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How To: Set & Remove Nicknames in Facebook Messenger Chats for More Personalized Conversations

For the most part, people use real names on Facebook. That's all fine and well for keeping tabs on those you know, but it can make friendly Messenger chats feel oddly formal. Skirt around this stiffness by giving your friends nicknames in Messenger for Android and iOS, so your conversations reflect the way you and your friends communicate in real life.

How To: Turn Off Those Annoying Amber Alerts & Emergency Broadcasts on Your Android

To bring things up to code with a new FCC standard, Android recently added an "Emergency broadcasts" feature that will make your smartphone notify you whenever a potential safety threat or Amber Alert is posted in your area. Even if you have your phone set to silent, these emergency alerts will cause your device to emit a loud, piercing sound when a potential threat is nearby.

How To: Change the Chat Color in Messenger Threads to Personalize a Conversation

Blue has defined Facebook's color scheme since its inception. Both Facebook's main app and Messenger theme are blue, which means your chat bubbles, like emoji, and menu bar items are also. While certainly a satisfying color for chat, you may get sick of it after a while, especially when it's in every thread. Luckily, Facebook lets you customize the color of individual Messenger chats.

How To: Disable Read Receipts in WhatsApp So Nobody Can See Those Blue Check Marks in Chats

WhatsApp, like other popular messengers on iOS and Android, shows when recipients have read your sent messages with a blue double check mark indicator. On the flip side, for those of you who are bad at replying promptly or don't feel like replying at all, you can disable "read receipts" so the senders won't know when or if you even read their messages.

How To: Make Texts & iMessages Stand Out on Your iPhone with Bold Subject Lines

The subject line is a crucial part of an email, but you don't see it very often in texts. That's mostly because many people don't even know it can be done, and even if they do, why would they use it? Just like with emails, subject lines can make iMessages and SMS texts seem more important and more professional. Plus, they can help with organization and searching past messages, as well as make text bold.

How To: Get the Pixel's Feature-Packed Google Camera App on Other Android Devices

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 means is that if you can get the Pixel's camera software, you can replicate the Pixel camera experience on other phones.

How To: Keep Facebook from Tracking Your Location When You're Not Using the App

When you think of companies that represent pillars like "privacy" or "security," Facebook is pretty far from the top of that list. However, the social media empire is making strides — small strides — to win trust with how it handles your user data. One of those efforts involves a way to prevent Facebook from tracking your iPhone or Android phone's location when you're not using the app.

How To: Temporarily Disable Your Instagram Account When You Need to Take an #InstaBreak

When you don't want certain friends viewing your account or just need to take a break from social media, Instagram lets you do so. While you can completely delete your Instagram account, then start over when you're ready again, it makes much more sense to just disable your account temporarily. Doing so will hide your profile, photos, comments, and likes from everyone, including your friends.

How To: Use Custom Background Colors & Translucent Overlays in Instagram Stories

On Instagram, you can write text over any picture or video in your Story, but it may be hard to get your message across with a distracting background. Although there is a "Type" option for Stories, which allows you to write text over colorful gradient backgrounds, the selection is limited to just over twenty options, and there are no options for solid colored backgrounds or translucent overlays.

How To: Use This Text Trick in Instagram Stories to Change Each Character's Color in Seconds

Instagram is all about the hook. If you want followers to stick around, you need to keep your content interesting and engaging. Rainbow text can really make your Stories pop, but it's not really an Instagram "feature," meaning it's not an easy task to accomplish. There is, however, an easy hack that takes all the work out of rainbow-colored text, making your Stories better overall.

How To: Record Your Sleep Patterns with Samsung Health — No Wearables Needed

The quality and length of your sleep will almost always dictate how the rest of your day unfolds. Sleeping fewer hours increases your chances of spending the day in a tired and cranky state, while having a restful night's sleep contributes greatly to being alert and productive. Luckily, if you want to track your sleep patterns to figure out how you can improve your circadian rhythm, Samsung Health has you covered.

How To: Cancel Your MyFitnessPal Premium Subscription on Android & iOS

In 2015, MyFitnessPal launched its premium service, an ad-free subscription for $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year which provides food analysis, deeper nutrient tools, more goal options, and exclusive content. After giving MyFitnessPal Premium a shot on your iPhone or Android phone, those perks may be unnecessary to your end goal, but you'll find that canceling your paid membership isn't very easy.

How To: Use Samsung Health to Diagnose Symptoms from the Privacy of Your Phone

You really can't go wrong with Samsung Health when it comes to staying on top of fitness-related data. Its features help you keep track of workouts, track calorie and nutrition intake, and monitor your heart rate, just to name a few. And if you start exhibiting symptoms you've never had before, you can even use the app to find out more about what's wrong with you.

How To: Download Maps & Navigation Routes for Offline Use in Apple Maps

Whether due to spotty cellular reception or just data that you want to save, popular navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze offer an offline feature that lets you navigate from one location to another in the absence of internet service. Apple Maps also lets you use its service offline on your iPhone, though the feature is not as straightforward as it is on its competitors.

How To: Read WhatsApp Messages Without Opening Them & Letting the Sender Know

WhatsApp comes with a ton of great features that make it the go-to messaging app for millions of people around the world. Among these is the ingeniously simple Read Receipts that let you know your message has been viewed. If you want to read a message without alerting the sender, however, there are simple tricks you can perform to give yourself plausible deniability.

News: The Best New Features in the Essential Phone Oreo Update

Essential recently launched their Android Oreo Beta Program, open to all owners of their PH-1 flagship. We detailed a quick and easy method for installing the beta on your device. With every beta program, there are bound to be plenty of new features and a few bugs, as we found out with the Galaxy S8 Oreo Beta. Let's take a look at what's new with Android 8.0 on the Essential Phone.

How To: Make a 'Thor - Ragnarok' Costume That Will Rock Halloween

You can bet Thor costumes will be prominent among the superheroes seen this Oct. 31. Since the summer, there has been no shortage of coverage for Thor: Ragnarok, and the timing of its November release couldn't be better as a tie-in with the cosplaying holiday known as Halloween. This year, the success of pulling off the Thor costume will rely on how well your new Thor helmet looks, which as it happens, you can DIY at home, using a few simple supplies and perhaps a trip or two to the craft and...

How To: Add Fade-Ins, Fade-Outs & Fade-Through Transitions to iMovie Projects on Your iPhone

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 beginning transitions to your first video clip or ending transitions to your last video clip. But that doesn't mean you can't.

How To: Format WhatsApp Messages with Italic, Bold, Strikethrough, or Monospaced Text

Unless you're a WhatsApp pro user, you may be surprised to know that there are text formatting options that you can apply to your messages. Markdown characters can help you emphasize certain words or phrases by making them italicized or bold, and it'll even let you cross out words and change the font. It's one of those nice touches that isn't available in most other messaging apps.

How To: Change Your FaceTime Caller ID to an Email Address or Phone Number

Whenever you make FaceTime audio or video calls from your iPhone, Apple automatically uses your phone number or Apple ID email address as the caller identification. So when someone that you're calling sees the incoming call, they'll see it's from your phone number or email address. But what if you'd rather it be a different identifier?