The Home Assistant Green is here to make the most powerful smart home platform more accessible

The Home Assistant Green can be the main command center for your smart home. | Image: Home Assistant

Buy enough tech and you can’t escape the siren call of a smart home. Amazon practically throws Echo Dots at you. Google will sneak a Nest Mini in the box with almost anything you buy in its store. Good luck buying a new kitchen appliance that doesn’t beg to be connected to the internet. All of those come with platforms that are locked down and cloud-dependent, requiring you to bend to their corporate wishes to use them.

But for the last decade, Home Assistant has been the go-to software for privacy-focused nerds who want all the benefits that Apple, Google, and Amazon products provide with infinitely better flexibility and fewer security risks. And now, for the software’s 10th birthday, the people behind Home Assistant are introducing a...

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Apple continues to use our own mortality as marketing

Apple touted the watch and iPhone’s lifesaving feature in a new ad. | Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge

In recent years, Apple’s presentations have started to feature a new type of messaging: without an Apple Watch, you might be mauled by a bear, drown inside a sinking car, get stuck in a trash compactor, or even succumb to hypothermia after falling through an icy lake.

These disasters have always been averted by the presence of an Apple Watch. But this year, Apple’s messaging has started to change again: it’s not just the Apple Watch that can save you from possible death — but the iPhone, too.

At Apple’s iPhone 15 showcase, the company opened with an ad that weaved together the lifesaving potential of both the Apple Watch and the iPhone. The video depicted people celebrating their birthdays with friends and family, blowing out candles,...

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How to reinvent your phone without buying a new one

Image: William Joel / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 6, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, first of all, hi, hello, welcome, and second of all, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been watching the wacky sci-fi series Command Z from Steven Soderbergh, updating all my browsers to fix a scary security issue, reading and listening to Cory Doctorow rage against Big Tech, cackling at this video about the state of the Hyperloop, trying the Endel app as work music instead of my all-day movie soundtracks playlist, and slowly cleaning up my camera roll with some help from Swipewipe.

Also this week, I have for you a bunch of new Apple gear (shocking, I know), two books worth...

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TikTok will fund Black Friday deals to take on Amazon

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok will try to boost its new online marketplace, TikTok Shop, by funding heavy discounts for the holiday shopping season, starting on October 27th, reports Bloomberg. The social video site reportedly hopes that by subsidizing up-to-50 percent discounts, it can gain a foothold with US holiday shoppers, who turn out in droves for big sales at retailers like Amazon and Walmart every year in November.

Bloomberg says a TikTok spokesperson confirmed the plans, with official Black Friday deals starting at 8PM on November 23rd and deals for Cyber Monday running from November 28th to November 30th.

TikTok rolled out TikTok Shop in the US last week, offering to hold and ship sellers’ products using its own fulfillment centers and launching...

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OnePlus’ next tablet is a budget model called the OnePlus Pad Go

The OnePlus Pad as pictured in The Verge’s April review. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

OnePlus is making a new budget tablet called the OnePlus Pad Go, according to Digital Trends. It will have an 11.6-inch 2.4K screen with a 144Hz refresh rate, according to the article, and will launch with OnePlus’ OxygenOS 13. It’s not clear when it’s coming or for how much, though. The OnePlus India X account teased what appears to be the tablet on Thursday, so it sounds like the tablet is at least launching in India soon.

Digital Trends’ report was light on other details like storage or processor power, but it’s a decent bet OnePlus gave it more modest specs than the OnePlus Pad that came out earlier this year. OnePlus president Kinder Liu is quoted as saying it will be “a mid-tier entertainment tablet.”

The Pad Go’s reported 2800 x...

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The Nintendo Switch OLED and jet-black Xbox Series S are both on sale right now

Who needs the drab white model, anyway? | Image: Nintendo

It’s been an exciting week for Nintendo Switch fans. First, Nintendo announced a whole bunch of games as part of its latest Direct event, including F-Zero 99 — a battle royale spin on the classic racing title — and remakes of both Mario and Donkey Kong and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. And now, the Nintendo Switch OLED is on sale for an all-time low at Monoprice, where you can pick it up with free shipping and blue and red Joy-Cons for just $289.99 ($60 off).

