The Verge

I love field recordings. I love making them. I love them when they're incorporated into my ambient music. They're great background noise for working or sleeping. But they're also great for active listening, focusing in on the fine nuances of burbling brooks or urban chaos. Earth Garden gives you a globe to explore with real [...]

When iOS 27 lands later this month, it will have a feature called iPhone Handoff that lets you switch between two phones using the same number. It was briefly mentioned during the WWDC keynote back in June, but there were no details at the time. Now there's a demo clip showing how to set up [...]

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), CD sales exploded in the first half of 2026. A new report from the organization says 17.5 million CDs were sold in the first six months of the year, up from just 12 million during the same period in 2025. That's a jump of 45.7 percent, [...]

Andy Holloway cohosts the Fantasy Footballers podcast with his friends Jason Moore and Mike Wright. The show is one of the premier fantasy sports podcasts, netting over 2 million monthly listeners and numerous awards, including Best Sports Podcast from iHeartRadio and People's Choice at the Podcast Awards four years in a row. Holloway's goal has [...]

During Naomi Osaka's match against Anastasia Zakharova at this year's US Open earlier this week, a gaggle of ring light-wielding influencers who were packed in a luxury suite became enough of a distraction that the umpire paused the match and repeatedly asked them to quiet down. Elsewhere in the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis [...]

I've been reviewing headphones for a long time, and I've listened to everything from the barely serviceable to multi-thousand-dollar open-back headphones. But recently I've been uninspired by the state of mainstream options. Most are perfectly good - great, even - but they lack a distinct character. Something to remind me why I fell in love [...]

OpenAI says it needs to overhaul how and when it reports instances of AI models attacking real-world targets. The acknowledgement comes as the company manages the fallout from reports that a swarm of its out-of-control agents hijacked a German wiki site. Regarding the "'wiki incident,' where our agents wrote to several internet sites," OpenAI wrote [...]

It's Bullitt meets Christine meets Waymo. A new short film imagines a San Francisco car chase where the other driver isn't human - and the car may be trying to kill you. That a robotaxi can now be cast as the villain with almost no explanation says something about the present moment. Autonomous cars have [...]

Audacity 4 has been in the works for some time, and had its own mini controversy last year when an unfortunate redesigned logo started making the rounds. The final version of the new icon isn't nearly as bad as the early rendition that was circulating last October. But more importantly, all the promised improvements to [...]

The PR masterminds at the White House just released a series of vaguely policy-themed "arcade" games, some of which are racist - and modeled on real games whose copyright holders may not be too happy to be associated with the MAGA agenda. The Tetris Company has already responded to "Build the Wall," which is obviously [...]

GoPro CEO Nick Woodman said in a letter to customers that making cameras is still his company's "core DNA," after a proposed $285 million acquisition by Starman was announced earlier this week. He claims the merger puts GoPro in a better position to continue developing its content creation tech, after saying in the deal announcement [...]

It's not quite the "push button; get song" of Suno, but Roland's new Melody Flip tool marks the company's foray into generative AI music. Available as a plug-in for your digital audio workstation (DAW), Melody Flip offers around 250 "Palettes," which are essentially themed collections of musical ideas sorted by genre. You can start from [...]

OpenAI announced its next big model, GPT-6 Astra, and also, by the way, that "the AGI era" is here now. Today on The Vergecast, we've got an all-star panel to break down the news of the week. First, senior AI reporter Hayden Field joins us to talk about our supposed AGI era and Nvidia's acquisition [...]

Microsoft's Copilot rarely reproduces even full sentences from news articles and books, let alone substantive chunks that could substitute for the original, the company says in new legal filings as it fights copyright claims from publishers including The New York Times and book authors. As part of the lawsuit's discovery, Microsoft provided 8.2 million Copilot [...]

The doors to Europe's largest consumer tech show officially opened to the public today following a week of news coming out of IFA 2026 in Berlin, Germany. If you're struggling to keep up with what has been announced, here are some of the best new gadgets and upgrades from the show - including a smartphone [...]

Gaming laptop deals aren't what they used to be (stares daggers at RAMageddon), which is why I consider Woot's deal on a refurbished Alienware 16 Aurora gaming laptop with Nvidia's RTX 5050 a pretty good deal at $927 for new Woot customers (with code WOOTALIEN used at checkout). It costs $1,029 for returning Woot shoppers, [...]

Apple's September 9th launch event could be one of its biggest in years. It will be Apple's first event since John Ternus took over as CEO on September 1st, stepping in for Tim Cook, and will likely feature the first models in Apple's iPhone 18 lineup. That could include the long-rumored foldable "iPhone Ultra," coming [...]

