Smartphones have put an end to camcorders. If you want to capture memorable moments in high quality, look no further than that technological marvel in your pocket. Recent Galaxy phones are shining examples of how far we've come — but the more capable a camera gets, the more complicated things can be.
If you're a long-time Spark user, you'll know that one of the only drawbacks to the app used to be its lack of rich text-editing tools such as hyperlinking. If you needed to link out to a site in an email, your best bet was to grab a computer to get the job done. Well, close those laptops and shut down those PCs — Spark corrected this issue, implementing support for hyperlinking right into the app.
Smartphones and dark mode go hand in hand. Screens can be bright, causing eye strain and battery drain, and dark mode can take the edge off both. It's perfect for nighttime browsing, but also for general use, especially on OLED displays with inky blacks. Dark mode, aka night mode, is particularly great for tweeting, and Twitter makes it easy to switch.
In the past, if you stumbled upon a Yelp listing you liked, you could bookmark it and check it out later on your profile. You can still take advantage of this feature in the mobile apps, but it's more refined now than it ever was thanks to Collections, a feature Yelp first added back in May 2018. You get more power over organizing, accessing, sharing, and discovering favorite businesses.
If you're an iOS app developer, your Monday just got better; Apple just released iOS 12.2 developer beta 5 to your Software Updates today, March 11. This fifth beta includes a number of small UI changes and tweaks, and likely some degree of under-the-hood improvements and bug fixes.
While the notch on Apple's newer iPhones started a wave of notches across the smartphone market, there are still plenty of users who don't like screen-obstructing zone up top, and you may be one of them. While it may soon disappear in future iPhone models, or at least get smaller, there are things you can do to hide the big notch you have right now.
Apple released iOS 12.2 beta 4 to developers on Monday, March 4, then shortly thereafter also pushed it out to everyone on the iOS 12.2 public beta program. All previous public beta updates for iOS 12.2 were released the following day, but this one changes course. In the iOS 12.2 public beta 4, there are new icons, an updated "About" page, and better Now Playing tile.
Some websites block image downloads on their webpages so you can't save them for reuse. That means long-pressing or force-pressing on protected images in Safari on your iPhone will not do anything or will omit the "Save Image" option. Taking a screenshot is the obvious solution to bypass restrictions, but you won't get the best quality. Thankfully, there's another way.
Gboard has come a long way from its roots as the "Google Keyboard" in the earlier days of Android. It's now the most popular, feature-rich, and useful keyboard app on the market. Google even includes quite a few themes right out of the box for Gboard — but what if you could have even more?
TikTok is great for creating short videos of people lip-syncing to songs or comedy sketches, but it's also very entertaining to just browse and share cool videos with friends. When you stumble across a video you like, you can download it onto your phone to watch over and over again. Even better, you can turn the video in a live wallpaper if you just can't get enough of it.
Short for Ask Me Anything, AMA threads are one of Reddit's signature features. They enable you to directly interact with a whole range of interesting personalities, from common folk with amazing life experiences to influential celebrities that help shape politics and culture.
Giphy has had a few apps for iOS over the years. Giphy Keys was a keyboard built specifically for GIFs. Giphy Cam lets you create your GIFs complete with stickers. Giphy World is for adding augmented reality stickers to the real world. But now, Giphy has combined elements of all of these into its main app, so you can create, find, and share GIFs and stickers right from your keyboard.
If you've ever wanted to download YouTube videos directly to your iPhone, there's an easy solution — just update to iOS 12 and install Apple's new Shortcuts app. With the Workflow-replacement app, you can add a shortcut that lets you download any YouTube video you want, without needing to jailbreak or use shady third-party tools.
Apple may pride itself on its commitment to user privacy and security, but it isn't invulnerable. We now know there is a bug in the latest version of iOS 12 and iOS 12.1 beta that allows those in the know to bypass your passcode and access contacts and photos. This applies to both Face ID and Touch ID-enabled iPhones. Not only do we know about the bug itself, we know exactly how to exploit it.
Xiaomi made a new phone with their sights set on picking up some ex OnePlus users. As a result, the Pocophone F1, or just Poco in some markets, is quite unlike most other Xiaomi phones. While you can't buy the F1 in stores in the US, you can get its home screen app on almost any phone right now.
Starting in iOS 11, Apple introduced a QR code scanner for iPhone that's baked right into the Camera app, reducing the need for a third-party scanner. However, not everyone knew it existed, so a lot of users were still using third-party QR code scanners. In iOS 12 and later, Apple addressed the issue, making theirs much more visible, as well as improved QR code scanning in general.
Ever since 2009, you could send a photo or video that you've already taken right from the Messages app on your iPhone. You would just tap on the camera icon next to the new message box, then choose either to take a new one or select one from your library. If you're running iOS 12, that's no longer the case, but that doesn't mean the capability is gone entirely.
If you're anything like me, when you first find a good song, album, or playlist on Spotify, your initial reaction may be to share it with your family and friends. While there are the usual share methods available in Spotify that are available in other streaming music services such as Apple Music and Google Play Music, Spotify goes one step further with QR-like codes users can easily scan.
Facebook, parent company of Instagram, has allowed you to download photos and other account data for some time now, but the data request feature is also now available on Instagram to meet the GDPR data portability requirement in the EU — and it's available worldwide, not just in Europe.
