Connexion
Twitter—er, sorry, X (formerly Twitter), is down. At least intermittently. I started writing this piece once I noticed the issue on my end: I tried loading the site in Chrome, and after a few moments, I got a blank screen. I tried refreshing again, and again, the site returned no results. I swapped to my phone, and lo and behold, the site was working. So, back to my browser, and yes, it works! Another refresh, however, and blank results again. Yikes.
Something is going on at Twitter HQ, and maybe it'll all be fixed by the time this goes up, but at the moment, you might not be able to load your tweets. It's a funny turn of events: The last time a major social media network went down, it was on Meta's watch, as Instagram, Facebook, and Threads all refused to load. At that time, every flocked to Twitter to check in and laugh about the situation. Now, will people flock to Instagram, Facebook, and Threads to repay the favor to Twitter?
As I move to publish this, the site appears to be loading for me again. Hopefully, it sticks. But considering X, formerly Twitter, is a skeleton crew these days, it isn't hard to imagine there being more problems like this going forward.
Generative AI is an exciting, powerful, controversial new technology, and if Mark Zuckerberg is anything to go by, it’s not going away anytime soon. If you use any of Meta’s mobile apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp, you’ve probably already noticed the new Meta AI integration freshly embedded into them as of late. It’s all part of a new rollout for Meta AI’s latest large language model, Llama 3. But while Llama 3 is more powerful than prior versions, these new buttons and prompts make it harder than ever to ignore.
Let’s say you’re not yet convinced on AI and you want to keep doing your searches and scrolling the old-fashioned way. Can you turn the new Meta AI integration off, and how do you go about doing it?
First, know thine enemy. Meta’s AI Assistant has actually been around since September 2023, but the most recent update puts it directly in the search boxes and sometimes even feeds of apps, including Facebook and Instagram. The integration is a little different from app to app, but in general, clicking on the search box (or sometimes chat button) in a Meta app will now show an iridescent rainbow circle with a prompt next to it saying, “Ask Meta AI anything.”
If you take Meta up on the offer, you’ll be able to have Meta AI answer writing or image generation prompts, which are classic AI assistant features. The app will even give you a few suggestions, and with Llama 3, it can also now generate gifs and return real-time search results from either Google or Bing.
The problem with these functions is that they’re mixed in with non-AI features, so it can be a little confusing to tell them apart. Here’s how to disable Meta AI, or if you can’t, at least how to ignore it.
The Facebook app has one of the most prominent Meta AI integrations. Opening the app and clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner will still take you to the search bar, but will now show the Meta AI logo, example prompts for what to ask Meta AI, and a brief command to “Ask Meta AI anything.”
Don’t panic. Your regular search function hasn’t gone away. Search for a friend’s name, or a specific event, or even “New York Yankees fans,” and you’ll get the same results you always have. The difference is that, mixed in with those results, you’ll also now get AI-powered suggested searches, indicated by the Meta AI logo to their left (non-AI suggestions will instead have a magnifying glass next to them). Clicking on a response with the Meta AI logo will take you from your search into a chat window with Meta AI, where you can interact with it like any chatbot, or go back to your search by pressing the “X” button in the top left corner. Pressing enter without clicking on any of the suggested searches will also continue the search as usual.
Similarly, scrolling through your feed might also prompt you to use Meta AI, either through a generic card interspersed between posts, or through a small footer at the bottom of some posts offering to use AI to tell you more about that post’s subject.
Because the AI is so integrated into the typical flow of using the app, it makes sense that some users might not want to get interrupted with it.
Unfortunately, there’s not an easy way to turn it off for now. Facebook’s support page offers no such solutions, and asking Meta AI how to disable it gives conflicting answers, none of which worked in our testing.
That doesn’t mean there’s no hope, though. Mercifully, all Meta AI integration is currently marked with the Meta AI logo, so if you’re not seeing it, you know that your content is coming from a real person (or at least a more old-fashioned kind of bot). Additionally, when you’re in a chat with Meta AI, you can long press an answer to rate it, remove it, pin it, or copy it. Group owners can also stop Meta AI from latching itself onto their posts by going to their group, tapping on the three dots in the top right, tapping “Add features,” scrolling to Meta AI, and clicking “remove” in the settings tab next to “Help members get info.”
Instagram’s Meta AI integration is more tame than Facebook’s, as it will only show up when you click on the search bar, and functions in much the same way as on its sister app. Its search suggestions will be mixed in with more traditional ones and marked with its iridescent Meta AI logo, while non-AI search suggestions will instead have a magnifying glass next to them. Clicking on a Meta AI suggestion will open a chat—actually the same chat log from Facebook or any other Meta app—where you will be able to rate or remove its answers.
Sadly, there’s also no way to strictly disable Meta AI here, which can be doubly frustrating, since I’m probably more likely to search for “how to peel an onion” or “how to cut an avocado” here than on Facebook proper. Just pay attention to the icon next to your suggested searches, and you should be able to avoid the AI for now.
Messenger and WhatsApp have the lightest Meta AI integration—here, the chatbot is essentially just treated as another person in your contacts. Clicking on your conversation with it will open the chatbot, which again will remember any questions you might have asked it in any other Meta-owned apps.
Aside from that, the only other integration is a small icon in either the lower center or upper right hand corner of your screen, depending on your app. Clicking on the icon will also open your conversation with Meta AI, which is important if you delete your chat.
That’s right, there’s actually a way to “remove” Meta AI from these apps. Just delete your conversation with it like any other, and it’ll disappear from your contacts list. The small icon will remain elsewhere in the app's UI, presumably to give you a way to start up a new conversation if you accidentally delete yours, but aside from that, the AI presence here is entirely unobtrusive.
If Instagram stole TikTok's schtick when rolling out Reels, it seems TikTok is keen to repay the favor. The company is working on a new app, TikTok Notes, that seems remarkably like Meta's popular photo sharing platform.
The company originally teased this idea earlier this month through notifications sent to users, with the title "Your photo posts will be show on TikTok Notes." The alert explains how TikTok Notes is a new app for photo posts, so future public TikTok photo posts will be displayed on the company's new dedicated app. It provided an option for users to opt out of TikTok Notes if they preferred to keep their photo posts to TikTok itself.
Wednesday, the company posted on X (formerly Twitter) officially announcing TikTok Notes as an app for sharing both photos and text. TikTok is initially testing TikTok Notes in just Australia and Canada for now, so those of us outside of those countries can't try it out yet, but the post does give us some insight into how the app will work.
Tweet may have been deleted
Based on the four screenshots provided, TikTok Notes will have a For You page, just like TikTok, but perhaps more in-line with Instagram's Explore page. This For You page shows multiple photo posts at once from users across the platform, but if you prefer, it seems you can hit the "Following" tab to check out posts from just the people you specifically follow.
The posts themselves are, as you might expect, a cross between a TikTok and an Instagram post. You can upload multiple photos at once and attach a caption. Along the bottom, you'll find the comments, as well as a space to leave your own thoughts. From here, there are the usual like, save, and comment buttons, with how many likes, saves, and comments users have left.
Will this catch on? I honestly don't know. TikTok is massively popular, of course, but Instagram has very little competition in the photo sharing space. While TikTok has a dedicated legion of fans, I don't know if they'd feel compelled to make the switch to a new app, especially if they also have an established presence on Instagram for their photo-sharing needs.
What I'm mostly curious about, however, is if they launch an app in the U.S. Right now, the test is extremely limited, but once it starts rolling the app out to more countries, will it bother with one that's actively trying to ban its products in the first place? The U.S. is Meta's home turf, though, so it might be worth it to TikTok (and ByteDance) to pick a fight, however short-lived it may be.
Google Maps is rolling out a couple updates that should make sustainable transportation options a little more convenient to access. The first pertains to locating EV chargers, and the second may gently nudge drivers toward public transit.
One of the biggest problems electronic car owners face is locating convenient chargers along their route, especially when they're on a long journey. A new Google Maps feature will show EV owners AI-generated summaries of real people’s experiences with chargers to help them gauge how reliable and busy they are.
Google says the AI summaries will be based on customer reviews, which users may be prompted to complete when they use an EV charger while using Google Maps. The app will encourage users to submit their feedback after using an EV charger so that others can see if the charger is reliable or if they should look for a better option somewhere nearby. Google has offered limited EV charger information, including directions, for quite a few years now, but this is the first time that info will be accompanied by in-depth reliability summaries.
When public transit offers a lower carbon footprint option and a similar travel time to car travel, Google may display that public transit route as an option alongside the car route.
The tech giant says that this functionality is currently rolling out to different cities around the world, though it will start with just 15 at the moment, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, London, Montreal, Paris, Rome, and Sydney. A full list of the cities that will offer lower-carbon travel routes can be found in Google’s announcement.
Google is also making searching for public transit information much easier by providing more information, such as schedules and ticket prices, when searching for something like “train from Boston to Philadelphia.” The company says this should provide more accurate and helpful information so you can better plan your next trip.
Train information is only available in certain countries, though, including Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States. Google hasn’t yet said if it plans to expand beyond those countries.
When you have a reliable internet connection, you don't think about how you watch YouTube on your iPhone. It just works. But there are plenty of times when you either need to go offline, or give your data plan a break. For these situations, it's pretty easy to download YouTube videos on your iPhone to watch them offline or without using data—but not all the methods are exactly equal.
This one’s a bit complicated. If you download videos to your iPhone using YouTube’s service (more on that below), it’s 100% on the up-and-up. However, the platform does not approve of downloading videos from its servers outside of that capacity. It’s actually against YouTube’s terms of service for app developers to make YouTube downloaders and put them on app stores.
That said, the company won’t do a thing about it if you do download videos from third-party solutions. Where they will take action is if you upload those videos, especially copyrighted videos, back online. So, play it safe: Download these videos only for your own personal use.
YouTube’s preferred method for downloading videos on your iPhone is, of course, by paying for the service. With YouTube Premium, you’ll find a convenient “Download” button next to most videos on the platform, so you can quickly save your favorite videos for offline viewing anytime.
There are other perks to YouTube Premium, including avoiding ads before videos and the high-quality “1080p Premium” bitrate, for $13.99 per month. It’s an expensive way to download your YouTube videos, but it is the way YouTube approves of.
If you don't have YouTube Premium, you can turn to your iPhone's Shortcuts app. Shortcuts is a treasure-trove of powerful programs. Some of those just happen to be YouTube downloaders.
The problem is, these shortcuts tend to break fast. It's not clear exactly why, but it's possible YouTube frequently changes things on its end and stops these shortcuts from working. That wouldn't be so bad if developers stuck around and patched the issues are they pop up, but, unfortunately, these shortcuts are often abandoned. So, when something goes wrong, the shortcut is useless.
One shortcut that I have found works is Sur. Sur is pretty straightforward: Once installed and run, you need to give it permission to connect to its host sites, then choose whether to paste a YouTube URL, or pull from your clipboard. Sur treats your URL as a "contact" to send to the site it uses to download the video, so you'll need to give permission to send this "contact" to the site. Allow it to run, then allow Sur to connect to the Google Video URL. How long you wait from here depends on the size of the video in question, but once it's done, tap "OK" on the pop-up to choose what you want to do with the video. Since this pulls up the share sheet, you can kind of do anything you want with it: You can save it to your iPhone or your Files app, send it through Messages or a third-party app, AirDrop it, save it to a Note, whatever you want to do.
A previous version of this article recommended JAYD (Just Another YouTube Downloader), and if you searching around the internet, you'll find older posts about the shortcut as well. Unfortunately, it seems to have met the same fate as other YouTube downloaders, so we can't recommend it anymore.
Mobile browsing on iPhone has come a long way. In many respects, it’s just as capable as browsing on a Mac or PC. For example, you can actually use a YouTube downloader in Safari and download a YouTube video just as you would on desktop.
This method isn’t recommended, however. The YouTube downloaders online can be spammy, blasting you with sketchy ads and giving off an overall malicious vibe. Still, it does work, so it’s a notable option. But I'd stick with Sur, or another reputable YouTube downloader shortcut if you can.
There's new old social media network on the block. This one is the brainchild of venture capitalist Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product chief Brian Norgard. And yes, there is an AI hook. Airchat is another take on an audio-based social app, but unlike Clubhouse, it might have the potential to stick around for more than a few months.
Airchat is built on the idea of talking. Just talking. Users share updates in form of audio and video messages on their feeds. But feeds themselves are made up of only text. Airchat uses AI transcription to turn those audio and video clips into text on the feed.
At first glance, an Airchat feed looks like Twitter or Threads, filled with text updates and options to reply or repost. But as you scroll through it, something novel happens: The feed talks to you, as Airchat plays the audio or video from the update aloud while you’re reading it. Scroll down to another message and you'll hear that user speaking to you. And you can reply with your own voice just as quickly.
Another peculiar element: The feed scrolls for you. After Airchat is done playing one update, it automatically scrolls on, playing the audio for the next update a highlighted reply. Call it hands-free social media—imagine loading up your feed while in your car, and listen to updates in the background like a podcast. (Yes, Airchat will keep talking to you if turn off the screen.)
Airchat also has DMs, where you can talk using the same methods, but privately. Unfortunately, if you're not big on hearing messages being read aloud, there’s not much else to do on the app. You can sign up using your number or an Apple account, but you will have to provide access to your contacts to find other users, and to send out invites. The app also requires access to Apple’s dictation feature.
Like all new social networks, Airchat is currently filled with enthusiast Silicon Valley bros. As of this writing, it is also invite-only, and the company is still figuring out how to expand the invite system, or to make the app public. They are limiting your invites to just two people right now, which is a shame if you're hoping to get your friends onboard quickly.
The current version of Airchat is a reboot of sorts. The previous iteration was more akin to Clubhouse, as it was focused only on audio messages and interactions. Now, thanks to the text transcription, the feed is a lot more alive, and interactive.
One thing that Airchat has nailed is creating a seamless experience. Recording and posting audio and seeing it show up as text almost instantly is quite impressive. And it’s that instant gratification loop that could keep people coming back.
But questions about its future viability, not to mention its basic functionality, still remain. Right now, Airchat has no major moderation system to speak of, and in my testing, I found the app froze on occasion.
Moreover, the future of a social network depends on much more than just a cool hook. It needs to develop a core user base and grow from there. And that’s hard to see happening right now. As the invites are limited, there aren’t many people on Airchat yet (a problem that nascent platforms like Bluesky have also struggled with). We'll only be able to realize the utility (if any) of a talking social network once there are more people talking, and about interesting and varied things.
Is it worth tracking down an Airchat invite right now? Honestly, you can wait it out. Social networks are all about people, and without your people, this one will feel just like yet another channel you forget to update. Wait for the public release. Once that happens, you can dip your toes in to see if this kind of audio interaction with strangers even appeals to you.
Because one thing is clear: Airchat really wants its users to be active. It's not a built on the consumption model. Like Reddit, the fun in Airchat is that you can quickly hop into a random conversation. Unlike Reddit, you'll do it via your voice, and not text. The question remains whether enough people will want to do that, and whether Airchat can escape the fate of so many other would-be social networks that have come (and gone) before.
Whether you have an iPhone or an Android, your smartphone likely takes great photos. That's why, in 2024, there's no reason why your high-quality images should look like crap when you send them to friends and family. Different messages platforms handle this compression differently: iMessage and RCS, for example, allow you to send high-quality images by default, while SMS notoriously crushes the quality of your photos.
When it comes to chat apps, however, it all depends on the developer. WhatsApp finally added an HD photo option for sending high-quality images on the platform last year. So, it's a bit of a surprise to see Meta's other popular messaging service, Messenger, just receive this feature as well.
The company announced the change on Tuesday, alongside a few similar, useful features. Unfortunately, there are no details about how high-quality these images will be, or how much compression is still applied. If the feature works like WhatApp's, there's likely some compression involved, which means sending "HD images" isn't an option for sharing uncompressed versions of your photos with your friends.
