Apple's iOS assistant has an undeniably iconic voice — you know Siri when you hear her. As memorable a voice as it may be, you don't need to stick with her default American accent. In iOS 11, you can choose from two other vocal deliveries, and in iOS 12, there are two more accents at your disposal for a total of four more.
You're at the bar, but your friend can't find you. You could call them, but that wouldn't feel very 2018. Instead, let your iPhone do the talking. Right in the Messages app, you can easily send your friend your current location — all without interrupting the friends you're hanging out with.
For quite some time, popular messaging apps like Snapchat have had features that let you place stickers on photos and videos to add time and location-based information. To catch up, WhatsApp has now added the same functionality to its messaging platform in an effort to remain among the most well-rounded messaging apps available.
One of the more exciting features in Android Oreo is the Autofill API. With this tool, third-party password managers can autofill login information into other apps. LastPass added this feature to their beta app a while back, but now, Autofill is finally available in the official stable version of LastPass.
No matter your reasons, you might need a second phone number that's a little more disposable than your primary number — a "burner" number, so to speak. If you create this burner number using Google Voice, you'll get new functionality like call forwarding and voicemail transcripts, and best of all, it's completely free.
There are plenty of third-party apps for scanning documents on your iPhone, but they can all be tossed out the door since iOS 11 includes one by default now. Instead of a dedicated app, it's included as part of the Notes app, and it's fairly easy to use. After scanning, you can save it, print it, turn it into a PDF, add markup, and more.
Features like themes and a tab queue make Firefox an extremely versatile mobile browser. Mozilla is constantly adding bonus functionality like this to Firefox, but a long-time staple is perhaps the most powerful feature: Extensions. This system gives you the ability to add features without having to upgrade the entire app.
Mozilla baked an easily missed feature into their Firefox Browser for Android called the "tab queue," which you should definitely be using if you find yourself opening links a lot from emails, texts, and other link-heavy apps. With tab queuing enabled, you can save links as new tabs in Firefox without ever leaving the current app you're in.
Thanks to their partnership with Tidal, over 30 million Sprint customers can access Hi-Fi audio on the go. And the Jay-Z-owned music service isn't limited to just Sprint customers — for $19.99/month, anyone can listen to lossless audio from their favorite artists. But streaming uncompressed audio files uses a lot more data than standard quality, so how do you use Tidal without hitting your data cap?
All to often, many of us are struck with a brilliant idea out of nowhere, only to forget about it moments later thanks to the distractions of daily life. Sometimes, the actual process of jotting these ideas down in our iPhones can be a holdup, as the idea we want to record fades from memory before we can even unlock our devices and open Notes to get started.
When most people first become aware of Kodi (formerly known as XBMC), they hear about its ability to stream illegal content. But the real Kodi community knows that it's much more than just a haven for pirated material — it's an all-in-one media player that addresses the majority of home theater needs, particularly for those that decided to cut the cord.
If you're like me, you change your wallpaper often. After maybe a week of looking at the same picture, you just have to have something different. Depending on the new wallpaper, you may spend another hour changing the background color of folders, the app drawer, and even Quickpage to match your overall theme. But you probably don't want to spend that much time tweaking your layout every week, so let me show you a way that reduces the time from an hour to a few seconds.
Just like in Instagram and other popular photo and video apps, iMovie for iPhone lets you add filters to your whole entire movie project. Not only that, but you can choose to add different filters to different video clips in your timeline, no matter if the clips started out as videos or photos.
If you're using Telegram for its "Secret Chats" feature, which provides end-to-end encryption for your messages, then I'd highly recommend locking down the app itself with a passcode, PIN, or password. While your phone itself may have a secure lock screen already, if that gets compromised, you'll at least have an extra layer of security on your important conversations.
The Google Assistant comes in several different flavors. There's the baked-in Google app on Android, the dedicated Google Assistant app on iOS, and the Assistant-powered Google Home smart speaker. But no matter how you access it, your Assistant will only get better if you take some time to personalize things.
More often than not, road trips will include unforeseen pit stops that have to be made, no matter how well prepared you are. In the past, making an unscheduled stop may have led to headaches and delays when your navigation app got off track, but thanks to a feature in Google Maps, this is no longer an issue.
If you've taken the time to edit a video on your iPhone or Android phone, you probably have a purpose for it. Maybe you want to share it to YouTube in hopes of making the next viral sensation. Maybe you just want to save the video to your phone to show off to friends and family when you can.
When you first set up an iPhone, you'll be prompted to create a six-digit passcode to unlock your screen and access certain system settings. If you skip this step, you can always go back and create one, which we highly recommend. Without a passcode, everything on your iPhone is accessible by anyone who gets their hands on it — nosey friends, hackers, thieves, local law enforcement, the FBI — and you don't want that, do you?
Pinning a tweet to your profile is a fantastic way to get people to view and engage with your most important content on Twitter. In fact, it could very well be the best way to improve your overall Twitter strategy.
It looks like "going live" is another thing we all have to figure out how to do to remain relevant in this very Facebook-driven world. But why would you ever want to go live? That's really up to you.
