Software & Apps

A new PC optimization app made by the team behind Compready has been released called HyperTune geared towards mainstream gamers looking to overclock their systems. The new overclocking and optimization tool is backed by Intel directly and is designed by experienced individuals in the PC tuning and overclocking industry to squeeze out the most amount of performance from a system without compromising stability or longevity.

The Hypertune app runs on a subscription-based model for $9.99 a month or $119.99 a year - though Hypertune is offering a 50% discount on its yearly subscription at the time of writing. The app focuses on improving both hardware and software by providing automated tools for overclocking the CPU and GPU, tuning memory, and optimizing the PC's network connection. There are also tools for optimizing graphics settings through game profiles, and optimizing Windows by cleaning up unnecessary background apps. If that's not enough, users can also book a call with experienced IT technicians through Hypertune to provide a manual tune-up of your PC for $80.

The app is reportedly built on Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) software developer kit and was made in close collaboration with Intel. The developers behind Hypertune also worked with Pieter Plaisier to help improve Hypertune's overclocking capabilities. Plaisier is a famous overclocker, known as SkatterBencher, who has helped break countless overclocking records over the years. He also provides overclocking guides and puts loads of effort into making guides for real-world overclocks that focus on stability.

NVIDIA's built-in statistics overlay has quietly picked up one of its most requested missing features. Version 11.0.9 of the NVIDIA App adds CPU temperature, clock speed, and power consumption to the overlay.

NVIDIA notably did not mention the addition in the official 11.0.9 release notes, which only document DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, per-application Resizable BAR controls, and a handful of interface changes. It went largely unnoticed until Reddit picked it up.

It's worth mentioning that NVIDIA has offered CPU monitoring through its separate FrameView utility for years, but those metrics were not available in the NVIDIA App's own in-game statistics. The new update finally brings them directly into the same interface used for GPU, FPS, and DLSS information.

Microsoft has announced Project Zenith, which is a stripped-down version of Windows 11 for AI developers. It's built for devices with at least 64GB of unified memory and 250+ GB/s memory bandwidth, with the goal, as Microsoft puts it, of delivering a "ready-to-code distraction-free Windows experience" on "developer-class" devices.

With that, AMD confirms that its Ryzen AI Halo systems (aka AMD's answer to NVIDIA's DGX Spark mini PC) will be the first to support Project Zenith out of the box, with this customized, developer-focused version of Windows pre-installed with Visual Studio Code, WSL, GitHub Copilot CLI, Python 3.14+, WSL 2+ Ubuntu, PowerShell, and more to help streamline development, testing, and iteration. Microsoft confirms that more devices from its OEM partners will support Project Zenith in the coming months.

Even for enthusiasts who aren't AI developers, some of Project Zenith's out-of-the-box features and settings sound like an improvement over vanilla Windows 11. For example, by default, File Explorer in Project Zenith shows file extensions, hidden files, full paths in the title bar, and details. Also, Start menu tips and account notifications are turned off to "reduce distractions."

Windows 11 looks to be getting a useful new addition to the widget panel that'll help you keep an eye on the battery life of your devices.

Zac Bowden of Windows Central spotted that there are references to a battery widget in the latest preview builds of Windows 11 - as flagged on Discord - although this functionality isn't actually live in testing yet.

We can see how the widget will work, though, and it will display the battery life of the host device if it's a laptop (of course), as well as the battery levels of any connected peripherals such as Bluetooth keyboards or headphones.

Windows 11 version 26H2 has landed in the Release Preview Channel, giving Insiders their first real look at this year's annual feature update before it rolls out to everyone else. Microsoft confirmed the release in a Windows Insider blog post on August 27, with the update carrying build number 26300.9278.

If you've been keeping up with monthly Windows updates, 26H2 probably won't feel like much of a jump. It ships as an enablement package, or eKB, which is a small file that switches on features already sitting dormant in the system rather than replacing anything wholesale. Versions 24H2, 25H2, and 26H2 all share the same servicing branch, so most of what shows up in 26H2 has technically already been rolling out gradually through regular monthly updates.

