How to search for images you can (legally) use for free

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you’re looking for an image that you can repurpose for one of your projects and aren’t able to take a photo yourself, there are a ton of free images you can use online without running into any copyright issues — you just have to know where to look.

Here, we’ll go over different places where you can search for free images on the web. It’s worth noting that when searching for free images, you’ll often come across the Creative Commons (CC) license that lets you use an image for free. But depending on the type of CC license an image has, there may be some limitations that require you to credit the original artist or prevent you from making modifications to the image.

That’s why it’s always important to read up on the license it possesses...

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Google admits its Google TV software is too slow

A variety of changes are coming to both the Chromecast with Google TV and third-party devices. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Google has been working on making its TV experience faster, more responsive, and less of a hassle for users. According to a post on its support forums on Monday, the company has been working on improving boot time, general performance, and the number of options for managing storage on both third-party TVs as well as its Chromecast with Google TV streaming puck.

The company says that it’s made it so the Google TV homescreen loads faster, reducing the amount of time before you can pick out which content to watch. Google says it achieved the performance improvements “through CPU optimizations and improvements to cache management” and that they’ve started to roll out on third-party devices and are “coming soon” for Chromecasts.

It’s faster...

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How to use the cover screen on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip

It might be small, but you can do quite a bit to customize the Z Flip’s cover screen. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Part of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip’s appeal is what you can do with the phone halfway open in Flex Mode, like make a hands-free video call or take a selfie. But there’s also plenty you can do with the phone closed, thanks to that little 1.9-inch OLED on the front panel, aka the cover screen.

It may be small, but it’s a place where you can read notifications, check the weather, set a timer, and control your smart home — all without flipping the phone open. Plus, you can customize the display with an animated wallpaper or a photo of your own.

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

The 1.9-inch cover screen lets you see info without flipping the phone open.

Here’s how to take control of the Z Flip’s cover screen...

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Samsung’s massive 55-inch curved Odyssey Ark is open for preorders

In Cockpit mode, the Odyssey Ark looks like a wave that’s about to crash on top of you. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

Samsung announced that you can now preorder its massive 55-inch 4K curved gaming display, the Odyssey Ark, for $3,499.99. For those who see the need for such a large, pricey display, buying it before Monday, September 12th, can loop you into some relatively small but welcome savings. For instance, preordering will earn you a $200 gift card from Samsung. Best Buy and Newegg are offering a similar promotion, giving out $200 in gift card value for those who preorder to be used on a separate purchase.

Samsung hasn’t officially shared a release date, though Newegg confirmed that shipments from its website will begin shipping on Monday, September 12th.

If you were someone who placed a no-cost reservation for the Odyssey Ark last week when...

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YouTube launches a dedicated page for podcasts

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

YouTube is embracing its position as the (unintentional) most-used podcast platform by launching a dedicated podcast page. As the lines between podcasting and YouTube blur, any step the company takes toward consolidating listening could pose a challenge for competitors Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The page debuted in late July and is still in the rollout process, according to 9to5Google. It can be accessed at youtube.com/podcasts or through the Explore page (in-app or browser), where there is a new podcast tab. The new page features trending shows and channels that already have millions of subscribers, like The H3 Podcast or Logan Paul’s podcast, but otherwise does not exhibit a ton of curation.

The page is not nearly as sophisticated as...

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The Game Awards sets a date: December 8th

Image: The Game Awards

Mark your calendars and get those predictions in because The Game Awards returns on December 8th. Geoff Keighley’s award show / marketing sizzle reel will be held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles for the show’s ninth year.

We have a date!

THE GAME AWARDS
Thursday, December 8

Streaming live around the world from Microsoft Theater in LA.

Hard to believe this is our NINTH show.

We've been working all year to bring you something very special. pic.twitter.com/VS9qOhyltQ

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) August 22, 2022

This is the ninth year for the program in which fans and journalists vote for their choice of winners in categories like Content Creator of the Year and Best Narrative Game.

