‘Terraria’ developer cancels the sandbox adventure’s sequel

Terraria made quite a splash when it launched in 2011, that its creators ended up releasing it on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U and even on mobile platforms. The 2D sandbox action-adventure title was so warmly received that indie developer Re-Logic announced that it’s working on a sequel three years ago. Sadly, you’ll have to make do with the original game, because Re-Logic has decided to cancel Terraria: Otherworld’s development.

In an announcement post, Re-Logic explained that after a “very thorough status review of the game” with partner developer 505/Pipeworks, they realized that they’re much too far from the finish line than they thought. There’s still apparently a massive amount of work to be done, and finishing it would take too much time, enough to interfere with Re-Logic’s other projects. The developers decided not to even try, explaining that they’re not one to “compromise game quality for speed to market.”

Re-Logic said that one of the things it learned from the experience is that it shouldn’t have outsourced development for such a critical title. But if anything good came out of this is that the developer now has a ton of unreleased designs, artwork and sounds, as well as ideas that didn’t make it into a full game, which it plans to use for future titles. Don’t worry, though, the original Terraria isn’t going away, and version 1.3.6 of the game is still very much in development.

Source: Terraria

AI creates ‘Flintstones’ cartoons from text descriptions

It can a long time to animate cartoons — just ask the Rick and Morty team. But what if you could ask computers to do some of the lifting? They just might. Researchers have produced an AI system, Craft, that automatically produces The Flintstones scenes based on text descriptions. The team trained Craft to recognize elements from the classic cartoon by feeding it more than 25,000 three-second clips, each of which included descriptions of who was in the scene and what was happening. From there, the AI only needed a line or two referencing a scene to stitch together characters, backgrounds and props.

To call the current results crude would be an understatement. While the AI usually gets things right, it sometimes mangles the output. Also, The Flintstones is a relatively easy target. Hanna-Barbera’s signature animation style frequently involved limited animation on top of static backgrounds. This would be much harder with a more dynamic art style.

All the same, Craft hints at how AI could be used for animation going forward. A refined system with larger, more complex training samples could theoretically animate the routine parts of a cartoon, like back-and-forth conversations or walking through a room. Whether or not that’s a positive depends on who you ask. It could lead to job cuts and a drop in creativity, but it could alternately lead to animators focusing more on unique scenes or putting out more content. You might spend less time waiting for animated shows to return and more time enjoying them.

Via: Gizmodo, TNW

Source: ArXiv.org, Allen Institute for AI (YouTube)

SpaceX will try ‘giant party balloon’ to recover upper rocket stages

SpaceX ultimately wants to recover every stage of a rocket, not just the first, and it may resort to some unusual tactics to make that happen. Elon Musk has claimed that his company will try to take rocket upper stages out of orbital velocity using a “giant party balloon” — yes, he knows it sounds “crazy.” He hasn’t shed more light on the subject as we write this, but we’ve reached out to SpaceX to see if it can elaborate.

If such a system works out, it could provide more than a few benefits to SpaceX. As of 2018, SpaceX estimates a cost of $62 million to launch a Falcon 9 rocket with a first stage landing factored in. If it can reliably recover the upper stage with a relatively low-cost method like a balloon, it can both reduce its own expenses and make launches more attractive to customers. Throw in the eco-friendliness (there’s no dead stage plummeting to Earth) and it could easily be worth attempting to use a balloon, however ludicrous the idea might sound at first blush.

SpaceX will try to bring rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2018

Source: Elon Musk (Twitter)

Fitbit Versa vs. Apple Watch Series 3: Which should you wear?

Fitbit is well-known in the fitness-tracking industry for its long (and impressive) line of wearables and sensors — however, it first tested the smartwatch waters with last year’s release of the Ionic. Now, Fitbit will soon be releasing the Versa, serving to rival Apple with upgraded smart features and an improved design. Fitbit’s newest product is especially appealing to the women demographic, both in appearance and function.

