Whatsapp Adds Filters, Albums And Much More New Features To June Update

WhatsApp has introduced a slew of new features to the latest version of the app for both iOS and Android. Most of the features have to do with the photos and camera features within the app. The new features can be found in the 2.17.219 and 2.17.30 versions of the app for Android and iOS respectively.

Here are the new features:

Quicker Replies : 

Reply to a message by swiping right on it.

With this iOS version of the app, you can now reply to a message by just swiping right on that message. This is a lot quicker when compared to the previous versions of the app where one had to long press the message to reply to it.

Photo Albums : 

Photos are now grouped in WhatsApp

This iOS only feature groups multiple photos sent together into a single album. This features saves valuable real estate on the screen and lets people see more on the screen. 

Photo Album is shown on clicking the image group.

On tapping the album, a new Album view is opened where the images are displayed in a facebook styled linear fashion.

Image Filters : 

Filters can now be added to images!

WhatsApp for iOS now lets people add filters to images before sending them! Filters can be added by swiping up from the ‘Swipe up for filters’ text after selecting the image to be sent. Only five filters,  Pop, B&W, Cool, Chrome and Film are available currently.

Easier Gallery Access : 

In the android version of the app, the entire photo gallery can now be accessed by swiping up on the horizontal image list! This provides an easy, gesture based method to access the entire photo gallery of the phone!

Multiple Statuses in One Go : 

Again an Android Exclusive(for now), WhatsApp now allows users to upload multiple image statuses in one go. This can be done by opening the gallery(Feature 4) and selecting multiple images just like sending multiple images to a contact.

With the recent update, WhatsApp seems to be making a shift from click-based interaction to a more natural gesture-based interaction model! All these features can be obtained by updating to the latest version of WhatsApp for iOS(2.17.30) and the latest Beta for Android(2.17.219). 

Most Useful Android Apps That Google Play Store Doesn’t Have

Google Play Store, the largest app market in the world with millions of app collections and hundreds of apps and games added everyday is one of the best places to find the app you need for your phone. 

Be it any category like a camera app, a compass, a flash light, you can find it here. But the thing with Play store is that, due to its strict privacy policy and content management rules, it doesn’t allow certain apps to be uploaded to its market.

You may ask, but how come it was most recently infected by over 40 apps with the Judy Malware when it’s policies and rules are so strong? Sssshhhhh! 

Anyway, as I am saying even though Google Play store has a ton of useful apps in every possible category imaginable, it doesn’t mean that you should not look beyond that, there are other app markets in the world besides Google like the Amazon app store, Aptoide apps, Mobogenie to name a few.

There is also a whole new world of APKs where you can download an app from a private website where an ambitious developer who loves android and smart phones and in a quest to add more and more abilities to the beloved Android operating system is working hard to upload apps that can do things which cannot be done using the apps available in the Google Play Store.

Since these APKs of several useful apps are out there in the wild among terrabytes of other content in the internet and some of us may not have the patience or the time to go through a massive amount of websites to find that one perfect app to satisfy our needs, I have taken the liberty to bring some of the most useful apps from the lot to the light so that you can also know about them and benefit from them, as I do. 

Hey, infact this website was started for that very own purpose, so be sure to check out some of our other posts to find apps that may seem interesting to you. Okay shameless self promotion aside, let’s dive into the topic and know about the apps I am talking about for the past few hundred words..

Snaptube

I bet you can guess what the app is for from its name. Snaptube is a Youtube downloader app, but unlike other similar apps like Vidmate or Videoder, Snaptube not only downloads videos from Youtube, you can also use it for downloading videos from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, A website you are browsing, Reddit or pretty much anywhere you find a video.

Also, unlike other apps you do not need to copy the link and open the app every time to download a video. Instead, you can either click on the share button and choose snap tube from the option, or if you enable the floating button, snaptube will automatically display a button on the screen when you copy a link, thus enabling you to download a video without leaving the app!

