The Verge

Amazon Prime Video is raising the price of its ad-free plan in the US and adding several new features. Starting April 10th, Prime Video's ad-free tier will cost $4.99 per month instead of $2.99, and include "exclusive" access to 4K/UHD streaming. The price increase comes two years after Amazon switched all users on Prime Video [...]

They may be great for fan engagement and selling ads, but the Big 12 has decided to replace the innovative glass-covered LED floors at Kansas City's T-Mobile Center with a traditional hardwood finish. It will be used for the remainder of the tournament during semifinal matches and the championship game. The LED floors, which were [...]

On Thursday, Rivian revealed its most important vehicle to date: the R2, a midsize SUV that eventually will start at under $50,000. As a distinctive EV with an attractive sticker price, the R2 is designed to take Rivian to the next level. In fact, the company is banking on it. If they succeed, then Rivian [...]

I upgraded from the Pixel A-series buds released in 2021 to the Pixel Buds Pro 2, and two things were immediately apparent: the A-series buds have no business sounding so good for their sub-$100 price, and the Pixel Buds Pro 2 were everything I wanted in a successor. They're even smaller and have a silicone [...]

Epic Games announced this week that Fortnite's in-game V-bucks currency would be getting more expensive with a somewhat glib statement: "The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we're raising prices to help pay the bills," the company wrote. The price hike will go into effect on March 19th, the same day [...]

When you open your Peacock mobile app this summer, you might see a portal leading to the AI likeness of TV host Andy Cohen on your homepage. In an announcement on Friday, NBCUniversal said Cohen's avatar will serve as a guide through Peacock's "infinitely swipeable" feed of clips from Bravo shows, like Love Island, The [...]

Peacock is rolling out a native vertical video format for live sports, allowing you to watch games without turning your phone sideways. The feature will roll out to NBA games first this spring and will use an algorithm to track players and zoom in on the action. The launch of this feature comes just months [...]

It was a little surprising to see Apple decide to leap fully into the affordable laptop market, to try and compete with devices the company typically prefers to just look down its nose at. It was also a little surprising to see Apple basically nail it on the first try. On this episode of The [...]

I had to buy Samsung's Galaxy Z TriFold from eBay for $4,399 and I'm pretty sure that's because Samsung doesn't want anyone to actually have this phone. I'm also afraid to turn it on. Not that turning it on does much good. Whenever I tap "start" to set it up, a prompt to supply a [...]

The MacBook Neo is here, and it took no time at all for an executive from a major PC manufacturer to put their foot in their mouth trying to discuss this new competition from Apple's $600 laptop. On Asus' latest earnings call, CFO Nick Wu said that the Neo and its aggressive entry-level pricing were [...]

Apple is cutting App Store developer fees in China from March 15th, dropping its typical commission on purchases from 30 percent down to 25 percent. The decision was made following "discussions with the Chinese regulator," according to Apple's announcement, suggesting that the reduction aims to avoid regulatory intervention after China reportedly considered opening a formal [...]

Some people rarely lose things. Wallets are always exactly where they're supposed to be, keys never go missing, and remotes never slip between the couch cushions. And then there's the rest of us - the folks who can't ever seem to find the thing that was right there a few seconds ago. For us, there [...]

You can download Chrome for Linux, and you can download Chrome for Arm devices - but if you've got a computer running Linux on Arm, not so much! Now, Google says it's finally bringing Chrome to ARM64 Linux machines in Q2 2026, following Chrome for Arm Macs in 2020 and Chrome for Windows on Arm [...]

Around a dozen parents huddled in the dim hallway outside the courtroom in February, nervously gripping paper tickets. They were glaring at a gray tote bag held by a member of the court staff - the one who'd determine, by lottery, if they made it inside. Pinned on bags and coats, butterfly clips honored children [...]

Despite the fact Apple released a new AirTag in January, the first-generation AirTag is still a top-notch tracker if you're embedded in Apple's ecosystem. And right now, it's on sale for $13.91 ($15.09 off) at Walmart, which marks a new low price. If you're an iPhone owner, the original AirTag still delivers a level of [...]

Facebook Marketplace is adding a bunch of new AI-powered tools that are supposed to make selling items on the platform a little more efficient. One feature will use Meta AI to automatically respond to those annoying "Is this still available?" messages. You can toggle on the auto-reply option when creating a listing, and Meta AI [...]

