Gadget Hacks

Google appears to be rolling out a Play Store redesign that changes the look and navigation of the Apps and Games tabs. The update adds pill-shaped sub-tabs, moves Top charts and Categories into separate pages, and makes personalized recommendations the default view when you open either section, Android Authority reported July 8.

MOFT's Find My-enabled MagSafe wallets are now shipping after more than a year of delays since their CES 2025 debut. Two models have been independently reviewed: the Snap-on Phone Stand & Wallet at $49.99 and the Tripod Wallet, which Tom's Guide lists at $59.99 on Amazon. MOFT's January 2026 CES preview listed all three models at $49.99, so the Tripod's current $59.99 price reflects a post-launch adjustment. A third option, the Field Wallet, was described by MOFT at CES 2026 as a "minimalist...

Microsoft's July 2026 Xbox reset has revived a question the company has not publicly answered: if Xbox no longer works as a traditional console business, could Microsoft sell it?

BBC director-general Matt Brittin confirmed this week that the corporation has held early talks with Channel 4 about a possible streaming partnership, with the most concrete idea being Channel 4 content distributed through BBC iPlayer while Channel 4 retains its ad-funded business model. The timing was pointed: Brittin's appearance before the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee came just two days after Sky announced a £1.6 billion acquisition of ITV, according to Hollywood...

A growing number of Google Home Speaker owners are hitting a wall before the device ever plays a single note. The Google Home Speaker setup issue surfaced in reports Thursday, with buyers across multiple countries finding that the speaker fails to complete first-time onboarding and then loops through the same error when they try to fix it. Google has confirmed its engineering team is investigating but has no root cause, no working fix, and no timeline for resolution, Android Authority reported...

Google removed a long-standing exemption from its cloud storage rules this week. Starting July 7, Android backups count toward Google Account storage: SMS messages, call history, and device settings now draw from the same shared quota as Gmail, Drive, Google Photos, and WhatsApp backups.

During a pre-briefing the night before Build 2026, a Microsoft developer instructed an AI agent to delete all the files on his desktop. The agent appeared to comply. The desktop looked clean. "That's a lie," the developer said the files were fine because, as he explained, "the container won't allow it," according to VentureBeat's coverage of the briefing. That demonstration captures the promise of Microsoft Execution Containers for AI agents in one clean image. It also raises the question worth...

The July 2026 Pixel update began rolling out Tuesday, marking Google's first monthly patch since Android 17 launched last month. The headline fix addresses a bug that could leave devices stuck in a restart loop, unable to load Android at all. A separate fix covers apps unexpectedly closing or refusing to launch across every supported device.

Code in iOS 27 beta 3 suggests Apple is preparing to add Apple Wallet car key support for Lucid Motors and Xiaomi, with identifiers "LCID" and "XIA1" surfacing in the build. The findings were reported today by MacRumors and 9to5Mac, both drawing on code analysis by Aaron Perris. The discovery comes days after Apple's backend was updated to add Volkswagen to the same list.

Airline apps will tell you when your flight is delayed. They won't tell you whether that delay means you'll miss your connection. The Flighty Connection Assistant is built to close that gap, tracking both legs of a connecting itinerary simultaneously and pushing an alert while travelers still have time to act, according to Flighty's help documentation.

This guide is for local administrators and technically capable users on unmanaged or lightly managed Windows 11 Pro systems whose executable, batch, or PowerShell script files have stopped running after installation or a feature update. Corporate devices enrolled in Intune or joined to a domain with Group Policy are a different situation those paths are called out explicitly below.

A leak posted today on X claims Samsung will open pre-reservations for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 as soon as July 8. The tip comes from a single source, Abhishek Yadav, and Samsung has not announced it. But a separate report noted that this year's pre-registration window is reportedly compressed to just a few days before the expected July 22 Unpacked event, 9to5Google reported two weeks ago, so the compressed timing fits. What matters before acting on that is understanding which device the reservation...

Google Wallet appears to be rolling out expanded transaction history for Android that includes payments made on paired Wear OS devices. For watch users, it closes a straightforward problem: the Android app previously showed only the 10 most recent tap-to-pay transactions from that specific phone, with Wear OS payments excluded entirely. Verifying a watch payment meant opening a browser, not the Wallet app.

Samsung's Home Up module picked up a significant update today, adding configurable multi-finger gestures to Galaxy phones. The Samsung Home Up screenshot gesture is the headline addition: users running One UI 9 can now assign a finger-based capture action to a swipe, giving them an alternative to the palm swipe method Samsung phones have relied on for years, according to Android Authority.

In late October 2025, Niagara Launcher published a support note that was, in its quiet way, a small admission of defeat. Google Play services had started blocking the launcher from opening certain Unity-made games a Niagara Launcher Google Play services issue the team could do nothing about. Not because of a Niagara bug. There was nothing to patch, nothing to push. According to the team's help page, it appeared that Google had rolled out new firewall rules in response to a Unity engine...

Microsoft is spinning off four Xbox game studios today and cutting roughly 3,200 jobs across its gaming division. Buried inside that restructuring is something worth separating out: Double Fine and Compulsion Games are leaving with their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games, according to the Xbox Wire memo. That deal structure is unusual enough in games industry M&A to warrant a closer look at what it actually means and what the reporting hasn't confirmed yet.

The UK government is drawing up legislation that would require YouTube and other video platforms to make public service broadcaster content prominently discoverable, Deadline reported two weeks ago. Under the proposed Media Bill, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Paramount-owned 5 would be named beneficiaries. In practical terms, that could mean boosting official clips from shows like Question Time in user feeds and search results, though exactly which surfaces would be covered remains publicly...

Samsung is expected to report Q2 2026 operating profit of around 86 trillion won (approximately $56 billion), roughly 18 times what it earned in the same quarter a year ago, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate drawn from 30 analysts weighted by track record, The Star reported yesterday. That would mark a third consecutive record quarter, driven by what analysts describe as a prolonged shortage across the entire memory market, not just premium AI chips.

The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold presents a specific kind of buying dilemma. Closed, it's a 6.3-inch smartphone. Open, it's an 8-inch tablet. The Galaxy S25 is a 6.2-inch phone that fits in a back pocket and does exactly what it promises. The question this comparison actually answers isn't which device is better in the abstract it's whether a bigger screen justifies everything you give up to get it, especially when a discounted foldable starts closing the price gap with a compact conventional...

A Pixel imported into a country where Google doesn't officially sell it runs the same chip, takes the same photos, and largely runs the same software as any other Pixel right up until the local carrier shuts down its 3G network. At that point, the phone may stop making calls entirely because Google doesn't enable Voice over LTE (VoLTE) in unsupported markets, per Android Authority. That's not a SIM-tray curiosity. That's a phone that stops working as a phone.