Root

If you have a custom recovery installed on your Android device, the first thing you should have done as soon as you finished installing it was to create a Nandroid backup. But if you didn't, I'm not here to judge—I'm here to show you a much easier way. What Exactly Is a Nandr ...more

Apple has packed a lot of new features into the iOS 13 update, and practically no core app has gone untouched. The Messages app, in particular, got plenty of love, including new ways to dress and use your Memojis. Beyond the improvements and additions made to Memojis, Message ...more

Many of our everyday apps include a menu tab or search bar, like Chrome and Twitter. In fact, a lot of times those are the first things we go for, as search is universal in most apps, and app settings are just about always accessible through the menu. Like the Back, Home, and ...more

A new feature in Android Nougat lets you add your own custom tiles to the Quick Settings panel. This menu, which can be accessed by swiping down from the top of any screen, lets you quickly adjust settings and toggle system features on and off. So now that it's been opened up ...more

We softModders come from all walks of life, and sooner or later, our devices begin to reflect who we are. Maybe you've followed one of our guides on customizing your Nexus 7, such as getting the exclusive Google Experience Launcher or hiding the navigation buttons for more scr ...more

The OnePlus 7 Pro is definitely a beast on paper. With a specs page that ticks virtually every box and a price point that undercuts the competition by hundreds of dollars, it's hard to overlook this phone. But before you get too excited, know that OnePlus has repeatedly shown ...more

The Calculator app on your iPhone may seem boring and basic, but there are a few interesting tricks worth knowing. You can ask Siri to perform calculations for you, long-press on results to copy them, long-press the field to paste numbers in, and swipe left or right above the ...more

What's the point of having a 1080p screen if you're not using it to get in some quality gaming time? Google Play is great for downloading games, but you probably already have an extensive library of games for your consoles, so use those! Emulators are a dime a dozen, but Retr ...more

On most Android devices, the various volume levels are comprised of either 7 or 15 steps between minimum and maximum. For voice-call volume, alarms, and notifications alike, 7 presses of a volume button will bring you all the way from silent to full-blast. With media controls, ...more

The brand new Pixel and Pixel XL, Google's first direct attempts at taking on the iPhone, haven't rolled out exactly how Google would have liked. The devices have already had more than their fair share of issues, starting with the camera, and now extending to the built-in spea ...more

Although lacking in megapixels, the HTC One M8's camera can be considered a top-tier, flagship-level shooter. With the Duo Camera and UltraPixel technology behind it, it can make even the most inexperienced photographer snap pictures like a pro. There seems to be little missin ...more

Emojis are a huge part of communication these days. In fact, I'm beginning to think that in a thousand years, historians will come across our then-ancient texts and speculate that we used a writing system that evolved from hieroglyphics. As prevalent as emojis have become, it ...more

If you're the de facto tech support person in your family or circle of friends, you know how frustrating it can be to have to hold someone's hand and walk them through every troubleshooting step. Luckily, several options now exist for you to remotely access a Mac or Windows PC ...more

Whether you use a third-party keyboard or the stock offering, your Samsung device keeps a history of the last 20 words you copied on its clipboard. Samsung added this feature to Android to help make multitasking a bit easier, but if you use a password manager like LastPass, th ...more

Getting the volume on our phones to be just right can be a pretty annoying task. Some people like to listen to music and videos with max volume while some like it a little lower. With the default volume control on your Samsung Galaxy S3, there are only 15 steps before you reac ...more

Google's new Material You theming engine in Android 12 adds a personal touch to your user interface. The main colors of your wallpaper dynamically affect the colors in menus and apps, essentially putting you in control of the overall theme. But there's another new design eleme ...more

Before, eReaders were only used to read eBooks. Not anymore. As tablet computers become more and more advanced, eReaders like Amazon's Kindle, Sony's Reader and Barnes & Noble's Nook are forced to expand their capabilities beyond the basic bibliophilic needs. And the first to ...more

The more you use your device, the more you'll download and install apps. These apps range from helpful to fun to simple distractions, but after a while, you may notice slow down on your device or a marked reduction in battery life. One potential cause can be that plenty of ap ...more

We may all have a Nexus 7 tablet, but we don't all want to have the exact same look and feel, which is why we softMod for a more personalized vibe. There are hundreds of cool mods you can perform on your Nexus 7, whether stock or rooted, but one of my favorites in Android 4.4 ...more