Nintendo just announced two Direct events for next week, scheduled back to back. First up is the Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct on September 8th at 10AM ET / 7AM PT. It's set to last around 30 minutes, streaming live on Nintendo's YouTube channel or the Nintendo Today app. Images recently leaked showing a [...]

A swarm of rogue AI agents from OpenAI reportedly commandeered a German website and transformed it into a messaging board for other agents, with officials staying quiet about the incident for weeks as the company prepared to launch its most advanced model yet, Astra. The finding adds to intensifying concern surrounding oversight at frontier AI [...]

Elon Musk's gilded robot car barely made it on public roads before federal regulators launched an investigation into the vehicle's lack of traditional features - many of which are required by law. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was opening an audit query (AQ) into the Tesla Cybercab "to examine the process and [...]

Microsoft is partnering with TCL to bring its Xbox app to supported TCL smart TVs. The Xbox app lets you connect to Xbox Cloud Gaming and stream Game Pass titles or select games you own as part of a subscription. The Xbox app will arrive on TCL TVs at some point "in the coming months," [...]

The original robot vacuum company showed off a concept robot at the IFA tech show in Berlin today. The Roomba Duo combines a heavy-duty floor-washing machine with a smaller, slimmer Roomba. The two floor cleaners can move around your home together, with the main unit mopping and sweeping larger floor areas and the smaller unit [...]

Bluetti doesn't want you to call the Pioneer 5000 a solar generator (SoGen), even though that's what it is. What makes it slightly different from other large power stations that can be charged off solar - aka, a SoGen - is the dolly cart and up to 18KW of instant surge power available to start [...]

Europe's biggest tech trade show, IFA, has taken over Berlin this week - and we've been on the ground all week checking it out in person. We figure you have questions, so we're hosting an AMA that's exclusive to Verge subscribers at 12PM ET today. That's when we'll start dropping answers, but you can ask [...]

Instagram's visible AI labels are supposed to help people quickly spot synthetically generated content at a glance. Over the last few weeks, however, users have been reporting that the system has gone haywire. They say Meta has been automatically applying an "AI Content" label to images that they didn't create or edit using generative AI [...]

There is a torrent of unappetizing slop coming from restaurants, cafes, and brands that are increasingly turning to AI to generate images promoting their food. The resulting horror show includes donut shrimp, Reubens from the deep, wormlike noodles, and noodle-like pastries and stringy chicken. There's also construction material masquerading as ice cream, ice cream masquerading [...]

Microsoft is giving its developer-optimized Windows experience a name: Project Zenith. While the software maker originally announced a similar developer-optimized Windows effort at Build earlier this year, Project Zenith is designed for new developer-focused devices with 64GB or more of unified memory. "Project Zenith devices come with a preconfigured Windows setup for development and a [...]

Just hours after OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, CEO Sam Altman was already apologizing for what he describes as a "messy rollout" after paying users expecting access to the new frontier model were left waiting. The company hailed the model as a "generational leap in capability" on Thursday and described it as the start of "the [...]

Ugreen, known for its phone power banks, chargers, and NAS storage solutions, is moving into the smart home - in a big way. This week at the IFA tech show, the company launched its HomeAgent smart home platform that combines security camera storage, on-device AI, and smart home control in one system, managed by a [...]

Following the lead of companies like Xteink, Lexar is the latest to sacrifice a USB-C port in the pursuit of slimming down its hardware. When the Lexar Muse Ultra-Slim Portable SSD launches later this year in 512GB and 1TB capacities it will be one of the slimmest you can buy. At its thickest point in [...]

After showing off several smart home firsts at CES, Aqara has returned to IFA with a major lineup of smart lighting compatible with both Zigbee and Thread. One of these new devices is the Floor Lamp T1, which trades the look of a typical lamp for an LED-equipped pole attached to a base. The lamp [...]

RugOne's Xsnap 7 Pro comes with both an IP68 and IP69K rating, meaning the rugged phone can survive intense water blasts and complete submersion for up to 30 minutes. But what really sets the Xsnap 7 Pro apart from everything else on the market is that one of its three rear cameras can be removed [...]

At a private, closed-door event in Austin, Texas today, Tesla officially launched its gilded car of the future: the Cybercab. It's a huge milestone for Elon Musk, who has been hyping the imminent arrival of driverless cars for years and has bet the future of his company on AI, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robots. It [...]

Last September, Steve Ballmer insisted in an ESPN interview that the Clippers weren't involved in a shady-looking $28 million endorsement deal for his star player, Kawhi Leonard, that involved no actual endorsing. Now, the former Microsoft CEO has been suspended by the NBA for a year, while the league says his team will forfeit five [...]

