The Moto X and Moto Z have a set of features that let you launch common shortcuts by shaking your phone in one direction or another. For instance, there's a chop gesture that turns on the LED flashlight, and a wrist-twist gesture that instantly opens the camera app.
Android TV devices have had those beautiful Chromecast background images as their screensaver for quite a while now. Envious of this feature, Apple copied the idea for a similarly-styled screensaver in their newest Apple TV, but with one big twist—they used videos instead of still photos.
Once you connect all of your devices to your Wi-Fi router at home, you'll never need that long, complicated Wi-Fi password ever again, right?
For years, we've had to download third-party apps if we wanted to browse or manage the files stored on our Android devices, but Google has finally included a bare-bones file explorer in Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Only thing is, it's not easy to find—but I'll show you how to access and use it below.
If there's one thing that gets used far too frequently in the modern kitchen, it's the trash can. Home cooks everywhere waste enormous amounts of food by throwing it away before it's actually ready to be tossed.
If you're just starting out with Android—or smartphones in general, for that matter—there are a lot of little things to learn. One of the first terms you'll likely encounter is "Wi-Fi," which is a wireless internet connection served up by a router in your home, office, or local coffee shop. This differs from your smartphone's regular "Mobile Data" connection, which is provided by your cellular carrier and included as part of your monthly bill.
All of Apple's products are praised for being extremely easy to use. So much so, that your grandma can pick one up and be a "pro" within a few hours. However, this isn't necessarily a good thing for us real power users who want more granular control of our devices.
When you're browsing the web, going through emails, or reading a book or magazine, you'll occasionally come across a word or phrase that you haven't seen before. This would be a perfect time to have some sort of built-in dictionary lookup service, but most Android apps lack such a feature.
The king of all Xposed modules is alive and kicking on Android Lollipop. GravityBox received an update over the weekend that will bring its bevy of UI tweaks to folks who have installed the framework on their Android 5.0+ devices.
Android Lollipop has an awesome feature called "Battery saver" mode that reduces power consumption through various tweaks in order to squeeze in an extra hour or two of standby time when your battery is running low. It does this by disabling background processes as well as location services and transition animations, so the phone is essentially running at half-throttle.
Most custom ROMs are built from the freely-available source code of AOSP, so they share a lot of common ground with stock Android. The difference, though, is the fact that Google adds many minor tweaks and finishing touches to AOSP while creating the version of Android that ultimately comes pre-installed on Nexus devices.
When you're expecting an important call or text, it's pretty annoying to hear or feel your phone go off just to find out it was your reminders app telling you that you need to buy more contact lenses. Not quite as annoying as phantom phone vibrations, but it's up there.
We use our smart devices for pretty much everything these days, from getting directions to playing games just to kill time. They're extremely important to our daily routine, and as we use our devices more and more, things get a little bit messy.
If there's one gripe I have with Android Lollipop, it's the new volume menu. When Priority mode was introduced, the stock volume panel was revamped to accommodate it, and somewhere along the way a bit of functionality was lost.
The switch from Dalvik runtime to ART in Android Lollipop has rendered the Xposed Framework useless until a new version is released, but Xposed isn't the only way to mod a phone.
Facebook is really good at two things: connecting people all over the world and force-feeding changes to its users (ahem...Facebook Messenger).
There were over 1.2 million changes made to Android when the OS got updated from KitKat to Lollipop, but a minor front-facing modification has many users in an uproar.
Steam is by far the biggest and best service for getting games on your Linux, Mac, or Windows PC. With their catalog containing everything from the biggest blockbusters to indie games created by one-man development teams, it's no easy task to keep track of their best values—until now.
While the new Google Inbox is currently invite-only, if you were able to snag one, you'll want to learn the best ways to navigate it. Google Inbox coins itself as "The inbox that works for you," and after a brief run through of it, we think it's definitely living up to that slogan.
As soon as you plug a set of headphones into a Samsung Galaxy series device, a bar pops up in the notification tray that lets you select from a list of "recommended apps" for earphones. It's a convenient little feature that shows the apps you're most likely to use based on previous activity.
While most are still fighting through a somewhat ridiculous invite system, OnePlus is starting to ship out a decent number of their One flagship devices to those who were able to obtain one.
