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We’ve seen signs that Android TV might step out of Chromecast’s shadow throughout the year. The software has been popping up on new devices, such as AirTV and Nvidia’s second-generation Shield TV, and enabling novel over-the-air DVR solutions like Tablo Engine and Plex. Even Google seemed to be giving more love to its lesser-known living-room platform, announcing plans to integrate Google Assistant and overhaul the Android TV interface.

But after installing Android 8.0 Oreo on a Nexus Player this week, I’m not sure an Android TV comeback is imminent. The new software is a mess on Google’s three-year-old streaming box, and it’s missing several features that Google showed off at its I/O developers conference in May. Meanwhile, there’s been little evidence of new streaming boxes to carry the platform forward, and it’s unclear if existing ones like the Shield will get upgraded to Oreo anytime soon.

Perhaps I’m expressing these concerns prematurely, and some big reveal is forthcoming with new Android TV hardware and improved software. Still, it’s hard to see how that happens with the state Android TV is in now.

Oreo on Android TV

On the surface, Android 8.0 Oreo is a major upgrade for Android TV. The home screen allows each app to have its own row, or “channel,” where it can recommend movies or shows to watch. Those apps can also feed into a “Watch Next” row for catching up on new episodes of previously watched programs. The layout is a nod to the grid-based guide you’d find on a cable box, and an attempt to make browsing through streaming apps much simpler.

But right now, Oreo on Android TV lacks several features that Google demonstrated a few months ago. The Watch Next row is empty, for instance, because shows aren’t populating the list automatically as they should, and attempts to add them manually result in a “Can’t add to Watch Next” error. Netflix’s previously announced home screen integration hasn’t arrived yet either—though the company tells me it’s still working on it—and video thumbnails aren’t appearing on channels like Google Play Movies & TV.

Google Assistant is also a no-show, so you can’t launch directly into videos from Netflix or YouTube with voice commands, control smart-home devices, or access third-party voice skills. The search results screen is the same as it has been in previous versions of Android TV. (Google said in January that Assistant would arrive on Android TV—including older versions—in the “coming months,” which seems conveniently non-committal in hindsight.)

Even basic operation of Android 8.0 Oreo veers into unpleasantness on the Nexus Player. The device stutters and lags at every step, and flashes a blank screen every time I tap the remote after waking the device from standby. And when pressing the remote’s voice search button, the device consistently takes a few seconds to produce any response on the screen. Also, Sony’s Crackle—one of the earliest streaming apps to support Android TV—doesn’t even work. This is the stuff of beta software, not a major, publicly available upgrade.

Pixel Player, where are you?

Judging Android 8.0 Oreo by its performance on a three-year-old streaming box might be harsh, but right now the Nexus Player is the only device that supports the new software. For developers who want to optimize their apps for Android 8.0, this is the experience they’re going to get.

The obvious fix on Google’s part would be to release a new halo device for Android TV, a “Pixel Player,” if you will. Imagine, for instance, a sub-$100 streaming box with 4K HDR video support, a voice remote for Google Assistant—maybe even with hands-free operation—and deep hooks into services like YouTube TV and Google Photos. Google could even bundle a USB TV tuner to showcase Android TV’s over-the-air channel integration. Beyond just serving as a reference for app makers, a device like this could help put Android TV on the map for consumers.

But so far, there’s been little evidence that Google will back its living-room operating system with new hardware. A report in May by Cord Cutters News claimed that Google was working on a new streaming player, but the site later backed off that claim, saying that the device may instead be another third-party offering similar to Xiaomi’s Mi Box. (The Mi Box, by the way, arrived in late 2016 with no fanfare from Google, was only sold in Walmart stores, and is not even running the second-latest version of Android as of this writing.) Other recent reports on Google’s upcoming hardware plans haven’t mentioned Android TV at all.

Looking out to other vendors, the future for Android 8.0 Oreo gets even murkier. Google did recently name Sony and Sharp among the device makers that plan to “launch or upgrade devices to Android 8.0 Oreo” by year-end, so it’s possible we’ll see new or existing smart TVs running the latest software before long. But Nvidia, which until now has carried the Android TV set-top business on its back with the $200 Shield TV, was conspicuously absent from that list.