The Versa is smaller and cheaper than the Ionic but how does it stack up against the world-beating Apple Watch? Not only is it the world’s best selling watch but the Series 3 was touted as being able to potentially replace your smartphone entirely — although it’s not quite there yet. In our own review of the Versa, we were impressed but how does it stack up alongside the popular Apple Watch Series 3? We put the two in a head-to-head spec showdown to find out.

Specs

Though the Fitbit Versa’s internal specifications are still relatively unknown, our first look did reveal speedy load times — and just a bit of jittery lag when scrolling at times, too. In the Series 3, Apple debuted the S3 processor which promises a 70 percent performance increase over the S2 processor found in the previous iteration.

Like the Series 2, however, the Apple Watch Series 3 features a built-in GPS, so you’re still able to log workouts even when out of service range. The Versa allows users to leave their phone at home, as well but without the built-in GPS, the accuracy of its distance-tracking suffers. To a further extent, to get the full Versa experience, carrying a smartphone is recommended — though, we found it to still perform well whenever we decided to leave our phone at home.

The Apple Series 3 smartwatch also comes with optional SIM card compatibility and LTE cellular connectivity — something the Versa lacks entirely. Although you have to pay extra to utilize the phone’s cellular connectivity — and it’s currently only supported by EE — in the future, the Apple Watch Series 3 could be able to replace your smartphone entirely with the capacity to make and receive calls, send messages, and stream music without being tethered to an iPhone via Bluetooth.

Apple’s decision to include a built-in GPS sensor gives its watch a massive advantage.

Since it debuted, the Apple Watch’s Watch OS4 has put a big emphasis on fitness tracking. To Fitbit’s credit, it’s probably the most well-known and synonymous brand in the fitness tracking industry, so it comes as no surprise that Fitbit OS 2.0 is chockfull of fitness data and capability. In terms of smartwatch functionality, the Versa allows you to view alerts from your smartphone including text messages, app notifications, phone calls, and calendar events — much of which the Apple Watch also offers.

However, the one aspect of the Versa we weren’t terribly fond of was the fact only Android users have the ability to send replies to text messages and messenger apps. As of now, iPhone users aren’t currently able to do the same — although developers are working to address this issue.

Considering the fact Fitbit only recently made the Versa available for pre-order, it’s not surprising that its feature set lacks in comparison to the Apple Watch. Though, despite this, Apple’s decision to include a built-in GPS sensor gives its watch a massive advantage.

Winner: Apple Watch Series 3 

Design

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Fitbit thankfully made a few much-needed improvements to the formerly blocky, masculine shape of the Ionic. The Versa features curved edges and more aggressive corners, designed specifically to look better on those with slimmer wrists — something women will especially appreciate. As we mentioned in our review, from a distance, it’s easy to mistake the Versa for the Apple Watch. With regards to its weight, Fitbit claims it as the lightest metal smartwatch in the United States to date — even with its larger size.

Fitbit thankfully made a few much-needed improvements to the formerly blocky, masculine shape of the Ionic.

Though it’s currently only available in light silver or pink, Fitbit does offer plenty of different bands to accessorize it as you see fit including silicone, metal, and Horween leather options. There’s even a bonus special edition of the watch which comes with its own woven material straps in addition to the standard plastic strap, making it easy to swap when you exercise.

The Apple Watch Series 3 is identical in shape to its predecessors, with the exception of the 4G LTE colored dot on the Digital Crown. It’s a touch thicker than previous models but while wearing it, you’ll hardly notice. The Apple Watch Series 3 is available in gold, silver, space gray aluminum, and space black stainless steel cases. There is also a gray ceramic Apple Watch edition, as well as a new Sport Loop with a wraparound band.

In terms of the display, both the Fitbit Versa and the Series 3 feature a screen with 1000 nits of brightness, making for easy outdoor viewing and vibrant colors. The Apple Watch Series 3 has a slight edge over the Versa in terms of pixel density but it’s so slight you’ll hardly notice. In terms of buttons, the Versa features three hardware buttons alongside its touchscreen while the Apple Watch Series 3 has a more elegant rotating Digital Crown. Both the Versa and the Apple Watch Series 3 are water resistant to 50 meters.

