Android How-Tos
How To: Root Your Pixel 3 on Android 10
When new Android versions come out, the modding community has to find new ways to root the OS. It's a fun cat and mouse game to follow, but it also means the process of rooting isn't exactly the same as it was the last time you did it. Android 10 changes how root works on a system level for some devices, but luckily, the developers are already on top of things.
How To: Use YouTube's Search Filters to Find Videos Faster
Have you tried searching for 4K HDR videos on YouTube, only to get 1080p videos just because the uploader used "4k" or "HDR" in the description? Or have you tried looking for a video about something that just happened, except YouTube's algorithm surfaces established videos first by default, so all the results you get are older than a month? Well, there's a better way.
How To: Translate Text in Any Android App
Sometimes, you encounter words in a non-native tongue while using your Android device. The Google Translate app has an awesome feature where it will translate any text you highlight. An overlay will appear, and on this overlay, there will be the translation of the foreign word. This can help you if you need a translation quick fix or if you are learning a new language.
How To: Increase Text Size in Google Chrome for Android
There are many reasons you might want to increase your text size in Google Chrome. The browser's accessibility options have a few tools to help the readability of text on websites. Changing the text scale, enabling zooming, and toggling the simplified view can customize Google Chrome to be perfect for you.
How To: Enable ARCore on Any Android Phone
When it comes to augmented reality (AR) on Android, you might be wondering how you can get those cool new games and apps on your unsupported phone. Google has an officially supported device list for its ARCore platform, which usually consists of the more modern devices. You won't find very many older devices on the list for a reason, but that doesn't mean your "old" phone can't use ARCore still.
How To: Enable Dark Mode in Google Keep
Google Keep now has a dark mode. If your device is running Android 10, it kicks in automatically when you turn on the system-wide dark theme. If your device is not running Android 10, you will have to manually switch on dark mode for each app, including Keep. The benefits of dark mode include increased battery life, reduced eye strain, and improved readability.
How To: Enable Closed Captions in the YouTube App for Android
Closed captions are great for watching YouTube videos on mute, or simply following along with a video that's hard to understand. It's easy to turn on captions on YouTube's desktop site, but in the YouTube Android app, the closed captions settings are tucked away.
How To: Enable Zen Mode on Your OnePlus 7 Pro to Help Curb Your Smartphone Addiction
In this era of smartphones, we all know very well how easily we can get addicted to our devices. Spending hours each day doing the endless scroll through Facebook and other social media sites just because we feel like we'll miss something if we don't. Both Google and Apple are aware of this and are trying to help control smartphone addition in their own way for Android and iOS.
How To: Make a Home Screen Icon That Opens the Facebook Website on Android
If you don't want the large and permission-hungry Facebook app on your phone, the perfect solution is to create an app icon for the Facebook mobile site on your home screen. The website version of Facebook doesn't run background tasks, has no distracting notifications by default, you won't be giving Facebook as much data, and your phone's battery life will be improved.
How To: Move Android's Quick Settings to the Bottom for Easier Access to the Swipe Menu
For those with small hands, smartphones have gotten out of control as of late. Nearly every flagship phone is over six inches in length, so many are forced to use phones that are too big for them and hope they don't fall. Well, thanks to one developer, using these phones can be a lot easier.
How To: Install Google Camera on Your OnePlus 7 Pro for Better Photo Quality & Night Sight
The triple camera system on the OnePlus 7 Pro is the best setup they've ever done so far, but it could always be better. The primary sensor packs a whopping 48 megapixels, but as history has taught us, megapixels don't equal better photos by default. In fact, with where we are in terms of hardware right now, it's the software that determines a phone's camera performance.
How To: Root Your OnePlus 7 Pro with Magisk
OnePlus has purposefully made their devices easy to root so that you can spend less time waiting and more time doing. These phones are a solid choice for anyone looking to dive into the rooting and modding scene. Using the same principles that Google has with the Pixel line, you can always be sure your OnePlus 7 Pro will get first-class treatment from launch day and beyond.
