News: The 5 Most Useful File-Sharing Apps for Android
Heads up! We've done a new, more thorough review of the best Android file-sharing apps. You can check that out here. Our old file-sharing app roundup can still be viewed below for posterity.
Automated Service Search Results
How To: Completely Banish Google from Your Android Experience
Update (February 2019): The methods below will help on older Android versions, but we've recently revisited this topic. So if you have a newer Android phone and you want to get rid of Google, head here.
How To: Exploit Shellshock-Vulnerable Websites with Just a Web Browser
I'm sure that many of us have heard of that nasty Shellshock vulnerability, but not very many people know how to exploit it. Try these few tricks on vulnerable websites!
Best Android Antivirus: Avast vs. AVG vs. Kaspersky vs. McAfee
When it comes to antivirus software, you don't want some fly-by-night developer having access to the sensitive data that these apps can scan. Luckily, most of the longest-tenured antivirus companies from the realm of desktop computers offer complete security suites for Android these days.
How To: The 55 Coolest New iOS 9 Features You Didn't Know About
Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 9, may not be the huge overhaul that iOS 8 was, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of new features. In fact, there are a ton of subtle changes that you may not notice right away. Here's a rundown of all the coolest new features you need to know about on the new iOS 9 for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
How To: Find Target Location with an iPhone Picture
Welcome back, my hacking friends. We use our smartphones every day, for business, socialization, and leisure. The number of iPhone users is increasing in dozens of millions every year, with a whopping 63.2 million users in 2014 alone. That's a lot of users.
How To: Disable Heads-Up (Pop-Up) Notifications in Android Lollipop Without Root
Android Lollipop, introduced an array of new features and aesthetics that pleased many loyal users. One of those additions being the new heads-up notifications. Taking subtle inspiration from iOS, these notifications are visually appealing and can be easily dismissed or expanded, but they do require that you take an action before they go away immediately. Of course, you can always wait 10 seconds for them to disappear, but that can be really annoying if you're in the middle of a game or editi...
How To: Install Sony's Newest Album & Walkman Apps on Almost Any Android
Sony's Xperia line of smartphones are beautifully crafted and have many great features. But considering the fact that Sony has evolved into a media company over the last two decades, it's their media-related apps that stand out the most.
How To: Set Up & Use Apple Pay on Your Apple Watch
As you're probably well aware by now, the Apple Watch isn't just for sending text messages and checking Instagram—you can also use it as your wallet. With Apple Pay compatibility, you can use your Watch to make purchases at any retailer that accepts the payment service.
News: Use Google Search to Locate Your Android Phone or Tablet, Send Directions to It & More
A set of cool new Android-related Google Search functions made their debut this week, which will allow you to locate your phone, send directions to your mobile device, set alarms and reminders, and send notes from any web browser.
How To: Mimic the Galaxy S6's SOS Feature on Any Android Device
Smartphones are great at keeping us busy with games, social media, and messaging apps, but there has been a recent push for them to also help keep us safe (and I'm not talking about from hackers, though that is equally important).
How To: Purge Your Inbox of Account Passwords with Dashlane's Email Security Scanner
With troves of sensitive information, like receipts and password reminders, hiding in your email, your inbox can become a sort of Holy Grail for hackers—or anyone with your password. Although my crazy ex-girlfriend had no hacking experience, using my email login, she was able to find a lot of account information with just a general search for "password" in my inbox.
How To: The Easiest Way to Discover New Music on Your Phone
Resources for finding new music are at our disposal in all corners of the internet; the only problem is deciding which one is the best for you. Spotify, Pandora, and Rdio all have options to discover new music on your smartphone, but they tend to expose mostly established artists, making the process of finding lesser-known but good music a game of trial and error.
News: Facebook's Riff App Makes Snapchat Stories (But with Friends)
In the shadow of Facebook's announcement for third-party app development on Messenger, the company has announced the release of a whole new application called Riff, a creative tool for making videos with friends.
How To: Open Links Directly into Chrome's Incognito Mode on Android
Chrome's Incognito Mode is a great feature for folks that don't want their browsing history tracked. When it's enabled, Incognito Mode makes sure that all cookies and cache that are saved while you're browsing are deleted as soon as you leave a webpage.
Cyberwar: Hacker vs. Hacker
From time immemorial, human beings seem to be at odds with one another. When these differences become so heated and unresolvable, it eventually erodes into physical violence. This violence has manifested into some of the most horrific exercises in human history, things which every school child is aware of and none of which we have to recount here. Although humans have been cruel and violent for a very long time, the 20th century may have epitomized that behavior. With two World Wars and many,...
How To: Change Netflix's Pesky Horizontal Scrolling into a Movie Grid View for Easier Browsing
Netflix was my proverbial gateway drug to cord-cutting, as I'm sure it was for many others. Yet as much as I truly love Netflix and its service, there are some annoyances I have with the interface of the desktop web version.
How To: The Best Way to Create Photo Collages for Instagram Pics on Android & iPhone
If you're one of the many that likes to upload collages to Instagram, the Facebook company has a new tool for you. Instagram released a brand new app in March called Layout to help facilitate the process of creating photo layouts to post onto social media or just share with friends.
How To: Stream Beats Music in Safari Using HTML5 Instead of Flash Player
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 than Adobe Flash Player to attacks (for the moment).
How To: Play Cards Against Humanity with Anyone on Any Computer, Phone, or Tablet
Cards Against Humanity is a popular party game with good old-fashioned raunchy adult themes that go quite well with a few alcoholic beverages. Up until now, though, you had to either print out a set of cards or order the official deck to play—unless, of course, all players happened to have devices that sported the same operating system.