Unlike on Android, you can't easily hide your iPhone apps. Sure, you can nestle them away in folders labeled "junk," but they're supposed to be omni-present somewhere on your home screen. That is, until one day they're just ... gone. The fact that some of your apps disappeared only makes it more frustrating because there's no logical reason why they should have, right?
Apple first announced Business Chat, a new way for customers to communicate with companies, at WWDC 2017. While Business Chat did not arrive with the initial release of iOS 11, Apple pushed it out in iOS 11.3 so companies can offer customer service in a whole new way, and it works pretty much the same in iOS 12 and higher as it did back then.
After several Android phones started incorporating the iPhone X's notch, the online community was vocal, with many expressing hatred for the trend. Well, thanks to XDA Forum Moderator Zacharee1, we already have an app to undo the incoming wave of notches.
One odd change found in the Android Pie update is that the "Battery" menu no longer lets you see apps that are draining your battery, nor gives access to usage details. However, one quick menu tweak will bring the Battery menu back in line with Android Oreo's, only there's a hidden setting you have to unlock first.
Samsung's Galaxy S9 was recently announced with features like AR Emoji and Dual Aperture, but great functionality lives underneath them — such as the ability to have your home screen auto-rotate to landscape mode. It's a nice feature, but with a little work, you can already do this on any Android phone.
While it may not be an obvious feature, Apple actually built a way into iOS that lets you hide specific pictures and videos in the Photos app that you want to keep on the down-low, for your eyes only. If you show off your photos a lot or stream slideshows to your TV, this is a great way to keep less appealing content private.
The internet is full of fun, cool, and interesting websites. Bookmarks and favorites can help keep your favorite pages on hand, but they aren't the most convenient method. In iOS, Apple lets you save whatever webpages that you want to the home screen, so you'll have as easy access to them just as you do apps on your iPhone.
With Signal's class-leading end-to-end encryption, you can be sure your messages will remain secure as they travel to the recipient. However, once the message arrives, its privacy is completely dependent on the receiver, who could share it anywhere if they wanted. To patch this vulnerability, Signal added disappearing messaging.
There are a couple swipe gestures in ProtonMail for Android and iOS that let you swipe right on an email to mark it as spam or swipe left to trash it. If you don't get a lot of spam or don't delete a lot of messages, it's easy enough to changes these gestures to perform another action.
When you have an idea you want to jot down or a quick list to make, the Notes app on your iPhone is a great place to do it. However, by default, Notes use a blank canvas, which doesn't match the physical lined notebooks we're used to. If you've always use unlined or gridless sheets of paper, a blank canvas is probably fine, but you can actually customize your digital stationary with lines or grids.
So you're thinking about downloading the Galaxy S8 Oreo beta, but you're not sure if it's stable enough to use. It is a beta, of course, so you might want to wait for others to give it a try. Over the past ten days I've used the Galaxy S8+ running Android Oreo as my daily driver, running down the best new features. Let's take a look at the bugs, the performance, and the battery life.
The new and improved Side button, as well as a plethora of new swipe gestures, are responsible for picking up the slack left by the missing Home button on the iPhone X. If you're really missing that Home button, however, Apple's built-in AssistiveTouch tool can help you out by adding a virtual Home button on your iPhone X's screen.
Many OEMs create skins that run on top of Android to differentiate themselves from their competitors. One example is the LG UX 6.0+ found in the new LG V30, which is Android at its core, but improved upon by the addition of unique features. One such feature is the ability to change the buttons at the bottom of your screen.
With so many Chromecast-powered devices available, chances are, you're near something with casting abilities right now. Whether it's Android TV, Google Home, or any one of the various gadgets with Chromecast built-in, you can use a more powerful speaker to play media from your smartphone. The only caveat is that the app you're streaming from needs to support Google Cast, but thankfully, Tidal does.
Playlists are a vital feature for any music streaming service. For many, the ability to add and organize songs into the perfect order is a deciding factor in which streaming service to choose. The folks at Tidal (including owner Jay-Z) certainly recognize this, as they've provided users with the tools to not only create perfect playlists, but edit them as well.
Alright, calm down and take a breath! I know the object creation chapter was a lot of code. I will give you all a slight reprieve; this section should be a nice and simple, at least in comparison.
The fact that the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR don't have Home buttons means that you'll need to learn a few new gestures. There's the home gesture, the multitasking gesture, and even a new way to access Apple Pay, among others. But one less-common action that has issues due to the lack of a Home button is taking a screenshot.
Scanning important paperwork on smartphones is a tedious process, often relying on either external scanners or third-party apps that had to be either purchased or were loaded with annoying ads just to get the job done. Thankfully, iOS 11 now lets you easily scan documents using your iPhone, and finally does away with the need for third-party apps or machines.
Apple first added a "Drag and Drop" feature to iPads in iOS 11, but your iPhone can do a little of the magic, too. It's just not so obvious. While you can't drag and drop items from one app to another like you can on an iPad using Split View and Slide Over, you can move things around in certain stock applications. And it works the same whether you're using iOS 11, 12, or 13.
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.
Adobe Premiere Clip gives mobile video editors the tools they need to make some great looking projects from their iPhone or Android device. Editors need ways to organize and trim clips, edit the look of those clips, add music, and more. For a smartphone app, Adobe Premiere Clip has these features in spades.