Android TV’s time

On some level, fretting about the state of Android TV is academic. Google has said the platform sees 500,000 device activations per month, in part because of the company’s deals with smart-TV makers such as Sony and overseas pay-TV operators such as KDDI in Japan. Android TV’s app ecosystem also enjoys an unusual symbiotic relationship with Amazon’s Fire TV, which runs a modified version of Android, so apps that arrive on one platform also tend to show up on the other soon after. Even without challenging major streaming devices like Roku or Fire TV, Android TV is somewhat healthy.

But “somewhat healthy” can’t be what Google is aiming for, especially as Chromecast loses its competitive edge among consumers. According to a recent Parks Associates report, Chromecast lost market share in the United States over the last year, and is now in third place behind both Roku and Amazon Fire TV. Consumers are starting to vote for proper remote controls and on-screen interfaces over Chromecast’s phone-as-remote approach, which in turn means Google is losing turf in the battle for the connected home.

Android TV could be the solution, but it’s unclear if Google will start treating it that way.

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The 8th-gen CPU promises up to 40 percent faster performance, a significant jump from before.

Dell’s XPS 13 is already a great laptop. Now imagine that laptop performing 40 percent faster than it does now. That’s the promise of the CPU refresh Dell announced for the product line on Monday at IFA in Berlin. The XPS 13’s two highest-end SKUs will have Intel’s latest 8th-generation Core chips, called Kaby Lake R.

The updated XPS 13 product line will start shipping September 12 with a base price of $799, but that model is not Kaby Lake R-fortified. (In fact, five of the seven CPU options for the XPS 13 will still use Intel’s 7th-generation Kaby Lake CPUs.) The Core i7 Kaby Lake R Core i7 model will have a starting price of $1,400.

Quad-core chips make a difference

The 8th-generation Kaby Lake R CPUs will be the first to offer quad-core processing power (four cores and eight threads) for ultrabook machines. Intel’s promised performance hike is based on tests comparing the 8th-generation Core i7 to the 7th- generation Core i7 (Kaby Lake) part. We got a more pedestrian 12- to 19-percent jump moving from 6th-gen Skylake to 7th-gen Kaby Lake.

Dell is upping the ante even more, however, claiming a jump of up to 44 percent in its XPS 13 implementation. The two Kaby Lake R CPUs in the XPS 13 line will be:

The entry-level Core i5-8250U, with a base clock speed of 1.6GHz and a boost speed of up to 3.4GHz

The midrange Core i7-8550U, with a base clock speed of 1.8GHz and a boost speed of up to 4GHz

Why this matters: As one of the first laptops to ship with Kaby Lake R, the Dell XPS 13 ushers in an intriguing new era for laptops, one where quad-core power could start to erase the compromises between portable and desktop PCs. We’ll let you know more if we have a chance to benchmark the XPS 13 ourselves.

 

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After a clean installation or restoration of your computer’s operating system, certain drivers may not be installed. One of the most common drivers to be missing is that of the wireless LAN (local area network). This piece of software is required for your Acer laptop to connect to a wireless network or Internet connection. Fortunately, reinstalling this driver is extremely simple, and the necessary files are available directly from Acer’s website. Follow these steps to reinstall the wireless driver so you can connect to your wireless home or office network.

Instructions

1.Navigate to Acer’s support and driver download website

2.Choose “notebook” from the “Product family” list.

3.Select your product line (Aspire, Travelmate, etc.).

4.Select your model number to identify the exact machine you own.

5.Scroll down the “Wireless LAN” entry, under the “Driver” tab.

6.Click the yellow “Download” button located to the left of the “Wireless LAN” entry.

7.Open the installation file once the driver has finished downloading.

8.Follow the on-screen directions to install the wireless driver.

9.Restart your computer when prompted to do so by the driver installer. This will finalize the installation process.

10.Attempt to connect to a wireless network.

Tip

Note that you will need to use an Ethernet cable to physically connect your computer to the Internet if your wireless controller is not working. If you are still unable to connect to your wireless network, it is possible that your internal wireless controller has malfunctioned. In this case, you will want to contact Acer directly to see about a replacement unit (especially if the machine is still under warranty) or a repair proceedure.

 

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It happens to everyone. Whether you have typed it out a thousand times before, or just used it once – like the last time you changed it – it’s all too easy to forget a password. However, there’s no reason to be alarmed. Microsoft knows that passwords are easily forgotten and has made allowances for you to get access again.

