At certain times of the day, like when I finally get home after sitting through aggravating traffic, the last thing I need is the sound of my phone irritating me any further. So, I toggle on the "Do Not Disturb" feature (introduced in iOS 6) on my iPhone and get to enjoy a little peace of mind.
Group messages make for some hilarious conversations with your friends, and are also a great way to update multiple people without sending individual text messages. But as awesome as they can be, they can also be as equally annoying.
Newsletters, subscriptions, and receipts are all necessary evils that come along with online services and shopping, and they take up a significant amount of space in a lot of people's inboxes. If you've ever signed up for an account on a website, chances are you've gotten an email from them.
We have apps that can silence your smartphone's shutter sound, send self-destructing photos and videos, and even make any innocuous image look like a censored nude photo. But, there's still room to be amazed, like when an app can take a panoramic 360-degree image all by itself!
The car is arguably one of the worst places to receive a text message. You know you can't resist looking, and when you do, your attention is no longer on driving, it's on reading the latest gossip or whatever. You take your eyes of the road for just a few seconds and you could get an expensive ticket, or even worse—an accident. But you can't just ignore that notification sound or vibration, can you? So, if you just have to know what it says right then and there, why not at least do it in a sa...
Out of the box, Apple's digital assistant could be a godsend or a nuisance, depending on your daily interactions it. No matter which camp you fall into, Siri can always be better suited to your personal needs with a little customization. You can make Siri a powerhouse not to be reckoned with, or you can minimize its presence if you only need Siri help sometimes — all without any jailbreaking.
The "Zoombombing" trend is still strong on the Zoom video meetings service, despite security measures Zoom put in place to stop it. That's why it's up to you, as either a host or co-host, to be proactive about preventing Zoombomber harassment, as well as stopping it whenever it slips through the cracks.
Scanning pictures and uploading them to Google Photos is a great way to digitize your collection. With unlimited high-quality storage and text recognition capabilities, it's hard to pass up. And for your older family pictures, Google Photos will soon even colorize black and white images.
With the arrival of iOS 12, Do Not Disturb has received long-overdue enhancements to make the feature more user-friendly. Among these changes is a subtle but incredibly convenient feature that helps ensure you remain undisturbed for short periods of time to more focus on your task at hand — without having to worry about turning it off manually or messing with complicated settings.
Included with iOS 12 is an easier-to-use Do Not Disturb mode. Not only is there a new Bedtime Mode that makes waking up less annoying, but also new ways to quickly launch the DND temporarily. One example is having the ability to set Do Not Disturb based on a time of day — specifically, morning or evening.
Ever since the announcement of The Walking Dead: Our World game last fall, publisher AMC and developer Next Games have been quiet about the title. Almost too quiet.
In the "Do Not Disturb" menu in your iPhone's settings, you can choose to allow phone calls from everyone, your favorites, or specific groups. However, this does not apply to text messages, only phone calls, so there's no way to get vibration or sound alert for messages from select contacts — but that doesn't mean there isn't a way.
Love him or hate him, we all know President Trump has a strong presence on Twitter. Whether it's 3 pm or 3 am, the president is probably tweeting. His frequent Twitter habits are often discussed by the media, and they've especially caught the attention of lawyers at Columbia University ... but not in a good way.
YouTube won't let you play videos in the background on Android without paying for YouTube Red, so if it's your primary source for streaming music, and you don't want to shell out $9.99/month, you'll just have to take matters into your own hands. The simplest solution to this problem would be to download MP3s straight from YouTube for offline playback, but in the past, this hasn't exactly been easy on a mobile device.
A growing trend for many artists (most recently Kanye West) is to offer exclusive or experimental tracks on music streaming sites like SoundCloud or YouTube before releasing them anywhere else. On rare occasions, some of these great songs never make their way onto an official album, which can be disappointing for die-hard fans who need to download every song available from their favorite artist or band.
It's been over a year now since Google introduced a visual way to track down which tabs are playing audio in Chrome, something that was previously only available using third-party extensions. However, they still didn't give an easy option for shutting those tabs up without having to stop what you're doing.
One of the more talked-about features of Android Lollipop is a new Priority Mode that allows you to mute all notifications except for those coming from starred contacts. As simple as that sounds, this can still be a bit confusing—or at least lead to some unwanted interruptions.
Android 5.0 has a cool new feature called Priority Mode that allows you to silence your phone's ringer except for when certain people call you. It's something you'd enable right before bedtime, for instance, if you don't want to be disturbed unless it's someone important trying to reach you.
A certain selection of applications on your Android device (both system and downloaded) start running as soon as your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 turns on, laboriously hammering away at whatever tasks they have to do.
Whether it's because you're too startled from a sudden awakening or you're elbow-deep in cake batter, turning an alarm or timer off on your phone can be annoying. So why not simplify the process by eliminating the need to even touch your phone? With these free apps by Augmented Minds, you can turn off your timer or alarm with just a wave of your hand. That means no more fumbling in the dark for the right button, and more importantly, no more worrying about getting food on your iPhone.
