The Verge

One of the issues holding Auracast back from wider mainstream use is some companies' lack of support for the Bluetooth technology - Apple being a prime example. With iOS having 58 percent of the market share in North America and nearly 28 percent worldwide, a decision by Apple to enable native Auracast support would potentially [...]

AI toys, companions, and robots have been everywhere at CES this year, but among the horde of waddling plushies and light-up emoji eyes, two stood out to me. HeyMates and Buddyo are each betting that the collectible figurine boom is going to come back with an AI-powered vengeance, letting us chat to sports stars and [...]

Since X's users started using Grok to undress women and children using deepfake images, I have been waiting for what I assumed would be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple's and Google's app stores. The fact that it hasn't happened yet tells me something serious about Silicon Valley's leadership: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are [...]

We just gave the Lego Smart Brick our Best In Show award at CES 2026, and I wanted to stop by The Lego Group's suite to get a last glimpse before I left Las Vegas. To my surprise, the company showed off one more feature I didn't see during my first demo, perhaps the most [...]

Google rolled out emoji reactions to personal Gmail accounts a little over two years ago, and I completely forgot about it until now - probably because the option is hidden within a small, smiley face icon beside the Forward button. But now, Google is bringing emoji reactions to all Workspace users by default on February [...]

On Thursday evening in Manhattan's Financial District, hundreds of protesters braved the cold to protest US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), after an agent fatally shot a woman at close range on Wednesday. Earlier that day, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's visit to One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan sparked protests outside [...]

The launch of an AI image editing feature on xAI's Grok has caused chaos on X after it was used to generate a flood of nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes. As Hayden Field wrote, screenshots show Grok complying with requests to put real women in lingerie and make them spread their legs, and to put small children [...]

Meta has forged agreements with three nuclear power providers in an effort to secure the vast amount of electricity it needs to power AI data centers. The agreements with TerraPower (which is backed by Bill Gates), Oklo (backed by Sam Altman), and Vistra are expected to deliver 6.6 gigawatts of energy for Meta's projects by [...]

In an interview with Netflix's Tudum, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker announced today that the sci-fi anthology series will be returning for an eighth season. "Well, luckily it does have a future, so I can confirm that Black Mirror will return, just in time for reality to catch up with it," Brooker said. "That chunk [...]

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. As usual, we're still waiting for a response. In the meantime, it's nowhere to be found at CES 2026. CES isn't a big smartphone show, but there have been more [...]

It may have been one of the smallest devices announced at CES 2026, but Lego's new Smart Brick was also one of the most talked about debuts of the show. We've recognized it as the "Best in show" in our CES 2026 awards, and following the Smart Play system's launch earlier this week, the first [...]

Following some controversy, the developers at Baldur's Gate 3 creator Larian Studios have further clarified their use of generative AI. CEO Swen Vincke and other Larian developers held an AMA on Reddit where they answered users' questions about the team's next title, Divinity. They also fielded questions related to reports that the studio was using [...]

Apple and Google are being dragged into the uproar around X's AI chatbot that has continued to virtually undress women in images without their consent this week. In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), and Ed Markey (D-MA) wrote that "X's [...]

We saw a ton of cool new products at CES 2026, but not all of them made the cut when it came to deciding what was best of show. One of those products that we nevertheless think holds promise is Anker's AeroFit Pro 2, which are wireless earbuds that can double as open-ear headphones. You [...]

Accessory maker Nimble announced a new power bank at CES 2026 that will appeal to anyone who's had to reluctantly share or loan their portable charger to someone else. The Champ Stack 10K looks like a typical 10,000mAh power bank that's jumped on the built-in charging cable bandwagon, but it has one interesting difference: you [...]

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest phones, smartwatches, apps, and other gizmos that swear they're going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here. At CES 2026 this week, people [...]

This year's CES was an odd one. This is a conference usually dominated by futuristic, expensive TVs and futuristic, expensive cars, but those things weren't what dominated CES 2026. Instead, Las Vegas was filled with new ideas about old gadgets and showed us a whole lot of really impressive hardware waiting on software to catch [...]