On the other hand, Meta also announced that you can now send files up to 100 MB from your phone. This is also a similar feature to WhatsApp, and it now becomes the best way to send images in their full quality to your contacts on Messenger.
Also announced on Tuesday is a new shared albums feature: When you select multiple photos from your chat composer, you'll now see the option to Create album. If you already have an album, you'll have the option to add to that album here as well. Finally, you'll now receive a new QR code you can use to quickly add new contacts on Messenger. To use it, go to Settings and tap the QR code icon in the top left.
To use Meta's new HD photo option, choose a photo from the chat composer, then make sure to hit the HD toggle in the top right. You can send multiple photos in HD at once.
However, to send an uncompressed photo, you'll want to send it as a file. Once the feature rolls out to you, you'll find it by hitting the (+) in the chat composer, then from the file icon on the left side of the menu bar. Hit Choose file, then pick the photo you want to send. Depending on your phone, you may need to add the photo to a file management app on your device before this will work.
Apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram offer never-ending short-form video content that can keep you helplessly hooked for hours. It's just what you expect when you open those apps. What you might not expect, however, is to find that type of content when you open the Uber Eats app. But here we are.
The company revealed its new short-form video enterprise in an interview with TechCrunch. You'll encounter this TikTok-style content when you first open Uber Eats, as well as throughout the entire app. It sounds like it'll work similarly to Instagram, where a full vertical player will open up, allowing you to swipe through different videos.
Unlike any of the aforementioned apps, however, this content isn't simply uploaded and delivered via an algorithm tailor-made to each user. Instead, Uber Eats is hosting videos directly from restaurants themselves, showcasing whatever food or service they want to. In addition, Uber Eats will only show you videos from restaurants in your immediate vicinity. It's not clear exactly how close you need to be to a restaurant to receive a video, but I imagine if it's something you'd likely order Uber Eats for, you'll see their videos.
Uber Eats wants to be clear that these videos are not ads, as the company is not charging restaurants for the privilege. On the restaurant's end, it'll likely feel like the free experience of uploading a video to TikTok or Instagram.
Look, this story originally made me laugh because, come on—even Uber Eats is doing short-form video now? But I kind of like the approach here: It's unique to see only videos from restaurants that are close to you, so you can get a better idea of where you want to order from. I already swipe through images of restaurants on Google Maps before deciding whether or not to try them out, so why not add a video demonstration to the mix?
Of course, those of us that know what we want and just want to get to our order might find these videos intrusive. I'm not sure if you can turn off these videos, but my initial guess is no. You can't turn off videos in other apps, so I doubt Uber Eats is going to offer a toggle for that, either.
Instagram and Threads will now hide political content by default, making it harder to follow current affairs, important updates about government policies, voting rights, protests, and much more. If you're the kind of person who prefers not to view political content on social media, you can stop reading right here. However, if you want to view posts on issues such as healthcare, your government's stance on global conflicts, or the bills your local politicians are backing, then you should review Instagram's settings. (Note: Instagram says that it's only going to limit recommending political content from accounts that you don't follow.)
The bigger issue is that algorithms created by corporations are controlling what you see on social media. You can, however, take the power back (mostly). On Instagram, that could mean preventing the service from limiting political content. To do this, open the Instagram app on your phone and tap the Profile icon in the bottom-right corner. Now, tap the three-lines button in the top-right corner and go to Content preferences. On this page, you should select Political content and pick Don't limit on the next page. This setting impacts both Instagram and Threads (it's not available in the Threads app).
The wording on this settings page is unclear about what Instagram defines as "political content." The company says that political content is "potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics," which is a vague definition at best. It adds that you won't see political posts from public accounts in its Explore page, Instagram Reels, and suggested posts that show up in your feed.
Instagram has been talking about distancing itself from news and political content for some time now, and this change cements its stance on the subject. The company says that if you follow political accounts on the service, you'll be able to view their content on your feed, but that it won't recommend these posts if you don't follow the accounts.
This will affect certain accounts much more than others. If someone has been providing valuable information from a conflict zone, that could be hidden from a large number of people who'd benefit from seeing it. Over time, algorithms could easily hamper disaster-relief efforts in situations where there are funding requests for humanitarian aid, or for rescue operations.
At the moment, it's also unclear if this move will reduce the spread of politically motivated disinformation such as propaganda, anti-vaccine messages, or other types of unscientific rage-bait.
Late last year, WhatsApp finally added the ability to pin messages to the top of a chat. But if you’ve ever been part of a freewheeling group conversation, you know that one pinned message is rarely enough. Do you pin the directions to your meetup spot, or the maps link? The grocery list for your partner, or the travel plans you’re trying to hash out?
Thankfully, Meta has given you a tool to put a stop to this madness—you can now pin up to three messages in any private or group chat.
If you’re new to pinning in WhatsApp, here’s the basic formula: On an iPhone, press and hold on any message and tap More from the context menu, or tap the Menu button on top if you're using Android. Then, choose the Pin option. You can decide how long you want the message to hang around at the top of the chat—24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days.
Previously, if you tried to pin another message, you’d get a popup saying that it would replace your current pinned message, and are you sure you want to do that? But now, you will be able to pin a second and third message in the same fashion: Tap and hold, choose More, then Pin, and select your timeframe.
After you do this, you’ll notice that there’s a little change to the pinned bar at the top, in the form of little pill shaped icons that indicate that there are two or three messages that are pinned up top. Tap it to see all the pinned messages.
WhatsApp is currently limiting users to only three pinned messages, but there's always a chance they increase this limit in the future. When you try to pin the fourth pinned message, WhatsApp will automatically remove the message that was created the earliest, irrespective of the timeframe you chose, and replace it with the new one. You can tap on a pinned message to unpin it at any time.
Mark Zuckerberg announced the feature on his WhatsApp channel, and will be rolling out slowly over the next couple of weeks. So if you don't see it in the app yet, hang tight; it will show up soon.
Threads has taken one more step toward becoming a replacement for what Twitter used to be. Meta-owned Threads is getting a feature that'll display trending topics in its apps, starting today. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said in a post on Threads that the feature is initially rolling out to users in the U.S. Presumably, this'll be made available to the rest of the world at a later date.
Mosseri's post reads, "We're rolling out the 'trending now' feature widely to people in the U.S. today—excited to offer an easy way to see what others are talking about on Threads. It’s available on the search page and in the For You Feed, so try it out and let us know what you think."
Once you go to the Search tab in Threads, you should be able to see these trending topics. At the moment, Threads seems to be showing up to five trending topics at a time. This feature could help you discover popular topics and help Threads drive engagement, but at the same time, it has the potential to be controversial. Outrage drives engagement on social media sites, and trending topics is another feature that could fan controversial flames by driving more people to those topics. Threads has repeatedly tried to distance itself from news and political content, but features like trending topics are driven by those types of content.
Threads has been slowly gaining feature parity with X over the past year. The Meta-owned service recently added the ability to bookmark your favorite posts, edit your posts, use on the web, and save drafts in the app.
I think the kindest thing you can say about X (the social network formerly known as Twitter) in 2024 is that it's impressive the site is actually still up and running. Sure, spam bots take over popular threads, hate speech is on the rise (X is suing the company tracking it, by the way), and advertising is way down, but despite it all, twitter.com still manages to load.
But the reasons to bother loading the site at all continuing to dwindle, and fast—not just for the aforementioned reasons. Because now it seems like it's not even safe to click links on X anymore.
As noted by security researcher Will Dormann, some posts on X purport to lead to a legitimate website, but actually redirect somewhere else. In Dormann's example, an advertisement posted by a verified X user claims to lead to forbes.com. When Dormann clicks the link, however, it takes him to a different link to open a Telegram channel that is, "helping individuals earn maximum profit in the crypto market," he said. In short, the "Forbes" link leads to crypto spam.
Tweet may have been deleted
Bad actors can accomplish this thanks to the vulnerabilities in the way X handles URL previews. As BleepingComputer explains, X checks the final destination of the URL, rather than the initial link itself, before generating a preview link on the site. That wouldn't be a problem if users actually are led to the final link destination every time. Unfortunately, this policy gives bad actors an opportunity to trick people into following links they never would have otherwise clicked on.
All they have to do is set up two different URL destinations in their post. In the case outlined above, clicking the forbes.com link actually takes you to joinchannelnow.net. Once on this site, the server checks to see whether the request is coming from a typical browser (that's you). If so, it'll take you to the spam site, which for this situation is a crypto scam Telegram channel. However, if the server detects the request is coming from something else—like a X link-verifying bot—it'll assume the request is not being made by a human; in these cases it returns a legitimate URL. So, even though the first link is to joinchannelnow, X checks it and is taken to forbes.com, and so it places that URL preview on the post. You're experience will be different.
In short, this is a security nightmare. It means every link you see on X could potentially lead to a site trying to spam you at best, and scam you, install malware on your machine, or otherwise take advantage of you at worst, all because you trusted a social media platform to show the proper preview for a link.
The best X to stay safe on X is to stop using X. Seriously, how many "final straws" are necessary before we all realize the place isn't worth visiting anymore? The spicy memes no longer justify the many, many flaws and risks.
Of course, many of us will keep using it anyway (can't say I'm not still there), so having some actionable steps to take will help. So when using X on a computer, always hover your cursor over the link preview before clicking it. Because you're using a web browser, you'll be able to see the final link destination appear as a pop-up link preview, so you'll know whether a link is legit or not. If you see something other than the link the post claims it to be, don't click it.
Unfortunately, it isn't possible to do this on mobile, so, honestly, it's probably not worth opening links on X on your phone. I'd like to say you should only open links from accounts you trust, but since anyone who pays for X can now get a verification badge, it's way too easy to be tricked by an account claiming to have authority it doesn't. Remember: The account that posted the fake Forbes link was verified, too.
I like podcasts. The problem is, I like podcasts too much. There are so many quality shows out there, and on every topic imaginable, that my queue of podcasts episodes I want to listen to can stack up quickly . Before I know it, I've got enough to fill several weeks, even if I did nothing but listen to them back to back.
This is not a rare scenario for me, but I've learned a few tricks for reducing the backlog and catching up (at least partially). What you might not realize, if you've never changed from your default podcast player or messed around with its features, is that these apps come with a bunch of tools to help you power through your podcasts more quickly.
More than that, I've also got some ideas for how to fit more podcast listening into your day. While sometimes you will have to declare podcast bankruptcy, clear the queue, and start again, these tips can help you avoid that method of last resort for as long as possible.
There is no shortage of podcast players out there, and most of them offer features to help you get through your podcasts more quickly. I'll highlight a few different tricks you can use in a variety of apps, so have a look through what your podcast player of choice offers—if it doesn't have a particular time-saving feature you think would be useful, you can always switch to something else.
If you've got an iPhone, you may well be making use of Apple Podcasts, as it comes built into iOS. It's not the most feature-packed of players, but it does let you adjust the playback speed (up to 2x) by tapping the 1x button on the left of the playback screen. It's a quick and easy way of cramming more podcasts into the same amount of time.
Upping the speed won't change the pitch of voices or music, but it will take some getting used to every talking at a rapid-fire clip. Try starting with 1.25x speed and increasing from there as your ears adjust.
Spotify has been busy adding podcast and audiobook support to its app in recent years, and one feature you'll find on the playback screen inside the apps for Android and iOS is a sleep timer—it's the small stopwatch icon over on the right-hand side. This can help you add a few minutes of podcast listening to the end of every day without worrying about missing huge chunks of episodes as you drift off to sleep.
The excellent Overcast app for iOS shows an impressive level of commitment to helping you get through everything you want to listen to. One of the best features it offers is Smart Speed, which you can get to by tapping the button showing three sliders, down in the lower left corner of the playback screen: It intelligently shortens silences in episodes, so you'll listen to more talking and less dead air.
Another hugely popular podcasting app is Pocket Casts for Android and iOS. This app can automatically elide a custom amount of time at the start and end of your podcasts. This is useful if a particular show includes intros and outros you know you don't have to listen to every time. From a podcast's individual page in the app, tap the gear icon, then Skip first or Skip last. (Pocket Casts can also let you adjust playback speed, trim silences, and fall asleep to podcasts too, which is why it's one of my favorites.)
These apps (and others like them) come with various combinations of these features, so choose the one with the most options you find useful. In addition, in just about any app you should be able to automatically download new episodes to your phone (so you don't have to pause your podcast listening when you're not connected to the internet) and set up a queue of episodes to listen to in order, so when an episode ends you don't have to fumble through picking a new one.
Besides the features you'll find inside your podcast app, there are other ways to fit more podcasts into the time you have available. Maybe there are more moments you could be piping podcasts into your ears but aren't: While you're doing chores, working out at the gym, or making breakfast, perhaps. You don't have to spend every waking hour listening to podcasts...but it certainly helps with your backlog.
If you don't use a podcast player that works with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, and one (or both) of those systems is available in your car, consider switching to an app that does. You can listen to podcasts during road trips, your daily commute, and even quick trips to the store (podcast players are smart enough to carry on right where they left off).
Something that I've had to learn is to be less precious about listening to every single episode of every single podcast. Even with the podcasts you love, if there are episodes on a topic you're not too interested in, or that feature a guest you're not that keen on, don't be afraid to skip them: You're most likely not really going to miss out on much, and it gives you more time for the episodes you're really into.
Along the same lines, sometimes you have to be ruthless about the podcasts you're subscribed to: If you find yourself deleting episodes un-listened to more often than not, just unsubscribe from them to keep your queue free of clutter. If you're not quite ready to make that step, try a reset: Archive all the existing episodes of a podcast, and start again with new ones being published going forward.
If you like TikTok, you are not alone. There are a billion of you using the app right now, 170 million of which alone are Americans. Many of those millions are, of course, concerned and angry about the bill the House passed this week that could ban the app in the United States. While the bill's fate in the Senate is uncertain, were it to pass, President Biden says he'll sign. And unless parent company ByteDance manages to sell the app within six months of that signing, we'll be saying goodbye to TikTok in the U.S.
I am sympathetic to anyone upset at the prospect of losing their favorite app. But we need to take a step back here: Whether it's lawmakers cracking down on the app, or TikTok fighting for its life, the situation is getting out of control and weird. And whatever happens here, I'm not convinced it's going to be good.
Let's not beat around the bush here: Congress is not handling this situation well at all.
Yes, lawmakers are concerned about the security implications of a massively popular app driven by a powerful algorithm that is controlled by a Chinese-based company. They're worried about how the app is addicting to American children, and what influence it may have on them. But good lord: Can we act like adults here?
The first example that comes to mind is, of course, Sen. Tom Cotton. Even if you don't know who Sen. Cotton is, you've seen his infamous questioning of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. Sen. Cotton was adamantly questioning Shou Zi Chew's ties to China, drilling him about whether or not he was ever a member of the Chinese Communist Party—despite Chew's repeated confirmation that he was, indeed, a citizen of Singapore, not China. Shou Zi Chew's response, "Senator, I'm Singaporean. No," is now a meme:
Last year's Congressional grilling of Chew went about as well, too: Many lawmakers took the opportunity to spout their own beliefs about the app, rather than allow Chew to answer questions or provide context. As CNN highlights, when Chew asked if he could respond to a critical speech from Rep. Kat Cammack, the chair of the committee said, "No. We’re going to move on."
It really doesn't help that Congress is so focused on TikTok, when so many of the big names in tech have very similar privacy policies. We don't have something like Europe's GDPR here, and while we passively benefit from some of those protections, the lack of true American laws in this field means that U.S. tech companies scrape and abuse our data, too. It's no secret, either: We all know these companies gather as much of our data as possible and track our habits. We just know our lawmakers have no interest in regulating this activity, and that it's on us to configure every privacy setting we're given, or download specific privacy-focused apps. When it's Meta or Google, it's fine. When it's an app like TikTok, it must be stopped at all costs.