The process varies depending on which version of Windows you have. Windows XP offers the easiest way to reset a password, simply by going into Safe Mode. If you have Windows 8 or 10, the process is also very easy, provided you have internet access. For Windows 7, or if you don’t have internet access and you’re using Windows 8 or 10, resetting your password will require getting access to a similar computer.

Using Safe Mode: Windows XP

If you have forgotten your login password for a Windows XP computer, you can reset it by going into Safe Mode.

First, restart your computer. As it is booting up, press the F8 key repeatedly to activate Safe Mode. If for some reason you didn’t press the F8 key in time, just restart the computer and try again.

In Safe Mode, click the Start button and select “Run.” Type the following line in the window that opens and press the Enter key: control userpasswords2

This command gives you administrative access to all user accounts on the computer. Select the Admin user account and then click “Reset Password.” Type your new password twice to confirm it and then click “OK.” You can now use this new password to access your computer.

Use a System Repair Disk: Windows 7

Resetting your password in Windows 7 is a bit more complicated than using Windows XP. To use this method, you’ll need a Windows 7 System Repair Disc. This is something you should have made when you first got you computer, but if you don’t have one – or can’t find it – you can use someone else’s computer. Windows 7 comes as either 32-bit or 64-bit. Whichever version you have, the other computer needs to be using that version too.

1. Insert a blank CD or flash drive in the computer. Click the Start button and type “system repair disc” in the Search field and press the Enter key. Follow the onscreen instructions to create the repair disc.
2. Turn off your computer and insert the System Repair Disc in your computer’s USB slot or disc drive. You’ll need to boot from this repair disc, which in most cases means entering the computer’s BIOS settings, which varies with each computer. The instructions appear on the screen just before Windows begins to load, such as “Press F12 to Choose Boot Device” or “Press Esc to Enter Bios.” If it appears too quickly, restart the computer and try again.
3. Once you access the BIOS, select the drive containing the System Repair Disc.
4. When the System Repair Disc loads, press any key when prompted. Follow the instructions until you get to the System Recovery Options. Select the disk drive containing your computer’s operating system, which is usually the C: drive. Make a note of which drive it is, because you will need it in the next step. Click “Next.”

Select “Command Prompt.”

5. At the next page, click “Command Prompt” to open the Command Prompt window. Here, you need to enter a few lines of code. If your operating system isn’t on the C: drive, use the appropriate drive instead, such as “D:” or even “E:” drive. Press the Enter key after each line:

C:

cd windows\system32

ren utilman.exe utilhold.exe

copy cmd.exe utilman.exe

exit

6. Remove the System Repair Disc and restart the computer.
7. When the login screen appears, click the “Ease of Access” icon in the bottom left corner to open the Command Prompt window. Type the following line, replacing the word “username” with your Windows username, which appears on the screen. Replace the word “password” with whatever you want your new password to be:

net user username password

8. Close the Command Prompt window and log in with your new password.

Changing Your Password Online: Windows 8 and 10

If you are using Windows 8 or 10, your Windows user account should be connected to your online Microsoft account, like a Hotmail.com or Live.com account.

Using any computer with Internet access, open a web browser and go to login.live.com. Enter the email address associated with your Microsoft Windows account, click “Next” and then select “Forgot My Password” and follow the instructions to reset it. You will be given a series of questions to determine your identity, based on answers to personal questions and phone numbers you provided Microsoft when setting up your account. Once you answer them to confirm your identity, you will be prompted to create a new password, which you can then use to log into your Windows computer.

Use a Windows Recovery Drive: Windows 8 and 10

If for some reason your computer does not have Internet access, or if you managed to create a local account that isn’t connected online to Live.com, you can use a Windows Recovery Drive to change your password. This process is exactly the same as what you would use to use a Windows 7 System Repair Disc, with only two differences:

1. Create a Windows Recovery Drive, rather than a System Repair Disk, on another computer that is running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows 8 or 10, just as your computer has.
2. The Ease of Access icon is located in the bottom right corner of the screen, rather than the bottom left.

 

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Acer is joining the 360-degree video craze with two new cameras, including one designed for your car. The Acer Holo360 is smartphone-sized 360-degree camera powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor. The LTE-connected camera comes with a 3-inch display and can capture 4K 360-degree videos. It also runs Android 7.1, making it easy for users to share their videos over social media.

The other camera Acer announced is the Vision360, a camera designed as a high-end dash cam. The Vision360 is designed to film every angle of your car during a collision in 4K, and then upload that footage to the cloud with GPS coordinates and your speed. If your car is stationary and is hit (say in a parking lot) the Vision360 will activate, record a clip, and send your phone a notification, a far better solution than a simple dash cam especially if your vehicle gets hit from behind.