Unlike the standard Switch, the high-end edition boasts a vibrant 7-inch OLED panel, one that’s richer in both contrast and color. Its speakers are louder and clearer, too, and you can store more games on the device itself thanks to its expanded 64GB of internal storage. It...

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Everything you need to know about switching to USB-C

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge

Are you an iPhone user looking to upgrade to... the iPhone? Well, you’ll have more to consider this time around since the new iPhone 15 comes with a USB-C port, ending an 11-year run for the company’s proprietary Lightning charging plug.

USB Type-C (or just USB-C) is the universal charging and data-transferring connector, and it’s now on pretty much every modern gadget, including Apple’s iPads and MacBooks. It might just be the last cable we’ll ever need.

Do I need to buy new chargers?

Apple has made us buy new cables before, but this time, you probably already have the things you need to charge your new iPhone. Apple stopped including charging bricks with the iPhone 12 in 2020, but the 15 and 15 Pro do at least come with a short C-to-C...

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Lightning was great, actually

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The world is rightfully celebrating the iPhone’s switch from Lightning to USB-C this week. People love to hate on Lightning — and they have good reasons to. Many of the world’s most popular devices now use USB-C ports, including Apple’s own iPads, meaning iPhone owners have been stuck toting around an extra cable just for their phone and its accessories.

But if you’ve been living in the Lightning world for the past decade like I have, things have been great anyway. I’m not ashamed to say it: I’m sad that Lightning is finally going away.

The Lightning Life, at least if you have an iPhone, has been convenient. Using a Lightning cable hardly requires any thought — its biggest revelation, at first, was that it could charge your phone no...

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Meta’s next smart glasses may have just shown up in FCC filings

Photo by Amanda Lopez for The Verge

Meta’s next pair of smart glasses made in partnership with Ray-Ban owner Luxottica might be released sometime soon. As spotted by Lowpass’ Janko Roettgers, a listing for a pair of smart glasses by Luxottica Group has surfaced in the FCC’s database. Given that the original Ray-Ban Stories are listed under Luxottica and recent reports on a second-generation pair of the smart glasses, I’m inclined to believe that these filings are for the new specs.

The original Ray-Ban Stories let you capture photos and videos using the cameras next to the lenses and look through what you capture on a companion app. They also have microphones and speakers to capture and play audio. They haven’t been a hit; The Wall Street Journal reported in August that l...

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X will now tell you if someone deletes a post you annotated with a Community Note

Illustration: The Verge

If you add a Community Post to a post on X (formerly Twitter), X will tell you if the person who wrote the post deletes it, the company said on Friday.

“Contributors consistently say their goal is to keep others well-informed,” X wrote on the Community Notes account. “This can happen when a helpful note appears on a post, and also when an erroneous post gets deleted. Starting today, writers will be notified when a post on which they wrote a note gets deleted.”

Contributors consistently say their goal is to keep others well-informed. This can happen when a helpful note appears on a post, and also when an erroneous post gets deleted. Starting today, writers will be notified when a post on which they wrote a note gets deleted. p...

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The newest Steam Deck preview tests VRR, HDR, and improvements for Starfield

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Valve’s next major SteamOS update brings some significant new display settings as well as some new performance improvements to Steam Deck. You can read all about the SteamOS 3.5 update in a blog post on the Steam website.

Two major new features are support for variable refresh rates (VRR) and HDR if you’re using your Steam Deck with an external display that supports them. Valve says that HDR can be enabled if you have a compatible display while VRR can be enabled if you have a compatible USB-C adapter.

The company has also changed the Steam Deck’s default color rendering to “emulate the sRGB color gamut,” which Valve says will result in “a slightly warmer and more vibrant color appearance.” If you don’t like the change, or want to try...

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The iPhone 15 Pro’s 5G modem reportedly boosts speeds by up to 24 percent

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge

The iPhone 15 Pro could come with better 5G connectivity. That’s according to data from SpeedSmart (via 9to5Mac), which indicates that the iPhone 15 Pro will offer up to 24 percent faster download 5G speeds when compared to its iPhone 14 Pro predecessor.

