How-To Guides about Android

Reviewed by Julianne Ngirngir

Reviewed by Corey Noles

Picture this: you're scrolling through your Galaxy Watch Classic, but something feels off. The bezel that should glide like butter suddenly feels sluggish, requiring multiple turns to move between screens. Sound familiar? Before you assume it's broken, there's a simple trick that can make your bezel work like magic again.

Reviewed by Julianne Ngirngir

Google's biggest smartwatch upgrade in years isn't coming through new hardware—it's arriving silently through the Play Store. The company is rolling out Gemini AI to older Wear OS watches starting this week, transforming your wrist into a genuinely smart assistant that can handle everything from complex cooking questions to calendar management.

Picture this: you set your Pixel Watch 3 down somewhere in your house, can't remember where, and instead of the usual "somewhere in a 30-foot radius" hunt, your phone guides you directly to the exact couch cushion where it's hiding. That's the power of what Google quietly introduced with precise Bluetooth tracking on the Pixel Watch 3.

Picture this: you're firing off a quick text about weekend plans when a friendly AI bubble pops up in Google Messages, ready to help craft the perfect response. Seems harmless enough, right? Here's the kicker: that helpful assistant is quietly collecting way more than you probably signed up for—and Google openly admits human reviewers might be reading your conversations for up to three years.

Over time, your Android phone or tablet has likely connected to dozens of Wi-Fi networks — and it remembers every single one. Whether it's a hotspot at home, school, work, the gym, a coffee shop, a relative's apartment — or even from a friend's phone — each time you type in a Wi-Fi password, your Android device saves it for safekeeping and easy access later.

Samsung has a cool security feature built into One UI with an interesting side effect that lets you have two separate copies of any Android app on your Galaxy phone. And that's not the only integrated Samsung tool for cloning apps.

Chromebooks offer multiple ways to share files with other devices, whether you're transferring to another Chromebook, an Android phone, or even a Windows PC. Each method has its own advantages, depending on whether you want something quick and built-in or a more feature-rich third-party option.

If you own a Samsung phone and enjoy rooting or modding your device, flashing official firmware can be very useful. Odin is Samsung's own internal program for loading such updates for testing purposes, and it's quite easy to use for your own custom modification needs.

A great way to incorporate a healthy exercise routine is by taking lots of steps throughout the day. While most smartphones can track and report your steps via a third-party app, you can check them right from your home screen if you have a OnePlus phone.

Besides obvious features like a touchscreen and biometric sensors, the modern smartphone comes with an array of state-of-the-art hardware in the form of various sensors that help your device sense the environment around it. And if you have a Samsung handset, chances are, you have a handy feature built in that enables you to check if these sensors are functioning 100 percent.

When I got my first smartphone, it didn't take long before my friends and I created a game that we liked to call "Paste-Send." You see, instead of having to use T9 to type out text messages, the touch-based interface made copying and pasting incredibly easy. So that meant we could copy a piece of text, then paste it into text messages in rapid succession to text bomb the annoyed recipient. It was all in good fun, of course, and it usually evoked a stream of swear words from the guy on the other...

If you're using the default Samsung Keyboard on a Samsung Galaxy smartphone or Gboard on a Google Pixel or any other Android device, here's a cool trick you should know about.

Have you ever seen those super-expensive universal remote controls like the Logitech Harmony and thought to yourself, "Man, I really want one of those, but that's just too much money"?

While Google's generative AI wallpapers for Android won't be out until the fall, you can take advantage of emoji backgrounds and cinematic wallpapers on your Pixel smartphone right now.

Apple's upcoming iOS 17 is expected to include many new features first seen on Android, but there are also some exciting, unique features that Android needs to steal pronto.

One aspect of Android's interface that remains clunky is its gesture- or button-based navigation bar, mainly because app developers aren't fully utilizing the tools available to them. But a new feature Google is working on may finally make your nav bar more uniform across your apps.

Android has a new security feature that every Android smartphone user needs to start using — even you. It won't change how you use your phone, but it will make life harder for nearby thieves.

Because our smartphones are ever present, frequently used apps become the topic of conversation in social situations. This often leads to sharing app links via messages, either by copying/pasting an app's URL or sending it through the sharing menu. However, there's another way to share an app, and it's most valuable when you need to share multiple apps and app updates without an internet connection.

There's more than one way to get free credits and discounts in the Google Play Store for apps, games, books, movies, in-app items, and other Play Store content. You may know a few of them — but some of these may surprise you.

For the avid multitasker, listening to audiobooks and podcasts is the ultimate way to passively absorb knowledge while performing other activities — but there are other options. You can turn any written text on your Android phone into speech that's read aloud to you, so there's virtually no limit on what you can soak up audibly from your headphones or speaker.

You can wake up to ringtones, music from streaming services, or downloaded audio files when setting alarms in Google's Clock app for Android, but that's not all. The latest feature lets you turn your own voice into an alarm sound, saying whatever it is you need to say to wake you up.

An iPad can serve as a second screen for a Mac via Sidecar, available since iPadOS 13, but Apple isn't the only manufacturer to support such a feature. Samsung has had a similar tool since One UI 3.1 that lets you turn certain Samsung Galaxy tablets into second displays for your PC — and there's a hidden feature that expands it to more tablets and even Samsung Galaxy smartphones.

The newest feature for Pixel smartphones puts a home theater in your pocket. Spatial Audio outputs sound that appears to come from in front of and behind you, adding a new level of immersion to your streaming video and music apps.

It's easy to copy text from webpages, messages, documents, and other views on your Android device — except when it isn't. Many apps block or prohibit text selection, forcing you to take screenshots or write out the whole excerpt manually. But you don't have to resort to those methods since there's a simple workaround to selecting and copying text from uncooperative apps.

If you're doing the same tasks on your Android phone repeatedly each day — like playing a specific playlist at the gym, viewing work documents, or watching your favorite music video — you can save some time by automating your routine, turning each task into a one-tap gesture on your home screen.

Emoji characters make messaging more fun, and Google has continuously added convenient and fun ways to insert playful symbols into your conversations using Gboard. After getting Emoji Kitchen in early 2020, we now have Emojify, a tool that automatically adds emoji to your message drafts.

Emoji characters give you a multitude of colorful characters to express yourself with on social media and within messages, and stickers give you even more symbols to play with. While Android and iOS both have a healthy arsenal of emoji and stickers, Android goes a step further for even more emoji madness.

You may not realize it, but most of your apps include third-party tracking services that monitor your activity in other apps and websites to serve highly-targeted ads to you. But now you can stop the creepy behavior on an iPhone and Android phone.

Just like the recently rediscovered Star Wars ruins in the Tunisian desert, there are tons of hidden treasures in your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 just waiting to be unearthed.

Customization has always been the main draw of Android for me, but Apple has an impressive feature on iOS 16 that lets iPhone users create customized emoji wallpapers for their home and lock screens. While Android doesn't have something like that built-in by default, it's easy enough to make emoji wallpapers for your Android phone.

You don't need to pay for an app or subscription to have your audio notes transcribed for you on your Android smartphone. There's an easy, free way to do it on almost any Google Pixel, and you can even use it on other Android devices.

While I prefer Android in my personal life, I've had the opportunity to work in the Apple ecosystem. One of the coolest features I've come to rely on is AirDrop, which makes it easy to beam content from mobile devices to desktops and vice versa. Thankfully, Android now has an equivalent.

If you've ever wanted or needed to use an app in a different language than your phone's primary language, your Android phone now makes it a simple process.