While Fitbit definitely made the greatest improvements of the two companies, the Apple Watch Series 3 slightly edges out Fitbit thanks to its advantage in pixel density and its more elegant bezel design.

Winner: Apple Watch Series 3

Battery life

Brenda Stolyar/Digital Trends

While it’s been nearly neck and neck in terms of specs and design, when it comes to battery life, the Versa dominates. Fitbit included a 145mAh battery which provides for more than four days of battery life, which is nearly double what the Apple Watch Series 3 can offer. On paper, the Apple Watch Series 3 is said to last up to 18 hours but Apple provided information involving more detailed scenarios. The Apple Watch Series 3 LTE model gets roughly three hours of talk time when paired with an iPhone, lasts around ten hours during indoor workouts, and streams music for ten hours when paired with an iPhone via Bluetooth.

Although the Versa doesn’t offer built-in GPS or cellular connectivity, in terms of sheer battery life, it’s clearly superior. It’s especially useful for outdoor enthusiasts, for example, if you want to track your fitness on a weekend backpacking trip and don’t want to bring along a charger.

Winner: Fitbit Versa

Pricing and availability

Brenda Stolyar/Digital Trends

The Fitbit Versa is currently available for pre-order for $200 while the Fitbit Versa Special Edition — including Fitbit Pay compatibility — will be priced at $230 on the company’s website, with global availability starting in April. The Apple Watch Series 3 base model with GPS costs $330 which is a whopping $100 more than Fitbit’s Versa Special Edition. The Apple Watch with GPS and cellular costs $400 and is available on Apple’s website or through various retailers. Although the Apple Watch boasts added features, built-in GPS, and cellular functionality, the feature-rich and impressive Fitbit Versa’s cheaper price tag is hard to ignore.

Winner: Fitbit Versa

Overall winner: Apple Watch Series 3

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

While we’ve only just scratched the surface in terms of what Fitbit’s Versa is capable of, our first impressions show that the company crafted a powerful product with smart features and a design which clearly rivals the Apple Watch Series 3. Its battery life and affordable price tag serve as icing on the cake — but we can’t get past the lack of built-in GPS.

In terms of fitness features, we see comparable similarities between the two models, highlighted by the fact both offer an accelerometer, heart rate monitor, and altimeter. The Fitbit Versa made an additional point to appeal to women with unique female health tracking, which allows females to track their menstrual cycles. However, the Apple Watch Series 3 provides for many of the same features, lacking only an official sleep tracker.

Where the Apple Watch Series 3 truly stands out concerns its apps and functionality. Apple has had more time to build a library of apps while the Fitbit Versa only has a limited selection currently available. Apple apps range from productivity to games and shopping, all accessible right on your wrist. With time this is bound to change but for now, Apple boasts a wider smartwatch functionality, allowing it to just barely edge out the Versa.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Here is everything you need to know about the Fitbit Versa
• Wear OS vs. Apple Watch: Which one will ‘wow’ your wrist?
• The time is right to take advantage of these Apple Watch deals for April 2018
• Fitbit Ionic: Adidas edition will be available on March 19
• Fitbit Versa review

Space Nation Navigator will help guide you to become an astronaut

App Attack is a weekly series where we search the App Store and Google Play Store for the best apps of the week. Check out App Attack every Sunday for the latest.

Accomplishing the dream of becoming an astronaut always sounds realistic as a kid — until you grow up. But this week, we have an app that could possibly bring you one step closer to space, even as an adult.

Space Nation Navigator — currently available on Android with an iOS version coming soon — is an astronaut training app filled with a wide range of activities from mind games to physical fitness. In collaboration with NASA, Finnish startup Space Nation hopes to give users insight into what it takes to be an astronaut through a fun mobile app.

