The iPhone's home screen gets its signature aesthetic from a grid of icons that seamlessly blend in to almost any background. It's a somewhat minimalistic look, but that's interrupted by cluttery text labels for apps and folders. Fortunately, there's a way to remove these labels, but you'll have to be jailbroken to pull it off.
Back in its infancy, the App Store was filled with text bomb apps that allowed users to send a barrage of text messages to friends, family, and foes. It was a fun way to annoy people, but Apple quickly scrubbed the apps because of technical issues. Although text bombs are still banished, you can now use a Siri Shortcut to send text bombs through iMessage on your iPhone.
Everyone occasionally has tipsy fingers that lead to mistaken button taps. Even if you didn't accidentally delete your note, you may have found that it is in fact still relevant and not time for that note's demise. Thankfully, there's a simple way to undelete your Google Keep notes.
Newer smartphones usually come with a decent amount of storage, even at the lowest tier, but that doesn't stop items from filling up all that space. Watching movies offline, shooting 4K videos, and other processes can fill up your phone fast, and so can albums and songs in Apple Music.
Introduced to Apple Podcasts back in iOS 11.2, whenever one episode of a show ends on your iPhone the next one begins right away for an uninterrupted experience. While the continuous playback feature for each show or station is incredibly useful for lengthy commutes, long drives, or to catch up on what you've missed, it may not be ideal for other situations.
While the audio experience is solid on Galaxy phones, it isn't the absolute best out of the box. That's because Samsung has partnered with Dolby Laboratories to provide its industry-leading sound technology known as Dolby Atmos, but it's turned off by default. Once enabled, your audio experience will go from good to great.
Let me paint a picture for you. You're on a long flight home, and while listening to music on your Samsung Galaxy S10, a great song comes on. You want your friend to hear it too, who's also listening to music using a pair of Bluetooth headphones. Thanks to Dual Audio, you can easily share your experience.
With so much of our personal data floating around the web, it's nearly impossible to get away from spam calls, texts, and emails. Unfortunately, this isn't just limited to the online world — filling in your contact information in a raffle ticket with the hope of winning that shiny new car in the mall, for instance, can often result in getting swamped with spam texts containing sketchy loan offers.
As the premiere app for chatting and video calls, it only makes sense for Skype to provide a dark theme to help prevent eye strain and minimize battery drain. Not only that, it has to also keep pace with popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger that also have the feature built-in.
Text conversations and group chats can sometimes devolve to random and nonsensical chatter that bombard you with annoying notifications. Naturally, this can get distracting and prevent you from focusing on more pressing matters. Fortunately, Samsung Messages has a feature built in to minimize distractions whenever conversations go out of hand.
Some messages take precedence over others, so having the same notification tone for all your threads isn't always the best solution. Fortunately, Samsung Messages has a simple option you can tweak to set custom sounds for specific chats to help you stay on top of priority conversations and reply much faster.
An iPhone's display can get seriously bright, whether LCD or OLED. When you're in bed at night or in a dark room where you don't want to disturb others visually, the brightness is even more noticeable. But there are a few built-in ways in iOS to reduce brightness below the default levels for less eye strain and other reasons.
Apple released the third public beta for iOS 12.4 on the afternoon of May 28. The update arrives roughly three hours after Apple published 12.4's third developer beta, and eight days after 12.4 public beta 2. At this time, it seems beta 3 is a minor update for 12.4, which itself is a small upgrade to iOS 12 as a whole. We expect iOS 12.4's shining feature to be Apple Card support.
With the iOS 13 beta right around the corner, Apple is churning out the betas for iOS 12.4 with developer beta 3 out today, May 28. It's the third beta in just 14 days and just eight days after developer beta 2 and public beta 2. The third beta may only house improvements overall, as iOS 12.4 is pretty bare bones as is, despite some hints at Apple Card support.
Apple just released the second iOS 12.4 developer beta today, May 20, five days after the release of the first developer beta for iOS 12.4 and one week after the public release of iOS 12.3. In general, the iOS 12.4 update will support Apple Card, Apple's upcoming credit card due out this summer.
As the industry has shifted toward OLED (including Google's own Pixel lineup), the outcry for dark mode has been louder than ever. Google heard the cries and has been working toward a real system-wide dark mode. To lay the groundwork, they are adding the feature to all their apps, including their Calculator app.
In order to save money, a few compromises had to be made when switching to Google Fi on an iPhone. No more Wi-Fi calling, no automatic network-switching, no hotspots outside the US, and no more visual voicemail. I've found that last one particularly frustrating — but not anymore. Visual voicemail is now available on Fi for iPhone, but it's not like it was before Fi.
Your Google history is mostly a binary choice — either you enable it fully, taking advantage of all its features while letting Google record your activity, or you disable it, staying incognito but also missing out on some fun stuff. But now, Google will let you auto-delete your history, allowing you to utilize all the perks that come with recording your history while maintaining some level of privacy.
We all listen to podcasts differently — on the way to work, at the gym, when drifting off to sleep. If you're in the latter group and rely on Overcast to help you with your nightly routine, you're probably sick of its blinding light theme keeping you up. That's why the app features a dark mode, to keep things easy on the eyes while picking out or playing an episode.
For me, there's nothing better than popping on a favorite show or new movie after a long day at the office — except when there's a friend or two I can talk to about that crazy ending. Netflix doesn't double as a social media app, so you can't chat about what you're watching there. What you can do is share your latest obsession to your Instagram story, to get the discussion going with all your followers.