The Vision360 also supports remote viewing and location tracking (to help you find your car in the parking lot), and users will be able to watch footage back through Acer’s VR headset.

The Holo360 will retail for $429 when it’s released in November, and the Vision360 will come in at €349 ($414) when it’s released later this year in Europe.

 

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Ever since Apple announced ARKit at its annual developers conference earlier this summer, the app-making community has enthusiastically shown off what it has been able to make with the new framework for augmented reality apps. ARKit hasn’t even officially launched yet, and already we’ve seen demos of AR fidget spinners, floating cats, and fancy car configurators on iPhones.

Serious, groundbreaking stuff, right?

But it’s sometimes the fun, toy-like technologies that give way to more serious use cases, which is probably why Apple seems to determined to show off other demonstrations of AR apps that will roll out with iOS 11 next month. Half a dozen app developers gathered on Apple’s campus in Cupertino, Calif. yesterday to demo their upcoming AR apps and talk about their development processes, including big brand names like Ikea, The Food Network, AMC TV, Giphy, and more.

IOS DEVELOPERS SAY THE SIZE OF APPLE’S USER BASE COULD BE THE REAL GAME-CHANGER IN AR

Some app developers, like UK-based Climax Studios and Brooklyn-based Touch Press, talked about how relatively easy it was to create an ARKit app, sometimes in just six to eight weeks. Many talked about the technical capabilities that have been unlocked with ARKit.

But almost all of the developers there said the same thing: it’s Apple’s giant audience, its many millions of iPhone and iPad users, that they think could be the real game-changer in AR. Apple’s pre-arranged gathering of AR app-makers also occurred just as Google is launching ARCore, a new platform for AR app developers that could expand Google’s AR reach in a significant way. If there was ever a moment that marked the real start of the mobile AR platform wars, it’s probably now, and all before the fall hardware season has even begun.

Ikea was on hand at Apple yesterday, and showed off a new AR app for iOS called Ikea Place. It’s a riff on other furniture try-on apps we’ve already seen in AR, whether on Google’s Tango AR platform or in 2D furniture apps. You open up the Ikea app on the iPhone, use the phone’s camera to measure the space around you, and “place” an Ikea furniture item in front of you. You can walk up to the item, get a sense of its size, see materials and texture, and in a future version of the app, you’ll even be able to tap on a virtual sofa to see how big it is when it expands to become a sofa bed.

Michael Valdsgaard, Ikea’s head of digital transformation, said that the company has been working on 2D AR features for almost five years, but that it developed a new app for ARKit because of reach. “Apple is the one who reaches many people,” he said.

Simon Gardner, the chief executive officer at Climax Studios, concurred. His new AR game for iOS, Arise, creates a virtual puzzle in real space that can only be solved by physically tilting the iPhone or iPad and steering a character through this puzzle. Climax Studios has long dabbled in AR, and created a game called Towers for Tango for Google’s Tango AR platform. Gardner says they’ve also worked on apps for Microsoft’s HoloLens before, though none have published.

The biggest difference between building for those platforms, and building for iOS, is the size of the audience, Gardner said. “You have a potential install base on day one of hundreds of millions of devices.”

ARKIT WILL WORK ON ANY EXISTING IDEVICE THAT HAS AN A9 PROCESSOR AND RUNS IOS 11 SOFTWARE

The biggest advantage Apple has with ARKit is that AR apps will run on any existing device that’s both equipped with an A9 processor and running iOS 11 software, which is currently still in beta. This means any iPhone 6S or later, or any iPad Pro, will run these AR apps.

Apple also has the advantage of owning the “full stack” in the iPhone and iPad: it controls everything from the iOS software right down to every component in every piece of hardware, which means the experience of how apps run on said devices is tightly controlled as well.

This means Google’s approach to AR has had to be a very different one, since Android shows up on devices of all sizes and specifications. The company has been working on its AR solution, called Tango, since 2013, and developed specific hardware and software requirements that phone manufacturers would have to adopt in order to support advanced AR. As a result, only two phone models to date, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro and Asus ZenFone AR, have shipped with Tango.

