How To: Install the Android Lollipop Recent Apps Menu on Any Android
Android 5.0's Material Design is truly a sight to behold. With beautiful transition animations and brand new system menus, Android has never looked better.
Android 5.0's Material Design is truly a sight to behold. With beautiful transition animations and brand new system menus, Android has never looked better.
It's pretty logical for your MacBook to sleep when you close its lid, but under certain circumstances, you may not necessarily want this feature to kick in.
We've already seen the visual changes that Android 5.0 Lollipop has brought to the table, but Google spent just as much time altering things under the hood. Awesome new functionality and hardware capabilities have been added left and right, and with the OS already out now, it's high time we had a look at some of these tweaks.
One of the biggest under-the-hood changes in Android 5.0 is a new, robust Camera API. When Lollipop makes its official debut, this API will allow developers to hook into your phone's camera sensor like never before.
I think it's safe to assume that most of us appreciate a little privacy and security when it comes to our mobile devices, which is exactly why we have lock screens that require unique passwords, patterns, or PINs. Although someone can discretely peer over your shoulder to see what your password is, it's much more difficult for them to duplicate your face to unlock the device.
By now, you've probably already installed 10.10 Yosemite, the newest version of Mac OS X, on your computer. While you most certainly noticed the visual changes, you might have missed some of the really cool additions.
While the adoption of Apple's newest mobile operating system, iOS 8, was smoother than its predecessor, there were still a lot of bugs and features that needed ironed out. There were lost cellular signals, missing Camera Rolls, a confusing iCloud Drive, and no functioning Apple Pay yet, among other things. Now it's just over a month later from its first release to the public and things are finally looking pretty good.
Without much notice, Spotify launched Desktop Open Beta a few weeks ago, a program that allows anyone to download, test out, and provide feedback on the latest beta version of their desktop application for Mac and Windows.
It's that time of year again, folks. Each fall, Google debuts a new device alongside the latest iteration of its mobile operating system—but this year marked the release of three new Nexus gadgets.
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.
While your iPhone may have a built-in time-lapse feature, it's nowhere near as smooth as Instagram's newish Hyperlapse app, and it doesn't give you any speed control like the latter does. If you haven't tested out Hyperlapse yet, check out the short promo video to see just how well its stabilization algorithm works.
In today's world of ordering food from your PC or hailing a cab with an app, it almost seems archaic when we have to actually use our vocal cords to contact a local business. It sure would be nice if we didn't have to use our smartphones as, well, you know...phones.
Mac OS X has finally added a way to use two apps side by side in full screen mode, à la Microsoft's Windows Snap. But since it's only available in 10.11 El Capitan right now, those of us with older systems will have to wait until the El Capitan Public Preview or final build is released later this year.
More and more devices are using iOS 8 over iOS 7, and that means more and more developers are adding iOS 8-friendly features to their apps, especially widgets. However, not every widget available for your Notification Center right now is awesome. Take for example the Dropbox widget—it's essentially nothing more than a real-time notification, as the only action it performs is opening a recently updated file within the app.
While there isn't a "Camera Roll" anymore in iOS 8 for your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, the photos that were once in it are not missing—they're just not as convenient as they once were. In the upcoming iOS 8.1 update, Camera Roll will be making a comeback, but we've found something better that you can use right now—even after Camera Roll returns!
Accessing your favorite and most recent contacts on your iPhone is now faster than ever before, thanks to the iOS 8 update. Just double-click your Home button, select your contact above the app switcher menu, then choose how you want to contact them.
A warning to all of you iPhone users with parents, significant others, and nosy friends: Private Mode in the Safari browser isn't as private as you think. At least, not as private as it used to be back in iOS 7.
Shortly after the official release of iOS 8, news outlets like BGR, Gizmodo, and Huffington Post were instructing iPhone 4S users to refrain from updating (which were practically regurgitations of an Ars Technica piece).
Keeping data private is vital in the days of smartphones and the free-floating information they carry. Justin wrote a guide on many of the deeply hidden and sometimes concerning privacy settings in iOS 7. Now we're back to cover some of the new (and old) privacy settings in iOS 8 that you need to address right now.
As soon as third-party keyboard compatibility was announced for iOS 8, Apple loyalists and the newly curious both looked to the popular Android third-party keyboard developer, SwiftKey, to see if they'd be offering their services to iOS.
