The Verge

We are all guilty of pulling out our phones and doomscrolling through stressful headlines or mindnumbing videos when we should be doing anything else. We know it's bad, but we still do it because it's hard to resist when much of our time is spent living and working on our devices. And even though we [...]

Gail Slater, the top antitrust enforcer at the Justice Department, announced Thursday that she has left her post, just weeks before the agency's next major tech monopoly trial against entertainment giant Live Nation is set to begin. "It is with great sadness and abiding hope that I leave my role as AAG for Antitrust today," [...]

The hours-long closure of El Paso airspace stemmed from the use of an anti-drone laser deployed by Customs and Border Protection, according to reports from The New York Times and the Associated Press. Sources tell The Times that CBP officials didn't give the Federal Aviation Administration "enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft," [...]

In a style that feels nostalgic and nascent, Bree O'Donnell is crafting her singular vision of a 3D witch named Mary. Through the tiny window of short clips on Instagram and TikTok, Mary's world seems enchanting and vast. Bree's work exudes melancholic emotion and ethereal femininity, painting the surfaces of Mary's world in the vibrating [...]

The Apple Vision Pro is finally getting an official visionOS YouTube app on Thursday. With the visionOS YouTube app, you'll be able to watch all videos available on YouTube, including standard videos, Shorts, 3D, 360, and VR180 videos, Apple spokesperson Corey Nord tells The Verge. The Vision Pro launched more than two years ago, but [...]

Big Tech's race to leapfrog the latest AI models continues with the launch of ByteDance's next-gen video generator. In a blog post, ByteDance - the China-based company behind TikTok - says Seedance 2.0 supports prompts that combine text, images, video, and audio. The company claims it "delivers a substantial leap in generation quality," offering improvements [...]

Amazon's rolling out a new "Send to Alexa Plus" feature to the latest Kindle Scribe and Kindle Scribe Colorsoft owners starting February 12. The feature lets you send your notes or documents to Amazon's AI-powered Alexa Plus assistant, which can then summarize them, turn them into to-do lists, calendar events, or reminders, as well as [...]

If you have a spare $7,999 (plus a $250 deposit), hate folding laundry, and happen to live in the Bay Area, one-and-a-half-year-old startup Weave has the robot for you: Isaac 0. It takes Isaac 0 around 30-90 minutes to fold a load of laundry, Weave says. That's all it does - it's stationary and needs [...]

Business laptops are typically dull computers foisted on employees en masse. But higher-end enterprise workstation notebooks sometimes get an interesting enough blend of power and features to appeal to enthusiasts. HP's ZBook Ultra G1a is a nice example. It's easy to see it as another gray boring-book for spendy business types, until you notice a [...]

Minneapolis was not the war zone I expected to find. Depending on who you are and where you live, things can seem, for a few fleeting moments, almost normal, like a few blocks or neighborhoods over people aren't being tear gassed or rounded up by ICE or, in two tragic cases, being gunned down by [...]

Highguard, a new multiplayer shooter from developers who worked on games like Apex Legends and Call of Duty, launched just over two weeks ago, but developer Wildlight Entertainment is already cutting jobs at the company, according to posts from affected staffers on LinkedIn. Former Wildlight level designer Alex Graner says that "most of the team [...]

Since the xAI-SpaceX merger announced last week, which combined the two companies (as well as social media platform X) for a reported $1.25 trillion valuation - the biggest merger of all time - a handful of xAI employees and two of its co-founders have abruptly exited the company, penning long departure announcements online. Some also [...]

On Wednesday, Apple released its latest iOS 26 update, which includes a new process for switching from an iPhone to an Android phone, as previously reported by 9to5Mac. The updated transferring tool can move over data like apps, photos, messages, and even a user's phone number by sitting the two phones side by side. Previously, [...]

Valentine's Day is often thought of as the quintessential Hallmark holiday - and why wouldn't it be? Most of the time, it's marketed to us with massive floral arrangements and heart-shaped chocolates, both of which can come off as borderline twee. But no one says you have to play by the rulebook when it comes [...]

Anthropic is the latest AI company promising to limit the impact its data centers have on nearby residents' electricity bills. The company said it would pay higher monthly electricity charges in order to cover 100 percent of the upgrades needed to connect its data centers to power grids. "This includes the shares of these costs [...]

In June 2024, in a dusty TV shop empty of customers save myself, my wife, and my kids, I stared deep into the LG C3 and Samsung S90C. I went back and forth between the two OLED screens for easily 20 minutes, happily paralyzed by the choice in front of me. The Video Only salesperson [...]