GOOGLE’S HAS LAUNCHED ARCORE ON GOOGLE PIXEL AND SAMSUNG GALAXY 8 PHONES, AND IS TARGETING 100 MILLION DEVICES BY THE END OF THE YEAR

But just this morning, Google announced something called ARCore, its equivalent to Apple’s ARKit. It’s a built-in AR platform for app makers, and is available now on Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy 8 phones, with the hopes that it will run on 100 million phones by this winter. This could expand the community for Google AR apps significantly, and The Verge’s Adi Robertson says that the controlled ARCore demo she had at Google’s offices was “one of the best experiences I’ve had with phone-based AR.” Google is also working on two experimental AR web browsers, one that will use ARCore and one that will run on iOS and support ARKit.

Certainly there are some technical advancements happening with Apple’s ARKit that are notable. ARKit enables something called “world tracking,” which, as The Verge’s Robertson has reported before, relies on a technique called visual-inertial odometry. Most AR on phones so far has involved 2D, flat overlays — think Pokémon Go — whereas the kind of AR we’re talking about now is advanced, 3D AR.

AMC’s The Walking Dead AR app, which is called Our World and was developed by Next Games, using an ARKit feature called ARPointCloud that lets developers hide objects in an AR environment and reveal them at a certain point in the experience. This is especially useful in a game like Our World, where walkers (zombies) appear to crawl out of the corners around you, at intervals, as you continue to play the game.

Some ARKit apps will incorporate multi-player or collaborative features as well. AMC and Next Games showed off how you’ll be able to invite friends to slay zombies with you in Our World; and the new Giphy AR app, called Giphy World, lets you create an AR environment filled with 3D confetti or cartoon hamburgers or 2D gifs floating around the room, and share a URL with another user who can add more Giphy content to your AR world.

Other ARKit apps might be simpler, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar AR app. A caterpillar inches around the room you’re in; you feed it when you feel like it; and eventually it turns into a butterfly. When you look up through the lens of an iPhone or iPad, it joins the dozens of other butterflies that have been created through previous game plays.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that iPhone and iPad users will be immune to the same problems that plague other advanced AR platforms — the gimmicky apps, the drain on device battery life, and the overall feeling that you’re sometimes using an AR app not because it makes sense but just because it’s a new AR app. These have all been very real barriers to AR becoming more mainstream.

But what will set ARKit apart, according to Barry O’Neill, chief executive officer of Caterpillar app-maker Touch Press, is the “ease of use from a developer perspective and the scale of the audience.”

“Consumers are going to work with AR in a very natural way now,” he said.

 

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All the rumors about the upcoming iPhone 8 point to Apple making some fairly big changes to the device’s user interface, with tweaks needed to accommodate the removal of the home button and the addition of a “notch” housing the phone’s camera and sensors at the top of the display.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has a new report on how exactly these changes could be implemented, with Gurman’s sources suggesting that Apple is looking for ways to replace the functionality usually assigned to the home button. (E.g. returning to the home screen, opening up the multitasking interface, and accessing Siri.)

In the dodgy supply chain of Apple leaks, it’s often better to repeat then paraphrase, so here’s what Gurman is predicting for the iPhone 8 UI:

Dock: The dock housing commonly-used apps will be “redesigned with a new interface similar to the one on the iPad version of iOS 11.” Underneath the dock will be a “thin, software bar in lieu of the home button.” Users can drag up from here to the middle of the display to open the phone, or use the same gesture to start multitasking when inside an app.

Multitasking: This interface will be “redesigned to appear like a series of standalone cards that can be swiped through, versus the stack of cards on current iPhones.”

Status bar: This will be split into two “ears” on either side of the notch. “[T]he left side shows the time while the area on the right side of the notch displays cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity and remaining battery life,” writes Gurman. Whether or not Apple will choose to hide the notch by making the status bar black has been the subject of some speculation, but Gurman reports the company will embrace it, with leaked images “showing a definitive cutout at the top of apps with non-black backgrounds.” The status bar will also reportedly “change based on the task at hand,” although exactly how is unclear.

Of course, this is just rumor at this point, and the final UI for the iPhone 8 may differ from what’s stated above in any number of ways. However, there is some evidence for this redesigned interface. As developer Steve Troughton-Smith points out on Twitter, the UI described by Gurman’s sources matches leaked iOS 11 gestures uncovered back in May. Troughton-Smith also tweeted this image showing how the redesigned status bar and dock might look:

And what the 'iPhone 8' homescreen could look like — iPad-style Dock and edge-gesture indicator (via @charavel)

— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) August 30, 2017

If true, these changes will only apply to the iPhone 8, with Apple expected to unveil two new, more pedestrian iterations on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus as well. The iPhone 8 is also expected to start at $999, have a front-facing camera that will use facial recognition for unlocking the phone and payments, and be available in a new color my colleague Jake Kastrenakes described as “ugly, pinkish bronze.”

