Skip to main content

Apps

The best apps download superpowers to your smartphone. The Verge covers the new and noteworthy Android apps, iPhone apps, and games, highlighting great design, impressive utility, and novel features. If it belongs on your phone, you’ll find it on The Verge.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google Vids can now do more with your slides.

In June, Google launched the ability to turn your Slides presentation into a video, but now, you can have it automatically generate an AI script, voiceover, and background music to go along with each of your slides. The feature is rolling out now to Workspace and AI plan subscribers.

You just have to enable the AI toggle when importing your slides to Vids.
You just have to enable the AI toggle when importing your slides to Vids.
Image: Google
Anker’s latest sleepbuds can silence snoring

7

Verge Score

Good for side-sleepers but ANC kills battery life.

Thomas Ricker
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Checkmate.

Duolingo’s chess course is now available on Android, and the iOS version will soon get a player-versus-player mode, the company says.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Steve Ballmer’s Kawhi Leonhard controversy intersects with another scandal.

ESPN NBA writer Brian Windhorst points out that when Aspiration signed up to be the Clippers’ jersey patch sponsor (and, allegedly, help circumvent the NBA’s salary cap) it replaced another company.

That was Honey, the shopping tool exposed for swapping referral codes, which actually got ads featuring Kawhi.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Snapchat now lets you permanently save messages.

The app has introduced a new “infinite retention” feature, allowing you to save chats in individual conversations. Snap will notify everyone in the group when you enable the feature.

Previously, Snapchat only saved messages for 24 hours after everyone in the group viewed them, or 31 days after the message was sent, whichever is sooner.

The iPhone to get this yearThe iPhone to get this year
David Pierce
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
If you can’t clear your Slack unread count, try refreshing.

The app had an outage this morning, leaving many users staring at an unread count, even after reading all their messages. Slack reports it’s fixed, but if your app is still stuck, hitting CMD + Shift + R (Mac) or CTRL + Shift + R (Windows) to force refresh should clear things up.

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
The Nintendo Today app has added special features unlocked by inaudible sounds.

Nintendo Today was updated to version 2.0 today with a new Kirby theme and exclusive content for the Nintendo Live 2025 event in Tokyo. But it will only be accessible at the event using an inaudible sound broadcasted at the venue the app will listen for to verify attendance.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Bluesky adds bookmarks.

You can finally save posts for later using the new bookmark icon that’s now available on Bluesky’s mobile app and web. And, if you’ve been using the “pushpin” emoji to save posts, there’s a tool you can use to migrate them to the new bookmarks tab.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Live Photos are coming to WhatsApp.

Wabetainfo says the WhatsApp for iOS beta 25.24.10.72 update adds support for Live Photos in chats, groups, and channels, after rolling out similar support for motion photos on Android last month. Users can decide whether to send them as a still image or the original dynamic clip.

Three screenshots showing the Live Photo support rolling out in the WhatsApp beta for iOS version 25.24.10.72.
The Live Photo support is available to some beta testers, and will be rolling out to more users “in the coming weeks,” according to Wabetainfo.
Image: Wabetainfo
Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Taking the ‘Eats’ out of ‘Uber Eats.’

Takeout on demand first expanded to groceries, and then to other retail, but the branding hasn’t always kept up. With Uber Eats now delivering from Best Buy, that opens the door to some pretty strange dinner orders,

jackcousteau:

Not confusing at all. I’m going to grubhub my next network appliance.

Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Ableton Live is adding stem separation and Splice integration.

Ableton Live 12.3 is now available as a public beta with a number of new features, including for the Push 3. But the headlining updates are stem separation courtesy of Music AI (makers of Moises) and Splice integration, which greatly streamlines workflows for producers that rely heavily on samples.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
More tools to help T-Pain (and other creators) sort through Instagram DMs.

Now, users with 100,000 followers or more can narrow down DMs with the addition of new filters and the ability to create folders. Creators can also customize shortcuts to navigate to certain categories of messages, such as requests.

Maybe this will help solve T-Pain’s missing messages problem.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
No, Gmail did not send out a mass security warning.

In a blog post, Google addresses several recent reports that incorrectly state it sent out a widespread security notification about Gmail, calling them “entirely false:”

Our teams invest heavily, innovate constantly, and communicate clearly about the risks and protections we have in place. It’s crucial that conversation in this space is accurate and factual.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
WhatsApp’s list of AI features just keeps growing.

The Meta-owned app announced a new AI-powered writing tool that can help you compose messages. Like some of WhatsApp’s other AI features, the writing tool is also built on the platform’s Private Processing technology, which is supposed to shield your AI interactions from Meta and WhatsApp.

Image: WhatsApp
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google is upgrading the Gemini app’s AI image editor.

Google says the Gemini app is better at performing more advanced image editing requests, such as blending two photos, performing multiple edits on the same image, combining different designs, or giving you an outfit change while preserving your appearance.

GIF: Google
Spotify is adding DMsSpotify is adding DMs
Jess Weatherbed