As shown by the data from SpeedSmart, the biggest jump occurred on Verizon’s network, which showed an average download speed of 195.83Mbps on the iPhone 14 Pro, as opposed to 243.06Mbps on the iPhone 15 Pro. Meanwhile, the iPhone 15 Pro on T-Mobile had the fastest average 5G download speeds at 300.92Mbps, as opposed to 204.34Mbps on AT&T.

Image: SpeedSmart

T-Mobile showed the fastest 5G speeds with an iPhone 15 Pro.

Despite this sizeable change, upload speeds...

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Developers fight back against Unity’s new pricing model

Image: Unity

The game developers affected by Unity’s new pricing model are striking back. A collective of developers across 19 companies, mostly based in Europe and mostly developing mobile games, has put out an open letter urging Unity to reverse course on its recently announced pricing model changes. The letter contains some of the same sentiments expressed by other developers this week but with one big twist.

“As a course of immediate action, our collective of game development companies is forced to turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization across our projects until these changes are reconsidered,” the letter read.

Essentially, these companies, which represent thousands of games with billions of downloads, have blocked Unity from making...

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Destiny 2 has one of the worst bugs in its history that’s melting bosses and PvP players

Image: Bungie

Destiny 2 has one of the worst — and most hilarious — bugs in its history right now, allowing players to create guns with perks that are game-breaking in activities or PvP. Players can put shotgun frames on auto rifles, resulting in a weapon that obliterates someone in PvP in milliseconds due to the hugely reduced time to kill.

Destiny 2 players have also been crafting grenade launchers with frames from other weapons, sending hugely explosive projectiles toward enemies and PvP players. Bungie currently has extra rewards running for its Grandmaster Nightfall activity, one of the more challenging sides of the PvE environment. This glitch makes that Grandmaster content light work, as people blast through enemies and bosses with ease.

T...

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How to use Philips Hue’s new smart security system

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Philips Hue Secure is a new smart home security system from the smart lighting company. The system was announced along with some new smart security cameras in August and is now live in the Hue app. However, if you’re a Philips Hue user, you don’t need to buy the new cameras to use the new security features; you just need to update your app to version 5.0.1.

The system works with Hue’s existing smart lights, motion sensors, and new contact sensors ($39.99) that monitor doors and windows. When armed, if the system detects motion or other activity, you get an alert and can choose to trigger all your lights to flash and even set off a Star Trek-style red alert. Add in Hue’s new security cameras, and you get the option of triggering their...

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Google’s Fitbit Charge 6 will finally bring the physical button back

This is not a physical button — and that was the problem. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

We wouldn’t have been totally surprised if Google axed Fitbit entirely after recent woes, but it sounds like the company might be listening instead! 9to5Google is reporting that a Fitbit Charge 6, coming this year, will bring back the physical button.

We panned the Fitbit Charge 5 because of its confusing touchscreen user interface, which was itself a replacement for the confusing capacitive button that haunted the Fitbit Charge 4 and 3. (Here’s an entire Button of the Month column about the lesson Fitbit might have learned from that capacitive key.)

9to5Google doesn’t have a lot of details about the new wearable, but “sources familiar with the matter” tell the publication that it “looks exactly like the Charge 5 except for the...

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Apple is now charging more for most Apple Watch battery swaps

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Apple has increased the price of most Apple Watch battery replacements, as reported by 9to5Mac. The swaps used to cost $79, but now, for Apple Watch Series 4 devices and newer, you’ll have to cough up $99. You can see the prices for yourself on the company’s Apple Watch Service and Repair website by sifting through different versions and models.

It’s unfortunate that some of the battery replacement fees are going up, but I’m also not surprised to see it. Apple bumped up the prices of battery replacements in some iPhones, iPads, and Macs by $20 to $50 earlier this year.

Still, paying for a battery replacement can be a good way to get some extra life out of an older device that otherwise works just fine. It’s what I’m personally thinking...

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In the Google antitrust trial, defaults are everything and nobody likes Bing

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

The first week of US v. Google begins with arguments over the power of deals and data.