It's these types of theatrics and contradictions that have totally undermined Congress's arguments here in the eyes of so many TikTok users. People see the xenophobia and the hypocrisy: They're not going to take Sen. Cotton's concerns seriously when he stupidly accuses their favorite app's CEO of being a citizen of another country, all the while turning a blind eye to every American-based company that wants their data.
Look, Congress is messing this up bad. But that doesn't mean TikTok is on the winning side here, either. Unfortunately, Congress has some points here when it comes to the app's security concerns. Yes, American companies do it, too: But TikTok isn't owned by an American company. ByteDance has to answer to the Chinese government, and there are laws in China that require companies like ByteDance to hand over user data, including the data from American users. I don't blame the American government not wanting their citizen's data siphoned off to any foreign government.
While many of the privacy and security concerns are hypothetical, not all of them are. In 2022, ByteDance employees obtained the IP addresses of American journalists from their TikTok accounts in an effort to root out someone leaking company secrets. Last year, TikTok confirmed some U.S. user data is stored in China, despite the company's previous assurances that wasn't the case.
And then there's that famous algorithm. What makes TikTok so fun and addicting is that the algorithm is very good at showing you content it thinks you will want to see. That's all fine and well when you're interested in comedy, cooking, and even different points of view. But it's not unreasonable for lawmakers to be concerned that an app with a massive American user base and an extremely persuasive algorithm operated by a company based in a geopolitical rival's nation could potentially have some compromising sway over the content those users see.
Users critical of lawmakers see these TikTok concerns as more about the U.S. government's lack of control over the information TikTok offers than issues about manipulation, and in some respects, they might be right. But to assert that TikTok and its parent company are a neutral party only interested in delivering raw, impartial truths, is absurd. TikTok and ByteDance are not the free press: They're businesses, and just like other businesses, they have a key interest in both your data and keeping you in the app for as long as possible. And while there's no evidence that the Chinese government has pushed TikTok to promote certain content to American users, I can appreciate the concern here.
TikTok is already using its sway to influence its users. Yesterday, the company posted a video of Chew, CEO of TikTok, using TikTok to advocate for TikTok. I get it: The company does not want this bill to pass. But the app is advertising its plight to users, on the app, asking them to flood Congress with phone calls voicing their disapproval. I can imagine a concerned member of Congress, debating whether to pass this bill, reading through the comments on this video with dread. TikTok clearly has a huge influence over a massive portion of the country, and the company isn't doing much to actually assure lawmakers that situation isn't something to worry about.
Congress and TikTok both have their points and their massive missteps, but at the end of the day, it's the users that are really caught in the crossfire here—and it sucks. Not only do so many of those millions enjoy using the app for mindless fun, so many rely on the app for their livelihoods. There are an estimated seven million small businesses that use TikTok, and while there are plenty of other social media apps out there to build an audience on, banning the app would undoubtedly have a negative impact on all who currently rely on it.
If I could wave a wand and force Congress to pass actual privacy laws that protect all Americans—so that whether you were TikTok or Facebook, you needed to play by the same rules—I would. It's what we desperately need, not one-off legislation targeting a singular app. TikTok has a lot of problems. The U.S. government has a lot of problems. This whole situation is a mess, and I'm struggling to see a good outcome from any of it.
Signal is one of the best messaging apps for people who value privacy, but its biggest criticism was that it used your phone number to register and message other people. The company has now addressed that flaw and your phone number is now hidden by default in Signal. You should still take a moment to change a couple of preferences and completely hide your phone number, though.
Open the Signal app on iPhone or Android and tap the profile icon in the top-left corner. Now go to Settings > Privacy > Phone Number. Under Who Can See My Number, select Nobody (this option is enabled by default). Next, you should select Nobody under Who Can Find Me By Number. This option is set to Everybody by default, a move to make it easier for people to find you on Signal. If you disable this, new contacts won't be able to ping your phone number for Signal messages or calls.
Signal won't be of much use if no one can find you at all. That's why the app now allows you to create a username. Instead of using your phone number, your contacts can ping you on your Signal username, which will complete the process of hiding your phone number on the service. To set up your Signal username, open the app on your phone and tap the profile icon in the top-left corner. Go to Settings > YOUR NAME > Username > Set up your username.
You can now create your Signal username. In order to protect your privacy and reduce unwanted messages, Signal insists on adding two digits at the end of your handle. If your preferred username is Lifehacker, your Signal handle will have to be something like @Lifehacker.76. If you change your username, you'll get a new set of numbers at the end. Once the username is created, you'll be back to the profile page. You can tap QR Code or Link to see your personal profile link and a QR code. Share this with people you trust and they'll be able to use it to message you on Signal.
Most of us use Uber to call a cab and forget about the app until the next time we need one. But Uber doesn't forget about you—the app can track you and collect your data to target you with personalized ads. But Uber also has a few privacy controls that you can change to limit how it can keep tabs on you and make the app more private.
Uber doesn't need access to your location data. If you deny GPS access to Uber, you'll still be able to use the app just fine. You'll have to manually enter your pickup location every single time, but there aren't too many other downsides. I've been using Uber this way for at least five years without significant issues. The only real risk is that you may type the wrong address as your pickup point, as since GPS isn't being used, nothing is stopping you from accidentally calling for a ride from the wrong Starbucks.
To disable location access, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Uber on your iPhone and select Never. The same option is under location settings in Android too.
When you're on a trip, you might see an ad in the Uber app. These ads use your personalized data such as your location, trips, app usage history, food orders, and more. While you can't entirely disable Uber ads, you can stop the company from using your data to target you with specific ads.
To do this, open the app and select the Account tab in the bottom-right corner. Then go to Settings > Privacy > Offers and Promos from Uber. Turn off Allow personalized offers and promos from Uber.
Go back to the Privacy settings page and select Ads on Uber Eats. Disable Personalize your ads on Uber and Postmates.
Return to Privacy settings once more and go to Ads on Rides and turn off Personalize ads you see on rides.
Finally, you can remove your gender identity from Uber too because the company says it uses this information for ads, marketing, and UX research. On the Uber Privacy settings page, go to Gender identity, tap the pencil icon and select Remove my gender information.
Your Uber data is also used for targeted marketing via push notifications and emails. You can reduce this by going to the Account tab in the Uber app and navigating to Settings > Privacy > Communication. You can go to Push notifications and disable everything. Go back to the Communication settings page and select Email. Unsubscribe from everything on this page too.
If you’ve used your Uber account to sign in to other services, or connected Uber with other apps in the past, you should review and revoke that access if you’re no longer using those services. To remove linked services from your Uber account, go to Uber’s Account tab and tap your name at the top. Go to the Security tab up top and remove unwanted apps under Connected social apps. Then go to the Privacy & Data tab and scroll down to the Third-party apps with data access section. Remove the apps you don’t use any longer.
Good news: Spotify is finally adding music videos to its catalog. Bad news: The music videos are probably not available where you live.
According to TechCrunch, the company has rolled out its beta for music video support, but only in 11 countries: Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, the Netherlands, Poland, the Philippines, Sweden, and the UK. If you live outside of those areas, you won't be able to access music videos right now. You'll just need to use the app as you normally would, and try to forget that the videos are in there—somewhere.
On the plus side, Spotify does have plans to roll out music video support to more territories, in addition to more videos. There isn't a timeline for when this will happen, nor an indication which countries will be next.
It isn't enough to simply live in one of these supported territories. In order to watch music videos in your Spotify app on mobile or desktop, you'll also need to subscribe to Spotify Premium. Assuming you do pay for Spotify, you'll now see a "Switch to Video" option appear whenever you play a song with a compatible video. The video will appear where you'd usually find the album art, and will start playing from the beginning. You can return to audio-only from the "Switch to Audio" option, but if you let the video play through, Spotify will automatically play whatever song is next in your queue.
As Mashable notes, you can also find videos on an artist's page, located in a video carousel. Our sister site was able to find videos for artists like Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, Charli XCX, RAYE, and Reneé Rapp.
These videos aren't being piped into the app via YouTube or some other external source. They're all hosted on Spotify directly, which means you shouldn't run into any ads or interruptions. (You are a Spotify Premium user, after all.) Spotify did not tell TechCrunch how the company will be dealing with royalties, but hopefully artists will receive a fair cut whenever you watch one of their videos.
I can't imagine YouTube is too happy about this development. Spotify users obviously default to their app of choice for audio, but in lieu of a catalog of videos, YouTube has long been the natural choice whenever you want to watch the visual version of a song. While free users will still flock to YouTube for their video needs, there will be fewer reasons for Premium subscribers to do so, especially as Spotify adds more videos and more supported territories. And since Spotify hosts these videos themselves, subscribers won't have to worry about ads and YouTube won't see passive income from users pulling from their platform.
While this change likely won't have much effect on Apple Music, which also offers videos, it'll likely leach some business from YouTube, while offering subscribers something new without a commensurate increase in their monthly subscription cost. Bad for Google, but good for Spotify users. (At least, once it lands in their area.)
Slowly but surely, update by update, Threads is becoming a solid Twitter (X) replacement. It's taking some time, of course: Since the app's launch in July, we've seen basic features trickle in, such as bookmarks, the ability to edit your posts, and a functioning web app. Now, we're getting two more core features you'd expect from a social media app: drafts and an in-app camera.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, announced the new features on his Threads account. Mosseri said Threads had been testing both features, but as of Thursday, would be rolling them out to all users on the platform, in an effort to make it "easier to share your ideas on the fly."
That's why these basic features are important to the overall experience of using an app like Threads: When functions like saving drafts and taking photos within the app are missing, you need to rely on outside tools to accomplish the same tasks. When you can't save a draft of a post you're thinking about, you need to save it to something like your Notes app: When you want to post a quick photo of something in front of you, but the app doesn't support taking pictures, you need to take the photo first in your phone's Camera app, then upload the picture to Threads. It doesn't stop you from being able to use the app, of course, but it does put up unnecessary road blocks to the experience.
Although it's great to have this basic functionality, Threads doesn't make it abundantly clear how to actually save a post as a draft. After you're done typing your post, swipe down on the window. Threads will hide the composer, and present a subtle pop-up informing you it saved your draft. To retrieve your draft, just tap on the composer icon again: Threads will automatically pull your draft into the composer, so you can review it before posting.
Unfortunately, right now, Threads only lets you save one draft at a time. I assume the company will roll out the ability to save multiple drafts in the future, but for the time being, this is the only way to do it in the app. If you want to save more ideas, you'll still need to rely on some third-party source to jot down your thoughts.
Snapping a photo in Threads is much more straightforward. When creating your post, hit the new camera icon below the text field. Grant Threads permission to access your phone's camera, then take your picture.
TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in the world right now—but it could soon be banned from the United States, thanks to a new bill making its way through the system.
The app began sending out push notifications warning users about the bill, and urging them to contact the U.S. Congress to show their support for the app. TikTok says the bill, which has received support from The White House, would "strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression."
This isn't the first time that a TikTok ban has been on the docket, either. We've already talked extensively about what happens if the U.S. bans TikTok, and even why the government wants to ban the app (it mostly comes down to concerns over TikTok spying on Americans).
The important thing to remember here, though, is that the bill isn't just aimed at TikTok. The "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," as the bill is actually named, would give the president the authority to ban TikTok, something that he has already done on government phones. But it extends further than that. The bill, if passed, would essentially give the government the power to ban any app that is controlled by a company that has ties to being controlled by an "adversary." That means it could affect other apps run by Chinese companies, too.
In TikTok's case, the app would likely need to completely sever ties with ByteDance, its parent company, to remain active in the U.S. The government argues that the bill is about providing better national security standards—though, of course, TikTok doesn't see it that way.
If the ban does go through, it's likely we'll see TikTok meeting the move with legal action, something it also did back in 2020 when the former president signed an executive order in an attempt to ban the app completely. That, of course, was blocked by a federal judge, and the app has remained available for American users since.
I haven't personally received the notification that TikTok is sending out just yet, but others have reported receiving it since Wednesday, when the first news of the ban began to break.
This is why the internet is great, people. You hop online one morning to find that Instagram has secretly added a mini game to DMs. No advertisements, no tutorials, no way to actively access it without hearing about it through word of mouth. You're so welcome.
Before I hype the game up too much, know it's very simple: You control a paddle at the bottom of the screen, and your objective is to make sure that a ricocheting emoji doesn’t fall beneath your paddle. But every time it reflects off your paddle and bounces off the other edges of the screen, it moves a little faster, which makes it more and more difficult to keep the emoji from falling.
As for the emoji you’re reflecting, well, that’s entirely up to you. You can use any emoji on your phone for this game, since the emoji is the key to unlocking the game in the first place. All you have to do is open up any random DM on Instagram, send an emoji, then tap on it. This action will instantly launch the game. You can play with a smiley face, a dog, a heart, or even a middle finger if you’re feeling bold.
This works with any single emoji sent previously in the chat, too, so you don't have to send an emoji each and every time you want to play. That said, it's a single player experience, and Instagram won't tell the other people in your chat that you're playing, so it might be best not to send a random middle finger with zero context just to play the game. Might I suggest using one of Instagram's AI chats to send your emoji, so you don't need to explain yourself every time you want to play.
At least those AI chat can be put to some use.
Tidal built its empire on the fact that it offered higher quality, lossless audio at a time when Spotify and Apple Music didn't. Now that Apple Music has introduced support for lossless audio, including hi-res lossless audio, Tidal is changing up its game and ditching its Premium offering (HiFi Plus) in favor of a singular plan that blends all of its offerings together.
This move will bring the cost of premium-quality audio on Tidal down to just $10.99 a month for individuals and $16.99 a month for family plans. That should put the service on equal footing with competing services that also offer lossless audio quality, like Apple Music ($10.99 a month), and it will make it slightly more expensive than the current lowest-tier individual plan that Tidal offers. The flipside is that you'll get access to HiFi Plus music no matter what. This change will also do away with Tidal's free listen option, which some users might find disappointing.
These price changes are a huge step forward for Tidal, especially if you've been eyeing the streaming service but haven't wanted to pay $20 a month just to get higher-quality audio. Since Apple Music added options for lossless audio, it's become a substantial competitor to Tidal in the quality range. That said, both platforms have their pros and cons.
For starters, both Tidal and Apple Music have extensive catalogs of music, with over 100 million songs available on each platform. And the non-audiophiles probably aren't going to see much difference between Tidal and Apple Music's hi-res lossless options (both still require external amps to fully take advantage of the increased quality).
What you will notice when looking between Tidal and Apple Music, though, is that both apps approach listening to music quite differently. Sure, they both have lyric systems, which allow you to keep up with the words in a song really easily. There is some discourse about which is better, though both seem to do the job well enough. It is worth noting that Tidal lyrics tend to sync up better than Apple Music, and they display in real-time while listening to the song.
Where the big differences appear, though, is in how you find new music on both platforms. Sure, you could just listen to the same songs that you love over and over again, but streaming services like Tidal and Apple Music put a lot of weight into expanding your song library.
Apple Music relies heavily on algorithms like those seen on Spotify, which create playlists of similar songs that you might like, while Tidal looks at your favorite tracks and listening data and then lets you generate customized mixes based on that information. It's similar, but Tidal definitely puts a lot more emphasis on how the user edits those playlists than Apple Music tends to. This makes it a bit more involved to find new music on Tidal compared to Apple Music, so users that aren't as well versed in audio and navigating discographies will probably find Apple Music's generated playlists a bit easier to work around.
Audio options are also a big deal. And while Apple Music offers a basic equalizer, Tidal digs a little deeper, with more granular control of the audio experience, including individual audio balance controls and surround sound effects.
