Android Features
How To: This Android App Lets You Cast Unsupported Web Videos to Chromecast
The Google Chrome browser for Android allows you to cast quite a few different videos from the web to your TV, but some sites actively disable this functionality, and others have outdated video players that won't allow for it. For example, Instagram's mobile website won't let you cast any videos, and the official app doesn't support Google Cast.
News: 9 Rootless Mods for the Galaxy S20 That Everyone Should Try
Every Galaxy S20 sold in the US — even the S20+ and S20 Ultra — simply can't be rooted. With the bootloader permanently locked, you miss out on the world of rooting and the customization it opens up, but modifications are still possible.
How To: Make Pokémon GO Work When You Have TWRP Installed
If you're a root user who has played Pokémon GO over the years, then you're probably familiar with the detection methods used to spoil your fun. The game's developer, Niantic, has publicly mentioned their ongoing battle with rooted Android phones and are unwilling to let up. They have a no-nonsense approach to try and keep you from playing, and they've stepped their game up once again.
How To: Opt Out of Ad Tracking on Android
Most of the free apps you'll find on the Play Store have ads. These ads are personalized — in other words, they're for products and services Google believes you might be interested in. The way Google knows about your interests is by collecting data from your smartphone, including your location and app usage. While personalized ads have their advantages, the collection of data is unsettling.
How To: Make OnePlus' Lift to Wake Feature Show the Lock Screen Instead of the Always-on Display
OnePlus releases some unique and exciting features before they start catching on with everyone else. Their OxygenOS is often considered the cleanest and most useful variant of Android. However, there are still a few key features OnePlus has yet to bring to their devices. This includes a proper lift to wake option.
How To: Install a Custom Recovery on Your Bootloader-Locked Galaxy S5 (AT&T or Verizon)
As the largest wireless service providers in the United States, AT&T and Verizon Wireless carry some serious clout. Sadly, they use some of this power to heavily modify the Android phones that they offer.
Firefox Mobile 101: How to Turn Websites into Apps on Your Home Screen with the New Quantum Browser
There are over 3 million apps in the Google Play Store, all optimized for the small screen in your hands. While that number sounds staggering, there are still many online tools and websites that require you to use a mobile browser since app development is expensive. However, that's where Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) come into play, a cost-effective way to turn websites into mobile apps.
How To: Fit More Notification Icons in Your Pixel's Status Bar
In older Android versions, you could flood your status bar with a wall of notification icons. But starting with Android 9, Google made it to where you can only see four icons by default, and it was mostly done to accommodate phones with notches. But Google's only notched phone is the Pixel 3 XL, so what if you have literally any other Pixel?
How To: Eliminate Screen Flicker & Lower Minimum Brightness on Android
If you pay close attention, you might notice that the screen on your Android begins to flicker or pulsate when you lower the brightness past a certain point. This is a result of the AMOLED technology Samsung, among other manufacturers, use in their displays, and the way that these types of screens operate.
How To: Hide Apps on Your Samsung Galaxy's Home Screen, App Tray, and Search
You don't have to see every app installed on your phone if you don't want to. Samsung One UI makes it easy to hide apps from your Samsung Galaxy's home screen, app tray, and search tool, whether you want to declutter, simplify things, or keep other people from seeing some of the apps you use.
How To: Disable the Full-Screen Calendar Alerts on Your Samsung Galaxy Phone
By default, when there's a new event in Samsung's Calendar app, it pops up with an obnoxious full-screen window to let you know. Thankfully, there's a way to turn these into regular notifications.
How To: Remove the 'Media' & 'Devices' Buttons from the Notification Shade on Your Galaxy
While One UI 2 comes with a slew of improvements like native screen recording and more intuitive gestures, it also includes some redundant features such as button shortcuts for "Media" and "Devices" that many of us can do without.
How To: Get iOS 16's Emoji Wallpapers on Your Android Phone's Home or Lock Screen
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.
