It's no secret that Android has a messaging problem. iPhone users can turn to iMessage as a one-stop shop for all their messaging needs — features like read receipts and the ability to text from a computer have been standard with Apple products for quite some time. Android has no such solution, but Google's looking to fix that with a huge update to the Android Messages app.
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! As most of you know, Mr. Robot is probably the best hacker TV show ever! This is a great show about a cyber security engineer who is being enticed to hack the very corporation he's being paid to protect. This show is so good, I began a series to demonstrate how to do the hacks he uses in the show.
The car is arguably one of the worst places to receive a text message. You know you can't resist looking, and when you do, your attention is no longer on driving, it's on reading the latest gossip or whatever. You take your eyes of the road for just a few seconds and you could get an expensive ticket, or even worse—an accident. But you can't just ignore that notification sound or vibration, can you? So, if you just have to know what it says right then and there, why not at least do it in a sa...
If you use the Google Assistant on your Android device, you can easily send a text message to any one of your contacts. But even though that same Assistant is powering the Google Home, you can't use the smart speaker to accomplish the same task — at least, not without some tinkering.
For some time now, iPhone owners have been able to use Siri to listen to and reply to text messages, but that functionality has been lacking on Android. That is, until Google silently rolled out a similar feature for Google Now (thanks to Android Police for the tip).
Conversations can be a little stale sometimes, so a little color help add some life. AOL realized this In the early days of AIM, and let you customize your colors just the way you want. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't let you go into your settings to customize your messaging app's colors, but with this awesome and effective tweak you can. All you need is a jailbroken iOS 7 iPhone or iPad, which is easily achieved.
One of the best reasons to enter Apple's ecosystem is iMessage, where you can communicate more securely with other Apple users and send and receive chats across all of your connected iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac devices. While those blue bubble conversations sync across devices, the green bubbles — SMS and MMS texts — remain on your iPhone alone unless you change a setting manually.
Ringing and vibrating alerts on your smartphone can be a bit distracting when you're at work or school, but silent alerts can be a little too subtle if you want to know when you get a notification. Even the tiny LED alerts can be easily missed. So, is there's something in-between loud and almost-not-there alerts? In today's softModder tutorial, I'm going to show you how to get flash alerts on your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and other Android devices. That way, whenever you receive a call or text m...
If you're a Mac user with an Android phone, some apps on your computer aren't very useful, such as Messages, which is meant to work and sync with iOS devices. But now, thanks to MDRS, LLC, using the Messages app on your Mac with an Android phone is now possible and easily achievable. Plus, we've got 50 promo codes to give away for a free year of service!
Your Nexus 7 may be a tablet, but it can also be used as a phone, thanks to the continued upswing of VoIP applications, which send voice and media messages over the Internet—not over a cellular network.
A highly useful, yet unrecognized and under-appreciated feature in Apple's iOS 8 is the ability to seamlessly convert incoming texts regarding future dates into calendar events. Messages like "Let's chill tomorrow" can be tapped on and quickly added to the calendar. It's convenient and easy, but unfortunately, not available on most Android devices. However, it's pretty easy to get using Inviter (SMS to Calendar) from developer Sergey Beliy.
While text messaging has become one of the most frequent ways we communicate with our friends, the missing body language, tone of voice, and eye contact can make it difficult to tell when someone is being dishonest. That said, it's not impossible. There are a number of subtle hints you can train yourself to recognize that will to help you detect written lies hiding in your SMS and iMessages. Here's what you should look out for.
A while back, Facebook released a killer feature called "Chat Heads" to its Facebook Messenger app. Messages from users would "pop up" in small bubbles that floated on the screen that could be seen, accessed, and moved around from within most apps.
If you're an iPhone user, iMessage is great for cutting down on SMS costs from your carrier, but it doesn't always work right away.
Prior to this year's WWDC, there were lots of rumors that Apple might finally be making a version of iMessage for Android. While that never came to fruition, a few big updates to a very useful app have now ensured that we can seamlessly send and receive Android texts in Apple Messages on our Macs.
I can't say that my handwriting skills are the best, and my cursive is even worse. I mean, I still don't know how to write a capital L in cursive, but who really cares when I do all my everyday writing with a keyboard now. I've gotten pretty fast at typing on my computer, but those tiny buttons on the Samsung Galaxy S3's keyboard is a totally different thing.
Gaining remote access to a phone isn't only for super hackers and spies. There are plenty of times when the average smartphone user would want to have remote access to their device.
Highlight text, tap "Copy," open the app to paste the text into, long-press or double-tap where you want it, and hit "Paste." That's probably what you do when you need to copy text from one location to paste into another on your iPhone. It's a tried-and-true method, but there's a hidden trick for saving and sharing text on iOS that cuts down on that lengthy copy-paste process.
