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.
With this update, Gmail users with client-side encryption can send E2EE emails to people using other providers, like Outlook. The recipient will receive a notice about the encrypted message, and can view it using a guest Gmail account.
This feature is only available to Google Workspace subscribers with an Enterprise Plus plan.
Last week, we noted that the popular multiplatform podcast app was showing ads to people who’d paid for the mobile version years ago, before subscriptions. Now, a post in its forum says, “We have removed the banner ads, and they will not be displayed to app purchasers in the future.”
From the app store notes:
Banner ads won’t be shown to Plus/Patron subscribers or users with accounts created prior to Sept 2019 – thanks for your support.
If you’re feeling particularly spreadsheet-y today, this BBC podcast highlights some interesting details about the creation of Excel, including Gabe Newell’s involvement and how developers wanted to name it “Number Buddy.”
Also, make sure to check out this wild piece on competitive Excel from my colleague David Pierce.
Starting on October 1st, the partnership will give Yelp users access to more than half a million US restaurants via DoorDash’s delivery network. Tapping the “order” button will automatically take users to the restaurant page on DoorDash where available, instead of manually having to switch platforms.
The free iOS app is now available to download worldwide today, following its announcement earlier this month, bringing Premiere Pro editing features to mobile devices. An Android version is also in development, but Adobe hasn’t said when it will arrive.
If you installed the new Google app for Windows, Google’s now telling you to remove it! To “keep receiving Google app updates,” you have to uninstall and reinstall from scratch. I wonder how many will skip the second step... particularly since it won’t uninstall until you dismiss this message and close the app.
If you have more than 5GB of Memories, you’ll have to pay $1.99 / month to store up to 100GB of your past snaps. Snapchat will also include up to 250GB of storage in its Snapchat Plus plan and 5TB with its Snapchat Platinum subscription.
Snap notes that the “vast majority” of users have less than 5GB of Memories.
[Snap Newsroom]
In June, Google launched the ability to turn your Slides presentation into a video, but now, you can have it automatically generate an AI script, voiceover, and background music to go along with each of your slides. The feature is rolling out now to Workspace and AI plan subscribers.
7
Verge Score
Good for side sleepers but ANC kills battery life.
Duolingo’s chess course is now available on Android, and the iOS version will soon get a player-versus-player mode, the company says.
[GlobeNewswire News Room]
ESPN NBA writer Brian Windhorst points out that when Aspiration signed up to be the Clippers’ jersey patch sponsor (and, allegedly, help circumvent the NBA’s salary cap) it replaced another company.
That was Honey, the shopping tool exposed for swapping referral codes, which actually got ads featuring Kawhi.
The app has introduced a new “infinite retention” feature, allowing you to save chats in individual conversations. Snap will notify everyone in the group when you enable the feature.
Previously, Snapchat only saved messages for 24 hours after everyone in the group viewed them, or 31 days after the message was sent, whichever is sooner.
[Snap Newsroom]
The app had an outage this morning, leaving many users staring at an unread count, even after reading all their messages. Slack reports it’s fixed, but if your app is still stuck, hitting CMD + Shift + R (Mac) or CTRL + Shift + R (Windows) to force refresh should clear things up.
Nintendo Today was updated to version 2.0 today with a new Kirby theme and exclusive content for the Nintendo Live 2025 event in Tokyo. But it will only be accessible at the event using an inaudible sound broadcasted at the venue the app will listen for to verify attendance.
