Microsoft Android App

Most hardcore Android fans loathe carrier or manufacturer additions to the Android operating system. Whether it's bloatware or changes to the user interface, many enthusiasts prefer the clean look of stock Android. However, you have to admit that some of these additions are a ...more

When you think of an online music service nowadays, Spotify is probably near the first that come to mind, and for good reason. Being able to create, share, and take all of your playlists anywhere, across all of your devices, is something that I couldn't live without. Unfortuna ...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

Smartphones are like high tech buckets that collect our personal information through constant use. This has some obvious benefits, like getting a more personalized experience with our devices. On the other hand, this data is a tempting target for bad actors looking to make a b ...more

Android does a great job at multitasking. Split-screen mode and picture-in-picture are terrific at letting you manage more than one app at a time. But there are some limitations. For instance, when you're playing a video and you open a second video in split-screen, the first o ...more

There are dozens of apps like Glympse, Family Locator, and Find My Kids that let parents see where their children's phones are, but they all have one fatal flaw: It's incredibly easy to spoof locations to make it look like the phone is somewhere else. Apps can't get direct ac ...more

Goertek's AM3D offers world-class audio processing software that powers millions of high-end devices around the world. Their biggest advancement is likely Virtual Surround Sound, which can make two speakers sound like a full 5.1 setup. You normally can't get these features on ...more

When you're on the road, the last thing you need to be doing is fumbling around with your phone. But with online radio services like Spotify and Google Play Music, you almost have to use your phone to play music through your stereo, because the in-dash head units on most cars ...more

In an effort to be more inclusive, Facebook will release over 1,500 ethnic and gender diverse emojis for its Messenger app across all platforms on June 2nd, 2016. The update includes the usual emoji diversity inclusions, such as skin tone choice for faces and hand gestures, an ...more

The only knock on Samsung's last round of flagship devices is that TouchWiz is still alive and kicking. Aside from this overbearing skin that's been applied on top of Android, the Galaxy S6, S6 edge, Note 5, and this year's Galaxy S7 models are some of the best phones money ca ...more

Many modern Android devices use a display technology called AMOLED. These screens differ from traditional LCD displays in that each pixel emits its own light, so a backlight is not required. Even better, when rendering a black element on the screen, AMOLED displays simply don' ...more

Nokia's recent foray into the world of Android brought a plethora of goodies along with it. The Finnish smartphone manufacturer offers a slightly different take on our favorite mobile operating system, with customizations ranging from ringtones to its very own app store. Much ...more

There are plenty of apps on Google Play for customizing your Samsung Galaxy S3 with wallpapers and new lock screens, but to be honest, you're not really customizing until you root. Once you're rooted, you have unlimited mods and hacks to choose from to make your device run be ...more

Gaining remote access to a phone isn't only for super hackers and spies. There are plenty of times when the average smartphone user would want to have remote access to their device. Maybe you left your Android phone at home and coincidentally forgot to stop farming coins in y ...more

These days, if you're having friends over, they'll probably ask to log into your Wi-Fi network before asking for a drink. But if you've forgotten your password, it can be quite hard to find, since most devices obscure the characters with asterisks. But it honestly doesn't tak ...more

It seems like custom Google Now commands are a dime a dozen these days. With Commandr for Google Now giving non-rooted users their first taste of custom voice commands just a couple weeks ago, you may wonder why we're covering this subject again. Unlike Commandr, the app Auto ...more

With a root bounty of over $18,000 up for the taking, developers were highly motivated to get the AT&T and Verizon Wireless variants of the Samsung Galaxy S5 rooted. Legendary hacker George Hotz, aka Geohot, has won the race and can now step up to claim his prize. Hotz is not ...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

Super Mario Run was released for iOS on December 15, 2016. Even though it debuted as a "free" app, almost all of the playable content was hidden behind a ridiculous $10 unlocking package. Despite coming with such a hefty price tag and receiving a two-star rating on the day of ...more

If you've ever attempted to report a bug to a developer, no doubt you've heard the response, "Get a logcat." This is infinitely important to a developer because of the fact that a logcat captures a full report of every command that was recently executed on your Android device, ...more