It always helps to be prepared for the worst. This applies to our phones now more than ever, as we depend on them to be our record keepers for text messages from friends, family, and coworkers. If you ever lose or severely damage your phone, having a backup of your precious texts gives you the peace of mind of knowing that you can always get them back.
Google's Android Device Manager makes it extremely easy to track down your phone or tablet, but while it's simple to set up and use, it does require your device to have an active data connection, which can be an issue in some areas.
It's time to enjoy one of America's longest lasting favorite pastimes. No, not baseball—pranking our friends! With the internet currently overrun with countless pictures and memes of cats, there's no way for your feline-hating friends to surf the web without coming across a kitten or two. But things can get worse for them. Way worse...
Android Messages, formally named simply "Messages" now, has built-in spam protection. This doesn't get every spam SMS message, however — in fact, you can still get unwanted texts multiple times daily even with the feature enabled. Thankfully, you can manually block numbers, too.
When it comes to getting your computer and smartphone to work well together, there's no service more robust and capable than AirDroid. For years, it's been the go-to tool for users looking to transfer files between their devices or access contact lists and call logs from their computer.
Developing an imperceptible lie is difficult, especially when you're lying right to someone's face. Thanks to smartphones, getting people to trust you is now easier than ever. You can craft a lie in seconds and hit send, all without ever seeing their untrusting faces.
Text messaging is a core component of the mobile experience, and Google has added several AI-fueled features to help you text better, such as Smart Reply for quick response suggestions. But Messages by Google's newest AI-powered tool is possibly the best one yet, giving you improved response suggestions and your own personal copyeditor to fix all your message drafts.
UPDATE: The mod discussed below is no longer available for download. We are looking for an alternative and will update this page when we find one.
Why are there no official Star Wars emoji in the Unicode Standard? We've got the "Vulcan Salute" from Star Trek, so where's the force choke hand gesture?! While you may never see Star Wars officially invade your emoji keyboard, there are ways to send Star Wars emoji and stickers to your friends in your favorite chat app.
With CyanogenMod 10.2 recently released and the Samsung Galaxy S4 still waiting on Android 4.3, it only makes sense that the coveted features from both firmwares are highly desired by Android owners all over. We've already brought you a feature from each firmware—the cLock home/lock screen widget from CyanogenMod and the Google Play Edition Camera and Gallery from Android 4.3. Now we're bringing you another in the form of an updated text messaging application, ported from both Android 4.3 and...
We've all been there. Your phone is on your nightstand, but you're on the couch in the living room browsing the web on your Nexus 7. Then you hear it—a faint sound for a new text message notification from the bedroom.
NSA aside, Apple makes it difficult for users to extract and download text messages from their iPhones onto a computer. For whatever reason (legal, devious, neurotic, etc), we've all found a time where we'd like to save backups of certain meaningful, important, or perhaps incriminating conversations (including all MMS or iMessage pictures and videos). While there are a handful of third-party applications that can help with this process, the majority of them cost money and implement certain te...
There are some calls you really don't want to miss. Whether it's "I'm going into labor" or "We have some questions about your résumé," not being able to answer or respond to certain messages can cause some serious problems.
In this quick video tutorial, you'll learn how to hide SMS text message preview on your iPhone. It is recommended that you reboot your iPhone after completing the steps in the tutorial.
The subject line is a crucial part of an email, but you don't see it very often in texts. That's mostly because many people don't even know it can be done, and even if they do, why would they use it? Just like with emails, subject lines can make iMessages and SMS texts seem more important and more professional. Plus, they can help with organization and searching past messages, as well as make text bold.
Back in iOS 6, deleting individual text messages in a conversation was just a matter of tapping the edit button on the right-hand corner of the thread, selecting which texts to delete, and then pressing delete.
Next to spam calls, few things are more annoying than being inundated with spam, scam, and smishing texts. Your iPhone's Messages app should be a place for your friends and family to stay in touch, not a minefield of phishing attacks, malicious links, and viruses. Luckily, there are quite a few methods to block and report your way to a more spam-free iPhone.
We've been able to mark all or individual unread conversations as read in Apple's Messages app since iOS 8. Eight years later, Apple is finally letting us mark individual text and iMessage chats as unread.
So you don’t need to have a full on conversation but you do want to relay some information to someone. A text message the perfect option to get a short message across using your cell phone or even just to say hi.
Have a friend in the UK that you'd like to surprise with a text message? This video will show you how to use cbfsms.com to send free text messages within the UK.
A full QWERTY keyboard makes typing out a text message simple on the Blackberry Curve. Short cut keys may take some time to get used to, but once mastered, texting will only take a second. Watch this video cell phone tutorial and learn how to send an SMS text message on a Blackberry Curve. Send a text message from a Blackberry Curve cell phone.
This video demonstrates how to send and receive text messages on your iPhone. From the people who brought you the Dummies instructional book series, brings you the same non-intimidating guides in video form. Watch this video tutorial to learn how to send and receive text messages on your iPhone, For Dummies.