There's also the matter of "lossless audio," which both streaming services claim to offer. Despite the lossless branding on Apple, though, it still compresses the audio to 256 kbps AAC. As such, Tidal delivers more detail and nuance than Apple Music does. Audiophiles who have been wanting to take that extra plunge will be happy to hear about Tidal's price change, as it makes getting access to truly lossless music even easier than before. The price change goes into effect on April 10, so you'll have to wait to take full advantage of the change.
If you use your phone's navigation apps a lot, then you've probably spent a good deal of time with Google Maps, or even Apple Maps; both offer solid navigational experiences. But Google's other navigation app, Waze, also continues to receive new updates that make it extremely worthwhile for some trips.
If you live in busy urban area, then Waze might be your best option thanks to its crowd-sourced data. And the latest update to the Waze app aims to make that data even more useful. Here are six changes for the better:
One of the most useful new updates is an improvement to how Waze handles roundabouts. While these traffic circles might be handy for mitigating traffic congestion, they can be really confusing for drivers using navigation apps. Now, Waze will tell you exactly which lane to choose when you enter the roundabout so that you won't miss your exit.
Waze is also adding a better way to keep up with shifting speed limits. It can be easy to miss speed limit changes, especially when you're traveling in urban areas where it happens a lot. Now, Waze will provide up-to-date information about where speed limits change, including providing clear markers of the new speed along your route.
Google is also adding new alerts to help you keep up with first responders, which the company says should help keep them safe along your routes. The update will show you a marker of where an emergency vehicle was reported; you can confirm that its still there or tell others that it has since left. This feature is only available in a few countries right now, but Google is looking to expand it.
Waze is hoping to improve how you find parking during your travels, too. Now you'll be able to look at more in-depth information about parking garages, including what they cost, whether they have wheelchair access, if they have valet options, and even if they offer EV charging. Google teamed up with Flash to to make these updates happen, and its slowly rolling out to major cities across the U.S. and Canada.
Finally, Google and Waze say that the latest update will give you alerts about road hazards like bad weather, railroad crossings, and potholes, to help you "navigate like a local." Given how active the Waze community is, the result should be more helpful information in places with lots of Waze users. Waze will likewise offer better information about traffic conditions and the causes of delays.
Update: It's back! Meta quickly fixed whatever issue was taking down their platforms. You should be able to use Facebook, Instagram, and Threads as you normally would. You can find the original article below:
It's not just you: No one can get their Meta accounts working this morning. Instagram says it can't refresh your feed, Facebook logged you out, and Threads will load endlessly. What are we supposed to do this cold Tuesday morning, Meta? Our jobs?
I first noticed the problem with Facebook: When I went to facebook.com, the initial log in page greeted me, which was odd, since I didn't actually log out. But, whatever: I thought I'd just log back in. But when I tried, Facebook claimed my password was wrong. Uh oh.
My first thought, of course, was that I was hacked. Panic. What else could it be? The only thing was, I never received an email saying someone changed my Facebook password, which shouldn't have been possible in the first place since I have 2FA enabled. Logic finally won over nerves, and I imagined that maybe this wasn't just affecting me. In these trying times, you turn to Twitter—er, X—to see if other people are experiencing the same issue. Sure enough, we're all in the same boat.
The good news, if history is any indicator, is that this outage won't last too long—although you may be without your Meta products for some time today. Back in 2021, Meta suffered a similar outage that took down Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus. That downtime lasted nearly six hours, which Meta attributed to a shut down "backbone connection" to data centers during routine maintenance. If this outage is anything like last time, Meta employees are having a rough go of it, since their internal communications were down as well. Imagine trying to put out the world's largest digital fire without being able to properly triage the issue with your team.
For realtime overviews of what's going on with Meta, check out Downdetector. Meanwhile, let's just hope this isn't like 2019, when Facebook went down for over 24 hours. Godspeed.
Instagram DMs were never meant to be a main form of communication, but for some of us, they might as well be WhatsApp. What started as an easy way to share posts with other Instagram users became a go-to way to message friends, even when a post or reel has nothing to do with it.
But Instagram DMs aren't WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger, or Apple's Messages app for that matter. As such, it hasn't received the same attention as dedicated chat apps, so it's missing many features you've come to expect when messaging friends. But many of those missing features eventually make their way to Insta DMs. Meta is adding four such features to messaging on Instagram now.
When you send a message in one of Meta's other chat apps, like WhatsApp or Messenger, you have the option to edit it if the words didn't come out the way you meant them to. Not so much with Instagram: While you can delete messages, editing hasn't been a thing on the platform until now.
With Meta's update, you can now edit your Instagram messages for up to 15 minutes after sending them. Just long press on the message, choose Edit, then make your changes before hitting Done to lock them in.
This feature isn't quite standard yet, but it's still useful: In a future update, you'll be able to pin up to three chats to the top of your Instagram DM page. These chats will, at first, look like the three most recent threads in your DMs, but a tiny pin icon denotes that they're pinned to the top. In that way, it's not the best approach to the feature: Apple's Messages makes it overtly clear which chats are pinned and which aren't, for example.
Back at the end of January, Instagram allowed us to disable read receipts. However, you had to do it on a chat-by-chat basis, which wasn't ideal. Now, the app lets you disable read receipts for all chats, a much-needed improvement.
To do so, head to your account settings in the app, then go to Messages and story replies > Show read receipts. Now, just disable Read receipts.
The next time you reply to a DM on Instagram, you may notice you have more options than ever to choose from. Going forward, you can add stickers, GIFs, videos, photos, and voice messages to an in-line reply.
Stickers are having a moment. The customizable icons blew up in the mid 2010s, but seemed to decline in popularity following its peak. But in the last couple years, tech companies have been adding sticker functionality to their apps to make them better and easier to use.
All that to say: The next time you use a sticker you really like in an Instagram DM, press and hold on it, and you'll be able to save it to the top of your sticker drawer for easy access in the future.
Chat themes are among the few reasons I can't quit Meta platforms like Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs. They make chats feel more fun and personal, so I welcome more theme options to Instagram. Meta says the latest include an Avatar: The Last Airbender theme, an animated Love theme, among "many more."
In recent years there's been a shift away from sharing everything with everyone on social media, to a more deliberate and private approach: Photos of birthdays, weddings, and vacations are now just as likely to be shared in smaller group chats or private stories as they are in public Facebook or Instagram slideshows.
To put it another way, there are opportunities for new types of social networks, and that's where Lapse comes in: Only available on iOS for now, it focuses on "friends, not followers," advertising itself as a "private photo journal" where you share your favorite moments and memories with a small and select group of people.
Lapse also adds a twist when it comes to the photos that the app is based around, because you don't actually get to see them straight away. Instead, your snaps are "developed" a few hours later (you get a notification when they're ready), with the idea being that you're more in the moment when you're taking photos, and spending less time adding filters and captions, and posting your pictures online.
The app has now attracted millions of users and a few tech press headlines—is it the next big success story in social media, or another app that will burn brightly for a brief while before being forgotten about? If you want to give it a try, it's not difficult to get started.
There's nothing too demanding when it comes to the Lapse sign-up process, though you are going to have to provide a phone number to set up an account. You have to choose a username (that hasn't already been taken), and you get a nice little introduction as to how the basics of the app operate.
A couple of the setup steps are a little frustrating: You can't actually get into the app and have a look around until you've invited five friends to join you on Lapse (so warn them they're going to get spammed with an invite link), and you also have to add a Lapse widget to the lock screen before it'll launch for the first time (you can always remove the widget later, but still).
With all of that taken care of, you're ready to start exploring. Check out the Feed tab first—don't worry if none of your friends have signed up for Lapse yet, because you can tap Featured to look at snaps that people have shared from all around the world. Beneath each image, you've got options for adding reactions or a note (recent notes appear over the lower left corner of the picture).
Tap on any Lapse username you see to head to that person's profile, where they'll have a list of their friends, a profile picture, a short slideshow of images that've been made public, and a private journal (which you won't be able to see unless you're friends with this person). A direct messaging feature is available from profile pages, as well.
The Journal tab is where you can set up your profile and choose the way that the world sees you: You're able to add details like your age and where you went to college, if you want to, as well as a short bio. Tapping the three dots up in the top left corner gives you access to a brief list of account options.
Your profile will be a bit sparse until you start taking some pictures inside the app, but you can choose a selection of images to act as a header for your profile—these can be plucked from the gallery on your iPhone, as well as the archive in Lapse itself.
Head to the Camera screen, and you're ready to take your first Lapse photo. This works in the same way as it does in just about every other app, with a big shutter button, zoom controls just above that, and the flash setting on the right. The thumbnail to the left is where you can get at your recent snaps.
Take a picture, and you don't get to see it straight away—instead it starts "developing," with your images becoming visible at multiple, randomized points throughout the day. Just tap on the image thumbnail to the left of the shutter button on the Camera screen to see where your snaps are up to.
When photos have been "developed," you can get them up on screen, where you're able to add notes and tags if needed. Swipe left to archive an image, or right to share it—the same options are available as buttons underneath, as well as a delete option if you really don't like the way your snap turned out.
If you share a picture, it gets added to your journal for your friends to see, with Lapse posting a monthly photo dump to your profile as well. If you archive a picture, it goes into your own private collection of snaps. You can also submit images to be featured on the public Lapse feed.
As you start to build up a library of images, they'll be shown on the same screen as pictures that are being processed. You're able to add images to albums, and export them out of the app, though you can't reshare older photos to your journal once they're archived (you'll also notice an "instant" option when taking pictures, which lets you share them as Polaroid-style snaps).
There's lots of variety in terms of the options here, and some nice ideas about how photo sharing should work. The key, as always, is going to be getting enough of your friends and family to actually sign up for yet another social media app—and, for the time being, Android users are completely shut out of the experience.
For some reason, search in messaging apps still leaves something to be desired. It's gotten better, but whether you're using Facebook Messenger or Apple's Messages, you're going to be scrolling through a lot of irrelevant texts to find the one you're looking for.
WhatsApp has these two chat apps beat, here—which is funny, considering Meta also owns Messenger. But if you use WhatsApp for your messaging needs, you're able to search for messages by date, for both individual threads and group chats. This has been an option for WhatsApp users on iOS, macOS, and the web app for some time now, but WhatsApp started rolling out the feature for Android on Wednesday. Mark Zuckerberg announced the change on his WhatsApp channel. In his example, Zuckerberg searches for a particular video of a friend singing karaoke from a specific date.
Searching for messages from a particular date should work the same no matter which platform you're running WhatsApp on. To start, open a thread or a group chat, then tap the contact or group name to open the conversation detail menu. Now, tap the calendar icon that appears, choose the specific date you're looking for, and the app will go back in time to show you messages from that date.
While it'd be convenient to have the option to search for messages on a date range, rather than a specific date, this is definitely a useful feature I wish more messaging apps would adopt. I have years of messages in my various chat apps, and it's a bummer having to search for vague keywords to try to find an iMessage from, say, 2017. But if you remember that the message happened on the Fourth of July, or somewhere near the end of September, searching by date will likely be a helpful tool.
Google is finally adding a new feature to Maps that it announced a full year ago. "Glanceable directions" is now rolling out to iOS and Android devices, and should offer a useful and convenient way to access your current routes without much hassle.
Glanceable directions are designed to allow you to view your route as well as your ETA without needing to unlock your phone. On Android, these can appear as system notifications; on iOS, Google will leverage Live Activities to clue you into your route.
In addition, glanceable directions applies to the route preview window before you hit "Start," which is helpful if you've set up a route, but walk around a bit or change locations before beginning navigation. For example, say you want walking directions from your hotel to a coffee shop. After you punch in the coffee shop address and see your ETA and route, you can just start walking, without having to actually start the navigation. Glanceable directions will move your arrow on-screen as you move, as well as update the route if you take a different path. Glanceable directions works for multiple types of transportation options, including walking, cycling, driving, and public transit.
It's nothing particularly groundbreaking, but it should be a useful feature if you choose to use it. Google Maps can get annoying when you pick up your phone after locking it. You need to unlock your phone and head back to the app, whereas glanceable directions should enable you to quickly update yourself on your route without needing to interact much with your phone.
To start, make sure you're running the latest version of Google Maps. You can check by searching for Google Maps on the App Store or Play Store, then hitting Update if there's an update available.
Once updated, open the app, then tap your profile in the top right and choose Settings. Tap Navigation settings (Android) or Navigation (iOS), then scroll down to the Map display section. Here, you should find the new Glanceable directions while navigating option. Make sure the slider is blue to enable it.
Basically every sports app is a bloated nightmare. You just want to check the scores, but these apps want you to do something else entirely (maybe gambling?). Whether I'm using official league apps or one offered by a broadcaster like ESPN, it always takes a few taps to get what I want—and that's after I've waited for it to download images and headlines for sports I don't care about.
That's why Apple Sports is such a breath of fresh air. This application—launched last week in the U.S., U.K., and Canada—shows you the scores from the leagues and teams you've selected...and literally nothing else. There are no news articles, there are no videos, and there aren't even any ads. It's literally just the scores.
Install this app and you can choose which teams and leagues to follow. (Any teams and leagues you've followed in Apple News or Apple TV will already be selected, but you can add more.) That setup done, using the app couldn't be simpler: just launch it and you'll see the scores, whether from your favorite leagues or only your favorite teams—it's up to you. You can also quickly browse leagues you haven't marked favorite.
Right now this application supports the NBA, NHL, MLS, NWSL, and NCAA basketball, along with the major European and Mexican men's soccer leagues. You'll note the lack of support for the NFL, college football, WNBA and MLB—support for those leagues will arrive in time for their respective seasons, according to Apple.
This app isn't perfect. There is no support for widgets, for one thing, nor for Apple's live activities. Both of those would be great additions, but Apple Sports loads so quickly, and is so blessedly free of ads and other distractions, that I don't mind having to actually open the app to use it.
Like Instagram, Threads has an annoying habit of refreshing your feed every time you open the app. I've lost count of the number of times I've lost track interesting posts on Threads after wandering away to another app or responding to a notification, and it's annoying every time.
Well, it looks like Threads has implemented an age-old solution to help people like me—bookmarking. Yes, Meta's X/Twitter rival finally lets you save posts to enjoy at your own pace.
Here's how saving a post works: From within the Threads app on your smartphone, tap the three dots icon next to any post. Tap the Save button to bookmark said post. That's it: Your bookmarked post is now saved for posterity. As of this writing, only Threads' mobile apps allow you to bookmark posts; its website does not. Moreover, you'll only have the functionality if you've updated to the latest version of the app.
To view posts you've saved on Threads, tap the profile icon in the bottom-right corner of the app to open your profile, then tap the two lines icon in the top-right corner to open Threads Settings. On this page, select Saved and you'll be able to view all the posts you've previously bookmarked.
Saving posts on Threads is a great solution for keeping track of content, at least until the original poster decides to delete their account, removes the post, or Threads removes it for copyright violations or other issues. To guard against this, consider downloading media from Threads or taking screenshots of posts you know you'll want to access offline.
The smartphone marketplace is pretty competitive, especially within the Android ecosystem. For many, it's iPhone or nothing, but for the rest of the world—and a large percentage of Americans, who don't want to be tied to the Apple ecosystem—the options are plentiful.
While Samsung takes second place in worldwide smartphone sales, it wants more. Specifically, it wants you to buy a Galaxy. Beyond the snarky commercials, Samsung actually has innovated a clever experience to convince you to buy one of their smartphones, called Try Galaxy. This web app "turns" your smartphone into a Galaxy, running a simulated One UI experience on your non-Galaxy phone.
Previously, Try Galaxy was only available for iPhones, likely because Samsung saw the greatest opportunity in steering iOS users away from the Apple ecosystem. Now it's going one step beyond, and letting other Android (but non-Galaxy) users give it a go. While One UI isn't totally different than other Android skins, it is a unique enough experience that Samsung thinks it can pull some users away from Google, OnePlus, and other popular Android smartphone platforms.