Apple will reportedly be unveiling the new iPhones on September 12th. Stay tuned for more.

 

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A new website and series of videos highlight several reasons to give up your Android phone and switch to iPhone.

Apple and Android may forever be locked in a fight for mobile domination, but they take very different approaches to their quest for market share. On the one hand, there are more than 2 billion active Android devices in use around the world. On the other, Apple makes gobs of money from selling just a handful of handsets.

But like the PC wars of the 90s, Apple isn’t content with such a slim slice of the market. While it has had a Move to iOS app in the Play Store for a while now, Apple is now taking the fight directly to Android users with a new campaign devoted to switching.

Head over to the iPhone tab on Apple.com and you’ll see a new box in the middle of the page. Called “Why Switch,” it declares that “Life is easier on the iPhone,” and offers 10 questions potential switchers might be asking:

1. Will it be easy to switch?
2. Is the camera as good as they say?
3. Why is the iPhone so fast?
4. Will iPhone be easy to use?
5. How does iPhone help protect my personal information?
6. What makes Messages so great?
7. Can I get help from a real person?
8. Can I switch at an Apple Store?
9. What about the environment?
10. Will I love my iPhone?

And finally, it asks, “Are you ready to switch?” while offering links to purchase all five of the phone models. The site also promotes Apple’s trade-in policy, boasting up to $260 in credits.

There is also a series of videos on Apple’s YouTube channel to highlight many of the points, including speed, ease of switching, and privacy. It’s unclear whether Apple plans on taking the campaign beyond the web, but it’s not too hard to see a TV or print campaign accompanying the site.

Earlier this year, Google unveiled its own switching site, coinciding with a new transfer tool that synced your contacts, calendar entries, and photos through Google Drive. It’s similar in practice to Apple’s Move to iOS app, but doesn’t require the installation of app you won’t need after the transfer is finished.

Apple ran a highly successful switcher campaign in the early 2000s, which used real people to tell stories about why they moved to a Mac. While Tim Cook has said upwards of 30 percent of new iPhone buyers are making the switch from an Android phone, Apple hasn’t previously launched an ad campaign targeted at Android.

Flip the switch: It’s no secret that Apple is looking for signs of growth. While the upcoming iPhone 8 will surely boost sales in the holiday quarter, Apple still needs to generate excitement during the rest of the year, which has proven difficult due to a steady stream of rumors and flagship competitors from the likes of LG and Samsung. But a new switcher campaign could be just what the doctor ordered.

 

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From text message alerts to wireless settings, your iPhone’s lock screen is brimming with sensitive data and controls. Here’s how to lock it all down.

Just because your iPhone is locked with a passcode or Touch ID doesn’t mean it’s safe from prying eyes and fingers. From text message notifications to Siri, your phone’s lock screen is brimming with alerts, features, and settings that anyone can tamper with, even after you’ve locked your handset.

Luckily, iOS has plenty of settings that can help lock down your phone’s lock screen. For example, you can keep sensitive notifications hidden, disable controls that could put your lost phone in airplane mode, turn off lock-screen access to Siri, and more.

Turn off lock screen notifications

You’d probably never dream of letting a stranger rifle through your text messages and email inbox, but that’s what could happen if you allow apps like Messages and Mail to put alerts on your iPhone’s lock screen. It’s even possible to reply to a text message or trash a mail message directly from the notification, even if your iPhone is locked.

If you’re worried about the wrong people seeing notifications from Messages, Mail, and other applications on your iPhone’s lock screen, consider turning off lock screen notifications for your most sensitive apps.

Tap Settings > Notifications to see a (probably massive) list of app the apps installed on your iOS device. Tap an app, then switch off the Show on Lock Screen setting to keep the app’s notifications from appearing on your lock screen. Unfortunately, there’s no way to turn off all lock screen notifications at once.

