Since version 4.4 (KitKat), Android has taken the album artwork for any song that's currently playing, as well as videos, podcasts, and other media, then used it as the background image for your lock screen. While many users have enjoyed this little tweak, others aren't quite as fond of it.
Netflix was my proverbial gateway drug to cord-cutting, as I'm sure it was for many others. Yet as much as I truly love Netflix and its service, there are some annoyances I have with the interface of the desktop web version.
Most of us enjoy taking photos with our iPhones and sharing them with friends and family, but it's adding that extra touch or funny caption that turns an ordinary picture into something unforgettable or downright hilarious. With Inkboard, you can use your imagination to draw and scribble over any photo you take or have in your iPhone's camera roll.
It feels great to wrap up in a big, fluffy towel after a steamy shower, but it's frustrating when that towel isn't quite up to the job. Over time, towels lose their ability to hold water and dry as needed thanks to daily use and the biggest culprit—laundry detergent.
Family Feud is one of the longest-running game shows in American TV history. Its viewer base spans generations, and this is mostly due to the fun nature of the show. Contestants have to guess the most popular answers to survey questions that were posed to 100 random strangers, and the responses often range from silly to downright funny.
If you're playing the Android version of Game of War, or pretty much any other game (including emulators), it's much easier to play using a controller. While most Android games have gamepad support built-in, others do not and require a root app like Tincore to map touches into buttons.
Cards Against Humanity is a popular party game with good old-fashioned raunchy adult themes that go quite well with a few alcoholic beverages. Up until now, though, you had to either print out a set of cards or order the official deck to play—unless, of course, all players happened to have devices that sported the same operating system.
Thanks to a couple of photoshopped images that made rounds across Twitter last year, iPhone users were duped into thinking that iOS 8 included a security feature that would lock individual apps. Of course, none of it ended up being true, but we covered other features and apps that could accomplish roughly the same thing.
For all of the flak that it catches, Wikipedia is still a great source of information. Contributors take their work very seriously, so the vast majority of information is cited, and the site serves very well as a starting point to learn about a new topic.
When you send an emoji from your Android device to someone that uses an iPhone, they don't see the same smiley that you do. And while there is a cross-platform standard for emojis, these don't work the same way as unicode-based smilies or dongers, so not every operating system displays these little guys the same way.
The bulk of my mobile gaming is done in instances of boredom, like sitting in a waiting room or watching bad TV. So when I heard about a new trivia game that pits every user against each other just once a day, I was immediately intrigued; it's a new spin on a very popular platform.
If Detective Alonzo Harris from Training Day taught me anything, it's that "It's not what you know, it's what you can prove." So when items mysteriously go missing from my room or my section of the fridge, it's up to me to figure out and prove which roommate took them.
Televisions used to be great for just one thing—watching TV. But a more connected world brought with it Smart TVs, devices that can access the web, stream Netflix, and even mirror your smartphone's display. And with this level of connectivity, OEMs like Samsung saw it fit to place targeted and interactive ads on your screen.
When going out to eat with friends, it's inevitable that one person takes charge at the end of the meal to split the bill. They whip out a pen and begin asking everyone what they ordered, carefully dividing, adding, and subtracting on the back of the receipt for everyone to use. Unfortunately, that never seems to work as intended. One person will end up paying a little more, while another will pay less.
Deep down, Android is a fork of Linux, which is a desktop operating system that started out as entirely command prompt-based. For that reason, many system-level tasks can still be executed within a terminal emulator app.
We've previously covered an app called YouTube Floating Popup Player which let you watch YouTube videos anywhere on your Android device, but it has since been removed from the Google Play Store due to infringement of certain policies.
We recently showed you how to recover your Shazam history from Siri, which is a lot less intuitive than finding the songs you've tagged directly in the Shazam app. But with a subscription to Rdio or Spotify, there's no need to even locate your history. You can Shazam songs and have them automatically added to a newly created playlist titled "My Shazam Tracks."
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! A short while ago, I started a new series called "How to Spy on Anyone." The idea behind this series is that computer hacking is increasingly being used in espionage and cyber warfare, as well as by private detectives and law enforcement to solve cases. I am trying to demonstrate, in this series, ways that hacking is being used in these professions. For those of you who are training for those careers, I dedicate this series.
These days, we truly have a world of knowledge at our fingertips. Trouble is, a large portion of that information is not something you'd want your five-year-old learning about quite yet.
