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Some iOS and iPadOS apps give you an option to lock them behind Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode, but there aren't many. While there's no setting on iOS and iPadOS to lock any app behind Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode, some third-party developers incorporate the feature the ...more

Nearly every native app on the iPhone received an upgrade or new features in iOS 14 — and Safari is no exception. The web browser now has better password protection, faster performance, privacy reports, and built-in translations, just to name a few. Some of the Safari updates ...more

Since iOS 9, the iPad has had Picture in Picture mode, which lets you minimize a video that you're watching into a floating overlay so that you can multitask in other apps while it plays. For iPhones, it came a little later, first appearing in iOS 14. It's not just for the Plu ...more

With the global COVID-19 pandemic preventing Pokémon GO players from venturing into the real world, developer Niantic has adapted the game for trainers to play in a socially-distanced manner. Likewise, with the annual Pokémon GO Fest, typically an exclusive gathering of playe ...more

With all this time spent stuck at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, HQ Trivia would be a prime way to beat the boredom. Unfortunately, HQ went belly up in February, just before everyone had stay-at-home orders. While HQ has teased a potential comeback, there are other tri ...more

There's something extremely satisfying about hunting down your online adversaries and knocking them out with a well-placed shot, which probably explains why shooting games are still one some of the most popular time killers for iOS and Android. Shooting games for mobile come ...more

We've seen a variety of AR experiences related to athletic footwear over the years, but Puma is betting sneakerheads will buy into a version of interactive design where sneakers are the augmented reality experience The shoemaker launched the LQD Cell (pronounced "liquid cell" ...more

With the list of available mobile apps for moviegoers constantly expanding and improving, seeing a film at your local theater has never been better. With the right apps for your iPhone or Android phone, you can research movies, find out if showings are sold out, reserve seats, ...more

The transcribing app can be an invaluable tool, especially if you're a student or are in a profession that relies on audio journals or interviews. These apps can convert important recordings like lectures and meetings into text for you to carefully read through to better compr ...more

As expected, Apple revealed today at the WWDC keynote that ARKit 2.0 will support multiplayer gaming support and persistent content, which will arrive this fall with iOS 12. In addition to persistent and shared experiences, ARKit 2.0 will bring improved face tracking, more re ...more

Apple's next big developer event happened on June 4, and it was the first glimpse of iOS 12 that anyone's seen. While there were lots of rumored features to be unveiled at WWDC 2018, Apple concentrated mostly on squashing bugs and making iOS work as seamless as it did years ag ...more

Directive Games received the enviable honor of unveiling their ARKit game, The Machines, on stage as part of Apple's iPhone launch presentation. The developer gave us a taste of the "moba-inspired AR PVP game" in July. At the time, they were one of the first game makers to pr ...more

It has been an interesting few days in developer news. The Microsoft blog has been busy with information relative to the augmented reality space. Meta 2 has also announced an interesting development this week. Here is a collection of various tidbits that have been collecting u ...more

When Disney teased an augmented reality game called Star Wars: Jedi Challenges running on a headset from Lenovo, fans had more questions than Disney had answers. When? How much? Can I be a real Jedi? With official word today from Lenovo and Disney by way of IFA 2017 in Berlin ...more

The staff at Next Reality News is legitimately excited about the prospects that Google's ARCore could bring not only to smartphones and tablets running Android, but also to Android-based hardware such as smartglasses. We can't help but imagine how Epson's award-winning, Andro ...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

Netflix added the ability to download TV shows and movies on Android and iOS for offline binging back in Nov. 2016, and the process is the same as it is today. So if you anticipate having some downtime to catch up on Narcos or give Bright a try when you'll be away from a secur ...more

Students from Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center have been working on an augmented reality system to help teach music in a project called Music Everywhere. This application for the Microsoft HoloLens would utilize holograms to visually instruct the u ...more

Fight me all you want, but it ain't a party without alcohol—whether it's a Halloween party, Christmas party, dinner party, or even a damn wedding. (If you think that people will stick around after dinner for a dry wedding, then you're sorely mistaken.) And while we'd all love ...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

Pokémon GO, the biggest augmented reality sensation ever, broke app store records this opening weekend. But it also did something even more important: it gamified physical activity. You've probably heard that sitting will practically kill you, and that you need to avoid a sed ...more

