Tips Tricks and Hacks

Apple's iOS 8 ushered in a new way of typing with the addition of third-party keyboard compatibility. We've seen everything from keyboards with swipe gestures, customizable themes, different sizes, and even embedded GIFs. Now we've got one for all of you music lovers called Au ...more

With intelligent grammar check, accurate predictive text, swipe gestures, and plenty of themes, it makes sense that Ginger Keyboard has well over a million downloads on the Google Play Store, making it one of the more popular keyboards available for Android users. GingerSoftw ...more

These days, there is no shortage of ways to exchange files to and from friends and family: text messages, email, Bluetooth transfer, and cloud services are just a tiny sliver of what you can use to share music, photos, videos, and more. But just because there are lots of opti ...more

Using your iPhone camera's panorama feature is great way to capture wide-angle views of scenery, such as sweeping cityscapes, broad landscapes, and seemingly never-ending skies, as well as that awesome party or get-together you just threw. While panoramic photographs do a gre ...more

The Pixel is the phone to beat when it comes to cameras, and it's largely due to software. While its hardware is solid, Google's machine learning prowess and general coding wizardry are the biggest reasons the Pixel is so good with taking photos and recording video. What this ...more

Filmic Pro harnesses the full native power of your iPhone or Android phone — and then some. If your smartphone shoots in 4K resolution, Filmic Pro will let you choose that resolution. However, it's not all about the pixels — bit rate is an essential factor in determining the o ...more

Business hours and addresses change, but they're not always updated on Yelp by business owners for the rest of us to see. Showing up when a business is closed or going to the incorrect address is a major annoyance, which is why the company allows us, the customers, to help upd ...more

Millions depend on Google Maps for directions, and it's easy to see why. The app comes with tons of features like offline navigation, location sharing, and more. Google is far from done, however, and continually improves upon its navigation app to make it even more efficient a ...more

As the stigma of online dating fades and swiping potential suitors on your phone becomes the new norm, one very real issue that you may have to deal with is catfishing: the act of being deceived by a fictional online persona. Although dating apps do their best to weed out fake ...more

If there's one strength of Apple's that iOS and Android fans can agree on, it's the company's dedication to user privacy. With each new iteration of iOS, Apple builds upon these foundations, enhancing and increasing each iPhone's ability to protect its user's data. In iOS 12, ...more

When it comes to traveling from one location to another with the aide of your iPhone, ensuring your navigation app works as it should keeps you one step ahead of potential hassles. One feature often overlooked is audio settings, and while having no voice prompts is easy enough ...more

Having your home and work addresses set in Apple Maps makes them incredibly easy to navigate to no matter where you're located. If you move to a new house, stay in a hotel or resort while vacationing, report to a different office, or have multiple job sites to visit regularly, ...more

By default, iMovie for iPhone adds a dissolve (also called a crossfade) in between all of the video clips in your movie project's timeline, which is an effect that transitions gradually from the end of one clip to the beginning of another. However, iMovie does not add any begi ...more

Adobe Premiere Clip gives mobile video editors the tools they need to make some great looking projects from their iPhone or Android device. Editors need ways to organize and trim clips, edit the look of those clips, add music, and more. For a smartphone app, Adobe Premiere Cli ...more

If you've just started a freeform editing project in Adobe Premiere Clip on Android or iPhone, what's next? The first thing you're going to want to do is trim down the video clips you imported into your draft, that way you can lay them out perfectly in your timeline and create ...more

A little-known feature in Apple Maps for your iPhone lets you tour big cities like you're Godzilla, and it's actually quite easy to access — if you know the secret. Despite being around since the introduction of Apple Maps in iOS 6, the "Flyover" feature that's baked in is st ...more

Not all batteries are created equal, but one thing's for sure—they all lose capacity over time. Thankfully, the advanced lithium-ion batteries in your MacBook and iPhone are meant to last for several years before they begin to lose their overall charge capacity. Of course, th ...more

How many of you have appointments that start at 11:07 in the morning or 4:46 in the evening? Probably none of you. We create leeway in our schedules by rounding up and down, not to mention it's just easier to remember times that way, so why is it that the Calendar app in iOS ...more

Back in iOS 6, deleting individual text messages in a conversation was just a matter of tapping the edit button on the right-hand corner of the thread, selecting which texts to delete, and then pressing delete. Easy enough, right? So, it comes as no surprise that people are ...more