The hallowed Game of the Year award is...

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Blake Masters’ Bitcoin investments tanked in 2022

Photo by Brandon Bell / Getty Images

Bitcoin evangelist and Republican Senate hopeful Blake Masters has invested millions into a wide variety of cryptocurrencies. But according to recent financial filings viewed by The Verge, Masters’ own digital investments have seemingly tanked in value over this past year’s cryptocurrency crash.

Masters, protegé to billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, disclosed a dozen different investments into different cryptocurrencies and platforms in a personal finance filing last week. As of August 15th, Masters owned between $600,000 and $1.2 million in Bitcoin alone, a dramatic decrease from the $1.1 to $5.2 million he touted in financial disclosures last year. Masters did not disclose any significant profits from his Bitcoin investment,...

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Elon Musk subpoenas former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

As Twitter and Elon Musk prepare for their October 17th trial date in the Delaware Court of Chancery to argue over his attempt to break their $44 billion acquisition agreement, Musk’s legal team submitted a subpoena for evidence from a familiar face: former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Dorsey stepped down as Twitter CEO for the second time last November and handed control of the company he helped create to Parag Agrawal. He’s running Square and Block and, reportedly, egging on Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter in private messages.

It’s tough to say what information Dorsey has that Musk couldn’t obtain by just texting him! But with billions of dollars on the line, Musk’s legal team is casting out all lines to support his (weak) argument the...

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Lincoln’s new concept car is an autonomous EV that runs on vibes

Image: Lincoln

Lincoln is celebrating its 100-year anniversary with the release of the L100, a concept car that harkens back to the automaker’s legacy while also looking ahead to a future where pesky controls like steering wheels may no longer be needed.

The L100 has all the hallmarks of a 21st-century concept car: sleek, futuristic design; gull-wing doors; a sparse interior that’s meant to underscore a generically autonomous capability; and a whole lot of glass. Naturally, the vehicle is not intended for production or sale but is intended to signal at a possible design direction for Lincoln’s future lineup.

Lincoln said the L100 is intended to pay homage to the automaker’s first luxury vehicle

“Concept vehicles allow us to reimagine and illustrate...

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How to connect and reconnect your PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 controller

The state-of-the-art PS5 DualSense wireless controller still requires a cable to use. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony’s PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 both use wireless controllers that rely on a singular method for connecting and resyncing with the consoles: a cable. While Microsoft and Nintendo have used wireless pairing on their respective systems for several generations, Sony sticks by the old ways it established back with the PlayStation 3. The PS4 DualShock 4 and PS5 DualSense controllers are capable of wirelessly pairing to other devices via Bluetooth, but when it comes to your PlayStation, you have to bust out their respective Micro USB and USB-C cables.

Here’s what to do if you’re having connection woes or your controller won’t turn on.

Plug it in

Pretty much all of your PlayStation controller connectivity headaches can be solved by...

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The Pixel Watch has only one job: don’t suck

The Pixel Watch doesn’t have to be great. It has to be competent. | Image: Google

Later this fall, Google is expected to launch the Pixel Watch. Given Wear OS’s history, there’s understandably a lot of anticipation. Will the watch be good? Will it fail to deliver the promise of Wear OS 3? Honestly, those questions might be more appropriate for future iterations of the watch. For now, all Google has to do is create a smartwatch that does the basics well.

Case in point, XDA Developers recently reported that Google seems to be hard at work addressing an egregious oversight in Wear OS: backups. In an APK teardown of Google Play services v 22.23.12 beta, XDA says that there’s code that refers to “companion backups” via Google One. Right now, if you upgrade to a new phone, you can’t back up your non-Samsung Wear OS...