The app itself is separated into four sections — Base, Missions, Profile, and Shop — which you can switch back and forth between. Under Base, you’ll find space related content you can read through or listening too, ranging from articles to podcasts. It’s also where you’ll see your own score such as weekly rank, weekly points, and level of training. Below your own score, there’s a leaderboard you can reference to see the top ranked players of the week along with the all time highest scores. Each week your score gets cleared in order to give you the opportunity to score even higher next time around.

If you’re wondering why scores are so important, it’s what defines the prize you could potentially win. After three 12-week cycles, you could be one out of 100 trainees chosen to participate in a training camp. Out of those 100, 12 will then be chosen to experience a 10-week astronaut training camp located in Iceland, where one winner will then receive an expenses-paid trip to space.

The fun begins under the Missions section, where you can play all different types of games to help boost your score. At the top, there’s a “Weekly Adventure,” which brings you through a series of different games and activities to complete. These are meant to cover a full range of abilities whether it’s a challenge for your brain or your body. You can also choose to do separate missions one by one if you want to jump between different skills to test out. In order to complete the weekly adventure, you have to beat each mission.

At first, I thought the games would be extremely easy to get through but I was definitely mistaken — they’re tough. While I didn’t have the opportunity to test out the workout activities, I did try all of the mind missions which made my brain feel like I was attempting to solve Sudoku puzzles on repeat. Along the way, it definitely gets easier as you continue to become accustomed to how each game works.

The one I found the most challenging along the way is called “Repair the Wayfarer,” where you have to save your ship after it was struck. This involves multi-tasking super quickly as you designate the right people to fix each part of it based on their expertise, before time runs out. It might be tough to narrow in on your strategy at first, but after playing a few more times I managed to move on from that level without — barely — breaking a sweat.

To actually break a sweat, you can participate in body missions that you’ll also be able to simply incorporate into your daily exercise. For example, one mission requires you to run as the app alerts you when you’ve reached a specific checkpoint. It also uses GPS to track your runs along the way.

One game that definitely gave me a glimpse into what it must be like trying to exist as normally as possible in space was called “Lunch Anyone.” This is where you have to cook meals from solids, pastes, and liquids without contaminating them. On the side of the screen, you’ll have different recipes to follow and put together. While that sounds simple, it’s tough to do with zero gravity as all your ingredients float around.

There’s also quizzes you can take — I specifically took one that tests your language skills and another for cultural understanding. There were questions that tested my knowledge of space terms but also how I should act if I were aboard a space ship with other astronauts. As you answer each one, you’ll receive a brief fact or explanation underneath to help you learn as you go. That way, even if you don’t pass the first time, you’ll know the correct answer for next time.

To keep track of all your progress, there’s a designated Profile section you can reference periodically. It’ll list your weekly points, weekly rank, and all time rank. It’s also where you can keep track of all the different badges you’ve unlocked as you explore 13 training topics.

Space Nation Navigator is free to play, but there are microtransactions included — and advertisements that pop up every once in a while. It’s important to take into account that if you decide to re-try the missions, you’ll have to spend the coins you collect throughout the game. You can purchase more through the Shop section, which — depending on how many you purchase — can range from $1 to $170.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Prep for today’s SpaceX launch with USA Today’s AR app
• Astronaut training app could earn you a real-life trip into space
• How to free up space on your iPhone and give yourself room to grow
• 12 tips to free up storage space on your Android phone or tablet
• Facebook Lite takes social media back to the basics

Looking to spice up your Facebook Stories? Try 3D drawing, a new AR effect

It’s not just Instagram that’s competing against Snapchat — now parent company Facebook is getting into the action as well. As originally reported by TechCrunch, you’ll soon be able to take a photo of your surroundings, annotate them using AR technology, and turn them into Instagram Boomerang GIFs, all using your Facebook Camera. Because if Facebook has learned anything from photo-sharing apps, it’s that folks love to create and share their own content.

“We wanted to give people an easy way to create with augmented reality and draw in the world around them” John Barnett, a Facebook Camera Product Manager, said. The company is calling the new feature “3D drawing.”  If you haven’t received the feature yet, you should find it in your Facebook Camera capabilities within the next few weeks.