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X continues to throttle links to competitors

Twitter is called X now, and the logo still looks weird to anyone who was used to the blue bird. | Illustration: The Verge

The platform formerly known as Twitter still takes a surprisingly long time to load a few bytes of data — at least, if that data leads to a platform that Elon Musk might consider a competitor. An analysis by The Markup has found that X makes users wait about two and a half seconds to access links to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and Substack.

If you click a link on X, you get redirected via X’s link shortener, t.co. Most sites load within 30 to 40 milliseconds. Meta’s platforms, Bluesky, and Substack take more than 60 times longer. The Markup has built a tool that lets you check the load times to any domain yourself.

It isn’t the first time X has throttled competitors. In August, an analysis by The Washington Post revealed that X...

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Valve is taking up to 20 percent off the Steam Deck to celebrate Steam’s 20th anniversary

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Another week, another roundup of celebratory anniversary sales to take advantage of. First up is Valve, which is discounting the Steam Deck through September 21st in honor of Steam’s recent 20th anniversary. There are a number of configurations of Valve’s handheld gaming PC to choose from, with the 64GB configuration going for $359.10 ($39.90 off), the 256GB version going for $449.65 ($79.35 off), and the 512GB version with the anti-glare screen going for $519.20 (about $130 off). Valve is also discounting the long-delayed Steam Deck Docking Station to $71.20 (about $18 off), giving you a cheaper way to connect the handheld to your TV or monitor.

For those unaware, Valve’s Steam Deck wasn’t exactly a winner when it launched early last...

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Google to pay California $93 million over location-tracking claims

Illustration: The Verge

Google has agreed to pay $93 million to the state of California to settle claims it tracked the location of users without their knowledge. Under the terms of the proposed agreement, Google must also provide more information about the location data it collects on users.

The settlement follows a “multi-year” investigation by California’s Department of Justice, which found that Google deceived users into thinking they weren’t getting tracked when they actually were. According to the complaint, Google continued to collect and store location data on users even when they disabled the “Location History” setting within its apps and services, allowing the company to use this information for targeted advertising.

Google told its users that it...

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The EV revolution is on hold as the ‘Big Three’ autoworkers go on strike

Photo by MATTHEW HATCHER / AFP via Getty Images

At midnight on Friday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) went on strike, imperiling the “Big Three” automakers’ plans to spend billions of dollars on electric vehicles in a bid to catch up to Tesla.

It was a historic moment — never before had workers at all three companies gone on strike at the same time — that came as the automakers were in the midst of making a huge high-stakes switch to EVs.

Those plans are now on hold, as Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis workers take to the streets to demand a share of the profits generated by combustion trucks and SUVs as well as stronger job security and better retirement plans.

The UAW stuck to its plans for a targeted walkout to start

The UAW stuck to its plans for a targeted walkout to start....

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Horizon Worlds’ avatars now walk among the virtual universe with their own legs

Meta used an AI model to help bring legs to avatars. | Image: Meta

Virtual avatars in Meta’s Horizon Worlds universe have gained legs, according to UploadVR. You should now see them when looking at other users or checking out your own avatar in a mirror, but your own avatar’s legs aren’t visible from a first-person perspective.

The addition of lower limbs — previously described by Mark Zuckerberg as “probably the most requested feature” — in Horizon Worlds comes after they first appeared in Quest Home. And they arrive as the platform sets out for growth beyond virtual reality with new experiences designed for mobile and the web.

Legs proved to be a technical challenge for Meta

“Seriously, legs are hard, which is why other virtual reality systems don’t have them either,” Zuckerberg said last year....

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The iPhone 15 apparently has a slightly bigger battery

iPhone 15 Pro made a bit more room for battery in there. | Image: Apple

Apple has given its iPhone 15 lineup minor battery capacity bumps by as much as 2.3 percent. The slight upgrade, which Apple has not officially published on its site, was uncovered from a Chinese regulatory database and published by MySmartPrice (via 9to5Mac).

Apple indicates the iPhone 15 lineup has the same battery life capability as last year’s models. The company claims the iPhone 15 Pro Max has up to 29 hours of video playback and up to 95 hours of audio playback, and the 15 Pro has 23 hours of video and 75 hours of audio. Meanwhile, the iPhone 15 Plus is listed with 26 hours of video playback and 100 hours of audio, and the base iPhone 15 ekes out up to 20 hours of video playback from its tank and 80 hours of audio.

