Setting up Face ID is simple, but getting it to work correctly every time is a different story. While there are numerous tips for getting Face ID to work every time you need it on your iPhone X, XS, XS Max, or XR, Apple has added a better option in iOS 12 that lets you add an "alternative appearance."
Most of us have, at one point or another, found ourselves glued to our smartphone in a trance-like state, totally unaware of what's around us. Well, Apple has a way to curb overuse with an awesome tool for iPhone starting in iOS 12. It can help nudge us away from our phones to spend more time attending to real-life matters.
Uber is one of the best ride sharing services out there, allowing you to travel without needing to be tethered to a car of your own. Still, if you're a frequent flyer, you may get tired of entering the same few locations into your app every time you use it. Fortunately, Uber lets you streamline this process.
Predictive text is a common feature in most mobile keyboards these days. However, many times, its guesses are way off, sometimes hilariously so. As absurd as it can be, predictive text can also continuously suggest the same wrong word over and over. Thankfully, Gboard offers users a way to quickly remove these suggestions for good on both iOS and Android.
Starting with Android 8.0 Oreo, the process of sideloading apps has changed dramatically. Google removed the old "Unknown Sources" setting and replaced it with a permission that you have to grant to individual apps. It's really an interesting security feature.
The Android version of Google Chrome only shows a home button on some devices. Unfortunately, this feature isn't available to all Android phones due to several factors. But thanks to a simple workaround, you can now enable this button and set a home page regardless of what device you have.
Great ideas often strike at random times, but messaging friends and loved ones at an inopportune hour not only risks their wrath, but also increases the chances of your message not being paid proper attention to. Thankfully, there's an app that lets you create and post WhatsApp messages at the time you wish for maximum effect.
With much of the hype centered around its powerful cameras, it's easy to overlook the equally impressive audio capabilities of the Galaxy S9. After all, the S9 and S9+ are the first Samsung flagships to feature AKG-tuned stereo speakers, and that's not even mentioning all the software enhancements that help deliver rich, immersive sound in several different listening situations.
There are few apps or services better than Slack for keeping a team both communicative and productive. But it also makes it difficult to escape your job — after work hours and weekends should be yours, not Slack's. If you want to stop the barrage of notifications and messages on your time off, you should make use of Slack's "Do Not Disturb" and "Away" settings.
Taking one-handed pictures with your phone can quickly devolve into a juggling act. You have to secure the phone in landscape mode (if you're doing it right), tap to focus, and then somehow hit the shutter button without shaking the device too much. Fortunately, Samsung has a nifty feature that'll help you keep a more secure grip on your Galaxy S9 or S9+ as you take photos with one hand.
If you recently received your new Galaxy S9 or S9+, you're probably excited to try out all of the features the flagship offers. While many of the features are self-explanatory and easy to access, there are a handful of very useful items that Samsung has buried in the settings menu. Enabling these hidden features will help you unlock the true power of your new device.
Your homepage should be the site you most likely need to check whenever you start a new session with Samsung Internet. However, times change — perhaps the site you're currently browsing is just what you need to see multiple times a day. In that case, you'll want to know a quick and easy way to set it as your default homepage.
There's a new secret settings menu hiding in Android 9.0 Pie that offers Chrome-style "flags" to the overall operating system. Since it's currently the first Developer Preview and Public Beta versions, it's possible that this menu could disappear entirely when the stable version finally gets released, but it could also persist in its current hidden state where you have to unlock it.
Samsung's Galaxy S9 has the best smartphone display among any in its class, beating out the likes of the Google Pixel 2 XL and iPhone X. However, Samsung doesn't unlock the true power of its screen out of the box. To do that, you'll need to rummage through a few settings on your way to maxing out the resolution of your Galaxy S9 or S9+.
Waze is the go-to navigation app for millions of drivers, and it's easy to see why. Benefits such crowd-sourced traffic data, police trap locations, and road work avoidance are just the tip of the iceberg. It can almost be overwhelming, but with these simple tips, you'll master Waze and start navigating like an expert in no time.
For parents that have an iPhone X, things are about to get a lot easier for you in iOS 11.3, which finally lets you approve app and media downloads on your child's iPhone using Face ID instead of typing in a password.
Apple has tools built into iOS to help parents monitor the iPhone habits of their children. However, those same tools can be used by everyday iPhone owners to both hide apps they don't care about, as well as restrict features they don't need or that infringe on privacy. Whether you fit into one category or the other, all iPhone users can benefit from the "Restrictions" feature.
Android users have had access to live wallpapers since the Eclair days, but some newer apps have made this feature even more useful. Now, you have the ability to use GIFs as your wallpaper, and through the marvels of modern technology, you can even set a video as your home screen and lock screen background.
Recently, iPhone users have been bragging that they can set Live Photos as their lock screen wallpaper. While this is a great way to spice up a boring lock screen, Android users shouldn't feel left out in the cold. The highly customizable and feature-rich OS has a few tricks up its sleeve too, and it's really easy to set any GIF as your Android's home screen and/or lock screen background.
One of Apple's best products is iMessage, which allows for quick, creative, and free messaging between iOS and Mac devices. However, users are reporting that conversation threads in the Messages app are occasionally out of order, which is equal parts confusing and annoying. Luckily, we have some ideas on how to fix the problem.