Kia unveiled the EV2, a small and affordably priced electric vehicle built for the European market. The EV2 made its debut at the Brussels Auto Show, where executives touted it as its "most compact" EV to date. Of course, it was another in a long line of affordable, capable, and impressively designed EVs that won't [...]

The CES show floor officially closes its doors at the end of the day, but there's still a trickle of announcements and reveals coming out of Las Vegas. If you're struggling to stay on top of all the new tech, gadgets, concepts, and AI-powered devices as the final day of CES gets underway, we're still [...]

CESis a lot - a deluge of consumer tech surrounded by lots of bad carpeting.The Verge's on-the-ground team of super nerds covered so many new products and technologies that it's understandable if it was all a little overwhelming. That's why we've gathered up a collection of trend reports from the show to help make sense [...]

Elon Musk's X has partially restricted access to Grok's image editing capabilities amid growing backlash to the flood of nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors generated by the platform. As of this writing, it no longer generates images as @grok replies for free, but Grok's image editing tools remain readily available for any X [...]

The first video I saw of the Minneapolis shooting was bad enough. Shortly after I saw it, I had the terrible realization that there were multiple people in the clip holding their phones up - another angle was bound to surface. Within minutes, a second video was all over social media, and it was even [...]

Every January, the world of consumer electronics heads to Las Vegas to spend the first full week of the year in the desert presenting, prodding, and gawking at all the new gadgets and gear debuting at CES. The show has once again delivered an avalanche of products, both innovative and vaporous, that will shape the [...]

Microsoft is making it a lot faster and easier to add links to text inside Word documents. Instead of having to open a menu item to insert a link or use the CTRL + K keyboard shortcut, you can now simply paste a link on top of the text you want to hyperlink. This new [...]

Towerborne, a side-scrolling action RPG published by Xbox Game Studios that has been available in early access, will officially launch on February 26th. But instead of launching as a free-to-play, always-on online game as originally planned, Towerborne is instead going to be a paid game that you can play offline. "You will own the complete [...]

If you have an iPhone, the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch for you. But there was only one Apple Watch when the smartwatch launched in 2015. A decade later, you've got three flavors to choose from: the entry-level Watch SE, the standard Series, and the rugged Ultra. Each appeals to a different demographic and [...]

I fully believe that once someone hears Dolby Atmos music in their car, they won't want anything else. The sonic envelopment turns your car cabin into an immersive, engaging experience. Every time I hear a demo - be it in a Rivian, Cadillac, or Mercedes - it leaves me energized and excited. But up to [...]

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer says the country will take action against X following reports that the platform's Grok AI chatbot is generating sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors, as reported earlier by The Telegraph and Sky News. "It's disgusting," Starmer says during an interview with Greatest Hits Radio. "X need[s] to get their act [...]

CES is always jam-packed with new laptop announcements, acting as a barometer for the year's upcoming releases. The proofs of concept at the show display what could potentially come further in the future. 2026 will soon bring us new chip options from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. While I'm excited to see how the latest horse [...]

As part of a few changes to its search filters, YouTube is going to allow you to search specifically for Shorts or longform videos. Right now, a filter-less search shows a mix of longform and short form videos, which can be annoying if you just want to see videos in one format or the other. [...]

The new year has brought a wave of deals on wireless earbuds and headphones, from the fitness-focused Beats Powerbeats Fit to the open-ear Shokz OpenRun Pro. Now, Nothing has joined in with a sale of its own, offering the Nothing Headphone (1), CMF Headphone Pro, and Nothing Ear (3) earbuds at their lowest prices to [...]

Things are looking bright for those who want to nab a great TV in 2026 at a substantial discount. Even though the year's biggest, brightest, and priciest TVs were announced at CES 2026, there's usually a great deal happening on a mid- or high-end TV from LG, Sony, Hisense, or Samsung. With the Super Bowl [...]

You can't shake a stick without hitting an AI gadget at CES this year, with artificial smarts now embedded in just about every wearable, screen, and appliance across the show floor, not to mention the armies of AI companions, toys, and robots. But those are just the beginning. We've seen AI pop up in much [...]

