Phone and Tablet Tips
44
What you should install this fortnight
MaskerAid
Free*
iOS http://www.snipca.com/41595
MaskerAid offers a fun way to share
photos without compromising the
privacy of your subjects. It automatically
detects faces
in pictures and
conceals them
with an emoji – by
default, this is a
smiley face, but you
can pay £2.49 to
unlock thousands of
additional options.
The app also
removes metadata
from your photos.Supercasts
Free
Android http://www.snipca.com/41591
This easy-to-use app finds you free podcasts
from across the world that “inspire, inform
and entertain”. Choose
from genres
including News,
Science and
Technology, then
listen to recommended
podcasts directly in
Supercasts, save
and share your
favourites, adjust the
playback speed and
download episodes
to play offline.BEST NEW APPS
Chess – Play & Learn
Free*
Android http://www.snipca.com/41585
iOS http://www.snipca.com/41586
Chess.com has redesigned its mobile app
to make it easier to navigate. The home
screen now offers
one-tap tabs for
starting games,
solving puzzles,
viewing chess
lessons and getting
the latest event
news. You can also
get statistics about
your gameplay and
see your rank in the
Players League.ANDROID & iOS
Listen to and record
WhatsApp voice messages
WhatsApp has made a slew of
changes to its voice-messaging
feature that make it much easier to listen
to audio notes that people send you – and
to record your own. Our favourite new
option is ‘Out of Chat Playback’, which
lets you keep listening to a voice message
after leaving the conversation you
received it in. This means you can read
and reply to messages from other people,while the audio continues to play – very
handy if the sender is particularly chatty
or long-winded. It’s complemented by a
new Remember Playback option, which
lets you pause and resume voice messages
without needing to start again from the
beginning, and another new option that
lets you speed up playback to listen to
long messages twice as fast (see^1 in our
screenshot below left).
When recording your own messages,
you can now view a ‘waveform’^2 that
shows a visual representation of the sound,
to ensure your voice isn’t too loud or too
quiet. It’s also now possible to pause and
resume recordings, in case you’re
interrupted or need to gather your thoughts,
and – best of all – you can preview your
messages before you send them^3.ANDROID
Protect your whole phone
using Opera’s new VPN
In our recent ‘Never get tracked
online’ feature (see Issue 625, page
53), we commented that Opera’s built-in
VPN is actually a proxy because it only
encrypts your data while using the
browser. Opera has now updated its
Android app with a proper VPN that
works across your whole phone or tablet,
keeping you anonymous and secure no
matter which app you’re using.
As well as encrypting your incoming
and outgoing internet traffic, Opera VPN
Pro (www.snipca.com/41581) lets you use
more than 3,000 servers in 33 countriesaround the world,
allowing you to beat
geographic restrictions
and access content
that’s unavailable in
the UK. There’s no
monthly data limit
and Opera says its
“high-speed” servers
mean the VPN’s
device-wide security
won’t slow down your browsing.
Opera VPN Pro will soon be integrated
with Opera for Android, and a beta
version of the updated browser is
available to try now (www.snipca.
com/41582). The catch is that the VPN
isn’t free, but will cost you £2.19 for one
month or £4.59 if you pay for three
months at once. However, there is a
seven-day free trial, which you can
unlock by tapping ‘Try for free’ on the
browser’s VPN screen (see screenshot
above), while a subscription lets you
protect up to six devices.ANDROID & iOS
View traffic lights and
islands in Google Maps
Google Maps has improved its ‘navigation
experience’ by adding more detail to its
maps, to help you explore unfamiliar
areas with more confidence. Most
notably, it now shows the location of
traffic lights (see screenshot above right),
an addition that’s equally useful for
drivers on the road and pedestrians*Contains in-app purchases27 April – 10 May 2022 • Issue 6301
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