How To: Set Up Google Voice to Get Visual Voicemail on Your Unlocked Android Phone
Buying an unlocked phone is usually the correct move. By doing so, you bypass a lot of bloat that carriers put on your phone, and you can also use that phone with another carrier should you decide to switch to a new one. However, a lot of carriers won't give unlocked devices access to their visual voicemail apps. For that, there's Google Voice.
Android Basics: How to Install BusyBox Commands
If you're a rooted user, you've probably heard the term "BusyBox" by now. Many mods require these powerful root commands, but the process of installing BusyBox can be a bit confusing for the uninitiated.
How To: Make Google's Messages App on Your Phone Write or Rewrite Text Messages for You Using GenAI
Text messaging is a core component of the mobile experience, and Google has added several AI-fueled features to help you text better, such as Smart Reply for quick response suggestions. But Messages by Google's newest AI-powered tool is possibly the best one yet, giving you improved response suggestions and your own personal copyeditor to fix all your message drafts.
How To: Unlock the Bootloader & Install a Custom Recovery on the LG G3
While LG G3 users have been patiently waiting, developer the cubed and his Codefire team have been diligently working on a successful unlock method for the heavily locked-down bootloader. Now it's finally here, and the unlocking method is extremely easy to do—and it works for all G3 variants.
How To: Use Google's Android Flash Tool to Manually Update Your Phone or Recover from a Soft Brick
If you've ever tried to update your Android phone manually, you know the process can be unnecessarily hard. There are so many steps and parts, that if one thing goes wrong, the whole process doesn't work. Recognizing this, the Android team came up with an even easier way.
How To: Copy Text from Any Screen on Android by Long-Pressing the Home Button
Selecting text on a touchscreen device has always been a major pain point. Those tiny little arrows that let you adjust the selection area are always too hard to actually adjust, making precision all but impossible. Then there's the issue of some apps not even allowing text selection in the first place, so the entire experience is basically a big mess.
How To: Quickly Disable Fingerprints & Smart Lock in Android Pie for Extra Security
Following in iOS 11's footsteps, Android 9.0 Pie will include a security feature that lets you immediately disable the fingerprint scanner as well as extended Smart Lock features. After initiating the feature, you will be required to insert your PIN, pattern, or password before any other unlock methods will work again.
How To: Improve Palm Rejection on Your Galaxy Device to Prevent Accidental Touches
Samsung has made curved displays a signature element of their flagship phones, but the Edge Screen, as it's called, has proven to be a magnet for accidental touches. Fortunately, Samsung has developed a little known app to help prevent this problem.
How To: Root the Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge
Samsung's 2016 flagship devices are some of the most beautiful, powerful smartphones ever made. And amazingly enough, thanks to legendary root developer Chainfire, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge are about to get even more powerful.
How To: Fix Bootloops Caused by Magisk Modules Without Factory Resetting Your Phone
When it comes to customizing Android, there's nothing quite like Magisk. You can potentially combine dozens of modules to create a one of a kind user experience tailored to you, but not all modules will work well together. You might run into a bootloop by accident once in a while, which could cause some issues on its own.
How To: Add a Google Cast Button to Your Quick Settings Tiles on Any Phone — No Root Needed
Android's Quick Settings menu gives you easy access to certain actions from any screen, but the tiles available are largely dependent on your phone's OEM skin. For instance, the Google Cast button that can cast your entire screen has been exclusive to Nexus and Pixel devices, even though other phones have the requisite software to use it. Fortunately, there's a way to add it on any device running Nougat or higher.
How To: Install Apps from the Play Store Without Gapps or Google Services
Android is Google's project, so of course you can see the search giant's fingerprints all over the operating system. Aside from the obvious user-facing apps, there's Google Cloud Messaging, Google Connectivity Services, and the much-maligned Google Play Services running in the background, to name a few.
How To: Test for Adups' Spyware on Your Phone—& Disable It
Mobile security researchers at Kryptowire recently uncovered spyware preinstalled on hundreds of thousands of Android smartphones by FOTA provider Adups which was gathering personally identifiable information (PII) such as call logs, app usage data, and even the full contents of text messages and sending these to a third-party server—all without the users' knowledge.