The clips are filmed from different angles. Some are zoomed in, making them indecipherably grainy, and others are slowed down. Some are 20 seconds while others are longer, sandwiched by commentary from users on social media platforms like X, Bluesky, Reddit, and TikTok. Each video - depicting the moment an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent [...]

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, could help make history with a new project unveiled on Wednesday, the Lazuli Space Observatory. As reported by Science, the telescope was announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week and could be the largest privately funded space telescope in history thanks to [...]

Microsoft is launching a new feature in Copilot that will allow you to make purchases during conversations with the AI chatbot. Now, when you're asking for suggestions about what kind of sneakers you should buy, Copilot can surface a checkout option for the product you choose directly inside the app. An example shared by Microsoft [...]

Satechi is launching a new pair of wireless keyboards with a rechargeable battery designed for easy replacement. Despite their ultrathin profiles, the compact Slim EX1 and full-size Slim EX3 both stow the removable battery in a compartment on their undersides. A wireless keyboard with an easily replaceable and rechargeable battery is hard to come by, [...]

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. Every year, TV makers flock to CES in Las Vegas to show off bigger, brighter, and better-looking displays. And every year, the same companies also use the show to throw [...]

I have a simple gut check I use when reviewing phones, especially ones that rely on their cameras as a selling point: how often do I wish I had another phone with me instead? These days, it's mostly the Vivo X300 Pro I miss when I'm testing something else, a phone whose camera remains unmatched. [...]

CES is a land of bold announcements of amazing, innovative products and technologies that will revolutionize the world, often set for release in two years' time. Twenty-four months seems to be about the right hype window: close enough to generate excitement and investment, but far enough that everyone forgets about your promises before that deadline [...]

After exclusively launching in Japan last August, Nintendo has announced its My Mario product line will be available in the US starting next month. That includes the interactive Hello, Mario! app featuring an interactive 3D version of Mario's head that reacts to being poked, tugged, and flung around the screen. The app will be available [...]

It's harder than ever for a new video game to crack the top of the most-played list. According to the Circana Player Engagement Tracker and video game market analyst Mat Piscatella, in 2025, the top five most-played games on PS5 and Xbox... were the same in 2024. And they likely won't be changing anytime soon. [...]

Woot has an excellent deal on refurbished Sonos Arc SL soundbars, the 2020 model that's similar to the original Arc aside from not having any microphones. It debuted for $749, but you can get one with a one-year Sonos warranty for $319.99 while supplies last. If this discount doesn't sell out quickly (which it may), [...]

The personal computer has remained surprisingly resilient to change over the past 15 years. Apple promised a "post-PC" era with the iPad in 2010 and failed to deliver one. Smartphones even overtook laptops as the most popular device to connect to the internet a decade ago, but millions of people still kept buying PCs every [...]

In a surprisingly user-friendly move, Bose has announced it will be open-sourcing the API documentation for its SoundTouch smart speakers, which were slated to lose official support on February 18th, as reported by Ars Technica. Bose has also moved that date back to May 6th, 2026. When cloud support ends, an update to the SoundTouch [...]

Microsoft's annual Xbox Developer Direct event is taking place on January 22nd this year. The fourth Developer Direct will provide a closer look at two of Microsoft's biggest Xbox games this year, Forza Horizon 6 and Fable, as well as a first in-depth look at Beast of Reincarnation from Game Freak. Playground Games will debut [...]

CES serves a few different purposes - to give us the sense of what's to come during the year, to introduce strange devices, and for companies to show off the newest technology. While there wasn't as much of the first as I had hoped, there sure was a lot of the latter. TV manufacturers delivered [...]

Google is announcing a new AI Inbox view for Gmail that, instead of presenting your emails in a traditional list, uses AI to offer personalized to-dos and summaries of topics you might want to follow from your emails. It's a potentially huge shift in how you might navigate your Gmail, especially if you have a [...]

For all the time that I've been covering technology, there's been a hierarchy when it comes to TV brands. The big three - Sony, Samsung, and LG - have been on top for a while. Pioneer and Panasonic were up there with plasma TVs, and Panasonic is getting back in the game in the States. [...]