For most Shortcuts automations you create on your iPhone, you'll get a "Running your automation" notification every time the task is automatically triggered. If you find those alerts annoyingly unnecessary, there's a less-than-ideal workaround to blocking them, but Apple gives us a better option in its iOS 15.4 update.
It's easier than ever to toggle your iPhone's flashlight (or torch) on and off. From your lock screen, home screen, or from within any app, most iPhone models will let you enable or disable the flashlight from the Control Center, via the Notification Center, or with Siri. But there's an even faster and more convenient way to trigger the flashlight button, and you don't even have to look at your iPhone to use it.
With iOS 14, Siri no longer takes up the entire display unless you want it to. That may be a good thing, but the update also axed the live feedback when listening to you and responding. Siri used to transcribe your words in on-screen text before answering, and it would transcribe its own answers as well. While it looks like those are gone, you can bring them back to life at any time.
Music streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music make it easy to find and play your favorite artists and albums on your iPhone — but they cost upward of $14.99 per month. If you're more into listening to downloaded music, a shortcut can help you find free music online that you can get and playback in almost any media player of your choosing.
At first, it may look like it's mostly a behind-the-scenes update, but iOS 14 public beta 6 is more than just that. The biggest addition to iOS 14 for iPhone in this version is the beginning of Spatial Audio, an AirPods Pro feature. Other notable changes in beta 6 appear in Maps, Mail, App Library, Photos, the home screen, and widgets, as well as in apps where you choose times.
Facebook Messenger's user base has grown so much that it has taken over text messaging as the primary contact method for many people. However, sometimes you might want to hide your online status from specific contacts and appear offline to others. There's a neat little trick you should know that can help you achieve this.
The ability to hide entire pages on your iPhone's home screen is an excellent privacy upgrade packed into iOS 14. That said, it can be a bit of a pain to find and open the hidden apps on those pages in a timely fashion. Luckily, iOS 14 has a solution that makes opening those apps, as well as any others, faster and more convenient — and we're not talking about the new App Library.
Even under normal circumstances, it's almost impossible to speak to a representative for a government agency or company in just one try. Many systems will put you on hold for long periods or ask to call you back when someone is available, but there are still some out there that just give you the busy signal over and over again. In those cases, there's a jailbreak tweak that can help.
Android 10 added the framework for OS-wide chat bubbles, a feature popularized by Facebook Messenger. The new system allows you to interact with incoming messages as if you were in the app — all without having to leave your current app. In Android 11, this feature is finally activated.
No matter how many camera improvements a phone adds, you're always better off using manual mode. Known as "Pro Mode" on the Galaxy S20, this feature can remove Samsung's pre- and post-processing from photos, putting you in total control.
It seems like each day our phones become more integrated into our lives. School, work, shopping — so many tasks either require a phone or heavily benefit from one. But our phones are a double-edged sword that can easily distract us and harm our mental health as well.
Apple hasn't refreshed its text tones on iPhones since iOS 7. That's six years of the same sounds. And while text tones like Bamboo and Hello have undoubtedly aged like fine wine, that's still too long to live with the same old sounds day after day. Let's take matters into our own hands — let's make our own text tones, right in Music on macOS 10.15 Catalina.
Have you ever heard someone else's iPhone ringing and thought it was yours? Of course you did. iPhone ringtones are iconic, but not varied. If you're using one of the more popular iOS sounds, you'll likely encounter it in the wild multiple times. Why bother, when you can create your own custom ringtones right on your Mac.
The long wait is over — the best augmented reality device on the planet is finally available.
While iOS 13 introduces over 200 new features for your iPhone, one of the biggest focuses this year is Photos and Camera. The update completely overhauls the Photos app, creating a more organized and natural way to interact with your pictures and videos. You'll also find a few new tricks in the Camera app. In all, Apple has added over 30 new features to your shooting, editing, and viewing experience.
If you like the "Street View" feature in Google Maps, you'll love "Look Around" in iOS 13's Apple Maps. Overall, Look Around has more details than Street View and the animations are super smooth as you navigate down streets and pedestrian areas. While Look Around isn't available in every city yet, it'll work the same way no matter which iPhone you're using.
Viewing available app updates and recently updated apps on your iPhone is more confusing and less obvious on iOS 13 than it was in iOS 12 and older.
The Reader mode in Safari is a great way to view a webpage on your iPhone in a stripped-down manner, removing unnecessary images, videos, and advertisements for a streamlined experience free of distractions. Apple's iOS 13 improves upon Safari Reader when it comes to choosing which sites you want it to run automatically on, so everything is more accessible with more controls to work with.
Firewall solutions for macOS aren't impervious to attacks. By taking advantage of web browser dependencies already whitelisted by the firewall, an attacker can exfiltrate data or remotely control a MacBook, iMac, Mac mini, or another computer running macOS (previously known as Mac OS X).
When you can't think of a way to respond in Messenger with words, emojis and stickers will do the trick. Since Facebook is all about the "likes," which use a thumbs-up icon, there's a shortcut to the symbol just to the right of the chat field. It's always there to send a quick like in response to something. But it doesn't have to be the standard Facebook thumbs-up sign — it can be any emoji you want.