Aurora, the driverless truck firm founded by former members of Google's pioneering self-driving car team, is branching out. In advance of its quarterly earnings report today, the company announced that a new software update would enable it to triple its driverless network to a total of 10 routes across the Southern US. Currently, Aurora has [...]

Apple had been reportedly pushing to introduce some big changes to Siri with iOS 26.4, but now the company is planning to introduce them in later versions of iOS, including iOS 26.5 and iOS 27, Bloomberg reports. Nearly a year ago, Apple delayed planned features for Siri that would let it understand your personal context [...]

Samsung's next Unpacked event is happening on February 25th, and we anticipate the company will announce the Galaxy S26 lineup of phones. There may be some new wearables and earbuds announced, too. In addition to the showing off the new hardware, Galaxy AI software is likely to be a big part of the show, since [...]

Microsoft has fixed a serious security vulnerability affecting Markdown files in Notepad. In the company's Tuesday patch notes, Microsoft says a bad actor could carry out a remote code execution attack by tricking users "into clicking a malicious link inside a Markdown file opened in Notepad," as reported earlier by The Register. Clicking the link [...]

Deals have been admittedly pretty dry since the holidays, but now that February is in full swing, we're starting to see strong discounts return across a range of categories. In fact, thanks to Valentine's Day, the Super Bowl, and - as of this week - Presidents Day, retailers are once again offering a slew of [...]

FBI Director Kash Patel said yesterday that investigators recovered footage from Savannah Guthrie's mother's doorbell camera using "residual data located in backend systems." This claim has many home security camera users asking an uncomfortable question: Is your data really gone when you hit delete? When Nancy Guthrie went missing, officials said she had a doorbell [...]

Threads now lets users in the US adjust what is recommended in their feed by writing "Dear Algo" in a post and explaining what they're looking for. The feature is part of a bigger push across Meta's platforms to give users more control over the types of posts that are recommended to them. Dear Algo [...]

Ableton is rolling out the Live 12.4 Beta with a number of new features, but the headliner is Link Audio, which enables real-time collaboration between devices on a local network. Having to be on the same network is a serious limitation and, as the name implies, Link Audio only supports streaming audio. That means your [...]

The best methods we currently have for detecting and labelling deepfakes online are about to get a stress test. India announced mandates on Tuesday that require social media platforms to remove illegal AI-generated materials much faster, and ensure that all synthetic content is clearly labeled. Tech companies have said for years that they wanted to [...]

TikTok announced on Wednesday that it's launching "Local Feeds," an opt-in feature that uses precise GPS location data to create a feed of localized content, similar to the "Nearby Feeds" that launched in the UK and Europe in December. This is the first new feature introduced for US users since TikTok officially came under new [...]

Let's give it up for companies that are making affordable smart bulbs. Lifx is one, having recently released a two-pack of A19 / E26 LED bulbs at CES 2026 capable of white and color for just $24.99. These dimmable 800-lumen bulbs connect over Wi-Fi, and they're compatible with Matter, making them work seamlessly with numerous [...]

OpenAI officially launched its advertising pilot in ChatGPT, leaving us with a better idea of the kinds of products we might see stuffed beneath our conversations with the AI chatbot. Several companies have announced plans to show ads inside ChatGPT - placements that will reportedly cost them a pretty penny - ranging from major retailers [...]

The woods in Reanimal are full of surprises. You will encounter human cadavers that slither like snakes, gigantic talking pigs, and, at one point, a forlorn, supersized whale who seems resigned to an agonizingly slow death. These variously monstrous beings inhabit a realm that, though it looks like our own, seems to defy spatial logic: [...]

Despite evidence to the contrary, not only are wired earbuds alive and well, they're enjoying a resurgence. Brands like Belkin and even respected headphone maker Master & Dynamic now offer tethered earbuds again. Even the Italian fashion brand Diesel has decided wired headphones are still cool and has launched a pair of earbuds it describes [...]

GameShare, a multiplayer feature that's exclusive to the Switch 2, is a neat concept that so far has mostly been used in pretty standard ways. It lets you use one copy of a game and beam it to multiple Switches, making it a great way to experience local co-op titles like Survival Kids or Split [...]

Donna Collins lives about 20 miles from where Meta's biggest data center is being built, in a house her family has lived in for five generations. Construction has thrown the small agricultural community in North Louisiana into the spotlight as a high-profile example of how the infrastructure behind generative AI could impact nearby residents. For [...]

