Phones

How to Cancel App Subscriptions on the iPhone

While working with a friend of mine working at a coffee shop (you don’t work next to your other friends that work remotely?), she popped her head up from her laptop and randomly asked, “How do I stop an app from charging me even though I deleted it a long time ago?” (your friends don’t randomly ask you tech questions?) Truth is, this is a more common question than it rightfully should be–Apple doesn’t make it easy or apparent on how to cancel app subscription. So, really quick, as one of my tips and tricks for the week, here’s how […]

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How to Turn off Read Receipts on All Your Social Networks

There’s one feature on a lot of messaging apps that’s one main feature is to basically get you in trouble: read receipts. While it’s great to be able to know if the person you’re talking to has read your messages, it’s never a benefit to you for others to know this. “He clearly saw the message! Why hasn’t he responded?!” It’s because of sentences like the above, that most people I know have read receipts off on all their supported apps (except maybe my mom). And, sure, while not everyone receiving messages from you will say things like the above, I

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How to Make a Phone Call Using Google Home (& Use Your Actual Phone Number)

Google has finally started rolling out their new Google Home feature that allows you to call someone. As in, actually call their real cell phone, not just ring their Google Home app if they happen to have one installed. The feature only works in you are in the US or Canada at the moment and requires that you speak English (sorry, my French Canadian friends) and although all of the things you need to make it work aren’t immediately apparent, once you know, it’s pretty easy. Here’s everything you need to start making calls using the Google Home. Check You

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How to Send a Text Message From Your Amazon Echo

Amazon just added a new feature this week to Alexa: the ability to send text messages from an Android phone. You’ve been able to send messages from one Echo to another or to a phone using the Alexa app, but now you can send them as an actual SMS and have it show in your normal Android messaging app. Here’s how to send text messages using your Echo. How to Setup SMS on Your Amazon Echo Open the Alexa app on your Android phone. Tap on the Conversations icon at the bottom (looks like a speech bubble). Tap on the

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How to Easily Turn Live Photos into Gifs on Your iPhone

I’ve never really been a fan of live photos on iOS. Frankly, I just really don’t have a use for a few second video before and after a photo, especially when you couldn’t edit this tiny clip. But, there was a small change in iOS 11 that made their usefulness change a bit. Apple decided to let you edit them and even easily turn live photos into gifs. With that, they’ve become a slightly better medium for capturing content than they were. Instead of this random tiny video, they can become pleasant surprises of accidental moments during a photo shoot

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How to Download Other People’s Instagram Stories (iOS/Android)

So I’m not sure I can think of a why you’d want to download someone else’s story necessarily. Maybe you’re a big fan of someone and want a keepsake? I don’t know. But I did think it was super interesting that you even could save someone’s story so figured I’d do a quick tutorial on how to do that for anyone who has a reason to or just wants to see how it’s done. Essentially, we’re going to use one of two apps, one for iOS and one for Android. How to Download Instagram Stories on iOS First up, iOS

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How to Turn Any Android Phone into a Security Device (Using Edward Snowden’s New App)

Edward Snowden, the guy who leaked government documents to the press revealing numerous secret surveillance programs, has released a security app. Snowden, referred to as a hero or a traitor depending on who you ask, revealed last week that he has made an open source app that allows any Android device to be used as a secret recording device. Download Haven from the Play Store Or Download the APK from here The app allows you to set thresholds for motion, audio, etc and you can then leave the phone, in say your hotel room when you leave and it would

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How to Check if Apple is Slowing Down Your iPhone (& What to Do About It)

Welp, Apple recently admitted to slowing down users’ iPhone processor speeds when iOS detects that the device has a battery that is suffering. Along with this admission after the outrage from people calling Apple out for deliberately slowing down their iPhones to get them to upgrade to new ones, Apple also announced that if you have a phone with an affected battery you can go to an Apple store and get the battery replaced to bring the performance back for $30 instead of the usual $80 during 2018. Without getting too much into why this was super not okay of

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How to Make Any Android Phone Look Like the Pixel 2 (Video)

If you’re not going to buy a Pixel 2 but are still slightly feeling the sting of jealousy at how clean the software looks on the new devices sold by Google themselves, here’s a quick video on how to get all of that stock, slick Google software on whatever Android device you have–including those new live wallpapers that I’m personally in love with. So in this video, I’ll show you how to make any Android phone look like the Pixel 2. Allow Unknown Sources Before we get started we’re going to be downloading apps that aren’t in the Play Store

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How to Fix the iOS 11.1 i Glitch (Video)

Figured I’d quickly do a video to show people how to fix the iOS 11.1 i glitch. If you aren’t familiar iOS 11.1 has a pretty nasty glitch that causes autocorrect to turn your lowercase “i” into an A and a Unicode symbol that shows up as a question mark instead of capitalizing it to “I”. Apple has said they’ll fix it with an update but they give a workaround to help in the meantime. Here’s how to do it. Head to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement and tap the plus sign at the top right. In Phrase

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Why You Won’t Miss the Home Button on the iPhone X (Video)

One of the biggest complaints, I’ve seen online about the iPhone X (besides the loss of TouchID) is the fact people are angry about having to learn how to navigate iOS without a home button. Instead of the home button and normal swiping up to get to control center, down to get notifications, etc. things have been swapped around. All of this, of course, begs the question: what’s even real anymore?! Don’t panic though, turns out the notorious gesture system is actually pretty intuitive and didn’t take me long to get the hang of. Let me show you what I

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How to Use Animoji (Video)

Welp, the iPhone X is finally here and with it, Animojis. These animated emojis (get it??), as annoying as some people find them, are getting a lot of attention. I have to admit, I’ve sent the poop one more times than I probably should have in the short time I’ve had the phone. Regardless, they’re novel and it is pretty impressive how it’s able to track the muscles in your face as well as it does. In case you’re still waiting for your iPhone X though, I figured I’d do a quick rundown of how you can use animojis properly

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4 Best Uses for the S-Pen That I’ve Come to Love (Video)

One of the new Note8’s most stand out features, as with all of the Note devices, is the pen. For some people, it’s why they’d choose the Note8 over the S8 or S8 Plus and while I think there are other reasons for doing that, which we can talk about in another video perhaps, I kinda get what they’re on about. Originally, I didn’t really think much of the pen–telling myself I’ll probably never use it, but then a funny thing happened: I forced myself to use it for a bit and now, now I like it. For anyone curious,

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How to Use Portrait Lighting on the iPhone (Video)

With iOS 11 and the new iPhone 8 Plus and X, Apple added a new feature to the cameras that I think people will definitely like an probably overuse on Instagram, social in general, etc. Regardless it is a cool feature and it’s called Portrait Lighting. Just like Portrait mode that we’re used to by now that uses the dual cameras on the phone to judge depth and create that bokeh depth of field look using software, this mode uses the dual camera setup and takes the software magic a step further. Instead of just being able to create a

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How to Remove an iOS Beta (& Get Back to Stock Firmware)

OK, so a new version of iOS is officially out and so now you’re done with messing around with the beta and just want to get back on the stable OS track. You’d like to think that maybe the beta software would just update to the latest stable version of iOS (and then maybe move to the next beta when that’s available?), but no, it doesn’t work that way. You need to actually remove the beta profile and then force the device to find the stable update and replace the software, for whatever reason. In case you aren’t sure how

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