Xposed Module

The Android Nougat preview build for Nexus devices comes packed to the brim with new functionality: multi-window mode, a dark theme, and a data-saver toggle, just to name a few. However, unless you have a Nexus device, it will be a while before you get these exciting new featu ...more

Rooting. As an Android user, I'm sure you've heard the word once or twice. According to Kaspersky, 7.6% of all Android users root — but for the 92.4% who don't, we wanted to talk to you. Rooting allows you to remove barriers and open Android to a level of unprecedented contro ...more

If you're reading this, chances are you're utilizing Xposed Framework to apply unique customizations to your device . We've covered various Xposed mods, like how to how to unlock KitKat's full screen capabilty and make your battery percentage easier to read on the Nexus 7, but ...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

Back when 4.1 Jelly Bean came out (boy, how time flies), Android introduced expandable notifications. Depending on the notification, a simple swipe down with your finger could expand it and show extra content, like Delete and Reply buttons for Gmail messages. If you have mult ...more

For some reason, when you're typing in landscape mode, Android extends the text input field to cover every bit of the screen that the keyboard's not occupying. This gets pretty annoying sometimes, especially with messaging apps where you might need to reference what the other ...more

For any multitude of reasons, some apps require you to be connected to Wi-Fi in order to function properly. This could be because they would rather you have a stable connection to enjoy their content, or that they don't want users complaining about the amount of data being guz ...more

While having a ton of friends on Snapchat does wonders to stroke my ego, sending content to all of them at once becomes a hassle when I have to go one by one, checking each contact individually. Snapchat has yet to implement a 'select all' option on the contacts list, so here ...more

The little black status bar at the top of your screen is great for at-a-glance info, but let's face it—it's pretty ugly. If you want to hide it completely, only showing it when you need it, check out our guide on using Immersive Mode in KitKat. However, if you want to keep the ...more

The basic clock app on Android devices is functional and has a few nice features. One of these is a "World Clock" view, which lets you see the current time in different cities across the world, and shows the time in your location at the top. But of course, the local time in y ...more

S Health is one of the biggest selling points for newer Samsung Galaxy devices. It offers a centralized place to view and manage data collected by all of the various sensors like the heart rate monitor. As wonderful as this service is, all of its features are not available in ...more

As a preventative measure against exploitation, certain Android applications won't work if your device is rooted. Opening one of these apps that detects root will typically end up with a warning and an inability to access its features, like in the picture below. AS IF! Since ...more

Twitter found a sweet spot with its 160-character limit, but Snapchat sports a social media low of 31 characters, forcing us to condense our ideas into a few short words when typing in picture captions because of their ephemeral nature. While this severely limited amount of wo ...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

Lock screen security provides a means of safety when it comes to keeping others from breaking into our smartphones and snooping around on or stealing private information like documents, emails, photos, and videos. While pattern locks are definitely useful, they can become a n ...more

There is only one time every year where I will willingly watch advertisements—during the Super Bowl. Maybe a Victoria's Secret commercial every now and then, too, but that's about it. So, when I'm on YouTube trying to watch a two-year-old skateboard, the last thing I want to ...more

Almost every Android device comes with a Google search bar embedded directly into its stock home screen app. But Google search is available in so many different places on Android that having this bar in your launcher is almost overkill. On top of that, Google recently changed ...more

WhatsApp recently updated their emojis (or emoji, depending on your preference), but it wasn't exactly a welcome change. Many users have complained that the new smilies are just way too big, others aren't too fond of the shinier appearance, and countless folks have been ventin ...more

Yes, they're called volume keys, but they can do much more than adjust your volume. With minimal effort, you can do some amazing things with these physical buttons, like secretly record videos, toggle on your flashlight, scroll through pages, control your music, and much more. ...more

Screen timeouts serve mostly as security measures and energy savers, but they can also interrupt you when you're reading a book or editing a document. There is no built-in way to manage screen timeouts on a per-app basis, but if you've got root access, you can do just that usi ...more

According to a recent survey conducted by Edison Research and Statista, Pandora still has a firm grasp as the most popular music streaming service in the United States. With iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, and even Spotify trailing behind by a large margin, it doesn't look like Pan ...more

