#5.0 apps

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WhatsApp tips and tricks: 5 ways to master your messaging

WhatsApp needs no introduction. It’s the world’s most popular instant messaging service, and for all its security flaws, privacy issues and annoying invite systems to get new features, we love it. As a show of appreciation for WhatsApp and AndroidPIT readers, we’ve decided to chalk up a list of WhatsApp tips and tricks to get the most out of it.

 5 of our top tips to help you become a WhatsApp wizz.

How to enable WhatsApp voice calling

Install WhatsApp on your PC

Send private messages in bulk, BCC-style

Privacy on the internet is becoming a hard thing to hold onto, but even the famously unprivate WhatsApp has a few features that let you do things on the down-low. Want to send out a group message without everyone in the group seeing who else received that message, then seeing every subsequent response to the message? That’s what the ‘Broadcast’ feature is for, and using it is simple:

Tap the Options icon at the top right (three dots).

Tap New broadcast

Enter the names of all the contacts you want to send your private message to.

Tap Create, write your message, then send it.

Go to Options and tap ‘New broadcast’ to send out a mass message without publicly displaying the recipients.

Hide ‘Last seen’, profile photo and status

Getting thrown into a big group chat filled with party guests and people you don’t know can be bewildering. Suddenly, your profile picture is staring back at a chatroom full of strangers, who can also see your status and when you’re reading messages. If I want a whole flock of strangers ogling and judging a photo of me, I’ll go on Tinder. In the meantime, here’s how to have better control over who sees this information on WhatsApp:

Tap the Options icon at the top right of WhatsApp

Go to Settings > Account > Privacy

Go through the Last seen, Profile photo, and Status options, then set their visibility to Everyone, My contacts or Nobody - depending on how privacy-obsessed you are.

Make sure people only see info about you that you want them to see using WhatsApp’s privacy settings.

Mute annoying group chats

We’ve all been in that position where we’ve somehow been dragged into a group chat that we either a) Didn’t really want to be in in the first place or b) Don’t want to receive notifications from every couple of minutes. Rather than just leave the chat, which may be offend some people, you can simply mute the chat so you stop receiving notifications from it. Everyone’s happy!

In WhatsApp, tap the Chats tab

Tap the group you want to mute.

With the group open, tap the Options icon at the top right

Tap Mute, then select the amount of time you want to mute the group for. You can also untick the Show notifications box to never hear from the group again until you decide otherwise.

Are you being harassed by notifications from an annoying group chat? Go into the chat and mute it.

Create a homescreen shortcut for your favorite chats

Do you have certain friends with whom you have constant stream-of-consciousness conversations, where you’re non-stop WhatsApping all day, every day? If so, then you can create a shortcut icon to those conversations which will appear on your Android homescreen. This means you can jump straight into chats with your BFFs, important groups, and other things nice and easily.

In WhatsApp, tap the Chats tab.

Tap and hold the conversation you want to create a shortcut for.

When the list of options appears, tap Add conversation shortcut

A shortcut displaying your contact’s profile picture will now appear on your homescreen. Tap it to jump straight in and start chatting to them.

If you want constant quick access to certain chats, tap the ‘Add shortcut’ option to have it appear as an icon on your Android homescreen.

Recover deleted messages

Most people feel pretty precious about the messages going to and from their devices. Thankfully, by default WhatsApp backs up your messages every day at 4am. This means that if you’ve deleted any precious messages since that time, but before the next auto-backup, then you can still recover them. To do this:

Uninstall WhatsApp from your device (Settings > Apps > WhatsApp > Uninstall).

Reinstall WhatsApp.

Type your phone number into WhatsApp, then it should notify you that it’s found a backup of your chats.

Tap Restore to get your deleted messages back.

http://www.everythingliveon.com/how-to-use-google-now-and-customize-your-cards/

How to use Google Now and customize your cards

Google Now, the smart digital assistant that predicts what you want to know before you ask for it, has gradually become more and more important to Android users. Google Now is designed to be as straightforward and as automated as possible, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t options and settings to play around with. We’ll guide you through some of the app’s best features and show you how to use Google Now to its full potential.

 Google Now knows what you need before you do.

