How-To Geek

Mountains invoke thoughts of beauty, solitude, and peace that can be quite alluring when life becomes stressful. Enjoy a relaxing view on your Nexus 7 with the first in our series of Mountains Wallpaper collections.

Choosing a ringtone volume can be hard – there is no one setting that is right for all environments. What works perfectly at home may be too quiet for when you’re on the train, but too loud for the office.  Intelligent Ringer can be used to adjust ringtone volume according to ambient noise levels.

When you’re in a meeting, on the train, or have muted your phone for some other reason, vibrations can let you know when you receive a call. But with Vybe, you can create unique vibration patterns for contacts so you’ll know who’s calling without the need to look at your phone.

There are plenty of reasons why someone would need to backup their voicemails; perhaps for legal purposes or to save the voice of a deceased loved one. Whatever your reasons are, this guide will show you two ways to backup the voicemails from your iPhone in MP3 format.

Many Android phones have an integrated notification LED. With Light Flow, you can have your phone’s LED notification flash different colors depending on the types of notifications you have waiting for you – your phone can communicate notifications even with its screen off.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone in your family hooked your phone or tablet up to the wireless and now you don’t know the password to connect your other devices?

DashClock allows you to see notifications and status information at a glance, turning your Android lock screen’s clock into a dashboard. It’s a big improvement over the lock screen widgets included in Android 4.2.

There are tons of great games available on the Android platform, but playing them with an onscreen interface isn’t much fun. Ditch the fake buttons and start enjoying your games with a comfortable gaming controller.

Whether you want to prevent your child from accessing Facebook or are simply sick of the advertisements that litter webpages, a custom hosts file can come in handy.

Free, ad-supported apps have two hidden costs: They use your phone’s data connection and battery power to download and display ads. In the long run, using a free app may be more expensive than buying the paid version.

Printing documents is easy enough – fire up the appropriate app, load the file and hit Print. But when it comes to Android, you probably find that you email or copy files from your phone or tablet so you can print from your PC. Things are a great deal easier if you turn to Cloud Print.

The media (and Apple) still can’t stop talking about Android malware. Antivirus companies want to sell you a complete Android security solution, but Android malware can be avoided with a few common-sense tips.

The vastness of space is filled with wonders beyond compare, all waiting for those who would explore and seek out its endless beauty. Take your iPhone into the depths of space with the first in our series of Outer Space Wallpaper collections.

Install an app from Google Play and, while the installer takes the form of an APK files, you’re never given the opportunity to download the file directly. Using the APK Downloader extension for Chrome, you can download any APK you need so you have it as a backup.

Much of the data on your Android phone or tablet is backed up by Google (or the individual apps you use) automatically. Your photos can also be backed up automatically, but aren’t by default. However, some data is never backed up automatically.

Increasingly sophisticated phones and data-hungry applications make it easier than ever to blow through your data plan’s cap and incur overage charges. Read on as we show you how to manage your data use and avoid unwelcome charges.

The Growl notification system is something that will be familiar to Mac users, but it is something that is also available for Windows. It is an incredibly versatile tool that can be used to monitor system and program notifications in a variety of ways, including remotely.

There are lots of tools that can be used to automate various tasks on your computer, and we have looked at how the likes of Wappwolf and IFTTT can help to automate your online life. AutomateIt brings very much the same idea to Android, making it possible to automate your phone or tablet in a variety of ways.

Android may not have Siri, but it does have Voice Actions. Voice Actions are a powerful way to perform actions – searching, getting directions, making notes, setting alarms, and more – with just your voice.

The Galaxy S III is the highest-selling Android phone, but much of the geeky buzz is around the Nexus 4 – and the Galaxy Nexus before it. Nexus devices are special because they don’t have some of Android’s biggest problems.

With browser sync enabled, you can open some tabs on your computer and access them on-the-go from your smartphone. If you have multiple computers, you can easily keep your bookmarks and settings in sync between them.

Android has a built-in battery stats tool that shows you what is using your battery. Unfortunately, this tool doesn’t provide all the information you need to identify the root causes of poor battery life.

Sometimes an inspiring background can be the perfect way to kick-start your imagination and get your browsing or work off to a great start. Take your iPad to whole new worlds with the first in our series of Fantasy Wallpaper collections.

Launchers. They’re not exactly in short supply in Google Play. While there are many to choose from, each with a slightly different approach to things, they all tend to work in the same general way. The same cannot be said of Trigger, which makes it possible to put your device’s touchscreen to the best possible use by using gestures to launch apps, access settings and more.

Android developers can restrict their apps to certain devices, countries, and minimum versions of Android. However, there are ways around these restrictions, allowing you to install apps marked as “not compatible with your device.”