For the most part, Google Play Music makes it extremely easy to upload and organize your music library, as well as access it quickly using the default settings—but there are a few things it could do better. In your settings, you can adjust the equalizer, block explicit songs, ...more

YouTube makes money hand over fist every year selling ad space to companies, but unless you're reaping those benefits, they can be pretty annoying. Luckily, there is a simple way to get rid them on your rooted HTC One with Xposed and YouTube AdAway. YouTube AdAway is an Xpose ...more

While some Android applications have built-in gestures that allow you to perform certain actions, it's not a feature that's been comprehensively, let alone consistently implemented. If you're on Twitter or Facebook and you want to go back, the only global way is by tapping on ...more

Oddly enough, stock Android does not come with a "do not disturb" function out of the box. Samsung has their own version built into to TouchWiz called "Blocking Mode," and Apple has had their "Do Not Disturb" feature since iOS 6, so why is stock Android so late to the game? N ...more

When opening a link or sharing a photo, your Android device will bring up a list of possible applications that you can complete the action with. However, some of the apps included you never use or didn't even know existed, and this leads to unnecessary clutter. Fortunately, if ...more

Jotting down notes is something we all do, and with the convenience of Google Keep, it is easier than ever to have them synced across all your devices. The only downside is that they can become a huge cluster of duplicates and uselessness after a while. You could always delet ...more

I find that little annoyances are always far more irritating than their larger counterparts, especially if there's no obvious way to get rid of them. One of these "little" annoyances on my Samsung Galaxy S4 is actually quite tiny, but it's enough to drive me crazy, and most l ...more

By default, Android limits your call history to the last 500 incoming, outgoing, or missed calls. When you reach this limit, older entries get trimmed off the bottom of the list and deleted forever. This isn't an issue with storage space, because even the biggest call logs onl ...more

Chrome's text selection interface is pretty nice, but it could definitely use some improvements. For instance, when you're in Incognito Mode, you can't perform a web search for words you've highlighted. And when you're typing out a forum post or using any text input field, for ...more

Over the years, we've covered many different methods for enabling background playback for YouTube videos on Android, but none have ever been as easy as this: Simply watch the videos with Firefox for Android, and they'll continue playing when you leave the app. Don't Miss: 20 ...more

Launcher shortcuts, which let you skip directly to a specific function on an app when you open it, first appeared in a recent Android N preview build, and now we're getting a look at how the feature might look in action. There are no apps that currently take advantage of thes ...more

There aren't many complaints I can think of when it comes to the Instagram interface, and finding one would just be nitpicking. But like with most things in life, if given the opportunity, why not take advantage? "When in Rome," as they say. So when developer Daniel Osinski r ...more

Maybe it was the years of concerts with deafening speakers blasting music into my ears, but I always listen to my tunes as loud as the volume allows me. So, it's pretty annoying when I get a "high volume" warning every time I listen to music on my OnePlus One with my headphone ...more

In an attempt to keep things simple, Snapchat has a limited amount of editing features, made up of "smart" photo filters, drawing pens, and special text captions. If you want more editing capabilities, you'll be pleased to know there's a way, no thanks to Snapchat, but you wil ...more

OnePlus offers a variety of features that you don't get with some other Android phones. Parallel Apps is one of those standout extras you didn't know you might enjoy until you've tried it. It allows you to clone compatible apps installed on your device, which means you can use ...more

On Android, there is a vulnerability that Google doesn't seem to want to fix — anyone can open the Quick Settings panel on your lock screen. GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, all toggles accessible in this menu, are vital tools for locating your phone in case it is ever stolen. But t ...more

Gotta catch 'em all, right? That's easier said than done, considering that Pokémon GO has region-specific characters that you may never get a chance to see. Sure, you can spoof your GPS location to make the augmented reality game think you're at a different spot on the map, bu ...more

While browsing the internet on your Samsung Galaxy S4, you've probably scrolled to the bottom of a very long webpage, Twitter feed, or down into the abyss of some other app. Depending just how far down you've scrolled, it can be a test of your patience (and fingertips) scrolli ...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