How To: Install TWRP Recovery on Your OnePlus 7 Pro
When it comes to modding your Android device, you'll want to be familiar with the TWRP name and what it stands for. It's a tool that you'll be using to make NANDroid backups or to install just about any mod file you can think of — the number of uses is quite awesome. You'll mostly be after Magisk for root access and potentially a custom kernel as well.
How To: Make Your Headphones Always Control Your Favorite Music App on Your Galaxy
I don't know about you, but I like to listen to music throughout the day. As I am writing articles or doing some cardio at the gym, I go through my playlist, only stopping the music in situations where I have to. And ever since I switched to the Samsung Galaxy S10+, this has gotten even easier to do.
How To: Boost Sound Quality on Your Galaxy Using Dolby Atmos
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.
How To: Play Music on 2 Devices Using Your Samsung Galaxy Phone
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.
How To: Unlock the Bootloader on Your OnePlus 7 Pro
The OnePlus 7 Pro is truly the best phone that the company has ever created to date — it's even one of the hottest phones around regardless of OEM. It offers an awesome display with minimal bezels, a smooth 90-hertz refresh rate, a pop-up selfie camera, and the best triple camera system in a OnePlus phone so far. It can truly compete with other flagship phones while keeping the cost down.
How To: Install the ElementalX Custom Kernel on Your Pixel 3a
The Pixel 3a runs smoothly out of the box already, but installing a custom kernel can supercharge your experience even more. From fine-tuned CPU tweaks for boosting performance or battery life to adjusting the display colors for your screen how you want, ElementalX kernel can provide you with a ton of new features you didn't know you were missing.
How To: Enable or Disable Chat Heads in Facebook Messenger on Android for Quick Access to Conversations
Popular chat apps like Messenger allow us to communicate with friends and family across iOS and Android phones alike. However, that interconnectivity doesn't mean both apps are the same. While Facebook has made strides to close gaps between these two platforms, chat heads remain an exclusive feature for Android devices, and they let you keep Messenger threads close by.
Compared: The 5 Best Keyboard Apps for Android
Your phone's keyboard is one of the most commonly used apps. Whether you're typing out status updates, sending private messages, or just bombarding everyone in sight with as many emoji as you possibly can, you probably couldn't get by without a good keyboard app.
How To: Open Google Assistant with Android 10's New Swipe Gestures
The Google Assistant is a core part of Android — Google even made it possible to launch the Assistant by long-pressing the home button. But with Android 10's new gesture controls, there isn't a home button to long-press, so Google created a new gesture to replace it.
How To: You Can Still Swipe to Open Side Menus with Android 10's New Gestures
Android 10 goes all-in on gesture navigation. Unlike Android 9, all three buttons which made up the navigation bar are replaced with gestures, with the biggest change being the back button. The problem is this same gesture is already used within apps to access the side menu, so in Android Q, this has been changed.
How To: Hide the Home Bar on Android 10 — No Root Needed
With the new navigation gestures in Android 10, you reclaim a lot of screen real estate that used to be occupied by the back, home, and recent apps buttons. But there's still a small bar on the bottom edge of the screen, and in most apps, it still sits atop a black background. Thankfully, an easy hack will give you true full-screen without breaking the new gestures.
How To: 3 Apps to Help You Learn Chinese from Your Phone
Learning Chinese is hard, but it can be a lot easier with the help of a few great apps. As a native English speaker who's currently living in China, this is a process I've recently gone through. After playing the field, here are the three apps I personally think will help you the most with your Chinese learning adventure.
How To: Block Spam Texts with Samsung Messages
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.
How To: Get Custom Fonts in Samsung Messages
While you can now apply a dark theme to Samsung Messages thanks to One UI, you may want to further personalize your texting app. A great way to do this is by applying a custom font, which not only enhances the app aesthetically, but can also go a long way towards making your texts more readable and help you process information better.
