How to Change the Number of Recent Items in OS X

With OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Apple has added a considerable amount of new features, but among all the hubbub and hoopla, are smaller items that the company slipped in unannounced. One of these is the ability to change the number of recent items.

Let’s show you what we mean. In many instances, OS X will collect recent items such as documents, apps, and servers you’ve connected to. For example, here on the Go menu, we see a list of recently visited folders, 10 items to be exact, which is the default.

You can clear the menu of any recently visited folders, but unless you change the configuration in the settings, it will always fill back up with at least 10 items.

Up until now, it hasn’t been possible to change the number of items that appear in these lists but El Capitan adds a new option to its General settings.

To change the number of recently visited items such as documents, apps, and servers, first open the System Preferences, and then tap open the “General” category. Scan down to “recent items” and, as we mentioned already, you will see it is set to show 10 items by default.

Click on this item and notice that you can change how many recent items appear in lists. You can turn them off or choose another number from 5 to 10, 15, 20, 30, or 50. When you choose “None”, obviously no more items will accumulate in your lists, but you will still need to clear items out, such as in the earlier screenshot.

That said, if you’re a privacy-conscious person and you don’t want documents, apps, and servers to appear in your recent items list, then here is where you can make that happen. If, on the other hand, you want your recent items to swell, then you can increase that number considerably over a mere ten.

Of course, this isn’t the only tiny, relatively unknown improvement to make its way into El Capitan. For example, we recently showed you how to hide your menu bar, which for longtime Mac users, is a noticeable change.

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How to Customize the iOS Sharing Menu

The sharing system in iOS is one of the more overlooked features and, within that feature, the ability to customize the options of the sharing system is even more overlooked. Read on as we show you how to tweak the sharing system to fit your needs.

Why Do I Want To Do This?

The share system in iOS allows you to send something from the application you’re currently using to another application. Anywhere you see the little sheet icon with an arrow extending out of it you can call upon the sharing, or as it is technically known the “share sheet”, system. This is the system you use to email a link to a friend, turn a document into a reminder or note, and so on.

That subtle change wasn’t readily apparent to the end user though as the default organization of the share sheet stays the same (with the iOS apps prioritized front and center but the new apps largely hidden behind the “… More” icon at the tail end of the share sheet menu.Historically the sharing system was pretty limited in scope. You could only send information from applications to core iOS apps like Mail, Notes, Reminders, and so on. With the release of iOS 8, however, Apple made the share sheet system extensible and suddenly it became possible to send the same stuff (website URLs, photos, documents, etc.) to third party apps like Facebook, Twitter, the iOS Gmail app, and the like.

Let’s take a look at how you can easily shuffle the entire share sheet system around to ditch the defaults (if you’re not using them) and put the apps you actually use front and center.

Customizing The Share Sheet

To demonstrate share sheet customization we’re going to open up Safari as it’s one of the most common places people use the sharing function, but you can customize the share sheet from any iOS application that supports the function.

In order to customize the share sheet we first need to access it as if we were using it under regular conditions. To do so tap on the share sheet icon, as seen in the screenshot above. This will pull up your share sheet menu in its present state (which, if you have not done any customization, will be the default state).

Here you can see the default apps: Message, Mail, Reminders, and Notes. While we use Message a decent amount we don’t use the default Mail app (we use the iOS Gmail app), we don’t use Reminders (we use Todoist), and we don’t use the Notes app (or even an equivalent third party application). And, even though we do occasionally share things via Message don’t even do that with any degree of frequency. That puts our default share sheet view at 25 percent usefulness or less, which isn’t such a great ratio of useful to not useful space. Let’s change that.

First, we need to swipe to the left along the list of shared icons to access the “… More” icon.

Here we see the first evidence of third party share sheet apps: Facebook and Todoist. These apps appears here because we 1) have them installed on this iOS device and 2) their development team took advantage of the share sheet API; not all apps will have share sheet functionality.

Tap on the “… More” icon to access the share sheet configuration menu.

Within the “Activities” menu you can toggle apps on and off as well as rearrange them. First, if there are apps you don’t wish to appear in the share sheet system you can use the slider button to toggle them off. Because we don’t use the Reminders or Notes function at all, we’re going to slide those off immediately. We’re also going to use the slider beside “Slack” to turn it on, as Slack is the chat communication suite we use at How-To Geek and we share a lot of links and information with each other through it.

