Gadget Hacks » Smartphone Lifehacks, Guides, Tips, Tricks & How-Tos

How To: Play Your PS5 Remotely Using Your DualSense Controller and Android Phone

If you have a PlayStation 5 and an Android phone running Android 12, you can stream and play your PS5 games right from your mobile device using PS Remote Play. While simply pairing your PS5's DualSense wireless controller with your phone will give you the basic controls to play third-party games, Remote Play takes a little bit more work to set up.

News: PlayStation's Remote Play App Now Compatible with DualSense Controllers on Android 12

Those of you lucky enough to snag a PlayStation 5 can pair your DualSense controller to Sony's PS Remote Play mobile app to stream and play your PS5 games from anywhere you want. DualSense support for Remote Play has been available on iOS since May 2021, and it's just now arrived on Android.

How To: Everything You Need to Know About Android 12's Game Dashboard

Android 12 comes with new features and upgrades that any mobile gamer can appreciate, including Instant Play, which lets you play games instantly without downloading them first. Even better, there's Game Dashboard, which adds shortcuts for screenshots, screen recordings, and more in whatever game you play. The only problems are that it's not enabled by default, and it's a little hard to find.

How To: Do This If You Want to Add an Unsupported Card or Pass to Apple Wallet

Apple's Wallet app lets you store boarding passes, concert tickets, gym memberships, vaccination cards, movie stubs, rewards cards, insurance info, student IDs, and more in one place on your iPhone, and you just double-click the Home or Side button to access them. Unfortunately, a decent amount of cards and passes are not officially supported — but that doesn't mean you can't add them.

How To: 16 Ways to Customize Your iPhone's Weather App (Yes, There Are Really 16 Things You Can Tweak)

Apple's Weather app has been around forever, at least, for iPhone, and it's gone through many design changes over the years. But we're at a point now where we can actually customize how the Weather app looks and feels in a number of different ways, some of which you probably haven't even considered.

How To: Scan Food with Snapchat to Discover New Recipes to Try Out

Have you ever had a great meal at your local restaurant and wondered how to make it yourself? Or perhaps you've found yourself stumped at what to make for dinner based on the random provisions in your kitchen? Now, you can discover solutions to these food-based problems via Snapchat's computer vision wizardry.

How To: Assign Apps Their Own Background Sounds on Your iPhone

You can play background sounds in iOS 15 to help you focus, stay calm, or fall asleep, essentially turning your iPhone into a personal sound machine wherever you go. Even better, there's a way to set each of your apps to play one of Apple's six ambient soundscapes automatically. When you open the app, its assigned sound plays, then it stops when you exit or switch to another app.

How To: Add Tags to Reminders on iPhone for Easier Browsing, Filtering, and Searching

The standard way to sort your notes and to-dos in Reminders has always relied on you putting them in the correct list and group. Then came smart lists for flagged and scheduled tasks, followed shortly by a smart list for tasks assigned to you. In iOS 15, Apple brings yet another way to find your reminders more easily — tags.

How To: If You're Not Using Safari Extensions on Your iPhone, You're Missing Out

You've probably already used a few Safari Extensions on your Mac, but if you haven't explored Safari's web extensions on your iPhone yet, you're missing out on some fantastic possibilities to increase productivity, make tasks easier, filter out noise, and bring more fun to your browsing experience.

How To: iOS 15 Gives You More Reasons to Use Your iPhone's Accessibility Shortcut

I use the Accessibility Shortcut on my iPhone practically every day, whether it's to dim the screen below the standard threshold, keep my child confined to a specific app, or open up the simulated magnifying glass. But with iOS 15, there are at least three more things I can use it for, and one of them is really good.

How To: Drag-and-Drop Emails on Your iPhone to Notes, Reminders, and Other Apps in iOS 15

There has been drag-and-drop functionality for iPhone since at least iOS 11, but iOS 15 adds a new ability that makes essential emails even easier to find when you need them.

How To: Use Snapchat's Latest Viral Lens to Put a Smile on Your Face — Or Someone Else's

From Time Machine to Cartoon 3D Style, Snapchat has strung together a run of viral AR Lenses as consistently as Beyoncé drops hits songs.

How To: Netflix Games Coming to Android Tomorrow — But You Can Play Its Games Right Now

You're caught up on "Squid Games," and you've rewatched "Seinfeld" for the umpteenth time. You're looking forward to the next season of "Stranger Things," but it isn't out yet. Why not play Stranger Things on Netflix instead?

How To: iPhone Not Getting Any Photo Messages? iOS 15 Updates Disable MMS on Google Fi & Other Carriers — Here's the Fix

If you have an iPhone running iOS 15 that's connected to Google Fi or another mobile virtual network operator, you may not be getting any photos or videos in Messages. That may be because you recently installed a software update, and you'll have to restore your cellular data network settings to get MMS working again.

How To: Move Safari's Search Bar to the Top of the Screen in iOS 15

Some of the new features in iOS 15 take some getting used to, and the biggest one of those is Safari's relocated search bar, aka address bar. There are more than a few reasons why it's a jarring change, but the good news is that you can return Safari's search bar to its pre-iOS 15 position at the top of the screen.

How To: iOS 15 Changes the Way You Open Private Safari Tabs

When you open Safari for the first time after updating to iOS 15, you'll instantly notice its search bar is now at the bottom, and its Page Settings menu has moved with it. For tabs, moving between them is as easy as swiping on the Tab Bar or selecting one from the new grid view, but you may get confused whenever it's time to open a private window.

