One of the biggest things that differentiates Android from iOS is the app drawer. Instead of the operating system just tossing all of your app icons into a cluttered heap on your home screen, most can be tucked away neatly in the app drawer, which, in essence, is very similar to the Windows Start menu.
Android apps check your system locale settings to determine which language they should display. For the most part, it's a seamless experience—except for those times when an app has not been translated into your language of choice, in which case the app will usually default to English.
Let's say you gave your Wi-Fi password to your neighbor a while back, under the assumption that they'd only use it while they were at your house sharing stuff via Chromecast. But now, your connection is slower than it normally should be, and you have this sneaking suspicion that the dude in apartment 3C is flat-out piggybacking off of your home network.
A few months ago, it was discovered that Verizon was installing an extremely shady app called "DT Ignite" on some of its smartphones—most notably, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. The app, created by Digital Turbine, monitors your smartphone usage, then uses the data it collects to silently install "recommended" apps without notifying you.
Cyanogen, Inc., the for-profit company that spun off from its CyanogenMod roots several years ago, has announced that they're shutting down all of their services. The company's impending demise shouldn't directly impact many Android users, but the announcement does have one major repercussion: The servers that used to host the popular CyanogenMod custom ROM have now been shut down.
If you were a particularly good little girl or boy this year, Santa might have finally brought you that cool new smartphone you've been wanting. Or perhaps you just took advantage of a great sale and treated yourself to a new gadget this holiday season—totally justifiable, and surely a well-deserved gift.
If you need to do some hardcore multitasking on your Windows PC, a second monitor can go a long way towards getting things done. If you opt to "extend" your Windows desktop across a dual monitor setup, it's as if you have two computers side by side, with each display getting its own set of windows and programs that can be open simultaneously.
With the exception of New York, D.C., and maybe San Francisco, public transportation in the United States is downright abysmal. Like it or not, you need a car to get around. This is why Uber and Lyft have seen so much success in recent years. Both ride-sharing services get you from point A to point B in an efficient manner, and they do it without costing an arm and a leg. Well, in most cases.
Google's Pixel and Pixel XL flagship phones are a rousing success, with consumers praising the fluid user experience and overall performance as two of the devices' biggest strengths. But even though Google may have knocked it out of the park with a set of Apple-like smartphones that "just work," there's still room for improvement in a few areas.
If you're an Android user, Google probably has almost your entire digital life stored on its servers. Family pictures are backed up on Google Photos, your e-book library resides with Google Play Books, videos are on YouTube, chat logs in Gmail and Hangouts, starred places and location history in Google Maps, and so much more.
When you're sitting at your desk trying to get some work done, your Android device can be a big distraction. If a text comes in, you have to pick up your phone, unlock it, then respond with the clumsy touch screen keyboard—and by then, you've probably forgotten what you were doing on your computer.
Now that Android 7.1.1 has been released, several features that were previously exclusive to Google's new Pixel phones are now available on the Nexus 6P. However, Google seems to be holding back on the Pixel's best features, as things like the "Night Light" red screen filter, "Moves" gestures, Google Assistant, blue accent color, and the new solid navigation buttons are still only officially available on the Pixel.
The rumor train for Samsung's upcoming flagship phone is now running on full steam, and some of its cargo (or lack thereof) might not be warmly welcomed by many when it finally pulls into the station.
Being able to take screenshots on Android isn't something we were always able to do. It was added to stock Android in Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 (Gingerbread 2.3, if you were a Samsung TouchWiz user) as a simple full screen screenshot, and that's the way it's remained ever since—until now.
A custom recovery is a very powerful tool. You can flash ZIPs that modify your Android device in ways that not even root can accomplish, and of course you can use it to install custom ROMs. But when you're applying all of these cool mods, there's always a chance that something could go wrong, and you might even end up bricking your device.
Most websites prevent you from saving embedded videos, but if you have the Xposed Framework installed on your Android device, a cool module from developer Ashish Bansal will now let you download almost any video. The way it works is simple—just start playing a video in your favorite web browser, then you'll see a notification that lets you download the source file in one tap.
There's one thing that I've always liked about iPhones, and that's their centered digital clock in the status bar at the top of the screen. On Android, it's always on the right side by default, and there's no easy setting that lets you just change it to the center position. But if you have a Google Pixel XL, there's a simple modification you can perform to get exactly that—a centered status bar clock.
Selecting text on a touchscreen device has always been a major pain point. Those tiny little arrows that let you adjust the selection area are always too hard to actually adjust, making precision all but impossible. Then there's the issue of some apps not even allowing text selection in the first place, so the entire experience is basically a big mess.
There's not much you can do to customize the look and feel of your iPhone's home screen, at least when it comes to official options provided by Apple. But thanks to a new bug discovered by YouTuber iDeviceHelp, you can now hide text labels for app icons and folders on your iPhone or iPad, and this hack doesn't even require a jailbroken device.