Much like other augmented drawing features, you’ll be able to hold up your phone and effectively draw on the outside world, even when you move your camera, your scribbles will stay in place. Think of it as ephemeral graffiti that is visible to you and you alone. You can even add your annotations before you start recording a video, so that you can create a big reveal moment as you move your camera from your boring old window to the AR doodles on your wall. And moving forward, Facebook is looking to add additional brushes — as it stands, you only have a few pastel colors to choose from.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s technology must “understand the corners and objects in the room to create a 3D spec.” Only then will it be able to accurately superimpose your drawings onto various surfaces in a realistic way. And since you can turn these drawings into GIFs, Facebook is obviously hoping that its users will begin making viral content to send back and forth.

The social media giant has been experimenting with augmented reality technology for quite some time now — AR effects were first launched at last year’s F8 in April, and more recently, the company has introduced AR effects that are tied to real posters or QR codes. Of course, Snapchat has been playing in the AR world for quite some time, and as Facebook continues to battle a growing number of social media companies for dominance, it’s looking for new ways to engage its users.

Editors’ Recommendations

• How to use Instagram
• Escape reality with the best augmented reality apps for Android and iOS
• How do people really use apps? We asked an expert
• Facebook brings AR features to ‘Ready Player One,’ ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ posters
• Snapchat now uses the iPhone X’s TrueDepth Camera to make better filters

A brilliant, devious way to stop telemarketing calls once and for all

Is there any group more persistent than telemarketers? Like the dogged protagonist of a romantic comedy, once a telemarketing company has you in its sights, it won’t stop chasing you until you agree to buy some product you have no interest in. In a time when people tend to carry smartphones everywhere, telemarketers can strike you anytime, and are seemingly impervious to disinterest or outright anger.

Tell them you’re not interested? They’ll call back. Ask them to take your number off their list? They might… or they might not, and call back at a later date.

As persistent as telemarketers may be, you do have options. You can register your number with the National Do Not Call registry, though this will only deter sales calls, and even then, shady businesses may still call you. Thankfully, there are a few other things you can try.

Try using the number-blocking function on your smartphone

On an iPhone, go to Settings, then Phone. Under Calls, tap Call Blocking & Identification.

On Android, open the phone app and click the three dots in the upper-right corner. Tap Settings, select Block Numbers, and enter the numbers you wish to block.

Even if you block a telemarketing company’s number, chances are they have plenty more to call you from. As long as they know that there is a living, breathing human on the other end — one who could potentially give in to their sales pitch — they’ll keep making attempts. The best thing to do is convince the telemarketers that your number doesn’t work. But how?

To stop telemarketers once and for all, trick them

Believe it or not, you can fool telemarketers by playing a message that says your number is not in service. To do so, you’ll merely need a recording of one of those disconnected phone messages, which you can then play whenever a telemarketer calls.

First, buy a recorder — preferably one you can plug into a headphone jack, so as to record the “not in service” message with better clarity. Afterward, find a “not in service” message, which you can easily do online, and record said message.

When a telemarketer calls you, answer (preferably in a quiet place), but don’t say anything. Play the recording, and the telemarketer on the other end, be they person or robocaller, should determine that your phone number is not in service, and remove it from their call list.

Granted, you’ll have to keep the recording on-hand for whenever you get a spam call, but if it works, the telemarketers will give up on you. Besides, you may also feel a sense of glee bamboozling the corporations that have long plagued you.

David Cogen — a regular contributor here at Digital Trends — runs TheUnlockr.com, a popular tech blog that focuses on tech news, tips and tricks, and the latest tech. You can also find him over at Twitter discussing the latest tech trends.

