Go to your widgets settings, and at the top you'll find the "Android S Easter Egg." If you own a Pixel phone, this keyboard will be your default typing option. What does this mean in simple terms, though? But one thing is certain: Googles phone software is more versatile and customizable than Apples offering. Download: UEM vendor comparison chart 2022, Top 4 mistakes to avoid when purchasing SaaS apps, Q&A: Qwick CEO details his company's 4-day workweek trial, Jamf and more: Apple MDM tools for smaller businesses, Got Gboard? This ability is possiblethough the option isnt easy to find. Other phone keyboards may also have one-handed modes, but they can be harder to access than Googles. (Goodness gracious, Google, you're making me dizzy.). It's a pretty powerful form of privacy protection, wouldn't ya say?

One of Android 12's most impressive hidden features is the Game Mode dashboard. As well as disabling the lock screen when youre at home (thats the Trusted Places option), you can also disable the screen when your phones Bluetooth is connected to a trusted device, such as your car stereo unit, or when it detects you have it on you. There's a todo list widget that integrates with Google Keep that keeps all your tasks front and center. Even more exciting is that Google has opened this functionality up to developers through its HapticGenerator API. Be the master of your Google-powered device. However, Android gives you a quick-and-easy shortcut. It happensyou accidentally swiped away one of the notifications that you wanted to read fully and now you have a nagging sense someone emailed you, but are not sure. This time, just swipe your way to it and tap on the preview to open it. Scroll about halfway down to the Display option, tap that, then select the Auto-rotate screen option. [Get more Googley tips in your inbox every Friday with JR's Android Intelligence newsletter. You can tell, from the promotional material, that they are hella proud of it. That said, for universal video usability, that may be a sacrifice worth making. With Pixel phones, for instance, in addition to the basic time-based rules, you can create rules that turn Do Not Disturb on automatically when you're driving or even when specific types of calendar events are active. Tap that. Join him on Twitter or sign up for his weekly newsletter to get fresh tips and insight in your inbox every Friday. A handy hidden shortcut for taking control in Chrome on 3 new time-saving Assistant tricks to try on Android. There's a Google Maps widget that will allow you to search for whatever you want with just a tap. The Android developer API page says that, "a one minute HEVC video file takes roughly 20 seconds to transcode into AVC on a Pixel 3 phone." My broken Android phone epiphany, 14 ways Google Lens can save you time on Android, 12 handy hidden tricks for Google Calendar on Android. The Android versus iPhone debate continues to rumble on. Every new Android OS release comes with its own special Easter egg(s). Android's got a native way to do that for you automatically if you know where it is and remember to set it up. Some of them immediately transform the way we work, while others just quietly fade away without making much noise. How truly reliable this is, I don't know, but it's a step up in personal security from the previous state of things. Few things are more annoying than trying to utilize the rotate feature of a phone when lying down. While I can imagine some utility for this feature, it involved far too many taps for my taste. 12 hidden shortcuts for faster Android typing, Sponsored item title goes here as designed, Android's secret voice control superpowers, How to add practically anything into the Android 11 power menu. The rightmost icon will say "Capture more." Essentially, the user wont be able to access any other parts of your phone without your code. Contributing Editor JR Raphael serves up tasty morsels about the human side of technology. Speaking of app-related shortcuts, Android has an incredibly handy system called rather fittingly App Shortcuts. Sign up to receive Popular Science's emails and get the highlights. App pinning lets you be generous without giving up your privacy, and will lock one app to the screen until someone enters the lock screen code again. Personally, I'm a fan of this next tucked away feature of the Android 12 operating system. Luckily, now, scrollable screenshots are built into the Android 12 OS. This takes you to another screen where you'll tap Schedules. That is to say, they're pushing new security features that, in effect, give you control of how exposed you want to be. He doesn't get much spare time, but when he does he spends it watching obscure movies and taking long walks in the countryside. Voila, your notifications will now have a tidy place to reside for 24 hours, even after you've swiped them away. Finally, flip the switch to the on position. To set it up, open the app carousel by doing a short swipe up gesture from the bottom of your screen. Keep in mind that not all apps support this feature (like Instagram, for example), so if you dont see this option, its because you cant use it like this. Tap "Advanced" followed by "Multiple users.". It's the ability to customize the order of apps in your phone's system-level Share menu which means can then keep your own most frequently used sharing destinations at the top of the list for easy ongoing access. You can also do less of a flick and more of an arching swipe moving your finger upward, ever so slightly, as you slide toward the left or the right on the bottom of the screen if you want to get a better look at the apps in the list before making the switch. [Related: A beginners guide to using Android]. 