Second, by pressing and holding on the three-bar icon located beside each application you can drag and drop to reorder your share sheet apps. Remember the first page of the share sheet system can hold four icons and the second sheet, which you access with a swipe motion, holds three more icons. So when reordering things place the four most important icons first then three extra icons you may wish to use occasionally in the next three slots.

After a little toggling of applications and a little drag and drop rearrangement our share sheet list is now reordered to reflect the apps we actually use and in the general order we use them. The majority of time we use the share function it’s to share a link to our to-do list in Todoist for either a personal or work project, followed closely in frequency by sharing links to other people via Gmail, and followed up by sharing content to Twitter and Slack. Message and Facebook make the cut for the second page, and Reminders and Notes are shut down entirely.

It’s worth noting, as an aside, that you can’t shut off some of the apps (like Message or Mail) but you can drop them to the very bottom of the list so they don’t appear in the share sheet.

Ah, there we go. Four apps in our share sheet we actually use, all ready to go. Now we can easily shuttle links and content to our most frequently shared locations without a hassle and without even swiping to the second screen.

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How to Update Your Apple Watch to Watch OS 2.0.1 (Or Higher)

The new version of Apple’s watch operating system, Watch OS 2.0.1 is now available to the public and, thanks to a host of new features and improvements, an important upgrade for any Apple Watch user. Read on as we show you how to update your watch to the most current OS.

Note: since we wrote this, Apple has released Watch OS 2.0.1 with more bugfixes, but you still use the same mechanism to update.

What’s New In Watch OS 2.0

In addition to various bug fixes and interface improvements the update to Watch OS 2.0 brings a host of new and improved features. You can read check out the official Apple page here for copious photos and details, but we’ll give you a crash course summary here.

While those are all great improvements the biggest improvement, by far and way, is the inclusion of a native app platform so that more applications can run directly on the watch (instead of just serving as a display for an app running on your phone). Running directly on the watch means faster response time and functionality in the absence of the companion iPhone.There’s new time-lapse watch faces of popular metropolises and wilderness locations from around the world (such as London and Mack Lake) as well as support for personal photos and photo albums. The complication system (e.g. the important information you want right on your watch face like the weather or your calendar) now supports direct interfacing with applications so apps can push information to you via the complication system. The complication calendar system now supports time-line-like scrolling via the watch’s crown dial so you can quickly scroll forward and backward through your calendar. The new update includes “nightstand mode” wherein you can plug the watch in and lay it on its side to use it like an alarm clock.

There’s also a host of tweaks like improved Siri integration and improved Apple Pay functionality with support for additional cards. You can discover all that for yourself while playing with your freshly updated Apple Watch, so let’s get down to the process of updating it.

How to Update your Apple Watch

Before you sit down to update your Apple Watch to Watch OS 2.0 (or any newer version) you need to first check your iPhone is updated to iOS 9. You can check on your phone by navigating to Settings -> General -> About; if your device needs updating navigate to Settings -> General -> Software Update (or, alternatively, plug your device into a computer with iTunes installed and update it through iTunes). If you don’t update to iOS 9 then you cannot update to Watch OS 2.0 (and the Apple Watch app will simply report that your watch, at version 1.01, is up to date).

With your iPhone updated to iOS 9, launched the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and navigate to General -> Software Update. You’ll be given a summary of Watch OS 2.0 and a download link, as seen below.

The download is 512MB in size and can be downloaded in advance of the actual update operation. This means if you’re reading this without your Apple Watch on hand or you wish to update it later when you have more free time to focus on the project then you can download the update to your iPhone now but perform the actual update later. Regardless of when you plan on doing the upgrade you still need the update, however, so hit “Download and Install”. If you’re reading this article at the date of publication (right after the Watch OS 2.0 update launch) be prepared to wait. Although the download should only take a few minutes on a high-speed connection the demand on the Apple servers found us staring at a download timer with an estimated 5 hours remaining.

When you’re ready to apply the update you simply need to connect your Apple Watch to its charging cable and ensure it is in range of your iPhone, confirm on the watch itself you want the update, and the update will happen automatically with your Apple Watch rebooting several times during the upgrade process.

That’s all there is to it! Once you’ve updated your Apple Watch it’s time to start playing with all the new features like the time lapse watch faces, expanded friends menu, and of course the native apps and enhanced complications.

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Don’t Trust Caller ID — It Can Be Faked

Telephone scams are on the upswing, and they’re often enabled by caller ID spoofing. That name and number that appears when someone calls you can be faked, so you can’t place all your trust in it.

