Articles by Ara Wagoner

With that fun Soli sensor, a 90Hz screen, and the latest and greatest software goodies from Google, the Pixel 4 XL is a tall drink of awesome. It’s also made entirely of glass and metal and needs to be protected at all costs. We’ve spent hours scouring the internet for the best Pixel 4 XL cases to get for your new Google phone, and these came out on top.

Classic heavy duty

Tudia Merge Series

Staff Pick

Tudia’s hybrid case grips your Pixel 4 XL snugly with a TPU sleeve and adds sturdiness with a colorful polycarbonate shell. There are four colors here, but the best is bright blue and warm Rose Gold.

$11 at Amazon $13 at Walmart

Protect and showcase

Ringke Fusion-X

I love the Fusion-X because it showcases the phone’s natural beauty while still giving robust corner and drop protection. The black and camo black options should really pop against the orange Pixel 4 XL.

$12 at Amazon
$13 at Best Buy

Ultra-thin durability

Tech21 Studio Colour

Tech21 may be better known for …

So long, and thanks for all the searchable memories.

Half a decade ago, backing up your photos was a tedious and often expensive experience unless you just sat down with a USB cable and a huge external drive once or twice a week. Wait, no, that method was the most tedious of all. We’ve come a long way since then. Amazon, Apple, Google, and basically every cloud storage company all offer automatic photo backups with robust indexing and photo management, and many of them have free tiers depending on the quality of your photos or if you subscribe to other services.

Google Photos helped spur this change by offering up one of the best damn photo backups on the internet for five full years. Now that the free ride is over, I’m not getting off this bandwagon. Five years of training and refining have made Google Photos 100% worth paying for — especially when it doesn’t cost me anything extra.

Unparalelled photo searching

Part of the reason Google was willing to give away free unlimited …

Get valuable information out of your pictures — even if you took them years ago!

Google Lens has been an instrumental part of your camera for half a decade, but it’s also been part of Google Photos for a few years, too. This means that even if there’s no time to use Google Lens at the moment — such as when some weird-looking snake gets into the garden — you can come back and use Lens for its AI object identification, text transcription, and context recognition to figure things out later — like if that was a harmless rat snake you killed or a deadly copperhead.

Here’s how to use Google Lens inside the Google Photos app on your phone.

How to use Google Lens in Google Photos

Open the Google Photos app.
Tap the photo you want to pull text or item info from.
Tap the Lens icon in the bottom bar.
Once Lens has analyzed the image, tap an object dot.

Swipe up to expand the details or context of the identified object.
To copy text, tap any highlighted text string.
Drag the blue …

Whether the weather you need to weather is coming by land or by sea, we’re here to help you prepare for it.

Hurricane Season is back again, and tornadoes and flash flooding can strike during any season. While we don’t yet have the technology to stop powerful storms from wreaking havoc, we do have the technology to help prepare us for them. Your trusty Android phone is a tool that helps you through most major events in your life, and severe weather is no exception, so long as you properly prep your phone and have a plan in place to follow with it. We are here to help you, so let’s batten down the hatches and get the barn doors shut with the best weather apps, services, and accessories.

Severe Weather and Android:

Weather Essentials
Severe Weather Accessories
Blizzards and Winter Storms
Hurricanes
Tornadoes and Severe Thunderstorms

Weather Essentials

Regardless of the kind of weather you’ll face when you step outside your door, there are some weather essentials everyone sh…

The display on the Pixel 4a is a significant upgrade from its predecessor. The bezels at the top and bottom are so much smaller that we can have a bigger screen in a smaller profile, but this also means that even a tiny crack at the top or bottom could impact the screen’s usable portion. We’ve done the research to round up the best Google Pixel 4a screen protectors you can buy!

Easy to apply

Supershieldz Tempered Glass (2-Pack)

Staff Pick

Supershieldz has my confidence because not only is its book-style application process easy enough for my mother to do by herself, but it has also stood up to rocks, ladders, and drops without damaging the screen underneath.

$7 at Amazon
$7 at Walmart

Best of the best

OtterBox Amplify Glass

OtterBox knows how to make a durable case. They worked with Corning — makers of Gorilla Glass — to produce a durable, high-quality screen protector in the Amplify, which offers higher scratch resistance and excellent case compatibility.

