Will the predicted apocalyptic date—December 21st, 2012—really be the end of the world? In this ongoing five-part series, we examine what would happen if zombies, nuclear weapons, cyber wars, earthquakes, or aliens actually destroyed our planet—and how you might survive.
If you want to make clothes for your cat, you're on your own. As I recently said in this article, cats will just totally flip out if you make them wear things. Your dog may also flip out, but I've found them to be more tolerant, personally.
Sure, you can remove apps from your iPhone's Home Screen without deleting them. But there's something satisfying about seeing them laid out and well-organized on the Home Screen, just a tap away, especially if you use user-selectable or custom icons for all your apps. Still, there may be days or situations when you want to hide apps without removing them entirely from the Home Screen.
If you scan the notification panel on your Samsung Galaxy smartphone daily, all those red circles with numbers that litter the apps on your home screen and app drawer can feel like persistent nagging and unnecessary clutter rather than friendly reminders to check your app alerts — but you can do something about it.
Since iOS 13, your iPhone's come equipped with a fonts manager that lets you install custom fonts for use in Apple apps and supported third-party apps. To add fonts, you need to use a font provider app that'll load them on your device and register them system-wide, and one of these apps shines above all else.
Back when Android used navigation buttons, there was a large black bar at the bottom of every screen to house the back, home, and recent apps buttons. But after switching to full-screen navigation gestures in 2019, there was no longer a need for it — however, a vestigial black bar still shows up when you're using your keyboard.
URL tracking codes: you'll see them on almost every link you copy online to share with friends and followers. It could be tens or hundreds of extra characters appended to the end of a URL, which websites and marketers use to tell how you got to the link in the first place. These excess tracking tokens not only make the links you share look sloppy and spammy — they could even invade your privacy.
Apple's two iCloud storage plans have made it easier than ever to free up space on your iPhone to take more pictures, play more mobile games, and download more music. The plan prices range from $0.99 to $9.99, which isn't bad, but not everyone wants to pay for storage. So deleting items becomes a great option to free up storage — especially music and music videos.
From browsing social media to creating films, your smartphone can do it all. But even with all that power, for many, it is primarily used to communicate with others, particularly via text. In One UI 3.0, Samsung and Google drastically changed this core functionality with a new-ish feature called notification bubbles.
Your iPhone's home screen just got a whole lot more exciting thanks to iOS 14, which is finally giving Android a run for its money in terms of home screen customization. What's new? Widgets in three different sizes, a new searchable App Library, and most importantly, the ability to hide entire home screen pages.
Out of all the myths about the iPhone's battery, one that's very true is that charging your phone overnight is bad news. Keeping the charge level at 100% puts the battery under strain, which can permanently damage it. Apple took steps to address the issue in iOS 13, where your battery stops charging when it hits 80% in some scenarios, but that's not always enough.
Android 10 added the framework for OS-wide chat bubbles, a feature popularized by Facebook Messenger. The new system allows you to interact with incoming messages as if you were in the app — all without having to leave your current app. In Android 11, this feature is finally activated.
Since iCloud's introduction in 2011, you get only 5 GB of complimentary cloud storage with your Apple account. With iPhone backups, app data, iCloud Drive files, and even emails (if you have a Mac, Me, or iCloud email address), you'll quickly run out of space to back up photos and videos. Fortunately, Google offers 15 GB of free storage, making it easy to upload your Camera Roll for safekeeping.
Wi-Fi tools keep getting more and more accessible to beginners, and the LAZY script is a framework of serious penetration tools that can be explored easily from within it. This powerful and simple tool can be used for everything from installing new add-ons to grabbing a WPA handshake in a matter of seconds. Plus, it's easy to install, set up, and utilize.
Apple's next big developer event happened on June 4, and it was the first glimpse of iOS 12 that anyone's seen. While there were lots of rumored features to be unveiled at WWDC 2018, Apple concentrated mostly on squashing bugs and making iOS work as seamless as it did years ago. Still, we had hoped that Apple would have added these features in iOS 12, but only a few made the cut.
Over the years, we've seen security breach after security breach, as well as high-profile data scandals where collected personal information was misused by companies. Apple makes customer privacy a priority, so there have been few issues to worry about when it comes to its services on your iPhone. However, there are still plenty of privacy settings to explore and change, especially within Safari.
Coinhive, a JavaScript cryptocurrency miner, was reportedly discovered on the BlackBerry Mobile website. It was placed there by hackers who exploited a vulnerability in the site's e-commerce software that allowed them to anonymously mine cryptocurrency every time the website was viewed. There's no doubt Coinhive, an innovative mining method, is being abused and exploited by hackers in the wild.
The headphone jack is becoming outdated technology in smartphones — that's what many manufacturers would have you believe. For the convenience of the audiophiles out there, we recently published our list of all phones that have removed the 3.5 mm jack. But what did each company gain inside their flagship phones by removing this supposedly antiquated port?
The holidays are stressful. Between traveling, family, and dinner, Thanksgiving weekend can feel like weeks. Many families have traditions that make the days long, but some of us would rather curl up somewhere and watch our favorite shows. But all is not lost — our phones do so much for us now that they can help make the long stressful weekend much more bearable.
