What’s the Matter with the smart home?

But has it? | Photo by Fabian Sommer / Picture Alliance via Getty Images

A year ago at Berlin’s IFA tech trade show (think European CES), Verge reporter Jon Porter witnessed a Google Nest Hub control an Apple HomeKit smart plug. This “lightbulb moment for the smart home” was the first public demonstration of Matter. The new smart home standard is designed to fix the biggest issue facing tech in our homes: interoperability, and witnessing two fierce competitors in the space working together was exciting. Twelve months later, on the eve of IFA 2023, we’re still waiting for that lightbulb to turn on across the industry.

The smart home remains fragmented. Despite being developed by the biggest names in the industry — Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and more — Matter has yet to deliver on its main promise. You...

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Chrome’s reading mode might read articles out loud

Illustration: The Verge

Google is experimenting with a text-to-speech feature for Chrome’s reading mode on desktop, as reported by Android Police. I sometimes use a similar feature in Instapaper, and in Chrome, I could see it being a useful tool to listen to articles in the browser I’m already using while I work.

The feature can apparently be found in Chrome Canary, Google’s bleeding edge version of Chrome, according to X user Leopeva64. If you have the feature, you can click a play button at the top of an article you’re looking at in reading mode to have Google read the text. Leopeva64 also shared a link to a video showing off the feature on Reddit.

Chrome for desktop will also have the option to "read aloud" articles, the initial implementation of this...

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Google Keep for Android is getting some overdue upgrades

Google Keep is a simple, solid note-taking app — hopefully Google doesn’t kill it. | Image: Google

Good news for Android-toting Google Keep users: you’re finally getting the text formatting options the app has so desperately needed for years. Google announced this week that the ability to bold, italicize, and otherwise transform text in your notes is rolling out now, and you should start to see it in the app soon. (I don’t have it yet, but Mishaal Rahman and a few others actually spotted the feature ahead of its official launch, so it seems to be coming fast.)

The new Keep features are more in the “should have been here all along” category than they are shiny new things, but they’re still a welcome addition to the app. And actually, Google has been paying an unusual amount of attention to Keep recently: users got a new homescreen...

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The EU’s Digital Services Act goes into effect today: here’s what that means

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) has officially gone into effect. Starting on August 25th, 2023, tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more must comply with sweeping legislation that holds online platforms legally accountable for the content posted to them.

Even though this new law was passed in the EU, we’ll likely see far-reaching global effects as companies adjust their policies to comply. Here’s what exactly the DSA does and how the EU plans on enforcing it.

What is the Digital Services Act?

The overarching goal of the DSA is to foster safer online environments. Under the new rules, online platforms must implement ways to prevent and remove posts containing illegal goods, services, or content while...

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SwitchBot’s new robot vacuum mop is the closest thing yet to a sci-fi cleaning robot

The SwitchBot S10, the company’s first robot vacuum for the US market, brings with it some unique features. | Image: SwitchBot

Smart home robotics company SwitchBot — of robot finger fame — has come up with another ingenious solution for automating boring chores in your home. This one is a sizable leap toward a Rosie the Robot vision of a fully autonomous robot house cleaner, though without the personality. The SwitchBot S10 is a new robot vacuum and mop that autonomously drains and refills its dirty and clean water tanks using a battery-powered water station that hooks directly into your plumbing.

Combined with an auto-empty charging dock that dries the mop, the S10 is the most fully automated floor cleaner I’ve seen. You won’t need to refill its mopping tank, deal with emptying dirty water post-clean, or mess with its mops. The only dirty work you need to do...

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AMD claims there’s nothing stopping Starfield from adding Nvidia DLSS

Starfield key art. | Image: Bethesda

AMD gaming chief Frank Azor is trying to thread a needle. He seemingly wants to say that AMD did notactually make Starfield, quite possibly the year’s biggest PC game, exclusively support AMD’s FSR upscaling technology at the expense of competitors like Nvidia DLSS.

But he clearly can’t. Azor says he can’t say what the contract includes. Instead, he repeatedly lands on this: “If they want to do DLSS, they have AMD’s full support.” He says there’s nothing blocking Bethesda from adding it to the game.