You can't use social media these days without running into stories. They're simply everywhere. If you're an avid Facebook Messenger user, you know that you can view your friend's Facebook and Messenger stories at the top of your Chats list. However, a new Messenger feature puts yours and other people's stories inline for chats.
Is there a bigger name in pop music than Taylor Swift right now? Her 116 million followers on Instagram would probably argue, "No." As such, if you're one of these many followers, you might have seen Taylor advertising a new "4.26" filter on her story. Problem is, there's no clear instruction for actually using the filter. That's where we come in.
Apple quietly pushed out iOS 12.3 public beta 3 on Tuesday, April 23, just over a day after developer beta 3 was released. Just like with the developer version, there aren't any major features or changes to get excited about, but if you were experiencing any minor bugs with the previous betas on your iPhone, this update could squash some of them.
The Pixel is the phone to beat when it comes to cameras, and it's largely due to software. While its hardware is solid, Google's machine learning prowess and general coding wizardry are the biggest reasons the Pixel is so good with taking photos and recording video. What this means is that if you can get the Pixel's camera software, you can replicate the Pixel camera experience on other phones.
Developers, get excited. The new iOS 12.3 dev beta 3 just dropped. While this beta doesn't introduce any major features or changes, it means Apple is continuing to address unseen bugs and potential vulnerabilities from the previous versions.
One of the biggest advantages of the front-mounted ultrasonic fingerprint sensor found on the Galaxy S10 and S10+ is that you no longer have to physically pick up your device and reach around the back to unlock it. Instead, you simply place your finger on the screen for easier access and added convenience — at least on paper.
Phone displays have gotten taller in the past few years, and it seems the OnePlus 6T might not make use of the entire screen by default for a few games. Most games play nicely with the large display on the 6T and its teardrop camera notch, but Pokémon GO is one that doesn't scale correctly. Until an official fix happens, there's a quick workaround you can use to make things a bit better.
The Galaxy S10 is one of the best phones in years from world's largest smartphone OEM. With its astonishing display, new UI, and top-tier cameras, there isn't much to complain about. The one major gripe we've had is the in-display fingerprint scanner and just how slow it is. Thanks to a recent update, it just got a whole lot faster.
Apple just released the second public beta for iOS 12.3 today, Tuesday, April 9, one day after the release of the iOS 12.3 developer beta 2. This update introduces new Japanese "Date & Time" updates as well as changes to Wallet transactions. Overall, iOS 12.3 includes Apple TV Channels, premium monthly subscriptions with content available directly in the TV app across the Apple ecosystem.
Apple just released iOS 12.3 dev beta 2 today, Monday, April 8, which follows the first iOS 12.3 beta by twelve days. This update introduces new Japanese Date & Time features as well as updates to Wallet transactions. As a whole, iOS 12.3 introduces Apple's previously announced Apple TV Channels, premium monthly subscriptions with content you can watch right in the TV app across Apple products.
Samsung's popular Good Lock app has been updated to work on One UI and now lets you take full advantage of its awesome add-ons to customize your S10 in a few simple taps. One add-on in particular lets you get rid of mostly redundant indicators like the NFC "N" for a cleaner status bar.
In Android 10, Google is letting you adjust the accent colors to give your phone a bit of flair. When combined with the new system-wide dark mode, you are looking at eight different color combinations. That is seven more than we had in the previous version and seven additional ways to help your phone stand out.
Text conversations can get confusing fast. In the time it takes to type up a response to your friend, they can send you one, two, three, or more messages. Once you send the original reply, it no longer makes sense in the context of the chat. Clear up the confusion with Facebook Messenger's "new" quote reply feature, which shows both you and your friend exactly what message you're responding to.
If your phone is running Android 10, you can now share your Wi-Fi network with friends using a handy QR code. The other person doesn't have to be running Android 10 — in fact, you can even share this code with iPhone users. In most situations, this is now the fastest way to share your Wi-Fi password.
The word on the street is Android users want a dark mode. With the increased usage of AMOLED panels on smartphones (including some midrange devices), there is a considerable demand for dark themes and their battery saving benefits. Recently, Nova just added the feature to Google Discover.
You don't need to be a hardcore modder to know the importance of booting your S10 into either recovery mode or download mode. In fact, these pre-boot menus are something everyone should be familiar with. The former can help you get out of soft bricks, while the latter lets you use utilities like Odin and Smart Switch to flash firmware files and fix your phone when all other solutions fail.
The home bar, that tiny sliver of color at the bottom of the screen on Home button-less iPhone models, is helpful when first getting used to an iPhone X or newer's gestures. It helps you learn how to swipe up to unlock, go to the home screen, view the app switcher, and so on. But after a few weeks, it just becomes an annoying eyesore you can't get rid of — unless you have a jailbroken iPhone X.
Samsung just announced the Galaxy S10 lineup, but we already knew each device's every nook and cranny. Thanks to leaks and hands-on demos, we know the OEM kept the coveted headphone jack, but omitted one treasured feature in its place — the notification LED. Why did Samsung strip the S10 of this light, and can users expect something to replace it?
I'm not a morning person, so getting a "Good Morning" message on my iPhone when I wake up makes me want to toss it across the room. If you feel the same way about this morning greeting, there's an easy way to stop it from showing up on your lock screen. This also applies if your "Good Morning" is actually "Good Afternoon" or "Good Evening," depending on your sleep schedule.
Apple first added the "Do Not Track" option to Safari in iOS 7, which sent a request to site owners and advertisers to not track your browsing activity. By tracking your activity, those third-parties could tailor content to you that you're more likely to interact with. While the feature was always opt-in, it's no longer a feature at all in iOS 12.2 on your iPhone.