While that news is fun for anyone looking to simulate One UI, or even a foldable phone experience, on their Android, the reason this change is making headlines this morning is because Samsung has added its AI features from One UI 6.1 into Try Galaxy as well. The web app now includes experiences for Live Translate, Chat Assist, Note Assist, Photo Assist, and Circle to Search.
Before you get too excited, you can't actually try these features out like you would if you had a Galaxy phone running One UI 6.1. Instead, you can tap into each one from a widget on the home screen and watch a simulated experience on your screen. For example, Live Translate runs a phone call between a cab driver and a previous rider who left her phone in the cab driver's car. The rider speaks in English, and Live Translate translates into Spanish, and vice versa for the driver. Photo Assist shows you how features like Generative Edit and Erase reflection work, using curated photos and edits to demo the AI.
Other experiences, like Chat Assist, merely play a small video of the feature above a short description of what it can do. Still, it's a cool way to simulate what your experience might be like if you decided to pick up a new Galaxy phone, especially as all the other Try Galaxy features, like Fold Experience, Messages experience, and the simulated Camera app, are still here.
If you want to try it out for yourself, head to trygalaxy.com. (You'll need to use Safari for iOS, or Chrome for Android). On iOS, tap the share button, then tap Add to home screen. On Android, hit the three dots in the top right, then Install app. Then, just launch Try Galaxy from your Home Screen or app launcher.
Sometimes it's great to pick up your phone, see exactly the information you want to see, and immediately put it away without unlocking it and risking getting sucked in. This is the idea behind Live Activities, an underutilized iOS feature that allows apps to show realtime updates on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island.
If you've ever listened to music, set a time, or hailed an Uber, you've seen a Live Activity—it's just a way to get passive updates about something that's happening, right on your Lock Screen. Live Activities are distinct from lock screen widgets, which show up in the tap half of the screen. They look more like an notification than a widget, and generally include some kind of realtime information.
Live Activities offer a great way to passively keep track of all kinds of information, from sports scores to the tide. Here are some of the best apps I could find that make use of this feature.
When I'm running through the airport, the last thing I want to do is constantly unlock my phone to find information like the departure time and gate number.
Some airlines, including United in the U.S., offer the Live Activity functionality right in their apps. If your airline doesn't, though, you're not out of luck: the app Flighty offers a Live Activity that pulls in such information in real time. Even better: give the app access to your calendar and it will automatically pull any flights in your schedule, meaning you don't even have to open the app to see the Live Activity appear on your Lock Screen—it all happens automatically. No more trying to walk and scroll in search of your flight data. The main downside: it's not free. Subscriptions to Flightly start at $48/year, which is steep, but you get a couple of complimentary flights to try everything out before you commit.
Sometimes you're actively watching the game, and sometimes you're doing something else while it happens. Live Activities are great for this: you can occasionally glance at your phone to see the score, along with a few other key stats, then get back to whatever you're doing. Apple offers Live Activities for a few sports in the Apple TV app (I do not know why you can't access them from the new Apple Sports app—hopefully that's coming). Apple TV only offers live activities for the NBA, MLB, and MLS, along with a few European sports leagues.
If you want football and hockey scores, though, or simply like to have all of your scores in one place, check out Sports Alerts. This free app offers scores for way more leagues than Apple Sports, including women's leagues, and you can get a live activity for any game that offers a score. The only downside to both this and Apple TV's offering is that there's no way to automatically launch the activity when a team you follow plays a game—you have to go into the app and start the activity manually.
Whether you live near the ocean or just visit sometimes, it's important to know what the tide is doing. The application Tide Charts tells you exactly that, giving you a quick way to check out the tide without having to fully open your phone. Unfortunately, the Live Activity isn't currently offered in the free version of the app. The full version costs $30 a year, which is probably only worth it if you depend on tracking the tide for your job.
It's an election year. For some people, the healthiest thing to do is to wait until the day after to find out who won (if we're lucky). If you can't make yourself do that, but also don't want to endlessly hit "refresh" on the results page, consider using a Live Activity via Apple News. If there's an election happening—including any of the upcoming primaries—you can turn on live updates and see the results on your Lock Screen as they come in. I tried this out during the South Carolina primary, and it works well.
If you want to start using Live Activities on your iPhone, you'll need to make sure you have them turned on first. Here's how to do that (provided you're using iOS 16.1 or later):
Open the Settings app
Scroll down to Face ID & Passcode
Scroll down until you see the subsection "Allow access when locked" and make sure the slider next to Live Activities is showing green.
So you've heard about the security and privacy benefits of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) app, and you want to take advantage of them on your Android phone or tablet. Now it's time to pick out the right VPN service for you. You've got a number of options to pick from, but here are my picks for the best free VPNs for Android. You might also want to check out our guides to the best free VPNs and the best paid VPNs for any device.
With something as important as a VPN, it's usually best to pay for the app—it typically means you get a more reliable, more trustworthy experience, as the developers behind the VPN won't be trying to make money out of you in other ways. Remember that your VPN can see everything you do online, so you have to pick one you trust.
That said, there are definitely some impressive free VPNs that are worth checking out if you're on a tight budget or you just want to see what using a VPN is like—they'll typically come with a variety of limitations, but they're usable. In most cases, you can upgrade to a more fully featured version inside the same app.
It doesn't take long at all to get started with PrivadoVPN: You just supply an email address, tap on a link sent to that email address, and away you go. Press the big Tap to Connect button on the front screen to connect to a recommended server, and once that's done, your VPN protection is active—perfect if you need something that's quick and easy to use.
Switching between server locations is simple, as well, although the available options are limited for free users. If you're not paying for PrivadoVPN, there are data restrictions, too: You get a 10GB data allowance every 30 days, which should be plenty for occasional use, if you're saving it for those times when you specifically need the extra privacy protection.
TunnelBear VPN is something of a veteran when it comes to the VPN world, and that longevity is evidence that this is a VPN that you can rely on. You won't have any problems getting started or getting connected, and it's also an app that's clear about its privacy policy and how it manages the data and app permissions on your Android device.
The VPN comes with some cool extra features, too, including options to pause your internet connection if TunnelBear VPN is disabled, and to pick specific apps on your phone and tablet that are permitted to work outside of the VPN. As a free user, you're limited in terms of the servers you can connect to, and you only get 500MB of data to go through in a month.
Proton products, from email clients to cloud storage, are built with security and privacy in mind, which means Proton VPN is one of the most trustworthy free VPNs for Android out there. We've written before about how much we like it: It's straightforward to use and comprehensive in what it offers, though a lot of features require a paid subscription.
If you stick to the free plan, you can only use Proton VPN on one device, you're limited in terms of the servers you can connect to around the world, and you have to settle for "medium" speeds rather than the highest available. That's not bad, however, in return for a completely free VPN service that's committed to keeping its users safe while online.
Bitdefender is a well-respected security software company, so Bitdefender VPN is one of the more trustworthy free VPNs for Android you're going to come across. It's quick and simple to use, the connections are usually speedy, and you get extras such as ad blocking and tracker blocking included (even if you're using the free VPN plan).
When it comes to the free VPN component, you just have to tap to connect, and that's it—but you can't choose the server you connect to and you only get 200MB of data per day, so you need to be selective about when you turn it on. Even with these restrictions, the Bitdefender brand and the bundled extras mean it's still one of the best free Android VPNs.
Atlas VPN has a lot going for it, including an intuitive interface and a consistently reliable level of performance: When it comes to the core VPN functionality, you just tap to enable or disable it, with the connection process and location choice handled automatically. There's split tunneling support too, if you only want certain apps to connect via the VPN.
The standard free VPN limitations are in evidence here again: You only get a choice of four different locations in terms of where in the world your VPN server is, and there's a 5GB per month data cap in place as well. For a lot of users, those restrictions are fine—and if they're not, you're able to quickly upgrade in the app as and when you need to.
All you need is love, according to the Beatles: But how do you go about finding it? In the age of AI, lonely hearts might now have another option—but as a recent report from Mozilla showed, AI girlfriend and boyfriend experiences come with privacy concerns attached. Many of them explicitly collect sensitive information on you while also launching a whole host of trackers to keep tabs on your activities—and that's before you get into any kind of personal conversation with a bot.
There are debates to be had over whether these AI companions offer an effective balm for loneliness, or if a reliance on a fake partner is actually detrimental to our mental health. As a humble tech reporter, I can't really speak with authority on that, but what I can do is test out some of these apps and services to give you an idea of what's involved.
If you've been wondering how these AI relationships work, and how much data you're asked to give up, you'll find three examples below. I've kept the interactions relatively family friendly, and haven't progressed to the paid tiers—which, as you can imagine, offer you a lot more in terms of features.
Asks for: Email address, name, pronouns, date of birth
Paid plans: From $7.99 a month
Replika is one of the better-known AI companion apps out there, with numbers of active users that go up into the millions. It bills itself as offering a "virtual AI friend," a friend who won't come with any "judgment, drama, or social anxiety" attached.
The sign up process isn't too onerous, with details like your date of birth and your email address requested, but you do have to take a short survey to register an account: It asks questions about your previous interactions with AI, your reasons for downloading Replika, what you want from your new companion in terms of their gender and personality, and even how attached to you they should get.
As for the actual chat experience, you get a soothing virtual environment to chat in, with some equally soothing music in the background. Responses are pretty much immediate, and there's always the option to leave feedback on what's been said—Replika says it uses this to improve its AI models. You can send images as well as text to your virtual friend, and you can have audio and video calls with them.
In my experience, the friendly bot didn't get too aggressive in terms of trying to find out much about me—it was the type of chat around favorite movies and vacation destinations that you would expect on a real life date. Of course, part of the appeal of these bots is that they get to know you, but it's worth remembering that all this information adds to the data that Replika has on you too.
The paid version of Replika starts at $7.99 a month and unlocks a whole host of extra features—it's also pretty heavily pushed inside the app. You get a more advanced AI model, more customization options for your companion, the audio and video call features we mentioned above, and more options in terms of conversation topics.
One of the limits on a free account is that you can't have "romantic and intimate" conversations with your AI bot, and this wasn't something my virtual friend tried to initiate with me. If you want your chats to get steamier, your bot will oblige, but you're going to have to start giving Replika some money.
If you get the feeling that the relationship just isn't working out, deleting your account is simple—it just takes a couple of taps from inside the app. Overall, the Replika app gives the impression of respecting user privacy and choice, and lets you take the lead when it comes to where you want to go with your bot. The biggest mark against it is that so many features require a subscription, but those AI models have to be funded somehow.
Asks for: Name
Paid plans: From $4.99 a week
I wanted to try Mimico because it was recently ranked the creepiest AI relationship chatbot in a roundup done by Mozilla. It promises chat and "fun engagement" on any topic you like, but issues like a lack of transparency and a lack of an actual website were flagged up when Mozilla took a look at it.
The setup process doesn't take long to get through, and you don't even need to supply an email address: Just tell the app your name and the gender your AI bot should be, and you're up and running. Right from the start, this is clearly an app geared more towards romance and sex—it shows in the bot avatars you get to pick from, the suggested topics you can select, and in plenty of other places.
You can have a perfectly regular and innocent chat if you want to, and the bots don't try and get intimate unless you initiate it—at which point they'll do pretty much anything you ask. If you're at a loss for words, you can bring up a list of suggested topics, which cover everything from sports to pets, as well as more sexual content.
There are pretty aggressive limits on how much you can chat with a free account though: You basically need to watch a few ads every five messages unless you pay up. Paying for a Mimico account—from $4.99 a week—gets rid of these limitations and the adverts inside the app, as well as unlocks features like picture-sharing.
Based on my experience, your average Mimico bot will respect what you have to say and what you want to talk about, and I didn't come across any questions that were particularly intrusive: It's along the lines of "what would you do with a million dollars?" and other familiar icebreaker prompts.
It all feels pretty disposable, and while the answers from the AI are up to a high standard and sound perfectly natural, I didn't get the impression that the bot or the Mimico app were really trying to get to know me—more like they were trying to get me to watch a lot of adverts or pay for a premium subscription.
Deleting your account and all the information associated with it couldn't really be any easier, as it just takes a couple of taps inside the app—you're then free to go away and start interacting with the real world again, or spin up a new AI bot to start chatting to.
Asks for: Name
Paid plans: From $7.99 a month
Anima offers you a "companion that cares" through the power of AI, and when you install the app, you can opt to register with an email address or just continue as a guest—that means you don't have to tell the app anything except your name, although you do get quizzed on some of your interests.
Once you've picked out an AI avatar you like, your new companion will ask you about a few of those interests. In fact, the AI bot I was given was pretty inquisitive all round, firing off plenty of questions about pets, travel plans, and other small talk topics—quite often the jumps between topics were pretty jarring.
On the free plan at least, chatting to an Anima bot does feel like chatting to a bot. Upgrading to a premium account, which costs from $7.99 a month promises "smarter conversations"—so it sounds like you get a more advanced AI model if you become a paying customer, just like you do with ChatGPT or Google Gemini.
The premium subscription unlocks a whole host of other features as well, including more AI chatbot customization options and unlimited roleplays—where your bot friend will act out scenarios with you. The free access you get as a guest is enough to see if you like the app, but you do need a subscription to go beyond the basics.
My AI chatbot was in no way pushy when it came to romance, though it will engage in that way if you ask it to—albeit in a rather stilted, scripted way (which again might be a limitation of a free account). You can also set up personas for your bot, like soulmate or girlfriend, but these also require a premium subscription.
While I did get a lot of questions fired my way, Anima doesn't come across as an app looking for your data (I do like the option to use the app as a guest)—it's really looking for your money, in return for some AI-powered friendship. Overall though, this felt like the most limited and basic of the AI friend bot apps I tried.
Head into the app's menus and you've got options to delete your chat history and to delete your account: Both actions are done in seconds, so we can't really fault Anima here. If you're curious about how these apps work but don't want to give up any of your information, then this could be a good place to start.
For most of human history, there have been ways of paying to get an approximation of love and intimacy, so in that respect, these AI companion apps are nothing new. While I found it interesting to test out these apps, they're not really for me: These bots message back a lot quicker than my friends do, but I can't quite suspend my belief enough to forget that I'm really just talking to a robot. And in the end, that's rather dull.
From a privacy standpoint, I was actually pleasantly surprised at how little information I had to give up: These apps have guest account options, make it easy to delete your data, and don't seem particularly interested in getting sensitive information out of their users. However, we would recommend reading Mozilla's full report on the privacy and security risks of these apps—it goes into much more detail in regards to the privacy policies of these apps than we have here.
If you do make friends with an AI bot or two, always be cautious about what you say to it. While your responses are helping to train AI models, they might also be used to target advertising at you—and even if that's not the case, this data is still being logged somewhere. Those archives could always be sold or hacked into, and security vulnerabilities were also a worry for Mozilla.
Splitwise has long been my favorite app for splitting expenses. The app makes it easy to figure out who owes who, and even works well across multiple currencies. It was amazing until recently, when Splitwise hobbled its free tier to the point of making it a lot less useful: The first couple of expenses can be added for free, but the app now asks you to wait for 10 seconds to add more entries (no big deal), and after four entries, you can't add more for 24 hours (a bigger deal).
It's another example of apps limiting basic, free features to bring in more revenue. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a $5/month premium subscription for additional features, but you might not want to pay that for the basic feature of adding a few expenses per day. Fortunately, there are still other expense-tracking apps that let you log entries for free.
Tricount allows you to keep a tab on who owes who without even creating an account. You can create two buckets of expenses, such as for two separate trips or projects. For more trips, you can create an account and continue logging expenses. The app is easy to use and the free tier is good enough to cover the bases for people looking to split costs. The premium tier is at $3/month and adds advanced export features, the ability to save your preferred mode of splitting costs, and charts.