The art of emoji — the next level beyond the simple text-based emoticons we used once upon a time in the not so distant past. We rely upon emojis so much in our always-connected world of today simply because they help portray emotion into our typed out words. They've not been ...more

Although the Essential PH-1 got off to a rocky start, thanks to steady updates, it has slowly become one of the best Android phones to come out in recent years. For $499, the Essential Phone is a cheaper Pixel, receiving updates almost as soon as the Pixel lineup does. What's ...more

The Google Calendar app hasn't really changed much over the years. As a pre-installed staple on most Android devices, the interface is definitely lacking in some areas. Google knows this, and has plans in the pipeline to completely revamp Calendar's UI alongside Android 5.0's ...more

Garlic: almost every cuisine in the world considers it a staple, and for good reason. Its pungent flavor gives depth and character to food. Dishes made without it seem bland and forgettable. And on top of all that, it's been studied for its potential anti-cancer properties (an ...more

Bluetooth has been a staple on every Android smartphone ever since they began taking over our lives. Despite the fact that every device seems to have the ability to share files with one another, there is a limit to the types of files that can be shared between them. Sharing a ...more

Notifications, while certainly helpful, can at times be overbearing. There are banners plastered every which way on your smartphone for almost every application. While many of the notifications can simply be swept away or turned off, the same can't be said of persistent notifi ...more

AT&T Code Scanner, DriveMode, and Samsung Hub make up just a sliver of the sea of apps on my Galaxy Note 3 that I'll probably never use in my lifetime. Additionally, there aren't any built-in methods for uninstalling these pre-loaded Android apps (aka bloatware) from carriers ...more

Recently, Mike over on Samsung Galaxy S4 softModder showed how to scroll from the bottom to the top of a page with a single tap, a feature that Apple is well known for, and something I missed very much on my Galaxy Note 3. However, there's always room for improvement. While t ...more

When the hardware buttons on your smartphone aren't working right, it can be a real pain to do almost anything. Simple tasks like accessing your home screen, opening the menu, and powering your phone on and off—normal functions you use every day—become chores, if you're even a ...more

While we wait for our chance to get our hands on Android Lollipop, Google has already released Material Design updates to most of their apps. I love the new direction of the updated UI, but something just seemed to be lacking in tying everything together. That was the case un ...more

OSPD1 In 1978, the first SCRABBLE Dictionary was conceived and published by Merriam-Webster, with the help of the National Scrabble Association (NSA). The idea was to include any word that was found in one of the five major dictionaries at the time: Merriam-Webster's Collegi ...more

While we're usually responsible for leaking our own private information through mediums like Facebook, there are other times when we mistakenly and unwillingly allow certain applications to scour through our personal data. Some apps may have enabled permissions for internet ac ...more

If you've followed our guide on unlocking KitKat's real full screen capability using the immersive mode mod, then your status and navigation bars will be hidden when not in use, giving you a more expansive full screen experience. As great as that is, immersive mode can be fru ...more

While it is convenient to buy avocados from the local supermarket, you can also start investing in the long-term goal of having free avocados coming from your own backyard by growing an avocado tree straight from the pit. To get started, remove the seed from the avocado fruit ...more

Let's say you're watching a video and everything's going great, but you feel the need to raise the volume a tiny bit. You hit the volume button on your Nexus 5, and all of a sudden, a giant volume slider appears that obscures half of your video for 3 seconds. I know it's happ ...more

The biggest complaint I have with my Nexus 7 is the lack of support for different types of media files. I have a lot of movies and music that I've downloaded off the web, in many different formats, and I want them on my tablet. Want to play that 1080p MKV file of your favorit ...more

Android Debug Bridge, or ADB for short, is a very powerful utility that can remotely execute commands on your Android device. This remote terminal interface, however, is not very "remote" at all. You have to be tied down to your computer to use it, since a USB cable is normall ...more

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are becoming almost synonymous these days, but there are still plenty of awesome deals that you can only get starting on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Amazon, for instance, will be hosting a week-long Cyber Monday sale, and of course, most big-bo ...more

When it comes to customizing Android, there's no better way to make it your own than by installing a custom ROM. You gain new features that were not accessible on the stock firmware that came with the phone, and you get complete control over how your system looks and feels. Bu ...more

Android's beauty is in its customization; you can have widgets for anything, launchers that look and feel completely different from one another, and fonts you can change at any time. And it doesn't stop at aesthetics—you can go much deeper than looks. For instance, you can ma ...more

