latest
How to find your Xfinity Mobile transfer PIN
Xfinity transfer PINs aren't always easy to get: Here's how to find yours quickly
Are you getting ready to switch from Comcast's Xfinity Mobile plan? Perhaps you found a better deal on a budget Android phone, or maybe the prices are pushing you. There's something important you need to know when making the switch. You may need a transfer PIN before signing up with a new carrier and a new plan. This authenticates your account and keeps your old number, which most people want to do.
How to pin apps and websites to your Chromebook's shelf
Access your favorite apps and websites on your Chromebook in seconds
On all our devices, we have apps and websites we visit at least once a day, if not more. To easily access these apps or websites, devices have some way for us to put them in an easy-to-access location on the homescreen. Like a taskbar on a Windows device or the bottom row of apps on an Android device, our favorite Chromebooks have a shelf where you can pin your most used apps and websites. This guide discusses how to pin apps and websites to the shelf and quickly access them.
Security has always existed on a spectrum, balancing concerns like convenience against robustness from attacks — face unlock may be very easy to use, but is it keeping your data as safe as a lengthy passphrase? Today we're checking out all the myriad changes Google has prepared for its second Android 14 Developer Preview, and while a couple tweaks have been spotted concerning how the platform approaches PIN authentication, from a security perspective it seems almost like a matter of one step forward, one step back.
Google Maps tips and tricks: 10 things you need to try now
So much more than just driving directions
If you wanted to go somewhere new before the invention of GPS apps, you had to unfold a large sheet of paper covered with names and symbols; then, after you found your way, you either wrote down your intended path on paper or committed your route to memory. Today, we have Google Maps (and phones you can unfold!), which helps a billion people a month find out where they are and gets them where they want to go.
An upcoming Chrome OS change could solve one of my UI pet peeves
Small quality of life improvements go a long way
Whether you're a newbie or a diehard Chromebook fan, it's easy to familiarize yourself with Google's operating system. Just like the Windows taskbar, Chrome OS offers quick access to your favorite apps and active windows so you can easily play or get work done. Keeping apps just a click away is as simple as dragging them into the taskbar from the launch or by its right-click menu. With an upcoming update, Google is working to further improve the taskbar, solving a gripe I've had with Chrome OS for a while.
The first Android 12 beta just landed shortly after the I/O keynote, and it has the huge rumored redesign in tow. While the most obvious changes are easy to spot, a few things are harder to see when you just have Google's press images to work with. One of these places would be your device lock screen's PIN or pattern entry field.
Back in 2018, Google started testing a system for sharing content in Google Drive (including Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites) with folks that didn't have a Google account, by using a PIN-based verification system. Now called "visitor sharing," the feature is rolling out more widely to G Suite customers over the next month.
Following user backlash, Signal lowers one of its drastic PIN measures
It comes with the promise of new features in the future, but at what cost?
Read update
Signal is one of the best choices for a communication app that's focused on privacy and isn't owned by Facebook, which is why it has attracted a large and dedicated user base. Earlier this year, the app got a fresh spark to the tune of a $50 million dollar investment from a co-founder of WhatsApp. But lately there's been a bit of negative chatter in response to the app introducing a system for backing up data based on PIN codes, and many users are filling online forums with complaints.
Netflix expands parental controls, introducing profile PINs and more
Moms, dads, and those with poorly-mannered roommates rejoice
Netflix is giving users more controls who can access which profile and what titles they can access from within. Most of these additions are for meant to tailor the viewing experience for kids, but for groupies sharing a single account, at least one of the changes will relieve some people from having their content suggestions bombed by their fellow viewers.
Read update
Dozens of Pixel owners are reporting that they can't authenticate into their devices because every time they put their PIN in, the phone loops them back to the lock screen. The issue, which was first reported on the Pixel Phone Help forum nearly a month ago, seems to be affecting Pixel XLs the most, though there have been mentions of other Pixel, Pixel 2, and Pixel 3 series devices. So far, product experts have been encouraging affected users to escalate the issue with Google directly or reset their device from recovery.
Passwords are kind of a pain. You probably have sign-in credentials for about a million services, and ideally, they're all different. Password managers can help, but they're often finicky. A new standard by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) called Web Authentication API could simplify your digital life by allowing for password-free sign-ins across a wide variety of websites.
After the Android P DP1 hit, a few people reported running into difficulty unlocking their bootloader if it wasn't already prior to flashing the developer preview. Turns out, there is a fix, and you don't have to wipe your device. Simply disabling whatever lockscreen security setting you might have is enough to fix things.
I use the task manager Todoist every day to stay on top of my pending orders at the pharmacy and I have learned every trick in the book to make the most of it. There's one feature, however, that I never knew I needed this much until it begun rolling out to beta testers last week and started making its way to the stable app today: Favorites.
Around a week ago, BLU issued a broken software update for its Life One X2 phone. In at least some cases, users who applied the update were locked out of their phones. Late this afternoon, BLU's official Twitter account—which, much to the chagrin of affected users, was silent on the subject for almost a week—issued a statement that the problem had been fixed via a new update.
Turning on the developer options menu has been the same for who knows how long. You always open settings, go to 'About phone,' and tap on the build number for a certain number of times (though most of us simply tap on it furiously). However, the second Android O developer preview has added another step: entering your device's PIN, password, or pattern.
It's been a while since we covered specific features of Android 7.0, and it turns out there are a few new-to-Nougat features that people are forgetting about. One of those features is the ability to pin apps in the share menu; even the big boss Artem forgot about this one. If you share things frequently and only use a few options, this could come in handy.
Sharing works pretty well in Android - the standard "share" command and its collection of APIs allows for easily getting content from one app to another. But if you're anything like most Android users, you have dozens of apps installed that include Share functions, and you're only used to actually using Share in a few of them. Android N has a little feature that makes that interaction much more user-friendly: Share apps can now be pinned to the top of the cross-app menu.
Earlier this year, Google+ community managers gained the ability to pin posts to the top of a page, useful during those times when you want visitors to see something in particular the first time they arrive. The thing is, community pages aren't the only ones that could benefit from such a feature. So the capability is now rolling out for regular profiles and pages as well. General users can now pin posts using the web version Google+ from their PC.