You can also browse inside of the Snaptube app by signing into your Facebook, Youtube or Instagram accounts and then simultaneously download the videos from there, without having to use separate apps for each purpose. 

Of all the best things Snaptube does it is also completely free, you can buy the pro version to remove ads though.

Viper4Android

Technically Viper4Android is not just an app, it comes with a flashable zip file, which you have to flash from your custom recovery to enable the app. 

Viper4Android is an audio enhancement mod which improves your smartphones audio performance and quality by modifying the parameters of your hardware to suit your need.

You can use the app to improve the base of your phone, enable surround and 3D audio while using your headphones and can also add Dolby atmos sound effects to your device speakers. 

It also comes with an auditory protection system which allows you to listen to songs for a longer time without any stress to your ears. Well, obviously the quality of your headphone matters.

Adaway

I think that if there is one thing all the android users would unanimously agree is that we all hate ads and wants to get rid of them. 

While some apps allow the users to remove apps by paying some money or buying a different premium version of the apps, not all apps do that. 

And there are also ads while browsing the web and unlike the web browsers in Computers, the built in chrome browser in android do not come with an ad blocker option unfortunately.

You may argue that we can download other apps with the ad blocking functionality like Opera or UC Browser, but since Chrome comes pre installed on all android device and it is not possible to uninstall it, it would be better if we had the option to block the ads on it. And yes, Adaway does exactly that.

Once you install the app and then download the latest updates and scripts using it, all you have to do is to restart your phone and voilà, all the ads from all the apps installed on your phone are magically gone! 

Though you need not flash any zip files for Adaway to work, it is recommended that you have a rooted android phone for it to work without any issues.

WiFi Kill

We have all been in a situation when some unwanted guests or visitors at your home, starts using your WiFi without your liking and proceeds to drain out your limited bandwidth. Sometimes you just want to turn off your WiFi to prevent them from using it or just to annoy your little brother or sister. But unfortunately you too can’t use the WiFi if you did this.

But what if there is a way to only disconnect their mobile devices from your WiFi without even having to access their phone? Yes it is possible with WiFi kill and all you need is the app and a rooted android phone and you are good to go.

Just download the app from the link and then once you install it scan for the devices that are connected to your WiFi, make sure to identify your device and then the device you want to disconnect from your connection. 

Now just click on it and then proceed to select the kill option. That’s it, now you can use your internet in peace, all alone.

Feel free to comment below if you have any doubts regarding how to use these apps or the steps involved and also if you know any other app that is not available in the Google Play Store, don’t hesitate to comment! 

Share this with your friends, especially those with iOs devices to let them know that what android users can do and what iPhone users cannot!

How to minimize time spent on your smart phone by knowing your usage pattern

The typical day of a smart phone user would be to, wake up, start using  the phone, sleep. Smartphones have invaded our everyday life so much that we spend more time with them than we do with our friends and family.

Though sometime it is necessary and done for productive purposes, most of the time spent using smartphones or to either use popular social messaging apps like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp or to play addictive games like clash of clans according to recent statistics by Flurry which say that an average user spends almost 5 hours everyday with his smartphone.

So, how to cut down your smartphone usage and to actually spend your time productively rather than killing it by killing the clans or the like buttons. One way is to travel to the Himalayas and then throw your phone from there and come back home. 

But since it is a lot of time and money consuming process and also you may need your phone for making calls or doing some other productive tasks like checking your mail or the time, I am going to suggest you a simple alternative which is neither time consuming nor requires you to book a flight ticket.

Ironically, to stop using apps for a long time, you need the help of an app. Time used, an android app developed by Time factory helps you to cut down your daily time spent with your smartphone and helps you to increase your productivity.

What it does is that, once you install and give the usage access to the app, it starts detecting and analysing your usage pattern and then shows you the time you spent using every single app on your phone. 

For example, If you use Facebook for 23 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes in the evening and then played a game for 1 hour it will record all the data and then show you the usage pattern in the form of a chart or a graph.