A couple of weeks ago, Google and Samsung announced a big Gemini development coming to their newest devices: task automation. Starting with food delivery and rideshare apps, Gemini would be able to use certain apps on your behalf in a virtual window to take care of things like ordering dinner or getting a car to [...]

Between March Madness and the Oscars, now might be a good time to improve your TV setup. Google's TV Streamer 4K is currently on sale for $79.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Target, and Walmart, which is its second-best price to date and only $5 more than its all-time low. As a streaming device, it's terrific. [...]

Anthropic's latest update to Claude will allow the AI chatbot to generate custom charts, diagrams, and other visualizations during your conversation. If Claude determines a visual is useful based on the context of your chat, it will insert the image in-line, rather than in its side panel. As an example, Anthropic says a conversation about [...]

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. "It is a pretty rough time for the game industry." Meta Reality Labs director of games Chris Pruett did not mince words when he returned to GDC for his annual [...]

Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of Microsoft's experiences and devices group, is retiring after more than 35 years at the software giant. Jha was a big part of the team that helped move Microsoft's Office suite to the cloud, and has recently been overseeing Microsoft 365 Copilot, Windows, Office, and more. "After 35+ years at [...]

The Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) body previously assigned its age ratings based on the presence of sex, drugs, violence, bad language, and fear. Now it's adding four new options that tie age suitability to interactive features, like rating games that contain loot boxes as unsuitable for children under 16. Games like EA's FC series - [...]

WordPress.org is launching a new tool that lets you create a private website directly in your browser, according to an announcement on Wednesday. You can access the tool by heading to my.WordPress.net, which opens up a workspace where you can start building a website without signing up to WordPress, choosing a hosting plan, or selecting [...]

When Rivian first revealed the R2 in 2024, a lot of the excitement was centered on the starting price of $45,000 - placing it slightly below the current average selling price for a new internal combustion vehicle. Finally, here was a decently sized electric SUV with great design and impressive software that wouldn't require taking [...]

Dyson's latest autonomous robot vacuum cleaner first debuted during IFA 2025 in Berlin last September. The Spot+Scrub Ai Robot is the company's follow-up to its 360 Vis Nav robovac launched in 2023 with upgrades that include a new self-cleaning roller mop, a multifunction dock, and lasers that can identify stains. It's available now through Dyson's [...]

Farewell, Honda Zero. We never knew thee. Honda is cancelling its Zero Series SUV and Saloon, as well as the Acura RSX EVs, citing an "extremely challenging earnings situation." The Japanese automaker, which unsuccessfully tried to merge with Nissan last year, said it expected to make a net loss of 360 billion (~$2.5 billion) to [...]

It's pretty easy to get an affordable phone case that looks good, no matter the device you have. Yet, that doesn't stop some companies from selling theirs for about the same cost as a dinner for two. Well, thanks to Woot, we now have a wider selection of affordable phone cases to choose from, with [...]

Microsoft announced on Thursday that it's launching Copilot Health, a "separate, secure space" in Copilot for asking questions about lab results and medical records, searching for providers, analyzing data from wearables, and other health-related chats. The feature will have a phased rollout, so it won't be available to everyone immediately, but users can join a [...]

Google is continuing to weave Gemini into the firmament of its most-used products. Today, it announced that Google Maps was getting a new AI-powered "Ask Maps" feature that allows for "complex, real-world questions" with highly detailed, personalized responses. In the past, Google Maps would struggle with hyper-specific questions like "where can I charge my phone [...]

Karaoke is more fun for everyone when the person holding the mic sounds as good as a song's original performer. So the latest addition to JBL's PartyBox Bluetooth speaker line, the On-the-Go 2 Plus, comes with one of the company's new EasySing wireless microphones, which use an algorithm to silence a song's vocals while also [...]

US medical equipment provider Stryker said its global networks were disrupted by a cyberattack on Wednesday, allegedly carried out by a hacking group linked to Iran. The attack impacted Stryker's internal Microsoft environment and deleted information from devices, with one employee telling NBC News that company phones stopped working, grinding work and communications to a [...]

For months, Grammarly has been using the identities of real people (including us) for its "Expert Review" AI suggestions without getting their permission, and now it's facing a lawsuit from one of the journalists included, as previously reported by Wired. The class-action complaint filed by journalist Julia Angwin on Wednesday alleges that Superhuman violated the [...]