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Thor: Love and Thunder is coming to Disney Plus in just a few weeks

Coming to a TV or phone near you. | Image: Marvel

Marvel’s latest theatrical release, Thor: Love and Thunder, will be making its way to the Disney Plus streaming service on September 8th (via Deadline). While my colleague Charles Pulliam-Moore described the movie as “messy” in his excellent review, which you can read here, it still did reasonably well at the box office. Soon, though, it’ll be available on streaming for anyone who’d rather watch it at home.

Thor isn’t the only content that Disney’s adding to the service on September 8th, which it’s declared as “Disney Plus Day.” There are several shorts, behind-the-scenes features, and TV episodes premiering as well. Perhaps the most notable other addition is a live-action Pinocchio adaptation featuring Tom Hanks and Joseph Gordon-Levitt...

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Clip Studio Paint announces subscription plan, angering the online artist community

Clip Studio Paint is moving to a monthly subscription when version 2.0 launches in 2023. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Celsys announced version 2.0 of Clip Studio Paint, its popular digital illustration and animation software, alongside plans to move over to a monthly subscription for updates to the service when it launches. It’s left some longtime fans who praised it for its one-time purchase model feeling very betrayed.

An announcement on the Clip Studio website states that “from 2023 onwards, the current Version 1 (the one-time purchase, perpetual version for Windows/macOS, ‘Version 1.x’ hereafter), offered as a download and physical version will no longer receive feature updates free of charge.”

This has subsequently outraged members of the artist community, who previously heralded the service as a fantastic one-time purchase alternative to software...

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How to quickly get the old Gmail look back

Gmail’s new look provides easy access to Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet on one panel but can make the design appear cluttered. | Image: Google

Not a fan of Gmail’s new look for the web? I feel you. Even though the changes rolled out were small, that side panel featuring apps like Mail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet has cluttered things up, making checking emails first thing in the morning feel more overwhelming.

Sure, you can make things a little easier on the eye by hiding the Gmail category and label panel with some quick tweaks. But if you’re also not a fan of other changes, like the new light blue Compose button background that I found distracting, it’s actually pretty easy to revert to the previous interface. (Well, at the moment, at least. We’re not sure, after all, how much longer Gmail will let users revert to the old design — so let’s enjoy the luxury while we still can.)

H...

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Ford is laying off 3,000 employees

Ford’s F-150 Lightning | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Ford is laying off about 3,000 employees and contract workers, with the cuts primarily affecting staff in the US, Canada, and India, The Wall Street Journal reports. Chairman Bill Ford and CEO Jim Farley sent a memo on Monday informing staff of the layoffs, with affected workers being told later this week.

“Building this future requires changing and reshaping virtually all aspects of the way we have operated for more than a century,” Ford and Farley said in the memo, according to CNBC. “It requires focus, clarity and speed. And, as we have discussed in recent months, it means redeploying resources and addressing our cost structure, which is uncompetitive versus traditional and new competitors.”

It’s unclear how the cuts may be spread...

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Google’s terrific Pixel Buds Pro are already $25 off at Amazon

The new Pixel Buds Pro are discounted alongside the Google Pixel 6A today. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Welcome back to the arena of deals. Our inaugural discount this week is on the excellent Google Pixel Buds Pro, which released less than a month ago. Typically priced at $199.99, you can currently find these new earbuds on Amazon for $174.99 in their black or yellow colorways. The Pixel Buds Pro are a drastic improvement over their middling predecessor, boasting solid noise cancellation, improved battery life, and multipoint Bluetooth support. While the sound quality isn’t quite up to par with some of our top picks, this discount makes the Pixel Buds Pro worth considering if you’re on the hunt for a fresh pair of earbuds. Read our review.

There’s still an opportunity to score a discount on the recently released Google Pixel 6A. Normally...

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Electrical currents to the brain improve memory for older adults, study finds

The study targeted two areas of the brain linked to memory.

Pulsing electrical currents through the brain for 20 minutescan boost memory for older adults for at least a month, according to a new study.