Azor, a co-founder of Alienware, has had many open conversations with me over the years, and this is the only thing he’s been cagey about all afternoon. AMD specifically prepped for this exact question, he says, because the situation’s a...

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AMD announces Radeon RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT, starting at $449

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT reference design. The lesser 7700 XT won’t be available with this AMD cooler. | Image: AMD

Is AMD beginning to give Nvidia a run for its money?

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Baldur’s Gate 3’s gigantic new patch is for the shorties

Image: Larian Studios

Baldur’s Gate 3’s first official patch is apparently so large its patch notes exceed Steam’s character limit. The patch, out now, addresses “over 1,000 bugs, balancing, flow issues and much, much more.” You can read the full but spoiler-heavy patch notes here, while BG3’s Steam page has a truncated but redacted version of the notes here.

The most prominent fix in the patch deals with height issues that arise when short-statured characters like halflings and gnomes try to romance a taller race.

“We’re bringing back Short King Summer with better kissing contact for short races!” Listen, that’s developer Larian’s words, not mine. They could have been mine, but they’re not.

Larian Studios

BG3 will now let the short...

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Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter

Screenshots of the note-taking app Obsidian. | Image: Obsidian

This is Platformer_, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer._ Sign up here.

Today let’s step outside the news cycle and turn our attention toward a topic I’m deeply invested in but only rarely write about: productivity platforms. For decades now, software tools have promised to make working life easier. But on one critical dimension — their ability to improve our thinking — they don’t seem to be making much progress at all.

Meanwhile, the arrival of generative artificial intelligence could make the tools we use more powerful than ever — or they could turn out to be just another mirage.

To understand where things went wrong, I want to focus on the humble note-taking app: the...

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All colors of the Beats Studio Buds Plus are $40 off (including the clear ones)

The black model was on sale last week, but we all know the transparent ones are what you want. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

It was a big deal when the Beats Studio Buds Plus fell to a new all-time low last week, but I think it’s an even bigger deal now that all three colors are available at that price — since the coolest earbuds by far are the see-through version.

You can get the Beats Studio Buds Plus in black, ivory, or transparent for $129.95 ($40 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. The latter retailer lists the deal as ending tomorrow, so it’s a solid bet that today is your one chance until this deal swings around again.

The Studio Buds Plus may not reinvent the wheel when it comes to wireless earbuds, but they offer good sound, noise cancellation, and longer battery life than their predecessors. They may not be quite as good as Apple’s latest AirPods...

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How to change your Mac wallpaper

If you’re tired of all this purple, there’s an easy fix. | Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge

Look, no disrespect to Apple’s default desktop wallpapers, but staring at the same combination of orange and yellow all day, every day, can get a bit boring. If you’ve long felt that your office life could use a bit of spicing up, a new wallpaper could be just the thing you need.

I’m here to show you how. It only takes a few seconds, and I’ll be with you every step of the way.

How to change your Mac wallpaper

First, you’ll want to open System Settings. This is in the Apple menu on the top left of your screen.

From there:

• Scroll down to the Wallpaper tab on the left side.
• If your Mac is plugged into multiple displays, select the display you want to change.
• Select a new wallpaper. Apple has a number of options that you can choose...

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Dropbox blames crypto miners and resellers for ending its unlimited cloud storage plan

Image: Dropbox

Dropbox said in a blog post that it’s implementing a metered model on its Advanced plan in response to customers who have been using Dropbox for cryptocurrency mining, “pooling storage for personal use cases,” and others reselling it.

Because of that, Dropbox is getting rid of its “as much space as you need” offer. Customers who sign up for a Dropbox Advanced plan with three active licenses will instead receive 15TB of storage across their whole team. As for businesses currently on the plan, the company says those using less than 35TB of storage will get to keep that amount, “plus an additional 5TB credit of pooled storage, for five years at no additional charge to their existing plan.”

Dropbox will throw in an additional 5TB of storage...

