The Latest from Gadget Hacks

Ask three different people what "Microsoft Copilot" does, and there's a good chance you'll get three different answers, and all of them will be partially right. That's the problem. Microsoft Copilot isn't one product. It's a family of surfaces, and each one sees a different slice of your data. Mixing up Copilot Chat with Microsoft 365 Copilot, or a Teams meeting assistant with the standalone Researcher agent, is a common reason people asking how to use Microsoft Copilot for research end up with...

Netflix's July shareholder letter contained a number that cuts against a decade of streaming-industry assumptions: revenue grew 13% year over year to $12.6 billion, while member viewing hours for the first half of 2026 grew just 2%. The two figures don't cover identical periods, but the gap is wide enough to raise a real question at the heart of any credible Netflix monetization strategy: if people aren't watching dramatically more, what's actually driving the revenue?

Google has begun rolling out Motion Assist, an Android 17 feature that displays motion-synced dots onscreen to help reduce or eliminate the nausea that comes from using a phone in a moving vehicle. In its own materials, Google calls it Motion Assist by Google. Availability is spotty even among Pixel phones running Android 17, according to reports published last week by Android Authority and MobileSyrup.

The Apple Maps Lake America update still hasn't happened. As of today, the app labels the body of water between New York and Ontario "Lake Ontario," even after President Trump signed an executive order renaming it and, according to his interior secretary, personally asked Apple to make the switch (CBS News; AP News).

Type "Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra lowest price" into a search bar right now and the answer hasn't moved: $2,099.99, exactly what Samsung charged when the phone launched. Reviews published last month still list that figure, and none of them point to a retailer markdown, a price-tracker record, or any confirmed Samsung Z Fold 8 Ultra discount (PCMag UK). Anyone hoping for a Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra deal this week will need to keep watching, or decide whether the launch price is worth paying now.

Talk to enough app developers about platform strategy and someone will eventually repeat a version of the same claim: foldable phone users spend more on apps, so building foldable-specific features is worth the engineering cost. It's a tidy story, and it fits with what everyone already assumes about early adopters of expensive hardware. It also isn't backed by any published dataset. No research reviewed for this article measures in-app spending, subscription conversion, or revenue per user by...

A leaked hands-on video posted by Instagram account mundoelectronica.aa has given the clearest look yet at Samsung's unannounced Galaxy S26 FE, showing the phone next to its retail packaging in a glossy shade reportedly called "Blueberry." Android Authority described it as showing off every important design element of the phone, retail box included, making it the most complete pre-launch look at the device so far.

Apple has given Siri a dedicated Mac app for the first time, with its own icon in the Dock.

Parallels recently announced Parallels Desktop 27, adding a Metal-based graphics driver that brings hardware-accelerated OpenGL 4.3 to Windows virtual machines on Apple silicon Macs. The company describes the capability as unique among Mac virtualization tools, though that comparison comes from Parallels itself rather than independent testing.

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold cracked along both antenna lines next to its hinge during a bend test, and its outer display popped clean off the frame, Trusted Reviews and Android Authority reported. The test comes from Zack Nelson, who runs the YouTube channel JerryRigEverything and put the phone through a series of scratch, flame, dust and bend tests, according to Trusted Reviews.

Continuity isn't one setting tucked into a menu. iOS, iPadOS, and macOS bundle nearly a dozen distinct tools under that name, everything from AirDrop and Handoff to lesser-known features like Continuity Sketch and Instant Hotspot (Apple Support, earlier this year). Knowing how to use Apple Continuity well means matching the right feature to the right task, not switching everything on and hoping it sorts itself out.

Pixel Watch 4 owners who feel left out of the Pixel Watch 5 launch have a workaround. According to Android Authority, Reddit user m0rr0ng0 found that sideloading a newer build of the Pixel Watch Faces app unlocks five Pixel Watch 5 faces: Weave, Chronograph, a Steph Curry edition, Multicolor Reveal, and Multicolor Modular.

Microsoft announced its new Xbox disc-to-digital program on August 26, with testing opening to Xbox Insiders on August 31. The feature lets owners of "most" Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs unlock a digital copy of a game simply by inserting the disc and launching it.