When my girlfriend told be about a Trivia Crack cheat she discovered, I was a little dubious. Then, after witnessing her trick in action and trying it out myself, my faith in the popular trivia game was forever tainted.
If you've sideloaded apps on your Nexus Player, you're surely aware that not very many are optimized for use with a remote control. This can make navigating such apps a pretty big hassle, since they were designed with touchscreen input in mind.
Nowadays, protecting your valuables can be challenging especially when you're on the go. That's why I decided to make a little secret compartment inside my car. Only you'll know it's there because nobody will be able to find it. Not only that, but you'll have easy access to it. It's fairly cheap and the total cost was under $5.00. Let me show you how to make it. You can watch the video or scroll down below for the written guide.
There are songs that we love, songs that make us sad, and songs that change the way we view the world—and that's something that Steve Jobs knew all too well.
With all of the productivity tweaks and usability enhancements that we cover here at Gadget Hacks, it's nice when we come across a unique and noteworthy app that's simply about having fun.
Google debuted YouTube Music Key in November, and for $10 a month, this essentially turned YouTube into a music streaming service. With ad-free music videos and background audio playback, YouTube serves as a viable alternative to Spotify or Pandora for Music Key subscribers.
Are you a lawyer who's married to a computer programmer? Chances are you might not have even dated if you first met online.
Whether you're a secret spy or just a regular person with a few secrets, you may want to keep certain information on your smartphone private, and it's totally possible on Android to do so.
Android automatically clears entries in your call log after 30 days. While this might be fine in most cases, sometimes you need to find a number that called you more than a month ago. Or perhaps you want to keep detailed records for business purposes, and 30 days just isn't long enough.
Normally, if you want to close all of the open apps on your Mac, you'd have to either quit them all one by one or restart, shut down, or log out while making sure to deselect “Reopen windows when logging back in." The latter option is great, but it doesn't always work in Mac OS X, and what if you don't want to restart, shut down, or log out?
We use the cameras on our phones to become Instagram-famous, direct Snapchat videos, and post pictures for all our Facebook friends to gander at. Needless to say, camera technology in smartphones has come pretty far in a fairly short amount of time. In fact, a film shot entirely with an iPhone 5S was just accepted into the Sundance Film Festival.
In today's world, we're constantly switching back and forth between all of our internet-connected devices. A PC may be great while you're at your desk, but the living room couch is tablet territory, and nothing beats the portability of a pocket-sized smartphone while you're on the go.
With Android devices getting bigger by the year, you'd think there would be a native multitasking solution by now. While Samsung and LG have included such features in their customized builds of Android, the stock base that manufacturers start with still doesn't include multitasking support.
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.
I once had a collection of over 300 different wallpapers for my MacBook, set to randomly change every 30 minutes. Needless to say, my desktop never got boring. Wallpapers can facilitate a mood, imply a political stance, or just add aesthetic appeal, so having to manually change them on my iPhone is a bummer because of how many times I want a new home or lock screen look.
Finding the right mix of custom ROM, kernel, and tweaks for my OnePlus One has left me flashing every new release I come across. This has led to many hours going through thread after thread trying to find the latest and best software out there for my phone. While I do enjoy the hunt, I would rather have a centralized location that covers all my bases, so that's why I have started using OnePlus One, an app by Alex Inthiaano.
WhatsApp is the go-to application for sending a message (or 100) to friends at home and abroad. And the best thing is, the service has remained true to its roots after Facebook acquired the company for $19 billion.
Getting caught using your iPhone at school or work (when you're using it for personal reasons) can be a little bit embarrassing. Even worse, it can be detrimental to how you're perceived by your teacher or boss. But sometimes you just have to beat that next level of Candy Crush, view a risqué photo on Snapchat, or send an important WhatsApp message.
After the Galaxy Note 3 firmware updated to NF4, Samsung decided to remove the option to hide apps in the app drawer, replacing it with an uninstall/disable feature instead. Before, with the hide feature, you could simply hide third-party apps that were barely used or that you didn't want others to see. Now, you can only completely get rid of them.
Many of us were required to take a foreign language in school, but sadly, many of us are far from fluent in said language. To be a better citizen of the world, learning popular and rare languages would be dope, but in reality, that's probably never going to happen. If you ever do find yourself in a situation where you're messaging people who don't speak your language, there's an app that can help you.
Almost all modern Android devices have a gesture that will take you directly to Google Now. For most phones and tablets, it's a simple swipe up from the home button. With a Samsung or an older Android device, it's only a matter pressing and holding the home button.