How To: Automatically Add Your Shazam Songs to a Rdio or Spotify Playlist
We recently showed you how to recover your Shazam history from Siri, which is a lot less intuitive than finding the songs you've tagged directly in the Shazam app. But with a subscription to Rdio or Spotify, there's no need to even locate your history. You can Shazam songs and have them automatically added to a newly created playlist titled "My Shazam Tracks."
News: How to Keep Your Kids Safe on YouTube for Android & iOS
These days, we truly have a world of knowledge at our fingertips. Trouble is, a large portion of that information is not something you'd want your five-year-old learning about quite yet.
How To: Control Music & Videos Using Hand Gestures on Your Mac
Looking back at my childhood in the '90s, I can't help but feel like I was deceived. Movies that took place in the "future," like in the year 2015, would showcase awesome technology. You know, self-driving or flying cars, hoverboards, and virtual displays controlled with hand gestures—so where are they?!
Dating by Profession: Retailers Don't Say No; Students Can't Get a Date
Are you a lawyer who's married to a computer programmer? Chances are you might not have even dated if you first met online.
How To: Secretly Call & Message Contacts Using an Innocent-Looking Android Calculator
Whether you're a secret spy or just a regular person with a few secrets, you may want to keep certain information on your smartphone private, and it's totally possible on Android to do so.
How To: Auto-Lower Music Volume Gradually on Android to Drift Off to Sleep More Peacefully
You don't need a study to tell you how beneficial music is to helping you fall asleep. Most of you probably have your soothing playlist and SleepPhones queued up and ready to go before you get into bed and count those Zs.
Unsubscriber: The Easiest Way to Get Rid of Annoying Emails in Gmail on Your iPhone
You've undoubtedly used your email address to sign up for a chance to win something online or to purchase something on sale. Often, these offers are too enticing to pass up, and you reason that you'll live with the consequences of handing out your information for the chance at making out big.
How To: Get Faster Access to Your Favorite WhatsApp Contacts on Your iPhone
WhatsApp is the go-to application for sending a message (or 100) to friends at home and abroad. And the best thing is, the service has remained true to its roots after Facebook acquired the company for $19 billion.
How To: Facebook Undo Gives You 5 Seconds to Think About What You’re Actually Posting
While it's currently impossible to go back in time, there is something wonderful about being able to undo the stupid stuff that you just did. While this is only really possible in the digital world, it does save you from real-life repercussions. If you've ever sent an email to the wrong person or sent some not-so-genius text messages, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
How To: Automatically Mute Media Playback When You Put Your Android in Priority Mode
One of the more talked-about features of Android Lollipop is a new Priority Mode that allows you to mute all notifications except for those coming from starred contacts. As simple as that sounds, this can still be a bit confusing—or at least lead to some unwanted interruptions.
How To: Watch Sony's "The Interview" Right Now (Update: Now on Netflix)
Surely you're aware of the Sony hacking scandal by now (here's a quick primer if you're not), as well as the multi-billion dollar company initially bowing to threats by canceling the Christmas release of the The Interview, the film at the center of the whole debacle.
How To: Use Your Computer to Send & Receive WhatsApp Messages Faster
Pretty much my only gripe with computer-side messaging clients like Mighty Text is that they don't allow you to send and receive messages shared through WhatsApp, the popular third-party messaging application, which was purchased earlier this year for $19 billion by Facebook.
Hack Like a Pro: Metasploit for the Aspiring Hacker, Part 4 (Armitage)
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! As you know by now, the Metasploit Framework is one of my favorite hacking tools. It is capable of embedding code into a remote system and controlling it, scanning systems for recon, and fuzzing systems to find buffer overflows. Plus, all of this can be integrated into Rapid7's excellent vulnerability scanner Nexpose.
How To: Unlock Your iPhone with Custom Images Instead of Numbers
One feature that the majority of iPhone owners utilize is the device's passcode security lock. And while iOS 8 ushered in device customizations that add a whole new level of personalization on the Apple's mobile devices, the lock screen passcode page remains frustratingly the same.
How To: Dashlane & LastPass Can Now Automatically Strengthen All of Your Weak Passwords
A group ironically called the "Guardians of Peace" hacked into Sony Pictures' computer systems and released a mountain of internal information such as medical records, leaked scripts, work complaints, and even celebrity aliases.
How To: Skip Ads When Listening to iTunes Radio on Your Mac or iOS Device
iTunes Radio, Apple's answer to Pandora, provides endless hours of free music streaming, but like other so-called "free" services, every now and then you're going to hear some ads. While you may not be bombarded with them, they can definitely kill the vibe when you're jamming to your favorite stations.
How To: Fix Wi-Fi Performance Issues in iOS 8 & Yosemite
You can find hundreds, if not thousands, of complaints about Wi-Fi performance issues with iOS 8 across all Apple devices. Even I had the issue on my iPhone 5S. The Wi-Fi connection on my router was strong, but I was getting extremely slow speeds. So slow, that I would resort to using LTE instead of Wi-Fi, which in turn led to going over my monthly data allotment.
How To: Get New Playback Controls for iTunes, Spotify, & More on Your Mac
I just about always have iTunes running in the background when using my Mac, but switching in and out of the app to change songs and albums can make focusing on my main task difficult. To help keep my mind on track, I have a few extensions enabled to take control of my music playback.
How To: Access the App Switcher from Your iPhone's Control Center
How many times do you think you press the Home button on your iPhone? You probably can't place a number on it, but you know it's a lot.
How To: Get Instagram Preview Photos Back on Twitter
In late 2012, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom made a sudden and controversial change to his social media service when he removed Twitter Card support.