If you're like me, then your perfect Friday night has your friends over for some group-YouTube streaming. If you're not like me, you're probably cool. But for the rest of us, YouTube is meant to be a shared experience. I think YouTube has caught on to that trend, since it has developed Uptime, an app that lets you watch YouTube with other people wherever you all are.
Firefox Focus is Mozilla's effort to make your internet experience a little more secure. Originally released in November 2016 for iOS, Focus blocks internet trackers, search history, anything that gets in the way of a clean, private browsing experience.
We've been following the rumors surrounding the OnePlus 5 for a while, and we are more than excited to get our hands on it. That excitement has only increased today, as we learn OnePlus has included a feature in its newest device that resembles the iPhone 7 Plus — real dual cameras.
Online lives could be made easier now that Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger are testing merged app notifications. 'Could' being the operative word!
While it remains unknown how exactly augmented reality will make its way into the mainstream (the Microsoft HoloLens sitting at $3,000 isn't exactly accessible), many brands have been trying to integrate the tech into their mobile apps, mimicking the success of Snapchat and its popular AR filters. One of those brands going all in on augmented reality is Shazam.
Monday has been a big update day for Apple. Alongside the release of iOS 10.3, iWork has been updated across both iOS and macOS. The biggest change is the ability to unlock password-protected files with Touch ID, either on iPhone and iPad, or on the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.
The internet's an amazing place. The entirety of human knowledge is now accessible in an instant, and all sorts of media can be streamed directly to the palm of your hand. But, of course, that also includes the darker side of humanity, so there's plenty of NSFW content floating around out there that's certainly not suitable for children.
If you're ever in a major accident or have a bout with acute onset health problems, first responders will need to know as much information about you in order to provide proper care. For this reason, paramedics and firemen have been trained to search a subject's cell phone to find ICE (in case of emergency) contacts that know your allergies, blood type, and other vital details.
Sometimes it's the smallest feature in your smartphone that makes the biggest difference in user experience. Take screen timeout, for instance. You can probably think of plenty of times when your handset's display blacked out while you were in the middle of something. You could have been cooking with a recipe on the screen or looking at chords while you learned a new riff on your guitar.
Android Nougat has a new API that lets apps create their own custom Quick Settings tiles. A similar feature was buried in Android Marshmallow, but that required a hacky workaround, and most manufacturers disabled it in their custom versions of Android 6.0. But since this is an official API now, all phones that run Android 7.0 and higher should be able to use custom Quick Settings tiles going forward.
Apple has been aggressively smashing bugs with its last few updates to iOS 10, so it seems like all of the major work is done. With the iPhone 7 release date approaching fast, it's a good sign that the only remaining hurdles are relatively minor and cosmetic tweaks (though they still need to add the song lyrics they showed off a few months ago).
Move over rainbow food trends, there's a new, darker kid in town: jet black ice cream. And no, it doesn't have squid ink in it.
Google's Chrome browser comes pre-loaded on the vast majority of today's Android devices, and it's one of the fastest, most stable, and useful browsers out there. But it does have one major annoyance—while a page is loading, you'll see a link, then reach to tap it, but an element further up the page will load, and the link will jump out from underneath your fingertip.
One of the best new features in iOS 10 is the ability to delete all of those stock bloatware apps that you never use. Instead of hiding them in a folder somewhere to get them out of your way, you can finally remove them—or at least, that's what we wanted to believe.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, a new smartphone manufacturer named Nextbit emerged, then released its first flagship device—the Nextbit Robin. The headlining feature of this colorful gadget is its cloud-based app storage, but the phone itself comes with a very polished and sophisticated suite of software.
Microsoft released a robust version of the HoloLens when shipping the developer kits, but there's still lots of room left to grow. Today, they've released the first update to Windows Holographic, the operating system of the HoloLens, with a whole bunch of cool new features like voice commands and app multitasking.
Walking, talking, life-size holograms aren't just for staging Hatsune Miku concerts and reviving Tupac, Michael Jackson, and other fallen stars.
When it comes to photographing products, models, and other small objects, a good light box makes the process super easy, no matter what your skill level is. However, if you want to create decent 360-degree images, things get tricky really fast. A new product, the Foldio360, may provide some much needed relief though.
This card is awesome, there is no other words for it! It is pretty, eyecatching and just so gorgeous, using cardstock and vellum to create a wreath made of embossed roses. There are a few different techniques in this tutorial to make the wreath but they are all easy when you see how. Step 1: Items Used
Many websites are crowded with ads, pictures, and other irrelevant content that make it harder than necessary to read a simple article on your iPhone. In many cases, you have to zoom in just to get a better view of the text you're attempting to read—unless the webpage blocks zooming.
