Hot Nexus Posts
How To: Root the New Android 5.0 Lollipop Preview on Your Nexus 5 or 7
It didn't take long at all for developer Chainfire to sort out a root method for the new Android 5.0 Lollipop. After handling a few issues with changes to the SELinux kernel module, Chainfire pushed out an update to his popular SuperSU root app.
How To: Conserve Battery Life by Auto-Switching to 2G Data When Your Screen Is Off
When you're actively using your phone, a certain amount of battery drain is to be expected. But, if your device is just sitting in your pocket draining its battery, that's when you need to take action.
How To: Rotate Any Orientation-Locked App on Android
Some apps have a nasty habit of ignoring your Android's auto-rotation settings and locking the display into either portrait or landscape orientation.
How To: The Absolute Fastest Way to Take Photos on Android
How many times have you witnessed a beautiful moment that you would have loved to capture on film, only to watch it slip away as you struggled to unlock your phone and open your camera app?
How To: Turn Your Wrist into a Remote Control for the Music on Your Nexus 5 or Other Android Phone
It seems like gesture controls are all the craze these days. From camera-opening gestures to "Air Gestures", it's getting to the point where we hardly need to touch the screens on our phones to control them.
How To: Increase Visible Screen Space When Using a Landscape Keyboard on Android
For some reason, when you're typing in landscape mode, Android extends the text input field to cover every bit of the screen that the keyboard's not occupying. This gets pretty annoying sometimes, especially with messaging apps where you might need to reference what the other person just said in order to properly form your response.
How To: Make Your Nexus 5's LED Notification Light Dance to the Music
Most of the time, the LED notification light on the front of your Android device just sits there doing nothing. Other than that brief period of time between when you receive a notification and when you turn your screen on, it's practically useless for anything other than showing when your charger is plugged in.
How To: Remove Button Clutter from the WhatsApp Interface on Android
If you're one of the millions of people who use the WhatsApp service for messaging, you've probably noticed a recent propensity that the app has had for adding buttons to its interface. Two such buttons have made their way into the message thread screen, cluttering up the interface with functionality that is a tad bit redundant.
How To: Get CyanogenMod's "Theme Engine" Themes on Your Nexus 5
Surely you've heard of the wildly-popular custom ROM CyanogenMod, right? As the longest-tenured third-party firmware for Android devices, CM has been able to maintain its popularity by supporting a wide array of devices and offering many customization options.
How To: Theme KitKat to Look Like Android L on Your Nexus 5
The new preview build of Android is out, and it looks good. But if you're not quite ready to install Android L on your phone, there's still another way to enjoy some of these new visual elements on your Nexus device.
How To: Prevent Thieves from Turning Off Your Stolen Nexus So You Can Locate It
Back in August, Google introduced Android Device Manager. This new service allowed you to locate, lock, or wipe a lost or stolen Android device from either a companion app or a web interface. Effectively, this is the "kill switch" that legislators are clamoring for.
How To: Update Your Rooted Nexus to Android 4.4.4 Without Losing Any Data (Update)
Update: June 19, 2014 Android 4.4.4 has been released, fixing a small security bug in 4.4.3. The factory images have already been made available to all current-generation Nexus devices, and I've linked them out below. This does not affect the process depicted, you can still use these same steps to bring your device up to date with this latest release.
How To: Get Custom Screen-Off Effects for Your Nexus 5 or Other Android Device
When theming Android, it's the little touches that complete the look, making your device yours. If you're rooted, you probably know by now that there's virtually nothing you can't change the look of on Android.
How To: Control Your Nexus 5 Without Touching the Screen
If you've ever seen one of those Samsung commercials from about a year back, you know that the Galaxy S series of phones come with a feature that allows you to do certain things by making gestures in front of your screen. They call this feature Air Gesture, and it enables you to perform certain functions without even touching your phone.
How To: Add a “Reboot into Recovery” Option to Your Nexus 5's Power Menu
Just about every softMod requires some kind of reboot. Whether it's because something in the System UI was changed, or because a ZIP needs to be flashed in custom recovery.