Visual Voicemail revolutionized phone calls and the voicemail system when Apple introduced it with the original iPhone. Now, thanks to iOS 17, Apple has done it again with its newest calling feature, Live Voicemail. This feature uses speech-to-text technology to show you voicemail transcriptions on the incoming call screen in real time, helping you decide if it's important enough to answer the call.
A good smartphone can be the perfect workout companion. You have music for motivation, videos for pushing through boring cardio sessions, GPS to keep you on course, and even an array of sensors for gathering data about your workout. But not all phones are created equal when it comes to helping you stay fit.
Silence spreads over these mountains like nothing I've ever felt. If I didn't have Moby blasting in my earphones, there'd probably be no other sounds around. Well, except for someone, Phil probably, murmuring in a nearby tent just low enough to make his words indiscernible.
One of iOS 14's more exciting features lets you tag someone in a group iMessage chat in the same way you would @ someone on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms. Even if the conversation is muted, you can get notified when you're mentioned, which helps you jump in only when needed. But if you want complete silence, then disable contact tagging notifications altogether.
It happens to almost everyone. You wake up one morning, check your phone, and realize your alarm never went off. Now you're late to start the day, and you spend every night onward paranoid it'll happen again. But if you have an iPhone, there are two things you can check to make sure the alarm always goes off on schedule.
At I/O 2018, Google showcased features that would make the Google Assistant easier to communicate with. While some people were impressed with (and maybe creeped out by) Google Duplex, one feature that was well received was the ability to talk to the Assistant without the constant "Hey Google" before each question.
There are few apps or services better than Slack for keeping a team both communicative and productive. But it also makes it difficult to escape your job — after work hours and weekends should be yours, not Slack's. If you want to stop the barrage of notifications and messages on your time off, you should make use of Slack's "Do Not Disturb" and "Away" settings.
These days, when you're setting up an Android device for the first time, you'll be prompted to add extra email accounts directly to the Gmail app. It's really simple, too—just sign in with your work or exchange account, then emails from those accounts will be mixed in with your personal account in the Gmail app's "All Inboxes" view.
We all fall sleep in different ways. Some may require absolute silence, others need white noise, and some enjoy listening to a song or two to help bring on the sleep. If you're in the latter group, like I am, there's a problem. Fall asleep before the music stops, and a loud song may jolt you awake in the middle of the night. With an iPhone, however, that issue can be avoided with a little setup.
Prying into people's lives without them putting up their guard can be difficult, unless you can convince them that you already know them very well. Most people don't have many friends they can be honest with, and this can be exploited. Once they're convinced you already know their secrets, they'll start to fill you in on the little details.
As far as lock screens go, your Samsung Galaxy S4 and other Android phones offer quite a few options. You can use the classic PIN unlock, the novelty facial recognition, or the reliable pattern lock. But what if you get tired of entering the same old PIN or pattern every day?
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.
Apple's iTunes Match service is a great feature for people who have large libraries or want to sync their music across a lot of different devices. It lets you store any song in your library that exists in the iTunes Store on the cloud, even songs you imported from CDs, and even improves the quality of some of them. But, like any new service, it's not without its problems, and the fact that it costs $25 a year makes those problems seem even worse. Among the issues that users reported, unmatche...
Your days as an ordinary Muggle are over — as long as you have an iPhone. With just a word or two, you can use your iPhone and newfound Muggle-born powers to cast spells or utilize charms just like Harry Potter and team. Only your "wand" is from Apple, not Ollivanders in Diagon Alley.
Do Not Disturb is the best way to block out all interruptions on your iPhone without having to power down. All notifications and alerts are silenced, but the same can't be said for phone calls. By default, repeat calls will bypass Do Not Disturb, which can be quite frustrating when you're in a movie, classroom, or board meeting. It's good for emergencies, but not for people who can't take the hint.
Since its introduction in iOS 11, the Screen Recording tool has been a great way to show less tech-savvy users how to use their iPhones better. It's never been easier to show your grandmother how to disable Live Photos or lower screen brightness. However, banner notifications can appear during a recording, forcing you to start over. They can even interrupt a screen share during a Zoom or Skype meeting.
Twitter can be a wonderful place for people to express their emotions and chat with each other in brief. However, it can also be a breeding ground for hateful comments, foul language, and a whole lot of political talk.
New year, new me. You finally committed to working on the best physical you by going to the gym multiple days a week. Except about an hour in, you start getting really tired of it all. Before you run to the exit, pick up your phone.
With Google's new Pixel 4, we now have another device in the pool of phones designed for normal-sized hands. The other major player in this segment is as big as it gets — metaphorically. Apple's iPhone 11 Pro is the small phone to beat, but can Google be the one to dethrone it?
Some of the Pixel 3's coolest features are software related, which means you can get many of them on non-Pixel devices. "Flip to Shhh" is a perfect example of this. It lets you quickly put your phone into do not disturb mode by placing it face down, and this can be replicated on other Android phones with the help of a simple app.
