Hacks for 5

Essential recently launched their Android Oreo Beta Program, open to all owners of their PH-1 flagship. We detailed a quick and easy method for installing the beta on your device. With every beta program, there are bound to be plenty of new features and a few bugs, as we found ...more

Huawei has been on a roll recently. They just became the second largest smartphone manufacturer in September, passing Apple and trailing only Samsung. Shortly after, they announced their new Kirin 970 flagship SoC to rival the Snapdragon 835, then followed that up by announcin ...more

One of the best parts of being an Android user is the countless awesome features. Many of these features are well-known and user-facing, like custom icon packs and launchers, but some get lost in the shuffle. Back at Google I/O 2016, Android Instant Apps were introduced to dev ...more

Have you ever wanted the perfect radio station for an artist, genre, or even one to match your mood? Luckily, Google Play Music has an extensive radio feature that takes you exactly where you and your friends want to go for a quiet brunch, or a neighbors-banging-on-the-walls d ...more

Now that it's been officially released for Android, Monument Valley 2 shot to the top of our best paid puzzle games list, and rightly so. This was no easy feat, as the games we covered ran the gamut of puzzles and all had stellar reviews. But there's just something about Monum ...more

Nova Launcher continues to push the boundary of features available to home screen launchers. While most users are waiting for their OEMs to send out the Android 8.0 update, Nova provides access to many of Android Oreo's features to the 99.8% of devices currently using an older ...more

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL were built by different manufacturers. This is pretty common knowledge among Android fans at this point — Google's smaller Pixel 2 was built by HTC, while the larger Pixel 2 XL was built by LG. What would the Pixel 2 XL look like if HTC had followed ...more

Many OEMs create skins that run on top of Android to differentiate themselves from their competitors. One example is the LG UX 6.0+ found in the new LG V30, which is Android at its core, but improved upon by the addition of unique features. One such feature is the ability to c ...more

We've all been guilty of sending messages that we instantly regret — be it a moment of anger or plain old drunk texting. More often than not, these silly texts result in unnecessary headaches for both you and your contact. Thankfully, WhatsApp has finally tackled this age-old ...more

One of Android 8.0's central themes was battery improvements. Google implemented background restrictions and a few other under-the-hood changes, but the biggest battery-saving measure was almost user-hostile: A static notification that tells you when any of your apps are runni ...more

Whether you use VSCO to take all of your photos or you use it primarily to edit photos you take with others apps on your iOS or Android phone, you're at some point going to want your VSCO pics to end up in your Camera Roll or Gallery. VSCO doesn't add them there by default, bu ...more

Taking a cue form Snapchat, WhatsApp Status lets you share updates that come in the form of GIFs, photos, videos and good old text. This awesome feature is available for both iPhone and Android users, and it even lets you choose which contacts to share with while disappearing ...more

Update 10/14: Developer paphonb has added rootless Google Now integration to the leaked Pixel 2 launcher, so now, anyone running Android Nougat or Oreo can get the full Pixel 2 home screen experience. For those running Lollipop or Marshmallow, we've left the unaltered leaked v ...more

Thanks to their partnership with Tidal, over 30 million Sprint customers can access Hi-Fi audio on the go. And the Jay-Z-owned music service isn't limited to just Sprint customers — for $19.99/month, anyone can listen to lossless audio from their favorite artists. But streamin ...more

Apple Music's name reveals a lot about itself — it's made by Apple, and it has a lot of music. 40 million songs, in fact, if the iPhone-maker is to be believed. With that many songs, you may find a gem before any of your friends or family do. How can you share that song with t ...more

With so many Chromecast-powered devices available, chances are, you're near something with casting abilities right now. Whether it's Android TV, Google Home, or any one of the various gadgets with Chromecast built-in, you can use a more powerful speaker to play media from your ...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

The Free App of the Week is as cool as it sounds. Apple features one app every week on the front page of its App Store that comes completely free. Once you download it, you have access to all future updates, just like you would if you purchased the app in full. Sounds great ri ...more

All to often, many of us are struck with a brilliant idea out of nowhere, only to forget about it moments later thanks to the distractions of daily life. Sometimes, the actual process of jotting these ideas down in our iPhones can be a holdup, as the idea we want to record fad ...more

You have a lot of choices when it comes to your next smartphone. iPhone, Galaxy, Pixel, G6, V20, and many more all vie for your wallet. Each of these phones are great for different purposes, but what if your main interest is mobile gaming? Which phone will give you the longest ...more