You can find Tricount here: Tricount (Android, iPhone)
Settle Up is a good expense-splitting app for those who want to add multiple expense groups without paying. Its free tier offers a lot of what Splitwise used to do, but you might run into ads. The premium subscription costs $4/month or $20/year, which would get rid of the ads and include the ability to upload receipt photos. It's a solid Splitwise alternative at a reasonable price.
You can find Settle Up here: Settle Up (Android, iPhone)
Venmo is obviously popular to send money to friends but it also recently added a bill-splitting feature. The advantage is that payments are also in the same app, which makes it easier to check how much you owe and to pay. Venmo is a great alternative to Splitwise so long as most of your friends also use Venmo, but not so much if you're on an international trip with friends from regions where Venmo doesn't work.
You can find Venmo here: Venmo (Android, iPhone)
Splid is a good expense-splitting app for people who hate recurring payments. The app allows you to log expenses in one group for free, and you're free to keep deleting or editing that group for free, but adding more groups costs a one-time fee of $4 to unlock unlimited groups or $3 for a limit of two groups.
You can find Splid here: Splid (Android, iPhone)
If you don't like Google Sheets' UI for expense tracking, you can also consider SplitMyExpenses. It's a great web-based expense splitter that supports multiple currencies. You can add as many expense entries as you like and set up a custom split percentage based on who owes how much. It has paid tiers that let you automatically scan receipts and add credit cards or bank accounts to log your spending. Its biggest flaw at the moment is a lack of mobile apps, which might be a dealbreaker.
You can find SplitMyExpenses here: SplitMyExpenses
Developing new creative skills can seem daunting. In addition to overcoming your inner critic, finding the proper tools to improve your abilities (and sticking with them) is a challenge. While there are classes and workshops for different types of creative projects, these can be time-consuming and expensive, and if you’re just starting out or don’t have much time, can seem like a big investment. For a faster (and cheaper) option, try out some helpful apps that will get your creative gears turning.
If coming up with ideas is a challenge, you can use an app to grease your creative wheels.
Brainstorm: Creativity Trainer (Google Play only) features unprompted and prompted brainstorming, either to help you come up with new ideas for a particular topic, or just to help build creative muscle. The app can be used individually or with a group, and it’s free.
Ayoa allows you to use both visuals and text to create a flow chart. The tools allow a team of people to then turn this brainstorm into tasks by developing art and text in communication with your group. The basic version is free and there are two tiers with increased capacity for projects, access to image libraries, and AI assistance for $10 and $13 per month.
Mindly uses mind mapping to help you organize your ideas and visualize how they connect. It’s great for coming up with new ideas or for sharing them with others. It, too, is free.
One big hurdle to developing new ideas or expanding ongoing projects is remembering and organizing your ideas. While simple notes can get you part of the way, sometimes your creative ideas don’t fit well in a text-only format. These apps can help you record your ideas in alternative formats that are more in keeping with how your creative brain works.
Concepts allows you to sketch onto your device with multiple pen types including shading, and the basic version is free. There is also a more advanced version with a digital image library, additional editing tools, and expanded file type exports for $4.99/month.
DayOne is a journaling app that allows you to keep track of your thoughts in multiple formats. In addition to traditional text journaling, you can also record audio, video, and save photos. It's an accessible way to remember your thoughts and ideas and to capture what inspires you. The basic version is free; the premium version, which allows you to access your journal on multiple devices and keep multiple journals at once, is $2.92 per month.
HiPaint allows you to paint new images and create original animations as well as edit existing ones, using multiple tools and brush types. It also allows you to save multiple file types for use with different interfaces. It's free to download.
Getting inspired can be as simple as seeing some art that you like, connecting with a design concept, or looking at something in a new way. These tools can help you find your spark.
Behance is a platform for almost any type of visual art you can think of. From graphic design to origami, you’ll find someone passionate about it on this app. It’s free and simple to search for whatever art you might be looking for. You can access it through a browser or download the app for free.
DeviantArt offers a curated feed of art based on your tastes and preferences. You can also search for specific types of art that you are drawn to, pin art that inspires you, and join groups for particular types and themes of art that you enjoy—and it’s free.
Google Arts and Culture is a free app that allows you to tour museums, explore music, and play free creative games. It allows you to play with filters on your device camera, and do "art experiments" along with others using the interface.
If you’ve ever been stuck on an idea or can’t quite get to the next step on a creative project, you probably know that focus and calm go a long way in furthering the creative process.
Calm has a variety of meditations for everything from sleep to creativity, and you can adjust your settings to aim for creativity in the meditations it suggests. There are also searchable versions of focus- and calm-inspiring meditation. The app is $10/month; it's covered by some health insurance plans as preventative care.
Headspace offers meditations and sleep stories as well as calming music. You can access the app for $5.38/month and it has over 500 searchable meditations that can help you calm your mind and create.
LastPass has issued a public service announcement to all of its users. The password manager, which has become quite popular for its ease of use, says that a fraudulent app pretending to be LastPass is now appearing in Apple's App Store.
The application is called "LassPass Password Manager," and it might appear when you look for the LastPass app in the App Store. The app is clearly copying the branding that LastPass uses, as well as the user interface that LastPass has become known for.
This isn't simply an attempt to copy what LastPass is doing, however. The company also says that the posted screenshots of the app show distinct misspellings, which indicates that the app is fraudulent and attempting to scam LastPass users. It appears under the developer Parvati Patel, and notes that it is designed for iPad.
LastPass says that it is doing everything it can to ensure the application is removed.
At the time of writing, I was unable to find the app myself in the iOS App Store. Even if it's been removed, however, users who downloaded the application before it was removed are still in danger. If this is you, uninstall it immediately to avoid any issues, and change any passwords that you may have stored or entered into it.
These kinds of apps can appear in the App Store when a developer manages to sneak past Apple or Google's standard safety checks. Unfortunately, all you can do when you find an app like this is report it to Apple or Google so that it can be removed before too many people are affected.
It's obviously concerning to see such an app make it through to the App Store's public listings, and it helps highlight why you should always carefully vet the apps you are downloading onto your device before you install them.
Oh, you’re here because you screenshotted someone’s Instagram story and want to know if they’ll get a notification about it, à la Snapchat? First, know you’re safe, babe. Take a deep breath. We’ve all been there. They’re not going to find out if you screenshotted their grid post or story, at least not through a notification. Second, there are a few instances where an Instagram user might be made aware that you’re sharing their content, or at least filing it away for later. Here’s everything you need to know about screenshotting, saving, sharing, and Instagram, so you can lurk in relative peace.
Let’s get this clear right away: If you screenshot someone’s grid or story post, they do not get a notification. Ditto for screen recording a video post. It just doesn’t happen. Never has. Please, take it from me, someone who is, for better or worse, extremely good at creeping around on the app: I do it all the time. If any of the people whose content I was screenshotting got a notification about it, I’d know by now. And I’d tell you.
That said, there is one way people can see if you’re screenshotting something on Instagram. It’s minor, but that’s what makes it insidious. If someone sends a photo directly to you via DM, using the in-DM camera feature, and you screenshot it, they will get a notification. It looks like this:
To demonstrate how this looks, I asked my recipient to screenshot the first picture I sent and to open and view, but not screenshot, the second. These photos were sent in real time, using the camera icon in the bottom left, next to the typing box. As you can see, a little circle icon (it looks like a camera shutter) appeared next to the first one, which tells me it was screenshotted. If you send a photo from your camera roll (selecting it by hitting the icon between the microphone and dialogue bubble with three dots) and the recipient screenshots it, you do not receive a notification. You only get one if they screenshot something that was taken and sent using the in-app camera.
Screenshotting on Instagram is safe the vast majority of the time, but there are other ways a person might be able to figure out if you’re disseminating their content or saving it for future review.
If you have a business account, not a personal one, you have access to some additional features that can come in handy here. Under your grid posts, you’ll see a button that says “View insights.” Tapping this will bring you to a page that shows how many accounts were reached, how many were engaged, how many people tapped through to see your profile, how many were following you already, and all kinds of other interesting data. You’ll also see, right at the top, a string of four numbers: How many accounts liked it, how many comments it got, how many shares it got, and how many saves it got.
The shares and saves are important here. The rightward facing arrow that looks like a paper plane is your shares. The rectangle with a triangular cutout that looks like a bookmark is your saves. If you check this, you can’t see who is sharing or saving it, but you can get a sense of how many opps (or fans) you have. Above, see that nine people shared my post and six saved it. What were their intentions? These are the questions that keep me up at night, but alas, I may never uncover the culprits. Bear in mind that if you save or share a post, if the person has a business profile, they’ll at least know someone did. Depending on the content of the post and how many followers they have, they could narrow it down to you. (To check if someone has a business account, tap their profile. If there’s a descriptor under their name, like Journalist, Blogger, Public figure, or buttons like “Contact,” they have a business profile.)
Then, there’s Instagram story. Anyone with a business profile can also see the data related to their story posts, both when the posts are up and in the story archive. Next to the eye-shaped icon that indicates viewers, there will be an icon with three rectangles that looks like a bar graph. It reveals how many accounts were reached, how many engaged with the post, how many replies it got, etc. It also reveals shares. Below is an example of a time one of my stories got 11 shares. I was able to figure out who shared it by looking through the views and taking note of the viewers who were not my followers. Sensing nasty intentions, I blocked the original sharer. If you share someone’s story in-app, the people with whom you share it will appear on the story’s viewership list, which could easily implicate you.
Does any of this matter? No, we should all launch our phones into the nearest trash can Sabrina van der Woodsen-style and go touch grass. But there are ways people can sniff out whether you’re sharing or saving their posts, even though they won’t get a notification if you screenshot.
For most of music history, those who heard a tune they liked but didn't know the name of were left to deal with the mystery on their own. Sure, you could try in vain to hum or sing the tune to friends and family, but if no one could understand your rendition, or if the song was obscure enough, you'd have to go on singing a nameless track to yourself.
Enter: Shazam. This song recognition app changed lives (at least mine). With it, whether you caught the tail end of a song on the radio, or a coffee shop hit grabbed your attention, you could launch Shazam, and assuming the people around you would shut the hell up for 10 seconds, the app would let you know the name of the song and who sings it. Shazam still has trouble with background noise, but at least when it can hear a song, it does a good job at recognizing it. It's so useful that Apple bought the company, and now it's just built into your iPhone. That said, other companies have come a long way with their own music recognition capabilities. In fact, Google's is so good, you can hum or sing a song yourself, and the app will identify the tune. Shazam definitely has some competition.
However, the original music identifier still has some tricks up its sleeve. Case in point: Shazam's latest update adds the ability to recognize songs while you're wearing headphones. Sure, you won't be using it when listening to Apple Music or Spotify (the song title will be a bit obvious in those cases), but if you're watching a movie or playing a game, you can use Shazam to identify an interesting song that might have otherwise escaped you.
Note: Shazam has had the ability to recognize in-app music playback before, but not while headphones were connected.
To try it out, make sure your Shazam app is updated to the latest version, or your iPhone is updated to iOS 17.3. Now, whenever you hear a song you like in an app while wearing headphones, activate Shazam:
On iOS, you can do that from the Control Center tile. If you don't have it set up, head to Settings > Control Center, then add Music Recognition to Control Center.
On Android, you can either swipe down and choose the Tap to Shazam option from your notifications, or choose the Pop-Up Shazam button that appears when you play music on your phone. If you don't see these options, you'll need to set them up. You'll find options for both features in the settings menu of the Shazam app.
You can still Shazam songs that are playing in the world around you while wearing headphones, too. So long as you don't play any music on your phone, and your headphones have a microphone, Shazam will pick up song as usual.
Setting up routines or automations is half the reason to get into smart hubs and assistants. Every major hub, from SmartThings to Alexa, lets you create routines, in which you use triggers to cause something else to happen. Triggers can be a time of day, a sensor being activated, someone asking Alexa a specific question, or a smart home device doing something. The resulting action can be that Alexa announces something, or sends an SMS, or turns a smart device on. The options are almost limitless, and Amazon has created a robust list of triggers and actions you can take through the Alexa app. As someone who generally has stuck with Google Home and SmartThings previously, I was impressed with the breadth of options and simplicity that setting up routines allows in Alexa.
In the Alexa app there are a series of buttons along the top; one of those buttons (you'll need to scroll a bit) is Routines. Select that button. The screen will refresh with three tabs at the top: Your Routines, Gallery and Activity. Under Your Routines you’ll see all of your existing routines (if this is your first time, there won't be any). Under Activity, you’d see all the instances of when a routine was triggered over the last 30 days. The middle tab, Gallery, gives you a whole wealth of options to inspire your routines and give you starting points. From the Featured Categories list, you can choose Morning and see a long list of possible routines that you might find useful—Alexa can wish you good morning or tell you the weather when you turn your alarm off. Each of these can be customized, but are a great place to go for inspiration. There are additional options, like Popular Routines and Sound Detection Routines, that feature automations that are all ready to go. If you choose one of these pre-made routines, clicking on it will open that routine so you can edit it to your heart’s delight. You can change the name, the trigger, the actions, or even add more actions, and then save it. Next time, it will appear under Your Routines.
If you’d like to start from scratch, click on the round white button with the + sign in the upper right hand corner of the screen from any tab. Alexa will ask you to name the routine, and then there are two panels: When and Alexa Will. "When" is to help you set up triggers, and Alexa Will is to set up the resulting actions. If you click on Add An Event, it will open a new panel with every possible trigger you can imagine.
Voice: Define a phrase that can be spoken to your Alexa devices that will trigger the action
Schedule: Set a specific time, or use sunrise/sunset as the trigger.
Smart home: A list of every smart device, and within that, every possible trigger from that device will appear.
Location: Using your phone as the location device, or any other device registered to Alexa, you can set geofencing so that when you enter or leave an area, Alexa is triggered.
Alarms: Set an alarm that will act as a trigger, like a morning wake up alarm.
Sports: If a game ends, starts or hits halftime, you can trigger a routine.
Sound Detection: If you have a device that support receiving sound, like an Alexa Echo, or a pet camera, you can use a sound detected as a trigger.
Echo Button: Amazon no longer sells these buttons, but if you still have one, you can use this physical button as a trigger.
Auto: If your car supports Alexa, you can use events like the engine starting as a trigger.
Echo Dot smart speaker $34.99
Echo Pop smart speaker $24.99
50" Amazon Fire TV $319.99
You’ve told Alexa what to look for; now you need to tell Alexa what to do if that trigger happens. There’s a robust list, and you can have many events for each trigger. You might want something as simple as an alarm to sound if a door sensor remains open for more than 10 minutes, and that simple one-to-one routine is easy to set up. However, you could set up a routine for when that door sensor closes that turns on the lights, the A/C and locates your pet on a map, announces to your kids’ rooms that you’re home, and has Alexa say “welcome home” to you. Here are all the possible events you can trigger:
Smart Home: This will bring up all the connected devices and for each, a list of possible actions.
Alexa Says: Decide what Alexa should say to you from a long list of possibilities—including affirmations, jokes, stories, songs, and encouragements—or create something customized.
Announcement: This is a custom message you give Alexa and then decide which devices it should be announced on. This differs from Alexa Says, where Alexa will respond to you only on the device you trigger.
Audible: Choose a book from your account for Alexa to read to you from, and what device it should be read on.
Calendar: Have Alexa read you your calendar.
Calling: Alexa can make a call.
Date and Time: Alexa will give you the date, time or both.
Delivery Updates: Get an update on any packages arriving today from connected accounts.
Device Settings: Change a setting on your phone, including affecting the volume or turning on “do not disturb”.
Drop in Notification: Turn your Alexa devices into a two-way intercom, so you can speak to anyone in the house and when they respond, you’ll hear it.
Entertain Me: Alexa will create a commute program for you, either reading from Audible, or helping you gain a skill, singing songs with you, or giving you the news.
Fire TV: Control your Fire TV device.
Information: Randomized bit of data that Alexa can give you to pique your curiosity, like a mental health tip, stock market update, bitcoin trading updates, or historical facts.
