Get started with Snapchat Discover

Get started with Snapchat Discover

Discover what Snapchat's new service is all about.

Snapchat Discover landing page.Jason Cipriani/CNET

On Tuesday, Snapchat announced a new service called Discover. The service brings daily video content from various content provides such as CNN, Vice News and ESPN. The content is refreshed every 24 hours with new stories, videos and photos for you to view. Think of Discover as a place within Snapchat (of all apps) you can go to catch up on the latest news, listen to the hottest music or receive cooking lessons from professional chefs.

After updating to the latest version of Snapchat on your iOS or Android device, you'll have access to Discover.

To access the new feature, swipe to the left from the main screen where you'd normally go to view Stories posted by your friends. In top-right corner is a new, circular button that launches the Discovery screen. I've had mixed results with swiping to the left again from the Stories screen, with some instances resulting in Discover being opened while others resulted in nothing happening at all.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

Currently a grid of 12 content providers is displayed on the main Discover screen. Tapping on any of the icons will launch the respective channel.

Each channel offers up a different mix of text articles and videos. When you first launch a channel, you're greeted with a familiar Snapchat-like message; it's short in nature, giving you just a glimpse of what the story is about. You can swipe up on any given preview to either read the article, or watch the accompanying video.

From what I can tell, videos range in length from just under a minute to over 15 minutes depending on the source and content covered.

At any time you can swipe down on a video (or article) to go back to the list of content from a channel, with another swipe taking you back to the main Discover screen.

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An easy way to remove oddball toggles from the Android 5.0 Quick Settings menu

An easy way to remove oddball toggles from the Android 5.0 Quick Settings menu

Accidentally enabled the Hotspot or Invert Colors feature in Android 5.0 Lollipop? You may have noticed two new icons in the Quick Settings menu. Here's how to get rid of them.

The release of Android 5.0 Lollipop brought a new look to the Android operating system. One area that saw improvement was the Quick Settings menu and Notifications bar. A simple swipe down from the top of the screen reveals notifications from texts, emails and other apps, while a second swipe lets you quickly adjust the brightness and turn on things like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Airplane mode.

The default screen in the Quick Settings menu shows toggles for eight options: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, network connection, Airplane mode, Auto-rotate, Flashlight, Location and Cast screen. When you turn on the Hotspot feature or (heaven forbid) the Invert Colors option a new icon will appear in this menu.

Sarah Tew/CNET

These new icons can be annoying, especially if you accidentally inverted your colors. The toggle icons will automatically disappear from the Quick Settings menu after 30 days of inactivity, but you don't have to wait that long. An easy to fix to remove these is to roll the calendar back a month or more, toggle the setting on and then back off, and reset the calendar.

This can be done on stock Android by going to Settings, selecting Date & time, unchecking the automatic time and date box, and clicking on Set date. Choose the same date from a month ago and toggle the icon you want to get rid of (either Hotspot or Invert Colors) on and off. Then all you have to do is recheck the box to use network-provided date and just like that those annoying icons will have vanished.

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