Google Keyboard, which comes pre-installed on Nexus devices (and is available for all others from the Play Store), is one of the most functional keyboards currently available for Android. With features like gesture-based typing, next-word prediction, and even text expansion ma ...more

Popular photo-sharing service Snapchat has released a major update to both its Android and iOS applications today, bringing secretive chat messaging and live video chatting. Video: . Updating Your iPad or iPhone If you have iOS device and still haven't received the latest upd ...more

Over the past two years, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) has become a showcase for new ARKit capabilities. This year, it could offer more information related to Apple's long rumored augmented reality wearable. According to sources close to the matter speaking t ...more

Android 9.0 Pie is now available to install on Google's own Pixel devices and a select few other phones. In the new release, there's a fairly hidden setting that lets you enable a system-wide dark theme that changes the look of your Quick Settings panel and other menus. It's ...more

There may be many third-party file managers for Android to choose from, but until now, Google offered no proprietary option. Enter 'Files Go,' which, while initially anticipated for December, is now available for you to try. After the beta version of Google's files manager le ...more

Snapchat developers insist that the app stay true to what its always been: a service for snapping and sharing self-destructing images. This belief is further hit home with their strict 31-character text limit, which some people refuse to abide by. Namely, Snapchatter Shayne Sk ...more

As one of the most frequently used and popular applications available, Facebook is now attempting to be a little more considerate for those Android users that don't have a bleeding-edge device or fast data connections. Like starting quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts Andre ...more

Podcasts have been around and popular for close to a decade now. For the uninitiated, podcasts are like radio shows that can be downloaded directly from the web and listened to on any device. Up until now, only paid apps allowed podcasts to be casted via Chromecast, but with t ...more

Veering from common practice, XDA commenter, "the_commenter", discovered a changelog for the upcoming version of Android 4.4.3 tucked away on Google's servers. While the 5,000+ lines of text are still being digested, a couple of interesting nuggets of information have already ...more

It seems like most of the really cool and interesting modifications you can make to your Android device always require special root access, so when a fun mod comes along that doesn't require root—I feel it's my duty to alert you. The softMod I'll be showing you today is an ap ...more

There are many impressive features on a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but just like any other smartphone on the market, the most used one is the camera. How many times did you take a picture today? Or admire all the selfies in your gallery? Or upload a video to Instagram, Vine, or Sn ...more

Feelings can get hurt on Twitter as fast as an update. Everything is fine and dandy because two people are mutually following each other, then out of nowhere, one person has unfollowed the other out for seemingly no reason. Twitter doesn't notify users when someone has unfollo ...more

Tired of the Instagram wave? If you're sick of having to view the world through low-contrast and sepia-toned filters, there's a way to get them back to how they're supposed to look, and it's called Normalize, which undoes the magic filtering that Instagram and similar photo fi ...more

When it comes to augmented reality (AR) on Android, you might be wondering how you can get those cool new games and apps on your unsupported phone. Google has an officially supported device list for its ARCore platform, which usually consists of the more modern devices. You wo ...more

I still remember when I had to get up from my comfy spot on the couch to change the channel on my old television. So for me, the remote control may be one of the most underrated inventions of the last century. These days, remotes take on all sorts of shapes, not just the typic ...more

Word games can expand your vocabulary skills in all sorts of exciting and creative ways. Because of this, both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store are awash with word games, making it hard to differentiate between good and bad titles. This is especially troublesome if ...more

We're on the verge of an amazing evolution of technology where we can work and play in virtual worlds that merge with our own—or let us escape into our imaginations entirely. But creating virtual, mixed, and augmented reality experiences requires resources and hardware that no ...more

With such a vast selection of music genres available, it's easy to build up a massive list of stations in Pandora that can make your go-to playlists harder to find. Fortunately, the app lets you easily remove unwanted stations to streamline your experience and listen to your f ...more

If you're a Game of Thrones fan and would like to watch the latest season offline on your iPhone, or if you need to catch up on previous seasons, there is no current support on HBO Go or HBO Now to download episodes for offline viewing. But that's only halfway true because the ...more

Whether it's an ex you can't stand, that annoyingly political friend of a friend, or good old fashioned trolls, the block feature on Facebook can be a great way to de-stress your feed. It will keep people from contacting you, and it will also prevent them from viewing your pro ...more