Last year, The New York Times wrote that certain restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn banned patrons from taking photos of their meals. That means no flash photography, no standing on chairs for a better angle, not even a quick pic for your Instagram followers before the first bite. Little do these restaurants know, this ban can actually make their customers' food taste worse, so to speak.
One subtle change that Samsung made with the Galaxy S5 is their replacement of the Menu softkey with one for recent applications. Instead of holding down on the Home button, we now have the Recents button, which is used for easy access to multitasking.
In direct competition with Pandora, iTunes Radio, and Spotify, Samsung has just launched Milk Music—a strangely named, yet completely free music streaming service for Android.
I listen to Pandora as I slowly drift off to sleep, so why not have the popular music app wake me up as well? Pandora only recently introduced the Alarm Clock feature on iOS, and now they've brought that same feature to Android—only it's better.
Adjusting the brightness on your Samsung Galaxy S3 can be a real pain sometimes. Each app you open may need a different amount of light to better optimize its use of the screen, and then you have to worry about it potentially eating up your battery life if it's too bright.
The sound I get when receiving a new text message is the camel from that Geico commercial yelling "Hump Day!" Sure, I could find a less obnoxious notification sound, but it makes me laugh every time, and that's important.
As you may have noticed, many of our tutorials cover topics that require you to have root access. When your phone is rooted, backing up apps doesn't require you to connect to your computer, and installing custom ROMs lets you get more useful settings. Rooting also lets you get rid of the Sense-style menus and status bar, and even upgrade to a newer version of Android.
There's something missing on your brand new Samsung Galaxy S4, and if you're a softModder like me, you know exactly what it is already. If you don't know, keep reading, because you should—anyone who wants a better Android experience should.
This web design tutorial is for newcomers to the Xara Web Designer software. In this web design tutorial, you will learn how to open a new document and save it using save as and save option.
Notch loves Halloween. He must, because he keeps putting scarier and scarier things into Minecraft around Halloween time!
Kip "Kipkay" Kedersha is known for his intriguing and clever how-to and prank videos, even when he teams up with MAKE Magazine. He will show you how to tweak, hack, mod, and bend any technology to your hacking needs. No electronic device, gadget, or household item can stand the test of Kipkay's hacks and mods.
Have you ever pulled a wool sweater off of your head in the middle of winter ready to look all hot and stuff in your cocktail dress, only to see your boyfriend snickering at you because your hair is standing straight up and unruly like Einstein? Then you know the fashion-destroying powers of hair static.
The wonderful thing about a "farmhouse brunch" theme is that most of the materials you'll need to decorate are natural and quite affordable. From sprigs of flowers to brown string to burlap, you probably already have most of the things you need lying around the house.
In this tutorial, we learn how to create a plankton science model. You will first need a clear bucket with water, modeling clay, toothpicks, sponge, beads, buttons, pipe cleaners, Styrofoam peanuts, and more. To make the plankton, you will first take the peanut and stick a toothpick into it. Then, add a paperclip on top of that to give it some weight. Drop it into the water and see if it floats or sinks. Add some more weight to it to see how much weight it takes to sink it to the bottom. Have...
How cool are smoke grenades? You toss 'em into the air and they explode into a vision of thick clouds and smoke, preventing your enemy from seeing you as you stealthily sneak past him and shoot him upside the head with a paintball gun.
The biggest thing that scares us when we're out to make something from a recipe is, well, the recipe. Usually you can't get away with anything less than ten items on the ingredients list, all of which we have to scour for in our pantry or purchase at the store.
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 724th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to check if quantities are the same in two lists and show the differences if not, list the word "equal" if they are the same, and "not in list" if the lookup items is not in list using the MATCH, INSA, VLOOKUP and IF functions.
If your little girl loves jewelry making but you're scared she's going to poke her eye out with a wire when you're not looking, sleep soundly at night by teaching her how to craft shrink plastic jewelry. Perhaps the safest and easiest forms of jewelry making, it involves only shrink plastic and a mini oven (which you would help out with).
Wallets are our least favorite item to purchase. Why? Well, they're either super crappy in quality and looks (think a pleather wallet you can purchase at the clearance bin at Wal-Mart) or gorgeous but out of this world expensive (Dior, anyone?). There's selmonly a space in between where we can get a good-looking wallet for cheap.