Apple's rumored foldable iPhone will come with an iPad-style interface that will allow users to view apps side-by-side, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman also reports that the outer display will be around the size of a small iPhone. The inner display will reportedly come with a wider aspect ratio, similar to [...]

Humble has teamed up with Frictional Games for a new bundle of PC games that pushed the horror genre forward. The bundle includes the Penumbra Collectors Pack, all four Amnesia titles (The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs, The Bunker, and Rebirth), and Soma, which I consider to be its opus in terms of visual [...]

Valve wants players to know that it plans on fighting New York Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit, which last month accused the company of promoting "illegal gambling" through its in-game loot boxes. In an email sent to Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 players in New York, Valve says it's "disappointed" in the [...]

Instead of moving forward with a jury trial against Live Nation-Ticketmaster as expected, the Justice Department announced a settlement Monday that omitted what used to be on the top of its wish list: a breakup. What the DOJ did get was a series of concessions that some industry stakeholders found unsatisfying and even baffling. There [...]

Superhuman says it has disabled Grammarly's "expert review" AI feature that said its edit suggestions were "inspired by" real writers, including our editor-in-chief and other Verge staff members. "After careful consideration, we have decided to disable Expert Review as we reimagine the feature to make it more useful for users, while giving experts real control [...]

Microsoft seems more determined than ever to combine Xbox and Windows - to the point that its next-gen Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will play PC games too. Today, we learned Helix will go alpha in 2027. But the company isn't waiting for Helix before it points Windows gamers in the Xbox direction. Starting in April, [...]

We're here at the 2026 Game Developers Conference, where Microsoft "VP of Next Generation" Jason Ronald is talking about a topic near and dear to many gamers' hearts: the future of Xbox. Ronald says the next Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will have a custom AMD chip with "an order of magnitude increase in raytracing performance" [...]

OpenAI's Sora video generator could soon become a built-in feature in ChatGPT, as reported by The Information. Sora is currently only available on its website or as a standalone app, which has fallen shy of the popularity of ChatGPT. This update would allow users to access Sora's video generation capabilities directly within ChatGPT itself, much [...]

AltStore PAL, the alternative iOS app store available in the European Union and Japan, is joining the social web. In a post on Wednesday, AltStore PAL announced that users across Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky can now interact with apps that developers choose to federate on its explore.alt.store website. Any likes from the social web will [...]

Canva introduced a new feature that separates flat image files and AI-generated visuals into layered, fully editable designs. The Magic Layers tool is launching in public beta today in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, allowing design components like objects, text boxes, and other graphics to be selected individually while preserving the original layout. "After [...]

Recently, Ring ran a Super Bowl ad for its Search Party feature showing how it uses AI to scan footage from Ring cameras and video doorbells to help find lost dogs. It sounds neighborly - until you consider that the same system could theoretically search footage for anything or anyone. Combined with longstanding concerns around [...]

The first Lego Smart Brick sets, based on Star Wars, aren't quite what my kids and I hoped, and I suspect much of that's down to programming. But the Smart Bricks may also have some technical limitations out of the gate. The first sets don't ship with a number of their sensors enabled, including the [...]

I love Godzilla Minus One. Granted, it's only the second Godzilla movie that I've watched, the other being 1998's terrible Godzilla featuring Matthew Broderick (the soundtrack has bangers, though). While I may not exactly be an expert, this is a good movie, whether you're a first-time Godzilla viewer or a longtime kaiju fan. If you've [...]

Millions of people are on the job hunt right now - and for many people, landing a job in the AI era feels more intimidating than ever. That's why the onset of AI avatars running your job interview via one-on-one video call, asking you questions, and analyzing how well you respond has generated a lot [...]

Tembo looks like a toy, but one of those bougie wooden toys you get on Crate & Kids, not some cheap plastic garbage. Despite its appearance, it is a fully functional drum machine and sampler. Rather than a bunch of buttons and a screen, you build beats on Tembo by placing what are essentially wooden [...]

For the fourth month in a row, Framework is increasing prices on RAM and storage for its modular PCs due to ongoing shortages from suppliers. An update to Framework's blog on Tuesday states that DDR5 RAM will now cost $13 to $18 per GB, up from February's rate of $12 to $16 per GB. This [...]