10 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Apps

The best apps download superpowers to your smartphone. The Verge covers the new and noteworthy Android apps, iPhone apps, and games, highlighting great design, impressive utility, and novel features. If it belongs on your phone, you’ll find it on The Verge.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Digg is getting a mobile app.

In addition to launching a reboot on the web, Digg told users that it’s working on an Android and iOS app with “full feature parity,” offering access to profiles, communities, and leaderboards with the top daily posts, comments, and gem-finders.

Image: Digg
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Anthropic’s voice mode for Claude launches in beta.

The conversational mode for Anthropic’s AI chatbot is now becoming available for users of its mobile apps, “gradually.”

TechCrunch notes that chief product officer Mike Krieger confirmed the rumored feature was on the way in a recent interview, while Anthropic says that it can integrate with Google Workspace, and that free users can expect “20-30 voice messages” before session limits cut them off, while paid users have higher limits.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google Drive will now let you see how many times people opened your video.

You can see the new metric by selecting a video in your Drive, clicking the three-dot menu, and then hitting “Details.” From there, you’ll find a new “Analytics” section that shows how many times the video has been opened.

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
The Browser Company won’t open-source Arc (yet).

After announcing its second browser, Dia, last year, the company stopped developing new features for original breakout Arc. Now CEO Josh Miller explains why, and admits he considered either selling or open-sourcing the software. Neither is on the table right now (because it would require giving up their custom development kit, or “secret sauce”), but “that doesn’t mean it’ll never happen.”

Dia is still in alpha testing, but will open up to Arc members next.

Letter to Arc members 2025

[browsercompany.substack.com]

Summer blockbuster season is here

Plus, in this week’s Installer: a cheap set-top box worth a try, a clever twist on the Stream Deck, where to go post-Pocket, and more.

David Pierce
Mozilla is shutting down PocketMozilla is shutting down Pocket
Emma Roth
Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Strava doubles down on training plans.

After last month’s acquisition of Runna, mostly to get at its running plans, Strava is repeating the trick in cycling. It just acquired The Breakaway, an iOS biking app with a focus on... AI training plans.

It comes as Strava closes a round of funding that valued the business at $2.2 billion. Yesterday it announced new AI route planning and improvements to its cheat detection.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Apollo creator Christian Selig is joining Digg as an “advisor.”

“We’re excited to have Selig bring that same craft and community-first thinking to Digg, helping us build something that feels good to use and even better to be a part of,” Digg CEO Justin Mezzell says in a press release.

You can read more about Digg’s revival in our article from March. And, if you don’t remember, Selig was a key character in the protests on Reddit a couple years ago.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
A big Hey update following the Epic v. Apple ruling.

“No more weird burner accounts,” David Heinemeier Hansson says in a blog post. “Now you can sign up directly for a real email address in HEY, and if you like what we have to offer (and I think you will!), you’ll be able to pay the $99/year for a subscription via a web-based flow that it’s now kosher to link to from the app itself.”

Cath Virginia
Cath Virginia
Palestinians in the West Bank are designing their own navigation apps.

At Rest of World, Reem Abd Ulhamid writes about community-sourced apps designed to help Palestinians navigate Israeli-enforced movement restrictions, like checkpoints, Israeli-only roads, and Israeli police. Traditional GPS apps like Google Maps and Waze “try to find the fastest route, [whereas] Palestinian digital networks focus on avoiding risks.”

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Patreon will no longer force creators to change their billing method.

Last year, Patreon asked creators to switch to subscription billing after Apple said Patreon had to use the company’s in-app payment method or “risk being kicked out of the App Store.” Thanks to the latest Epic Games v. Apple ruling, Patreon has lifted its November 2025 deadline for all creators to make the switch to subscription billing.

Additionally, Patreon creators will once again be able to let supporters purchase memberships at the price they’ve set on iOS.

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Apple gave Monaco a custom F1-themed Maps treatment.

The update puts a focus on Formula 1 racing in promotion of both upcoming Apple movie F1 and the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix race happening later this month. The update is full of special Monaco Grand Prix-related things, including little renders of Formula 1 cars at the pits and road closure advisories.

Not that any of us will ever use it — this is basically an update for Apple exec and known sports fan Eddy Cue, right?

Apple Maps showing Monaco.
Three screenshots of Apple Maps on an iPhone.
More of the special Grand Prix race locations shown in the app.
1/3
The update lets you see where the route is, so you can join in the fun (just kidding, don’t try to do that!).
Image: Apple
Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Google Messages tests @mentions.

After spotting early code for the functionality in March, Android Authority has managed to get it working in the latest beta build of Google’s RCS messaging app. For now it’s not triggering any extra notifications for people who get tagged though. Google is yet to confirm it’s working on mentions, so we don’t know how long it’ll take to roll out for real.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Slack is down, unless it’s back up already.

Slack has acknowledged an outage Monday evening as “...users are experiencing issues connecting to Slack and are unable to load threads,” with most reports noting problems beginning just after 6:30PM ET.

Some people are still connected, or can load certain threads and rooms, while others fail. According to Slack, “our backend database routing is contributing to error spikes with many Slack features,” affecting a percentage of users globally. There’s no ETA for a repair yet, but it might be a good time to take a break or just call it a day entirely.

Updated at 7:12PM ET.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
The parent company of Tinder and Hinge is cutting 13 percent of its staff.

Match Group, which owns Match.com and other big dating apps, announced its quarterly earnings today and announced a workforce reduction that new CEO Spencer Rascoff said will reduce “around 1 in 5 managers overall.” Based on its 2024 filing, Bloomberg says that’s about 325 jobs.

The company said recent developments have included rolling out a new AI-powered recommendation system for Hinge that “has driven a 15 percent increase in matches and contact exchanges.” Meanwhile, new “AI-enabled Discovery, Double Date, and The Game Game” launches for Tinder are targeting Gen Z users with “more social, low-pressure experiences.”