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.
First announced as part of the November Pixel Drop, the feature gives Google Maps a simplified black and white interface when you press the power button while navigating with your phone in portrait mode. Google says the feature can extend battery life up to 4 hours while still displaying basic directions including upcoming turns.
Apple noted requirement as part of its updated App Review Guidelines changelog:
5.1.2(i): Clarifies that you must clearly disclose where personal data will be shared with third parties, including with third-party AI, and obtain explicit permission before doing so.
You can see the full guidelines on Apple’s website.
A new test with Instacart will allow some guests in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Orlando to order groceries before they arrive at their stay, as first reported by Bloomberg.
Airbnb spokesperson Tom Korolyshun confirmed to The Verge that the company “will pilot groceries with Instacart in select markets across the US beginning in January.”
A spokesperson tells Variety that the integration will arrive in the “coming weeks,” allowing users to go back and forth between listening to a song and watching the music video. Spotify brought music videos to countries outside the US last year with support for select artists, including Charlie XCX, Doja Cat, Ed Sheeran, and others.
Tapping the new “Images” tab at the bottom of the app will pull up a grid of pictures that Google says are “tailored to your interests.” You save images to your collection while you browse, as well as start another search based on what you find.
This feature is rolling out on Android and iOS “over the next few weeks.”
A new setting allows your 1Password vault to automatically unlock alongside your Mac or PC. It’s part of three new security presets rolling out now to individual and family plans — biz plans coming soon.
Google is cracking down on apps that prevent a device from going to sleep for a long period of time by performing activities in the background. Starting March 1st, 2026, Google will begin hiding some of these battery-draining apps from recommendations and may even display a warning label on their Play Store listings.
The new integration means you can access iFit’s workouts from the “fitness” tab on Samsung’s Health app, with videos spanning high-intensity interval training, Pilates, yoga, strength, recovery, and more. Samsung Health users can access one video per month for free, or pay $9.99 per month for a larger catalog of workout videos.
The browser is back. A new generation of upstarts hope so, anyway, because it might help them change how we use the web.
The change affects some 2017 through 2020 vehicles, GMAuthority reports. Apps that affected owners have downloaded won’t receive support, and if they delete an app or do a factory reset, they’ll lose access to that app.
Open one of the the Rainy, Sunny, or Snowy Day themed playlists for the Animal Crossing: New Horizons soundtrack on the Nintendo Music app and you’ll now find a new “Play hourly tracks” button. Pressing it will automatically play the hourly track that correlates to your current time of day.
Just as it did with its Weather app for wearables in September, Google has announced that new Wear OS devices from other manufacturers will have to rely on something else. If you have a non-Pixel watch with the Clock app already, it will keep working, but without new updates.
With your favorite watch brands offering their own default clock apps on Wear OS, Google’s Clock app (alarm, timer, and stopwatch) is no longer available for download on Wear OS smartwatches – except for pre-installed on the Pixel Watch.
The company will use the length of a reservation, property type, distance from a guest’s location, and timing to block “higher risk booking attempts” — similar to what it did on New Year’s Eve.
Airbnb says its anti-party system prevented 38,000 people in the US and 6,300 people in Canada from booking entire homes during Halloween last year.
[Airbnb Newsroom]
The team behind Software Applications Incorporated sold its Workflow app to Apple in 2017, which later became Shortcuts. Now the startup, along with its AI interface for the Mac called Sky, is joining OpenAI.
OpenAI says it plans to “bring Sky’s deep macOS integration and product craft into ChatGPT.”