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Maui County says Hawaiian Electric caused deadly blazes in new lawsuit

Downed power lines block a road as people feed chickens outside a burnt home in the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, western Maui, Hawaii, on August 11th, 2023. | Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images

Maui County has filed suit against Hawaiian Electric, alleging that the utility is responsible for catastrophic damages from wildfires that tore through Maui this month.

The utility “acted negligently by failing to power down their electrical equipment despite a National Weather Service Red Flag Warning” on August 7th, Maui County alleges. The suit says Hawaiian Electric’s downed power lines, while still energized, caused the fire by igniting dry grass and brush. It also alleges that the utility failed to maintain the power grid, causing “systemic failures” that sparked three blazes on August 8th. The county is suing for civil damages affecting public property.

The utility “acted negligently by failing to power down their electrical...

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Can news outlets build a ‘trustworthy’ AI chatbot?

Illustration by Haein Jeong / The Verge

News publishers have jumped headfirst into artificial intelligence, using generative AI tools to produce bland travel guides, inaccurate film blogs, and SEO-bait explainers. By and large, the goal has been: can we make more pages for ads without paying more writers?

Now, a group of tech outlets is attempting to incorporate generative AI into its websites, though readers won’t find a machine’s byline anytime soon. On August 1st, an AI chatbot tool was added to Macworld, PCWorld, Tech Advisor, and TechHive, promising that readers can “get [their] tech questions answered by AI, based only on stories and reviews by our experts.”

The AI chatbot, dubbed Smart Answers, appears across nearly all articles and on the homepages of the sites, which...

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Arm’s IPO will tell us how much AI hype matters

AI hype or mobile reality? | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

I love a circus, and the Arm IPO is kinda looking like a P.T. Barnum production. As our ringmaster, we have SoftBank, the current majority owner of Arm. On the high wire, with no net, we have AI. Riding an elephant, we have mobile. And doing a contortion act, we have US-China relations.

It’s been a slow time for IPOs, and the tech industry’s major silver lining is the AI boom. The bull case for Arm, the Cambridge, England-based company that designs chips, relies on its ability to move into the AI market. After all, in its current iteration, AI relies on massive data centers, stocked with state-of-the-art chips. But its most recent corporate filing raises some other concerns — and the question in my mind is what matters most to these...

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Fortnite’s island gets a luxury makeover thanks to a vampire

Image: Epic Games

Out with the Wilds, in with the Last Resort. _Fortnite’_s latest season kicks off today — bringing the battle royale game up to Chapter 4: Season 4 — and, as teased yesterday, this new drop comes with a heist theme. But not just any heist: this time around, the island has been given a handful of luxurious locations thanks to a new character.

Here’s the basic rundown of the changes and new lore (yes, Fortnite has lore):

Vampire Kado Thorne has made the Island his home in Fortnite Battle Royale Chapter 4 Season 4, draining the Island’s wealth and treasures to fund some pretty fancy real estate: Sanguine Suites, Relentless Retreat, and Eclipsed Estate. Heist goods from Thorne’s properties to take back what belongs to the Island — and more...

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How to turn your photos into stickers in iOS 17

Turning your cat photos into shareable stickers is a cinch in iOS 17. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Last year, iOS 16 gave us the ability to cut subjects out of our photos. It was fun! But it wasn’t totally clear what you should do with them. That changes in iOS 17, which is still in public beta at the moment. You can download it now or wait until the full release this fall, but in either case, you’ll find one excellent way to use your photo cutouts: turn them into stickers.

I know. I was skeptical, too. But you have to trust me on this: stickers in iOS 17 are well worth your time, particularly in iMessage. You’re going to thrill and impress all of your friends when you turn a grumpy picture of your cat into a tapback reaction, and everyone will want to know how you did it. You can tell ‘em we told you, or just keep it to yourself and...

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Donald Trump returns to X / Twitter to post his mug shot

Donald Trump posted his first tweet after getting banned from the platform last year. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Donald Trump has made his return to X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.

On Thursday, the former president turned himself in at the Fulton County jail on over a dozen charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. Over the last five months, Trump has faced criminal charges in four separate cases, but the most recent booking was the first and only time his mugshot was taken. He took the opportunity to make his first post on X since January 8th, 2021.

