Night Shift, Dark Mode, Reduce White Point, and Zoom's Low Light Filter all help reduce the harmful effects on your body's clock that bright iPhone and iPad screens have at night. But there's another option on iOS and iPadOS that turns your entire display red, and it's useful for so much more than just late-night browsing in bed.
TikTok is all the rage right now, and its green screen effect is one of the more popular augmented reality tricks creators use to boost their viewership numbers. Now Snapchat has leveled the playing field by making it easier to access its own green screen effect.
When you take a photo of something interesting, like a landmark, piece of art, animal, or plant, there's a good chance you'll also want to know more about that something than just what you see in the frame. When this happens, you can take advantage of Apple's content recognition service for iOS and iPadOS without having to install any third-party apps.
The latest iPhone update introduces big features like Live Activities and Clean Energy Charging, but those aren't the only things you'll notice different on iOS 16.1. If you build your own shortcuts in the Shortcuts app, there are a few things you'll definitely want to know about the new software. It's not a massive feature drop as with iOS 16.0, but they are important changes.
There are two types of people in this world: those who recognize Wordle grids of yellow, green, and gray/black blocks and those who do not. No matter which category you fall in, there's a Wordle-inspired game that's perfect for you.
Editing and unsending iMessages are definitely the stars of the Messages app's latest app update, but they aren't the only new features worth exploring. One tool you may not have discovered yet fixes an issue that's plagued the Messages app since the beginning.
The Lens Studio community, now made up of more than 200,000 creators, has generated some impressive augmented reality effects in the last few years. Amazingly, the groundbreaking Lenses for Snapchat continue to come, often from the internal AR team at Snap.
A pair of properties from the soon-to-merge Warner Media and Discovery companies chose different platforms for their augmented reality marketing, with Warner film Space Jam: A New Legacy opting to go with Facebook and Discovery Channel publishing an AR experience through Snapchat.
The makers of arguably the two most important mobile AR apps, Niantic and Snap, both had good news this week, with the former preparing to replicate its success with Pokémon GO for another franchise and the latter notching another popular augmented reality Lens for Snapchat.
The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy.
Sure, Microsoft has mostly marketed its HoloLens headsets towards enterprises and developers, but we learned this week that, like every other tech giant, the company is working on a consumer-grade AR wearable. Speaking of consumer smartglasses, Apple made another strategic investment this week that has implications for Apple's AR future.
The mission to rise above the fray to become a leading player in the augmented reality business is a moving target that depends on innovation, resources, and timing.
As a company, Facebook is not shy about talking up its AR smartglasses plans. The latest missive comes from two executives in charge of developing AR software and hardware.
Snapchat and its augmented reality capabilities have become a haven for music artists seeking to promote their new albums or simply amplify their art with immersive experiences.
The augmented reality industry has grown steadily over the past four years, but now it is on a collision course with uber-popular non-fungible tokens technology, with Looking Glass and music artist Reggie Watts among the latest to strike while the iron is hot.
The Lens Studio creators have published more than 1.5 million AR effects to Snapchat. One of them is Audrey Spencer, who shared her story with us and provided her insights into Lens Studio as a storytelling device. Meanwhile, Snap has added new capabilities to the platform to stoke more creativity from its creators.
The Super Bowl isn't just the most important NFL game of the year, it's also the biggest night for brands to bring their most creative advertisements to a vast television audience.
Hand tracking is a key component in making natural interactions with augmented reality content, and one of the leading technology makers in this discipline has just improved on its tracking engine.
In the three years since Snapchat launched Lens Studio, developers and artists have created more than 1.5 million AR camera effects with the desktop tool.
The economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt in practically every business sector. Now, as we look back at the top augmented reality investments of 2020, the AR industry has been no exception.
While Google Play Music fans mourn its demise, its replacement, YouTube Music, is gaining some neat features that its predecessor never had.
In a similar vein to Facebook's colorful backgrounds for text posts, Instagram has a way to add vivid text-only status updates for your stories. That way, you can conjure up colorful stories that make a statement without even needing to take a photo or video in the first place. And now there are even more fonts to choose from.
