Hot Android How-Tos
Nova Launcher 101: How to Organize Your App Drawer with Tab Groups
Over the years, Nova Launcher has widened its audience. No longer is it simply a tool to return your home screen to a more stock look. With Nova, you gain customization tweaks and functionality unavailable with the stock launcher. One example of this is all of the cool stuff you can do to organize your app drawer.
How To: Enable the Hidden 'Night Mode' Setting on Android 7.0 Nougat
When Google released the first Developer Preview build of Android 7.0 Nougat, users were happy to see that a new "Night Mode" was included among the changes. The feature would cancel out any blue light emitted from your screen to help you get to sleep a bit earlier, quite similar to f.lux for desktop computers, or Apple's Night Shift for iPhones. It could be set to turn on automatically based on time of day, or you could manually enable Night Mode with a Quick Settings toggle.
How To: The 4 Best Android Apps to Share Files Between Phones, Tablets & PCs
Think back to when you last wanted to transfer some music or videos to your friend's smartphone and how difficult and slow it was. As powerful as our phones are, the default file sharing options are limited. There are, fortunately, some better options which make moving files easy, secure, and painless.
How To: Enable 'Flip to Shhh' on Your Google Pixel & Quickly Turn on Do Not Disturb Mode
The Pixel's "Flip to Shhh" feature may not be groundbreaking, but it is useful. Third-party apps are copying it for other phones because it's so convenient. But it's not enabled by default and it's fairly hidden in the settings. So to take full advantage of your Pixel's feature set, you should learn how to use Flip to Shhh.
How To: Force Apps to Use Android's Transparent System Navigation Bar if They Don't Already Support It
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.
How To: List of Phones with Unlockable Bootloaders
If you want to root your phone, it's a huge plus. If you want to install a custom ROM like LineageOS, it's an absolute must-have. Custom kernels like ElementalX, custom recoveries like TWRP — none of this happens unless you buy a phone with an unlockable bootloader.
How To: There's a Handy Shortcut for Typing Fractions on Android
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.
How To: Change the Status Bar Icons on Your Google Pixel
Android's status bar is ever-present. It sits at the top of almost every screen in every app, making it the most prominent part of your Pixel's theme. So it only makes sense that Google would give you a way to change the icons it uses.
How To: Root the Pixel 5 & Still Pass SafetyNet — Full Guide for Beginners & Intermediate Users
The Pixel 5 is a great value proposition in this era of $1,500 phones. With its reasonable price tag, fully open-sourced software, and unlockable bootloader, it's also an ideal phone for rooting.
How To: Use Wireless ADB in Samsung's One UI 3.0 (It's Actually Pretty Easy)
Samsung's One UI 3.0 skin is built on top of Google's Android 11 open source code base, which means you get all of the standard features, plus some cool bonus stuff from Samsung. However, it's one of those standard AOSP features that you might find most useful if you send a lot of ADB commands.
How To: Replace the Tip of Your S Pen (& Why You Should)
When you were unboxing your Galaxy Note7, you probably wondered why a little metal claw tool was included in the packaging. Then, if you looked closer, you saw there were five plastic sticks included with the claw tool that came in two different colors.
How To: Google Maps vs. Google Maps Go — Which App Is Right for You?
Google's "Go" line of apps are lightweight counterparts designed to be limited speedy alternatives to their full-featured sibling apps. There is a Go version of Photos, Search, Maps, and more — but are they the right apps for you?
How To: 101 Features Android Phones Had Before iPhones
When it's all said and done, it doesn't really matter who did it first — the more important question is who did it best. Still, it's nice to know who's really responsible for groundbreaking innovations in the smartphone space.
How To: Cook Up Your Own Custom Emoji Stickers with Gboard for Android
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.
How To: Delete the T-Mobile App from Any Android Phone — No Computer Needed
If you buy an Android phone from any of the big US carriers, it will come with several extra apps in addition to any apps the manufacturer preinstalled. It's all in the name of profit, of course. Some of these apps are from companies that paid the carriers to distribute their software, and some are from the carriers themselves, usually aimed at upselling you or perhaps collecting a little data.
How To: Change or Replace Your Android's Home Screen App
One of the easiest ways to change up your Android experience is by swapping out the stock launcher with a new one. The word "launcher" is Android lingo for "home screen app," and it's a common term because of how easy it is to switch to a new one. So if you're looking to revamp your home screen, this guide's for you.
How To: Always-Updated List of Google Pixel Codenames
In a tradition dating back to the Nexus days, Google has always used fish-themed codenames when communicating internally about their phones. Their laptops and tablets are usually named after video game characters. These names often give us the first evidence of an upcoming device when they're used in software commits in Android's open source code.
How To: Get Over 100 New & Unique Themes for Gboard on Android
Gboard has come a long way from its roots as the "Google Keyboard" in the earlier days of Android. It's now the most popular, feature-rich, and useful keyboard app on the market. Google even includes quite a few themes right out of the box for Gboard — but what if you could have even more?
How To: Unlock the Bootloader on Your Pixel 4
The Pixel 4 is one of the most talked-about phones of 2019, and it has many things going for it, especially in the world of rooting and modding. Just as with previous Pixel generations, unlocking the bootloader is the gateway to realizing your device's true potential. It can make way for such things as TWRP, Magisk, custom ROMs, and many other device-specific mods just the same.
How To: Unlock the Bootloader on Your OnePlus 5 or 5T & Install TWRP Recovery
The OnePlus 5 had been in the hands of the public for a meager twenty hours before developers on XDA released a custom recovery image for it, and the 5T had a similar trajectory. The installation process is simple enough, but it can be somewhat confusing if you're new to modding Android.
