How to take a screenshot on an iPhone

The short answer is: Press the Home and Lock buttons on your phone at the same time to capture a screenshot. For a more in-depth explanation on how to take a screenshot on an iPhone using alternative methods, read on.

Apple has never made taking a screenshot a tough task. Doing so allows you to capture what’s displayed on your smartphone as a PNG file, allowing you to quickly edit and share the image among friends via email, text, or on popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Hell, you can even send screenshots to tech support for further analysis, or use them to make a guide rounding up various Pokemon Go tips and tricks. Regardless of the reasoning, here’s everything you need to know.

Are you a MacOS user? If so, we have also have a comprehensive guide on how to take a screenshot on a Mac.

Taking screenshots with physical buttons

Step 1: Locate the necessary buttons — You’ll want to locate the Home button and the Lock button on your iPhone. Chances are, you probably know where these are because they’re literally the only physical buttons on the phone. If not, don’t sweat it. The Home button is circular and appears on the face of the phone, directly below the screen. The Home button has occupied the same real estate on every model of iPhone. The Lock button — also known as the Sleep/Wake button — is located on the right-hand side of your phone, at least if you’re using an iPhone 6 or newer. Otherwise, it’s located on the top of your device.

Step 2: Capture the screenshot — Press the Home and Sleep buttons at the same time when you see what you want to capture. The iPhone display will then briefly flash white, signaling that the screen capture worked correctly. You’ll also hear a faint shutter noise, so long as your device isn’t in silent mode.

If you press the Sleep button a fraction of a second before the Home button, your iPhone’s screen will turn off. If you press and hold the Home button for too long, then you will activate Siri. Timing is everything here, so if this is the first time you’ve done it you may have to try it a couple of times to get the timing right.

Step 3: Edit the screenshots — Once you’ve successfully captured the screenshot, a small preview will appear in the bottom-left corner of your screen. This preview will automatically disappear in about five seconds, but you can also swipe it to the left to dismiss it. Tapping the thumbnail will allow you to crop or magnify the image, or mark it up with a pen and various shapes. When you’re finished making edits, tap Done in the upper-left corner, and choose whether you’d like to save the new image or delete it.

If you take a screenshot, tap the preview and select Done. You can also select Delete Screenshots and quickly delete a screenshot you didn’t mean to take, which is very convenient.

Step 4: View and share the screenshots — Once captured, your iPhone will automatically save the screen capture directly to the camera roll (aka the Photos app). Simply tap the Photos app, which is represented by a multi-colored sunflower icon of sorts, and scroll to the bottom of the photo stream to view the recently-captured screenshots. Then, tap the thumbnail to enlarge said images, or the box in the lower-left corner while viewing the image to access options for sharing the screenshot via text, email, AirDrop, Facebook, Twitter, and other services.

Google’s Family Link app lets parents manage their kids’ devices

Why it matters to you

Google’s Family Link makes managing kids’ phone usage easy and it is now available.

Worried about what your kids are up to on the internet? Google’s made an app for that. Family Link, a new, free service for Android and iOS, lets parents manage the content of their kids’ devices.

Family Link, which is now available publicly after launching in a limited beta earlier this year, lets kids access Google services like Gmail, Maps, Chrome, and Photos. But it ties their devices to their parents’ devices, and parents get notifications about virtually everything their kids do.

Here’s how it works on Android devices: If kids try to download an app or visit a site, parents receive a notification that they can approve or deny. They get detailed analytics of what apps their kids are using, and even a rundown of which services they spend time with.

Once parents download the Family Link app to the child’s phone and their respective smartphones, they can allow or block access to any app on the child’s device, or limit the amount of time they can spend with a specific service. Ratings and information from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and Google’s own internal review board help to indicate the age-appropriateness of apps’ content (Maps is rated ‘G,’ for example).

Family Link includes broader device controls, too, like a feature that limits kids to a certain amount of screen time each day. Parents can set “blackout periods” during which kids won’t be able to access their devices (think dinner or bedtime), and a Lock Devices Now option instantly locks a child’s device.