Chrome didn't kill ad blocking. It killed one specific technical approach, and took a popular extension's full functionality down with it. If ads have started slipping through since your last Chrome update, or an old uBlock Origin install stopped filtering the way it used to, the good news is that ad blockers that still work in Chrome are easy to find, once you know which one actually matches your problem.

Android users spotted something unfamiliar in their Play Store update queues last Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026: an app called "Android Pulse," often showing up as a blank square with no icon at all. So what is the Android Pulse app doing on millions of phones? According to 9to5Google, it's a first-party Google tool built for diagnostics rather than anything malicious, and its Play Store listing shows more than 10 million downloads.

For years, Apple Notes was a one-way street. Text went in and mostly stayed there, with no built-in way to hand a note back out in a format other writing tools could actually read. iOS 26 changes that by building native, two-way Markdown support into Notes, and this guide walks through how to import and export Markdown in Apple Notes on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Google has confirmed the Made by Google 2026 keynote for Wednesday, August 12, six days from now, kicking off at 6 p.m. ET / 3 p.m. PT, notably later in the day than usual (9to5Google, last month). This is a practical guide to how to watch the Google Pixel 11 event: exactly when it starts, where the stream is expected to show up, and what Google and outside reporting expect to land on stage.

This guide walks you through preordering any of the three new Galaxy foldables in a way that minimizes total cost or preserves flexibility, depending on which matters more to you. By the end, you'll know which channel fits your situation, how to run a real cost comparison, and what to verify before submitting your order.

Battery damage from heat doesn't announce itself. It builds quietly through July and August, and by the time September's heat waves roll in, a phone that used to coast to bedtime can barely make it past lunch. Summer is the season when phones take their biggest annual hit to battery health, and most of that damage happens in ways that don't feel serious in the moment, according to CNET. Knowing how to protect your phone battery from summer heat means understanding what's actually happening...

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 iFixit teardown has produced a provisional 4/10 repairability score, with iFixit pointing to a fragile inner display, an intricate hinge, and dust protection that falls short in real-world conditions, according to Android Authority.

Most Mac users assume the system language is all-or-nothing: change it, and everything from Finder to your third-party apps follows along. That's not quite right. macOS has a dedicated setting for how to change language for individual apps on Mac, letting you override one app's display language while leaving the rest of the system exactly as it was.

Google closed its Pixel 11 launch event in New York on August 12 the way it opened: with Trevor Noah on stage. Near the end, Rick Osterloh, Google's hardware chief, joined him, apparently to wrap things up, after a lineup expected to include Alex Cooper, Steph Curry, PinkPantheress and Ayami Nakajo, according to Engadget's live coverage of the show. It made for solid television. It made for a thinner night of proof.

Samsung's new Galaxy Z8 lineup set a preorder record in South Korea, and the standard Fold8, not the pricier Ultra, carried most of it. That's the story behind the Samsung Galaxy Z8 preorder record set this week: Samsung said the lineup drew more than 1.44 million preorders in South Korea during the seven-day window that ended Monday, Aug. 3, the highest preorder total for any Galaxy phone the company has ever released, foldable or not, according to The Korea Times.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 bend test that JerryRigEverything ran this week threw the toughest thing a durability channel can throw at a foldable: reverse-direction flex, the failure mode that has cracked hinges and popped screens loose on lesser phones. The Fold 8 didn't crack, and nothing popped loose (JerryRigEverything, this week).

Google says its notification-abuse defenses cut Android notification volume by more than 7 billion messages a day in 2026, according to Google's security team. That number reframes what looks like a minor annoyance, a browser popup asking permission to send updates, into a large-scale security fight Chrome has been waging for years without much fanfare.

Samsung Galaxy S26 FE leaked images posted this week give the public a new unofficial look at the company's next Fan Edition phone. A Telegram account called "The Cipher Project" shared three photos showing the device in black, light green, and dark purple, according to 9to5Google.

Apple's China support site posted, then quietly pulled, a guide showing Mac users how to connect Alibaba's Qwen model, known in mainland China as Qianwen, to Siri and Writing Tools. The page went live on August 8 and disappeared within a day, according to Particle. It is the most detailed public look yet at how Apple Intelligence Qwen integration is meant to work, even though Apple has not confirmed the feature is actually live.