Block access to Today widgets and Notifications

Swipe from left to right on your locked iPhone screen, and you—or anyone else who’s got your device—can see your Today widgets. That means, depending on the widgets you’ve installed, they could check your calendar, peek at your Mail inbox, speed dial your favorite contacts, and more. Some apps are sensitive about what they show when your iPhone is locked—Activity, for example, and Find My Friends, won’t show anything in their widgets until you unlock the phone.

Also, if you swipe down from the top of the Today view, you’ll see a running tally of all your lock screen notifications, neatly organized by date. Essentially, it’s a history of your important app activity for the past week, all there for anyone to see.

If you don’t want just anyone to be able to view your agenda in the Today view or past app alerts in Notifications, you can tap Settings > Touch ID & Passcode, scroll down to the Allow Access When Locked section, then uncheck the Today View and Notifications View settings.

Keep in mind that even with the Notifications View setting unchecked in the Allow Access When Locked section, individual lock-screen notifications for your apps will still appear on the lock screen, unless you disable them in the Notifications settings screen. You just won’t be able to pull down the list of all your notifications.

Turn off access to Control Center

Flick up from the bottom of your iPhone’s lock screen and you’ll reveal Control Center, a panel of settings and controls that do everything from toggling your airplane and Do Not Disturb modes to setting timers and turning your iPhone’s LED flash into a flashlight.

It’s handy, but leaving Control Center enabled on your lock screen could allow an iPhone thief to put your stolen device into airplane mode, rendering your lost handset untraceable via Find My iPhone. If you don’t want anyone messing with Control Center settings on your locked iPhone, tap Settings > Control Center, then turn off the Access on Lock Screen setting.

Block access to Siri

Siri can perform a surprising number of duties even when your iPhone is locked. For example, she can rattle off your agenda, schedule new meetings, create reminders, and even send text messages to contacts.

While Siri won’t perform sensitive tasks (such as reading your email) without a passcode, you can, if you wish, block access to Siri completely from the lock screen.

Tap Settings > Siri, then uncheck the Access When Locked setting.

Turn off Wallet access

If you’re an Apple Pay user, iOS will let you quickly access your stored credit cards from your iPhone lock screen by double-tapping the Home button.

While you can’t actually make a purchase without authenticating with Touch ID or a passcode, you may not want your Apple Pay cards so visible from the lock screen—or perhaps you’re just tired of your credit cards popping up whenever you double-press the Home button by accident.

To block lock screen access to your iOS Wallet, tap Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay, then uncheck the Double-Click Home Button setting. Your Wallet will still come up when you hover your phone over an Apple Pay terminal, or you can launch Wallet from its app or with Siri.

Put your missing iPhone in “lost mode”

Let’s say you never got around to securing your iPhone’s various lock screen features, and whoosh!—your iPhone vanishes from your pocket. If you act quickly, there’s still a way to remotely lock down your iPhone.

The trick is engaging Find My iPhone’s Lost Mode, which instantly silences all notifications, alarms, and rings from incoming phone calls. Control Center will also be disabled, and even the Camera shortcut—which can’t be turned off by any other means—will shut down.

To put your missing iPhone into Lost Mode, visit iCloud.com, click Find My iPhone, select your iPhone, then click the Lost Mode button. You can also turn on Lost Mode using the Find My iPhone app on another of your iOS devices.

Note that Lost Mode will only work if your missing iPhone still has wireless access. If the thief who snatched your handset puts it into airplane mode, you’ll be out of luck.

 

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Sure, iOS 11 looks cool, but Android’s still cooler in some key ways.

Call me a flip-flopper, but the new features in iOS 11 have me thinking of jumping back to iOS after switching to Android barely a year ago.

Indeed, the new version of iOS brings such enticing features as a revamped App Store, a customizable Control Center, and drag-and-drop for iPad users, plus such catch-up features as one-handed typing and easy person-to-person payments.

But returning to iOS would mean leaving behind many Android features I’ve grown to love, from the ability to set up multiple user profiles to one-touch Google searches on whatever’s onscreen at a given moment.

Read on for six awesome Android features that iOS 11 has yet to match, starting with…

Multiple user profiles

Given all the innovations coming to the iPad courtesy of iOS 11, from the ability to drag-and-drop elements from one side of the split screen to the other and the new, persistent app dock, you’d think Apple would toss in a feature that’s been standard on Android for years: user profiles, perfect for letting family members in a one-iPad household create their own personal iPad spaces.

