Android Features
How To: Undo Deleted Text with Your Samsung Galaxy's Keyboard
Undo. Redo. These two actions are forever intertwined, but they're missing from the standard keyboard on Android. Accidentally delete a word, and there is no Ctrl + Z to undo this mistake. But there is finally a solution available on Samsung Galaxy phones.
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: If Magisk Shows You Pass SafetyNet, but You Still Have Issues, Check This
Google recently started testing a new SafetyNet check that might spell trouble for rooted Android devices. It cross-checks your SafetyNet status with Google remote servers, making it impossible to fool by normal means. If Magisk shows you pass SafetyNet and you're still having issues, you might be affected by this change.
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: 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: Install Facebook Messenger Lite to Save Battery While Boosting Performance
In an effort to make its services more accessible to users who live in developing countries, Facebook has released a streamlined version of its messenger app. Messenger Lite, at less than 5 MB, is much smaller than its regular 25 MB counterpart and was developed for use on older and lower-end phones. Finally, the app is now available for download in the US.
How To: Listen to FM Radio on a Google Android Smartphone
Android smartphones have all sorts of connectivity chips built in, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, and mobile data. But what about AM or FM radio, two of the most common methods of wireless communication?
How To: Play Super Mario Bros. & Other Classic Nintendo (NES) Games on Android
A mustachioed Italian plumber collects coins and battles bullets, plants, fish, mushrooms, and turtles in strange environments to save a princess held captive by a crazy, spiked-shell, bipedal tortoise.
How To: Use Samsung's Hidden Hearing Test to Get Drastically Better Sound Quality from Your Galaxy
A lot of folks complain about the extra features Samsung adds to Android, but while there are some benefits to the slimmer stock Android, the TouchWiz firmware on Galaxy devices definitely has its own advantages.
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: 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.
How To: Use Your Phone's Fingerprint Scanner to Unlock Your Windows PC
Almost every phone comes with biometric security of some sort these days, but the same can't be said of Windows computers. While fingerprint scanners are becoming increasingly common with laptops and desktops, they're nowhere near ubiquitous. Thankfully, your phone's scanner can be used as a sort-of remote authentication point for your PC.
How To: You Can Now Use Instagram Without Any Ads on Your Android Phone
Most of you probably hate ads on your smartphone, but they're a part of modern digital life. As long as apps like Instagram are free to use, then we'll need to pay by dealing with posts, videos, and pop-ups trying to sell us stuff. Well, not necessarily, so long as you're OK with a few compromises.
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: Silence Notifications from Individual Apps on Your Android Phone
Sometimes you might find that a certain app keeps sending you notifications. What are you to do? There are plenty of useful apps that might send one too many push notifications, but that doesn't mean you should dump them. Luckily, Android gives you complete control over how each installed app handles notifications.
How To: Unlock Themed Icons on Android 12 for Colors That Dynamically Shift with Your Wallpaper
Google's new Material You theming engine in Android 12 adds a personal touch to your user interface. The main colors of your wallpaper dynamically affect the colors in menus and apps, essentially putting you in control of the overall theme. But there's another new design element for app icons that's hiding in your settings.
How To: Completely Prevent Apps from Accessing Your Camera & Microphone on Android
We're thinking more and more about our digital privacy these days. When we first started using smartphones, we'd download apps with reckless abandon, allowing permissions lists as long as novels in order to play free games. Now, we know that apps have access to things like our cameras and microphones, even when they shouldn't. Luckily, taking away these permissions is easy.
How To: Get the Galaxy S9's New Ringtones & Notification Sounds on Any Android Phone
The Galaxy S9 was announced February 25, and it's jam-packed with features like AR Emojis and and a Dual Aperture camera. You really love the cut of its jib, but maybe you don't have the means to get your hands on one. Well now, you can get the Galaxy S9's notification sounds and ringtones, to help you feel like you own one.
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: 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: The Easiest Way to Make the Bixby Button Open Google Assistant on Your Galaxy
After years of user complaints, Samsung is finally letting us remap the Bixby button without the need of a third-party app. The new feature requires One UI a simple app update to Bixby, but there's one major downside: Samsung won't let you remap the button to open other digital assistants like Amazon Echo, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Assistant. Luckily, there's an easy workaround.
How To: See Which Audio Codecs Your Bluetooth Headphones Support with One UI 3.0
Codecs are like ZIP archives for media files. Rather than storing an entire analog sound file, the digital version is compressed to save space. The algorithm used to reduce file size is called a codec, as it encodes to digitize and decodes when it's time to play the file back. So as you can imagine, a better codec can lead to drastically improved sound quality.