3 clever new tricks to turn Google Docs 7 inconvenient truths about the hybrid work trend, How to stay smart about Android app permissions, The Android clipboard enhancement you didn't know you needed, Drop, crack, d'oh! Sharing has been updated for the Android 12. The feature is unfortunately complicated by the fact that lots of apps, including many of Google's own utilities, now use custom share interfaces instead of relying on the system standard (grumble, grumble, grumble). Tap that thing tap it with abandon, garsh dern it! A phenomenal Android privacy feature you probably forget to How to add practically anything into the Android 11 power An indispensable note-taking tool for Chrome, 10 hidden tricks for making the most of Android gestures, 7 smart adjustments to make Android 11 more efficient, How to get Android 11's best features on any phone today, How to fix Android's Smart Lock Trusted Places feature. What about MPEG-H 3D Audio? If you're using a phone with Android 10 or higher and you aren't seeing that Live Caption option as part of your volume controls, head into your system settings and search for Live Caption there. If an app accesses your clipboard, a little notification will pop up at the bottom of the screen and fill you in. From there, tap the Font size and drag the slider at the bottom of the screen to make text larger or smaller as needed. Finally, if you go to this URL on your device and click the big 'ol link, you'll be able to place a giant number 12 statue in augmented reality space. This view side-by-side or top-and-bottom app view (depending on the orientation of your screen) comes in handy when you want to display photos, optimize your social networking, or multitask. This one's only available in Google's own version of Android, so if you've got a Pixel phone or Android One device, press and hold your finger onto any app's icon on your home screen or in your app drawer and look for the hourglass icon and/or the "Pause app" option. Then, swipe all the way to near the bottom and tap System. You should find a Screen Cast option in this menu. One-handed mode gives you the ability to temporarily, and with just a tap or swipe, bring the top half of the screen down to the lower half, for easier navigation. Dig into the settings and tweaks available for your Android phone and youll find a host of clever features and useful tools. Hungry for more? Tap and hold on an empty part of the home screen, and a screen-adjusting mode will pop up. This feature is missing one thing, though, that I hope they reconcile in the future: a search bar. Alternatively, you can go to your setting and tap Notifications. To turn this on, find an empty space on your home screen and press down for about one full second. Some of this we've covered earlier, such as the Easter egg widget and the Material You color customization. Here's one for the real techies out there! The first one is somewhat familiar to anyone who's found previous Android surprises. If you don't recall what "haptic feedback" is, it's just tiny vibrations that can help give digital interfaces a more tactile feel. Using Material You will result in a personalized aesthetic experience on your phone. While haptic feedback is nothing new to smartphones, Android 12 is trying to jump on the bandwagon of making haptic feedback a little more interesting and useful for the average user. ), you might also have to activate a second toggle in that same area to make sure the Live Caption option actually shows up as part of your volume panel. Not all the apps will respond to these adjustments, but most of them will. If you're not familiar with what a scrollable screenshot is, imagine you want to capture an entire webpage, or a large section of a conversation, in a single image. It isn't, unfortunately, available for the Samsung owners among us, as Samsung has for no apparent reason opted to remove this standard operating system element from its software but for everyone else, follow these three quick steps: And then, whenever you want to tap into your shiny new Guest Mode option, swipe down twice from the top of your screen to open your Quick Settings, tap your user profile picture (which is probably just a generic person icon in the lower-right corner of the panel), and then tap the "Add guest" option on the screen that comes up. Open the app and choose your Chromecast and your devices display should appear on the big screen. A little menu will spring up, and you'll need to select "Wallpaper & style." For example, if youd prefer to chat with friends via Facebook Messenger, rather than your phones built-in SMS app, you can make Facebooks product your default messaging app. Just like magic, every word being uttered in the video or audio clip shows up on my screen so I can read it whilst having the actual sound turned all the way down. HEVC is the same idea as AVIF, except for video. New to Android? In the new screen, scroll down a bit to the General section where you'll need to tap Do Not Disturb. Swipe all the way to the bottom where you'll see the "App grid" section. You've always been able to adjust the size of your icons, but Android has made the options even more accessibility-minded by introducing the jumbo-sized 2x2 grid arrangement for your app icons. And, if you're a user of an Android phone with a larger screen, you may feel very lucky to have this one-handed mode finally added to the list of available features. It lets you lock one specific app or process to your screen and then requires you to unlock your device before anything else can be accessed. But for any app that's actually doing things in a sensible way and using the standard Android share menu, take note: So long as your phone is running Android 11, you can press and hold your finger to any item in that sharing list to pin it to the top. Not only do you need Android 12 for this nifty function, but you need to have a phone that supports it. Devs can plug into this to auto-magically generate haptic patterns for their music and sound effects.