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.
Starting with the original HTC One and now present on the new Nexus 6, dual speakers allow for smartphones to pump out true stereo sound. OnePlus, however, kept their speakers on the bottom of the device and use different sound drivers for each to produce great sound quality, although it's still mono. While there are mods out there that can further increase the volume of the OnePlus One, none of them can produce true stereo sound.
Android has plenty of features that provide multitasking support, which are especially useful on smartphones with larger screens. One such feature that I loved on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 was the popup browser, which brought up a floating window whenever I opened a link inside of third-party apps like Facebook and Twitter.
Your Mac's clipboard is great when you are just copying and pasting a phone number or address, but sometimes you end up having to re-copy the same thing over and over every day. To make those phrases a lot more easily accessible, the people over at Tiny Robot Software have released Pasteomatic. With this app, you will be able to use a hotkey to bring up a collection of your most commonly used text snippets and paste them into any text field or document.
Blizzard Entertainment, the wildly successful video game developer that brought us World of Warcraft and StarCraft, has finally released their popular trading card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft to the Android platform.
There are few sounds that actually make me cringe whenever I hear them: silverware scraping on a plate, nails scratching on a chalkboard, and piercing high-frequency tones. While the former two terrors require some physical hardware, sending out high-frequency sounds is as easy as downloading an app.
One of the main reasons to buy a Nexus device is the fact that they're always the first to get new Android updates. Another great selling point for the Nexus series is that the devices are amongst the easiest to root and mod. Unfortunately, though, these two features are somewhat mutually exclusive.
The front-facing stereo speakers on the Nexus 6 certainly pump out some awesome sound—but it could always be better, right?
If you're like me, things just seem to look better when they're symmetrical. While Android's status bar icons are indeed weighted against the notifications that show up on the left side of this area, the balance still seems skewed to the right.
After a few unforeseen delays, the Android Lollipop update is finally here for Google Play Edition HTC Ones. This means that if you have an official GPE M7 or M8, or if you have simply converted your HTC One from a carrier-specific, Sense-based model to a Google Play Edition, you should be receiving an OTA notification shortly indicating an update.
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.
Android is all about customization: "Be together. Not the same," as Google's latest ads for the platform put it. Changing your device's boot animation, for instance, is one of the many great ways you can add a touch of personal flair.
Apple has been one of the biggest trolls when it comes to adding new features to their software. Whether its adding a new boot screen and not letting all devices use it, or adding Dark Mode and making it a hassle to toggle on and off, there is always to be a caveat attached to each new addition.
We recently showed you YouTube's new music streaming service, YouTube Music Key, with it's promise of ad-free music complete with background listening and offline play. Well, if you check your YouTube app, there's a good chance that Google flipped on the service for you. Activate the Service
The vague 90-day release window for CyanogenMod 12 has done nothing to stop my craving for Lollipop on my OnePlus One. Luckily, there are other "unofficial" means of getting my hands on it. Since CyanogenMod still gives users a way of building their own variants of their ROM, we can install user-compiled versions of CM 12 pretty easily.
Amazon is currently offering over $80 in free Android apps in the Amazon Appstore, but only for Friday and Saturday, so make sure to grab them quick before they all go back to normal price. Highlights include the Fleksy Keyboard (normally $3.99), Oxford Dictionary of English with Audio (normally $24.99), and EasyTether (normally $9.99).
Most diehard Mac users have used TinkerTool at some time or another, and if you haven't, it's time to start. Whether it's to change your system's font or to disable UI animations, it seems like anything you could ever think about tweaking in Mac OS X is doable through TinkerTool. And now, developer Marcel Bresink has updated his app to work with Yosemite, so let's see what it can do now.
Google has already started to roll out the over-the-air update of Android 5.0 Lollipop to older Nexus series phones and tablets, but chances are it will take a long time for the OTA to hit your device.
If you're struggling with freeing up space on your iPhone thanks to your massive collection of photos and videos, there's a feature in iOS 8 that could help you get some of that much-needed internal storage back while giving you more room in the future.
Lollipop's imminent release should be cause for excitement with Google bringing out new features, a huge redesign, and under-the-hood changes. Unfortunately, the Nexus line of devices will be the first to receive the Android 5.0 update, leaving the rest of us to wait on manufacturers and carriers to release their skinned, bloatware-packed builds.