OS X is built upon a UNIX foundation, which grants you access to the benefits that UNIX offers, including the standard toolkit (make, gcc, clang, git, perl, svn, size, strings, id, and a lot more) via the command line developer tools, which are an essential if you're a develop ...more

If you've ever used the YouTube mobile app for Android or iOS, you've probably noticed a cool little multitasking feature it has. While watching any video, you can simply swipe down on your screen to shrink the video down to a thumbnail view, which then allows you to browse th ...more

Have you ever used an open wifi, which after you connect displays a website to enter your credentials to get internet? That website is called captive portal and widely used in airports, hotels, universities etc. Have you ever wondered what would happen if someone would set up ...more

For a lot of would-be cord cutters, the lack of streaming local sports is the only hurdle that needs to be cleared before they can sever all ties with big cable. This is why it was a huge victory for us anti-cable folks when Yahoo announced that they would be hosting the first ...more

It's a breeze to send videos and music from your phone straight to your TV with an Apple TV or Chromecast, but these devices don't support all file types. While MP4 videos and MP3 music files are the norm these days, I still have a ton of AVI and FLV files that I'd like to wat ...more

Piracy, it can be argued, is the scourge of the internet. But when it comes to music, sometimes it's best to give a listen to a track or album before deciding to spend your hard-earned money on fully supporting it. Unfortunately, there are few good ways to do this without exp ...more

A good chef's knife is a thing of beauty and, with proper care, a joy forever. It can totally change the way you cook and turn even the dullest prep work into a glee-filled task. I once spent a happy, messy afternoon turning beef and beets into a credible Russian borscht with ...more

Since the new Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan is brand new, I recommend installing it on a separate partition on your hard drive. This will keep your current Yosemite system safe from harm, and will let you easily switch back to it should El Capitan become unusable for any reason. ...more

Google Play Music is an awesome app—even if you don't subscribe to their $9.99/month All Access service, you can still use it to store and stream up to 50,000 of your own songs for free. Add to that the fact that it's a pre-installed app on most Android devices, and there aren ...more

At any moment, you can open up Meerkat and start live-streaming a video from your smartphone, available for anyone to watch. Thanks to its popularity at SXSW and the backing of several big Hollywood players, the app just announced that it's receiving $14 million in funding. A ...more

Google's Chrome Web Store is packed to the brim with extensions that do everything from letting you customize Facebook to improving your Google+ experience. While there are thousands of extensions for basically anything you can think of, the problem is sifting through them all ...more

You have a cool picture that you want to show someone, but when you hand your phone over, they start swiping through all of your photos. Surely, you've encountered this scenario before. I definitely have. If you have any pictures stored on your phone that you don't want other ...more

Samsung has multiple built-in font styles to choose from in TouchWiz, but they're limited to just four types. While there are many font installers available on Google Play, they usually cost money and only replace some of the text on the device, not all of it, creating an inco ...more

Most days, getting through an eight-hour work shift is a struggle. There are a million places you'd rather be, and none of them include your desk. It's difficult to find the motivation to tackle the growing number of emails in your inbox when your mind is back at home, comfort ...more

There's a known issue affecting some Nexus 5 users where the speaker volume is fairly low. This could be attributed to a manufacturing defect, which you could possibly fix with a hot needle, but if your built-in speakers and headphones seem muted, don't take your Nexus apart j ...more

Google's new camera, aptly named Google Camera, has been all the rage since it was released onto Google Play last Friday. The main reason is the amazing Lens Blur feature that adds depth-of-field Lytro effects to photos, without the use of any expensive accessories or extra ha ...more

If you want to play games that aren't in the iOS App Store, Apple makes it pretty tough for you. Usually, the only solution is to jailbreak your iPad or iPhone, but that's something most avoid because it will void the warranty and may cause potential bricking issues. In some ...more

"Cheating is for losers" is only something that losers like to say. If you want to smash your friends and fly up the leaderboards, though, sometimes you have to go that extra mile. Bejeweled Blitz is a PopCap game that can be played on your computer, through Facebook, or even ...more

Apple finally gave the Books app for iPhone the attention it deserves, making the experience even better for reading e-books and listening to audiobooks on the go. You can even do more with Books in custom shortcuts you develop. We've had Apple's convenient book reader and bo ...more

SharePlay is arguably one of the most significant features to hit FaceTime since group calls, and it's still hard to find apps that support shared experiences in FaceTime. Apple does list a few apps, but there is no official index of all the apps with SharePlay integration. Th ...more

