Boomerangs are a staple camera feature for Instagram and its users. The idea is to take up to 20 frames of video, which Instagram then processes into a looping movie that plays forward and backward. Since Facebook owns Instagram, it was only a matter of time before the feature hit its namesake apps, so it's not surprising that Messenger now supports the popular camera technique.
Apple Watch owners know the struggle — it's the end of the day, and those rings aren't met. Whether you forgot your watch before hitting the gym, let the battery run out, or just didn't move enough, you could feel the sting of fitness failure. But it doesn't have to be this way. You can actually close your Activity rings yourself; it just takes a little know-how.
When the announcement of the Cheddar app for Magic Leap first went out on Tuesday morning, the app was not available on my updated Magic Leap One (located in New York City). However, after checking throughout the day, I can confirm that the app is now live.
One of the headlining features in Samsung's One UI update is a new dark mode that turns stock apps and system menus black. But something you may have missed is what this theme does to the Samsung Internet app and all the websites you visit.
Cinemark may not be as big as AMC Theatres, but it also has a subscription if you want cheaper access to movie tickets. There aren't as many theaters, but if there's no AMC around you, there will likely be a Cinemark to save the day. But is the price of its Movie Club plan worth it?
Android 9.0 Pie has finally arrived for Galaxy devices like the Note 9, S9, and S8, in the form of One UI. Of course, we've had a good idea as to what Samsung had up its sleeve for some time, thanks in large part to beta versions of the firmware that leaked out well before its official debut. Nevertheless, it's still exciting to experience the new features the software has to offer — with all its kinks ironed out.
Occipital's initial augmented reality module, the Structure Sensor, gave iPhones and iPads the depth-sensing abilities of the HoloLens. Now, the company's latest product promises to do the same for Android devices, as well as augmented reality and virtual reality headsets and other devices.
The holidays are here, which means a slew of new smartphones are set to be gifted to loved ones in the spirit of giving. Of course, a great case to compliment and protect that precious flagship is a must, regardless of whether it's a OnePlus 6T, iPhone XS, or Galaxy Note 9. And while quality cases usually come with a hefty price tag, there are plenty of Black Friday deals to keep you from going broke.
With the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR, Apple introduced dual-SIM capabilities to iOS, made possible by eSIM technology. If you recently picked up one of these three new iPhones and need to utilize your eSIM while traveling abroad, you might want to take a look at the data plans offered by GigSky.
In the world of technology, there's often a trade-off between convenience and security. The Java Remote Method Invocation is a system where that trade-off is all too real. The ability for a program written in Java to communicate with another program remotely can greatly extend the usability of an app, but it can also open up critical vulnerabilities that allow it to be compromised by an attacker.
Many apps claim to record phone calls on Android, but very few actually deliver. There's just too many different devices floating around out there for one app to be able to support them all — or so it would seem.
A simple security flaw can allow an attacker to gain a strong foothold with little effort on their part. When a web application permits remotely hosted files to be loaded without any validation, a whole can of worms is opened up, with consequences ranging from simple website defacement to full-on code execution. For this reason, RFI can be a promising path to obtaining a shell.
With iOS 12, iCloud Keychain has become a more useful password manager for your iPhone with strong password suggestions, password reuse auditing, and Siri support. However, before you jump ship from your current password manager, you should consider all the reasons why iCloud Keychain doesn't make sense as your primary password manager.
Ever-shrinking bezels and disappearing hardware buttons make for good looking phones, but they also increase the need for gesture controls. Android Pie comes with seven new swipe gestures, but if you don't have the update yet (or find its default gesture options to be lacking), you should take a look at the Microsoft Launcher.
Fans attending the US Open Tennis Championships in Queens, New York, which kicks off on Monday, will have the opportunity to meet tennis star Venus Williams in an augmented reality game sponsored by American Express.
Maybe you prefer writing passwords in a notebook. Maybe you like creating your passwords yourself. Whatever the case, you don't like iOS 12's new automatic password generator, and you don't need it to pop up every time you enter a new password in Safari or a third-party app. Lucky for you, iOS 12 lets you disable the feature altogether. Unfortunately, that perk comes with a catch.
With iOS 12, Apple is offering users more options than ever to create, store, and manage their saved passwords. Not only can iOS 12 make you new passwords via the AutoFill feature, you can quickly and efficiently access your entire iCloud Keychain using Siri. Why go hunting for the passwords yourself when you can ask your iOS assistant to find them for you?
The option to auto-fill passwords on your iPhone has been around a while now, but iOS 12 improves on it by suggesting strong passwords when first creating an account online in Safari or within apps. Apple has also added "password reuse auditing" for your iCloud Keychain, where all your logins are housed, which will find and change your weak passwords to strong ones.
Front and center for iOS 12 this year is Group FaceTime, which allows users to chat with up to 31 additional people at once. While that ambitious feature is sadly delayed, don't cast away FaceTime just yet — you can always pick up your iPhone and start a call with any single contact directly from the Messages app.
One of the new iOS 12 features for iPhones is an enhanced version of Do Not Disturb mode. Instead of being limited to times you manually input, Apple added new ways to manage the feature, including activating it based on location. For those on the go, this can be done pretty quickly.
