11 – 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.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Apple is trying to halt the App Store ruling.

After filing an appeal, Apple is now asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to pause the Epic vs. Apple injunction requirements that prevent the company from restricting external links in iOS apps and charging fees on purchases made outside the App Store.

Apple says compliance will cost the company “hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually,” and that the “extraordinary intrusions into Apple’s business will cause grave, irreparable harm” without a stay.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
AI message summaries are coming to WhatsApp.

The WhatsApp beta for Android 2.25.15.12 update includes an in-development AI feature that summarizes messages in chats, groups, and channels using the Private Processing AI tech Meta announced last week, allowing users to quickly catch up on lengthy conversations.

It isn’t available for testing yet, but WABetaInfo notes the summarization feature won’t be available in chats where Advanced Chat Privacy is enabled when it does roll out.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Slack’s ‘Later’ tab is down.

The office collaboration / messaging app is still functional, but a notice on Slack’s website confirms there’s an issue affecting the Later tab for saved items in its desktop and web app as of about 1PM ET.

We’re looking into an issue impacting the Later tab on the desktop app and browser. Users may be having trouble switching from the In Progress tab to the Archived or Completed tab. Items may also be missing from the Archived or Completed tabs.

We’re investigating and will let you know as soon as we know more. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.

The Verge looks back on SkypeThe Verge looks back on Skype
Verge Staff
Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Google Photos now lets you edit shared album images and video on Android.

Only the albums’ owner can make changes, with the option to save the edits just to their own gallery as a copy or also to the shared album, Google writes in a help page. The feature is already live in Google Photos on the web and in iOS, and is now coming to the Android version of the app, as well, as Android Authority notes.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Firefox is finally adding tab groups.

That means you can now organize bundles of tabs into groups labeled by name or color. Firefox is also testing an AI-powered tool that will suggest tab groups and names based on the pages you have open in the browser.

Mozilla says it introduced the feature after a request for tab groups became the most-upvoted post on its Connect forum, with more than 4,500 people showing support for the suggestion.

Image: Mozilla
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
An ‘official’ Flappy Bird game is back, but it has nothing to do with the original creator.

Today, a Flappy Bird game launched in the Epic Games Store on Android (and nowhere else, so far), but is it the Flappy Bird? It’s from the same “Flappy Bird Foundation” that said it acquired the trademark last year, and also seems to have some kind of crypto / Web 3 tie-in ambitions.

However, its clone is being released without any involvement or arrangement with the game’s creator, Dong Nguyen, who pulled it from app stores more than a decade ago, saying the game was “too addictive.” He tweeted about it last September:

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Substack is down.

The newsletter-turned-more platform has been experiencing an outage for about an hour. However, the status page now says that “Substack publications, the publisher dashboard, and other functionality are fully recovered,” with work continuing on getting the app and webpage back up and running.

Increased error rates

[substack.statuspage.io]

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Yelp will let restaurants use AI to take calls.

Companies that offer services will be able to use the AI-powered answering service, too. Yelp will “soon begin testing” the product, according to the description of its video about the tool.

Star Wars is so backStar Wars is so back
David Pierce
Wes Davis
Wes Davis
WhatsApp is testing sticker reactions on Android.

That includes stickers available in WhatsApp’s sticker keyboard and those that users import, according to WABetaInfo, which spotted the change in a new beta for the Android version of the app. It works with animated stickers too, according to the site.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
How Skype shaped the world.

Ahead of Skype’s May 5th shutdown, Rest of World put together a list of stories from readers who recount how the service kept them connected with friends and family members across the globe. Some readers even recorded their blurb, complete with Skype’s iconic ringtone.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
YouTube Music is testing a Spotify-like lyrics sharing feature.

Android Central and leak hunter Assemble Debug point out that the feature has started to appear, as shown in this Reddit post. Beyond just displaying lyrics for certain songs, it allows users to highlight specific ones to create a social media-friendly sharing card, just like Spotify does.

Let us know if you’re seeing this in your app.