. Some of the updates from iOS 9 to iOS 10 were huge, as you'll s ...more

Last week, we covered a new, open-source live wallpaper (LWP) called Muzei, and less than a week later we have no less than twenty beautiful add-on extensions to the app. Muzei uses subtle blur and dim effects to create aesthetically pleasing LWPs. The app takes free works of ...more

Google Assistant was just released for iOS today. You may know it as the AI-powered assistant that makes Google Home tick, or perhaps you've heard from one of many review sites about how much better it is than Siri. Well, before you run off to the App Store to install Google A ...more

Playlists are a vital feature for any music streaming service. For many, the ability to add and organize songs into the perfect order is a deciding factor in which streaming service to choose. The folks at Tidal (including owner Jay-Z) certainly recognize this, as they've prov ...more

You may not know this, but the Spotify app will let you add a bit of personal touch to all the music you stream. Unlike many other music streaming services, Spotify actually has fantastic equalizer support on both iOS and Android. While Spotify's music library already sounds ...more

Most new Android devices come with at least one feature that helps control navigation, music, and more through voice-controlled, hands-free communication. While they usually don't end up being completely "hands-free," these apps do stop people from using both hands to perform ...more

Virtual reality, along with its siblings, has the opportunity to profoundly change the way we interact with all things digital. As a visual medium, we often don't think about the impact on audio, but it plays a significant role nevertheless. When it comes to music—and music vi ...more

Koushik Dutta, the developer behind the Android app AllCast, has made the leap over to the realm of personal computers with his latest offering. AllCast Receiver for the Chrome browser, much like its Android counterpart that turns older devices into media servers, allows you ...more

With every new Galaxy flagship release comes the age-old dilemma: do I choose great hardware or great software? For years, Samsung has given users the best components available on any smartphone. The problem is the software is an acquired taste. But there is something you can ...more

After testing a series of Android 8.0 builds, Essential hit the reset button and jumped to Android 8.1 Oreo. The beta program didn't last long, as Essential has now released the official 8.1 update to the masses. The features from the 8.0 betas are all still there, plus a few ...more

A few long-awaited iOS 11 features that Apple had promised way back in June 2017 have finally made their way to iPhones with the iOS 11.4 update. Aside from finally delivering on those, there's not a whole lot new in iOS 11.4 as a whole, though, there are a few things you'll d ...more

With MP3 players all but dead, phones are now the dominant portable music devices. While smartphones have gotten better at this task over the years, they do have some glaring limitations when it comes to music. On the bright side, we can use these limitations to help find the ...more

While you can use Google Assistant on your Android phone to identify songs playing around you, you may still prefer Shazam's music recognition service, which has been available on Android since 2008 — a full nine years before Google Assistant's audio-fingerprinting technology. ...more

There are a lot of Android phones out there, and chances are that someone in your life is looking for one this holiday season. Well, there also happens to be a lot of Black Friday deals on Android phones this year. So we've rounded up the best deals taking place on Black Frida ...more

TouchWiz might not be the Android skin of choice for hardcore aficionados, but the Galaxy's OS still has a ton of great features up its sleeve that help provide one of the most enjoyable smartphone experiences out there. Many of these are relatively hidden and overlooked featu ...more

Antimatter15, author of the popular Surplus Chrome extension, was suspended from Google+ for using a pseudonym instead of a name that fits Google's community standards. As such, he's no longer supporting the extension, and if you're using it, now might be a good time to find a ...more

Your childhood "social networking" may have been to go outdoors to the neighbor's — and outdoors is a great place for kids to be. But these days, the terms educational, digital media, entertainment, and toddlers don't have to be mutually exclusive. Like most things in life, it ...more

You can't always have your media on the same network as your Chromecast. Say you're at a friend's house or even out of town—it sure would be nice to cast your videos when you're out and about, wouldn't it? Well, worrying about having access to your media is now a thing of the ...more

Cortana, Microsoft's personal assistant for its Windows Phones and Windows 10, will soon be released for Android. That is, officially released. It's hard to keep a good thing locked away, and to that end, Cortana for Android has been leaked, thanks to APK Mirror. Don't Miss: ...more

When Yahoo! purchased the home screen replacement app Aviate back in January, many were wondering if the internet giant intended to continue development of the launcher or if the transaction was just another acqui-hire. Those questions have been answered today, as Yahoo has r ...more

I read, walk, and do lunges all at once. Time is money, and I'm all for multitasking whenever I can. Thankfully, my Samsung Galaxy S3 is extremely good at it, but extremely good could still be extremely better. While multitasking is a main feature of almost any Android device ...more

Running multiple applications at the same time is one of the Samsung Galaxy S3's and S4's biggest advantages over Apple devices, and it's a fact that Samsung certainly harps on constantly in their well-targeted commercials. Plus, there's the whole widgets thing. There are zer ...more

When you're a kid, the best part about Halloween is the free candy, but if you're past your trick-or-treating years, there are still plenty of things you can do. With all the costumes, scary stories, and pranks, what's not to love? And now, you can even use your smartphone to ...more