You may not worry about the app consuming your battery or occupying your RAM as it is running in the background all day. This is because the app is very light in size and since it also comes with no ads it is highly unlikely that it will affect your device performance or your battery life.

You can also go a step further in productivity and then use the Time Lock, another app from time factory which locks your phone for the specific time interval set by you so that you cannot use any of your apps or games during this time period. However you can place and receive calls based on your preference.

Be sure to check these apps and comment below your suggestions. Share this post with your friends or family whom you think should stop using their phone and start living their life!

How To Get Notification Bubbles For All Your Notifications Like Facebook Messenger

Remember the app by Facebook that allows you to send messages to your friends and post stories? No, not Instagram. No, not Whatsapp. It is the Messenger app that Facebook forces on you to download a separate app that consumes hundreds of megabytes just like the Facebook app, yes the Facebook Messenger. 

Though it occupies a lot of your storage and RAM it has one really good thing and surprisingly it was not copied from Snapchat. It is the notification bubbles for your messages also known as chat heads.

These bubbles appear on the left or right corner of your phone and allows you to read and reply to your messages from any app, without having to actually open and enter the messenger app. So it kind of took multitasking to the next level. 

But unlike Facebook Messenger no other android third party app or system app have added this bubble notification feature. 

So as it always happens an enthusiastic android user have developed an app called Bubblefication which apparently, as the name suggests, bubblefies notifications sent by each and every app installed on your phone.

So whenever you get a new notification, Bubblefication will display a notification bubble at the corner of your phone, in the colour and size you like. You can even select which notifications you want to display and which you don’t. 

The app also allows you to view long messages which is normally not visible in the notification panel and you can even reply to and view messages in fullscreen activites like when you are playing a game or watching a movie. And the best part about this app is that it is completely free and has no ads!

Bubblefication also shows the history of your notifications so that you can views those old messages or alerts you dismissed. 

How to setup the app

Step 1:

Install the app from this playstore link.

Step 2:

Open the app and then enable the notification access permission to allow the app to detect and read your notification.

Step 3:

Now select and deselect which apps you want or don’t want to show the notifications.

Step 4:

Finally you can now customise the features of the app according to your preference like the colour, size and position of the bubble. 

You can also choose what action to perform when the bubble is clicked and whether or not to display the bubbles in the lockscreen.

Be Sure to check out the app to improve the multitasking abilities of your phone and comment your suggestions!

How To Use Android Instant Apps Without Installing Them In Your Phone

Google announced a few months back that they are bringing instant apps to their Android operating system. Instant apps are a nifty little feature where you click on a shared or a posted link online, and then a small snippet of code that is required for the functioning of the app gets downloaded allowing you to use the significant part of the app without even installing it on your phone.

As we already said in our previous post, Instant apps have a lot of benefits like saving your precious storage, using apps with large sizes without even downloading them, especially useful in situations where you need to use an app quickly, but you don’t have sufficient data or speed to do that. You can read more about the advantages and working of Instant apps here.

However, as remarkable as the instant apps may sound, Google seems to take its own time in rolling them out to the extensive public user base. So, as it always happens an impatient and an enthusiastic developer, this time from India has taken the liberty to bring the instant apps version of popular favorite Android apps to his fellow Android enthusiasts. 

A recent startup which goes by the name AppBrowzer have released and Android app of the same name which allows the users to use popular Android apps as instant apps, without having to install or download them to your phone.

Unlike Google, which is planning on developing instant apps only for big developers who are enrolling in the program, AppBrowzer has developed instant apps for widely popular Android apps in every category. 

Some of them include Uber, Amazon, IMDB, Quora, Paytm, CNN and many more apps out there, All you have to do is to install a single app, AppBrowzer on your phone and then voila, you can now use multiple resource-hungry and storage consuming apps without having to spend a byte of your storage.