Android is all about the fine details. You can make a little tweak here and a little tweak there and completely customize your experience to be exactly how you want it to be. Sure, you don't need to customize LED colors or screen record, but it's nice to know you can. Today, ...more

When Android N is officially released sometime later this year, it will bring a lot of cool new features along with it. We've already had the chance to play around with some of these, thanks to a preview build available to Android beta testers, and one change that we like in p ...more

Android's main UI is looking so good these days that you hardly ever see developers spend time creating themes anymore. But even with the beauty of Material Design working in our favor now, there's always room for improvement, right? Recently, developer Thunder07 created an X ...more

Some apps have a nasty habit of ignoring your Android's auto-rotation settings and locking the display into either portrait or landscape orientation. When you open one of these apps, the screen goes into landscape view and you're forced to hold your phone differently. Convers ...more

Stock Android has come with lock screen widget support for a couple of years now, ever since the days of the first Ice Cream Sandwich build. But for some reason, Samsung decided to remove this feature in the Galaxy S5. Developer elesbb has stepped in with an Xposed Module to ...more

Android updates are a funny thing—they give us a host of new features and upgrades, but they can also change things that we're used to. And sometimes we prefer to have things the way they were. We embraced the new Google Now integration in KitKat, and some of us asked, "OK Go ...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

When it comes to blocking unwanted calls, your Android device comes stocked with a native blocking feature that allows you to reject certain phone numbers. That being said, the native blocking feature on the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 isn't the prettiest or the smartest, with its n ...more

You've seen it a million times. You try to do something on your Android device and a box pops up asking you which app you'd like to use. You could try Photos, Gallery, Drive, Picasa Web Albums...the list is fairly extensive sometimes. And what's worse, after that you have to s ...more

Google's YouTube Red is an awesome service, particularly in the United States where it comes bundled with a subscription to Google Play Music. You don't have to worry about ever seeing ads again on any videos, you can continue playback after you exit the YouTube app or even wh ...more

For some odd reason, the Chrome Browser on Android doesn't allow you to search selected text when you're in Incognito Mode. This must have been an oversight on Google's part, because the feature is definitely present with the browser in its normal viewing mode, allowing you to ...more

Even with the highest-tiered data plan available, there are times that your phone or your carrier might downgrade your connection to 3G or even lower. This usually occurs when you've made a phone call, or you've switched cell towers while traveling. And after that downgrade o ...more

When Google first introduced Android 4.4, the most glaring user-facing change was a new trend towards transparency. The stock launcher, originally exclusive to the Nexus 5, had transparent status and navigation bars and its app drawer added a touch of transparency. They even ...more

Normal wear and tear, combined with unfortunate accidents, can take a toll on any smartphone leading to scratches, cracks, and breaks that can leave physical buttons useless. One of the first buttons to usually go is the power button, since it's the main way to turn your phone ...more

A great aspect of using Android is having the ability to change and tweak aspects of the user experience to your liking. You can easily change things like home screens, widgets, and icons on your Nexus 7 tablet, but also core system settings if you want, like volume settings. ...more

Skype is one of the most popular messaging and video chat services for a good reason—it's packed to the brim with tons of cool features. But one bit of functionality that Microsoft left out is the ability to block friend requests from people that aren't in your contacts, which ...more

The transition from Android KitKat to Lollipop was pretty drastic in the looks department. Google's new Material Design guidelines changed the way many parts of the UI function, like the notification drawer, status bar, and most notably, the lock screen. Don't Miss: How to Pr ...more

Google debuted YouTube Music Key in November, and for $10 a month, this essentially turned YouTube into a music streaming service. With ad-free music videos and background audio playback, YouTube serves as a viable alternative to Spotify or Pandora for Music Key subscribers. ...more

Honestly, Android's stock alarm icon is completely useless. It doesn't relay any information other than the fact that, at some point in the future, you have an alarm coming up. Considering how pointless it is, I normally install GravityBox or other similar mods just to get rid ...more

When theming Android, it's the little touches that complete the look, making your device yours. If you're rooted, you probably know by now that there's virtually nothing you can't change the look of on Android. The Xposed Framework allows modules to easily hook into system-le ...more