Google's new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL have a new camera mode called "Motion Photos." As the name implies, it's quite similar to Apple's Live Photos feature or HTC's Zoe before it. For every picture you take, a few seconds of video footage from before and after the shot was taken ...more

Regardless of what you're trying to accomplish with Tasker, there's a good chance that someone else has already walked through the same steps. If you're unfamiliar with creating tasks and working with profiles, simply importing someone else's work would be a great shortcut. Af ...more

When most people first become aware of Kodi (formerly known as XBMC), they hear about its ability to stream illegal content. But the real Kodi community knows that it's much more than just a haven for pirated material — it's an all-in-one media player that addresses the majori ...more

The default look for Kodi is a menu that shows all of the possible media playback options available to the media player. From movies to radio, Kodi's main menu has an option to meet your needs. But everyone's needs are different, and sometimes we don't want all of these option ...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

If you're like me, you change your wallpaper often. After maybe a week of looking at the same picture, you just have to have something different. Depending on the new wallpaper, you may spend another hour changing the background color of folders, the app drawer, and even Quick ...more

Using either iMessages or FaceTime on the iPhone is a great alternative for coworkers to stay in touch in the event that messaging services like Slack go down. They're also a handy means of communicating between buyers and sellers, as it provides a more intimate way of either ...more

When customizing your Android home screen, it's always a challenge to balance aesthetics with functionality. Do you crowd your home screen with icons and widgets so they are easier to reach, or do you spread the icons over many home screens? Each option has its downsides, and ...more

Let's face it — our phones are our heart and soul. We do everything on them, from banking to media consumption. However, sometimes we download apps that we don't want others to see. Sometimes, we wish to hide apps so that, in the rare times we lend our phone to someone, we don ...more

In a classic case of one step forward, two steps back, Apple has eliminated the ability to use multiple iCloud accounts for FaceTime and Messages in iOS 11, meaning the primary Apple ID on the account is the only one allowed. As inconvenient as this omission is, there's still ...more

Whether you used it to remind yourself to buy a game or to store away that app recommendation that your friend begged you to download, the "Wish List" in the iOS App Store was a useful tool to keep track of new apps you might have wanted to install on your iPhone. But how can ...more

The final developer version of iOS 11 was leaked a few days ago, but Apple quickly stopped signing it so nobody else could install it. With Apple's Sept. 12 event now over, the Golden Master (GM) version of iOS 11, the same version that will be released to everyone around Sept ...more

In the new iOS 11, Apple lets you hide purchased apps from the App Store no matter if you have "Family Sharing" turned on or not, which is an interesting change from iOS 10. It's a fairly easy task to hide an app from your list of purchases, but unhiding it is anything but eas ...more

Scanning important paperwork on smartphones is a tedious process, often relying on either external scanners or third-party apps that had to be either purchased or were loaded with annoying ads just to get the job done. Thankfully, iOS 11 now lets you easily scan documents usin ...more

The iPhone 8 is just about here. If you're anything like me, you can hardly contain your excitement. Apple has been keeping its 10th-anniversary device — whether you call it the iPhone X, iPhone Edition, or iPhone 8 — as secret as possible, but this past year we've seen a wate ...more

When you're sending sensitive information via email, it's best to do so with end-to-end encryption. Even better, set the email to destroy itself after a set amount of time for a little piece of mind. Sending a self-destructing email message is a cinch in ProtonMail for Androi ...more

Whenever you would use "Portrait Mode" in iOS 10 on your iPhone 7 Plus, the camera would save both a regular and depth effect version. If you were low on space, you could always opt to save the depth effect version only, but this setting is now gone in iOS 11. While at first i ...more

Much like Xposed or Cydia, Magisk has an official repository that makes it easy to download root-level tweaks. These tweaks are called modules, and they can do anything from changing your emojis to installing high-level audio mods. But as it stands, a large number of Magisk mo ...more

You can send self-destructing messages in Secret Chats, but that's not the only thing that can destroy itself in Telegram after a specified amount of time. Your whole account can disappear after a certain amount of inactivity, so it's important to adjust these settings to give ...more

While using end-to-end encryption may be enough security for most of your messages in Telegram, you can go a step beyond this by sending messages that disappear after an allotted amount of time. This prevents you from having to manually delete the message at a later time, so y ...more