Some Google apps offer more granular controls than others. Chrome, for example, allows three different levels of access: Unfiltered, SafeSearch (which filters websites and pages Google’s filters deem “inappropriate”), and restricted (where the child is only allowed to visit a list of sites the parent specifies). And most of Google services are available to kids.

YouTube is the exception to the rule. Family Link directs kids to YouTube Kids, Google’s child-friendly version of YouTube with built-in age controls and restrictions.

Family Link on iOS, which launched in April, isn’t as holistic. Because of the iPhone’s operating system-level security restrictions, Google doesn’t offer a Family Link client for kids’ devices — it wouldn’t be able to set time limits or remotely lock the device. Basically, parents can manage an Android device from an iOS device, but they can’t manage an iOS device from another device.

Family Link isn’t Google’s first attempt at kid-friendly controls. In Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, it introduced Restricted Profiles, which locked down potentially harmful features. But it was largely an all-or-nothing affair — kids were prevented from using Gmail, for instance, and couldn’t back up photos to Google’s cloud services.

Targeting services at the 13-and-under crowd is a difficult business. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act restricts the kinds of information companies can collect from users 12 and under, and requires parental consent before children can share personal information such as their location, gender, or image of themselves.

Google thinks Family Link could be part of the solution.

“There’s always a concern if [kids] are going to stumble into some dark alley on the internet,” Amar Gandhi, Google’s director of product management told Mashable. “This is a problem we think Google can solve. A lot of the people who worked on this project are parents. We never think tech is a substitute for parenting, but we do think technology can help.”

Family Link can control Android devices running Android 7.0 Nougat or higher, and select Marshmallow devices. Parents need to have a phone running Android 4.4 KitKat or higher, or iOS 9 and higher.

Update: Added in information about Family Link’s public availability. 

Thursday Night Football streams free starting tonight with Amazon Prime Video

As though Amazon Prime members needed another benefit to brag about…

Tonight marks the first Thursday Night Football game streaming free on Amazon Prime Video. Last year, Twitter was the exclusive streaming partner of the Thursday night games, but that changes this year. There are already a number of other benefits to Amazon Prime, like free 2-day shipping, other exclusive video content, music streaming, and much more.

See what’s new on Amazon Prime Video this month!

You can stream the games using the Amazon Prime Video app on your Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Roku devices, Smart TVs, smartphones, and tablets. There are a number of big matchups that will stream, including the Patriots vs. Buccaneers, Seahawks vs. Cardinals, Broncos vs. Colts, and more.

Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President, Business Development & Entertainment, Amazon said:

Our focus is on bringing customers the best premium video programming, when and how they want to watch it. Streaming Thursday Night Football on Prime Video is a great step for us toward that vision, and offers tremendous new value for Prime members around the world. And we’re thrilled to extend our ongoing content relationship with the NFL — the gold standard for sports entertainment — on behalf of our Prime customers.

If you haven’t already subscribed to Amazon’s Prime service, now may be the time. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial to see how all the benefits work for you.

More from Thrifter

• How to prevent your kids from making purchases using Alexa
• How to add a DVR to your OTA antenna setup

For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

How to disable the Edge screen on Galaxy Note 8

If you don’t want the hassle of the edge screen, turn it off!

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 gives you access to the Edge screen which can make it easier to access certain contacts and apps. However many people never take advantage of the Edge screen’s capabilities. If it does of a better job of getting in your way than it does of making things easier, then you may want to disable it. We’ve got the details on how to do just that right here!

How to disable the Edge Screen

Disabling the Edge screen is just a matter of flipping a toggle from within the settings. This means that turning the Edge screen off, or back on, just only take a few moments.

Open Settings.

Tap Display.

Scroll down and tap Edge screen.

Tap the toggle next to Edge panels to turn off the edge screen.

Questions?

Do you have questions about disabling the Edge screen on Note 8? Have you turned off the Edge screen on your Note 8, or do you prefer to utilize it? Let us know in the comments below!