Caller ID is more of a convenience feature. If a friend, family member, or business is calling you, you can easily see who it is before you answer. It’s not a security feature, and scammers can appear as any phone number and name they like.

Yes, It Can Be Faked — And Yes, It’s Often Illegal

This is often illegal, of course. In the USA, FCCrules “prohibit any person or entity from transmitting misleading or inaccurate caller ID information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value.” But, if someone is already trying to scam you, they won’t necessarily be scared of breaking another law. This is especially true if those calls are coming from outside the US, as those fake Windows and Mac tech support calls often do.Caller ID numbers and names can be faked. The how and why aren’t as important — everyone just needs to know this is possible.

Doesn’t the Phone Company Know Where the Phone Call is Coming From?

You might assume that, because the phone company theoretically knows where the phone call is coming from, they can show you an accurate number. But that’s not how the system works. Instead, an incoming phone call comes with a bit of data attached to it — the number it claims to be from and, sometimes, a name. In other cases, your phone company may look up the number in a phone directory and automatically attach the name.

Phone calls are more like letters and emails. When you mail a letter, you can write anything in the “Return address” area — it’s not checked. When you send an email, you can modify the “From” field and claim it’s from anyone — that’s usually not checked, either.

That’s the main thing to bear in mind. Caller ID doesn’t show you where the phone company thinks the phone call is coming from. It shows where the caller claims the phone call is coming from.

But Why Is This Even Possible?

This feature isn’t always used for bad purposes. For example, a business owner might want to use caller ID spoofing on their cell phone. The cell phone could report its caller ID number as the business’s landline phone number. People would know the call is from that business and returned calls would go to the business itself rather than the cell phone.

That sort of use wouldn’t be illegal in the US, as it wouldn’t be performed with the intent to defraud.

It’s Not Even Hard

VoIP equipment generally allows you to set a caller ID phone number to anything you want, and many VoIP providers may just offer this feature.

It doesn’t matter, though — anyone can do it with a quick web search. Plug “caller ID spoofing” or “fake caller ID” into your favorite web search engine. You’ll find websites where you can plug in a phone number and easily call someone with a fake caller ID.

There are also other services that work like calling cards, allowing you to call a phone number, enter a fake caller ID number, enter the number you want to call, and connect you.

How Can You Protect Yourself?

So, how do you protect yourself? Easy: Don’t trust what caller ID says.

If you see a number like the local police department, a bank, a legitimate business, or a government agency, remember that number could be fake. Don’t trust the caller just because of the number that appears on their caller ID. If you’re ever in doubt, just assume you’re being scammed, pranked, or otherwise tricked.

If you think it might be a legitimate call, you should try calling them back. For example, let’s say your bank calls you about a problem with your bank account and wants personal information. Rather than giving it to them, hang up and find the bank’s official phone number — on their official website, for example. Call that phone number back so you’re sure you’re actually talking to your bank.

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Don’t be fooled into trusting a scammer just because a legitimate number appears when they call you. Always remember that number can be faked.

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How to Mute Individual Browser Tabs in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox

Web pages can automatically play audio thanks to HTML5, even if you’ve set Flash and other browser plug-ins to click-to-play. Most modern web browsers include an audio indicator that will show you which tab is playing sound. Most modern browsers also let you mute individual tabs.

This feature was available behind a hidden flag in Chrome for a while, and is now stable. Apple’s Safari was the first web browser that actually enabled it by default, and Mozilla is working on adding it to Firefox.

Google Chrome

The audio indicator will turn to a crossed-out speaker icon, informing you that the tab isn’t allowed to play audio. Right-click it again and select “Unmute Tab” to change your choice.This feature is now part of the stable version of Chrome and doesn’t require enabling any hidden flags to use. Just locate a tab playing audio — you’ll see a speaker indicator to the left of the “x” on the tab itself. Right-click the tab and select “Mute Tab.”

You can also do this preemptively. Right-click any tab and you’ll be able to select “Mute Tab,” preventing audio from playing on that tab even before it starts.

Note that, unlike the way this feature worked when it was behind a hidden flag, you can’t simply click the speaker icon to mute and unmute a browser tab. Google was clearly worried people would accidentally click this, muting their tabs and being confused. Chrome developers argued against enabling this by default and only did so until Apple pulled the trigger in Safari.

Apple Safari

This is also possible in Safari — Safari was the first browser that made this feature available to all its users.