A few months ago, iOS 12.1 came out with a handful of useful new features, and iOS 12.2 goes even further. While some of iOS 12.2's new features for iPhone are much welcomed, there are some that we'd be better without.
Switching phones has never been easier. Google backs up most of your app data on the cloud, which can then be restored onto your new phone. Sadly, Signal doesn't use this feature since it could compromise your security. Instead, Signal stores encrypted backups locally, requiring a bit of work to restore these messages.
Since iCloud's introduction in 2011, you get only 5 GB of complimentary cloud storage with your Apple account. With iPhone backups, app data, iCloud Drive files, and even emails (if you have a Mac, Me, or iCloud email address), you'll quickly run out of space to back up photos and videos. Fortunately, Google offers 15 GB of free storage, making it easy to upload your Camera Roll for safekeeping.
Update: The LG G8 ThinQ has been announced. You can read all of the official specs at our full article on the new phone.
Traditionally, if you were looking for end-to-end encrypted messaging, you'd stick with something like iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal. However, if you already use Facebook Messenger, you have all you need for truly private chats with its built-in E2E encryption. It's available to all users, on Android and iOS — you just need to know where to look.
Every photo you take is brimming with metadata such as iPhone model, date and time, shooting modes, focal length, shutter speed, flash use, and geolocation information. Share these pictures with friends, family, or acquaintances via texts, emails, or another direct share method, and you unwittingly share your location data. Even sharing via apps and social media sites can compromise your privacy.
The macOS 10.14 security update tried to make parts of the operating system difficult for hackers to access. Let's take a closer look at how its new feature works and what we can do to spoof the origin of an application attempting to access protected data.
Although the Essential PH-1 got off to a rocky start, thanks to steady updates, it has slowly become one of the best Android phones to come out in recent years. For $499, the Essential Phone is a cheaper Pixel, receiving updates almost as soon as the Pixel lineup does. What's more, you get a phone with an easily unlockable bootloader, which is the first step to rooting.
There are nearly 100,000 unique onion service addresses online with over two million people using Tor every single day. Join me as I explore a small fraction of what the Tor network has to offer.
Apple released the fifth developer beta for iOS 12 on Monday, July 30, only 13 days after the release of dev beta 4 and 12 days after public beta 3. Until this release, Apple kept a consistent two-week schedule for developer beta updates, so we were a little surprised to see this one drop one day early.
This year's big iPhone update, iOS 12, aims to solve many of the issues that arose during iOS 11's controversial, buggy tenure. With that in mind, it may be tempting to jump on board the new software immediately and leave iOS 11 in the dust for good. Here are some reasons why you might want to reconsider joining the iOS 12 beta.
Once a hacker has created a PowerShell payload to evade antivirus software and set up msfconsole on their attack system, they can then move onto disguising their executable to make it appear as a regular text file. This is how they will get a Windows 10 users to actually open the payload without knowing they are doing so.
The share menu is a vital part of Android that lets you send data between between apps. Many of your favorite apps support the feature, including the new Direct Share sub-menu, which can lead to a messy share menu. However, there are a number of tools to clean up this clutter, three of which don't require root.
While hackers have taken advantage of numerous vulnerabilities in Adobe's products to deliver payloads to Windows users via PDF files, a malicious PDF file can also wreak havoc on a Mac that's using the default Preview app. So think twice before double-clicking a PDF open on your MacBook — it might just be a Trojan with a rootkit inside.
Google Calendar is a cornerstone of the Google Suite, perhaps second only to Gmail itself. Whereas email is constantly plagued by phishing attacks, as of yet, the calendar is a relatively untapped social engineering attack vector. But it's relatively easy for an attacker to inject a meeting or event into a target's Google Calendar and use it to exploit them.
If bezel-less was the goal of OEMs in 2017, 2018 seems to be the year of the notch. Thanks in no small part to Apple's iPhone X, more and more smartphone manufacturers are designing their displays with this polarizing cutout. While many are frustrated with the trend, it's worth taking the time to consider what each phone gains with the unique design.
Unless you own an Exynos model, there won't be much development on the custom ROM front for the Galaxy S9. But that doesn't mean you have to put up with all of the UI quirks from Samsung Experience (née TouchWiz). With a little work, you can give your S9 a stock Android makeover, even without root.
When you don't want somebody you're calling to know the real phone number associated with your iPhone, whether it's for privacy reasons, to avoid being called back, or to prevent being ignored, there are multiple things you can do to block it on their caller ID.
Sure, emojis are all the rage, but there's not an emoji for every emotion or feeling just yet. That's where emoticons come into play, emoji's older typographical sibling. Unfortunately, emoticons can be hard to type out, easy to forget, and ASCII art, in general, can be pretty time-consuming to create from scratch — but there's an easy way to forgo all these issues — make keyboard shortcuts.
Back in June 2017, Apple promised us AirPlay 2, a simple way to connect and control multiple speakers together via an iPhone or other Apple device. While the feature was included in early iOS betas, by iOS 11's official release, AirPlay 2 was nowhere to be found. After all the numerous subsequent iOS 11 updates, it's finally here in iOS 11.4.