The Xposed Framework lets you modify your phone's software like nothing else. But because of how powerful this tool can be, it seems like things are always in development. This is certainly the case with many Xposed modules, to the point where some have several alpha and beta ...more

If you're using Telegram for its "Secret Chats" feature, which provides end-to-end encryption for your messages, then I'd highly recommend locking down the app itself with a passcode, PIN, or password. While your phone itself may have a secure lock screen already, if that gets ...more

Back in 2009, largely due to the sheer number of users demanding it, Spotify added an amazing little feature — the ability to disable volume normalization. While the feature is nothing more than a toggle on the visual front, the audible difference is far superior and moons apa ...more

Unless you're a WhatsApp pro user, you may be surprised to know that there are text formatting options that you can apply to your messages. Markdown characters can help you emphasize certain words or phrases by making them italicized or bold, and it'll even let you cross out w ...more

The Xposed Framework is still alive and kicking despite the fact that development has slowed down a bit lately. Rovo89 is the only true developer behind Xposed, so it's really a one-man show. This means the popular root mod doesn't typically support the latest Android version, ...more

The Google Assistant is great about understanding what you actually mean, so you don't have to issue exact commands like you do with Amazon Alexa, for instance. But even though it's a master of colloquial speech, it could still be better, and that's where shortcuts come into p ...more

When it comes to watching movies and TV shows in Amazon's Prime Video service on an iPhone, it's as simple as installing the Amazon Prime Video app, signing into it, then playing content. However, on an Android phone, it's a lot more complicated. While there is an Amazon Prim ...more

The Google Assistant comes in several different flavors. There's the baked-in Google app on Android, the dedicated Google Assistant app on iOS, and the Assistant-powered Google Home smart speaker. But no matter how you access it, your Assistant will only get better if you take ...more

More often than not, road trips will include unforeseen pit stops that have to be made, no matter how well prepared you are. In the past, making an unscheduled stop may have led to headaches and delays when your navigation app got off track, but thanks to a feature in Google M ...more

Snapseed is an app that you should definitely be using not only if you're really serious about photography, but also if you want to ensure that your online work sets the standard for social media. It's a great companion app to Instagram and VSCO, and it will save your day many ...more

Adobe Premiere Clip is a great mobile app for users with little to no editing experience. Its automatic editor will sort your clips into a fun video in seconds, leaving you to just choose the music. But what if you're looking for more than automatic settings? What if you want ...more

When you're on the go, Plex makes sure your media always stays with you. Just install the server app for Mac or PC and enable remote access, then you can stream movies and TV shows from your computer to your phone over the internet. But video playback uses data like nothing e ...more

If you maintain a digital library of your favorite movies, Plex is the perfect solution for bridging the gap between your computer and your mobile device. All you have to do is install the server program on your Mac or PC and point it to the folder where you store your movies, ...more

If you've accidentally turned on "Read Receipts" for all of your iMessages, there's an easy way to disable it so that no one knows when you're actually reading their incoming messages. You could also pick and choose which conversations can see that you've read their messages i ...more

One of the more interesting improvements to the Photos app in iOS 11 includes a way to drag and drop a photo from one album into another album. In fact, you could even drag and drop multiple photos at the same time. And this is not an iPad-only feature — it works just as well ...more

One of the best features in Super Mario Run is a multiplayer race that lets you test your skills against other players. Toad Rally, as it's called, pits you against other players in a battle for Toads. The more Toads you collect, the easier it is to build your kingdom and coll ...more

For a long time now, VLC has been the go-to media player for Windows and Mac — but it's fast becoming the best third-party video player on Android and iOS, too. Aside from its ability to play virtually any file type, one of VLC's best features on mobile is the fact that you ca ...more

We use subtitles when we can't understand what's being spoken on screen, but most of the time it seems like those subtitles are out of our control. Maybe we find them too small, or even too large. Maybe the color is too faint, or the background too distracting. If only we coul ...more

What's better than having access to Hulu's entire catalog on any device you wish? Having HBO's as well, obviously. Hulu recently began offering subscribers the option to either subscribe to HBO through their Hulu account, or to link a prior HBO subscription to their Hulu accou ...more

Update: HBO discontinued this service. Your best bet for transferring your data from one account to another is to save a record of your watch list. That way, you can add your titles back manually with your new account. Now that you can add an HBO Now subscription to your Hulu ...more