Articles by Adam Doud

Driving Mode is similar to Android Auto, but it lives entirely on your phone, and oddly enough, only in portrait orientation. If you often use your phone to navigate and don’t have Android Auto, this is a great way to get a similar experience. The apps and buttons are laid out more organized and large enough to press easily.

Please note, we here at Android Central do not endorse actively using your phone while driving. But we recognize that sometimes you want to do something quickly, and Driving Mode is a better way to do that. What’s most aggravating about this, and we’ll detail this more in a bit, is that driving mode doesn’t even kick in until you’re actually driving/moving with velocity. So please use appropriate caution when navigating while driving, and where possible, use voice commands exclusively.

With all that being said, here’s how to turn on Driving Mode.

Open Maps and tap on your profile photo in the upper right corner.
Tap Settings.
Tap Navigation settings.

Tap Go…

Google Assistant is at the center of your Google experience. Whenever you ask Google for some information or to control any of your Google Home compatible devices, it’ll chat back at you. It’ll either tell you what you wanted to know, or in some cases; it’ll say, “OK, I’m going to do that thing you just told me to do.” As iconic as that voice is, maybe you’re looking for something different. Fortunately, there are other options. Voice actor Antonia Flynn provided the original voice of Google Assistant. Depending on where you live, you may have different options. Also, assistant voice options vary from region to region. We’ll show you how to change that voice to another one and how to customize it when you get responses.

How to change the voice of Google Assistant on your phone

Open Google Assistant. On an Android phone or tablet, you can say “OK Google” or swipe in from one of the two bottom corners of your screen. On an iPad or iPhone, you can open the Assistant app.
Tap the butt…

Google Chrome syncs a ton of data, including an increasingly useful password manager, across your devices. It’s arguably one of the things that make Google Chrome so useful. The service is called, creatively enough, Google Sync. Google Sync matches data to all your phones, tablets, and desktops, including your bookmarks, history, open tabs, passwords, payment info, and more. You might be thinking, “That’s a lot of private data,” and you’re right. You might further be wondering how you can go about keeping that data private from even Google.

The good news is, you can tell Google to encrypt all of your data, even from Google, by setting up a passphrase. Once you do, that will encrypt all of your data, except on other devices with your Google account. The better news is that Google will no longer see that information, not even the passphrase.

The bad news is, that’s a one-way trip. Once you set up the passphrase, if you change your mind or forget your passphrase, you’ll have to reset …

Google Chrome has a fairly robust password manager. It can help generate passwords, store them safely, sync them across multiple devices, and even help you change your bad passwords. But there are a lot of reasons why you might want to consider switching to a dedicated password manager. As a rule, they’re more secure, work across multiple browsers and devices, and still largely do everything Chrome does. Basically, all password managers let you import passwords from Chrome. All you have to do is import the CSV generated by Chrome into your new password manager. Here’s how to do that.

How to export your passwords from Google Chrome

Open Google Chrome.
Click your profile photo in the upper right corner of the browser.
Click the Key icon under your name and email address.

Click the three dots to the far right of Saved Passwords. Click Export passwords.

There will be a warning box here and one that’s worth repeating. When you export your passwords, you will be exporting them to a …

In March of 2021, Google updated the search box in Google Drive to change some operators you can use to search for files. If you’re using your Chromebook, Android phone, or desktop, these will make finding files easier since you’ll be able to filter the people involved with the files themselves. You can use these search terms to filter out to whom a file has been shared, who owns it, who you got it from, and who you sent it to.

How to use operators to find files easier in Drive

To use the operators, enter them in the Search box at the top of Google drive, as demonstrated below.

Some of these operators existed before, but their function has slightly changed. The changes to the operators are as follows:

“from:” will now return files shared with you by the specified email address. Previously, it would have returned files owned by that email address.
“to:” will now return files you have shared with the specified email address. Previously, it would have returned all files th…

At CES 2021, Samsung introduced Galaxy Upcycle, which is a way to turn old Samsung smartphones that may be sitting on a shelf collecting dust into something useful that you can use with SmartThings. Currently, functionality is limited to a light sensor or a sound sensor. Some use cases include using SmartThings to turn on your smart lights when it gets dark (regardless of the time of day) or using an old smartphone as a baby monitor or broken glass alarm.