$19 at Ama…

The Chromecast with Google TV has a new Google TV layout that, for the most part, is quite excellent. All your apps are close at hand, it’s easy to browse for shows or films from your favorite genres, and Google Assistant means that any show or movie is just a voice command away. This is one of the many reasons the Chromecast with Google TV is one of the best streaming devices, but if you’re not a fan of being constantly bombarded with Google TV’s recommendations — especially on a shared device where those recommendations might be skewed — here’s how to turn off personalized recommendations and enter apps only mode on Google TV.

How to turn on apps only mode in Google TV

On the home screen, go left to your profile picture.

Select Settings.

Select Accounts & Sign in.

Select your Google account.

Scroll down to the bottom of the list.
Select Apps only mode.

Select Turn on.

Hit the home button to exit Settings.

It’ll take a second or 10, but your home screen wi…

Whether you have had your Google Pixel 3 XL for years or just managed to pick one up today, you should really grab yourself one of the best Pixel 3 XL cases (or three) to keep your phone safe when you’re out in the big, cruel world — or when you’re bumbling around your apartment at 2 a.m. like a half-blind, half-asleep idiot. Whatever the scenario, protect your phone and show off your style with one of the best Pixel 3 XL cases that are offer style and durability.

Ruggedly handsome

Spigen Rugged Armor

Staff Pick

$12 at Amazon

Spigen’s Rugged Armor has been one of our go-to cases for years: it feels great in hand and protects your phone as well as many dual-layer cases would.

The X factor

Ringke Fusion-X

$12 at Amazon
From $12 at Walmart

This big brother of the Fusion features a beefier bumper and reinforced corners for extra protection, and the translucent red version is so lovely.

Armored protection

SUPCASE Full-Body Rugged Holster Case Unicorn Beetle Pro Series

…

From easy organization to multi-format notes, here’s how to best use Google Keep.

Google Keep is the best Google app you’ve never heard of and part of what makes this app so adaptable and wonderful is that it has a very robust set of features despite its simple concept. This auto-syncing note-taking app works wonderfully on the best Android phones, Chromebooks, or even if you’re logging into the website through your library’s computer lab.

Whether you’re making packing lists for your summer vacation, writing up new proposals in a more mobile-friendly experience than Google Docs, or just trying to get this story idea out of your head so you can get back to work, here’s the Google Keep tips you absolutely need to know.

Jump to:

Nested items
Labels
Search
Doodles
Keyboard shortcuts
Shorthand
Location reminders
Archive
Character limits
Reference materials
Wear OS

Make the most of lists with nested items

The to-do lists in Google Keep are relatively basic — they can contai…

Scratching or breaking the screen on your Galaxy S10+ is one of the worst things that can happen to your shiny new phone. To protect that large display, you’re going to want to invest in a quality screen protector. We’ve rounded up a list of some of the very best, whether they’re made of glass or plastic film. See which screen protector catches your eye. When you’re done looking at screen protectors, don’t forget to choose a Galaxy S10+ case.

UV curing

amFilm Ultra Glass Screen Protector

Staff Pick

This curved glass follows the contours of the S10+ screen, comes with a UV curing kit, and is compatible with the fingerprint sensor.

$40 at Amazon
$40 at Walmart

Pack of protection

LK HD Clear Screen Protector (3-Pack)

LK’s film protectors are thin, clear, and clean, with good margins for cases and precise cutouts for those hole-punch cameras and the top earpiece.

$11 at Amazon

Smooth as water

IQ Shield LiQuidSkin (2-Pack)

This 2-pack protects your phone without getting …

Meet the new best Chromebook charger.

What you need to know

Anker has released three new Power Delivery chargers using “GaN II,” further optimized gallium nitride chips.
The new Anker Nano II comes in 30W, 45W, and 65W sizes, with the 45W and 65W also sporting folding plugs.
Priced from $30-$40, these chargers are available for preorder today in the United States, eventually coming to Europe, too.

The last two years have been an amazing time for chargers — and yes, I know how nerdy that is, but really, it has. Power Delivery charging means that you can now charge basically everything you own off one charger so long as you buy USB-C accessories in addition to your laptop and phone. Gallium nitride has also allowed the bets GaN chargers to get smaller and cooler when charging at full speed, meaning grabbing your laptop charger won’t scald you after four hours of charging while editing in Final Cut.

Gallium nitride has come to chargers of most sizes, from phone chargers up to …