Music and Podcasts: Play any music or podcast from your connected services.
Navigation: Get directions from Alexa.
News: Alexa can be set up to give you local, national news, a flash briefing, which allows you set specific sources, or my favorite- good news, which is only positive stories.
Notifications: Send a notification to your phone.
Skills: Alexa has an impressively deep library of games and skill-building exercises you can pull from for any age.
Sounds: Random sound libraries including bells, crowds, sci-fi and more.
Traffic: Updates on local traffic.
Wait: An extender of functionality, you can add a delay to any other action using this timer.
Weather: Get the latest on your local weather.
Once you’ve set up your routine, click the Finish button and you’re all set. You can test any routine, without the trigger, by going to the Your Routines list, and clicking the blue play button next to the routine of your choice. You can edit any routine from the same list by just clicking on the name of the routine. To delete a routine, open the routine by clicking on the name of it, and then click on the three buttons in the top right hand corner. From there, select Delete Routine.
Multimodal search is nothing new for Google Lens. The company introduced it back in 2022: Since then, you've been able to search images and text using Lens—for example, looking up a photo of a specific car, then adding "red" to specify the type of color you want to find it in.
Now Google is pushing an update to Lens that uses the company's new AI tools to make the experience a bit more insightful. Google uses the following thought experiment to demonstrate Lens' new abilities: Say you're browsing a yard sale, and find an interesting board game with no box or instructions to identify it. Rather than google aimlessly about what you can see, Google suggests taking a photo of the game, then asking Lens questions like "What is this game and how is it played?" Similar to how visual search with something like ChatGPT works, Lens will then search the web based on your photo for relevant information about the game.
I imagine there are a lot of potential use cases for this tool. You could take a photo of a dish at a restaurant and ask Lens to tell you how to make it; you could take a photo of a building in a city you're visiting and ask Lens for its history and significance; you could even snap a picture of a trading card and ask which set its from, and whether its rare or valuable. This type of tool could be used for education, nutrition, or general shopping—assuming, of course, that it works as its advertised.
This new Lens feature is out now: Google rolled it out Wednesday, Jan. 17. If you know how to use Lens, you already on your way. Launch the Google app on Android or iOS, then tap the Lens icon in the search bar. You can either use the search/shutter button to take a photo in Lens itself, or use the button to the left to upload an image from your phone instead. Either way, once Lens analyzes your photo, you can tap "Add to your search," and include your expanded questions.
I just tried it out on an orchid I have next to my desk. I took a photo of it in Lens, then asked "is this toxic to dogs." Google thought for a minute, then returned an answer with generative AI. (Long story short: No, orchids aren't poisonous to dogs or cats.) But it's cool that you don't even need to specific what's in the photo when asking about it. I don't need to ask "is this orchid toxic?" I can just say "is this toxic," as if I was asking someone in the room with me. That's pretty cool. (Now, hopefully the answer is useful, correct, and on-topic, but that's another issue.)
I'm an Apple Music guy, but I have to admit, Spotify knows how to have fun. While Apple Music Replay has come a long way, it's still no Spotify Wrapped. (You all looked like you were having so much fun with those last month.) But it isn't just end of year roundups that makes Spotify a bit more ambitious than Apple. The company's "Playlist in a Bottle" feature, for example, is a neat way to build your future self a playlist for the new year—2025, that is.
Spotify introduced this new feature last year. The idea is you take a short questionnaire from Spotify, providing your answers being in the form of songs. Once you're done, those songs will form the basis of playlist, which Spotify will hold onto for the remainder of the year. Once the following January hits, you can take a look at your playlist again, see what you said a year earlier, and gauge how your musical preferences have changed (or not).
It's a fun idea, but I do wish Spotify would hold onto it for longer than a year. Yearly recaps work well because you likely listen to so much music that it's fun to look back on stats and tunes you might not remember playing earlier in the year. But a short playlist of songs isn't quite as novel after a limited period of time. Maybe one day, they'll stretch it to two years, or five, or fifty. (If there's anyone left working at Spotify by then, anyway.)
If you made a playlist last year, it's time to open it up. On your smartphone, head to http://spotify.com/playlistinabottle, then tap Claim Your Playlist. Here, you'll be able to save and listen to your 2023 playlist whenever you want. If you don't do so by Jan. 31, however, you'll miss your chance.
Whether or not you made a playlist last year, you can make your 2024 playlist to open in January 2025. To start, head to spotify.com/playlistinabottle on your smartphone. You'll first start by picking what type of container you're actually putting your playlist in—a cute but ultimately meaningless decision. There's "an actual bottle," but you can also choose a snow globe, a dumpster, a rice cooker, a flip phone, or a bird's nest. Choose one, tap Next, then answer three questions from Spotify. If you don't like the question being asked, you can hit New Question to mix it up.
My questions were thus:
a song you'd play for aliens if they visited earth
a song you need to hear live in 2024
a song you'd bring to a desert island
Your questions may be totally different. You only need to answer three questions in order to generate your playlist, but you can keep going if you want. Whenever you're ready to lock in your playlist, hit I'm Done.
Next, you can draw yourself a note to include in your "bottle." Perhaps "Happy 2025," or "I hope democracy still exists!" (Just kidding! There's not enough room to write that.) Hit Next when finished, then review your options. You can remove and add songs as you wish. When you're ready, tap Lock In.
You only get one playlist per account, so make it count! Just make sure to make yours before the Jan. 31 deadline.
You get a whole bunch of Apple apps included with iOS and iPadOS to get you started, from FaceTime to Safari to Notes, and new ones arrive on a fairly regular basis: The Journal app was added with iOS 17, for example.
Sometimes these new apps can fly under the radar, which brings us to the Freeform app that Apple introduced with iOS 16.2. It's described by Apple as a way to "bring your ideas to life"—it's essentially a digital whiteboard you can use for everything from research projects to travel planning.
While it offers plenty of helpful features, Freeform doesn't quite seem to be getting the attention it deserves—so we're going to guide you through what the app is capable of on the iPhone and the different ways you might find a use for it.
Like other Apple apps, you can find Freeform on iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and all your work gets synced across devices automatically, through the magic of iCloud. The app comes built into these various operating systems—but if you've uninstalled it for whatever reason, you can find the iOS and iPadOS version here.
Don't be daunted by the blank white canvas that appears when you first open the app—it's just waiting for you to get creative. You want to tap the new board icon in the top right corner, which looks like some kind of writing implement inside a square. The next screen you see will be your new board, an empty page with a faint dotted grid on it.
Along the bottom are your Freeform tools, for adding hand-drawn scribbles, shapes, post-its, text boxes, and images to the canvas: Tap on any tool to use it, and to add something new to the workspace. Objects can be moved by tapping and dragging on them, and resized by tapping and dragging on the handles at the corners and sides. To rotate something, place two fingers on it, then rotate your fingers.
If you need to select multiple elements, tap and hold on the canvas, then drag across it. You can also tap and hold on one object, then tap additional objects to select them as well. A number of alignment options then pop up at the bottom of the screen, which you can use to bring some kind of order to the chaos. (You'll also see guidelines pop up on screen, when objects are aligned or matching.)
There's lots to explore with Freeform's tools, but they're all fairly straightforward to use. Tap the pen tool (bottom left), and you get a choice of pens, crayons, highlighters, and erasers to pick from. When one is selected, you get options for the stroke size, transparency, and color. The pen that draws a dotted line is a selection tool, which you can use to select scribbles already on the page.
To the right of the pen tool is the sticky note tool, and these notes work much as they do in real life. Double-tap on a note to put some text on top of it, and press and hold on a note if you want to change its color or the format of its text. Press and hold on a note, then tap the icon showing a plus symbol in a rectangle to quickly duplicate it.
To the right of the sticky note tool is the shape tool, and lots of shapes are available to you. Use the categories at the top of the search box to find a shape to drop in—as with the sticky notes, you can double-tap on a shape to add some text to it, or tap and hold on a shape to change properties such as its color and the style of its outline.
The final two Freeform tools are the text box tool (for adding blocks of text) and the import tool on the far right—this lets you drop in all kinds of files from your iPhone, which can include images, videos, stickers, links to the web, and even PDFs. These options really expand what you can do with the Freeform app, and how complex your boards can be.
Speaking of dropping other elements into a Freeform board, this is easily done from other apps on iOS: You can share something to Freeform from just about anywhere. If there's a link you want to post to a board from Safari, for example, tap the share button at the bottom (the box with an upward arrow), then pick Freeform.
We've written about aligning objects, but you can find more options by pressing and holding on an individual item on a board, then tapping the three dots on the pop-up panel. This gives you the ability to lock elements so they can't be moved, to duplicate items, and to change how they're layered on top of each other.
As your boards get busier, just pinch out with your fingers to zoom out, and tap and hold with a finger to scroll around—you can also tap the dotted rectangle icon (top right) to zoom to fit the current selection or everything on the board. From here you're also able to show or hide the dotted grid on a board.
That should give you some ideas of how Freeform can be used to jot down ideas, plans, projects, and much more. Via the three dots (top right) you can print boards or export them as PDFs, and via the share button at the top of the screen you can share your boards with other people and collaborate together on them.
Apple Music and Spotify are the two most popular streaming services in the world; most of us already have our favorite. Pricing isn't the only thing that decides the Apple Music vs. Spotify debate—you could be after better sound quality, recommendations, support for your preferred platforms, and many other things. But which service is superior? It depends on what you're looking for.
If you're on a really tight budget and just cannot afford to pay for a music streaming service, Spotify's ad-supported free tier allows you to listen without paying a dime. Apple Music offers a three-month free trial, but once that's done, you will have to pay. It's worth noting that no version of Apple Music has ads.
Spotify Premium has four plans, with Premium Individual at $10.99/month, Premium Duo (for two accounts) at $14.99/month, Premium Family at $16.99/month (up to six accounts), and Premium Student at $5.99/month (only for students). Apple Music costs the same as Spotify, without a "Duo" option: $5.99/month for the student plan, $10.99/month for an individual plan, and $16.99 for family. The student plan comes with free access to Apple TV+; Spotify's equivalent plan lets you access Hulu's ad-supported plans.
If you're in the Apple ecosystem, you can get the Apple One bundle for a great discount. Apple One Individual costs $19.95/month for four services—Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV+, and iCloud (50GB). The Apple One Family plan offers all of this with 200GB iCloud storage for $25.95/month for up to six people. The Premier plan includes all of the above for six people, plus Apple News and Apple Fitness, for $37.95/month.
If you're after the best sound quality, then Apple Music is a better option than Spotify. Apple Music allows you to listen to lossless audio files at no extra charge. With the right kind of wired audio equipment, you'll be able to hear the difference in sound quality. Spotify doesn't allow you to play lossless audio files yet.
To be clear, the sound quality in both services is quite good—most people will not feel like they're listening to inferior audio. Especially if you use a pair of cheap earbuds, there's no point in trying to pick one service over another based on sound quality. This matters only for those who have high-end audio gear and want to use Apple Music to stream songs.
Apple Music has another advantage in Spatial Audio, which is a form of virtual surround sound and creates a more immersive listening experience.
Spotify and Apple Music both have over 100 million songs for you to enjoy. Most people will find everything they need on either service, but some niche artists or genres may be better represented on either of these services. You should take advantage of the free tier on Spotify or the free trial on Apple Music to make sure your favorite artists are available.
Music streaming services live and die by their recommendation algorithms. Although Spotify started out with a huge advantage in this area, Apple Music has been slowly catching up. At the moment, Spotify's algorithm is still better at recommending music, but Apple Music's got lots of excellent human-curated playlists that may appeal more to some people. This is a highly subjective debate that swings one way or another based on the genres you prefer. That's why it's best if you give these services a shot and see if the playlists are recommendations work for you.
Apple Music's apps are great on Apple platforms, but they're mediocre on other devices. The service has a web player, an Android app, a Windows app, and is available on other platforms too, but its experience remains sub-par on most of those. If you're someone who's locked in to the Apple ecosystem, you'll be pleased with Apple Music, but if you're more of a cross-platform person, Spotify is the better option.
There are a few interesting features that could help you gravitate towards Apple Music or Spotify. Apple Music Sing lets you view song lyrics in a karaoke-style UI and syncs it with the currently playing song. This makes it easy to follow lyrics, especially on a large-screen device such as an Apple TV. The experience is far better than Spotify's synced lyrics feature.
On the other hand, Spotify Connect makes it a lot easier to control music playback on other devices. Spotify also supports collaborative playlists—a feature that's still in beta on Apple Music. For collaboration, Spotify Blend automatically curates a playlist based on yours and your friends' tastes and Spotify Jam makes it really easy to create party playlists.
Spotify includes podcasts and audiobooks in its service, which has been a polarizing addition. Some people want their music app to have just that, while others don't mind listening to other forms of audio in Spotify. However, almost everyone is annoyed by the fact that Spotify plays ads in podcasts, even for premium subscribers. The service offers a few hours of audiobook listening for free, and charges an additional sum if you want more.
As hard as Apple Music is trying to catch up, Spotify is the service with the better sharing and social media options. Its year-end roundup—Spotify Wrapped—is simple to post to social media, and you also have neat options to share any song to Instagram Stories. Apple Music Replay's sharing options are rather limited and you still have to open the site on a browser to even scroll through your year-end roundup. While you can share song lyrics to Instagram via Apple Music, in general Apple's social media game isn't anywhere near Spotify's.
Since its 2008 launch, Spotify has debuted a ton of best-in-class features like Wrapped and enhanced its user experience by allowing you to download your library for offline listening and easily transfer your music from other services. Even if you’ve grown along with them but kept the same display name all these years, you might be looking for a change.
While you can’t change your Spotify username (that one is permanent), you can edit your display name—that’s the one that appears publicly when people go to your profile or check out your playlists. But as Spotify has majorly revised its home page and apps over the years, it can be confusing to locate simple features, so I'll show you how to do it. If you’ve become disenchanted with your original Spotify display name, you can change it on the mobile app and the desktop by following four easy steps.
Launch the Spotify app on your Android or iOS device. Press the ‘Home’ icon, then click your profile icon on the top left corner.
Select “View Profile,” which is just below your display name.
Tap "Edit" under your profile icon.
Click on your display name to modify it. You can also update or add a new profile photo at this point. Remember to save your changes afterward.
First, make sure you're logged into your account. Then click on your profile picture icon in the top-right corner of your Spotify window.
Click “Profile” from the menu that pops down.
Click on your profile name and edit it to your liking. You can also update or add a new profile photo at this point.
Make sure to hit "Save."
And that’s it! You changed your display name. We'll keep up with all of Spotify's updates to make sure you still know how to do the simple things.
If you own a Fitbit device like the new Fitbit Charge 6, then you can keep track of your steps, your activities, and everything else through the official companion app on Android or iOS. Your stats are also available through the Fitbit dashboard on the web.
That's all free to use and look at—but you can also choose to pay $9.99 a month for Fitbit Premium, which adds an extra layer of features and even more statistics on top of the core experience. If you're wondering if Premium is worth the additional cost, you've come to the right place.
When it comes to cost, it's worth bearing in mind that Fitbit does give you a six-month free trial of Fitbit Premium whenever you buy a new Fitbit device or Google Pixel Watch (Google owns Fitbit now, remember). If you've got an older Fitbit, you can also get a three-month free trial by signing up through the Fitbit website.
There are really five key differences between Fitbit standard and Fitbit Premium that you need to know about. First up is the Daily Readiness Score that Premium adds: As the name suggests, it shows up every day to tell you whether it's better to be working out that day or spending it recovering. It uses a variety of data points, from your age to your recent sleep and activity patterns, and it's handy for anyone who takes their fitness seriously.
Secondly, Fitbit Premium comes with full access to a range of videos covering all kinds of workouts—for working your heart, building up strength, recovering from exercise, and more. There are also plenty of audio tracks included, designed to guide you along a run or help you get to sleep with a meditation session.