Netflix added the ability to download TV shows and movies on Android and iOS for offline binging back in Nov. 2016, and the process is the same as it is today. So if you anticipate having some downtime to catch up on Narcos or give Bright a try when you'll be away from a secure Wi-Fi connection, download videos onto your phone and save your data for more important things.
Cinemagraphs are basically artistic photos that have been turned into a GIF to showcase a bit of subtle motion and give them life. Unlike regular GIFs, which can sometimes loop with a jarring cut at the end, cinemagraphs give the illusion of perpetual motion, like water drops off a flower's petal or clouds moving over a scenic sky.
Everyone loves sharing pictures and quick video clips with Snapchat, but while the service itself is tons of fun, the Android app is one of the worst on the market. For one, Snapchat takes terrible photos even on high-end Android phones. And to make matters worse, the app is a notorious data-sucking battery drainer.
Starting with iOS 7, the iPhone has had a cool feature that lets you see upcoming calendar events right on your lock screen, and it only got better with iOS 10. Android used to have this feature with its lock screen widget system, but that was removed back in the Lollipop days, so there's nothing quite like iOS 10's "Today View" feature anymore.
Blue light (like that from our smartphone) tricks the human brain into thinking it's still daytime, even if it's coming from something as small as a screen. So while you're playing around with your new Pixel or Pixel XL after dark, subconscious signals to be awake are preventing you from getting to sleep as early as you should.
If you've been visiting websites of ill repute, or if you've been Christmas shopping and don't want to spoil the surprise, it would be a disastrous situation if anyone were to come across your browsing history. Visited sites, cookies, and cache can paint a very clear picture of your recent internet activity, and depending on the situation, you may only have a few seconds to delete your history before someone else barges in.
Besides being one of the super nutritious "superseeds," chia seeds also absorb liquid and then take on a jelly-like texture. These properties make chia seeds the perfect hack for an easy, healthy jam compared to the normal jam-making process—which usually requires lots of sugar, pectin, and boiling for thickening.
For those times when you can't get something done by clicking a few buttons with your mouse, the Windows command prompt has always been an indispensable tool. But as much as advanced users have relied on this useful utility, it hasn't seen a significant update since the Windows 95 days.
After a few months, I get so fed up with hearing the same ringtone go off alongside each new notification that I'm forced to switch things up—only to end up repeating this whole process when the new one gets played out. And I'm sure people around me are equally sick of listening to that tired old tone towards the end as well. I mean, a decade later, I'm convinced that Nokia tone is permanently implanted in my brain.
Manufacturers like Samsung and LG have added their own implementation of multi-window features to Android for years now, but with the release of version 6.0 Marshmallow, Google has finally gotten around to working the same feature into stock Android.
Sadness won over the worried world with her downtrodden, mopey attitude in Inside Out, the widely popular animated film from Pixar and Disney. She's relatable, helping us to connect with all of our bouts of tears, sour attitudes, and blue feelings—and this Halloween, you can embody Sadness with this easy DIY makeup tutorial via Rotoscopers.
For reasons unknown, Microsoft decided to change the way the Guest account feature in the new Windows 10 operating system works. In previous versions, the Guest account feature allowed you to set up a limited account for other users so they don't have access to your important documents and settings. Now, the process requires assigning an email to a new account and configuring share settings.
If your PC setup includes a mouse and keyboard, you'll be happy to know that most of the touchscreen-first features of Windows 8 have gone by the wayside in Windows 10. Where it once required awkward gestures to access key features, Windows now recognizes when you're using a traditional desktop or laptop, then responds by making sure that all features can be easily discovered with clickable buttons and menu entries.
The desktop Start menu is finally back! After receiving a lot of negative user feedback, Microsoft ditched the touchscreen-first approach of Windows 8 and went with a more traditional setup for mouse-and-keyboard users in Windows 10.
No matter how fresh, sharp, or clean a razor is, it can still create an itchy, inflamed trail of razor burn bumps. When razor burn appears, it's unpleasant, and can even affect your next shave.
Since the new Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan is brand new, I recommend installing it on a separate partition on your hard drive. This will keep your current Yosemite system safe from harm, and will let you easily switch back to it should El Capitan become unusable for any reason.
Samsung is known for its added features, but occasionally, these can cross the line between functionality and bloat. For many users, this is the case with the "S Finder" and "Quick connect" buttons that are hard-coded into the notification tray on most Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge variants.
You can capture some pretty amazing videos using the slo-mo and time-lapse capabilities in the stock Camera app for iPhone 5s, 6, 6 Plus, or iPad Air 2, but there's no way to really combine them unless you shoot different videos and splice them together with a separate video editing app.
Family Feud is one of the longest-running game shows in American TV history. Its viewer base spans generations, and this is mostly due to the fun nature of the show. Contestants have to guess the most popular answers to survey questions that were posed to 100 random strangers, and the responses often range from silly to downright funny.
Normally, if you want to close all of the open apps on your Mac, you'd have to either quit them all one by one or restart, shut down, or log out while making sure to deselect “Reopen windows when logging back in." The latter option is great, but it doesn't always work in Mac OS X, and what if you don't want to restart, shut down, or log out?
