2/20/2024: Transform an old phone into an iPod

How I made my own portable music player

Plus: Debunking the rice myth (again), Wyze’s latest blunder, and Google Photos’ near-duplicate cleaner

Jared Newman
|
February 20, 2024
An Android phone running the Symfonium app next to a pair of wired headphones

Over the weekend, I read a great story from Craig Grannell about how he misses using an iPod.

You can probably guess the gist: While smartphones have replaced portable music players (along with a slew of other single-use devices), their do-it-all nature comes at cost. With so many possibilities, it’s hard to stay focused on just one thing, like listening to music.

Not content to just pine for the past, I decided to do something about it. I conjured an old Android phone, gave it a factory reset, and imbued it with fresh purpose as a dedicated music player. It automatically syncs with my music library, works offline, and loads nothing but a single app for music.

Here’s how I did it:

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Need to know

Wet phone? Avoid rice: It’s official. A new Apple support document spotted by Macworld specifically discourages users from putting an iPhone in a bag of rice to mitigate water damage. “Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone,” Apple says. (Also: Don’t take a hairdryer to it or stuff cotton into its orifices.)

The bowl of rice myth has already been busted countless times over the years—I even linked to iFixit’s explainer back in 2019—but it seems to work because it forces folks to leave their phones alone. That, in fact, is the best thing you can do in a water emergency, though open air works even better. (Also, pretty much every modern iPhone and many Android phones can survive a dunk in the pool regardless.)

DuckDuckGo password sync: DuckDuckGo’s web browser can now sync your passwords and bookmarks across devices, bringing it more in line with other browsers such as Chrome and Firefox (and FLOORP). You can set up sync in DuckDuckGo’s Settings menu under Sync & Backup.

DuckDuckGo’s browser is still on the bare-bones side, with no extension support, vertical tabs, or ability to set a default search engine besides DuckDuckGo itself. If you don’t care about any of that, it’s the simplest path to a more private internet.

Wyze’s latest security blunder: For the second time in five months, Wyze allowed thousands of users to see content from strangers’ security cameras. Most only saw image thumbnails, but in some cases Wyze leaked event videos as well. Another glitch last fall swapped strangers’ feeds into Wyze’s web viewer for some users.

This is the same company that previously exposed millions of users’ personal data and decided not to patch a vulnerability that could have allowed remote camera access in its first-gen cameras, despite being aware of the problem for three years. If you’ve noticed that I’ve stopped recommending Wyze’s cameras in my deal roundups, this helps explain.

Tip of the moment

Use Google’s Photo Stacks Google Photos has made it a little easier to manage near-duplicates with a new feature called “Photo Stacks.” Once enabled, it will automatically group similar photos together, so you can compare them and decide which ones are worth keeping.

To enable Photo Stacks, tap your profile icon in the Google Photos app, then head to Google Photos Settings > Preferences > Stack similar photos. Enable this setting, and you’ll start seeing a number on some of your photos, indicating that they’re grouped together.

While viewing a Photo Stack, you can swipe between each photo or tap the grid icon to view them side-by-side. Swiping up reveals a handy “Keep this, delete rest” option. You can also long-press on any photo in the grid view to select the ones you want to keep.

Now try this

Relaxing visuals: Magic Fluids is a free app for iOS and Android that generates colorful effects under your fingers. Use it whenever you need a minute of mindless visual stimulation. You can pay for extra effects, but the free “Lite” version is just fine.

Bootleg Spotify: Spotube is a free alternative Spotify app with no ads or podcasts, and it also supports offline downloads. Though it apparently pulls music from YouTube behind the scenes, you can connect a Spotify account to access your library and playlists. The account connection process is a bit tricky on the desktop, though, and mobile support is Android-only. (Via Dense Discovery.)

Further reading

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Thanks for reading!

I had fun joining Rich DeMuro on his Rich on Tech radio show and podcast over the weekend, discussing last week’s feature column about what to do when you’re out of iCloud storage. My segment starts at about the 1:32:50 mark if you want to give it a listen. Thanks for having me, Rich!

Got tech questions for me? Just reply to this email to get in touch.

Until next week,
Jared

Authentic tech advice.

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