Around 8 percent of people in the US get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia as they get older — significantly impairing their memory — and an even larger group of older adults has some degree of age-related memory loss. This new study is only a first look at a potential solution. But easy, quick treatments like this one could become even more important as the world’s population rapidly ages — especially if future research shows that it can help with more serious cognitive conditions.

The brain stimulation done in this study, published Monday in Nature Neuroscience, came from a swim...

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In lieu of a trailer, Knives Out 2 finally has a release date

The cast of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery | Image: Netflix

Given the almost half a billion dollars Netflix spent on the rights to director Rian Johnson’s Knives Outfollow-ups and the streamer’s plan to debut the first of the two sequels this winter, you’d think we would know more a Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery than its name. Alas, we do not. But at the very least, we now have a proper streaming release date and an announcement... for another announcement about when Glass Onion will be in theaters.

Along with a new photo of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’s cast members Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., and Jessica Henwick, Netflix shared today that the film will be available to stream on December 23rd.

Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe,...

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Who exactly is the Acer Swift 5 for?

Who should buy Acer’s flagship notebook (and who shouldn’t)

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Apple’s DIY self-repair program expands to cover fixing M1 MacBooks

Photo by Alexander Kramer for The Verge

Apple’s expanding its DIY repair program to include MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops equipped with the M1 chip. Once the program officially opens tomorrow, you’ll get to purchase genuine parts for the 2020 M1 MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the 14- and 16-inch 2021 M1 MacBook Pros from Apple’s Self Service Repair Store.

This expands on the repair program Apple launched earlier this year, which initially included parts for the iPhone 12 and 13, such as the display, battery, and camera. While the program is currently only available in the US, Apple plans on bringing it to Europe next.

Apple’s making a number of MacBook parts available to start, including the display, top case with battery, Touch ID, and trackpad. According to T...

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Super73-ZX e-bike review: love and hate can be so much fun

Van’s best friend

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Microsoft is putting more ads in Outlook on iOS and Android

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has started putting more ads in Outlook mobile for iOS and Android in recent months.

The Outlook mobile app gives users two options for organizing their inbox: a single inbox with everything in it or a tabbed inbox split into two categories — “focused” with important mail and “Other” with all the rest. Previously, Microsoft only put ads in the “Other” tab for free users, but it’s now adding them to the single-inbox mode, too.

Image: James Vincent / The Verge

An ad inside Outlook mobile on iOS.

The change has been rolling out over the past few months and essentially means Microsoft is making it harder for free users to avoid ads in Outlook mobile. Whatever inbox mode you use, there’ll be ads somewhere...

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Obscure video game movies could flood the industry following Sonic’s success

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the highest-grossing video game movie ever in the United States. | Image: Paramount Pictures

Fresh off the success of Uncharted and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 respectively, Sony and Sega are planning film adaptations of even more of their franchises. Deadline reports that Sony is developing Days Gone for the big screen, while Sega says it’s developing adaptations of Space Channel 5 and Comix Zone.

These join a dizzying number of adaptations currently in development or production from Sony alone, including Gran Turismo, Ghost of Tsushima, Jak and Daxter, The Last of Us and God of War. As it stands, the number of upcoming projects listed from other studios on the Wikipedia page for movies adapted from video games is almost half of the total number of movies ever historically released within the genre. Notable upcoming projects also...

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Meta’s plans to encrypt Messenger risk ‘grotesque betrayal,’ says UK home secretary

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook’s parent company Meta is heading into another political battle over the planned introduction of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in its Messenger chat platform. The UK’s home secretary, Priti Patel, makes this clear in an op-ed for Tory mouthpiece The Telegraph this week, saying it would be a “grotesque betrayal” if the company didn’t consider issues of child safety while introducing E2EE. Similar arguments are likely to be raised in the US, too.

Meta has been working on adding E2EE to Messenger for years, and recently confirmed that it aims to encrypt all chats and calls on the platform next year. (It currently only offers E2EE on its other big chat platform, WhatsApp.) The move is reigniting decades-old debates in politics and...