It's been a long-rumored feature, but today, VoIP calling has finally started rolling out to users of Google's Hangouts service. Essentially integrating Google Voice into the popular messaging platform, Google has given Android (as well as iOS) users an easy way to make calls without eating up their plan's minutes.
Viewing all of the attachments in a message thread within iOS 7 has never been particularly easy. To see every single picture and video dating back to the beginning of the conversation, you have to manually scroll through the entire conversation and refresh it until all of it appears on your screen. Depending on how long the conversation is, that could take some time.
Quickly jotting down grocery lists, recommended books, phone numbers, and addresses, among other things, has been a pretty straightforward process on an iPad or iPhone. Through the Notes app, you can enter information and have it seamlessly synced across all of your iOS devices, making access to them simple, quick, and universal.
If you've used Twitter on your smartphone sometime in the past two weeks, you've probably noticed that tweets from users you don't follow have been popping up on your timeline.
Say goodbye to your boring stock Apple keyboard, because when iOS 8 is finally released, you'll be able to use Fleksy, SwiftKey, Swype, TouchPal, and other third-party keyboards on your iPad, iPhone, and/or iPod touch.
Rooting is a great way to unleash your device's full potential, but not everyone's comfortable with it. Rooting can void a warranty, cause issues with certain apps, and the process itself can be tricky for older devices. Alas, most of the great apps or mods out there require root access, like the ability to utilize a built-in KitKat feature known as Immersive Mode.
When Android 4.4 was released, the massive changelog led to some awesome new features getting lost in the virtually endless list of new tweaks. One such change was the ability to set a default text messaging app, which streamlined the existing process of installing a third-party SMS client.
While the legality of recording phone conversations varies from state to state, it's still a sought-after feature for most people. How else are we going to shame all of those bad Comcast customer service reps? Since it's a legal gray area, HTC and other smartphone manufacturers have omitted call recording capabilities from their devices.
Screen mirroring was a long-awaited feature for the Chromecast, now available for select devices (and even more with root). While great news for those who couldn't wait to play games, watch movies, and browse pictures on a big screen, it did mean that you had to keep your device's screen on the entire time it was being mirrored.
Aside from its many high-end features, the camera on the LG G3 is up there with other heavy hitters like the Galaxy S5 and HTC One.
Much like the high volume warning, there are various minute features on Android that users either hate or just find annoying. Thankfully, there are developers out there that sympathize. It may seem frivolous, but one feature that a lot of people want eliminated is the screen waking whenever a charger is plugged in.
If you thought iOS 7 was a drastic change from previous iterations, iOS 8 will certainly continue to rock the boat. From a revamped Control Center to enhanced "Continuity" to ephemeral messaging, Apple's newest mobile operating system will have many of you relearning the "basics."
One of the most feature-packed camera suites out there resides on the Sony Xperia Z2. Along with the regular camera and video modes, it comes with Motiongraph, AR Effect, and Social Live.
If browsing speed is important to you—and it should be—you'll probably be interested to know that there are ten simple flag modifications you can make in Google Chrome in order to achieve the fastest browsing speed possible.
Arguably Chromecast's biggest feature since its launch, screen mirroring functionality started rolling out to select devices earlier this week, and in a word, it's awesome.
Tab previews—you can do it on an iPhone or an Android device, so why not on your Mac or PC? It's about time you take your browsing game to the next level and learn how to toggle between previews of your tabbed webpages.
The newest version of iOS 8 beta is now out. Almost three weeks ago, in the iOS 8 beta 2 release, we saw podcast integration, full-screen caller ID, new assistive touch toggles, and a "disable all" button for app notifications, among other things.
Google announced Android L to the masses at their I/O event, and with it they introduced their new "Heads Up" notification system. These notifications are part of the new Material Design UI and are sure to change the way we interact with notifications on our devices.
Safari has some cool new features in iOS 8, but the app that seems to have gotten the biggest update so far is Messages. A lot of the new Messages features were discussed during Apple's developers conference, but we found many others and picked out our favorite hidden ones below.
Battery life is and most likely always will be an issue with iPhones and other smartphones and tablets, but Apple is making it easier for us to save juice when we need to. To help monitor per-app battery usage, iOS 8 now lets us view battery usage stats for individual apps.