News: Android 4.4.3 Update Rolling Out Now for the Nexus 5
It appears that the next iteration of KitKat, Android 4.4.3, is fast approaching. If the past is any indication, today's update to the Nexus 5 software changelog on Sprint's website tells us a new version of Android will begin rolling out within 24 hours. Sprint has broken the news of a forthcoming Android release twice in the past. With 4.4.1 and 4.4.2, a mini-changelog was posted on the Sprint website about a day before Google began pushing updates to its Nexus devices.
How To: Get All the LG G2 “Knock Knock” Features on Your Nexus 5 for Faster Sleep/Wake
Probably one of the most sought after features of the LG G2 is its "Knock Knock" capabilities. Rather than dealing with that pesky power button, you simply double-tap portions of the screen to either sleep or wake your device.
How To: Find Your "Missing" Parked Car Using Your Nexus Without Doing Any Work
We've all been there. Stranded in a large lot or parking garage, braving the rows upon rows of identical cars in an endless concrete landscape because, for the very life of us, we can't remember where we stashed the very ride that brought us there.
How To: Add Swipe Gestures to the Stock Launcher's Home Screen on Your Nexus 5
The Google Now Launcher that was introduced with the Nexus 5 seems to have a lot of folks torn. On the one hand, having a home screen page dedicated to Google Now, as well as the always-listening voice search, are killer features. On the other hand, its lack of customization options like home screen gestures and variable grid sizes has some people considering switching to third-party launchers.
How To: Mirror Your Nexus 5's Display on Your TV Using Chromecast
With Google's recent release of the Software Developers Kit for Chromecast, Android gurus now have a roadmap of sorts to guide them in adding Chromecast functionality to their apps. The results are beginning to pour in.
How To: Install a Custom ROM on Your Nexus 5 (A Newb-Friendly Guide)
The flexibility within Android is pretty amazing. Unlike iOS, you can make a lot of modifications with nothing more than a download from Google Play, but to really step up your softModder game, you'll need to go a little further.
How To: Install the Xposed Framework on Your Nexus 5 for Max Customization
If you've been keeping up with anything Android these days, you've no doubt heard about a little dandy called Xposed Framework kicking around. Xposed, by XDA developer rovo89, is a framework for Android devices that lets you easily modify your stock or custom ROM.
How To: Unlock the Nexus 5 Bootloader & Start Modding Your Android Experience
You know what's awesome? You own a Nexus. That means, with Google's blessing, you have easier access and control over your device than other manufacturers allow. You can really dig in and do some interesting things if you root.
PSA: Updating to Nougat Through the Android Beta Program Is Risky
Google just released Android 7.0 Nougat, and as usual, they're doing a staged rollout. This means that most users won't actually get the update on their Nexus devices for a few weeks—that is, unless they take matters into their own hands.
How To: Find Out When Your Nexus Will Stop Getting Android Updates
The beauty of Nexus devices is they receive firmware updates faster than any other Android phone, and keep getting updates for years longer than most of the competition. This means that you can always use the great new features that come along with an Android update, and even more importantly, your phone gets monthly security patches to keep hackers and malware at bay.
How To: Swap the 'Back' & 'Recent Apps' Buttons on Your Nexus 6P
If you find yourself switching between Android devices frequently—for instance, your Nexus 6P and a Samsung tablet—you've probably noticed how the button placement can be different. Normally, it's back, then home, then the recent apps button, from left to right. But Samsung devices have this backwards, which can lead to frustration when muscle memory kicks in and the back button isn't where you expect it to be.
How To: Wake the Screen on Your Nexus 6P with a Double-Tap
Ever since developer bponury created his TouchControl app for the Galaxy Nexus back in 2011, manufacturers and modders alike have been racing to re-implement the "Double-tap-to-wake" functionality it brought to the table. We've seen LG do it with their "Knock On" feature, we've seen Motorola put a twist on it with "Active Display," and we've even seen Google implement the feature in their Nexus 9 tablet.