The "Smart Keyboard" on the LG G3 has received a lot of praise for its ability to adequately analyze user keystrokes, provide adjustable sizes, and customize key placements, among other things. These features, combined with predictive text, swipe gestures, and autocorrect make the Smart Keyboard one of the most powerful typing tools available for Android. Now, it's easy to get it installed on your Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
Getting things done isn't easy when you're bombarded with alert sounds and notifications all day long on your Mac. Here's how you can quickly remove those distractions with just a single click.
Automator takes the work out of common repetitive tasks. I don't enjoy compressing videos for quick sharing or uploading to the web, so I created an Automator action to handle the process for me.
Apple has a built-in way to protect you from opening up potentially malicious apps on your computer in Mac OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, and macOS Sierra. This setting, named Gatekeeper, will never stop you from installing apps from the Mac App Store, but it could from anywhere else. If it's an app you're sure you want to install on your system, here's how to do it.
Emojis have transformed the way we laugh and cry, tell stories, give responses, and express excitement to get a drink after work — without any actual text required. Heck, in an incredibly meta move, the Oxford Dictionary even named the "Face with Tears of Joy" emoji as their word of the year at one point. So how could you not want to be an emoji character for Halloween? Emojis are everywhere. The ubiquitous symbols are already on smartphones, tablets, and social networks, so why not help them...
As smartphones become increasingly integral parts of our lives, so does data throttling. Personally, I try to save data any way that I can, so to stave off unnecessary usage, I use the GoogleOfflineVoice to limit the amount of data consumed by voice typing.
While I consider myself to be a pretty organized guy, there are often times where I just can't find a file I put on my phone. Most of the time, when I download a file it goes automatically into my Download folder, but when I use a third-party to download other files, like torrents, they could end up in a number of places. Filtering abilities on file explorers often fall short, so it was time to find an app that would automatically sort files in real time.
Many Android games use large, storage-heavy OBB files to store supplemental data. Generally, games with high-end graphics download these extra files when you install them from the Google Play Store.
Heartbleed, move over. There's a new bug in town, and this time it's also affecting Mac and Linux computers. It's called Shellshock (its original official title is CVE-2014-6271), and it's currently got a 10 out of 10 severity rating over at the National Cyber Awareness System. While some updates have been issued to fix this bug, they were incomplete, and your system is probably still vulnerable, as it has been for the last probably 20 years.
Google has a practice known as dogfooding, where they use their employees to test new and upcoming features for their various services. Back in March, they accidentally released a dogfood version of YouTube on Google Play, and many Android users got their first behind-the-scenes glance at the internal testing features.
Getting a new phone is exciting, but having access to its exclusive apps ahead of its release is what we're all about here on Gadget Hacks.
Straight out of the box, the Nexus 5 is an awesome device, but even it can be faster with better battery life. Luckily, one of the things that makes it so awesome is that there are tons of developers creating mods for it, since it runs stock Android by default. When it comes to gaining speed and better battery life, flashing a custom kernel is the way to go.
From my experiences, there are only two types of U2 people: those that love them and those that hate them. I'm the latter, so it's pretty damn annoying that Apple just added U2's new album, "Songs of Innocence," to my iCloud. If you find it creepy that U2 is appearing on your iPhone or in iTunes, don't worry—I've found a few ways to deal with it. UPDATE: How to Delete U2 Forever & Ever
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.
Apple released the iOS 8 Gold Master build to developers shortly after their WWDC event ended on Sept. 9th, which is jam-packed with tons of new features for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. The public version comes out on Sept. 17th, but if you can't wait to test out iOS 8, you can get it right now.
Some apps have a nasty habit of ignoring your Android's auto-rotation settings and locking the display into either portrait or landscape orientation.
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 texting and driving may get you a ticket, there are still a ton of uses for your phone in your car, music and navigation just to name a couple. Every Android device comes with access to GPS and traffic updates, but none of those apps really have your back in real-time.
With over 20 million songs, Spotify has become my go-to source for music. I can stream tunes to my desktop or phone, without ever having to worry about storage space being eaten up.
There are so many mods we can apply using a custom recovery. From themes to bug fixes and feature ports, a typical rooted user spends a decent chunk of time in TWRP Recovery.