Now that MLB has finally begun to play ball without fans, the NBA is gearing up to restart its season with 22 out of teams qualifying to play in isolation in Orlando and advance to the playoffs.
Android phones finally have a true AirDrop alternative called "Nearby Share." The new feature was added through an update to the Google Play Services app that comes pre-installed on all Android devices in the US, so you don't even have to wait on a firmware upgrade — it's just there.
A modern iPhone is capable of running sophisticated, exquisitely-rendered games that rival titles on current-generation consoles. However, there is some value in classic video game titles, whether you grew up playing games on the Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Sega Genesis or not.
Remember concerts? Those were fun. While gathering in large groups to listen to live music might not be allowed at the moment, the live music part still is. Thanks to the internet, more and more musicians are taking the stage each day to perform for those of us stuck in social isolation due to the new coronavirus. The best part? Many of these concerts are 100% free.
While the airline, casino, cruise, and hotel industries are asking for government bailouts during the COVID-19 pandemic, companies around the US are giving away its apps and services for a limited time. So while you're stuck at home, keep your mind off of coronavirus with free movies, TV, music apps, concerts, internet, fitness sessions, classes, and more.
People fundamentally distrust magicians. And they should. The illusions they proffer are just that, illusions meant to astound rather than tangible interactions and results that have weight and meaning in our real world. Our lizard brains know this, and, no matter what the outstanding feat of "magic" presented, we nevertheless hold fast to our survival-based grip on the truth: we just saw simply "can't be real."
Who here binges TV on a regular basis? I know I do. Never before have we had so many options for watching our favorite shows, especially when you consider how easy it is to stream from anywhere on a mobile device. But sometimes, all that choice gets a little overwhelming. What services are really worth the money? Where should you be investing your Friday-night binges?
If you had a phone in 2004, there's a pretty good chance it was a Motorola RAZR. The iconic phone is the tenth highest-selling of all time, and it marked the height of the flip phone era. Now that the technology has caught up, Lenovo (Motorola's parent company) is bringing it back in a big way.
It's always a big deal when the company that makes Android releases a new phone. Google's Pixel series has made a name for itself in three short years behind its camera prowess, but now it's time to start competing with the major players. That said, Google should like how their Pixel 4 and 4 XL stack up against the iPhones and Galaxies of the world.
You're a busy, on-the-go professional, so you deserve an email client that keeps up with you. "Mail" on iPhone wasn't always the best option, but thanks to iOS 13, it feels like a completely different app. That said, there are plenty of alternatives that offer a different experience. Better yet, these apps are free. You won't need to spend a dime to try them out for yourself.
What if, back in 2013, Google Glass had launched not as a Star Trek Borg-like eyepiece, but as a pair of seemingly normal shades, with the augmented reality lens and camera hidden within the frame?
Over the past decade, Marvel Studios has been a dominant force at the box office, raking in more than $21 billion dollars. Averaged out over that span of time, the yearly earnings of those movies outweigh the gross domestic product of some countries.
I noticed the neon yellow sign at the new location of Pho Bar in Chinatown right away. The sweeping cursive yellow letters spell out "Crazy Rich Broth"; the same phrase printed on the back of servers' shirts. It's the kind of minimalist but colorful design feature that is especially popular on Instagram at the moment — shots of patrons in front of a glowing sign.
A few months ago, iOS 12.1 came out with a handful of useful new features, and iOS 12.2 goes even further. While some of iOS 12.2's new features for iPhone are much welcomed, there are some that we'd be better without.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that augmented reality (or, AR for short) will "change everything." But what, exactly, is augmented reality?
In a way, Twitter is the town square of our era, where people can share and discuss ideas on a wide variety of topics. While the tech giant has its own app for Android, it's pretty bare-bones when it comes to features. This has paved the way for third-party clients that are rich with customization options.
The year 2018 was a rough one for Snap, the company behind the Snapchat app and the Spectacles wearable camera device. From executive departures to reports of slowed user growth, the company that once spurned Facebook's multibillion-dollar advances is now facing a moment of truth as it stares down its uncertain future.
On April 26, 2019, Sinemia posted a note on its website stating it has ceased all operations in the United States. It's not known if it continues to work in other countries or if US users will be getting any refunds, particularly, for annual subscribers.