Samsung Galaxy Note 8

• Galaxy Note 8 review
• Complete Galaxy Note 8 specs
• Galaxy Note 8 vs. Galaxy Note 5
• Which Note 8 color is best?
• Join our Galaxy Note 8 forums

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Alcatel Idol 5 brings subtle design tweaks, heads to Cricket Wireless for under $200

If there’s one thing we know by now, a solid Android doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

We’re seeing a lot of premium smartphones come in over $800, but you can also enjoy some premium features in a smartphone that costs less than $200. The Alcatel IDOL 5 is a VR-ready Android 7.0 Nougat phone with a 5.2-inch 1080p display and dual front-facing speakers. Under the hood is a (cost-saving) Mediatek Helio P20 octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, up to 32GB of internal memory and a microSD slot for even more storage.

The most noticeable change on the Idol 5 compared to the Idol 4 is the metal back. Alcatel says the move to metal was in response to customer feedback that the glass back on the Idol 4S was fragile.

The NOW key on the Idol 5 replaces the BOOM key from the previous model (my word, those names). The key instantly launches your most commonly-used tasks. You can use it to turn the flashlight on or off, compose a message, take a screenshot, snap a photo, or launch your favorite apps.

Other notable features include the 12-megapixel camera with dual-tone flash, 8-megapixel selfie camera with LED flash, and fast charging for the 2850mAh battery. You can also find a 3.5mm headset jack located at the bottom of the phone.

The new Alcatel Idol 5 is available exclusively at Cricket-branded stores or cricketwireless.com beginning October 27, with the affordable price of $199. The UNI360 VR Googles, which is optimized for the Idol 5, is sold separately for $49.99, although it is compatible with other VR-capable smartphones with 5- to 6-inch displays.

Google Family Link is now invite-free for parents in the U.S.

After being announced as an invite-only service in March, Family Link can now be used by any and all parents in the U.S.

Back in March, Google officially introduced Family Link — a suite of parental controls that aimed to help make raising your kids in the 21st century just a little bit easier. Family Link could only be accessed with an invitation when it first launched, but today, Google is making the service available for everyone to try.

You’ll still need to live in the United States and have a Google account to get things started, but assuming you do, you can start using Family Link by either going to the Family Link website or downloading the official app from the Play Store. Once you’ve done this, you can start creating Google accounts for your children if they don’t already have one.

With your kids’ accounts made and connected to your account via Family Link, you’ll be able to set all sorts of limits and restrictions on what they can and can’t do with their devices. This means that you’ll be able to approve and block apps/games that can be downloaded from the Play Store, see how long your son or daughter’s phone screen has been on, set daily limits for how long devices can be used, and even remotely lock your kiddos’ gadgets when it’s time to go to do homework, play outside, or go to bed.

The Family Link app is automatically downloaded to your kids’ phones/tablets after you’ve got their accounts linked to the service, and for any of our readers that would like a helping hand for making sure your children are using their devices in a safe and healthy manner, Family Link looks like one of the best tools that you have at your disposal.

This security camera offers a sweeping view of your home for $40

Google’s longstanding search widget could add customization options soon

The Google Search widget might be getting a suite of new customization tools for changing its shape, color, and more.

Ever since its inception, one of Android’s strongest characteristics has been its ability to customize just about everything to your heart’s content. There are a ton of third-party customization solutions throughout the Play Store, but thanks to a teardown of the Google app, it would appear that Google itself will soon be giving users more options for changing up the look of their home screens.

Right now, the Google app has three widgets that you can add to your home screens: Feed, Google, and Google Sound. The Google widget is the rectangular search bar that allows you to quickly initiate typed and voice searches, and while it’s perfectly functional, you can’t really change the look aside from adjusting its length.

Going from fixed widgets to customizable ones would be great.

Within the latest beta for the Google app, there are numerous mentions for something called “Google Bar” within strings of code, and once these strings are activated, an updated Google widget can be added to your home screen. However, the real magic happens when you tap on the Customize tab within the overflow menu.

Upon doing this, you’ll see the Google widget on top of your wallpaper with four icons below for customizing the bar logo, bar shape, bar color, and bar shading.