Does your power bank have "CryoPulse technology" or a "Cyber Window"? If you disappointingly answered "no" to both, you might want to consider upgrading to Ugreen's new MagFlow Pro Magnetic Power Bank. It's available starting today for $149.99, which puts it on the really expensive end of power banks with only a 10,000mAh battery, but [...]

A Ravenloft series is currently in development from executive producer Alfonso Cuaron, writer and executive producer John August, and Hasbro Entertainment, Deadline reports. It could bring to life one of Dungeons & Dragons' most iconic campaign settings, which got an update earlier this year with Ravenloft: The Horrors Within. Netflix's Ravenloft series will reportedly center [...]

TikTok backed out of a congressional committee's "public roundtable" set for this month over concerns it would be asked about child safety practices, the chair of the committee said. After negotiating "in good faith" to bring TikTok's chief security officer before the House Select Committee on China to answer questions about Chinese government access to [...]

Researching, buying, then finally assembling a sound system for your TV is daunting, but it doesn't have to be. If you want one of the best kits you can get at a rare discount, Best Buy and Amazon are selling the Samsung Q990F Soundbar for $999.99. It normally retails between $1,300 and $1,600. This bundle [...]

OpenAI's next big model is here: GPT-6 Astra. The company calls it a "generational leap in capability" for areas like cybersecurity, professional work, software engineering, science, and computer use. As OpenAI announced earlier this week, it's also the first model designated as meeting OpenAI's "critical cybersecurity capability threshold" - but the company promises that won't [...]

Microsoft says it will let anyone access Xbox Cloud Gaming in November, without the need to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. The change to a pay-as-you-go model is part of some sweeping changes to Xbox Cloud Gaming today, and is designed for people who don't use cloud access enough to warrant a monthly subscription. "Players [...]

Microsoft is announcing some major changes to Xbox Cloud Gaming today, less than a year after opening up cloud gaming to its Xbox Game Pass Premium and Essential tiers. While all Game Pass plans have included unlimited cloud gaming over the past year, from November this will be limited to just 15 hours on Ultimate, [...]

Circular announced its new Ring 3 Series today as a follow-up to the Ring 2 that debuted at CES 2025 with upgraded sensors and FDA-cleared atrial fibrillation detection. The new Ring 3 collection consists of both a Pro model that carries forward those same health-tracking features, and a smaller Slim option that offers more limited [...]

Just a few months after getting back into the smartwatch game, Motorola is targeting the premium end of the market with the first Moto Watch Ultra. It comes with some upgrades from the recent Moto Watch - most obviously the jump to Wear OS - but lacks the outdoorsy features that would make it a [...]

Lenovo is announcing the IdeaPad Vibe, a productivity laptop aimed at taking on the MacBook Neo with a similar starting price and a wider range of colors. The Vibe comes in 14- and 15-inch sizes, with AMD and Qualcomm chip options due out in October and November, respectively. Intel versions (likely Wildcat Lake) are set [...]

Lenovo is announcing a new concept laptop for IFA 2026 that uses solid-state cooling instead of traditional fans, making it incredibly thin and super light. The 14-inch Project AeroBlade concept laptop is less than 10mm thick and weighs under 1.8 pounds / 830g. For reference, recent ThinkPad X1 Carbons are around 14mm at their thickest [...]

All the rumors leading up to Nvidia's announcement of its Arm-based RTX Spark chips over the summer mentioned two specific chips: the N1X and N1. While the N1 won't be arriving this year, Nvidia says its N1X chip is arriving in RTX Spark laptops in two different configurations in October. You'll be able to buy [...]

Google is rolling out AI-powered voice assistant modes for Gmail, Docs, and Keep that allow you to manage the apps by talking to them. The real time conversational capabilities are called Gmail Live, Docs Live, and Keep Live, and like the Gemini Live experience for Google's chatbot, aim to make it easier to note down [...]

Lenovo's latest rollable concept, announced at IFA 2026, is the ThinkBook Project Swan: a business laptop with a screen that expands horizontally from 14 to 17 inches. Rollable screens are nothing new for Lenovo. The company has shown off several concepts and even launched a real one last year (and it was pretty great). But [...]

Nvidia is announcing its new Personal AI Router (PAIR), a free tool that syncs up your home computers for tackling local AI inference tasks with tools like Ollama and LM Studio. Let's get the obvious thing out of the way, despite what its name might imply: PAIR is not a hardware router. It's open-source software [...]