Newsstand was the most hated Apple app when it was first introduced, mainly because you could not delete or hide it inside of a junk folder. That's because it acted like a folder itself, with magazine and newspaper apps contained within. Previously, there were ways to hide th ...more

Personally, my favorite new feature in iOS 7 is the Control Center. With it, you can very quickly and efficiently access popular and much used settings, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, brightness and more—all with one simple swipe. While I love the Control Center, it may not be eve ...more

With the camera usually being pretty simply in the past iOS versions, iOS 7 has seen a few major changes—built-in filters, Instagram-ready square photographs, zoom-in during video recording, and more. One less obvious feature that the new iOS has is the ability to activate bu ...more

During today's press event at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple announced that iOS 7 will come bundled with several new ringtones—something that has stayed relatively static the past few years. I've download the GM version of iOS 7, which is the last ...more

While there were many highlights during Apple's keynote address at WWDC this year, the new advancements to the sassy personal assistant Siri in iOS 7 were amongst the most talked about—and something I was eager to test drive myself. Currently, there are ways to improve Siri in ...more

Panoramic live wallpapers for the iPhone? If the first beta version of iOS 7 is indicative of the imminent public release of Apple's revamped mobile operating system, the answer is a resounding yes. UPDATE: The final build of iOS 7 does not have this feature anymore. Hopefull ...more

With the majority of smartphone carriers no longer offering unlimited data plans for the iPhone, monitoring how much mobile data you use is a key element to saving money on your phone bill. Android has been integrating data monitoring into its OS for quite a while now, and wi ...more

Sharing just got a whole lot easier in the new iOS 7. Apple has decided to integrate AirDrop, the local vicinity file-sharing service found in Mac OS X, into the latest version of iOS. With AirDrop, you can share pictures, contacts, notes, and more between two iPhones without ...more

With all the little improvements that Apple made to iOS 7, some older features have been changed or moved (and sometimes, it's not obvious). Just yesterday, I was at the Apple store speaking with an employee about iOS 7 when he said: "It sucks that the new iOS 7 doesn't have ...more

This is a familiar scenario: you light up the grill, get cooking, eat the fruits of your labor, then clean up every trace of your barbecuing once you're finished — except maybe the hot charcoal, which usually gets dumped right before the next cookout. But instead of tossing e ...more

A huge part of the fun that comes with TikTok is watching your videos go viral. To that end, the popular social media app has a simple way to let you instantly see how many people viewed your videos and photos Watching your TikTok recordings soar in popularity is undeniably s ...more

When you take a screenshot on your iPhone in iOS 11, a thumbnail preview appears in the corner for a few seconds. Tapping on it will give you immediate editing and sharing tools, but not everyone digs the convenience. What can be convenient for you can be obtrusive for others ...more

While millions eagerly await the arrival of the Galaxy S9 and all the new features it has to offer, we can actually get a glimpse of its capabilities right now — if we know where to look. The S9's home screen, in particular, is one such area that has new features we can previe ...more

After my hard drive crashed recently, I lost everything. Old college essays, half-written stories, short films, and most importantly, all of the photos that I had saved from the past five years... all gone. Since I didn't back up my hard drive (stupid mistake #1), or upload p ...more

On an Android device, you can download almost any file type into a neat and tidy "Downloads" folder, and those files can then be accessed with an appropriate app, shared via email, or transferred over to your computer. On an iPhone, there is no such folder, and saving files fr ...more

Google recently announced the beta release of a developer tool called ARC Welder for Chrome, which allows developers to run and test their Android apps on any computer with the Chrome browser installed. Outside of developers, ARC Welder can be run by everyday users to bring A ...more

An app called Launcher was released for iOS 8 last September that let users open any installed app directly from a widget in the Notification Center pull-down. For some reason, Apple didn't take too kindly to this and banned Launcher from the iOS App Store just a few days afte ...more

Even if my phone has only 1% of battery life left, I'll keep using it until I can get to a power source somewhere. Most times I never make it to a charger, and my device eventually powers down on its own. Yes, there is a low battery warning, but it'd be more helpful if we cou ...more

The Google Play Store may have fewer restrictions that its iOS counterpart, but that doesn't mean that all apps make the cut. Ad blockers and Xposed modules that bypass paywalls have never had a place on the Google Play Store, which makes tracking their app-updates a painful p ...more

Unlike the Moto X with its Active Display or the Nexus 6 and its Ambient Display, some devices (especially those now running Lollipop) do not include a function that permits the display to turn on upon getting new notifications while the device remains locked or the display in ...more

