You drop your phone and the screen shatters. Ugh. While you've probably been smart about putting your critical data on the cloud — right? — there might be some things you still want to extract from your smartphone before you take it in for repair or swap it out for a new one. Or you not be in a position to afford a new phone right now. How do you continue to use your phone when the screen is cracked?

My dog, Alice, is an RSPCA special. She's a nearly 40kg mix of every medium-to-large working breed without any distinguishing traits. Alice is such a mongrel that she's registered as a 'mixed cross'.

Maybe Google Lens would be able to work out what breed she is. Its first guess was Dachshund/Corgi cross. That's not right. We took Google Lens to the local dog park for further testing.

It may not seem like there is ever a right time of year to an iPhone. Apple almost never discounts the price of its handsets until a newer model launches, and this leaves the telcos and retailers to eat into their profits if they want to run a special price or promotion.

Sometimes you need a fair and equitable way of deciding who goes first in a board game, which child has to have a bath first or you need a way to divide people onto teams. You could draw straws or you could use Chwazi.

iOS: Augmented reality feels a little gimmicky — there are only so many games you can play on your coffee table, monsters you can drop into your backyard, and items you can sort-of measure. However, augmented reality apps that are thoughtful in their approach, such as Fields, are incredibly fun to play with.

We all know that fruits and veggies that are currently in season are going to taste better and be more affordable than those that aren't but remember what's in season when can often be a bit of a challenge.

Renting sucks. Finding an affordable place sucks. Finding a place that will accept your application sucks. Not least of all, being at the mercy of Australia's fractured internet landscape and gambling on what sort of connection - if any - your new home will have sucks.

Now you can search for NBN ready properties to make the process suck a little less.

iOS: The words “Apple” and “free” are a bit like oil and water — just ask anyone who works at the company and doesn’t get to partake in the Silicon Valley custom of free lunches and dinners for all. However, Father Cook is feeling generous this month, and Apple is offering up the excellent Obscura 2 camera app for free. Here’s how you get it (and save $7.99).

If your regular ol' Tinder profile pic isn't getting enough people to swipe right, now you can replace it with a GIF.

The Lifehacker staff sifts through a ton of apps on a regular basis, but a few have stuck with us over the years. Some apps are simply nice to have, while others have become essential in our daily lives. From dealing with irate dragons to counting our mindfulness minutes, each app on this list has a special place in our hearts (and our homescreens). Best of all, they're completely free to download!

Maybe you bought a brand-new phone; maybe your phone just went through a major OS update. Either way, the result is the same: you can't connect it via Bluetooth to your older car anymore, which means you've lost the ability to rock out, enrich yourself with podcasts, or make hands-free calls.

It feels as though Google has held the market on “point your camera at it to learn more” technology for some time now, first through its Translate app, which let you target signs in foreign languages with your smartphone’s camera and receive translations on the fly, and now via Lens, which expands this technology to give you plenty of information about the objects in photos you’ve taken (or are about to take).

The iPad may have started its life as a content consumption device but over the last eight years, since its release, it has evolved through a combination of upgrades from Apple and the release of many accessories into a valid alternative to a traditional computer for many people. One of the key apps many people need is an image creation and editing tool. Pixelmator fills that gap with a powerful suite of image creation and editing tools for iOS and the Mac.

In this week's Tech 911 - the column where we offer reasonable answers and explanations for of your deepest, darkest tech confusions - a Lifehacker reader wonders why she can't access some of Gmail's best features with a third-party email client (and a non-Gmail address).

While a lot of the stuff you do with your phone will involve Wi-Fi, the essential functions of a phone — the calling and the texting — still rely on a connection to a mobile phone tower. If that link breaks, you can miss important messages or be out of reach to family and friends. Here's what you can do if you struggle to get a solid mobile network connection at home.

iOS: One of the best parts of any science-fiction game or movie are those ominous tones that suggest a conversation or discovery is about to head south — a quintessential part of the soundtrack that adds a lot of atmosphere (and tension) to an experience. And now, thanks to an open-source iOS app, you can make your own imposing synthesiser sounds and teach yourself the basics of music production.

While there is a lot of hype around the launch of Apple’s new all-glass iPhone X, the attention of consumer lawyers is probably focused in a different direction. In April, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) alleged that Apple had contravened consumer law by wrongly representing to customers they were not entitled to have a phone defect remedied if their device had previously been fixed by an “unauthorised” repairer.

The action was brought after reports that some consumers who had had their screen repaired by a third party suffered an “error 53”, which disabled their iPhone or iPad, after downloading an iOS update. Given that the new iPhone launched on Tuesday in the US, it’s timely to think about the rights available to Apple fans under Australian law if they suffer that most common of breakages – the shattered screen.

Battery issues are one of the more headache-inducing problems you’ll deal with as an iPhone owner. Whether it’s Apple’s alleged planned obsolescence or just the simple physics of your iPhone’s battery — it won’t last forever — there will come a time when you can’t make it through the day on a single charge. But consider this: It might be an app’s fault instead.

Every week at Lifehacker, we highlight the best new apps and browser extensions that can do something awesome for your devices (or life). If you took an Internet-free sabbatical or went on vacation for a week, you probably missed some gems.