Starting off with bar logo, this allows you to choose whether you want the full Google logo to be displayed or just a single “G.” The bar shape option has three different shapes to choose from, including a traditional rectangle, a rectangle with slightly rounded corners, and a round bar not unlike what’s found on the Essential Phone, Galaxy S8, and other 2017 flagships.

Bar color really gets the customization juices flowing, enabling you to turn the Google and other icons from white to gray, darkening the entire bar for a more stealthy look, and even two sliders for fine-tuning the color of the bar to your exact liking. Lastly, bar shading lets you adjust the transparency of the widget to choose whether you want it to be more solid or see-through.

Google has yet to comment on this latest discovery, and at this point, it’s entirely possible that it could get scrapped and never see a public debut. However, I think it’s safe to say that this is one feature most of us are chomping at the bit for Google to hurry up and release.

Google Assistant gains a search bar for easier app searching

‘Timberscrapers’ could soon dominate urban skylines

They just don’t make ’em like the Sakyamuni Pagoda anymore. Built from wood in 1056 in the Shanxi province of China, the building has remained standing to this day, despite seven earthquakes rattling the region within its first 50 years of existence. Since then, it’s held up against a slew of seismic events, even when more-modern structures have failed. Now, thanks to recent advancements in timber technology, modern architects are rediscovering the benefits of working with wood.

Wood was the go-to construction material from the dawn of time up until the late 19th century. However, it is far from ideal. For one thing, its cells can swell and shrink by up to 10 percent of their original size, depending on the humidity. Plus, if it stays wet for too long, the material rots. Imperfections in the grain weaken its structural integrity and can cause it to fail under loads that it should otherwise support. In its natural state, wood breaks more easily than steel and bends more readily than concrete. Wood’s biggest drawback is, of course, the fact that it burns so readily. That’s not what you want in a densely packed urban center, as the fires of San Francisco in 1851 and 1906, Chicago in 1871, and Boston in 1872 illustrate.

Still, while the 20th-century skylines were dominated by steel and concrete, the first two decades of the 21st have seen a rapid influx of wooden architectural designs. However, many are still little more than artist renderings. In 2012, the 10-story Forte residential block in Melbourne, Australia, became the world’s tallest timber building. It was quickly overtaken two years (and four stories) later when The Treet in Central Bergen, Norway, was completed.

The Brock Commons, in Canada, currently serves as 18 levels of student housing for the University of British Columbia. And beginning next month, architects in Portland, Oregon, will break ground on a 12-story mixed-use structure dubbed the Framework, which will be the tallest wooden building in the US once it’s complete. That structure may not hold the title for long, however, as the Cambridge University Department of Architecture is looking at how it might construct twin 80-story residential towers — one on the Chicago River, the other in London.

This rapid proliferation of designs is all thanks to a kind of building material called cross-laminated timber (CLT), which was invented in Europe in the 1990s. It’s not that different from plywood, actually, just produced on a much larger scale. Long planks of two-by-fours are glued together side by side into sheets. Those sheets are then stacked three or four layers high, separated by fire-resistant glue and pressed together. By rotating the grain of each subsequent layer by 90 degrees, the composite material shows a structural strength that rivals steel and negates the imperfections that any one layer might have.

Wood structures offer a number of benefits over steel and concrete, especially in an increasingly carbon-conscious world. For example, it’s roughly a quarter of the weight of an equally sized concrete structure, which means that the foundations don’t have to be as large. That means you don’t need to use as many building materials and don’t have to expend as much fuel getting them to the construction site, which further reduces carbon emissions. That’s a big deal here in the States: According to the Department of Energy, a full 40 percent of the country’s total carbon emissions come from building construction and use.

“Carbon dioxide is the building block of wood,” Professor Arijit Sinha of Oregon State University told Engadget. “As the tree grows, more carbon dioxide is stored.” What’s more, Sinha continued, lighter wooden buildings — whether they’re made from mass timber materials or traditional wood — tend to withstand earthquakes better and dissipate the energy of the shaking more readily than steel structures.