‘Sea of Thieves’ updates will focus on new maps, not perks

Ask a Sea of Thieves player for complaints and they’ll likely have one common theme: there’s not enough to do. You can only dig up so many treasures on the same islands. And Rare knows it. The developer has detailed content plans for the first several months after launch, including a shift in priorities. While Rare had talked about adding pets and ship captaincy early on, those features are “on the back burner” as the company focuses on adding more raw gameplay, including maps, enemies and events.

The first wave of new material arrives in May, including The Hungering Deep (which focuses on a “new AI threat” and a special event) as well as weekly events that bring “new mechanics” and rewards. In the summer, you’ll get both a new ship type through Cursed Sails as well as a new region in Forsaken Shores. Both of those later updates will once again toss in new gameplay dynamics, AI enemies and rewards.

Rare was careful to warn that its plans would remain “fluid,” but maintained that all new content will be free. It doesn’t want to split the player base, and that means ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

This won’t necessarily change your mind if you weren’t already inclined to swashbuckling. However, it’s an acknowledgment of a recurring problem we’ve seen with games like Destiny 2: when the experience centers around cooperative play, you need a steady stream of new content to keep players interested. A good underlying concept will only go so far if gamers have no reason to come back.

Source: Sea of Thieves

Hulu renews Sarah Silverman’s talk show for a second season

Hulu might not be as committed to streaming talk shows as Netflix, but its fledgling efforts are paying off. The company has renewed Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America for a second season, with the 11-episode run beginning on September 6th. While there aren’t any clues as to what’s on deck, it’s safe to presume the show will continue to focus on the cultural and political landscape of the US, using chats with notable figures (such as Roxane Gay and Patton Oswalt) as a hook.

It’s not certain exactly how well I Love You, America and other internet-only talk shows have fared, since the services involved rarely provide viewer numbers. Chelsea Handler said she ended her Netflix show to focus on upcoming elections. The allure to Hulu, Netflix and others is fairly self-evident, however. Weekly talk shows give you a reason to come back on a regular basis. That, in turn, may keep you subscribed where you’d otherwise be tempted to jump ship.

“I am fundamentally changed with each episode, each interview, each encounter. By the end of this I will likely be a butterfly. Or a really colorful moth.” -@sarahkatesilverman

New episodes of @ILYAmerica arrive Sept. 6, only on Hulu https://t.co/zZe8Tq31x6

— hulu (@hulu) April 15, 2018

Source: Hulu (Twitter), Hollywood Reporter

How to send webpages from Google Chrome to your Android phone

Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world, and there’s a high chance it’s your browser of choice on both your PC and your phone. But what do you do if you want to send links between your phone and your computer? Here’s our guide on how to send webpages from Google Chrome on your desktop to your Android device, and then back again. Now you’ll be able to pick up right where you left off, no matter what device you’re using.

Before we start, you’re going to need Google Chrome installed on both your PC and your smartphone. Head over to the Chrome download page on the web, and the Chrome for Android page on the Google Play Store if you haven’t already. Download both of these, and sign in to your Google account.

Using Google’s inbuilt syncing options

Google unfortunately shut down the Send to Mobile Chrome extension a few years ago, and there’s no native support to send a single page across platforms, even if both devices are running Google Chrome. But that doesn’t mean all is lost. Tucked away inside the Settings options are a couple of little tools that should help you out.

First of all, make sure that your devices are synced to your Google account. On the PC, hit the three vertical dots in the top right, then click Settings to open your settings menu. From there, tap Sync to open your sync settings. On an Android device you’ll open your Chrome settings the same way, but once you’re in the options menu, tap your Google account’s name, then hit Sync on the next menu to access the sync options.

From the sync options you can change your synchronization settings however you like, so if you don’t want your passwords to be remembered between devices, then just untick Sync all and untick Passwords. For now, have everything ticked with the Sync all button, and you can change whatever you like later.

Using recent pages

So you’re in the middle of reading a very interesting article — perhaps on a certain tech website — but suddenly you have to drop everything and zoom out of the house to get to an appointment. Now you’re sat in a waiting room bored, wishing you could quickly refind that article on your phone.