All you have to do is to choose your  favorite app or an app you want to use only for a single time, like booking an Uber or using Amazon to enjoy the app only offers but you are too reluctant to download those apps just for a single time usage.

AppBrowzer then loads the app you have selected and sure enough it provides the same experience you get when you actually download and install the app from the Google Play store, except for this time it is much quicker and less space consuming, not to mention saving hundreds of megabytes of your precious limited data.

Feel free to comment on your experience with AppBrowzer and post suggestions or requests below if any! You can also visit the website of the developer for more information!

Facebook For Android Adds A New Videos Tab As An Attempt To Increase Revenue

Facebook with its recent decision of placing ads on popular videos has been concentrating on ways to make its massive user base to view as many videos as they can. In an attempt to achieve that Facebook has been constantly adding various features to its app. 

Last week Facebook introduced the option to view its videos in a picture in picture mode wherein you can play the video in the background and perform other tasks. We also got a feature to save the videos to watch them later and unskippable ads played during the middle of a video.

This week, Facebook has added a yet another new feature to its Android app, a separate tab for videos. This videos tab is now placed alongside you newsfeed and friends tab which could be accessed by swiping to the right. 

It only displays the popular videos and videos from your friends and the pages you have liked. Though it may seem useful and time-consuming to find all videos at a single place, It won’t be much efficient till Facebook exclusively shows videos only in this tab of their app.

Because currently the videos you see in the videos tab also appears in your main newsfeed thus cluttering your newsfeed with videos you have already watched. 

So, unless Facebook makes the videos tabs exclusive it doesn’t seem much of an innovation rather than an attempt to tempt its users to watch more videos by which Facebook can make more money.

United Airlines Based Android Game Removes Passengers From Flight

United airlines faced a worldwide bashing last week after allegedly forcing a passenger out of their flight by pulling and dragging him all the way from his seat to the door. Apparently, they were overbooked and wanted volunteers to get out of their flight based on the history of their relationship with United Airlines. Even though the officials have apologized for this raging activity, the world does not seem to be convinced which is evident from various social media memes, troll videos and the recent addition to this list an android game.

Remove Airline Passenger is a new game added to the Android Play Store this week and it already has thousands of downloads and a rating of 4.7 showing its popularity. The appearance of the gameplay is designed to look like classic 8-bit games like Pacman that appeared during the beginning of the month on Google maps which was an April fools day prank from Google.

The game is similar to numerous endless running games out there where the user constantly keeps running in a dynamically changing environment facing various obstacles throughout his way. But to add to the fun, the game allows you to throw the passengers out of the airline where you are running. You have to tap on the passengers who are seated on both sides of the plane while you are running to throw them out and the longer you run the more intense and difficult the game gets.

The game also keeps track of your high scores and lets you share them with your friends. Even though the game is highly fun and entertaining I am pretty sure that the officials at the United Airlines would disagree with me. Well, it is definitely Game Over for them. Happy throwing!

You can watch the gameplay video right here!

Chicken Scream Is A New Game For Android And iOS Based On Voice Recognition

Android, as we all know, is one of the largest operating systems in the world with an ever-growing App Store which has over a million apps, and hundreds of apps and game are flowing in every day.

Since Google is not so strict and not as strict as Apple about the apps or games that are uploaded to its play store, you can see a lot of weird and sometimes useless apps floating around.

Though this may seem a disadvantage it has imposed a freedom on the developers who can now think of anything or develop any idea into an app or a game and since the play store has already got a billion users, if you hit the right stone with your product idea you are sure to strike gold and go viral.

With last years Pokemon GO and the new Mario Run, the Android world have seen all kind of unique games of viral with the augmented reality and the Nintendo based classic. 

The recent game added to the list of viral and unique games is the Chicken Scream, a voice recognition based sideways endless running game released this week.

Chicken scream, unlike the myriad of front and side endless running games out there, relies on an entirely different approach. 