As in Chrome, you’ll see a speaker icon to the left of the “x” button on an individual browser tab when it’s playing audio. You can click the speaker icon to mute the tab, and click it again to unmute the tab. You can also right-click or Ctrl-click the tab and select “Mute Tab” to mute that individual tab.

Unlike in Chrome, there’s no way to preemptively mute a tab. This option is only available when a tab is already playing audio.

Mozilla Firefox

It works similarly to Safari and Chrome. If a tab is playing audio, you’ll see an audio indicator to the left of the “x” button on the tab. You can click that little speaker icon to mute a tab or right-click the browser tab and select “Mute Tab.”Firefox is on the verge of adding built-in audio indicators on its tabs and a way to mute them. According to the bug report, this feature should be part of Firefox 42. It’s part of the latest experimental “nightly” builds of Firefox, too.

Like Chrome, Firefox also allows you to preemptively mute tabs before they start playing audio — just right-click a tab and select “Mute Tab.”

If you’re still using an old version of Firefox, you can do this by installing an extension like “Mute Tab.” However, this extension doesn’t work as well — it only works with HTML5 audio. Thankfully, it’s possible to prevent plug-ins from automatically playing by setting them to click-to-play in Firefox.

Microsoft Edge

Edge doesn’t yet offer a built-in way to mute tabs, and it doesn’t support browser extensions. Browser extensions — or Microsoft itself — may one day bring this feature to Edge. For now, Edge is still stuck playing catch-up to the features offered by established browsers.Microsoft Edge does at least include audio indicators on its tabs. Unlike all other browsers, however, those audio indicators are located at the left side of each tab.

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You can always mute your entire browser to prevent all web pages from playing audio until you change your mind — assuming you’re using Windows or Linux. On Windows, right-click the volume icon in your system tray, select “Open Volume Mixer” and use the mixer to mute the browser or at least lower its volume. On Linux, you’ll usually find this option in your desktop’s sound settings, too — it’s offered by PulseAudio. Mac OS X doesn’t offer this feature.

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How to Hide or Show the Battery Percentage on iPhone or iPad

If you find the battery charge percentage in the upper-right corner of your iPhone or iPad screen distracting, it can be turned off easily. However, if you decide you want to easily keep track of your battery life, you can easily turn the percentage back on.

To turn off the battery charge percentage, tap “Settings” on the home screen.

On the “Settings” screen, tap “Battery” on the left.

The “Battery” settings display on the right. Tap the “Battery Percentage” slider button to turn off the battery charge percentage on the status bar.

The “Battery Percentage” slider button turns all white to indicate it’s off and the battery charge percentage is removed from the status bar immediately.

If you decide you want the battery charge percentage to display again, simply turn on the “Battery Percentage” option.

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How to Set up Text Message Forwarding on Your Mac or iPad

We love Apple’s Continuity features, including the ability to receive calls and text message from your iPhone on your Mac or iPad. If you want to automatically forward text messages to your Mac or iPad however, you first need to set it up.

Text message forwarding works great because you don’t have to actually be on your iPhone to communicate via text. Any text messages that arrives on your iPhone will automatically be forwarded to your Mac or iPad via the Messages app.

To set up text message forwarding, first open the “Settings” on your iPhone, then tap on “Messages”. Next, tap on “Text Message Forwarding” to allow text messages to “be sent and received on other devices signed in to your iMessage account.”At this point, it’s akin to using instant messaging, you simply type and talk as if you’re using the phone and messages will continue to be sent and received via text.

In this example, there are two other devices available for text message forwarding. We tap on our Mac to turn it on and we’ll next need to verify to allow this device.

Each device you enable text message forwarding will need to be verified on your iPhone.

On our Mac, the Messages app will display a dialog telling you that in order to send and receive iPhone text messages, you need to enter a code on your iPhone.

Enter the code the Messages app gives you on your iPhone.

Similarly, a message will appear on you iPhone urging you to enter the code shown on your Mac. In this case, upon entering the code and tapping the “Allow” button, any text messages that arrive on our iPhone will also be routed to our Mac as well.

Enter the code shown on your Mac or iPad to complete the setup process.

So, if we’re working on something using our Macbook, and our iPhone is in the other room, not only will be not miss any important texts that arrive, but we’ll be able to reply to them without actually using the iPhone!

If you have other devices to which you want to forward text messages, simply repeat this process for each one. On the other hand, if you want to turn off text message forwarding, then simply return to the Message settings on your iPhone and disable each or all the devices you previously allowed.