Accessing and browsing Google Now

If you’re using the latest stock version of Android Lollipop, you can access Google Now by swiping left from the home screen. Alternatively, tap and hold on the home button and drag upwards. You can also launch Google Now from the Google app in the apps drawer (the same way you find it on iOS devices).

Google Now’s interface changes depending on the time of day.

Scroll up and down the screen to see the various updates that Google has for you. The interface might be fairly quiet or very busy, depending on what you’re currently doing, the time of day, upcoming events on your agenda, and various other factors. Items can be quickly dismissed with a swipe to the right.

In most cases, tapping on a card leads you to a browser window – whether that’s showing the weather or a website you frequently visit. Scroll right down to the bottom of Google Now interface and tap More (if available) to see a group of cards that Google isn’t sure whether you need or not.

Customizing your cards

Google Now makes a lot of assumptions about who you are and what you want to see, but you don’t have to settle for the information that’s served up. All of the cards in Google Now can be customized by tapping the More menu (three horizontal dots) on the right-hand side. You’ll be asked if you want to keep receiving this specific update and these kind of updates in general.

You can hide topics you’re not interested in.

For more control over how the app works, open the menu (the three horizontal lines at the top left) then choose Customize. This gives you access to all of the different topics covered by Google Now — stock prices, places you’ve been to, sports teams, TV and radio programs and so on. The Everything else category acts as a catch-all for Google Now cards that don’t fit anywhere else.

Once you get into a specific topic you can tell Google Now what your interests are: The sports teams you follow, the movies you’ve watched, and so on. The interface isn’t particularly well organized but it does let you tweak the cards that are served up to some extent. The Sports section, for example, lets you confirm your favorite teams and hide score spoilers during live matches.

Any changes you make are immediately applied and reflected in Google Now. If there’s something new that isn’t covered by the menus then the easiest way to add it is to spend a lot of time searching for it through Google on the web (while you’re signed in) or from your Android device.

Change language, share commute info, and more

Tap the Google Now menu button then choose Settings and another range of options appear. You can change the language used by the app, whether or not you share your commute to work, which apps are included in Google Now searches, and a host of other minor options related to Google’s tool.

The app’s capabilities extend to sports teams.

Select Now cards and you can turn Google Now cards on or off, clear your search history, and reset the preferences you’ve chosen for all of your cards at once — this is helpful if you’ve previously dismissed some cards that you want to bring back, and you’d like to start the process again from scratch.

There are also a few settings relating to the way you get notifications about Google Now cards. Remember that these notifications are an important part of Android Wear as well — some of the most important Google Now cards are going to pop up on your smartwatch at different points in the day.

http://www.everythingliveon.com/how-to-customize-your-nexus-5-to-make-it-look-and-feel-awesome/

How to customize your Nexus 5 to make it look and feel awesome

If you’re pretty new to this whole Android customization thing, you might get a little freaked out when you think about taking your Nexus 5, rooting it, overclocking it, switching ROMs and flashing custom kernels. Never fear, it doesn’t have to be all that complicated if you just want a few superficial changes to mix things up a bit. Here are seven super easy ways to customize your Nexus 5.

 How to customize your Nexus 5 to make it awesome: install “beautiful theme” with Apex Launcher.

Get an alternative launcher

Launchers are one of the quickest and easiest ways to completely overhaul the look of your device. From changing the layout of the app drawer, to setting your own custom dock (that’d be the apps permanently visible on every home screen) to adding gesture controls and setting your own transition animations, a simple and free launcher like Nova or Apex can take you from stock to tweaked in about five minutes.

Apex launcher comes with a ton of themes, from simple ones like above to completely crazy designs.

Apex Launcher INSTALL

Grab an icon pack

While lots of icon packs cost money, there’s plenty that are completely free. Sure, you may not get a custom-designed icon for every single app on your Nexus 5, but you will get a lot of them. Installing a cool icon pack is one of the easiest ways to change the look of your Nexus 5 because all you have to do is install it once and it’s done.

The free VIT icon pack is a pretty sweet.

VIT – Icon Pack INSTALL

Use NoLED

NoLED was developed for Samsung Galaxy S devices which lacked an notification LED light, but there’s no reason you can’t use it for the Nexus 5 too. NoLED is an alternative lock-screen which notifies you if you have messages, tweets, missed calls and more.

