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.
Replit CEO Amjad Masad announced on Friday that the app got its first iOS update in four months. In March, Apple reportedly blocked Replit and other vibe coding apps from publishing App Store updates unless they made changes, potentially including moving generated app previews to web browsers.
AI is empowering a generation of vibe coders to build exactly what they want. The personal software revolution is here.
Adobe’s updated Premiere video editing app, which launched on iOS last September, will finally arrive on Android “this summer.” It’ll include some Android-exclusive templates and effects designed for YouTube Shorts.
There are also Android-exclusive tools coming to Instagram’s Edits app, including AI upscaling and automatic audio track separation.
[Google Blog]
Google gave Snapseed its first major update in years on iOS last June, and now the Android app is getting a big upgrade, too, 9to5Google reports. Both apps are now on version 4.0.
A TikTok spokesperson tells Business Insider that the feature will now identify products in a video, instead of attempting to summarize what happens in it.
Users have reported some wildly inaccurate AI video descriptions, like one that described Charli D’Amelio as a “collection of various blueberries with different toppings,” according to Business Insider.
The hit DualShot Recorder app just switched from an increasingly rare one-time fee to a subscription-based model. The app’s developer — also a notable squirrel video creator — says he made the change to “support the long-term sustainability of the business.” Subscriptions come for us all, I guess.
Viral wildlife creator Derrick Downey Jr. vibe-coded his way to a hit app in DualShot Recorder.
Enrique Lores, who took over as PayPal CEO in March, is putting Venmo into a standalone segment within the company, “making it easier to track its progress or potentially sell the business to another company,” according to a report from CNBC. As part of the change, PayPal reportedly aims to hire a banking executive to head up the new Venmo unit.
The new feature uses AI to generate a preview of your day, a to-do list, and daily highlights. You’ll also find a list of your upcoming calls on the Today page, which will roll out in beta starting next month.
Eight months after the iOS app launched, Tesla has released an Android version of its Robotaxi app. The service expanded to Houston and Dallas last week, but still seems to only have a small number of vehicles actually on the road.
[Google Play]
Organizing playlists into folders was introduced in 2010, but only available on the desktop app. Now it’s reportedly rolling out to mobile users. Tap the + icon in your library, and you should see a new “folder” option. You can even play an entire folder of playlists, or shuffle them.
Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) have written a letter to TikTok USDS CEO Adam Presser, urging the platform to estimate users’ age using their account activity or require parents to confirm their child’s age. The lawmakers also suggest that TikTok works with OS-makers like Apple and Google to implement age verification:
For example, if a user is designated as a child in their iCloud account, meaning they are under 13, Apple could share that information with TikTok and the user therefore would not be able to create a TikTok account.
Correction, April 22nd: The name is Josh Gottheimer, not John.
Software developer Josh Pucket has released Pica: a macOS app for managing fonts that’s currently optimized for latin script. It’s yet another free tool for the design community (yay!) and it even has a fun launch animation that sends characters cascading down your desktop.
No more scaled-up mobile interface elements. The latest version of Spotify has a collapsible sidebar and specific portrait and landscape layouts on both iPads and Android tablets. There’s also the ability to browse in one pane, while a video or music keeps playing in the other.
Terry Godier, who recently launched an RSS reader called Current (which is very good!), has encountered an unavoidable and unsolvable problem: in the five-star review system, anything below five is a disaster, and so what are we even doing here?
You will see a lot of 4 star reviews that say things like, “This is my favorite app!” or “Gamechanger!” The apps that tend to have these types of reviews are often over a 4.0 in the store and are being actively harmed average-wise by having them, even though the intent was clearly not to do so.
[Terry Godier]
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the open-source, cross-platform European Age Verification Solution it has been testing will be available publicly soon, reports Bloomberg. She said it is “completely anonymous,” using a passport or ID card to verify age for access to online services, with accuracy that complies with EU child-protection regulations.
After adding support for the iPhone 17 and its square sensor selfie camera last November, Adobe has updated its Project Indigo camera app to support the iPhone 17e and iPads with at least 6GB of RAM. But Adobe warns that “Project Indigo is not yet tuned for iPad operation” and suggests sticking with an iPhone for an “optimal experience.”
[App Store]