Living on a budget often means compromising what you want for what you need—or at least, for what's affordable. But that doesn't necessarily mean you have to compromise on flavor, especially if you know the right tips and tricks to make something spectacular out of the ordinary.
Mac OS X 10.11 and iOS 9 won't be officially released until later this year, but that doesn't mean you can't get a taste of it today. And the easiest way to do that is to download the new El Capitan and iOS 9 wallpapers.
Living in Southern California means I don't really have a need to check the weather all that often. But every now and then, I'm caught off guard by a particularly chilly or hot day—no one wants to be the only person walking around with a T-shirt and sandals on a rainy, 50-degree day.
I have a thing for black foods, whether it's mysterious, lovely black garlic (the secret to its color: fermentation) or adding charcoal powder with its reputed health benefits to cookies, cakes, and breads.
It probably doesn't happen much, but occasionally you'll run into a frozen or bugged-out app on your iPhone or other iOS device. That's where force-closing comes in, allowing you to close any app manually through a few clicks and swipes.
Android has a permission that allows apps to draw on top of other apps, but as fun as that may sound, it has mostly been used to create floating multitasking utilities. While these can certainly be useful, it would still be nice if this permission were taken literally and we could actually draw on top of apps.
Live wallpapers, like the classic Mario-themed one we previously covered, is a great way to spruce up your device and get some simple amusement. Unfortunately, they also drain more battery than conventional wallpapers. Which brings me to ASUS LiveOcean.
I'm all about customizing my iPhone and making it as different as possible from everyone else's. While it's easy to change the wallpaper, swap keyboards, and hide apps on your home screen, there's not much else you can do aesthetically without jailbreaking, especially when it comes to the status bar and app icons.
When it comes to subscription-based music streaming services, the conversation doesn't go much further than Spotify and Google Play Music (previously called "All Access"). Both services are essentially the same aside from slightly different catalogues and social options, and they both run ten bucks a month for unlimited music streaming and offline track saving (although Spotify does have a free, ad-supported service).
While the new Lollipop wallpapers are great, they'll eventually get stale like all of the others. I've covered a bunch of cool Android wallpaper apps previously, including ones that give you psychedelic and shake-to-change options, but this time I was on the hunt for some geometrical-based ones.
One of my favorite new additions to iOS is the ability to view battery usage stats on a per-app basis, which is helpful in knowing exactly which apps are taking up all of my iPhone's battery life. If you jailbreak iOS 8 on your device, you can take Apple's stock battery stats feature even further to give you details on how those apps are actually using the battery.
The original implementation of Android's face unlock feature was a mess. It took too long to unlock (when it worked), brought up a huge interface that overpowered the lock screen, and maybe most egregiously, was able to be "hacked" by someone holding up a picture of your mug.
Accumulating approximately one million downloads on the Google Play Store in less than 72 hours from its initial release, TouchPal instantly became a favorite among Android users.
Shortly after Apple's iOS 8.0.1 update fiasco ruined many iPhone users' cellular reception (which was fixed with iOS 8.0.2), developers were treated to the first beta release of iOS 8.1, which will be the next big update for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
A musical hiccup during a DJ's set can completely ruin the mood, and that same feeling can definitely translate to mobile listening as well.
The new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are supposed to last a lot longer in your pocket with improved battery life, but that doesn't mean that iOS 8 will be that friendly on your older iPhone model. All of those awesome new features could be killing your battery, but with some simple tweaking, your battery life concerns will be a mere afterthought.
Naps provide some serious mental and physical benefits, but not if they last too long or occur too late in the day. Ideally, you want to awake from a nap feeling alert and refreshed enough to attack the rest of your tasks with renewed zeal, but not energized to the point where you can't get to sleep at night. Alas, most of us don't know these tricks and end up messing with our sleep cycle (guilty).
Aside from a collection of new features, like Carousel Pinning, the latest update to the Amazon Fire Phone also ushered in Quick Switch functionality, allowing for quickly switching between or closing recent apps. Like the majority of mobile devices, this is our primary tool in multitasking as it allows us to easily jump from app to app, or close them with a flick.
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 person just said in order to properly form your response.
Maybe it is narcissistic to take selfies, but it has become a socially accepted norm, no matter how stupid you might look doing it. Since so many people are seemingly in love with themselves and mobile photography, I thought it was about time to show you how to step up your selfie game.