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Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal is getting a second season

The Rehearsal, the docu-comedy TV show created by and starring Nathan Fielder, has been renewed for a second season, HBO has announced. The new came just ahead of the show’s sixth episode and season one finale on Friday night. “One more chance to get it right,” reads the Season 2 tagline, though a premiere date is missing from the announcement.

Ostensibly, the basic premise of The Rehearsal is that it’s a comedic documentary series designed to help ordinary people tackle difficult moments in their life by giving them an opportunity to rehearse it beforehand. But the show approaches this simple premise with a budget and attention to detail that can make the scope of each rehearsal feel dizzying, and the show as a whole becomes...

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Our first glimpse of HBO’s The Last of Us TV show is here

The Last of Us | Image: HBO

Along with the occasionally-glitchy premiere of House of the Dragon, HBO presented a teaser trailer of content that its new owner hasn’t abruptly shelved that provided the first in-motion look of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey playing Joel and Ellie, respectively, in its upcoming The Last of Us TV show.

Neil Druckmann — the writer and creative director of both The Last of Us games — is an executive producer of the show, and tweeted, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Other content in the preview came from The Idol, Love and Death, Succession, The White Lotus, And Just Like That, Hacks, The White House Plumbers, Our Flag Means Death, but the Naughty Dog-made PlayStation franchise’s live-action TV debut is the one we’re interested in the most....

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House of the Dragon premiere crashes HBO Max streaming, mostly on Fire Sticks

Besides unreleased and disappearing content, there have been plenty of complaints about the HBO Max streaming apps since they launched. Still, they’ve generally held up well under the stress of premieres for content like Tenet, Wonder Woman, The Matrix, or Westworld, but for HBO there may not be anything like a Game of Thrones premiere. Tonight’s debut of the show’s spinoff, House of the Dragon, is the first taste of a new GOT experience inside HBO Max, and while many people trying to stream the premiere episode are watching without a problem, others said the app crashed on them, or froze up once it got past the pre-show teaser trailer.

Based on reports seen on Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere, it appears that most of the people having...

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Google AI flagged parents’ accounts for potential abuse over nude photos of their sick kids

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A concerned father says that after using his Android smartphone to take photos of an infection on his toddler’s groin, Google flagged the images as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a report from The New York Times. The company closed his accounts and filed a report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and spurred a police investigation, highlighting the complications of trying to tell the difference between potential abuse and an innocent photo once it becomes part of a user’s digital library, whether on their personal device or in cloud storage.

Concerns about the consequences of blurring the lines for what should be considered private were aired last year when Apple announced its Child...

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Netflix’s ad-supported tier may have some commercial-free content

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix’s upcoming ad-supported tier might not show commercials on all the content included in the cheaper subscription plan. A report from Bloomberg suggests that Netflix may cut commercials from newer original films, as well as certain kids’ shows.

According to Bloomberg, Netflix may not run ads during original movies when they’re first released, and will instead insert ads at a later date. It’s still too early to tell how long Netflix will show a newer movie without ads, but as noted by Bloomberg, this decision may help alleviate some of the concerns filmmakers might have about ads detracting from their work.

Netflix original kids’ programming will also reportedly get the ad-free treatment — just like Disney Plus plans on doing with...

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Tesla’s Full-Self Driving software is going up in price again

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla’s increasing the price of its Full-Self Driving (FSD) software to $15,000. In a post on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the new price will go into effect in North America starting September 5th, representing a $3,000 jump.

Drivers who order a vehicle before September 5th won’t have to pay the newly-increased price, Musk says. The price hike comes as Tesla begins rolling out FSD beta 10.69 to drivers, a version Musk calls “a big step forward.” It’s still unclear whether Tesla plans on raising the price of its FSD subscription, which currently costs $199 per month.

After wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2, price of FSD will rise to $15k in North America on September 5th.

Current price will be honored for orders made...

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