Tips & Tutorials

The ultimate guide for installing the Google Play Store on Amazon Fire tablets

This story was originally published 2020/03/184:41pm PDTon Mar 18, 2020, and last updated 2020/12/251:23pm PSTon Dec 25, 2020. 

Amazon's Fire tablets are incredibly popular, mostly because they're incredibly cheap. However, none of them come with access to the Google Play Store, which is how most Android devices download and install applications. Instead, Fire tablets come bundled with the Amazon Appstore, which has a much smaller library and lacks any Google-made apps and services. No YouTube, no Chrome, and so on.

The good news is that it's not incredibly difficult to install the Play Store on a Fire tablet, and the whole process can take as little time as 10 minutes. This complete guide for installing the Play Store on Fire tablets has detailed instructions for every model produced since 2014, with added troubleshooting steps if you run into issues.

Read MoreThis app gives you a local ADB shell, no need for root

ADB shell commands are insanely useful for numerous reasons, whether you want to make your Amazon Fire tablet feel more like stock Android, granularly change your phone's animation speed, or bring back the 2-button navigation to the OnePlus 7. To run these commands, you have to set up the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) on your computer and connect your phone via USB or Wi-Fi, which is far from comfortable. That's where a new app comes in: LADB lets you run shell commands right on your phone via Android's wireless ADB protocol. But there are some big caveats for people with older phones that haven't been updated to Android 11 yet.

Read More25+ forgotten or hidden shortcuts for your Android homescreen

When you spend a lot of your day digging into Android as I do, you start looking for ways to get to things faster. One shortcut equals several saved taps and seconds, which add up over a day, week, and more. With time, I've uncovered more and more interesting Android or Google-specific shortcuts that save me every day from the menial and repetitive task of digging into settings or apps. In this article, I'll share some of these shortcuts with you so you too can feel the small joy of reaching your favorite features and settings faster and more efficiently.

Read MoreTip: The new Google Camera helps you align your phone for perfectly level shots

Google recently released a big update for its Pixel camera, and it's packed with exciting new features, like a storage saver, better video effects, and some Pixel 5 and 4a 5G exclusives. But there's more — improvements to the existing framing hints are also rolling out. You may have already noticed that there are now two-level indicators or two crosshairs, a familiar white variant and a new yellow one. You can use these to get perfectly level shots and top-down pictures. Here's how you do it.

Read MoreHow to run ADB shell commands via your browser without installing drivers

This story was originally published 2020/11/308:27am PSTon Nov 30, 2020, and last updated 2020/12/069:49am PSTon Dec 6, 2020. 

If you've ever used the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), you know that it's such a hassle to set up (if you don't happen to be a developer who installed Android Studio already anyway). But with new web tools like the WebUSB API, there's no longer a need to rely on local software to fulfill the most basic ADB needs. That's where WebADB comes in, a free and open-source web service spotted by XDA Developers that allows you to debug Android devices from any supported browser.

Read MoreHow to view your recent Pixel portrait photos with bokeh off

This story was originally published 2020/12/029:06am PSTon Dec 2, 2020, and last updated 2020/12/056:39am PSTon Dec 5, 2020. 

Google Photos storage will soon count against your quota, which might be a reason why Google is trying to make its camera more economical. Following a big update to Google Camera version 8, the developers introduced a new storage saver option, but that's not all they changed. Instead of saving two versions of a portrait photo, one with the signature artificially blurred background and another one without it, the camera now only saves the bokeh variant. But you can still get the photo with the original background if you really need it — here's how.

Read MoreHow to transfer files from Android to macOS

This story was originally published 2020/06/137:00am PDT on Jun 13, 2020, and last updated 2020/12/056:27am PSTon Dec 5, 2020. 

Android and macOS have never been the biggest friends. While Android app development is an easy feat for Apple's desktop OS, the situation is much different for simple file transfers. There is Google's Android File Transfer application, but the program is hopelessly outdated, finicky, and prone to crashes when you transfer a lot of data at a time. You don't have to rely on Google's tool for transfers, though — there are a ton of third-party apps that solve moving files between Android and macOS much better.

Read MoreHow to reliably sideload the latest Google apps on Android 11

Some Google apps are failing to install on Android 11 when you try to sideload the latest versions from a trustworthy source like our own sister site APK Mirror. Ever since Google released the new Android OS, an INSTALL_FAILED_VERIFICATION_FAILURE error keeps popping up for some people who want to install the most recent version of the Google Camera or the Google Recorder, for example.

Read MoreHow to make your own personal VPN in under 30 minutes

This story was originally published 2018/04/1411:25am PDT on Apr 14, 2018, and last updated 2020/11/237:33am PSTon Nov 23, 2020. 

VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, are a popular way to stay safe online. When you connect to a VPN, all outgoing network traffic is funneled through an external server. Your internet service provider can't tell what sites you visit (only that you're using a VPN) or inject content into webpages. VPNs are also commonly used to bypass blocked websites and to stay safe on public Wi-Fi networks.

Unfortunately, using certain VPN providers can be just as dangerous as going without a VPN in the first place.

Read MoreThe 10 best tips and tricks for Chrome on Android

This story was originally published 2018/04/189:01am PDT on Apr 18, 2018, and last updated 2020/11/215:03am PSTon Nov 21, 2020. 

Chrome is Google's globally popular browser platform, and while the version for Android may not seem as powerful as the full-fledged desktop application, there's more than meets the eye. Chrome for Android has some hidden functionality lurking underneath the surface, and in this roundup, we'll go over ten of the browser's less-obvious features.

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