Here’s how the...

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How to manage camera and mic permissions on your desktop

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge

If you use Zoom, Google Meet, or any other video conferencing app, it’s likely that at one point you may find yourself frantically trying to figure out why your mic is muted or your camera isn’t working. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of checking the mute or camera buttons on your app — but if that doesn’t work, you may need to manage the permissions for audio and video on your operating system or browser.

The good news is that these permissions aren’t too difficult to manage, no matter which OS or browser you’re using. You can grant permissions to the sites that need it while blocking any others that you don’t trust enough to have access to your camera and mic. Below, we cover how to manage permissions for macOS, Windows, and four of...

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Samsung is bringing artwork from the Met museum to its Frame TVs

Image: Samsung

Samsung is expanding the art selection available on its Frame TVs with the help of a renowned museum. Today, the company and New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced a partnership that will bring 38 pieces from the Met to Samsung’s Art Store. The new artwork is available through a subscription costing either $4.99 per month or $49.90 annually.

In addition to the Met’s artwork, that subscription provides access to “over 2,300 pieces of digital art from more than 800 artists in partnership with world-renowned museums, galleries, and leading art ecommerce platforms.”

In the case of the Met, here’s what you can expect, according to a joint press release from both companies:

Samsung Art Store users can display beloved works of...

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The original Wizardry has been remastered — and you can play it right now

Image: Digital Eclipse

Fresh off the launch of The Making of Karateka, retro game studio Digital Eclipse has announced a remaster of the original action RPG title Wizardry. Even better — it’s out now in early access on both Steam and GOG.

First released in 1981 and developed by Sir-Tech Software, the first Wizardry — or Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, to give it its very long full title — was a first-person, party-based, _D&D-_inspired RPG that proved incredibly influential and kicked off a long-running franchise. Here’s the official description for the uninitiated:

Craft your own party of adventurers and head into the labyrinth at the behest of the mad overlord Trebor, in search of the amulet stolen by the evil wizard Werdna. Battle challenging...

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X can now ask users for government IDs to verify their paid accounts

Users who choose to verify their X accounts using government-issued IDs will get a separate badge alongside their blue check. | Image: X / The Verge

Social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) will now let paid users verify their accounts using a government ID in a bid to prevent impersonation and “maintain the integrity of the platform.” According to X’s updated verification policy (first seen via TechCrunch), the company may also request a government-issued ID “when needed” and is exploring additional measures to protect users from spam, malicious accounts, and content that isn’t age-appropriate. The new verification system was first leaked back in August.

A pop-up window for the feature notes that X is partnering with Israel-based verification company AU10TIX to facilitate the new authorization feature. All verification information — including photographs of user IDs and...

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Artifact co-founder Mike Krieger is coming to the Code Conference

Artifact co-founder Mike Krieger. | Photo: Artifact

Artifact co-founder and CTO Mike Krieger will be onstage at the Code Conference this month, where he’ll discuss his new AI-infused news app in an interview with Platformer founder Casey Newton.

The new company from Krieger and Kevin Systrom, the two founders of Instagram, is trying to build a different and more helpful kind of news app by leaning on AI. It tries to surface interesting articles based on your reading habits, can rewrite headlines to make them more useful, and is increasingly filling up with social features to put a wider variety of content in front of readers.

Just this week, Artifact launched a new feature called Links that recommends any type of content that users feed into it, from recipes to design mockups to old...

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TikTok fined $367 million for how it handled children’s data

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Today, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced a €345 million (around $367 million) fine on TikTok for how the company processes the data of children. The fine follows an investigation by the DPC announced in 2021 that looked at TikTok’s compliance with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws. Politico reported in August that the DPC was preparing to issue its penalty.

The probe focused on a few TikTok features: default account settings; “Family Pairing” settings; and age verification. After consulting with the European Data Protection Board, the DPC found that TikTok set children’s accounts to public by default when they signed up on the platform. That meant that kids’ videos were publicly viewable by...

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