Apps

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) have written a letter to TikTok USDS CEO Adam Presser, urging the platform to estimate users’ age using their account activity or require parents to confirm their child’s age. The lawmakers also suggest that TikTok works with OS-makers like Apple and Google to implement age verification:

Software developer Josh Pucket has released Pica: a macOS app for managing fonts that’s currently optimized for latin script. It’s yet another free tool for the design community (yay!) and it even has a fun launch animation that sends characters cascading down your desktop.

No more scaled-up mobile interface elements. The latest version of Spotify has a collapsible sidebar and specific portrait and landscape layouts on both iPads and Android tablets. There’s also the ability to browse in one pane, while a video or music keeps playing in the other.

Terry Godier, who recently launched an RSS reader called Current (which is very good!), has encountered an unavoidable and unsolvable problem: in the five-star review system, anything below five is a disaster, and so what are we even doing here?

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the open-source, cross-platform European Age Verification Solution it has been testing will be available publicly soon, reports Bloomberg. She said it is “completely anonymous,” using a passport or ID card to verify age for access to online services, with accuracy that complies with EU child-protection regulations.

After adding support for the iPhone 17 and its square sensor selfie camera last November, Adobe has updated its Project Indigo camera app to support the iPhone 17e and iPads with at least 6GB of RAM. But Adobe warns that “Project Indigo is not yet tuned for iPad operation” and suggests sticking with an iPhone for an “optimal experience.”

As Canva expands beyond its roots as a design platform, the company says the acquisitions of Simtheory and Ortto will help Canva “become the system where teams do all of their work from start to finish.”

After launching across the US and India, Google is bringing its revamped Finance app to more than 100 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, and Mexico. Users in these countries can now interact with the app in their local language, as well as access a built-in Gemini chatbot, new charting tools, and an upgraded news feed.

Google AI Edge Eloquent is a new live AI transcription app that requires no subscription and has no usage limits. When you finish speaking, it will also filter out filler words like “um.” It’s currently only on iOS, but Google plans to bring the app to Android and macOS.

The iPhone maker plans to ask the Supreme Court to review a December 2025 ruling that found Apple in contempt by imposing a 27 percent fee on external in-app payments, according to a new legal filing. Apple also is asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to pause that ruling.

The app will no longer be available on devices with Android 12 or newer in July 2026, according to an update on Samsung’s website. Samsung is encouraging users to switch to Google Messages, which it began shipping as the default messaging app on flagship Galaxy devices in 2024.

Not because they’re so ugly, it’s because Garmin wearables that track skin temperature during sleep — like the Fenix 8 and Forerunner 970 — can now feed that data to the FDA-cleared Natural Cycles birth control app to show the wearer’s daily fertility status.

According to “I Decompiled the White House’s New App,” the Android version has some odd choices for a government app that mostly shows content from the White House website.

It’s still using Meta’s Private Processing AI setup to avoid sharing the content of your messages to anyone, even Meta. Other new features announced Thursday include AI image editing directly in chats, improved cross-platform chat transfers, and the option to have two WhatsApp accounts logged in on the same device on iOS.

There are some complex pros and cons to Google’s new “advanced flow” for sideloading unverified Android apps, which may well protect some users from scammers. But it would sure be nice if I could just install the apps I want on the computer I own.