Gadget Hacks

GM confirmed last week that it's bringing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto back to the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500, part of a redesigned infotainment interface arriving later this year on the company's highest-volume vehicles. CarPlay and Android Auto won't take over the whole screen anymore, though. They'll share display space with fuel level, tire pressure, and Super Cruise status instead, according to Autoweek.

Outlook throwing "Your message can't be displayed right now" sends most people straight to a search bar looking for a one-click fix. There isn't one published yet. The Microsoft material reviewed for this guide does not document a fix for this exact wording. What follows is a troubleshooting heuristic for narrowing down whether the problem is a local app glitch, a single damaged message, an account-level issue, or something happening on Microsoft's end. It's not a Microsoft-confirmed diagnostic...

Microsoft has until October 31, 2026, to explain why it waited until December 22, 2025, to disclose a June 2013 internal presentation now central to the Microsoft ValueLicensing antitrust lawsuit. The document, titled "Second-Hand Software" and referred to in a new UK Competition Appeal Tribunal consent order as a "Known Adverse Document," sat undisclosed for roughly four years after ValueLicensing first filed suit in April 2021, according to The Register.

Safari looks almost the same after installing iOS 27. Open it, and the address bar, tab bar, and reading view sit right where they always have. But WIRED found that Apple tucked several new tools into Safari's menus, changes easy to miss if you're just scrolling through a webpage.

Google appears to be rolling out Pixel Live Translate offline mode support for the conversation feature inside the Google Translate app, though the change looks limited to three phone generations so far. According to BGR, Google's updated support documentation lists offline Live Translate on Pixel as available only on Pixel 9, Pixel 10, and Pixel 11 devices.

Apple's EU-mandated energy label has settled a question that used to require teardown videos and guesswork: the iPhone 18 Pro battery capacity comes in at 4,056mAh, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max jumps to 5,391mAh. That Pro Max figure now edges past the Galaxy S26 Ultra's official 5,000mAh typical capacity, with a 4,855mAh rated capacity listed in Samsung's specifications and EU energy-label records.

Google Photos is building a tool that could finally automate the tedious part of making beat-synced Highlight Videos. Android Authority enabled the upcoming Beat Match option inside Google Photos version 7.93.0, uncovering a feature that automatically times photo transitions to a song's beat instead of forcing users to nudge each photo into place by hand.

Apple told developers to "start getting ready ... today" for the iPhone Duo, eight days ago. Eight days later, the iPhone Duo app developer update timeline still has a gap right in the middle of it: no Xcode 27.1 beta, the actual tool developers need to act on that instruction.

Apple's macOS 27 "Golden Gate" puts Siri AI into Spotlight, the right-click menu, and screen-aware queries, but the first hands-on account of it found Siri itself only "occasionally useful." Gizmodo's Kyle Barr spent time with the macOS 27 beta two months ago and came away more impressed with a different feature: AI-assisted Shortcuts, which he called "the real gold" of the release.

Apple TV won 28 television Emmys this year, more than any other outlet, with parent company Apple's total reaching 29 once a separate commercial-category award is folded in. It's the first time Apple TV has finished at the top of the Emmy tally since the service launched in 2019, according to The Hollywood Reporter today.

Apple Music subscribers don't have to wait until December to see their year in music laid out. The 2026 Replay playlist has been quietly taking shape since late winter, breaking down top songs and artists as the year goes rather than dropping all at once (9to5Mac). This guide covers how to get your 2026 Apple Music Replay playlist in the Music app, how to pull up the same stats on the web, and what to check if Replay still isn't showing on your account seven months in.

Farwave, an iPhone and iPad app, lets people find world radio stations by spinning a 3D globe to a region and tapping on a station, according to a 9to5Mac report published last Saturday as part of the outlet's weekly Indie App Spotlight series. The Farwave app is free to download, with a subscription tier that adds podcasts and imported music.

Two phones, same price, different stickers: one says "pre-owned," the other says "refurbished," and a third might claim "certified pre-owned." None of those words alone tells you which phone is the smarter buy (Engadget, this week). The short version: pre-owned describes a phone's ownership history, while refurbished describes a process the phone went through before resale. All refurbished phones are used, but not every used phone has been refurbished (Engadget, this week).

Apple TV boxes don't ship with automatic content recognition, and the Apple TV 4K can't inspect video coming through a television's other inputs, giving it a privacy edge over most other streaming devices and smart TVs, according to Ars Technica's reporting from last year. That's a real advantage, but it doesn't touch app tracking, diagnostics, Siri's data handling, or how the Apple TV app personalizes recommendations. That's where the Apple TV privacy settings below come in.

If your Apple Watch is a Series 6, 7, or 8, an Ultra 1, or an SE 2, there's a compatibility issue to check before anything else about watchOS 27 features. Apple's official compatibility list shows those models won't run it. MacStories, testing the public beta two months ago, found watchOS 27 limited to Series 9 and later, Ultra 2 and later, and the newly added SE 3. That leaves Series 6, 7, 8, Ultra 1, and SE 2 without the update, even though all of those models currently run watchOS 26.

Cultured Code released the Things 3.24 update today, adding Siri AI task creation, full Spotlight search integration, a new XL Portrait widget, and expanded notification snoozing across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. The update is already live on the App Store (9to5Mac; MacRumors).

The Apple CarPlay settings to change after that first pairing aren't hidden exactly, but they do live in two different places: the iPhone's Settings app and CarPlay's own on-screen Settings, reached from the car's display. CarPlay ships with a handful of options that adjust how it looks and behaves, and most are worth checking once the initial setup is done (Engadget, yesterday).

Less than a month after launch, Pixel 11 owners are running into a scattered set of problems: a phone that won't survive its own setup screen, videos full of static, spotty Wi-Fi, and a hit game that refuses to launch at all.

Some PCs upgrading from Windows 11 23H2 or 24H2 to 25H2 run into a specific, confusing failure: "We couldn't update the system reserved partition," paired with error code 0x800f0922 (also logged as 0xc1900104). A Microsoft Q&A thread posted late last year reports a connection between this failure and devices running a 100 MB EFI System Partition, smaller than Microsoft's current sizing minimum (Microsoft Q&A). That's the scenario driving this look at Windows 10 to Windows 11 upgrade partition...

iOS 27 lands as a free software update on Monday, September 14, Apple confirmed yesterday, and the biggest of the new iOS 27 features by far is Siri AI: a rebuilt assistant Apple says can read what's on your screen, dig through your messages and photos, and pull live answers from the web.