To set up a Samsung phone as an upcycled sensor, you need a Galaxy-branded Samsung smartphone from 2018 or newer. Technically, you should also have a new Galaxy-branded smartphone to assist with setup, but there is a workaround for that (see step 8 below). Both phones need SmartThings and the latest software updates installed. So here’s how to do it!

How to turn your old Samsung smartphone into a smart sensor using SmartThings

Open SmartThings.
Tap the Hamburger menu on the left side.
Tap SmartApps.
Tap the three dots on the rig…

Whatsapp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. When you have a lot of friends, messages, and contacts flying around, it can be hard to keep track of what is where. Fortunately, Whatsapp incorporated a sort of Universal Search into its app that can help you locate basically anything that has happened in the app. That makes it easy to search for chats, attachments, contacts, or anything else, all from one search bar.

How to use Universal Search in WhatsApp

Open Whatsapp
Tap Search
Enter text for whatever you’re searching for.

That’s it. You can type in anything and Whatsapp will search all of your chats, contacts, documents, links and more and display the results for you.

How to use filters in Universal Search

Using Universal Search is great, but Whatsapp also includes some filters you can use to try to narrow yuor results. You can filter by photos, videos, links, GIFs, audio, and documents. In most cases, you cannot search by names of files (e.g. filenames o…

The ability to search browser tabs in Google Chrome could be a major time saver. Tabs are great for multi-tasking, but they’re easy to lose track of. You can try using tab groups to keep things in order, but you can still lose track. In Chrome version 87, the search tabs button rolled out for chromebooks first, and Windows and macOS machines later. It gives you the ability to do exactly that. There’s no need to turn the feature on or opt-in. You should see a new button to the right of your tabs that looks like an arrow pointing down.

How to search your Chrome tabs

Click on that arrow down, and you get a quick vertical list of all tabs that are open in any number of windows. You can scroll up and down to see all the tabs, or you can search by searching for a tab in the search box at the top. Here’s how to do it.

Click the down arrow to the right of your tabs.

Type the name of a tab in the search box.

Click the tab you want to see. Chrome will switch you to the tab and window t…

Sunrise and sunset routines are just another aspect of smart home automation that you can enable with Google Assistant. One of the best parts about having smart home products is letting Google Assistant and routines get things done for you that you’d normally have to do yourself. One common occurrence you should take advantage of is sunrise or sunset. Maybe you want your lights to turn on automatically when the sun sets. Maybe you want your smart screen to display the weather at sunrise. Whatever the case, it’s easy to do with your smartphone, so let’s get started.

How to set up a sunrise or sunset routine

You can set a routine to start at sunrise or sunset, but it’s buried in the app. Here’s how to get there.

Open the Google Home App.
Tap Routines.
Tap the + in the bottom right corner.

Tap Add Starter.
Tap Sunrise/sunset.
Tap either Sunrise or Sunset.

Tap Sunrise location.
Tap the location where you want Google to track the event. You can choose any saved place or create a …

Finding your misplaced smartphone with Google Assistant can be a real lifesaver. The unique pain of losing your smartphone is something that we’re all familiar with. Whether you set it down someplace and forgot, or it managed to work its way down into the couch cushions again, you can use Google Assistant in your smart speaker or smart screen to find it. As long as you’re logged into the phone using your Google Account, and you haven’t disabled Find My Device, Google Assistant uses the Find my Device service to ring your phone, even if it’s muted.

How to find your phone with Google Assistant

All you need to do is activate Google Assistant and ask by saying, “Hey Google, find my phone.” Similar phrases like “where is my phone” and “ring my phone” also work. You can use this method on your smart speaker or on Google Assistant on another phone. As long as your account is signed in, it will work.

It’s a good idea to make sure Find My Device is on in the first place. You can check th…