How To: Use Your iPhone or Android Phone as a Remote Control for Android TV or Google TV
If you can't find the remote for your Android TV or Google TV, don't like using its voice control feature, are sick of using the directional pad to type, or can't get it to work at all, use your smartphone instead. Using your iPhone or Android phone as a virtual remote control can be more convenient, easier to use, and more helpful than the original remote, so it's definitely worth trying out.
How To: Use the Volume Keys for Page Scrolling on Android
Android's beauty is in its customization; you can have widgets for anything, launchers that look and feel completely different from one another, and fonts you can change at any time. And it doesn't stop at aesthetics—you can go much deeper than looks.
How To: Unlock the Bootloader on Your LG G6 (T-Mobile Variant)
Preorders for the LG G6 have all been fulfilled, and the phone has been up for grabs at local cell phone providers for three weeks now. However, not every LG G6 was created and released equally. The T-Mobile variant of the LG G6 features an unlockable bootloader, while most other North American variants come with a tightly locked down bootloader, which effectively limits the full potential of your brand new fairly expensive phone.
How To: Enable the Qualcomm DAC on Your Snapdragon-Powered Phone for Superior Audio
Every phone powered by a Qualcomm processor has a built-in WCD9xx Audio DAC, but it's rarely configured to be used to its full potential by OEMs. This might not seem like a problem to some people, but if you're a music lover, or you simply enjoy high-quality sound, it's an issue you'll definitely want to fix.
How To: Get Google's Call Screen Feature on Your OnePlus
Spam calls are one of the most annoying things to happen in the world of smartphones for more than one reason. Not only are they bothersome, but they can also be dangerous to people who don't know any better. Google has come up with a crafty solution known as "Call Screen" to let the Google Assistant handle the call for you while you listen in on the caller like a stealth ninja.
How To: Root Your HTC 10 & Install TWRP
There are many great reasons to root your phone, but if you're not experienced with tools like ADB and Fastboot, it can seem like a daunting task. Fret not, because if you want to root your HTC 10, we're here to walk you through the process.
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: Unlock the Bootloader & Root Your HTC One M8
As with most OEMs, HTC would like you to think that you can do virtually anything with your new HTC One M8, but as a softModder, you know that isn't true. To actually unleash the full potential of that device, you need access to the whole system, not just the parts that HTC deems okay for you to mess with.
How To: Set Up Two Different Facebook Accounts on One Android Device
Whether it's for handling your business's social media account or just for personal reasons, like trolling an ex-girlfriend's page (not that I've ever done that) or posting on behalf of your pup, there are instances where having two different Facebook accounts on one device is simply easier than switching back and forth.
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: Fingerprint-Lock Apps on Android Without a Fingerprint Scanner
If you have a specific app you want to lock so that others can't access it, the most secure way of doing so is with biometrics. While there are options to lock apps with either a PIN or pattern, these can easily be figured out with a simple glance over your shoulder. It's much more difficult for someone to crack your fingerprint ID, unless they chop off your finger, of course.
How To: 3 Ways to Get Around Google's Uncertified Device Ban
Google has started blocking certain devices from accessing the Google Play Store and other Google services. This is part of an effort to clamp down on OEMs that skirt its certification requirements, but now millions of phones have been uncertified to download or update Google apps. Fortunately, there are a few workarounds.
How To: Open Links Directly into Chrome's Incognito Mode on Android
Chrome's Incognito Mode is a great feature for folks that don't want their browsing history tracked. When it's enabled, Incognito Mode makes sure that all cookies and cache that are saved while you're browsing are deleted as soon as you leave a webpage.
How To: Enable Dark Mode in Google's Contacts App for Android
With the rise of OLED displays, Android users have been begging Google for a true system-wide dark mode for years. While a system-wide solution is still somewhat unlikely, Google has given in by providing a dark mode for certain apps, including Contacts.