Very often than not, many of us hear songs on radio, TV or on a device nearby. Sometimes, these songs are very interesting and suit your taste for music but unfortunately, we are unable to identify the songs by their owners or title.

In situations like this, one thing that comes to mind is an app which can help you search for a song by recording a part of it.

In this article, we shall take you through three applications that enable you to find any song that is playing around you.

Shazam

Shazam is a multi-platform app for identifying music playing on TV, Radio, Cinemas and music devices. Shazam is available for IOS devices and Android devices.

To use Shazam to search for a song, follow these steps:

1. Open the app and press the ‘Shazam’ button.
2. Hold the phone near to the source of the song for about 10 seconds.
3. A digital fingerprint of the audio recorded by your device is created and, within seconds, matched against Shazam’s database of millions of tracks and TV shows for a result.
4. If the song is available in the database, details of the songs will be displayed to you. However, if the song doesn’t match any of the songs in the database of Shazam, it will show ‘No results found’.

Note: In order for shazam to produce the kind of results you want, you need to reduce the background noise of the environment in which the song is being played.

Soundhound

Soundhound is one of the most efficient speech- to- meaning applications on the internet today.

With Soundhound, anyone in the world using both android devices or IOS devices can search for songs or TV programs of their choice by simply recording a part of the song or singing and humming part of the song.

Soundhound then matches contents of the recorded audio with a list of millions of marked audio in their database.

Soundhoud has features that enable users to link their soundhound account to their Apple Music or Spotify so as to create an automated playlist based on their Soundhound history.

MusixMatch

The last app on this list is MusixMatch. Arguably, MusixMatch is rather a better choice than many of the other song finding apps on the internet.

This app gives you useful results almost every 9 out of 10 times and provides users with lyrics of songs they search as well.

The app also has a floating lyrics feature, which lets you see lyrics in real-time as you listen to music.

In addition to this, once you create an account, you can contribute to lyrics for your favourite songs.

Musixmatch has a free version which displays ads and a paid or premium version which costs 3 Dollars per month and provides the option of saving your lyrics for offline usage.

Google Assistant

One of our readers, Mawuli, pointed out the Google Assistant app, which we had missed in the earlier version of this article.

Quite, rightly, once you say “Ok Google” and ask what song is playing, the Google Assistant will listen to part of the song (usually 6 seconds or less) and tell you the name of the song playing.

You could also singly type “What song is this?” in Google Assistant and you will get the same response.

Conclusion

From the list provided above, my best tip is MusixMatch as it provides far more than just music identification.

Also, its accuracy rate is quite high and it is more likely to give you the results you want. Meanwhile, depending on the level of popularity of the song you want, Shazam may be a better choice. The more popular the song is, the better it is for Shazam to identify it.

Also, there are many other music identification apps you can use. Kindly share with us the ones you have used and how best they worked for you. Let’s hear from you in the comment box.

Secrecy and privacy are the keywords behind the need for protecting how people interact with your mobile devices.

Most times, our phones contain some sensitive pieces of information such as our banking details, important dates, vital passwords and usernames as well as images and applications.

The need to protect such pieces of information on your phone becomes even more necessary when you realize the number of people that are likely to use your phone with or without your permission.

If you are a married man or woman, chances are that your spouse my comb through your phone or your children may play with your phone while you’re busy with something else.

Again, you may lose your phone through theft or by misplacing it. In such instances, whoever the phone gets to may have the privilege of accessing all files and apps on your phone.

The consequences of all the above-listed situations could be dire to you as an individual and the family as a whole.

In order to prevent all the above, there is a need for you to lock the apps on your phone.

In this article, I shall take you through some of the best apps you can use to lock other apps on your android phone.

Norton App Lock

For all security-cautious individuals, Norton is a common name in the anti-virus industry. Just as with their antivirus software, Norton App Lock is a perfect App lock for your android device.

The Applock is built to be ad-free and contains a large range of features.

What fascinates me about this software is the unrivalled element of spying on intruders.

The app allows you to lock your apps, images and files with password, PIN or fingerprint.

It also has the ability to secretly record and capture the face of intruders so you could track them when you return to your phone.

What is more, Norton gives you recommendations for the apps you should lock on your phone. This is based on Artificial Intelligence systems which detect where your sensitive information may be hidden.

Applock – Fingerprint Unlock

This app developed by Cheetah Movile is one of the best app locks you can use on your android mobile device today.