Thankfully, you can. On your Android device, open Chrome, then tap the three dots in the top-right corner. Then hit Recent tabs to get a list of the last tabs open, listed under each device. Just tap the page you want, and you’re away. If you’ve chosen to keep your history synced, then you can also access your full history from here too, making it even easier to get back to whatever you were up to before. Keep in mind it won’t track Incognito Mode. 

The other way around is just as simple. To access a page you’ve had open on your Android device, again click the three dots in the top-right corner of Chrome. Then navigate down the menu to History and scroll down until you find the listing for your Android device. Keep in mind that the history title may be marked with the device’s model number, so it may not be immediately recognizable.

Using your bookmarks

It’s probably been a while since you bookmarked anything. The venerable bookmark seemed to be all the rage when the internet was fresh and new, but now it seems that we all collectively use about five different websites, making the idea of bookmarks something we sometimes remember to do, rather than being a necessity. But they’re still fantastically useful when you need to quickly swap between devices.

To make sure this works, you’ll need to have your bookmarks synced between devices. If you left your sync settings set to Sync all then you’re fine, but if you turned off Bookmarks then you’ll need to be sure to go back and flip that back on.

To bookmark a specific site on the PC, you can either click the star to the right of the address bar, or press Ctrl+D. A pop-up will ask you to choose a bookmark folder, but then hit Done and you’re finished. To then access that bookmark on your Android device, open your Chrome browser, then — you guessed it — tap the three dots in the right-corner. Hit Bookmarks, then select the folder you placed the bookmark in earlier, and tap your bookmark to open it up.

If you’re doing this the other way around, hit the three dots in the top-right, then tap the little star icon at the top of the menu. Then go back to your computer, hit the three dots in the top-right, then navigate to Bookmarks > Mobile bookmarks, then find your site in the list. The Android version of Chrome saves bookmarks to Mobile bookmarks by default, but you can move bookmarks in Android by tapping the (now blue) star in Chrome to edit or remove it.

Sending pages with third-party apps

Chrome’s inbuilt options work well for people who don’t need to use the service often, but if you’re constantly changing between devices and need something a little more powerful, then something a little more heavy-duty might serve you better. We’ve covered a bunch of the best read-it later apps that can work for this, but we’re also going to highlight how you can use Pushbullet to share links between devices.

Pushbullet is a service that delivers notifications and shares links between a Chrome extension and an Android app, and it’s extremely good if you want to reply to text messages on your computer or be immediately alerted to phone notifications on your PC. For this guide, we’re just going to focus on the sharing feature, which shares links between your devices.

To use it, you’ll need to download the Pushbullet Chrome extension and the Android app so that both devices can talk to each other. Then sign up to Pushbullet — you can do so with your Google account to save time.

Setting Pushbullet up

Installing the Chrome extension is easy, and as long as you’ve signed up and signed in the Pushbullet website, the extension should log you in without much issue.

Setting up the Android app is a little bit more intensive, and requires allowing the app access to a couple of permissions on your phone. Don’t worry, it’s safe and the app needs those permissions to send you certain types of notifications. Following the setup instructions shouldn’t be too time-consuming and should have you up and running in no time.

Using Pushbullet

Once you’re set up, it’s time to send your first link. From the page you want to send, hit the Pushbullet icon in the top-right corner of Chrome on your desktop — it should be a little white bullet with a green background. From there, you’ll be able to hit the send arrow to fire off your link. Your link will then appear in the chat-style stream, and you’ll receive a notification on your phone that you’ve received a link.

Pushbullet is set up to send to all linked devices by default, but you can change that by clicking the little bubble marked All Devices and selecting a specific device.

Sending a link from your phone to your PC is a similar process. Open the page you want to send, tap the three dots in the top right, and then hit Share. Select the Pushbullet icon from the sharing options given to you — you may need to scroll through the list. Once the Pushbullet popup has opened, tap either the Chrome icon or the All Devices icon to send to everything. If you have a Chrome window already open then the page will automatically open — otherwise you can access the link through your Pushbullet extension at a later date.

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