Four months ago, Google Messages for web began warning users that "QR code pairing is going away soon." The prompt urges people to sign in to Google Messages for web with a Google account "to avoid interruption," an early warning of a removal Google has since completed in the United States.

Samsung set August 7, 2026, as the general availability date for the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, but some customers have seen estimated arrival dates extend well beyond launch day.

Hands-on coverage of the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL from Android Authority has now shown off details of at least one launch color. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold hasn't gotten that treatment. Everything anyone knows about which Pixel 11 Pro Fold color to buy still traces back to retail listings that leaked last month, not anything Google has shown directly.

In yesterday's announcements, Google detailed three headline Pixel 11 camera features, and the coverage that followed backs up a rival comparison for exactly one of them. How-To Geek writes that Camera Looks "parallels Apple and Samsung features that let you adjust photo styles to match your tastes" (How-To Geek). Magic Capture and the Pro line's 8K Pro Stable Video mode don't have a named comparison point anywhere in the reporting reviewed here. That's not proof Google invented something...

Google says its latest Gemini for Home update makes timers and alarms faster and more accurate. It's the third time since May the company has made close to that same claim, following updates on May 11, May 28, and June 23 (9to5Google, 3 months ago; Android Police, 2 months ago; 9to5Google, 6 weeks ago). The cited reports provide no performance figures for any of the three updates, and no independent review available for this article tested alarm accuracy after the June update shipped.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 crease is far less visible than on earlier Fold models, according to hands-on reviews published last week, and that alone has helped tip a head-to-head reader poll decisively in the phone's favor. In a survey of more than 1,000 readers, Android Authority found the standard Fold 8 took 59% of the vote to the pricier Fold 8 Ultra's roughly 26% (Android Authority, last week). But a redesigned hinge and a flatter screen don't automatically answer the question that has...

Some YouTube users say they no longer have to tap play at all. Opening the app is apparently enough to start a Short playing, according to a report from Android Authority published today. One user described a Short auto-launching through connected earphones and waking a sleeping partner, with no interaction involved beyond opening the app.

TikTok videos on Disney Plus are becoming real, and Disney+ subscribers will start seeing that content inside the app within the next few months. The rollout stems from a global Disney Plus TikTok partnership the two companies announced yesterday, according to The Walt Disney Company's announcement and USA Today. Opt-in creators will have their short-form videos appear on both TikTok and Verts, the vertical-video feed built into the Disney+ mobile app.

A teardown of the second Android 17 QPR2 beta has surfaced a hidden feature called Voicecast, according to Android Authority. The Google Pixel Voicecast feature would let Pixel phones broadcast a user's live voice over Bluetooth, a capability their phones currently lack: existing Pixel audio-sharing tools handle music and video, but not a microphone feed.

The Apple Intelligence subscription cost for Home app camera features now has a specific number attached to it: $9.99 a month, tied to Apple's 2TB iCloud+ plan. That figure comes from beta release notes for macOS 27, the update Apple calls Golden Gate internally, which confirm that AI-powered camera tools require the top iCloud+ tier even though the features themselves run on iPhone and iPad (MacRumors; MacRumors).

Samsung Electronics' phone business lost money in the same quarter its chip division posted the most profitable quarter in company history. The MX and Networks unit, which sells Galaxy phones, tablets, wearables and networking gear, reported an operating loss of KRW 0.7 trillion for the second quarter of 2026, even as the company's chip division posted KRW 89.2 trillion in operating profit and companywide operating profit hit an all-time high of KRW 89.5 trillion, according to Samsung's...

Turning off Roku's automatic content recognition system took investigators at The Markup 11 to 24 clicks. That click count applies specifically to Roku's ACR setting on Roku TVs, the feature built into Roku's television hardware rather than its streaming sticks (The Markup, 2023). Even after finding it, disabling ACR doesn't answer the bigger question most people actually have: how to stop Roku from tracking what you watch across every app you open. This guide walks through the Roku privacy...

Google is testing a redesigned Android voice search button that turns the familiar mic icon into a swipeable toolbar with four modes: Search, AI Mode, Search Live, and Song Search, replacing what used to be a single-purpose transcription tool (9to5Google, reported this week; corroborated by Android Headlines).