It allows you to use your fingerprint sensor to secure your apps from unauthorised entries.

You may also create a PIN or use a pattern to lock the phone apps.

AppLock-Fingerprint Unlock by Cheetah Mobile is a lightweight Android app lock that allows you to use your fingerprint sensor to lock apps. You can also use a pattern or create a numeric PIN to lock phone app.

One other interesting thing about this app is that it enables you to lock other aspects of your phone such as your Wi-fi, Bluetooth, your phone settings and incoming call logs.

It also comes with an in-built timer which enables you to set a time within which it’s supposed to lock on idle mode.

Smart Applock Pro ( App Protect)

The Smart Applock pro is also a leading name when it comes to app locks for android devices. With an ad-free user interface and being a complete freeware, Smart Applock has some really beautiful features you can use.

This app allows you to lock your private data, pictures, videos, incoming call logs, phone settings and apps.

The lock methods include gestures, fingerprint sensor, password, PIN and patterns.

Also, for its security aspect, the app takes secret photos of individuals who wrongly try to access your phone. It then sends an email to an address you setup during installation.

MaxLock

Our fourth and final pick has to be MaxLock.  This app is one of the finest lock apps for those looking to achieve more than just locking their apps and settings.

With Maxlock, you have improved battery performance and an overall improvement in device health and performance.

It shrinks data and therefore does not take up too much space as well.

The MaxLock app allows you to lock your phone settings, photos, videos, apps and other settings.

Its lock methods include PIN, Password or knock code and pattern.

The best part of this app, however, is that it enables you to fake the crash of apps that are locked.

So, when someone tries to open a locked app, it looks as if the phone had frozen or the app had crashed.

Also, you can hide the lock app by changing its icon and hiding it in a different folder on your device so that nobody realises that you intentionally locked your apps.

Conclusion

So, there you have it. A list of apps you can use to lock your android phone from intruders. The apps listed above were carefully selected based on their properties and how safe they may be.

However, for the sake of your own safety from phishing apps (Apps that look like the apps listed above but are fake), you are required to read the reviews on the play store before you download any of them. I hope this article was helpful to you.

If you do have any other app you’d like to share with us, kindly indicate it in the comment box. We would love to hear from you. You can also reach out to us via email or call for more information.

It’s 5:30 am, my alarm just went off, I stop the alarm and use my phone for a good 30 minutes before getting out of bed or even praying. I spend a huge portion of my time on my phone doing research, playing video games and interacting with people. At times, I feel like I spend too much time on it and try to limit it.

There are many other people who think in the same way and want to reduce the amount of time spent on their phones.  Thankfully there are many apps that can help us manage our time.

Digital wellbeing is a system application built into android versions 9 and above. The fact that it is a system app means it has more control than a third party application. Upon booting up a new phone, there is the option to set the maximum number of hours to be spent on the phone.

There’s also an option to set the preferred number of applications for each specific app as well so if it’s just social media, the maximum number of hours can be set for it. When the set time is reached, the phone goes into total lockdown but it also gives the option to get more time specifically 15 minutes more or unlimited use for the rest of the day.

Doing this for every application used is really stressful and annoying so the goal is achieved. The number of hours spent on the phone each day is recorded for each application and then summed up in a weekly report.  Everyone concerned about their phone time should set it up and the results would amaze you.

Flipd, a freemium app which locks down the phone entirely for a set time is. Unlike Digital wellbeing, Flipd blocks all non-essential apps for a set amount of time to help to focus on life but allows you to make calls, send messages, use Google maps and calculator.

The time options include 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, 8 hours and 12 hours to allows maximum control. There’s a light option for those who believe in their self-control which creates a page on your phone. If another application is opened, the session is also closed.

For 190 cedis a year, Flipd provides weekly reports about your stats and keeps the for further reference.  I find it useful to Flipd my phone when I’m about to study and it really helps. When I use Flipd with digital wellbeing, I realized I spent less time on my phone and it really helped.

If a game or social media app is taking too much time, Freedom is here to help. It is available on the iPhone and it allows you to create blocklists of applications and even schedule the blocklists. The block lists and schedules can be shared among your iPad and Mac. Sadly, it isn’t free, all features are available for a monthly fee of 35-40 cedis a month.

As our phones take a more central role in our lives, it is necessary to make sure they don’t end up controlling us and these apps do just that.