How To: Turn Your Android Phone into a Universal Remote Control with These Cool Apps
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"?
How To: Turn Your Google Pixel Buds into Hearing Aids
Google's 2020 Pixel Buds are one of the hottest true wireless earbuds of the year. With their unique, circular design, they stand out from the long-stemmed AirPods look you get from other wireless earbuds. The design is also sleek and minimal, making them the perfect candidate to use as a personal hearing aid.
How To: Change the Default Snooze Time for Your Alarm on Any Android
While we shouldn't rely on it, every so often we need to hit the snooze button to get a few additional minutes of precious sleep. Depending on which OEM skin is running on your device, this could be either five or ten extra minutes of dozing. However, some of us need a different length of time.
How To: Unroot & Revert Your OnePlus 5 or 5T to 100% Stock
To please those of us who love to mod and root our Androids, OnePlus has made both the OnePlus 5 and 5T relatively easy to customize — so much so that the 5T topped our list for the best phones for rooting. Unfortunately, unlocking the bootloader and using root to modify the firmware on your OnePlus 5 or 5T makes it hard to update to a new firmware such as Oreo when compared to stock.
How To: Create Home Screen Shortcuts to Almost Anything on Android — Videos, Music Playlists, Social Profiles, and More
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.
How To: Completely Hide Root Using Magisk
Ever since the introduction of Google's SafetyNet feature, it's been an ongoing battle with apps trying to detect root access. For a while, there was a lot of back and forth between Magisk and certain apps. Pokémon GO was a high profile example of an app aggressively checking for anything related to root. Luckily, Magisk has made great strides to keep apps from detecting root for good.
How To: Remove the Black Bar Under Your Galaxy's Keyboard
Back when Android used navigation buttons, there was a large black bar at the bottom of every screen to house the back, home, and recent apps buttons. But after switching to full-screen navigation gestures in 2019, there was no longer a need for it — however, a vestigial black bar still shows up when you're using your keyboard.
How To: The Easiest Way to Send Fastboot Commands to Your Google Pixel
Pixels don't have a "Download Mode" like Samsung Galaxy phones, so there's not an easy, point-and-click way to send firmware files and low-level commands from your computer. What they do have is an even more powerful tool: Fastboot Mode.
How To: Customize Your Google Pixel with New Accent Colors
Google lets you change the system-wide accent color on its Pixel devices, but the options are a bit muted. If you'd like something more vibrant, developer Tulsadiver created a mod that will give you a wide selection of punchier colors.
How To: Make Apps with Tasker That Anyone Can Use
When anyone brings up Tasker, the first topic that always gets discussed is how powerful the Android automation app can be. But all of that power can be overwhelming for some people, so even if you're a Tasker pro, it's hard to share your awesome creations with friends that don't quite understand what's going on.
How To: Use Health Connect to Sync Your Health and Fitness Data Between Google Fit, MyFitnessPal, and Other Android Apps
Taking a cue from Apple and its Health app for iOS, Google has created a central hub to collect health and fitness data on your Android device. With it, you can share and sync health and fitness data, such as steps, heart rate, water intake, sleep quality, and calories burned, between different apps and devices and use your favorite app to view all the information.
How To: Bring Back the Squeeze Gesture for Google Assistant on Your Pixel 5 — No Root Needed
The Pixel 5 is a bit of a departure from previous Pixels. Gone are the Pixel 4's Soli-based Motion Sense gestures, the Pixel 3's dual front-facing speakers, and the glass back panel of previous generations. But perhaps the most notable omission for long-time Pixel users is the lack of a squeeze gesture to trigger the Google Assistant.
How To: Make Your Android Phone Read Articles, Books, News, and Other Text Out Loud to 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.
How To: Get the Pixel's Feature-Packed Google Camera App on Other Android Devices
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.
How To: Enable "Unknown Sources" in Order to Download Independent Apps on Your Galaxy Note 2 or 3
Installing applications that are not on Google Play requires you to enable a certain permission in the settings so that the whole process goes down smoothly. If you're downloading one of these third-party applications (in the form of an APK), you'll need to enable Unknown sources.
How To: Open an ADB or Fastboot Command Window in Platform-Tools
When it comes to rooting and modding any Android device, ADB and Fastboot commands will quickly become your two new best friends once you realize the power they have. From unlocking your bootloader to flashing any file you could ever want — if you're serious about the modding and customization game, you'll want to become acquainted with these commands as soon as possible.
How To: The Best Way to Send High-Quality Videos from Android to iPhone
Being an Android user and having friends who are in the Apple ecosystem does not need to be a pain. You can easily send high-quality videos to iPhone users, so don't feel handicapped without access to iMessage. Sending high-resolution videos to iOS users is easy with this fast video-sharing method.
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: Disable App Icon Badges and Unread Notification Counts on Your Samsung Galaxy Smartphone
If you scan the notification panel on your Samsung Galaxy smartphone daily, all those red circles with numbers that litter the apps on your home screen and app drawer can feel like persistent nagging and unnecessary clutter rather than friendly reminders to check your app alerts — but you can do something about it.
How To: Redirect Links on Android to Open in the App You Really Wanted
One of Android's biggest strengths relative to iOS is the fact that you can use any app to open compatible links, not just the stock ones that come preloaded on your device. When you tap a link that two or more of your apps are capable of opening, you'll see a message asking which app to launch it with—and from there, the choices are "Just Once" or "Always."