There are two things you're not supposed to talk about in a social setting: religion and politics. When it comes to the latter, though, a certain orange-hued reality TV star has made it all but impossible to stay mum about the goings-on in DC.
With the recent news that New York County's District Attorney's office is trying to get into over 400 locked iPhones for use in criminal investigations, you can see why it's important to keep other people away from your personal data. The fact that it can and will be used against you in a court of law is just one reason to protect your phone, because even if you make sure to stay above the fray, identity theft and bank fraud are still very real threats.
A new hack has reopened an 8-year-old iPhone security loophole that Apple thought it had fixed back with iPhone OS 2.2. This is not one of those times when a theoretical attack gets identified and blocked quickly by Apple. On the contrary, it's a hack that actually exists right now, and it can have some serious real-world repercussions, so this is something all iPhone users need to be aware of.
Apple released 10.2 to developers yesterday, which contained some new features that you'll probably want right now on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Lucky for you, the Public Beta is pushing this same update out today.
The Google Chrome browser for Android is packed with many great features, but it definitely has a bad rep for being slow and laggy on low-end or midrange devices. Without a top-notch processor, you'll likely notice some stutter with choppy scrolling, and pages can take too long to load in general.
Google Assistant just got a lot more powerful thanks to IFTTT. The automation platform, whose name stands for If This, Then That, connects your favorite online services and smart devices to one another, allowing for a seamless experience with many different gadgets—and Google Assistant is officially supported.
If you're in the market for a non-root ad-blocker, developer Julian Klode has an app that you'll definitely want to check out. It uses Android's VPN system in a similar manner to alternative apps like NetGuard and AdGuard, but it's got a new twist that should save lots of battery life in the process.
Copying files from a computer to your Android device has always been pretty straightforward—just connect the two devices with a USB cable, open your desktop file explorer, then move the files over. But what if you didn't need any wires at all?
If you've ever wondered why the pictures and videos you share with Snapchat on your Android device seem to look grainy with low resolution, you're not alone. We all know it, and we've come to accept it as a plain fact: Snapchat image quality sucks on Android.
Starting with iOS 7, the iPhone has had a cool feature that lets you see upcoming calendar events right on your lock screen, and it only got better with iOS 10. Android used to have this feature with its lock screen widget system, but that was removed back in the Lollipop days, so there's nothing quite like iOS 10's "Today View" feature anymore.
In case you didn't know, Google has an awesome app that gives you free money to spend on apps, games, movies, books, and virtually anything you can buy on the Google Play Store. The app is called Google Opinion Rewards, and all it asks in exchange for the Play Store credit is that you answer a few questions every now and then.
We all got a little jealous of the iPhone 7 Plus's dual-lens camera during the Apple Keynote in September. It's okay, you can admit it. But just because your Android doesn't have two lenses doesn't mean you can't recreate the fun bokeh effect of the iPhone's now wildly popular Portrait Mode.
Google makes Android, but now, Google makes its own phones, too. Until this point, they've always stayed on the software side of things and let Samsung and friends handle the hardware, but their new Pixel phones are changing all of that.
Google's new Pixel phones are shaking things up in the world of Android, as the Nexus line is no more, and the Mountain View tech giant has now become a smartphone OEM. The long-term impact of these moves remains to be seen, but we already know that Google, the manufacturer, will be adding extra software and UI features to the version of Android that ships with its Pixels.
Google's Pixel phones have a feature that lets you swipe down on the fingerprint scanner to open your notification shade and Quick Settings panel. It's one of those features that make you wonder why it wasn't there in the first place, since it gives you another way to interact with your device, and your fingerprint scanner isn't being used while you're screen is on anyway.
Starting with Marshmallow, Android added a built-in theme engine called "Runtime Resource Overlay," or RRO. This theme engine was intended to be used only by smartphone manufacturers, not end-users, so unlike Cyanogen's CM Theme Engine, owners can't use it to change the look and feel of their phones.
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.
One of the main reasons for installing a custom ROM on an Android device is all of the added features. For instance, OmniROM offers a souped-up multitasking mod called OmniSwitch, so instead of the regular app switcher, you get an interface that lets you pin your favorite apps, access settings, view memory usage, and more.
When you were unboxing your Galaxy Note7, you probably wondered why a little metal claw tool was included in the packaging. Then, if you looked closer, you saw there were five plastic sticks included with the claw tool that came in two different colors.
One of Android's biggest strengths relative to iOS is the fact that you can use any app to open compatible links, not just the stock ones that come preloaded on your device. When you tap a link that two or more of your apps are capable of opening, you'll see a message asking which app to launch it with—and from there, the choices are "Just Once" or "Always."
Some manufacturers, like Samsung and LG, have had split-screen multitasking on their custom versions of Android for years. But starting with Android Nougat, Google added this functionality to AOSP, which means that all phones and tablets running Android 7.0 or higher will now have a new multi-window mode.