How To: 15 New iOS 15.1 Features You Need to Know About for iPhone

Apple's next big iOS update is ready for your iPhone, and it's out just a little bit more than a month after the iOS 15.0 update was released — and 14 days after iOS 15.0.2. The hottest feature you'll find in iOS 15.1 is definitely SharePlay, but what else is hiding within Oct. 25's new firmware?

How To: Android 12 Finally Has Scrolling Screenshots — Here's How They Work

It was a long time coming, but Android finally has built-in scrolling screenshots, and they come courtesy of Android 12.

How To: Scan Real-World Text with Your iPhone's Camera to Copy, Paste, or Share It Using iOS 15's Live Text Tool

Whenever you need to digitally share large bodies of real-world text, you'd likely show a photo of it or manually type everything into the document or chat. But iOS 15 has a much better way for your iPhone.

How To: Use iOS 15's Live Text Feature to Scan Text in Photos and Online Images to Copy, Share, Translate, Look Up, and More

Google Lens has easily been one of the more useful AR apps and a tantalizing tease of life with smartglasses in the not-so-distant future. Now, Apple has its own version of Lens, dubbed Live Text, built right into iOS 15 and iPadOS 15.

How To: Unlock Themed Icons on Android 12 for a More Dynamic Home Screen

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: Unlock Powerful Tools in Android 12's Hidden Dev Options Menu

When you start up your new Google Pixel 6 or 6 Pro, one of the first things you should do is unlock the hidden "Developer options" menu. Don't let the word "developer" scare you because there are little-known features in this secret Android 12 menu that every Android user can enjoy.

How To: Android 12's Upgraded Search Gives You Quick Access to Contacts, App Shortcuts, Phone Settings, and More

The new Material You theme engine with its fancy widgets is a sexy change for Android, but there's another new Android 12 feature that's more than just pretty colors and curves.

How To: Is Your Phone Getting Android 12? We've Got Answers

Android 12 was released to the Google Pixel devices on Oct. 19, 2021, so anyone with a Pixel 3 or newer model can install the new operating system with an over-the-air update. The AOSP version of Android 12 was released a few weeks earlier on Oct. 4, so that OEMs can use or modify the source code on their smartphones. So, what devices have or will have Android 12 then?

How To: Turn Your iPhone into a Personal Sound Machine in iOS 15 to Help You Focus, Rest, and Stay Calm

If you get distracted or stressed out easily, your iPhone might be able to help you focus or calm you down, as long as you've updated to iOS 15.

How To: You Can Hide Specific Content in iOS 15's 'Shared with You' Without Disabling the Whole Thing

After updating to iOS 15 or iPadOS 15, you'll notice a new "Shared with You" section in certain Apple apps that contains recent shares from conversations in Messages. If you don't like seeing shared content from specific contacts or groups, there's a way to block them from Shared with You on your iPhone or iPad.

iOS 15 Emoji: All 112 New Characters Coming Soon to Your iPhone

The latest set of emoji characters, Emoji 14.0, was approved on Sept. 14, 2021, less than a week before iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 hit iPhones and iPads. There wasn't any time to get any new emoji into iOS 15.0, but they are coming soon in a 15.x update later this year. So get ready for "Melting Face," "Biting Lip," and "Troll," to name just a few.

How To: iOS 15.1 Lets You Screen Share in FaceTime — And It's Pretty Awesome

Apple's hottest new FaceTime feature, SharePlay, comes packed with sharing options, and the biggest one lets you share your device's screen with the people you're FaceTiming. It didn't make it in time for the big iOS 15 release, but it did arrive in iOS 15.1, released Oct. 25, and here's how it works.

News: The Future of Apple Augmented Reality Wearables Through the Lens of Steve Jobs & His Legacy

Today is the 10-year anniversary of the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. To commemorate the occasion, Apple has posted a message and a mini-documentary on its website.

News: Facebook Outage Takes Down the Metaverse, Oculus Quest & Ray-Ban Smartglasses Users Impacted

On Monday, the social media giant Facebook suffered a massive outage that, as of this writing, is still in effect.

Market Reality: NASA AR Launches, Smartglasses Showdown, Vuzix Secret Lab, Magic Leap Turns the Corner

The beginning of autumn has delivered a number of new augmented reality developments, and we're on top of it.

News: Microsoft HoloLens 2 & Unity Used to Highlight the Threat to Endangered Whales at the Smithsonian

Although the enterprise use cases for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 continue to impress, the arts community just can't stay away from the best augmented reality headset on the market.

News: What Is the Difference Between Facebook Ray-Ban Stories, Snap Spectacles, & Amazon Echo Frames Smartglasses?

The emergence of Facebook's collaboration with Ray-Ban to launch Stories smartglasses has finally put an exclamation point on a new category of smartglasses: the pre-augmented reality wearable segment.

News: NASA Launches First Woman to Moon via AR App, & Delivers Interactive Visit to New Space Telescope

The team at NASA is in full mission preparation mode as they prepare to send a new team to the moon for the first time in decades via the Artemis program in 2024.

News: Robots, Drones, Disney, Halo View & More — Here Are the New Gadgets & Alexa Skills Amazon Wants to Fill Your Home With

Amazon really wants to make itself at home in your home. Like, everywhere in your home, from your doorstep to your kitchen, your kids' rooms, and everywhere in between.