How To: Enable RCS in Android Messages for iMessage-Style Texting on Android
Google has recently been pushing to replace the decades-old messaging technology we've been stuck with. SMS was never meant to handle the high-quality multimedia content we consume with our smartphones today, so in comes RCS, which is a universal platform that aims to change our messaging game forever.
How To: Mute Conversations in Samsung Messages Without Blocking Contacts
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.
How To: Set Custom Notification Sounds for Individual Contacts in Samsung Messages
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.
How To: Root Your Pixel 3a with Magisk
The Pixel 3a came out of nowhere and flexed its muscles to show the industry that you can have a great phone without a hefty price tag. Since Pixel smartphones are first-party devices straight from Google, you can be sure you'll have root access one way or another. For right now the method used to get your Pixel 3a rooted will take a few steps, but they go by real quick.
How To: Unlock the Bootloader on Your Pixel 3a
The first thing you'll always have to do before getting your customization game on with most phones is to unlock the bootloader. Doing so opens the true potential of the device, allowing you to root, install TWRP, Magisk, custom ROMs, and other mods. No matter your wants or needs, there's no way around it — the bootloader must be unlocked to modify the system.
How To: Schedule Texts to Send Later with Samsung Messages
Ideas can hit you out nowhere, but texting loved ones in the wee hours of the morning or during work hours isn't always ideal, especially if they've muted their notifications. So you'll want to send a message at a better time to ensure it gets the attention it deserves. Samsung Messages lets you do just that by scheduling messages to send at a later date.
How To: Make Your Own WhatsApp Sticker Packs on Android
WhatsApp stickers can make your chat more fun. The stickers that come with WhatsApp are fine, but they're standard and accessible to everyone. What if you wanted to show off unique stickers that your friends haven't seen? To take things to the next level, you can create your own WhatsApp Stickers.
How To: Make Android Messages the Default SMS App on Any Phone
When it comes to texting, Google's Messages app for Android is absolutely top-notch. The app gives you the ability to block those annoying spam text messages that have been plaguing us for so long, send messages from a computer, and can even provide RCS features if your carrier supports the Universal Profile.
How To: Turn Off Those Annoying Amber Alerts & Emergency Broadcasts on Your Android
To bring things up to code with a new FCC standard, Android recently added an "Emergency broadcasts" feature that will make your smartphone notify you whenever a potential safety threat or Amber Alert is posted in your area. Even if you have your phone set to silent, these emergency alerts will cause your device to emit a loud, piercing sound when a potential threat is nearby.
How To: Turn Your OnePlus 6T into a Google Pixel
Since we wouldn't have Android without Google, everyone has come to realize that the Pixel smartphones are a prime example of what an Android smartphone should be. With so many unique software related features, no wonder people want that Pixel experience.
How To: Save Your Parking Location from Your OnePlus Home Screen
There once was a time before smartphones when you had to actually remember where you parked your vehicle. This really sucked when visiting a location with a large parking lot — they even made a whole Seinfeld episode about it. But now you can just tap a button to solve this problem. Who says we're not living in the future?
How To: The Best Way to Uninstall All Types of Bloatware on Any Android
When you get a new phone, the last thing you want to deal with is a ton of preinstalled programs staring back at you. They not only clutter your home screen with apps you'll probably never use, but they're also wasting space on your internal storage and potentially draining battery. To truly uninstall them, you'll need root — but even then, it can be hard to pin down all the apps that should be removed.
How To: Install Android Q Beta on Any Project Treble Phone
For many, the stock version of Android is often considered the epitome of what the operating system should look and feel like by default. It's clean and clear of unwanted extra apps that come pre-installed with the system, provides a fluid and fast user experience, and runs on just about any device that has an unlocked bootloader to install a custom ROM with the stock version ready to go.
How To: Install Android Q Beta on Any Google Pixel Phone
During the Google I/O 2019 keynote, the latest Android Q Beta was released to the public for Pixel smartphones along with 15 other non-Pixel devices. It's the third Developer Preview for Android 10, but it's the first official public beta outside of Google's Pixel smartphones. A new public beta means good things are on the way as the future of Android continues to evolve.