Magisk 101
How To: Hide the Gesture Pill in Android's Navigation Bar
Google switched to gestural navigation in Android 9, and in removing the back/home/recents buttons, they were able to greatly reduce the size of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. However, there's still a white line, aka "The Pill," taking up space to show you where to start your gestures.
How To: Get One UI's Rounded Corners on Non-Samsung Devices
The two primary design paradigms in Samsung's One UI Android skin are vertical padding and rounded UI elements. The extra empty space at the top of most menus moves touchable elements closer to your thumb, and the rounded UI elements match the curved corners of modern smartphone screens. While you can't add the vertical padding on other Android phones, you can now get the rounded corners.
How To: Get the iPhone's System Font on Android
For the first time in twenty years, Apple created its own custom font in late 2014. Dubbed "San Francisco," it combined elements from Helvetica and FF DIN to create a crisp, elegant, and highly legible font that is now used in iOS, macOS, and tvOS.
How To: Shrink the Pixel 5's Giant Status Bar Down to a Normal Size
The Pixel 5 is the first mainstream phone with perfectly symmetrical slim bezels. Most other "bezel-less" phones have had a disproportionately large bottom bezel, and while the iPhone's side and bottom bezels are symmetrical, there's a huge notch across most of its top bezel. The downside to the Pixel's approach is it has a pretty big display cutout for the front camera.
How To: Remove Background Telemetry Services on Your OnePlus to Stop Unnecessary Data Collection
Your phone tracks your every move to some extent, and I'm not just talking about Google services. Smartphone manufacturers use telemetry services that run in the background to track how you use the device, mostly for ads or to improve their future products. You don't usually have a say in the matter, but if you have a rooted OnePlus, there's a way you can take control over it.
How To: Bring Back the 9-Tile Grid in Android 11's Quick Settings
Android 11 has plenty of new features as you'd expect, including a fancy new embedded media player. Rather than a constant notification, your audio controls now get pushed up into the Quick Settings panel when playing music. However, to make way for this new media player functionality, your total number of quick settings tiles had to be cut from nine down to six.
How To: Keep Apps from Collecting Data About Your Phone by Spoofing Device ID Values
Apps can learn a lot about you just by reading information about your smartphone. They can easily track what device model you have, your phone number, and in some cases, your hardware MAC addresses. Many third-party apps will only track your device values for advertising purposes, but some might be trying to snoop on your data for ill intentions.
How To: Our No-BS Pixel 4a Root Guide for Android 11 — Straight to the Point for Experienced Users
I think it was about Day 3 of working on our massive, all-encompassing Pixel 4a root guide for beginners when I realized something: Not everyone needs their hands held through each tiny step. If you just need a quick refresher, some links, and maybe a fastboot command to copy, this Pixel 4a root guide is for you.
How To: Remove the Calendar & Weather Widget from Your Pixel's Home Screen
Google's "At A Glance" widget gives you the current weather conditions and upcoming events from your Google Calendar in a handy spot right at the top of your home screen. But on Pixel phones, this widget is permanently embedded into the launcher, so you can't just long-press it to remove it.
How To: Ditch Google's WebView & Switch Android's System Browser to Bromite
Apps don't need to come bundled with an entire browser just to be able to display web pages — instead, they can call on the system WebView browser to render content for them. Android's default WebView renderer is Google software, which isn't quite as privacy-forward as some other options.
How To: Get the Classic Nexus Ringtones & System Sounds on Any Rooted Phone
Google's legendary phone series fittingly ended with the Nexus 6 (P), and all the replicants that have come in its wake failed to unite the geek crowd quite as well. It might seem silly to think back on a smartphone with a sense of nostalgia, but if any Android phone deserves it, it's the Nexus.
How To: Send ADB & Fastboot Commands from One Android Phone to Another
ADB and Fastboot are powerful tools that have always required a computer. But with the right setup, you can now send commands to a phone using another phone.
How To: Send ADB Commands to Your Own Phone Without a Computer or Root
There are three tiers to Android customization: things you can do by default, things you can do with ADB, and things you can do with root. While root is still pretty tricky to get, ADB mods just got a lot easier.
How To: Install Dirty Unicorns on Your Pixel & Get Custom ROM Features Without Losing Motion Sense & Active Edge
If you've ever been into custom ROMs, you likely know the Dirty Unicorns name pretty well. It's been synonymous with unique features and awesome tweaks when compared to stock. Recently, Dirty Unicorns has returned again in a big way with some neat features for Android 10.
How To: Root Android 11 on the Pixel 4a — Every Step Covered in Detail
If you live in the US, it's pretty simple: The Google Pixel 4a is the best phone for rooting and modding in 2020. Its price keeps the risk-reward ratio nice and low, and its unlockable bootloader makes it easy to modify virtually any aspect of Android.
How To: Root Android 11 Using Magisk — The Foolproof Guide
Thanks to Magisk, you don't have to lose root when updating to Android 11. The popular systemless rooting tool already achieved superuser access on Google's latest OS, even before the official release. It's currently in its experimental stages so the process is trickier than usual, but it does work.
How To: Customize Your OnePlus 7 or 7T Pro's Caller ID Screen with an Updated Design
When you receive a call on your phone, you likely don't think twice about the design when the notification pops up. Whatever the default UI is, that's what works best since there aren't any other choices to pick from. At least, that's how things used to be in the past — we're starting to see some new OnePlus mods that allow you to expand on it.
How To: Disable the Pull-Down Quick Settings Menu on Your Pixel 4's Lock Screen
On Android, there is a vulnerability that Google doesn't seem to want to fix — anyone can open the Quick Settings panel on your lock screen. GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, all toggles accessible in this menu, are vital tools for locating your phone in case it is ever stolen. But thanks to Xposed, you can eliminate this potential risk.
How To: Create & Boot from a Magisk Core-Only Image to Fix a Bootloop Without Custom Recovery
Bootloops are a risk inherent to rooted devices — with great power comes great destroyability, after all. While custom recovery sometimes provides a quick fix when you flash the wrong Magisk module, with TWRP becoming more challenging to implement thanks to Android 10, the solution is a bit more complicated nowadays.
How To: Enable 2-Button Navigation on the Pixel 4
There was a period when Google knew they were switching to gesture navigation, but felt users weren't quite ready for it. The result was Android 9's two-button nav bar that you could both tap and swipe. Android 10 has since brought full-on gestures, and that's the version the Pixel 4 shipped with, so it never had that quirky, fun two-button setup. But you can bring it back, so to speak.