Google switched to gestural navigation in Android 9, and in removing the back/home/recents buttons, they were able to greatly reduce the size of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. However, there's still a white line, aka "The Pill," taking up space to show you whe ...more

If you're one of the millions of people who use the WhatsApp service for messaging, you've probably noticed a recent propensity that the app has had for adding buttons to its interface. Two such buttons have made their way into the message thread screen, cluttering up the inte ...more

With so many apps being cloud-based, cached data has started to become a problem. This is particularly true if you're low on storage, so developer Dhi decided to do something about it. You see, apps will download temporary bits of data called cache to help speed things up the ...more

In a previous softModder guide, I detailed how to get the Jelly Bean 4.2 Photo Sphere Camera and Gallery on your HTC One running Sense 5, but that was quickly outdated with the release of the new Google Play Edition HTC One, which has a newer Camera that works great with our h ...more

The launch of Android 4.4 KitKat alongside the Nexus 5 was met with much fanfare from Android enthusiasts. Unfortunately, if you don't have a Nexus device or are still awaiting the 4.4 update, you may feel a bit left behind. If you have a carrier version of the HTC One, 2013' ...more

With its awesomely enormous size, the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 can at times be difficult to navigate when you only have one hand free—especially if you have really small hands. To make the Note 2 (and other large Android devices) easier to navigate, Paranoid Android (and later C ...more

Ever since Sense 4, HTC phones have had no access to easy access setting toggles from the notification pane. CyanogenMod and other custom ROMs are an option, but even if your phone isn't rooted, you can still have clean, functional quick settings. Step 1: Install Power Toggles ...more

Ever use Nexflix and YouTube on Your Nexus 7 tablet? It sucks! The menus are too big and not enough videos are shown on the screen. What gives?!? Thankfully, these apps have tablet specific UIs that help fix this issue. If you're wondering why your Nexus 7 tablet doesn't have ...more

In direct competition with Pandora, iTunes Radio, and Spotify, Samsung has just launched Milk Music—a strangely named, yet completely free music streaming service for Android. Currently exclusive to Samsung owners (unless you're rooted), Milk Music is similar to much of its c ...more

There's two things I'm always looking for in my Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Efficiency and quickness. So, like any other softModder, I tend to download a bunch of apps and tweaks that help speed up my device's overall performance. In doing so, I often come across the "Complete acti ...more

The flexibility within Android is pretty amazing. Unlike iOS, you can make a lot of modifications with nothing more than a download from Google Play, but to really step up your softModder game, you'll need to go a little further. Rooting takes things a step deeper, allowing y ...more

Since the introduction of LED flash to smartphones, there have been hundreds of flashlight apps flooding Google Play, since most Android phones do not have built-in flashlight apps, including the HTC One. Third-party flashlights are great for lighting up dark corners, but som ...more

I regularly listen to music on my Nexus 7 while working or playing my Xbox. It's light and easy to carry around, and has basically become an extension of my body. The only thing that bugs me is having to constantly turn the screen on to pause or change music tracks. Even if I ...more

There's no such thing as a perfect Android keyboard. Some, like Swype, have gesture typing down to a science, but lack in predictive technology. SwiftKey, on the other hand, boasts awesome next-word prediction, but less than stellar gesture typing. Many others are optimized fo ...more

When Google introduced their new launcher alongside the Nexus 5, one of the most innovative features was the "always listening" voice search, meaning that at any time you were on your home screen, triggering a Google search was as simple as saying "Okay, Google." Combined wit ...more

What do Leo Tolstoy (writer), Beethoven (composer), Paul Gaugin (artist), and Adolf Hitler (politician) have in common? They are all considered to have suffered from the sexually transmitted disease syphilis. With the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and se ...more

Google may have decided to back HTML5 for YouTube, but much of the internet still relies heavily on Adobe Flash content. While the Chrome browser for Android is unable to play Flash-based content like Amazon Instant Video streams, some third-party browsers will. Now, I haven' ...more

Welcome to the first annual Next Reality 30, our list of people who've made the biggest impact on the augmented reality space in the last 12 months — and what a 12-month roller-coaster ride it's been. Apple introduced ARKit-powered apps last fall, Google launched ARCore for An ...more

BlackBerry has yet to find a home amongst the iPhone and popular Android phones, with sales plummeting over the last couple years, but this might be a thing of the past thanks to their latest device, the BlackBerry Priv. It has decent numbers so far and was even sold out on Am ...more