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.
As Canva expands beyond its roots as a design platform, the company says the acquisitions of Simtheory and Ortto will help Canva “become the system where teams do all of their work from start to finish.”
After launching across the US and India, Google is bringing its revamped Finance app to more than 100 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, and Mexico. Users in these countries can now interact with the app in their local language, as well as access a built-in Gemini chatbot, new charting tools, and an upgraded news feed.
Google AI Edge Eloquent is a new live AI transcription app that requires no subscription and has no usage limits. When you finish speaking, it will also filter out filler words like “um.” It’s currently only on iOS, but Google plans to bring the app to Android and macOS.
The iPhone maker plans to ask the Supreme Court to review a December 2025 ruling that found Apple in contempt by imposing a 27 percent fee on external in-app payments, according to a new legal filing. Apple also is asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to pause that ruling.
The app will no longer be available on devices with Android 12 or newer in July 2026, according to an update on Samsung’s website. Samsung is encouraging users to switch to Google Messages, which it began shipping as the default messaging app on flagship Galaxy devices in 2024.
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Not because they’re so ugly, it’s because Garmin wearables that track skin temperature during sleep — like the Fenix 8 and Forerunner 970 — can now feed that data to the FDA-cleared Natural Cycles birth control app to show the wearer’s daily fertility status.
According to “I Decompiled the White House’s New App,” the Android version has some odd choices for a government app that mostly shows content from the White House website.
That includes enabling location tracking and other monitoring via OneSignal’s analytics (which the company says are opt-in at the OS level), JavaScript loaded from some guy’s GitHub, an injected script to hide things like consent dialogs on pages users open in the app, and other hooks to non-government third-party services.
[Thereallo]
It’s still using Meta’s Private Processing AI setup to avoid sharing the content of your messages to anyone, even Meta. Other new features announced Thursday include AI image editing directly in chats, improved cross-platform chat transfers, and the option to have two WhatsApp accounts logged in on the same device on iOS.
There are some complex pros and cons to Google’s new “advanced flow” for sideloading unverified Android apps, which may well protect some users from scammers. But it would sure be nice if I could just install the apps I want on the computer I own.
orion_resident:
Remember when you didn’t need special permission to install software on your own computer? Those were the days.
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The iOS launch for the AI-powered browser follows an Android release in November.
[Perplexity]
Starting May 31st, 2026, the Microsoft-owned SwiftKey will stop supporting Google and Apple accounts, according to Windows Central. Though you don’t need an account to use SwiftKey on its own, you’ll need to sign in with Microsoft to continue syncing your most-used words across devices and receive personalized typing suggestions.
On Monday, MotionVFX announced on its website that it’s “joining the Apple team.” MotionVFX is the developer behind a suite of tools for Apple-owned Final Cut Pro, including several AI features like AI upscaling and captions. The suite is currently still available as a monthly subscription catered toward creators, similar to Apple’s Creator Studio subscription.
[MotionVFX]
I love tools that let you make music based on a simple set of rules. Tim Holman created this one based on a YouTube video in which notes are triggered by a simple binary counter. Now if only I could get this out of Chrome and into my DAW.
[Musical Toys]
This spring, Peacock is bringing a new Jeopardy! game to its mobile app. It will feature daily trivia rounds straight from the Jeopardy! team, along with shareable scores and streak challenges.
Epic and Google are settling, but the US version of the plan still rests in Judge Donato’s hands. He’s asking for “friend of the court” briefs in early April, meaning it’ll be longer before he makes a decision.
Bitwig teased its latest version back in August, and it’s finally here. There are tons of new editing features, like automation clips, which make it easy to create repeating patterns for any parameter. You can also lock projects to a key signature to ensure you never hit a wrong note.