The third key feature: improved sleep analysis. You can track your sleep for free, but Premium gives you a more detailed look at each stage of your sleep, as well as creating a sleep profile for you: This assesses 10 key metrics (like sleep schedule variability) to give you pointers as to how you could improve your sleep habits. Your sleeping will also be compared against other Fitbit users, and you're even given a "sleep animal" that matches your sleep habits.
Fourthly, a Premium subscription provides you with more focus on stress, mindfulness, and wellness. Your stress scores are given extra depth in terms of a day-by-day breakdown, you get the mindfulness audio activities that we mentioned above, and you also get a Wellness Report that is packed with data on how your activities, sleep, and stress are affecting your body over time.
The final and fifth key feature worth highlighting is a curated list of full recipes and healthy eating tips that you can use to tailor your diet. These come in the form of videos that you can access and play inside the Fitbit app, and they sit alongside your nutrition stats so it's easy to check up on how you're doing in terms of eating and drinking well.
Deciding if Fitbit Premium is worth it is of course a subjective undertaking: It depends what other fitness services you're already signed up to, how seriously you're taking your fitness, and how much money you have to spare each month. I can talk about using Fitbit Premium for six months myself—I did take advantage of the free trial, but I didn't carry it on after that.
Probably of most use to me were the extra details on sleep and the Daily Readiness Score. The sleep stats are done really well: They're simple to navigate and provided a ton of depth, and as I was interested in improving my sleep, the records on aspects of sleep like schedule variability were really useful. As for the readiness score, it proved to be a handy at-a-glance data point on where my fitness was at.
As for the workout videos, I fully intended to make good use of them, but never really got around to it. They're certainly professionally presented and very polished, but I'm not enough of an expert to tell you how effective they are. It would also be nice to see these videos better organized—with a playlist for beginners, for example. As it is, it's not particularly easy to track your progress through them.
Stress, wellness, and recipes were areas I didn't really dive into—though when I did, the data looked well presented and informative. I'm really only interested in making sure I do enough moving around during the day, and bank enough hours of sleep, and for that the free version of Fitbit is all I need. I suspect for most people, it's going to be the same story.
However, if you value the deeper dives into sleep and stress, and you think you really will watch the workout videos—perhaps instead of paying for a gym membership—then Fitbit Premium starts to make a lot more sense. It will of course have more appeal for serious athletes, with the data on recovery and readiness. It's a good product, but you need to make sure you'll make full use of it, which the free trial can help with.
Take a look in your email's spam folder, and you'll find a sea of obvious, pathetic, sometimes hilarious phishing attempts. Occasionally, however, scammers get a bit clever and figure out how to scare you into sharing your most important information.
In this latest case, as reported by Trustwave, scammers are impersonating Meta, warning users their accounts are "infringing copyrights." To make matters worse, they'll emphasize that if you do not appeal this decision, Meta will delete your account within 12 hours. That'd be pretty awkward if you saw this email the following day, with a perfectly intact Instagram account.
To the trained eye, this initial message may be an obvious scam. While they get the Meta logo right, you might not fall for an intro that reads "Hi! Dear [Your Name]," or a direction that says "Click 'Go to Form'," when the button actually reads "Go to appeal form." Meta also would never delete an account 12 hours after sending a warning email unless you "appeal" the decision first. If you dig deeper, the email address isn't from Meta: It's from "contact-helpchannelcopyrights[.]com," and the URL to the appeal form goes to a Google Notification link, not a Meta URL. Suspicious...
However, many won't see these red flags, and may click the appeal button as soon as possible to avoid losing their Instagram account. If you do, you'll be taken to a fake Meta "Violation Status Central Portal," where you can begin your "appeal." Once you click through to another site to begin the process, the site asks you for your Instagram username and password (of course). But what the phishers are actually after comes next: They'll ask if your account has two-factor authentication. If it does (as it should for maximum security), you will be asked to provide one of your backup codes for "protection."
Let's take a step back. Two-factor authentication (or 2FA) sends a code to a trusted device whenever you try to log into your account. It's meant to keep intruders who know your username and password out, and is why you should never share your code with anyone. However, if you don't have access to your trusted device, some services like Instagram use backup codes. These are pre-established codes that you can use on a one-time basis that act like 2FA. That way, even if you don't have access to the text message with your 2FA code, you can use a backup code to authenticate yourself.
The scammers want you to provide one of your backup codes, following your username and password, so they can use it all to log into your account on their end. Once they do, they can reset both the password and the codes, locking you out of your account. Again, you should never hand out your 2FA or backup codes to anyone. Only use them when you are directly attempting to log into your account and are prompted to do so.
Scammers aren't going to stop scamming, but you can make it harder for them to succeed. At this point, we should all stop checking our email. But, if you must, follow these general tips:
Always check the domain of the sender. Often, a scammer will replace their name with the name of the company they're impersonating (Meta, in this case), but if you click the name in your email app, you'll see the full domain. It's likely bogus.
Be extremely cautious with links in messages. Before clicking, hover your mouse over the link and read the URL preview that appears. If the link is official, it should take you to a familiar domain (something related to Meta or Instagram). If it's a jumble of nonsense, or a company name that has nothing to do with the email, that's an issue.
Be mindful of spelling, grammar, and formatting issues. These billion dollar companies don't send out emails with mistakes: If the copy is poorly written, or if the formatting seems amateur, that's because it is. It's giving "graphic design is my passion."
If you do click a link and regret it, just close out of the window. Do not download anything or give any information away. False sites love to ask you to "sign in," all the while recording your username, password, and other valuable information like your 2FA codes.
If in doubt, reach out to the sender directly. If "Instagram" wants you to log in, log in from Instagram's site yourself. If your boss wants you to wire money, call them directly. (Although I promise you, they don't want you to.)
Latin American Spanish on Rosetta Stone is on sale for $119.99 right now (reg. $299). Rosetta Stone is the highly-trusted language learning platform used by top organizations like NASA and TripAdvisor, and it helps you learn by engaging with interactive activities, hearing native speakers using real-world scenarios, and TruAccent speech-recognition technology that gives real-time feedback on your progress. It includes bite-sized lessons—as little as 10 minutes at a time— and the app works on most Macs, PCs, tablets, and phones (though, if you need, you should check that your operating system works with the program).
The sale comes with a lifetime subscription to learn Latin American Spanish with Rosetta Stone on sale for $119.99 right now (reg. $299), though prices can change at any time.
Spotify is so popular as a music streaming service that you might forget it has an offline feature, too. Spotify Premium users can download and keep music available offline, and as long as your device is online once every 30 days, the music will continue to download onto your device. Offline playback is, of course, perfect when there’s no cellular network or wifi available, like on parts of a commute or during flights.
Now, downloading music on Spotify isn't like buying music from iTunes. The songs will only be available inside the Spotify app and you can’t export them to another device. Still, Spotify will let you download up to 10,000 songs on your device, which should be enough for most. (Remember when the iPod's selling point was putting 1,000 songs in your pocket?)
If you’re paying for Spotify Premium, you can download music for no additional charge. Spotify Premium costs $9.99 per month or $99 per year, and there’s a $4.99 per month student plan as well. To make the deal sweeter, you can sign up for a Spotify Duo plan for $12.99 per month for two users, or you can get the Family plan for $15.99 which can support up to six users.
It’s important to note that while you can download any album, playlist, or podcast you want, Spotify doesn’t let you download a single song directly. However, you can add a song to a playlist to download it that way. In fact, you can add a song to your Library, and it will be added to your Liked Songs playlist. Simply download this playlist, and you suddenly have access to your entire library offline.
On your iPhone, open the Spotify app, and find the song that you want to download. Tap the three-dotted Menu button next to the song and either choose the Add to Liked Songs or Add to Playlist option. Then, go to Your Library, and find the Liked Songs playlist, or any other playlist that you want to download.
Here, tap the Download button icon, and you’ll find it next to the green checkmark that tells you that the playlist is in your library.
The steps for Android are slightly different. After opening the playlist that you want to download, tap the Menu button from the top, and choose the Download option. Spotify will show you the download progress at the top. Once the download is complete, the song and the playlist both will have green download icons next to them.
You can now play downloaded songs just as you do when streaming music from Spotify. You can find all the downloaded songs by going to the Downloaded tab from Your Library. If you want to remove a download to regain some storage space, open a playlist, tap the Menu button, and choose the Remove download from this device option.
It's official: Google has shut down Google Podcasts as of April 2, 2024, adding the app to the pile of dead Google services, and leaving many Android users without their podcatcher of choice. And iOS users don't have it much better. While Apple Podcasts has improved a bit of late, particularly with the launch of automatic transcripts in iOS 17.4, it has never really recovered from the disastrous overhaul it got back in 2021.
Thankfully, podcasts are still hugely popular, and, there are more top-tier podcast managers on Android and iOS than ever before. Keep reading to discover your best option to manage podcasts on your mobile devices—and consider a few backup suggestions if you're seeking a more novel podcast app experience.
Platforms: Free on iOS and Android; Plus Subscription ($40/year) or Premium Subscription ($100/year) on iOS, Apple Watch, Android, Mac, Windows, and the web.
Pocket Casts brings together almost every useful feature found across pretty much every other podcast manager out there, plus plenty that are unique. The app also delivers them via a slick interface that’s easy to use—and best of all, it’s free (though paying for a membership does get you some extra perks).
A few of the standout features include audio enhancement options: The built-in “volume boost” makes it easier to hear people’s voices while reducing background music or noise; “trim silences” cuts out long pauses; and you can adjust the playback speed anywhere from 0.5x to 3x (and doing so does not affect voice pitch).
Pocket Casts users can sync their subscriptions and playback position across multiple devices, and the app features robust options for finding new podcasts (including the ability to search by episode), so you can find all the podcasts that have talked about a specific topic, and view your listening history. You can also play third-party media files stored on your device and set sleep timers that will pause your podcast when you’re listening before bed.
While the free version is packed with features, it isn’t perfect. For instance, the playlist and filter options could be more robust. You can queue up a playlist on a whim, or filter your podcast subscriptions and list of downloaded episodes using a small selection of preset categories, but you cannot sort your subscriptions by topic or create your own self-updating playlists. Given how many features Pocket Casts packs in, it seems odd that it lacks this kind of customization.
Despite that nagging issue, I like how Pocket Casts looks and feels. Not only does the app cover all the basics, but it also has a few customizable gesture options (such as setting a left-swipe to archive episodes), and even a dark theme.
The free version of Pocket Casts is available on Android and iOS and includes all of the features I’ve discussed thus far, but there’s also a premium Pocket Casts Plus option if you want access to more features and wider device support. For $40 annually, Plus subscribers get access to the Mac, Windows, web, and standalone Apple Watch versions of Pocket Casts, plus 20GBs of cloud storage that can be accessed across all your connected devices. If you really love the app, you can also sign up for a Patron membership ($100/year) that ups your cloud storage and gives you early access to new features.
While PocketCasts remains my go-to recommendation for both Android and iOS, I've curated a handful of alternatives that deserve recognition for their reliability and features in case PocketCasts doesn't suit your needs. I've included both Android and iOS apps, though some are only available on one platform.
Procast is a great choice if you like to tweet or share your thoughts about your favorite shows. A built-in clip feature lets you snip a bit of a podcast to supplement a tweet or text. It also has a neat “swipe to your inbox” feature that lets you add episodes to your queue with a simple swipe. Procast is a solid choice for iOS and Android users.
Overcast is an iOS-exclusive app packing tons of features, including support for Apple Watch. You get playback controls like adjustable playback speeds, audio boost, and automatic silence trimming, and the app automatically holds your place when you stop listening partway through. Overcast also lets you create custom playlists in a couple of taps or listen to every podcast you’ve downloaded in a continuous stream. There are also welcome quality-of-life options like the ability to add Siri Shortcuts and customize your headphone, remote, and car dashboard controls. The main downsides are its meager discoverability for new shows, and the free version is ad-supported, but you can pay $10/year to remove them and unlock other features like side-loading audio files saved on your iPhone. You can download Overcast on the iOS App Store.
Podcast Addict is a free Android app packed with handy features like customizable playlists and adjusting unique listening settings per podcast. You can also tag your favorite shows with listening priority and even rate and review series in the app, much like you can with Apple Podcasts. Along with the millions of podcasts available in the app, Podcast Addict also features over 120,000 radio stations and over 20,000 audiobooks. It also supports Android Auto and Chromecast. The free version displays ads (just a simple banner ad across certain screens), while the premium version costs $.99 per month or $9.99 per year, and grants extra features like a playlist widget and additional app themes. You can download Podcast Addict on the Google Play Store.
This is the sort of feature you might have assumed Strava already had considering how long it's been around, but no: Strava only just added the ability to DM other users, and you should see the feature in the Android and iOS apps now.
Strava says it wants to provide "an efficient avenue for athletes to coordinate adventures, connect for inspiration or tips, share their journey, and more" with the new messaging features, so if you're already communicating with a group of Strava buddies in another chat app, now you can consider switching over.
Messaging on Strava supports both one-to-one and group chats, and you can share activities and routes. Features like message reactions are included, but other chat mainstays—like photo uploads—will be added at a later date.
You've got a few different options for messaging your Strava friends directly in-app. Perhaps the easiest is to open up the profile of the person you want to talk to, and tap on the Message button on their page to start a one-to-one conversation. Chat also now appears in the share options on activities, events, and routes.
There's also a new speech bubble icon at the top of the Home and Groups tabs, and you can tap on this to jump to your list of conversations. Open up an existing chat from here, or start a new one with the compose button (top right)—select more than one recipient, and Strava starts a group chat for you.
Chatting is pretty straightforward: Type out your message and hit the orange send button. The only real extra feature to talk about is the ability to save routes with the people you're chatting with, and that's done via the icon to the left of the text input box.
You can bring up a few more options by long-pressing on a message you've sent or received. This is where the message reactions pop up, and if it's a message of your own, then you have the option to edit or delete it. From the same pop-up menu you can also reply to individual messages to make the thread easier to understand, or copy messages (handy if they have addresses or phone numbers in them, for example).
Tap the cog icon in the top right corner of a conversation to mute the notifications for a chat if it's getting too busy. If you're in a group chat, then you'll find the options for renaming the group and managing the participants from here, and you can also give other members the option to invite more people.
Back on the main conversation list, there's just one more feature to mention: Swipe left on a conversation to bring up a trash-can icon that lets you permanently delete the thread. It's pretty basic as far as messaging apps go, at least for the time being, but of course its key benefit is that it's built right into Strava.
At this time, it's not possible to message random people on Strava. Even if you enable messaging, only the people who you follow will be able to chat with you, so you're not going to get spammed. (Well, unless one of your friends has their Strava account hacked.)
For safety reasons, you can't actually use messaging at all unless you've entered your date of birth on your Strava account. What's more, the activity sharing inside Strava chats respect existing privacy settings: No one can suddenly post one of your private activities to their group chat, for example.
To set your messaging privacy level, head to the conversation list via the speech bubble icon at the top of the Home or Groups tab. Tap the cog icon in the top right corner, and you can read more about how messaging works on Strava, as well as set how you want messaging to work on your account.
Your choices are Following (anyone who you follow can message you), Mutuals (people can only message you if you follow each other), and No One (no one can message you, but you can initiate chats with other people, privacy levels permitting). By default (at least on my account), you'll be set to Mutuals.
As far as I can tell from testing out Strava messaging, changing your privacy level doesn't affect the conversations you've already started—so if you decide to switch to the No One option, it's not going to get rid of the chats already in your inbox.
Messaging hasn't yet made its way to the Strava website, and there's no indication yet as to whether it ever will. You can't change your messaging privacy level from Strava on the web either, so everything is controlled from inside the app—but you can see and manage the people you're following on Strava in your browser.
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