Technologies

Spoilers? Trolls? You can remove them from your Twitter feed. Here’s how

Muting words and phrases lets you avoid entire topics in your feed.

Terrified of spoilers for upcoming movies like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or The Batman? Need a break from people talking about COVID-19? Timeline suddenly hijacked by people talking about a news event you have absolutely zero interest in? Twitter‘s mute feature can solve all those problems — it’s just a bit buried in the app’s menus.

Twitter can be a great place to interact with friends, brands, celebrities and almost anyone imaginable. The price of admission? Those people are probably going to tweet things you don’t want to hear about.

Movies and TV show spoilers are a frustrating but mostly harmless risk. Reading tweets that include painful or potentially triggering content can have a negative impact on your mental well-being and is a bigger problem. An unfiltered Twitter feed leaves you vulnerable to both of these risks and many in between.

Fortunately, there’s a way to protect yourself. Twitter offers the option to mute terms, the same way you’d mute an account you don’t want to hear from.

According to Twitter’s description: «When you mute words, you won’t get any new notifications for Tweets that include them or see Tweets with those words in your timeline.»

Here’s how to cleanse your timeline of unwanted topics.

How to mute specific words on Twitter

1. Tap on your profile picture in the top left on a mobile device. Select More if you’re using a computer.

2. Select Settings and privacy

3. Choose Privacy and safety

4. Go to Mute and block

5. Tap Muted words. If you have any terms muted, they’ll display on the next menu.

6. On iOS, press the Add button in the bottom right. On Android, press the + symbol in the bottom right (upper right on a web browser).

7. At the top of the screen, enter the word or phrase you want to mute. If you want to mute multiple terms, which is generally more effective, you’ll have to mute them one at a time.

8. Select your preferred details for muting the term: Whether you want to mute them in your entire timeline or just notifications, whether you want to mute them from anyone or only people you don’t follow, and how long you want the term to stay muted.

9. Hit Save at the top right of the screen to mute the word or phrase. If you want to add more terms, repeat again from step six.

Tips for muting terms on Twitter

Although the muting process is straightforward, in my experience, there’s an art to successfully keeping unwanted terms off your timeline. I’ve learned two major tricks in my time trying to navigate around specific topics.

First, grab a thesaurus. As a longtime James Bond fan, I didn’t want to hear anything about No Time to Die before I saw the movie. But I knew muting the title wouldn’t be enough. I also muted the terms «Bond,» «James Bond,» «007» and «Daniel Craig» to shield myself from as many spoiler avenues as possible. Similarly, if you need a break from pandemic talk, I’d recommend muting words like «pandemic,» «COVID,» «COVID-19,» «vaccine,» «delta» and «omicron.»

Also, choose the timeline that makes sense for you. Sometimes, you just want to dodge a topic for a day. Or maybe you just need to survive spoilers through the weekend until you can watch a movie. But there might be cases where you’ll be better off muting a term forever. You can always edit your muted word settings, and your mental health should come first.

For more tweeting tips, check out our guide to Twitter Blue. We can also show you how to delete your entire Twitter history and which privacy settings you should change.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for June 9, #463

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 463 for June 9.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Todays NYT Strands puzzle features a bunch of mysterious words. Some are a bit difficult to unscramble so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: What you see isn’t what you get

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Hiding in plain sight

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

CALL, CALLS, FALL, FALLS, SAME, SEAM, LAND, ROSE, COVE, CANE, CANES, FLUME, FLUMES, DIGS, MEAL, COLA, CARD, CASE

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

MASK, CLOAK, COVER, FACADE, DISGUISE, CAMOUFLAGE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is FALSEFRONT. To find it, start with the F that’s two rows over from the far left and two letters down. Wind around into a question mark.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 9, #729

Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 9, No. 729.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Do you play the NYT Spelling Bee? If you do, you should be able to ace the purple category in today’s NYT Connections puzzle. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Control-C.

Green group hint: Don’t wait till the last minute.

Blue group hint: Pals to plan a heist.

Purple group hint: Think another NYT online game.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Keyboard shortcut commands.

Green group: Secure in advance.

Blue group: Crime organization.

Purple group: Spellling Bee ranks minus a letter.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is keyboard shortcut commands. The four answers are paste, print, quit and save.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is secure in advance. The four answers are book, order, request and reserve.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is crime organization. The four answers are crew, family, ring and syndicate.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Spelling Bee ranks minus a letter. The four answers are genus, goo, mazing and slid. (Genius, good, amazing and solid.)

Technologies

I Made Google Translate My Default on iPhone Before a Trip and It Saved Me More Than Once

Google Translate supports far more languages than Apple’s app, and it’s easy to make the switch.

If you’re traveling overseas this summer, the Google Translate app can come in handy to quickly translate a road sign or conversation. The latest Google Translate update allows you to pick the app as your default translation app for Apple iPhones and iPads running iOS and iPadOS 18.4 and later. Previously, you were limited to the built-in Apple option.

Google began leveraging AI to boost Google Translate’s offerings, adding 110 languages last year to increase its total support for 249 languages. Compare that to Apple Translate, which supports 19 languages. Neither Google nor Apple responded to a request for comment.

Both apps offer voice and text translation, including a camera feature that lets you instantly translate by pointing your camera at text. Both also allow you to use translation features without an internet connection, which can come in particularly handy when traveling to more remote locations.

After using both, I found that the Google Translate picked up speech a little quicker so I didn’t have to constantly repeat myself, and the audio pronunciations were a little easier to understand than on Apple Translate. I switched to Google Translate as the default on my iPhone, and here’s how you can, too.