For commercial and enterprise devices specifically, 26H2 turns on a handful of things that were previously available but not enabled by default, including Windows Settings Backup, app-specific actions from the taskbar, and some File Explorer improvements. IT admins looking to prepare their fleets can find Microsoft's guidance through the "Get ready for Windows 11, version 26H2" support page.

Microsoft is building remote power controls into Link to Windows, the Android companion app for Phone Link on Windows 11. Code discovered in an August 25 build of the app reveals a RemoteControlManager component and a flag called "isRemotePcControlsV2Enabled", which is currently disabled.

The strings point to a full set of new controls beyond the existing Lock PC button. Restart and shut down are the big ones, but there are also Update and restart and Update and shut down options. A sleep option is also present, though it comes with a caveat spelt out in the app's own warning message. Once the PC goes to sleep, it disconnects from the phone, meaning users would need physical access to wake it again.

Confirmation dialogues are also being worked on for situations where remote commands could cause problems. Restarting or shutting down during an update triggers a warning that unsaved work in open apps will be lost and cannot be saved remotely. A separate generic warning asks users to confirm they have saved anything important before pulling the trigger from their phone.

NVIDIA has confirmed that it will drop Windows 10 support for its Game Ready and Studio Drivers in November 2026, which may be a problem for millions of Steam users.

While most gamers have moved to Windows 11, millions still use Windows 10. Valve's latest Steam Hardware Survey shows 23% of Steam users are still using Windows 10, which is nearly 1 in 4 Steam users, or about 20 - 30 million Steam users. NVIDIA will release the final compatible driver in October 2026, after which users will receive only quarterly security updates through October 2029.

This announcement from NVIDIA coincides with Microsoft's original end-of-support date for Windows 10, set for October 14, 2025. NVIDIA has maintained support for one year beyond Microsoft's cutoff, giving users time to transition. But come November, users will need to upgrade to Windows 11 to receive the latest performance and game optimizations for newly released titles.

Microsoft is testing a hidden Windows 11 feature that lets users manually reserve unified memory for graphics and AI-heavy workloads, rather than leaving Windows to manage it dynamically. The discovery, internally called IntelligentCarveout, was spotted in Windows 11 Insider build 29648.1000 and confirmed by Windows Latest, with code strings referencing "reserved memory for accelerators" and "memory for graphics and AI acceleration."

For context, unified memory refers to a shared pool of high-bandwidth memory accessible by the CPU, GPU, and other processors, rather than the dedicated VRAM found on traditional discrete graphics setups. Windows currently manages that pool dynamically, shifting resources between workloads as needed.

That works fine for everyday multitasking, but it can become a problem for heavier workloads such as local AI inference or demanding games, where background tasks and foreground applications compete for the same memory.

Microsoft is finally updating Windows 11's privacy and security settings to give users more direct control over what apps can or can't access your PC or laptop's microphone, camera, and location settings. As spotted by Windows Latest, a recent Experimental Insider PC Build 26340.9212 for Windows 11 lets you choose which desktop apps can access these features.

For native Microsoft Store apps, you've been able to choose which apps can, say, access your microphone for years. However, when it comes to more traditional desktop Win32-style apps, like Discord, Chrome, and anything else that launches via a .exe file, this feature was missing. Before this update, you had a single catch-all toggle that let all desktop apps access your microphone, camera, and location settings.

And with that, you were beholden to in-app settings or Windows pop-ups to confirm which desktop app could access them. As seen in this preview build, the 'Privacy & security' section of Windows 11's Settings removes the separate "Let desktop apps access your camera/microphone/location" toggle and instead places each app in the same dropdown menu as native Microsoft Store apps.

The latest Linux kernel has made the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) a hard requirement for x86 processors, ending decades of compatibility code that allowed the operating system to run on hardware without reliable TSC support. The change, committed to Linux 7.2 under the title "x86/cpu: Make CONFIG_X86_TSC unconditional," removes the configuration logic that previously allowed the kernel to be built without TSC support.

Before you panic, this is not Linux's equivalent of Windows 11's TPM 2.0 requirement. The TSC has been present in x86 processors since the Intel Pentium launched in 1993. If your CPU was made within the last three decades, it almost certainly has one. The change is really about finally removing compatibility code for hardware that is unlikely to be running a modern Linux kernel anyway.

