Social Media


How To: Open Snapchat Directly to Camera, Stories, Chat, and More from Anywhere on Your Pixel — Even the Lock Screen
In Android 12, you can launch the Snapchat app just by tapping the back of your Pixel phone twice. The latest Pixel update from Google improved upon the feature by giving us access to the shortcut from the lock screen. That means you're mere seconds away from snapping photos, videos, and stories. But first, you have to set up and configure where you want to land when Snapchat opens.

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.

News: Facebook Makes Portal Portable, Upgrades Portal Plus, & Adds Microsoft Teams
With the arrival of Facebook Ray-Ban Stories smartglasses commanding the recent spotlight, the tech world acted like it forgot about Facebook's first foray in consumer hardware — the Portal line of video calling devices.

How To: Clean Unwanted Tabs & Alerts from Facebook's Nav Bar to Remove Shop, Groups, News, Watch & Notification Dots
In the Facebook app for Android and iOS, the shortcut bar has a few necessary tabs to go home and view notifications and settings. But other tabs can make the interface feel cluttered if you don't use them often enough — or at all. Thankfully, there's a quick trick to get rid of them for a cleaner navigation bar.

How To: Download Reddit Videos on Android
Reddit has been pushing for more first-party content over the last couple years. So instead of just being a place to submit links, you can now upload photos and videos directly to Reddit's servers. But unlike Imgur, Gfycat, and other popular file hosts, Reddit doesn't give you an easy way to download videos.

How To: Add Self-Generating Captions to Your Instagram Stories So You Don't Have to Type Them in Manually
When creating video content for social media, such as a story on Instagram, it's common practice to add captions or subtitles to the post so that people can watch it wherever they are on silent. Doing this by hand is time-consuming and frustrating, but Instagram has a solution: a feature to add automatically-generated captions to any story you make from your iPhone or Android phone.

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: 9 Things You Should Be Doing to Make Your TikTok Account Secure from Hackers
You should feel relatively safe to watch and post videos on TikTok, but like with any online service, you're always at the mercy of hackers.

How To: Scroll Through TikTok Hands-Free on Your iPhone or iPad Using Simple Voice Commands
If you can't curb your TikTok obsession, at least make it more efficient by taking your hands out of the equation. So when you're eating breakfast, working on your computer, or using your hands for another non-TikTok task, you don't even have to touch your iPhone or iPad to scroll through all of those videos in your feed. Instead, you can just tell it what to do, and it'll listen.

How To: See Your Likes on Instagram — Every Photo, Video, and Reel You've Ever Hearted
Unlike TikTok, there isn't a convenient "Likes" tab directly on your Instagram profile page to see all the posts you've ever loved. That's too easy. Instead, you have to dig a bit deeper if you want to take a trip down IG memory lane.

How To: Record 10-Minute Videos on TikTok Using Your iPhone or Android Phone
In mid-2021, TikTok rolled out three-minute videos, but it's not stopping there. The company is rolling out a feature that will let you record up to 10 minutes in a single TikTok video — only the update hasn't appeared for everyone yet.

How To: Add Your Favorite Songs and Other Music to Instagram Stories
Music goes well with almost every Instagram story, but adding a particular song or soundtrack isn't the most obvious task if you've never tried before or haven't done so in a long time.

How To: Download Instagram Reels on Your iPhone for Offline Use, Better Playback Control, and More
Downloading content from TikTok is relatively easy, even if the video is protected, but the same can't be said of Reels, Instagram's version of short-form videos. Instagram doesn't make it easy to download content unless it's your own, and that's especially true with Reels. However, there is a way to bypass Instagram's restrictions on your iPhone and save videos locally without ever leaving the app.

How To: Rename Your Original Sound to Make Your TikTok Video More Shareable
TikTok is a video-platform first, and while visual content is critical to its popularity, what has carried many of these videos to millions upon millions of views isn't only what you see but what you hear.

How To: This Hidden Setting Is the Trick to Uploading HD Videos on Your TikTok Profile
You might have noticed some of the videos you upload to TikTok don't always look great. If you think the answer is that you need a DSLR, you're wrong. The blurriness, pixelation, and overall bad quality that can happen in your uploaded videos is probably not your smartphone's fault — it might be because you aren't uploading your videos in HD.

How To: Download TikTok Videos Without Watermarks on Your iPhone
TikTok has grown to be one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. The video-sharing app is a driving force for viral content, spurring various popular movements in dance, pranks, comedy, and more. And as one might assume, videos on TikTok don't stay on TikTok — they're shared on Instagram, Twitter, and other services where millions of people get the chance to also view them.

How To: Stop Your TikTok Account from Being Suggested to Contacts, Facebook Friends & Other Users You May Know
Your TikTok videos might be interesting, creative, fun, and appealing, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want the entire world to see them. While you're fine with strangers watching your videos, you may not want your close friends, family, and coworkers to see the kinds of mischief you're up to.

How To: Hide Your Liked Videos on TikTok So That Nobody Can See Them but You
Every video you like on TikTok, whether it's a stranger performing a series of choreographed movements or a celebrity showing off their new workout, is saved to your profile. If you want to watch your liked videos at any time in the future, you can easily do so from your profile — but so can everyone else.

How To: Pin Your Favorite TikTok DMs to the Top of Your Direct Messages Inbox for Quicker Access
Want quick access to message threads with your favorite or important contacts? Just pin them to the top of the conversations list. It's a common feature in many messaging apps, including Apple's Messages in iOS 14. While it's not particularly well-advertised, TikTok also lets you pin chats to the top of your direct messages inbox on Android or iPhone.

How To: Disable Vanish Mode in Facebook Messenger & Instagram
Facebook recently implemented "Vanish Mode" into Messenger and Instagram, which lets you have an end-to-end encrypted conversation in a chat that will disappear as soon as you leave the thread. As cool as it sounds, it's easy to enable accidentally, and a friend could force you into using it. In some cases, that may not be ideal since everything you or the recipient said will disappear.