Apple's iOS 15.4 update for iPhone is out after 46 days of beta testing, and it has some exciting features you won't want to miss. Here's everything you need to know about the new software. The iOS 15.4 software has been available to developers since Jan. 27, 2022, and public ...more

You're in a Zoom meeting, and you're click-clacking away at your keyboard, typing important notes from the call. More realistically, you're doing something unrelated to the meeting, such as browsing the web, playing a game, or messaging friends. Whatever it is you're typing, i ...more

Third-party apps on your iPhone must ask for your permission to access your library in the Music app. Some will even want to get access to your Apple Music account. If you no longer use the apps, you shouldn't be letting them have access anymore. It's easy to hunt them down, a ...more

One of Android's biggest strengths relative to iOS is how simple it is to sideload apps that aren't on the official app store. Rather than having to sign IPA files or tell your phone you trust a developer every two weeks, you can just enable a setting and be done with it. Jum ...more

The longest-running children's television show in the United States, Sesame Street, hasn't survived 50 years without leveraging new technology along the way. The latest innovation from the Sesame Street Workshop is Sesame Street Yourself, a new iOS app that takes advantage of ...more

Bus stops can provide shelter in the event of rain, and now they also protect you from augmented reality squid. Surprising recent commuters at bus stops in Los Angeles and New York, outdoor media company Outfront Media used the cover of night to add Watchmen-inspired augmente ...more

Augmented reality plays a key role in the evolution of adjacent technologies, such as 5G connectivity and brain-control interfaces (BCI), and the business news of the week serves up proof points for both examples. On the 5G front, Verizon's acquisition of Jaunt XR adds anothe ...more

Following in the steps of Snapchat, Instagram, and YouCam, another popular photo app has gotten into the virtual try-on augmented reality game. On Thursday, BoxyCharm, a cosmetics subscription service, unveiled a partnership with app developer Lightricks that will bring cosme ...more

Apple has pulled quite the headscratcher in anticipation of its big iPhone unveiling next week. Its latest iPhone update, iOS 13.0, is just on the horizon, going through eight beta versions so far. And yet, before that software's official release, the company has started beta ...more

When Apple takes the stage next week, we have no idea what version of iOS it will release. For months it seemed like a given that we would, of course, see iOS 13 seeded to our iPhones. Now, we aren't sure if Apple will tout iOS 13 or iOS 13.1, since the latter is now the focus ...more

Increasingly, cutting-edge platforms like blockchain technology and augmented reality are overlapping, forging new digital frontiers that promise to change the way we interact with the virtual and the real world. The latest effort in this area features blockchain startup WAX, ...more

Your Xbox Wireless Controller is a great way to play games on both Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 computers. However, you don't need to have any of those devices to enjoy your controller with your favorite games — you can seamlessly connect the Xbox Wireless Controller to yo ...more

When the Steam Link app was first introduced in 2018, I was impressed. As long as you were on the same network as your PC, you could play your Steam games on your phone. But now, it's even more impressive. By enabling a few extra settings, you can play your Steam library on mo ...more

Next to map data overlays, one of the most often discussed concepts for apps that could propel augmented reality smartglasses into the mainstream is a real-time language translation app. Now, Netherlands-based startup Zoi Meet is promising to deliver just that with a new app ...more

The future of smartglasses for consumers seems ever dependent on Apple's entry into the market. Coincidentally, the exit of Apple's long-time design chief Jony Ive has shed some light on that eventual entrance. Meanwhile, as the enterprise sector of AR continues to expand, on ...more

It turns out that the video Magic Leap released earlier today was indeed a teaser for the public release of the Game of Thrones experience for meant for all Magic Leap One users. Available now for download in the Magic Leap World section, the app is a free download that allow ...more

When Stardew Valley launched back in 2016 on Steam for PC, it was instantly deemed a success for steering the RPG farming simulator genre back on the right track. Before its release, we hadn't seen too much in this particular field of games that caught the eye of the general p ...more

The first annual Snap Partner Summit kicked off on Thursday in Los Angeles, and with it came some new products announcements, several of which enhance Snapchat's already robust augmented reality powers. Among the new releases, the big standout is an interface change that the ...more

Whether we like it or not, our personal information and smartphones are tied together at the hip. The former needs the latter to deliver a personalized experience that matches our individual needs. This personal data, however, makes your phone a prime target for thieves of all ...more