According to a 2014 study published in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, we’d be able to reduce global C02 emissions by 15 to 20 percent if we used CLT instead of steel. Additionally, CLT can be fabricated in a factory and flat-packed Ikea-style to the job site and then simply assembled, rather than constructed in the traditional sense. “This has huge time and financial savings implications,” Kevin Flanagan, a partner at PLP Architecture, told CNN.

But perhaps wood’s most valuable advantage is its ability to sequester carbon. A 2009 study by the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand, found that over a 60-year life cycle, “Increasing the amount of timber in the buildings decreased the initial embodied energy and GWP [Global Warming Potential] of materials and also decreased the total energy consumption and GWP.” Overall, wooden buildings can have a total carbon footprint a third smaller than similarly sized steel and concrete buildings.

“When you compare a wood building with a concrete building, wood wins every time,” Jim Bowyer, an emeritus engineer at the University of Minnesota, in St. Paul, told Nature in May.

But as promising as all of this carbon offsetting appears, whether that carbon remains locked depends largely on how the material is recycled. Unlike the Sakyamuni Pagoda, most modern buildings aren’t meant to be everlasting. Instead they’re routinely demolished and rebuilt every half a century or so as the needs of the city around them change.

So what do you do with the pile of lumber after you’ve knocked down the structure? You can’t dump it in a landfill and let it rot, as that slowly releases the trapped carbon back into the atmosphere, Sinha explained. Burning the wood for energy does the same thing, only more quickly. Responsibly recycling that wood for use in other construction projects or other products entirely is the only way to ensure that the sequestered carbon stays that way.

Another major challenge is wood’s sustainability. According to the World Wildlife Foundation, 58,000 square miles of forest are destroyed annually. That’s roughly the land mass of Georgia. However, with responsible land management, a number of experts believe that we can make it work.

“Wood is a renewable and sustainable resource so long as the forest is managed using good practices,” Sinha said. “If that is happening, then wood is an obvious choice for building ‘green.’”

Bowyer, who is leading an expert assessment on behalf of the American Wood Council, figures that the US timber industry is currently logging about a third of the country’s annual forest growth but has the capacity to double the amount of carbon sequestered in buildings annually. What’s more, his team found that wood construction could expand beyond residential (some 80 percent of American homes are made from wood) into commercial and industrial spaces, without reducing the amount of carbon locked away in America’s forests.

Researchers are already looking to “mix the the [wood] species and glue type and play around with the orientation of the laminate to optimize the engineering properties for the specific application,” Sinha said. Oregon State University is also partnering with a local timber company to develop CTL’s successor, dubbed Mass Plywood Panels. With maximum finished dimensions of 12 feet wide by 48 feet long by 24 inches thick, MPP can support the same amount of weight as CTL while using up to a third less wood. As Sinha concludes, “I think cross-laminated timber is just the start.”

[Image credit: University of British Columbia (Brock Commons); Gisling / Wikipedia (Sakyamuni Pagoda)]

The latest ‘Super Mario Run’ update is available for download

The update to Super Mario Run has arrived. We heard about the new features planned for the game last week, a main one being the introduction of Remix 10 — super quick courses that include Bonus Games and one Super Bonus Game that can get you some new buildings for Kingdom Builder mode. Super Mario Run will also now include Daisy as a playable character who has the ability to jump while she’s already in midair.

Some additional features include the new World Star that brings courses like a forest and an airship armada, and you’ll also be able to listen to your own tunes while you play. Mario and the gang will sport headphones when you do. And finally, your Toad Rally opponents will now have Toad populations that are more inline with your own.

The update is available now and new players can snag the game for half of the regular price between now and October 12th.

Via: Alex Seedhouse

Source: App Store, Play Store

Amazon’s confusing new Echo lineup: There’s a method to the madness

Amazon’s overstuffed Echo event yesterday made one thing clear: it’s not afraid of doubling down on smart speakers and its virtual assistant Alexa. The company announced a smaller $100 Echo (just as we reported in July); a $150 Echo Plus with smart hub features; and an Echo-powered alarm clock called “Spot”. And that’s not even including the truly strange stuff: Echo Connect, which turns your Echo devices into speakerphones for landlines; and a tiny Bluetooth button for games. Amazon’s also bundling an Echo Dot with the new Alexa-powered Fire TV dongle for just $80, as well as with the Fire TV stick for $60. Whew.