Image: Screenshot of Twitter / X

The most recent two posts from @realDonaldTrump

That was the day he was permanently banned from the platform by its former management, with the company citing a “risk of further...

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Meta is pulling the plug on Messenger Lite on Android

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta’s Messenger Lite app for Android is being shut down in September, as reported by 9to5Google. The app launched as a more, well, lightweight way to talk to people on the company’s Messenger platform (former Verge staffer Vlad Savov was a fan), but you won’t be able to use it after September 18th.

When you open the app, you’ll apparently see a prompt that pushes you toward the main Messenger app, 9to5Google says. The app also isn’t available to download on Google Play if you haven’t downloaded it before.

Meta confirmed the closure in a statement to TechCrunch. “Starting August 21, people using the Messenger Lite app for Android will be directed to Messenger or FB Lite to send and receive messages on Messenger,” a Meta spokesperson...

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Google Home app finally begins adding support for older Nest Cams

Illustration: The Verge

Google is finally starting to add support for older Nest Cams to the Google Home app, starting with the first-generation Nest Cam Indoor from 2015, according to a post from Google on Thursday.

The support is available in the public preview of the Google Home app, and you can find instructions on how to participate in that program on Google’s website. But it might be awhile until you can actually use your Nest Cam Indoor with the app. “Once you’re in the preview, you’ll see a prompt in the Public Preview version of the Home app when you’re able to transfer your camera (it may take a couple of weeks as we slowly add more Nest Cam Indoor users each week) and it will guide you through the process,” Google says in its post about the update....

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Google is expanding its ads transparency center to comply with EU rules

Illustration: The Verge

Google is making some changes to ads transparency and its data that’s available for researchers to comply with Europe’s Digital Services Act, according to a blog post published Thursday.

Regarding ads transparency, the company says that it will be “expanding” its Ads Transparency Center to “meet specific DSA provisions and providing additional information on targeting for ads served in the European Union,” Google’s Laurie Richardson and Jennifer Flannery O’Connor write in the post. The center, which Google launched earlier this year, is a searchable repository that lets you find out more about the ads you see on Google’s platforms.

For researchers, the two execs say that Google is “expanding data access for researchers” who might be...

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Dune: Part Two has been delayed

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

Dune: Part Two has been delayed to March 15th, 2024, according to The Hollywood Reporterand Variety, and it’s just one of a few big shifts in Warner Bros.’ movie slate. The films are moving around amid the ongoing strikes in Hollywood that have affected production and promotion on many films and TV shows.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has a new date, too, moving from March 15th to April 12th. The upcoming Lord of the Rings anime, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, is shifting from April 12th to December 13th.

However, three big Warner Bros. movies set to release in December are, so far, keeping their premiere dates, THR reports. Wonka is still set for December 15th, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is still set for December...

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Alphabet’s Wing partners with Walmart for drone deliveries in Dallas

Image: Walmart

Wing, the drone delivery service owned by Alphabet, is teaming up with Walmart to offer deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. In an announcement on Thursday, Walmart says the partnership will allow the retailer to deliver to an additional 60,000 homes.

In the coming weeks, Wing will start delivering out of a Walmart Supercenter in Frisco, Texas, before expanding to a second nearby store by the end of this year. The company will make deliveries to homes within six miles of the stores, with deliveries arriving “in under 30 minutes.” Even though Wing says the drones are “highly automated,” operators will still keep an eye on them from a remote location.

Walmart and Wing set to expand drone delivery together in Dallas metro #...

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Citizen suspends sales of its latest smartwatch

Citizen is temporarily suspending sales of its CZ Smart watch. | Image: Citizen

Citizen is temporarily suspending sales of its second-gen CZ Smart watch due to a “technical issue.” The Wear OS watch, which launched in May, had a feature based on tech from IBM’s Watson and NASA to track a person’s alertness.

It appears the decision stems from negative experiences from reviewers. Michael Fisher — better known as MrMobile on YouTube — noted that Citizen said it would suspend sales after he had reached out to the company about the watch’s many issues. That was corroborated by a Wired story, in which reviewer Julian Chokkattu also detailed several bugs, like laggy screens, bad battery life, inaccurate tracking, and watchfaces that can’t even tell the correct time.