For whatever reason, though (privacy concerns, perhaps?), Apple has yet again passed on adding user profiles to the iPhone or iPad. That means if you share your iPad with your toddler or teenager, you’re sharing all your iPad data, too, including your e-mail, your open browser tabs, your Facebook app, everything.

Multiple Do Not Disturb schedules

Android has really spoiled me with its “automatic rules” for Do Not Disturb mode. With automatic rules, you can set up multiple Do Not Disturb schedules for weeknights, weekends, meetings, and any other scenarios you dream up. For example, I have Do Not Disturb set to turn itself off early (as in 6 a.m.) on weekday mornings, while on weekends, Do Not Disturb keeps things quiet until about 8.

In iOS 11, though, Do Not Disturb mode still lets you set only a single schedule, meaning you can’t set Do Not Disturb to give you more quiet time on weekends or during meetings.

Yes, the new “Do Not Disturb While Driving” feature (which automatically silences notifications whenever your iPhone senses you’re driving) is a nice innovation, but it’s too bad iOS 11 didn’t catch up to Android’s Do Not Disturb features.

Search the entire screen

As with previous versions of Apple’s mobile software, iOS 11 lets you perform quick web searches on selected text via Spotlight, iOS’s universal search feature. That’s helpful if you want a deep search on a narrow selection of text, but sometimes I’m looking for a broader search of everything on my screen.

Here’s where Android‘s Screen Search feature comes in handy. With a single tap of the What’s on my screen button in Google Assistant, Android will scan the entire screen and return any relevant search results, handy if you want a quick, 360-degree cheat sheet on a news article or web page. Pretty neat, and there’s no real equivalent on iOS, not even once iOS 11 arrives.

Clear all app windows

Here’s an Android feature I’d sorely miss even though I know it’s more cosmetic than anything else. The “Clear All” button on Android’s Overview screen instantly closes all your open app windows, leaving you with a soothing “No recent items” message when you tap the Overview button again. For a neat-freak like me, tapping the Clear All button never gets old.

On iOS, though—and yes, this includes iOS 11—there’s no easy way to clear out the massive stack of app windows on the multitasking screen, forcing you to flick up on dozens of individual windows until the coast is clear.

Now, I’m sure iOS comes with marvelous under-the-hood tools that manage the resources used by your apps and automatically suspends those that have been sitting untouched in the background for too long.

Still, though, I know it’ll kill me the first time my thumb reaches for the non-existent Clear All button on my new iPhone 8 (assuming I actually make the big leap).

Delete all local photos & videos from the Photos app

You’ve probably heard about the new storage-saving features in iOS 11, particularly when it comes to the storage-hogging Photos app.

For example, Apple announced support for a new image format (HEIF, for “High Efficiency Image Format”) that can halve the amount of storage gobbled up by your snapshots.

Also coming in iOS 11: shortcuts that do a better job of recommending storage-saving features like iCloud Photo Library, which uploads all your pictures and videos to the cloud and then automatically pares down the number of images sitting on your iPhone or iPad.

Those are worthwhile improvements, but here’s something I’d sorely miss if I went back to iOS: the “free up space” feature in Android’s Photos app, which instantly zaps each and every local snapshot and video stored on your handset.

Thanks to the “free up space” feature, photos take up less than 100MB of space on my 16GB Nexus 5X. On the other hand, the Photos app on my old iPhone 6 consumes a ridiculous 17GB of storage, even with iCloud Photo Library turned on (and yes, with the Optimize iPhone Storage option enabled).

Bonus tip: The iOS version of Google Photos has a “free up space” feature just like its Android counterpart, meaning you could clear up tons of storage space on your iPhone or iPad by uploading your photos to Google and then using the “free up space” option to delete your local copies. Keep in mind, though, that if you’re using Google Photos and iCloud Photo Library at the same time, wiping your local images and videos with Google Photo’s “free up space” feature will also delete those photos from iCloud, so make sure all your local image files are safely backed up first.

Symbol shortcuts on iPhone letter keys

As with the latest version of Google Keyboard for Android, iOS 11 will bring symbol shortcuts to letter keys on the iPad keyboard, handy for saving a few keystrokes when you need to type a number key, an ampersand, or another common symbol.

That’s a welcome change, but unfortunately, iOS 11’s so-called “QuickType” keyboard is only coming to iPad, not iPhone. Now, you could argue that the iPhone keypad is too small for symbol shortcuts, but the shortcuts on Google Keyboard work just fine on my five-inch Nexus 5X.

 

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