Here, instead of the traditional automatic running and tap using your fingers to jump over or the slide under the obstacles on your way all you have to do is to talk, sing or scream and the game will recognize it accordingly and perform the corresponding actions.

Yes, you read that right, you never have to touch your phone or even hold it to play this game, just place it on a table and start screaming you should be good to go. The game allows the core actions like running and jumping to be carried out once the user talks or screams respectively.

As of now, it has been only a week since the game’s launch so the graphics are not breathtaking and the sensitivity is also weak at times like the chicken would jump only if you scream above your normal voice level.

But given the time available for the improvement and the growing user base we may expect better graphics and improved sensitivity in the upcoming versions of Chicken Scream. 

Until then, have fun screaming at your phones or open the game when your partner or your boss is screaming at you, my folks!

You can download the game from here!

Make Your Home Button Long Press Action To Do Anything But Launch Google Assistant

If you own an Android phone and are in social media, then you probably have known by this time that Google is rolling out its Google assistant which was designed to run exclusively on their pixel phones to all of the Android smartphones running the Android versions of marshmallow and nougat.

This means that your classic long press action on your phone’s home button will cease to launch the now on tap function from Google. Instead, it will initiate the voice-based personal assistant from Google to which you can communicate only via your voice. 

As impressive and nifty the Google assistant may sound it is sometimes annoying and also what’s the point in wasting your home button for launching an app when you can already start it with your voice by saying “Ok Google.”

So what if you don’t want to launch the Google assistant on long pressing your home button? What if you want to assign some other more useful action to it like launching an app you frequently use or visiting your daily website or switch on your flashlight or even call one of your contacts?

You may ask, “yes it sounds kind of cool but how am I supposed to alter something just android assigned to by default?”. Dude, we are talking about Android here, and in Android, almost anything is possible just like replacing the long press action of your home button to anything you want once you follow the below steps.

Step 1:

Install the Home bot app from the Google Play store.

Step 2:

Open the app and then click on the Enable option from the top. Nothing to worry, it is just the core functionality of the app which replaces your favorite option instead of Google assistant from launching when you long press the home button.

Step 3:

Once you click on, enable you will be taken to the assist and voice input settings page where you will find the assist app option at the top. Click on the gear icon next to it.

Step 4:

Now a screen will pop up with the list of apps with the assisting functionality on your phone. Just select the home bot app from that list. And then click on the agree option from the confirmation dialog that appears next.

Step 5:

You can now go back to the home bot app where you could select one option from the list.

You can choose to launch any app, a shortcut, open a website or even toggle your flashlight or the brightness of your phone.

I have currently set it to launch my favorite music playlist upon long pressing the home button.

Let me know in the comments what have you set it up for and also don’t forget to share this with your friends!

How To Instantly Know When A Paid App Goes On Free Sale On Playstore

Google had recently announced that it will allow the app developers who have placed their paid apps for sale on the Google Play store to host a free sale on their app as a part of a promotional activity for a limited period of time. 

This means that you could actually get the app you have got your eyes on for some time for free, no strings attached.

As awesome as this offer sounds, unfortunately, an app could go on a free sale only for a limited period of time, and it is next to impossible to exactly find and download such apps among the myriad of apps available in the Google Play store.

To make things easier and to quickly download the free apps within the limited time, a developer has come forward and put together a nifty app which lets you know through notifications instantly whenever a paid app goes on a sale on the play store. 

This means that you will never miss a chance to grab your download of that app which you thought was awesome but didn’t have the money to purchase it.

This app notifies you about all kinds of apps in the play store whether they are from a large developer of from a newbie and it also includes games. All you have to do to get your hands on is to follow the below steps.

Step 1:

Download the Free App Notify app from the Google Play store.

Step 2:

Open the app, and that’s it you can now find the list of all apps in the play store that went on a free sale recently.

You can also search to see whether your favorite paid app is on sale yet.

Step 3:

You just have to wait now till the app notifies you about the next app or game that goes on a free sale.

Enjoy!