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How to Enable Android 6.0’s Experimental Multi-Window Mode

Android 6.0 Marshmallow contains a highly experimental and hidden multi-window mode. Perhaps this will be stable in the next version of Android — it would definitely make Google’s Pixel C, Nexus 9, and Nexus 6 phones more useful. For now, you can enable it if you’re willing to do some tweaking.

Unlike Samsung’s multi-window mode, Android’s built-in multi-window mode works for all Android apps. It’s Android’s long-overdue answer to the multi-app features on Windows tablets and iPads — but it can also be used on phones.

Install TWRP Custom Recovery or Root Your Device

This requires either installing a custom recovery environment or rooting your Android device. Google really doesn’t want the average Android user enabling this yet.Google hasn’t made this easy to enable. While this feature is included in the final builds of Android 6.0, you can only access it by editing the system’s build.prop file and telling Android you’re using a “userdebug” build instead of the typical “user” build.

To install TWRP, head over to the TWRP Devices page, search for your device, and follow the instructions. Rooting your Android 6.0 device will likely require a custom recovery like TWRP anyway, so you may just want to do it the TWRP way. This will require a USB cable and a PC, Mac, or Linux machine with access to the adb command.

Activate Multi-Window Mode With TWRP

You can also activate it if you’re using the TWRP custom recovery environment, but haven’t rooted your device.

First, boot your device into the recovery mode using its device-specific button combination, which you can find online. Select the “Mounts” option in the recovery environment and check “System” to mount the system partition.

You’ll need adb installed on your PC to continue. If you went through the process to install TWRP on your device, you should already have it.

Connect your Android device to a PC and pull up a command prompt or terminal window. Run the following command:

adb pull /system/build.prop

This downloads a copy of the /system/build.prop file from your Android device to your computer. Open the build.prop file with a text editor — Notepad++ is a good one if you’re using Windows — and locate the “ro.build.type” line.

Change the “user” text after the = sign from “user” to “userdebug”. The line should read:

ro.build.type=userdebug

Save the file afterwards.

Return to the command line or terminal window and run the following command to copy your modified build.prop file back to your Android device:

adb push build.prop /system/

Next, type the following commands in order to open a shell on the device via adb and run the commands on your Android device itself. This changes the build.prop file’s permissions to the correct ones:

adb shell

cd system

chmod 644 build.prop

Reboot your device normally afterwards. Just tap the “Reboot” option in TWRP and then tap “System.”

Activate Multi-Window Mode With Root Access

If your device is rooted, you can download the free Build Prop Editor application from Google Play. Launch the app and give it root permissions to start editing your build.prop file. You could also use a root-enabled text editor and load the /system/build.prop file for editing.

Locate the “ro.build.type” field and change the value from “user” to “userdebug”. Reboot your device afterwards.

Enable Multi-Window Mode

At the bottom of the main Android Settings app, tap the “Developer options” category.Once you’ve edited your build.prop file, you can activate this option from the Developer Options screen. if you haven’t enabled Developer Options yet, open the Settings app, tap “About phone” or “About tablet,” and repeatedly tap the “Build number” field until you see a pop-up message saying you’re a developer.

Scroll down on the Developer options screen and, under the Drawing category, tap the “Enable multi-window” option to enable it.

You’ll have to agree to a warning first, as this feature is highly experimental.

Use Multi-Window Mode

Once you’ve enabled multi-window mode, tap Android’s overview — or multitasking — button to see a list of all your available apps. You’ll see a new button to the left of the x on each app’s card.

Tap the icon and you’ll be asked where you want to position that app on screen. Repeat this process to position another app in another place on the screen. You can then drag-and-drop the edge between two apps, too.

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Tested: Should You Unplug Chargers When You’re Not Using Them?

How much energy do your smartphone, laptop, and tablet chargers really use? Should you unplug them when you aren’t using them to save power and money? We measured exactly how much power a variety of common chargers use, and how much keeping them plugged in will cost your each year.

You’ve probably heard of “vampire power” — the amount of power a device uses in standby mode when you aren’t using it. But just how much vampire power does a charger use, and is it worth the hassle of unplugging them when you aren’t using them?

How We Measured It — and How You Can Measure, Too

We used a Kill A Watt electricity usage meter to measure the power usage of a variety of popular chargers. You can measure the electricity usage of your own devices and appliances if you buy such a device, too. They’re currently under $24 on Amazon. Plug the meter into an electrical socket and plug another device into the meter. The meter will sit between the two and tell you how much energy the device is using. This is very useful if you want to measure your energy use , allowing you to identify power-hungry appliances and devices that should be replaced or adjusted. Look up the rate your electricity company charges you and you’ll be able to figure out exactly how much that electricity will cost you, too.