Instead of a simple light blinking at you, you can select icons or dots to show up in multiple colors, and even the date and time. Lollipop may have enabled lock-screen notifications for everyone, but this is a unique, retro approach that just might take your fancy.

NoLED offers an alternative lock-screen to display notifications in a retro style.

NoLED INSTALL

Set custom pictures and ringtones for your contacts

It may be age-old, but it never gets old, amirite? Assigning the theme music of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to your Grandmother will make her every call a pure joy. Not only that, you can assign a custom picture for your contacts too! No need to stick with the boring selfie they have selected, instead make your own.

Tap you dialer button > go to contacts > tap the contact you wish to edit > tap the pencil (edit) icon > hit change at the camera icon > tap take new photo or select new photo if you already have one you want.

Tap you dialer button > go to contacts > tap the contact you wish to edit > tap the pencil (edit) icon > tap the three dots (options) button > tap set ringtone > select a ringtone.

Curate your wallpapers

We really like Justin Maller’s Facets right now, but if you don’t want to spend a buck or so to get 365 different (and awesome) artworks for your home screen then you can easily grab one of literally a million free HD wallpaper apps in the Play Store. Plenty of these apps can give you a new wallpaper every day, so there’s no excuse to ever be bored again. If you prefer to curate your wallpaper with a little more care, then you can also grab them online.

With a little curating, you can get yourself thousands of great wallpapers.

Facets INSTALL

Theme it baby!

One of the benefits of alternative launchers like mentioned above is just how simply you can completely theme your device. If you go for one of the popular launchers you can rest assured that there are hundreds of fully locked and loaded themes in the Play Store just waiting for you to install them. Like an icon pack, all you have to do is find one you like, install it and you’re done, complete makeover at the touch of a button!

You can get a completely different theme on your Nexus 5 in about ten seconds.

Dialer + INSTALL

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WhatsApp voice calls now available in updated app

If you’ve been waiting forever for the WhatsApp voice calling feature to arrive, you may not have to wait much longer. Users are now reporting another wave of WhatsApp calls being activated. Head below to see how to get WhatsApp phone calls enabled on your Android smartphone.

 WhatsApp calling has finally landed. And we’ve got it working.

WhatsApp voice calling: out now

Head to WhatsApp’s official website to grab the latest version of the WhatsApp APK (currently v2.11.556) or you can grab it directly from APK Mirror and install it. You may need to enable ”Unknown Sources” in your device’s security settings first though.

WhatsApp calling in action, with new contact options (right).

Once you’ve got the app installed, all you need to do is find yourself someone with the feature already enabled, and have them call you to activate it on your device too. This has already worked for some of us at AndroidPIT, but we’ve found the call quality to be a little patchy. You’ll then see a three-tab layout with a calling option next to your contacts

WhatsApp calls have a detailed call log and you can handle calls in the notifications shade.

If you’re having any trouble getting the service to work, you can also do it manually with a little elbow grease. Just check our guide on how to manually enable WhatsApp voice calling. If you want to know how to silence incoming WhatsApp calls now that you’ve got yet another calling channel to worry about, here’s a quick guide for that too.

Lollipop’s Priority Mode allows you to silence notifications

WhatsApp now respects Android 5.0 Lollipop’s Priority Mode. This means you can now silence WhatsApp notifications and incoming phone calls – which would previously come through even with Priority Mode enabled.

At last! WhatsApp now works with Android 5.0 Lollipop Priority Mode.

The issue came about because WhatsApp plays alert tones differently to most apps. Whereas most apps play a notification tone – which Priority Mode can silence – WhatsApp played its notification via Android’s media volume, which meant that even with Priority Mode enabled every WhatsApp message would still play a jingle. Considering that basically everyone with a smartphone uses WhatsApp, this essentially made Priority Mode useless.

WhatsApp now shows when messages have been read!

A previous work around was to silence media volume as well, but as you can probably tell, that would silence all other notifications tones as well. Funny how one app alone can essentially undermine an entire Android feature. In any case, WhatsApp will now be silenced even in Priority Mode, unless you have it white-listed. Enjoy the peace and quiet now that you can actually use Priority Mode.