Think back to when you last wanted to transfer some music or videos to your friend's smartphone and how difficult and slow it was. As powerful as our phones are, the default file sharing options are limited. There are, fortunately, some better options which make moving files easy, secure, and painless.
Fortnite's long awaited arrival on Android has ramped up excitement among gamers who are installing the beta version in astounding numbers. With so many midrange and budget devices running Android, however, it's important to stay on top of your device's performance to ensure smooth and uninterrupted gameplay.
After getting confirmation from Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, we now know Fortnite Battle Royale will not be available on the Play Store when it's finally released for Android. Instead, users will have to download the APK directly from Epic Games' website — and quite frankly, this is a bad idea.
Will smartphone batteries ever last as long as we need them to? Perhaps not. That's why we rely on external batteries to help us stay connected for hours, even days, longer than usual. But in 2018, you don't want to use just any external battery. Modern Android phones have fast charging — so should your portable charger.
You may have heard of a signal jammer before, which usually refers to a device that blasts out a strong enough radio signal to drown out the reception of nearby devices like cell phones. Purpose-built jammer hardware is outright illegal in many countries. Still, Wi-Fi is vulnerable to several different jamming attacks that can be done with Kali Linux and a wireless network adapter.
One of the most exciting additions to iOS 12 for iPhones is called Shortcuts, a tool integrated with Siri to help you get things done faster. While there are a few recommended shortcuts available to you in Siri's settings in iOS 12, the Shortcuts app brings the functionality of Workflow to Siri so you can build your own custom actions or select from the gallery of available shortcuts.
If you ever want to root your OnePlus 6, install TWRP, get Magisk and Xposed, or flash a custom ROM, the first thing you'll need to do is unlock your bootloader.
With the re-emergence of Samsung's Good Lock app, you're once again able to tweak parts of your Galaxy's interface with no root or major modifications required. One add-on in particular even lets you fully customize the Quick Settings panel on your S8, S9, or Note 8 in a full spectrum of colors to truly make it your own.
After a district judge approved the $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner, we knew AT&T would be quick to reap the rewards of capturing Time Warner's media properties. Today, we get our first look at this with two cellular plans from AT&T. What makes these plans unique is they include a new cord-cutting service called WatchTV.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a great way to add another layer of security to sensitive third-party apps and websites like Venmo. However, before iOS 12, to log into a particular 2FA-secured app or site on your iPhone, you'd have to memorize or copy the SMS code from Messages, then jump back in a timely manner to log in. Apple's latest iOS version streamlines this process.
When you first update to iOS 12 on your iPhone, notifications on the lock screen and in the history will be grouped automatically into stacks based on a variety of factors for each app. For example, articles from Apple News will be stacked together based on sites. But you can also change this so that all alerts from a particular app will be grouped in one bundle, not separate ones.
There's always an iPhone in our list of top phones for privacy and security, due in large part to advanced security measures like Face ID, consistent iOS updates, and easy ways to prevent unwanted access and excessive data sharing. However, some of those options actually do the opposite and hinder security. It all depends on how you use your iPhone, but you should at least know everything available.
Most of us have, at one point or another, found ourselves glued to our smartphone in a trance-like state, totally unaware of what's around us. Well, Apple has a way to curb overuse with an awesome tool for iPhone starting in iOS 12. It can help nudge us away from our phones to spend more time attending to real-life matters.
Bookmarks and favorites are handy options for saving interesting websites you come across while surfing the web on Android but are far from ideal when it comes to instant access. Thankfully, Google Chrome gives you the added ability to save webpages and progressive web apps directly to your home screen for added convenience.
Instagram integrated Stories back in 2016, and it flew right by Snapchat as a whole, becoming a bigger success itself than the whole entire Snapchat app. Still, the constant bombardment of information can be tiring in Instagram, so much so that you may want to mediate what Stories are shown to you. Fortunately, there's a way to do just that — without unfollowing accounts or hashtags.
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.
Apple released the iOS 11.3.1 update for iPhones on Tuesday, April 24, 26 days after the official release of iOS 11.3 and eight days after the iOS 11.4 beta 2 update. It is the first minor update to iOS 11.3, and the biggest thing in it is a fix that lets displays fixed by third parties work again.
Google has started blocking certain devices from accessing the Google Play Store and other Google services. This is part of an effort to clamp down on OEMs that skirt its certification requirements, but now millions of phones have been uncertified to download or update Google apps. Fortunately, there are a few workarounds.
Beginners learning brute-forcing attacks against WPA handshakes are often let down by the limitations of default wordlists like RockYou based on stolen passwords. The science of brute-forcing goes beyond using these default lists, allowing us to be more efficient by making customized wordlists. Using the Mentalist, we can generate millions of likely passwords based on details about the target.
Privacy is a hot topic. In the wake of Facebook's data scandal, many want to safeguard their personal info. On the other hand, we all gain a certain amount of convenience by using services administered by huge companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Google Assistant collects plenty of data, but you can easily check what is stored and delete items at will.