How-To Guides from Gadget Hacks: Page 73

While it hasn't gotten as much attention as iOS 10, Apple's big 10.12 update to their Mac operating system is finally out for all to enjoy—and you can download it for free from the Mac App Store right now.

Several major web services—most notably Facebook—have horrendous Android apps that occupy way too much space and drain battery life at an alarming rate. Such issues have led to a new trend where third-party developers create minimalist "lite" apps that are essentially the mobile website bundled into a native Android wrapper, freeing up storage space and saving battery life without sacrificing many features at all.

The internet, as I understand it, is a wonderful, magical place where people congregate to share memes and viral videos. Well, okay... there's a lot more to it than that, but let's just focus in on the good stuff.

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.

The new Google phones, which are rumored to ditch the Nexus moniker for Pixel, will most likely come with an Android feature that 7.0 Nougat doesn't currently have—a new set of navigation keys.

The default screen timeout on most Android devices is 30 seconds. This usually offers a good balance of usability and battery savings, but sometimes, you need the screen to stay on longer. For instance, practically every time I try to show something on my phone to someone else, the screen locks before they get a chance to see it. But increasing the system-wide screen timeout isn't a great solution either, because this can lead to unnecessary battery drain and even screen burn-in.

When it comes time to buy a new smartphone, the sheer amount of options on the market can make you feel overwhelmed. There are Android devices of all shapes and sizes with different functionalities and price points, and now, even Apple has three unique iPhone models to fit various budgets.

If you have any group chats going, you're surely familiar with this scenario: One person sends a picture, then, within 30 seconds or so, all other participants chime in with one-word responses like "Cute," or "Awesome." It's a social nicety, so you have to expect this behavior, but that doesn't make it any less annoying when your phone randomly beeps and vibrates ten times in a row because of it.

When it comes to sharing files between a smartphone and a computer, there are several solutions available for a Windows and Android pairing. But for those of us with Apple devices, the selection of apps in this category isn't quite as great. You can use AirDrop to quickly share files, but searching for files is not so easy.

North American users get a raw deal when it comes to Sony devices. For some reason, the critically-acclaimed Xperia lineup of smartphones is hardly ever available here, whereas in Europe, the Sony Xperia Z series is one of the most popular flagship devices around.

Several Samsung phones have a feature that turns the screen black and white when the battery is getting low. This takes advantage of the AMOLED display in these devices, because unlike red, green, and blue pixels, no battery power is used to display black pixels on this type of screen.

When shopping for a new smartphone, you'll encounter comparisons and spec sheets that are filled to the brim with values like mAh, GB, and GHz. To the average consumer, however, these values are meaningless, so we end up looking at which device has the specs with the highest actual numbers.

Have you ever been using your computer when a friend randomly decides it's time to start up a text message conversation? You usually have to stop what you're doing on the desktop, then go pick up your smartphone and respond to the text. Then, if your buddy replies with another message, you have to juggle back and forth between your mouse and keyboard and your handheld device.

Rooted users have been able to remap their hardware buttons since the earliest days of Android, allowing them to change the functionality behind one of the most centralized methods of interacting with a phone or tablet. Up until now, however, non-rooted users have been left out in the cold, meaning these buttons could only perform the functions assigned to them by the device manufacturer.

You wouldn't send your GPS coordinates to a completely random stranger just because he or she asked you for it, right? So why are you constantly sharing your location (and other data) to apps on a daily basis?

The upcoming version of Android has already been made available to certain devices for beta testing, but we won't see the official release of Android Nougat until sometime later this year, maybe even sooner than expected. The trouble here is that Google has made it really hard to wait patiently, because they've basically just teased us with a massive visual overhaul to the world's biggest mobile operating system.

When Hey Siri was first introduced in iOS 8, it was a pretty lackluster feature since you had to be plugged into a power source in order to even use it. Since then, newer devices (iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, SE, 9.7-inch iPad Pro) don't need to plug in to have always-on Siri, which makes the feature actually worthwhile—when it works.

Even with today's high-powered devices, battery life is still an issue. We, as users, have to almost habitually check the current battery percentage, because otherwise, we might end up draining too much in the morning, then get stuck with a dead phone at night.

Emojis, for better or for worse, have essentially taken over online forms of communication. And now, thanks to a recently discovered feature in iOS, they are going to change the way you search for nearby places.

The Moto X and Moto Z have a set of features that let you launch common shortcuts by shaking your phone in one direction or another. For instance, there's a chop gesture that turns on the LED flashlight, and a wrist-twist gesture that instantly opens the camera app.