So, with a meter in hand and a variety of chargers lying around, we got to work and tested them so you wouldn’t have to.

How Much Vampire Power Does a Charger Use?

Plugging in a variety of chargers — everything from iPhone, iPad, and MacBook chargers to Android phone and tablet chargers to Windows laptop chargers to Chromebook chargers to Nintendo’s 3DS charger — it was immediately obvious there was a problem with the very idea of our test. Having heard about the evils of vampire power and the need to unplug devices when we’re not using them, we were surprised to see that not a single charger used a detectable amount of vampire power when it was plugged into an outlet.

In other words, the meter’s display read a big 0.0 watts, no matter what charger we plugged into it.

But Surely They’re Drawing Some Power!

It’s not entirely accurate to say that each charger was using 0 watts, of course. Each charger is using some fraction of a watt. And it should certainly be detectable at some point!

With that in mind, we had a new idea — plug a power strip into themeter and plug a variety of chargers into the power strip. We’ll see just how many chargers it takes for the meter to be able to measure some noticeable electrical draw.

The power strip itself — despite its red LED light — registered 0.0 watts when we plugged it in. We started plugging in chargers and watched the meter continue reading 0.0, even after several chargers were plugged in.

Eventually — with six separate chargers plugged in, filling up the power strip’s electrical outlets — we had a solid, measurable reading.

The combined total vampire power draw of this power bar, an iPhone 6 charger, an iPad Air charger, a MacBook Air (2013) charger, a Surface Pro 2 charger, a Samsung Chromebook charger, and a Nexus 7 charger read 0.3 watts.

Aha! How Much Money is That?

Finally, we have a measurement to work with: 0.3 watts.

We’ll assume these are all plugged in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week over an entire year. There are 8760 hours in a year. That equates to 2.628 kilowatt hours (kWh).

According to the EIA, the average cost of electricity in the US is 12.98 cents per kWh. This means that those 2.628 kWh of electricity will cost about 34.1 cents over an entire year. Even using the most expensive electricity rates in the US — 30.04 cents per kWh in Hawaii — that’s only about 79 cents per year.

The real cost is actually lower, as you’ll be charging your devices with these chargers sometimes, so they won’t always be drawing vampire power. You’ll probably unplug them to take them with you sometimes, too.

But let’s use the highest number — 79 cents per year. Divide that by the six different chargers here — being charitable and ignoring the power strip — and you get 13 cents per year for each charger in Hawaii. That’s about five and a half cents on the average US electrical bill.

This Isn’t Meant to Be Precise, But It Answers the Question

This isn’t meant to be a completely scientific or precise test, of course. Some of the chargers likely use more power than others, so the real cost to leave your smartphone charger plugged in for an entire year is probably below 13 cents.

Either way, this shows us that the amount of vampire power consumed by your chargers is extremely small. It isn’t worth worrying about. Just leave your chargers plugged in for convenience; don’t unplug them.

Yes, it’s true that you could save a tiny amount of electricity by unplugging your chargers, but you could save a much larger amount of electricity by looking to heating, cooling, lighting, laundry, your computer and other more significant power drains. Don’t sweat the chargers.

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How to Change the Names of the Icons on Your Android Home Screen

When you install an app on an Android device, a shortcut for the app is created with a default name and added to your home screen. The Android system does not allow you to change the name of your shortcuts. However, there is a way around this.

We’re going to use a free app available in the Google Play Store called “QuickShortcutMaker”. Search for it in the Play Store and install it.

Once the app is installed, open it and scroll down the list to find the app for which you want to change the name of the shortcut. Tap on the app name.

Information about the app shortcut displays in the right pane. Tap the area that says “Tap to change label”.

The “Rename shortcut” dialog box displays. Replace the current name with the name you want and tap “OK”.

The new name displays at the top of the right pane.

To create a new shortcut with the revised name, tap “Create” at the bottom of the screen.

A dialog box displays thanking you and asking you to rate the app. To close the dialog box, tap on one of the last two options. The “Rate this app” option opens the QuickShortcutMaker page in the Google Play Store. If you selected “Report to developer”, a dialog box displays asking which email app you want to use.

Now, in addition to customizing your home screen with folders for your apps and different wallpaper, you can change the names of your app shortcuts.

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