Your email is just that — yours. You shouldn't have to worry about other people gaining access to it on your iPhone. Fortunately, Outlook agrees, and has included a way for you to protect your messages with one of two keys no one possesses but you — your face or fingerprint.
With email, one size does not typically fit all. You have multiple email accounts, each for different purposes and with varying levels of importance, so it only makes sense to customize the way your phone alerts you to each account's incoming emails. Luckily, Outlook allows you to do just that.
One of the biggest gripes we always hear about is the changes OEMs make to Android's notification shade. Icon styling and home screen layouts can be fixed with custom launchers like Nova and Action, but we're stuck with the tacky Quick Settings theme our phones came with. Today, we no longer have to envy Pixel 2 owners, as a new app will give you that clean stock Android look on any phone.
TeslaCoil's Nova Launcher is one of the best home screen apps on the Play Store. It's about as fast as it gets, and it's always among the first to add the latest Android features. However, it looks like Nova Launcher isn't showing users all of the customization options available — apparently, there's a secret menu, and it's pretty simple to unlock.
If you're trying to get somewhere fast, taking a toll road or two can definitely help you do that, but at a cost. When you're not in any rush, that would-be toll money will work much better in your gas tank, especially if it's only minutes that are being shaved from your trip. With this in mind, Apple Maps has a simple way of avoiding tolls to save you money while navigating on your iPhone.
With the raw, visceral feeling of zooming around on the open road, it's easy to get carried away when you're out for a ride on your chopper, super bike, or scooter. This increases your chances of getting lost, plus routes can differ slightly for motorcyclists and cagers, unbeknownst to most drivers. Luckily, Waze has rolled out a feature that caters specifically to bikers.
So after setting everything up, creating the system, working with focus and gaze, creating our bounding box and UI elements, unlocking the menu movement, as well as jumping through hoops refactoring a few parts of the system itself, we have finally made it to the point in our series on dynamic user interfaces for HoloLens where we get some real interaction.
The default look for Kodi is a menu that shows all of the possible media playback options available to the media player. From movies to radio, Kodi's main menu has an option to meet your needs. But everyone's needs are different, and sometimes we don't want all of these options.
So you spent all day customizing your phone. You tinkered with all the settings, searched the web high and low for the perfect wallpaper, and found an ideal icon pack to complement the color scheme. You go to sleep, proud of the work you accomplished when the unspeakable happens — your phone freezes and tech support is telling you to do a factory reset to fix the problem.
AirDrop is an underrated feature that lets you to quickly transfer files like songs and photos via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi from your iPhone to Macs and other iOS devices. It's been a staple in the Control Center ever since iOS 7, prominently displayed for easy access. However, with iOS 11, that quick access to AirDrop has seemingly disappeared.
Using the Mail app to log in and sync to email services such as Gmail and Outlook is incredibly easy to accomplish on the iPhone thanks to the intuitive nature of its operating system. This is still evident with iOS 11, and though the process differs slightly from its predecessors, it can still be accomplished with relative ease.
When you're sending sensitive information via email, it's best to do so with end-to-end encryption. Even better, set the email to destroy itself after a set amount of time for a little piece of mind.
Your display name in ProtonMail is what email recipients will see when they first receive your message in ProtonMail, Gmail, or another email provider. You can choose this name when you first set up your ProtonMail account, but it can also be set up after the fact if you skipped that step.
While it's easy enough to take a screenshot of an end-to-end encrypted Telegram chat thread using an iPhone, it's an entirely different story on Android phones. Telegram disables screenshots for Secret Chats by default on Android, and not everyone can turn it on.
If you're not a fan of your iPhone's ability to adjust screen brightness by itself, you've probably turned off auto-brightness on multiple occasions in the past. All you would do is go to your "Display & Brightness" settings and toggle it off, but that's no longer the case in iOS 11 and iOS 12 — whether you have an iPhone X, XS, XS Max, XR or any older supported iPhone.
The Google Assistant comes in several different flavors. There's the baked-in Google app on Android, the dedicated Google Assistant app on iOS, and the Assistant-powered Google Home smart speaker. But no matter how you access it, your Assistant will only get better if you take some time to personalize things.
The Google Assistant is an incredibly useful tool that's now available for both Android and iOS. You can use plain English to send voice commands that range from turning off your smart lights to answering almost any question — but many of these features won't work properly if you have certain Google activity controls disabled.
When you're on the go, Plex makes sure your media always stays with you. Just install the server app for Mac or PC and enable remote access, then you can stream movies and TV shows from your computer to your phone over the internet.
Life is all about spending time together with loved ones, experiencing new places together to enjoy and create memorable moments. Luckily, Google has made it easier for us to rendezvous with friends and family at specific places by letting us broadcast our locations using Google Maps.
By default, when you receive a FaceTime video call on your iPhone, the speakerphone kicks in immediately after answering unless you're wearing headphones. It's the exact opposite when it comes to FaceTime audio calls, but it's pretty easy to remedy if you'd rather have the speakerphone kick in instead of the built-in ear speaker.