How To: Unlock the Electronic Image Stabilization Feature on Your Nexus 5X
The Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P have identical camera hardware—in fact, both use one of the highest-end camera sensors ever put into a smartphone. The only real difference between the cameras on Google's latest flagship devices is that the 6P natively supports electronic image stabilization (EIS) whereas the 5X does not.
How To: Root a Nexus Device Running Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Android Marshmallow was recently released, and as we've grown to expect, a root method was quickly made available to devices running the brand new operating system. Legendary root developer Chainfire has stated that he's working his way towards retiring from the scene, but he still had enough left in the tank to quickly publish an update to his popular SuperSU root method.
How To: Install Android 6.0 Marshmallow on Your Nexus Right Now
Google has finally released the next version of the world's leading operating system—Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This latest iteration isn't as much of a visual overhaul as Lollipop was, but it packs in more new functionality than almost any update before it. Awesome features like Now on Tap, granular permissions control, and a deep sleep battery-saving feature called Doze round out the highlights, but there is far more to it than that.
How To: Install the Android M Preview on Your Nexus Device (Using Mac or Linux)
Google I/O is like Christmas for Android enthusiasts. Every year, this conference showcases new and upcoming features for the world's leading mobile operating system, and this year's was no different. Shortly after announcing Android M, Google released a preview version of the upcoming firmware for Nexus devices.
How To: Install the Android M Preview on Your Nexus Device (Using Windows)
On Thursday morning, May 28th, Google announced an upcoming version of Android—and within a few hours, a preview build of this so-called "Android M" release was made available to select Nexus devices.
How To: Automatically Change Brightness Levels Based on the Time of Day on Your Nexus 5
Android's auto brightness feature was recently updated, and as of version 5.0, a new "Adaptive brightness" feature was added. This allows users to set a preferred overall brightness level, but still have the ambient light sensor adjust the backlight accordingly.
How To: Enable the Charging LED on Your Nexus 6
The Nexus 6 has an AMOLED screen that uses virtually no power to display black pixels. To take advantage of this feature, Google included an Ambient Display notification system that shows a black and white version of your lock screen when you get a new message. As a result, the Nexus 6 doesn't use an LED light to notify you of new incoming messages like most phones.
How To: Add a Data Traffic Meter to Your Nexus 5's Status Bar
Carriers really suck, don't they? We constantly have to monitor our data usage, even though many of us are on "unlimited" plans, which, in reality, will just be throttled to a slower 2G or 3G connection when we hit a certain download threshold.
How To: Dual-Boot Multiple ROMs on Your Nexus 6
Desktop users have taken advantage of dual-booting operating systems for decades now. If your core system software is lacking in any regard, dual-booting a secondary OS can give you access to those features that you're missing out on.
How To: Get CyanogenMod's Audio Mixer on Your Nexus 6
CyanogenMod continues to be the most popular custom ROM for a good reason. Their team of developers always stay on top of the latest trends, and ensure that their software is packed with nice tweaks and awesome features. One such feature is an audio equalizer that allows you to fine-tune your device's various sound outputs. It's got a great interface, and works with any app that calls on Android's default audio mixer.
How To: Trim Down Android Lollipop's Overview Screen
As is the case with most software updates, Android 5.0 brought changes that were viewed by users as somewhat positive and somewhat negative. This generally happens because we're accustomed to the old way of doing things, and changes, no matter how useful, can slow us down.
How To: Get Custom Lock Screen Shortcuts on Android Lollipop
Android's lock screen has evolved quite a bit over the years. From the Donut days of two tabs that launched the phone app and unlocked the device, to KitKat's clean and simple approach, shortcuts have come and gone.
How To: Add Custom Unicode Smilies to Your Android’s Google Keyboard
Emojis, smilies, emoticons—whatever you prefer to call them, these fun little guys can bring a text-based conversation to life. If you're worried that someone's sarcasm meter might be broken, just toss in a wink at the end of your message. Or perhaps you can't quite put your sentiment into words, but one of these little graphics suits the moment perfectly.