With so much stimuli in today's world, it can be hard to keep track of all the places we've visited and the events we've attended. Thankfully, a great feature in Google Maps lets you view a detailed log of your phone's location history to help you remember where you were at almost any given point in time.
Word games fit perfectly with the on-the-go nature of mobile gaming. They're easy to pick up whenever you feel like exercising your brain, but they're also fairly easy to put down when you need to get back to the real world.
WWDC 2017 is right around the corner, where Apple is expected to reveal iOS 11, the newest version of their mobile operating system. There have been many rumors floating around about what iOS 11 will have in store for us, but not all of those features will end up in the final product — and a lot of the features you want won't actually make the cut, either. But that doesn't mean we can't hope for the best.
Fight me all you want, but it ain't a party without alcohol—whether it's a Halloween party, Christmas party, dinner party, or even a damn wedding. (If you think that people will stick around after dinner for a dry wedding, then you're sorely mistaken.)
While iOS 11 is ready to take over your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, let's take a step back and check out all of the new features that iOS 10 brought to the public when it was released to everyone in Sept. 2016.
There is much to be learned about Apple Music and the revamped Music application introduced in iOS 8.4. Throwing their hat into an already competitive field with other companies like Spotify, Tidal, or Rdio, this is a bold move on Apple's part. So, before you consider signing up for the new streaming service, let's take you through all the changes and features you should know about before doing so.
Apple Pay has been available to use in stores, as well as in select apps and websites, ever since its first appearance in iOS 8.1. Now, with iOS 12, there are currently 13 different iPhone models that support Apple Pay functionality without the use of an Apple Watch, and the list of partnered stores that accept Apple Pay has only grown. Here's our always-up-to-date list to keep you in the know.
Running out of storage space on your iPhone is annoying, but trying to free some up is downright aggravating. Until they figure out a way to throw a terabyte of flash memory in there, you're going to have to do some spring cleaning every now and then, especially if you're trying to update to iOS 8.
As I said in this earlier post, there's no easy way to explain or define the Steampunk aesthetic. There are a large number of Steampunk tropes or "cues", as I call them, that bring to mind the feeling of Steampunk. These cues combine to push past the "not-Steampunk" threshold into firmly "Steampunk" territory.
Visit a webpage on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and there's a good chance you'll be bombarded with distractions such as ads, fullscreen pop-ups, cookie consents, log-in requests, notifications, email signups, sticky videos, and calls to action. If you're using Safari and content blockers, "Block Pop-ups," and Reader mode can't hide the elements you need, Apple's got a new tool you should be excited about.
Some websites require you to perform a verification task so they know you're human and not a bot. It helps websites curb spam, abuse, unauthorized access, and cyberattacks but also adds an obstacle for anyone trying to visit their content. If you find it more of a nuisance than a necessary evil, there's an easy way to reduce the number of human verification prompts you receive on your iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac.
If you're an avid YouTube viewer, you may find yourself overwhelmed on the home page by recommendations from your past viewing habits. But now, you can have a clean slate on your YouTube home screen, free of recommendations.
Spotify lets you customize some aspects of your experience, whether on the desktop, web, Android, or iOS app. And one of the simplest yet coolest customizations you can perform is changing your playlist cover images. However, it doesn't work on all playlists.
The screenshot tool on your iPhone can come in handy in various ways, but it may be even more helpful than you realize. So if you thought you knew everything there was to know about your iPhone's screenshot tool, it's time to put your knowledge to the test.
TikTok has grown to be one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. The video-sharing app is a driving force for viral content, spurring various popular movements in dance, pranks, comedy, and more. And as one might assume, videos on TikTok don't stay on TikTok — they're shared on Instagram, Twitter, and other services where millions of people get the chance to also view them.
Facebook recently implemented "Vanish Mode" into Messenger and Instagram, which lets you have an end-to-end encrypted conversation in a chat that will disappear as soon as you leave the thread. As cool as it sounds, it's easy to enable accidentally, and a friend could force you into using it. In some cases, that may not be ideal since everything you or the recipient said will disappear.
One of the most aggravating things that can happen on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media apps is when a friend shares an exciting story, and a paywall prevents you from reading any of it. You could pay for a subscription to unlock it, but there are so many news sites that it can be both confusing and expensive to spend money on all of them.
There are a lot of cool shortcuts you could run on your iPhone, but in iOS 13 and iOS 14, you'll likely see a notification any time you try to run an automation. Shortcuts should feel seamless when their actions are performed, and getting a banner alert each time one initializes takes away the seamlessness of it all. But there is a way to block them.
Voicing your displease with a shoddy third-party app or professing your love for an album you've just bought is normal, which is why we have ratings and reviews. You hate something, you write something. You love something, you rate it. But feelings change over time, so your ratings or reviews may need to be updated.
In iOS 14, your iPhone can have home screen widgets, but you can also keep using widgets in the Today View if that's more comfortable for you. You could actually use both if you wanted. But when it comes to the Today View, the process for adding, removing, and editing widgets has changed.
Home screen widgets might not be a new concept in the Android world, but for iPhones, they're downright revolutionary. A new iOS 14 feature allows you to place small, medium, and large-sized widgets of your favorite apps on the home screen, to see important information without needing to long-press an app's icon, swipe to the Today View, or launch an app directly. Even better — you can stack them!