The TSC itself is a 64-bit register that provides high-resolution timing and can be read far more quickly than platform alternatives such as HPET or the ACPI PM timer. Reading a TSC-based timer can take tens to hundreds of CPU cycles, while falling back to a motherboard-based timer can take roughly 0.8 to 1.0 microseconds.

Microsoft has apparently settled on an answer to a question it's been asking itself for years: where does Copilot actually belong? According to a new support document, the standalone Copilot app and Microsoft 365 Copilot are merging into a single app, with the rollout starting on mobile this week, followed by Windows and macOS as an opt-in over the coming weeks.

The unified app keeps chat and image generation while adding direct access to Word, Excel, Outlook, and other Microsoft 365 apps and files, plus support for personal, work, and school accounts in one place, logically separated for data purposes. Group Chat, Podcasts, and Deep Research are all being retired for consumers starting August 18, with existing content still downloadable beforehand.

Free users keep basic chat and image creation, while a Microsoft 365 subscription apparently still unlocks higher limits and more advanced tools. CEO Satya Nadella has reportedly said a fuller "super app," which will also bring Copilot's coding and agentic tools, is coming later this quarter under exec Jacob Andreou.

Microsoft has reportedly raised the price of Windows OEM licenses by up to 10%, according to Taiwan's Economic Daily News. PC brand executives cited in the report say Microsoft typically adjusts licensing fees for hardware makers every year, but the increases have historically stayed in the low single digits. Starting in July, that number jumped to an average of 7% to 10%, described as the largest hike in recent memory.

OEM licenses are the fees manufacturers pay to preinstall Windows on new laptops and desktops. Customers never see a separate line item for this cost since it gets folded into the price of the finished machine.

Microsoft hasn't confirmed the new rates publicly, and it's still unclear whether the increase applies globally or only to specific manufacturers, regions, or product tiers. These fees reportedly scale with CPU specs too, so higher-end configurations may carry steeper licensing costs than budget machines.

Microsoft Word began as a word processor for MS-DOS back in the 1980s, a time when most personal computer software was all about databases, spreadsheets, and typing up documents. Yes, a time when a PC was referred to as a Personal Computer because before then, computers were the size of rooms and limited to places like universities. Over the years, Microsoft Word has evolved, with the more familiar Microsoft Word for Windows version arriving in 1989.

With its old-school interface and lack of any special features like spell checking, it's a relic of a different time. One of the big innovations that Microsoft Word brought to the table was its WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design, meaning that what you saw on-screen was how the document would look when printed. The shift to Microsoft Word for Windows opened the door to a more intuitive user interface, helping MS Word become the most popular word processor on the market.

And with that, thanks to the source code for Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a for Windows 3.0 becoming publicly available in 2014, someone has taken the time to port it to Windows 11 as an x64 Windows executable that can run on modern PC hardware.

Windows 11's built-in Weather app is apparently one of the most wasteful apps on the entire OS, and the numbers are surprisingly bad. According to testing from Windows Latest, just opening the app can push RAM usage past 1.2GB, and it apparently spikes as high as 1.6GB once you start interacting with it.

The app is actually MSN Weather wearing a trenchcoat. It's built as a WebView2 web wrapper rather than a native app, and expanding the process tree in Task Manager reveals nine separate Chromium-based sub-processes running underneath it. That's a lot of overhead just to display a forecast.

For comparison, Apple's native Weather app on macOS reportedly uses around 246MB for the same basic function, roughly a fifth of what Windows 11 needs. It also doesn't show ads, while Windows 11's version apparently slots sponsored tiles directly into the forecast grid.

A video making the rounds on X shows what's being called a "3D OS," built around a cube-shaped desktop. It looks like there is a window mapped to each of five faces, while the viewer's perspective sits on the sixth.

The user who posted it, kapilansh_twt, captioned it "I built the first 3D OS," though that claim isn't confirmed, and it's not clear whether they're the actual developer or just sharing someone else's project. Either way, it looks like a real custom build, not a mockup.

In the clip, apps run on each face of the cube, and the demo drags a window from the right side across to the left, then down to the bottom, all on a normal 2D laptop screen. It's a neat trick of perspective, using rotation and depth to fake a spatial desktop without any headset involved. There seems to be some kind of head tracking involved, although that could very easily be faked using camera trickery.