Good move. My review of the CZ Smart 2.1 would have...

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Windows 11 will soon get a settings homepage that puts your most-used controls in one place

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is getting closer to releasing a new settings homepage in Windows 11. In an update rolled out to Windows Insiders on the Beta Channel, Microsoft added a homepage with “interactive cards” that let you quickly jump into various settings, such as device personalization, Bluetooth controls, account recovery, and more.

The page will also surface recommended settings that change based on your “specific usage patterns,” giving you shortcuts to whatever settings you use the most, such as display, sound, and search permissions. You can see how all of this might look in the image embedded below.

Image: Microsoft

The new homepage also features recommended settings tailored to your activity.

It looks like...

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The Space Invaders AR game now lets you play without using AR

Imagine this but not outside. | Image: Google

Google and Taito have added a new “indoor mode” to their Space Invaders AR game, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday. In this new mode for Space Invaders: World Defense, the game autopilots your ship through a pregenerated world so you can focus on using your thumb to shoot the aliens.

The new indoor mode was kind of fun for the few minutes I messed around with it. The game has a charming wireframe-y vibe, and mashing the screen to blast the Space Invaders was satisfying. I’m not a huge fan of waving my phone around outside to play a game, so I appreciate that this indoor mode is an option.

Indoor mode unlocked!

SPACE INVADERS: #WorldDefense has a new Indoor mode, so now you can play wherever you are! Take the...

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Monarch Tractor CEO Praveen Penmetsa is coming to the Code Conference

Monarch Tractor CEO Praveen Penmetsa. | Image: Monarch Tractor

Praveen Penmetsa is bringing the AI craze to farms. His company, Monarch Tractor, makes an electric tractor powered by an Nvidia AI platform that allows the vehicle to drive itself through farm fields and work autonomously. The first machines rolled out of the company’s Livermore, California headquarters last year.

Now, Monarch Tractor is scaling up production in partnership with a Foxconn plant in Ohio, and Penmetsa is coming to the Code Conferenceto talk about it. He’ll chat with The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel about making AI accessible, building in the US, and broader concerns around tractor repairability as their technology becomes all the more advanced.

Penmetsa joins a host of other tech and business leaders who’ll be...

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For Native Hawaiian advocates, tech billionaires’ donations don’t go far enough

In an aerial view, burned cars and homes are seen in a surrounding that was destroyed by a wildfire on August 18th, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. | Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Tech giants have accumulated vast properties across Hawaii while Native Hawaiian residents fight to keep their land. It’s a fight that’s heating up in the aftermath of the deadly fires on Maui.

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YouTube tests a new hum-to-search feature on Android

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is testing a new YouTube feature that lets you hum or record a song to search for it.

If you’re part of the YouTube experiment for the feature, you can hum or record three or more seconds of a song so that Google can try to identify it, according to a support page. Once YouTube identifies the song, it will show you relevant content about that song. Basically, it’s a Google-y take on Shazam, which is owned by Apple.

Not everyone will have access to the experiment at first, though. Google says it’s rolling out to “a small percentage of people across the globe who watch YouTube on Android devices.”

This feature isn’t entirely new for Google, as it introduced a hum-to-search feature in the Google app and Google Assistant in 2020....

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How to clean your smartwatch

If your smartwatch is stinky, it’s time to give it a quick clean. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

When was the last time you cleaned your smartwatch? These are devices you wear 24/7, and if you took off your watch right now, there’s a good chance you’d find dead skin, sweat, oil, and grime all over it. A gunky sensor array isn’t the best for health tracking, and crusty charging contacts are also less than ideal. If you’ve experienced any skin irritation or smelled something funky — this may be why.

Plus, I hate to break it to you, but your straps are also filthier than you think. A recent study found that nearly 95 percent of smartwatch wristbands contained high levels of bacteria, including Staphylococcus, E.coli, and Pseudomonas — particularly on porous materials like rubber, plastic, and fabric.

The good news is that cleaning...

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