As impressive as this new lineup is, it’s easy to see how it could also be confusing for consumers. Which Echo device do you really need? It’s hard enough to decide if you’re just dipping your toes into Amazon’s smart speaker world. It’s even tougher for the Echo faithful, who now have a bevy devices to choose from as they bring more smart speakers into their homes. Previously, you only had to choose from the “big” Echo and “small” Echo Dot (the portable Echo Tap always seemed superfluous).

Even as someone who’s been living the Alexa life since the original Echo, I’m a bit confused about what to upgrade to. Maybe it’s not worth upgrading at all? The new model should sound better, thanks to improved speakers. And it also has a refined microphone array, which means it’ll be more effective at actually hearing your voice commands. That’s something the original Echo still occasionally has trouble with. The new model is much smaller than before, and its cloth covering should make it easier to fit into your home decor.

And then there’s the bigger Echo Plus, which does everything the smaller version does, but adds a smart hub. I’m the ideal customer for that model, since I already have four Phillips Hue lights in my apartment. (I also wouldn’t mind the extra Hue light that comes with the Echo Plus.) Since it has its own hub built in, it also means you wouldn’t need to run a separate device to hook up other connected gadgets. At the moment, you need to have a Hue Hub connected to your router to get those lights working. Amazon could encourage more people to adopt smart home devices by removing the need for additional hardware, and simplifying the overall experience.

AOL

Your Echo choices get even more confusing as you start thinking about bringing more than one speaker into your home. The adorable Echo Spot seems like it’d make a decent connected alarm clock — you can even watch a bit of video and take calls on its tiny 2.5-inch screen. But at $130, it also seems indulgent. For $30 less, you could get the new Echo with its improved speakers. The Spot is basically a cuter version of the $230 Echo Show, but that device’s bigger screen makes it much more useful. You could, for example, watch Amazon Prime videos, or see responses from your Alexa queries.

Amazon’s $50 Echo Dot is a far cheaper way to bring Alexa into your bedroom, or you could just buy it together with Fire TV devices for an additional $10. At this point, it’s almost like the company is giving the Echo Dot away (something it actually did in August). It’s understandable why. It’s more important for Amazon to expand its Echo system than it is for it to make a huge profit on hardware. And the Dot is ideal for making existing Echo users even more reliant on Alexa (and consequently, all of Amazon’s services).

The Echo Connect is the most curious new device from Amazon. It plugs into landline phones and instantly turns all of your Echo devices into speakerphones. Sure, it’s pretty useless for people without landlines, but for users that just can’t give up a physical phone line, it makes things like checking up on family much easier. It’s intriguing to see Amazon innovating for users who rely on older technology — how often do we see that as tech companies chase what’s new? At the same time, that’s also a crowd that might be less inclined to try out new gadgets. It seems like a gamble to expect landline users to adopt something as advanced as a voice-powered speakerphone.

It’s hard to make heads or tails of the Echo Button until we get our hands on it, but like the Echo Look camera, it seems more experimental than something Amazon truly expects to take off. It makes sense for the company to play around with what the Echo devices can do. Third-party companies are also throwing Alexa into things like portable radios, so why not try new things? Back at CES, it was clear that the Alexa ecosystem was exploding. It’ll only have more room to grow if Amazon manages to bring the virtual assistant into new territory.

Ultimately, a wider variety of Echo devices is a good problem for Amazon. It may get tougher for consumers to figure out what they need, but it also gives the company more ways to fit Alexa into their lives. It’s also important that Amazon doesn’t lose it’s ability to experiment. The Echo was a risk when it debuted in 2014, like the Kindle before it. Sometimes those experiments leads to failure, like the Fire Phone. But Amazon, like most tech companies, won’t truly innovate if they’re playing it safe.