RELATED: Buying New vs. Used Smartphones: What’s the Cheaper Option? Checking an iPhone’s Parts and Service History Like a car, your iPhone now effectively has a logbook of any parts that have been replaced. This area will only show up on a device that has had any components replaced, which means if you don’t see it then you can be relatively sure that the iPhone has remained sealed since it left the factory....

The Notes app in iOS 9 contains many improvements, like drawing sketches and adding photos, but arguably one of the more useful features is the undersung checklist. Here’s how to quickly turn text into a grocery list, to-do list, or wish list in the Notes app on iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and iCloud. How to Create Checklists in Notes for iOS 9 To create a checklist on your iPhone (or iPad or iPod Touch), tap the “Notes” icon on the Home screen....

In Adobe Photoshop, it’s easy to quickly crop an image into a non-rectangular shape such as a circle, which can come in handy when visualizing round social media headshots. Here’s how to do it. First, open the image that you want to crop with Photoshop on your Mac or Windows computer. In the Photoshop window, find the “Layers” panel, which is located in the sidebar on the right. In the Layers panel, find the “Background” layer and click the lock icon next to it....

The Cortana virtual assistant is one of Windows 10‘s headline features, but it’s only available in seven countries around the world at launch. “I’m afraid I’m not available to help in your region,” she’ll apologize. Why isn’t Cortana available on your Windows 10 PC? Well, Microsoft wants to tailor Cortana specifically for every language and culture before releasing it. But you can get Cortana now without waiting. Countries Cortana is Available In RELATED: Why I’m Excited About Cortana in Windows 10...

If you’ve decided to get rid of your Ring Doorbell, here’s how to completely reset it to its factory settings. RELATED: How to Install and Set Up the Ring Video Doorbell The Ring Doorbell actually doesn’t necessarily need to be reset, since the unit itself doesn’t save any specific data on it that’s related to your usage. Instead, you simply disassociate the device from your Ring account using the app....

You found somebody’s lost iPhone. They were cautious enough to enable a passcode, so you can’t root around in their contacts looking for the owner. If Siri is enabled, though, she can help you get the iPhone back to the right person. RELATED: How to Track, Disable, and Wipe a Lost iPhone, iPad, or Mac Hopefully, if you’ve found an iPhone, the owner has been clever enough to put that phone into Lost Mode using the Find My iPhone app....

For certain router configurations, shared networks (such as those found in hotels and dorms), and other situations it’s important to identify your Apple TV’s IP and/or MAC address. Read on as we show you how. Note: Although the screenshots and general tutorial that follows apply to the Apple TV 4th generation and above the process is similar to the older Apple TV models. Why Do I Want To Do This?...

The number of people who use a digital camera for their snapshots is steadily declining, but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t a market. If you have a camera that doesn’t automatically geo-tag your photos, you can do so manually with Apple’s Photos app. Normally, when you take a picture on your smartphone, be it an iPhone or Android device, it will usually tag your photo with your location. It’s actually very precise, too, which is why many choose to disable geotagging, and remove any personal information before uploading photos to the Internet....

Stop-motion movies are loved by many. Whether it’s the iconic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or more modern films like Coraline, stop motion has a distinct aesthetic. If you have a phone with a camera, you can make your own. You’ve probably seen stop-motion videos, but you may not know how they’re made. A stop-motion video is actually a sequence of photos. The illusion of motion is created by moving the objects ever so slightly in each photo and stitching them together....

Disc images have become more useful than ever on modern PCs that often lack CD and DVD drives. Create ISO files and other types of disc images and you can “mount” them, accessing the virtual discs as if they were physical discs inserted into your computer. You can also use these image files to burn copies of the original discs later, creating duplicate copies. Disc image files contain a complete representation of a disc....

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS includes a long-awaited feature: You can now move the Unity desktop’s launcher to the bottom of your screen. It isn’t locked to the left side of your screen anymore. However, this option requires a terminal command or tweaking tool, as it isn’t offered in Ubuntu’s normal System Settings window. Despite this new option, the Unity 7 desktop environment is still a bit restrictive. You can only have your launcher bar on the left side of the screen or on the bottom–not at the right side or top of your screen....

Normally, the first page, or cover page, of a document does not have a page number or other header or footer text. You can avoid putting a page number on the first page using sections, but there is an easier way to do this. If you don’t plan to use sections in any other part of your document, you may want to avoid using them completely. We will show you how to easily take the page number off the cover page and start the page numbering at one on the second page of your document by simply using a footer (or a header) and changing one setting....

Photoshop is a popular and powerful graphics editing tool, but what do you do if you need to open a PSD file and don’t have Photoshop? We have several solutions for you that don’t involve buying (or renting) an expensive copy of Photoshop. A Photoshop Document (PSD) file is an entirely editable file format that saves the exact state of a document—text, shapes, layers, masks, effects, and all. While a standard image file is generally quite small, contains a flat image, and is single layered, a Photoshop document can be quite large, holds a lot of information, and is usually multi-layered....

Enable Voice Purchasing in the Alexa App Start by opening up the Alexa app on your phone and tap on the menu button in the top-left corner of the screen. Select “Settings” from the list. Scroll down and tap on “Voice Purchasing”. Tap on the toggle switch to turn on voice purchasing if it isn’t already. That’s all you need to do to enable voice purchasing, but if you want to prevent others from ordering items on the Echo, you can tap inside of the text box right above “Save Changes” and enter in a four-digit PIN code....

Are you tired of digging into Safari’s settings to change the default search engine? Dig no more, there’s a much easier way! If you like to use different search engines, or just don’t want to use Google, then there’s a much quicker way to change it from the location bar. Normally, in order to change the default search engine on Safari, you would first need to open the preferences, then click on “Search”, change the search engine, and then exit out of the preferences....

Snapchat, by its very nature, makes it very hard to deal with abuse. Unlike Facebook posts or Tweets, Snaps vanish in seconds and aren’t stored on Snapchat’s servers. If someone is posting something that violates Snapchat’s Terms of Service to their Story, it will stick around for 24 hours but that’s it. If a Snap is gone and it’s your word against someone else’s, there’s not a lot the Snapchat review team can do....

By default, when you open File Explorer in Windows and start typing, it will scroll down to folders that begin with the letters you key in. This can be handy, but if you prefer you can change this behavior so that typing brings you up to the search box instead. In any open File Explorer window, click the File menu and then select “Change folder and search options.” In the Folder Options window, switch to the View tab and then scroll down to the options under “When typing into list view....

This week, Google rolled out a new global feature for its desktop maps app that allows users to automatically send addresses to their phone with the click of a single link. This setting should help to reduce the amount of time you end up scrambling between devices on your way out the door and streamline the process of importing directions without adding any extraneous glut that might slow you down when you’re already late for that dentist’s appointment....

Parental controls in Windows 10 are pretty solid, but to use them you have to set the whole family up with Microsoft accounts and you have to create specific child accounts for your kids. If you prefer to use regular local accounts, you can still set time limits for how long any non-administrative user can use a computer. In Windows 10, Parental controls offer some nice features for monitoring kids’ accounts....

Phones are extremely personal devices that contain things you probably don’t want just anyone to see. Some Android devices have a “Guest” mode so you can hand off your phone and not have to worry about what they’ll find. Guest Mode on Google Pixel To get started, swipe down twice from the top of the screen to expand the Quick Settings panel. Tap the gear icon. Scroll down and select “System....