Some third-party keyboards, like SwiftKey for example, include a convenient feature that suggests emojis as your type based on the content of what you're saying. Unfortunately, many keyboards, including most stock ones, don't include this function. It's often not a convincing ...more

We have all seen videos of people walking off of platforms and into street signs because they were too distracted by their phones to pay attention. This has become such a problem that cities have even considered fining pedestrians for texting and walking. Even though I find t ...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

As a Mac and Sasmsung Galaxy S6 user, I quickly realized that the two devices don't play well with one another out of the box, and using ADB commands to record my Android's screen isn't as simple as it is would be with a Windows PC. Though you might feel like attempting to us ...more

If you have a smartphone, chances are you have something on it you don't want others seeing. Whether it be photos, videos, or documents, some things are best left private. Not everyone is a saint, after all. On a Samsung Galaxy S6, you can lock down specific apps using your f ...more

One tweet can get your fired from your job. At least, in the cases of Gilbert Gottfried, Rashard Mendenhall, Ozzie Guillen, and Mike Bacsik, who were all either fired or forced to resign from their jobs after posting regrettable tweets online. An ex-GOP aide for Jeb Bush was ...more

No one is perfect, and this goes double for software developers. All of the quality assurance testing in the world does nothing when you put a new OS in the hands of everyday users, since we all use our devices in different places and for different reasons. Recently, Cyanogen ...more

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If a person makes calls but doesn't have a Facebook account, are they even really a person? Yes, of course they are, but it just makes life easier when you're part of the world's biggest social ...more

They might be a little late to the party, but the Cyanogen team has finally released their newest ROM for the OnePlus One, Cyanogen OS 12. The launch had to be pushed back a few times due to some technical issues, but now we finally get to see what the Cyanogen team has cooked ...more

Widgets exist to offer quick access to certain features in the apps we use most. On the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, home screen widgets let me do pretty much anything, from checking the forecast to browsing my emails. While these are certainly useful, I wish there was even more th ...more

With the release of the Nexus 5 back in 2013 came the Google Now Launcher, which has become the go-to choice for many Android users, especially those who prefer the Nexus line. With its integration of the Google Now page and the always-listening hotword detection, you'd be har ...more

The shooting of Walter Scott (who was unarmed) has been dominating the news these past few weeks. Scott, who ran away from police officer Michael Slager after a routine traffic stop, was shot in the back and pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Unlike similar cases where a cop ...more

Like its predecessor—and probably every device in the future—the Samsung Galaxy S6 comes with a fingerprint scanner that allows for a more secure lock screen, web sign-ins, and account verification. But unlike its brethren, the sensor on the S6 has been vastly improved. No lon ...more

If you're like me, you probably encounter the lock screen on your Android device more than any other screen. Every time you check for new notifications out of habit, or simply pull your phone out to see the time, the lock screen is front and center. For being such an importan ...more

When ringtones and vibration alerts miss the mark and fail to grab your attention, causing you to miss an important call or text, LED flash alerts are a great backup plan. While we already showed how to activate this on Samsung devices, the apps shown below make this feature e ...more

Collaborating with other people can be a pain, especially if you have to share one device between the entire group. Usually when you're creating a new design or trying to edit a mockup, you end up hunched around a single screen or end up emailing revisions back and forth, whic ...more

Thanks to its longevity and familiarity among web designers, Flash is still alive and thriving, but HTML5 is catching up since it can render faster in web browsers, can be customized by developers on a per platform basis, doesn't need a plugin to run, and is less vulnerable th ...more

With floating song lyrics displayed over the screen, apps like musiXmatch and Floating Lyrics are perfect for people who want to go beyond just the tunes and delve into a song's message and meaning. And while these floating windows can be convenient, they're not always necessa ...more

If cameras are a priority, one of the first specs to check on a new phone is the image stabilization. You've probably been told optical image stabilization (OIS) reigns supreme, but this isn't the case if you're taking a lot of videos. Instead, we would argue, electronic image ...more

Every photo you take is brimming with metadata such as iPhone model, date and time, shooting modes, focal length, shutter speed, flash use, and geolocation information. Share these pictures with friends, family, or acquaintances via texts, emails, or another direct share metho ...more

Combined, the new iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max are the largest suite of iPhones that Apple has ever released at once time. While the XS remains the same size as last year's iPhone X, the XR and XS Max are even larger. But which size is right for you? We can help you decide which ...more