How To: Fix Screen Burns on Your Nexus 6 or Other AMOLED Device
Many Nexus 6 owners, myself included, have already started to experience the dreaded burn-in issues that often come with AMOLED display technology. These displays are different than your typical LCD screen in that each pixel emits its own light instead of using a backlight, so this leaves AMOLED screens more susceptible to issues with dim or unresponsive pixels.
How To: Network Unlock Your Samsung Galaxy S3 to Use with Another GSM Carrier
Why unlock your Samsung Galaxy S3 to use with a different SIM card? One possible reason is that you love your phone, but not your cellular provider because of the poor service or an unreliable connection. If you purchased a Samsung GS3 with AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. on a contract, it might be locked for a specific amount of time called the contract period.
How To: Fake Your Location if Your Parents Installed a GPS Tracker on Your Android Phone
There are dozens of apps like Glympse, Family Locator, and Find My Kids that let parents see where their children's phones are, but they all have one fatal flaw: It's incredibly easy to spoof locations to make it look like the phone is somewhere else.
Firefox Mobile 101: How to Customize Your Browser with Themes
Android is a highly customizable operating system, but that doesn't always apply to the apps you find on the Play Store. Most of the time, when you install an app, you're stuck with the default look and feel — but luckily, this isn't the case with Firefox. Unlike most other browsers, you can actually install themes to change the look of the top browser for Android.
How To: Remove the Screen Recording Icon from Android 11's Status Bar
After teasing the feature in Android 10, Google finally added proper native screen recording to Android 11. But when you start a capture, you'll see a small red indicator in your status bar as long as recording is ongoing, which can really distract from your video. Thankfully, it can be removed with a little ingenuity.
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: 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: Root ANY Samsung Galaxy S5 Variant (Even AT&T & Verizon) in 20 Seconds Flat
With a root bounty of over $18,000 up for the taking, developers were highly motivated to get the AT&T and Verizon Wireless variants of the Samsung Galaxy S5 rooted. Legendary hacker George Hotz, aka Geohot, has won the race and can now step up to claim his prize.
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: Completely Disable Bixby on Your Samsung Galaxy
Sorry Samsung. I know you really wanted Bixby to be the next Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa — but it just isn't. Burying the option to disable the app won't change that. Sure, Bixby has some redeeming qualities, but there are many of us who don't want it shoved down our throats. We'll show you how to disable the app to prevent it from launching every time you try to access just about anything.
How To: Hide All Traces of Your Apps & Pictures on Android
Unlike some of the popular app lockers out there, a nifty app fittingly named App Hider completely erases apps, files, and their associated footprints from your smartphone. Think of App Hider as a micro-OS within your smartphone's system. This miniature ecosystem can operate copied apps independently, thus giving it an unprecedented layer of privacy and freedom within your handset.
How To: Change the Screen Resolution on Your Google Pixel Pro — And Why You Should
The most recent premium flagship smartphones from Google — the Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel 6 Pro — are equipped with displays cable of 1440 QHD+ resolution. But they also come with a tool to downgrade to 1080p FHD+, which you may want to do in certain situations.
How To: Automatically Delete Pictures & Videos You've Backed Up to Google Photos
Even with Pixels now coming with 128 GB of internal storage, many folks still struggle with low storage. The culprit is usually photos and videos, which can quickly eat away the space. Thankfully, there's a feature that solves this problem.
How To: Copy/Paste Between Android Devices and Chromebooks Quickly with Nearby Share
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.
How To: You Can Double Tap Your Home Screen to Lock Your OnePlus Phone
By default, most Android phones will instantly lock once you turn the screen off with the power button. Doing so is a surefire way to secure your device when you walk away, but what if there was another way to accomplish this even faster? If you're using the OnePlus Launcher on your OnePlus phone, there's something you can do to lock your phone instantly without pressing the power button.
How To: Remove the 'Connected to VPN' Notification on Your Samsung Galaxy Device
If you're using a VPN app to block ads or secure your Galaxy's internet connection, Samsung has decided you need yet another non-dismissible notification from One UI to tell you about it. Not just a status bar indicator like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, but a full-size alert that can't be dismissed. The entire time your always-on VPN is running.
How To: Pixel 4 Bootlooping After Installing a Magisk Module? Here's How to Fix It Without TWRP
TWRP won't be ready for the Pixel 4 and 4 XL until months after release. But since you can already root with Magisk and tinker with the OS, you might find yourself in a situation where your phone won't boot, yet you don't have a custom recovery installed to fix it. Luckily, there's still a way around this.
How To: The Definitive Guide on How to Restore Your Nexus 7 Tablet (Even if You've Bricked It)
Something went wrong and your Nexus 7 is freaking out on you. Maybe you flashed a bad ROM or ZIP file, or maybe it's just bugging, and it's time to restore your tablet back to a working condition. Thankfully, you've already made a backup of your Nexus 7!