Technologies

Home Safe? Snap Map Will Let Your Friends and Family Know With Alert

Snapchat adds a new feature to send alerts to trusted contacts when you’re safe and sound at home.

«Let us know when you’re home.» How many times have you heard that from friends or family at the end of the night, but forgotten to follow up when you get through the door? Snapchat has added a feature to its popular Snap Map that will take care of it for you.

The messaging app launched a new feature on Thursday called «Home Safe,» which will alert friends and/or family that you’re home safely even when you forget to do so. It’s ideal to let folks know when you’re back from a vacation, a night out or a long drive.

With location sharing already part of Snapchat’s Family Center hub, the new «Home Safe» feature will also be great for parents to get alerts to know when they’re kids are home in one piece.

How Home Safe Works

First, tap your Bitmoji on Snap Map and then «My Home» to set your home location. Then, open the chat conversation with a friend or friends who you want to alert when you get home, tap the map icon and then the «Home Safe» button. Later, when you arrive back home, your friend or friends will get a one-time alert in the chat conversation that you’ve made it home with no problems.

Remember that alerts can only be sent to contacts with whom you are already sharing your location, and the «Home Safe» notification will only be sent once. You will need to go through the process again for future alerts. Also, remember that location sharing on Snap Map is turned off by default.

In May, Snapchat announced that their user base for Snap Maps topped 400 million monthly active users.

Snapchat’s «Home Safe» is a welcome addition to its app, and it’s one of several apps that can help make others aware that you are safe, including:

Life360
bSafe
UrSafe
Noonlight
VithU
Raksha

Technologies

Starlink Restored After Hours-Long Outage Took Down Elon Musk’s Satellite Internet Service

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for July 25 #509

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for July 25 No. 509.

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.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a mix of easy words to find and unscramble and one whopping long one. But if you know the theme, that word is easy to decipher. 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: Step to it!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Boogie shoes.

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:

HOGS, RICE, RICER, MUSE, CHAT, CHATS, GRAM, PANT, COAT, COATS, PARS, CARS, LASS, CLASS, CLASSY

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:

MUSIC, COSTUME, RECITAL, TEACHER, CHOREOGRAPHY

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is DANCECLASS. To find it, start with the D that’s five letters down on the far-left row, and wind up and over.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 25, #305

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for July 25, No. 305.

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition tested my breadth of sports knowledge. The blue category pays tribute to one of the greatest players of all time. See if you can figure it out. We’ve got hints and the answers in case you get stuck.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

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

Yellow group hint: Rink-related.

Green group hint: The lower end of the Golden State.

Blue group hint: NFL G.O.A.T.

Purple group hint: You can also do this to your hair.