If you're sick of playing chess in Facebook Messenger, there's another little-known game you can play with your friends directly in the app—basketball. This hidden game was originally added to Messenger before March Madness 2016, and still works perfectly to this day. Just ma ...more

Getting cool new features before everyone else is just plain fun. To be on the bleeding edge can require a lot of effort at times, since the fastest way to get an update is to find it as soon as it leaks, then get to work on sideloading the new version. Luckily, there's an eas ...more

This past year was a big one for WonderHowTo. Our biggest yet. In 2014 our writers, curators, and community members helped over 100 million people learn over 270 million new things. That's 40% more people than the total number of students enrolled in every single school from e ...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

Even as a writer by trade, I'm not intimately familiar with every word in the English language. When you're typing something out on your Nexus, sometimes you think to yourself, "Is that right? Am I using the correct word here?" Then, you have no choice but to bring up Google N ...more

If you have a limited or restricted data plan, monitoring your usage can be the difference between escaping the month without overage fees or emptying out your wallet. Android dev Richard Lucas created NetLive to help Android users monitor the transfer rates and usage of thei ...more

Needing to use your device in bright or low lighting can require an adjustment in the phone's built-in brightness settings. However, there are times when those default settings just don't do the trick. If you are expecting an important email and want to check your phone durin ...more

There's nothing worse than losing your phone—except losing your phone when the ringer is silent. If you're alone, it can be excruciatingly hard to find your lost device even if the ringer is on, considering most of us don't have landlines anymore. So, the next time you find yo ...more

If you are reading this article right now on your Galaxy Note 20, you are using one of the most powerful smartphones on the market — but are you taking full advantage of it? The answer is likely no, but you can change this with a few apps. The S Pen is the biggest differentia ...more

Puzzle games are a great way to kill time and exercise your brain in one fell swoop. They challenge you to think strategically and plan ahead, whether that's to create killer chain combinations for maximum points, or to plain old keep from getting killed. But with so many puz ...more

Facebook, parent company of Instagram, has allowed you to download photos and other account data for some time now, but the data request feature is also now available on Instagram to meet the GDPR data portability requirement in the EU — and it's available worldwide, not just ...more

Binance, a China-based cryptocurrency exchange, is rapidly gaining popularity thanks to the sheer selection of digital currencies you can purchase — Ripple (XRP), Tron (TRX), IOTA, and Stellar (XLM), to name a few — using both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Binance has an i ...more

Just as we published our rumor roundup for the HTC U11 Plus, the internet happened: A Facebook video revealed the flagship HTC U11 Plus and the midrange HTC U Life in all their glory. The video was in German and has since been taken down, but according to a translation, it rev ...more

If you find this update from Pinterest more than a little creepy, I agree. If you don't, then keep reading about how Pinterest's updated "Lens" feature is your next must-have tool! The worldwide catalog of ideas — shared by over 175 million users every month — just updated it ...more

The first developer preview of Android Oreo 8.0 was only out for a couple of days before Chainfire created a new root method for it. For the time being, only the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P are supported by this first SuperSU ZIP, as the Pixel's dual-partition layout has created som ...more

The only mail I like getting comes in the form of an Amazon package, but when I go to my mailbox, it always ends up being a pile of credit card offers and catalogs I could never see myself ordering from. Those pieces of junk mail usually end up in the trash, which is horrible ...more

It seems like gesture controls are all the craze these days. From camera-opening gestures to "Air Gestures", it's getting to the point where we hardly need to touch the screens on our phones to control them. With music players seemingly being left out in this recent trend, de ...more

If you've never played with a Nexus 10 tablet, then you probably have no idea that your Nexus 7 actually has a different user interface. For some reason, Google decided it was better for the Nexus 7 to use a phone UI instead of a tablet one, but luckily for us, we don't have t ...more

BEATS by Dr. Dre started making their studio-style headphones and speakers over four years ago, which claim to help listeners actually "hear" music as it was intended by the artists, since commodity headphones and earbuds are known for producing lackluster results. But you can ...more

IFTTT is an application that allows you to automate certain tasks on your iPhone or Android. It can communicate with a myriad of apps and services on your phone by creating applets that perform actions automatically — actions you'd normally have to do manually. Finding those a ...more