Something happens every time I try to use an iPhone camera like a real camera. Here's how it goes: I shoot RAW in addition to the default HEIC output, and since I have the RAW file I might as well edit it to my taste. And if I'm going to do that, I want to [...]

Though catching monsters and making them fight have always been core elements of the Pokemon brand, spinoffs like the Pokemon Snap and Detective Pikachu series have stood out by approaching the franchise from different angles. In different (and often small) ways, recent mainline Pokemon titles like Sword / Shield, Scarlet / Violet, and Legends: Z-A [...]

The Federal Aviation Administration has lifted its temporary closure to the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas, after originally saying that all flights in and out of the airport would be grounded for 10 days. No explanation for the closure was given, beyond a vague reference to "Special Security Reasons." CBS News reported [...]

T-Mobile is preparing to test a new AI feature that translates live phone calls into more than 50 languages. Live Translation is launching in beta "this Spring," according to a press release, with registration for eligible T-Mobile customers available starting today. "Some of the biggest barriers wireless customers face are the simplest ones - like [...]

Uber announced a new AI feature called "Cart Assistant" for grocery shopping in its Uber Eats app. The new feature works a couple different ways. You can use text prompts, as you would with any other AI chatbot, to ask it to build a grocery list for you. Or you can upload a picture of [...]

Keep your head down. Compartmentalize. Don't make trouble. That's what many tech workers are taking their CEOs' strategic silence to mean, amid an immigration crackdown across the US by the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security. Widespread violence by federal agents has sparked protests in Minneapolis and across the country. One month after an ICE [...]

Toyota unveiled the new 2027 Highlander, a fully redesigned midsize SUV that marks the brand's first three-row electric vehicle for the US market and the first Toyota EV assembled in America. It's a familiar name - Toyota has been selling gas Highlanders for over 20 years - with an all-new powertrain aimed directly at one [...]

Ring's new Search Party feature has once again drawn backlash for the company. A 30-second ad that aired during Sunday's Super Bowl showed Ring cameras "surveilling" neighborhoods to locate a lost dog. In the current political climate, a prime-time ad celebrating neighborhood surveillance struck a nerve. People voiced concerns across social media that the AI-powered [...]

Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics, announced on Tuesday that he is stepping down from his role effective immediately and leaving the company on February 27th, as previously reported by A3. Under Playter's leadership, Boston Dynamics navigated its way through an acquisition from Softbank that brought it to Hyundai in 2021, and it launched a [...]

Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about tech politicking in the age of Trump. If you're a subscriber, you are dominant and talented, like the Seattle Seahawks. If you're not a subscriber yet, it's time to get your act together, like the New England Patriots. (I'm from Boston and I'm allowed [...]

OpenAI is updating ChatGPT's deep research tool with a full-screen viewer that you can use to scroll through and navigate to specific areas of its AI-generated reports. As shown in a video shared by OpenAI, the built-in viewer allows you to open ChatGPT's reports in a window separate from your chat, while showing a table [...]

Samsung's annual Galaxy S-series reveal is later than usual this year, but we finally have a confirmed date to circle on the calendar: February 25th. And if you were hoping for major hardware upgrades from the company's flagship phones, you probably shouldn't hold your breath: an extensive leak published by WinFuture has seemingly confirmed that [...]

It seems clear at this point to say that Donald Trump does not want to spend a single dime on EV charging. He tried to freeze $5 billion in funding for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which was approved as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And when a federal judge ordered the [...]

Google announced on Tuesday that the public preview of Fitbit's AI personal health coach is rolling out to iOS users in the U.S. as well as both iOS and Android users in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. The update tests a major overhaul of Fitbit's app, introducing a conversational interface with a [...]

Ayaneo opened preorders for its next Windows 11 handheld and it looks like a powerhouse. The Ayaneo Next 2 is 13.45 inches wide, 10.3-inches tall, and weighs 3.14 pounds. That's more than twice as heavy as the original Ayaneo Next that launched back in 2022, and it easily outweighs the Steam Deck and Switch 2. [...]

The EasySMX S10 is a fantastic wireless controller for the Switch 2 that offers nearly as many features as Nintendo's $90 gamepad. I ranked it as the best Switch 2 controller you can buy, thanks to its satisfying rumble sensation in games, support for motion controls as well as Nintendo's amiibo NFC figures, plus the [...]

On Tuesday, Discord released an update clarifying that the "vast majority of people can continue using Discord exactly as they do today," without needing to use a face scan or ID to verify their age so they can use the platform without restrictions. Discord states in the post that "age prediction" using information Discord already [...]