The RAMpocalypse, or memory crisis, is very real, and with seemingly no end in sight, if you've been following the notebook and laptop market this year, you'll notice that a lot more devices are being sold with 16GB and even 8GB of memory. For the foreseeable future, it's looking increasingly likely that PC hardware with less memory will be the new norm, and this is a reality that Microsoft is keenly aware of.

As spotted by Windows Latest, the company behind Windows 11 is quietly removing references to 32GB of RAM as a recommendation for the best Windows experience. These references to 32GB of RAM being recommended were found in a few different Windows Learning Center articles, including one all about optimizing your PC for gaming.

That article has now been removed, which previously contained the line "32GB is ideal for serious players who run the most demanding titles or use heavy mods." Now, this doesn't change the fact that having 32GB of RAM on a Windows 11 PC built primarily for PC gaming is, in fact, "ideal." But it does point to Microsoft's very serious and very recent push to optimize the operating system for devices with 8GB and 16GB of memory.

Large PDFs are a normal part of modern technical work. Product specifications, compliance documents, research papers, and software documentation all require more than simply opening a file. They need editing, searching, converting, and organizing without disrupting existing layouts. While AI can quickly explain complex information, it still depends on dedicated software for precise document processing. UPDF brings both capabilities together, making it a compelling Adobe Acrobat alternative for Windows users.

Artificial intelligence summarizes documents and answers questions, while dedicated tools ensure accurate processing every time. UPDF combines GPT-5.6 with editing, conversion, OCR, and organization inside one lightweight application. This guide explains where each capability fits in practical technical workflows for maximum productivity.

Large language models understand information, summarize documents, and answer questions using contextual reasoning. They cannot guarantee identical results whenever technical document tasks demand precise, repeatable processing consistently.

IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) is an important metric for determining the performance you can expect from storage, with random read IOPS referring to how a storage device handles non-sequential read operations. This is increasingly important for modern AI workloads that deal with large datasets and indexes, which rely heavily on non-sequential read operations.

And with that, the new KIOXIA GP1 Series PCIe 6.0 NVMe SSDs are classified as 'Super High IOPS SSDs' because they can deliver up to 10 million random read IOPS with KIOXIA XL-FLASH generation 2 flash memory. This is an impressive number because KIOXIA is leveraging flash-based memory extension specifically to enhance and address the demand for AI performance in today's cutting-edge data center environments.

The company notes that KIOXIA GP1 Series SSDs are built to be paired with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) systems as a fast and effective storage solution optimized for GPU direct access.

Reddit is building a new video experience that would let users watch and listen to viral posts directly on the platform. CEO Steve Huffman revealed during the company's Q2 2026 earnings call that testing is expected to begin before the end of the year.

The feature is a direct response to a format that has been making Reddit's content enormously popular on other platforms for years. On TikTok alone, there are 19.6 million posts tagged with #reddit and another 9.9 million under #redditstories. The format is now its own distinct genre, featuring a text-to-speech narration of a viral Reddit post, usually from communities like r/AmITheAsshole or r/relationships, played over unrelated background footage like Minecraft parkour or cooking videos.

"There is an emerging content type elsewhere on the internet of, basically, podcasts where people read Reddit content," Huffman told investors. "I think this version of, like, listened-to or spoken Reddit can be really engaging, as well. So that would be almost a different format entirely."

GOG has confirmed that a native Linux version of its Galaxy launcher is officially in development. The news comes from joint CEO Krzysztof Papliński, who told GamingOnLinux that the company has hired a specialist for the project and is actively exploring the best approach to Linux support. No release timeline has been shared.

"Linux continues to be one of the topics we hear the most about from our community, and we really appreciate the passion and patience of everyone who's been asking about it," Papliński said. He further described the project as a significant undertaking, saying GOG is actively investing time and resources into Linux support but is not yet ready to share specific plans or a release timeline.

The specialist position was first advertised in January 2026, when GOG described Linux as its "next major frontier" and sought a senior engineer to rethink Galaxy's architecture and tooling for the platform. Hiring that engineer appears to have been the first major step toward making a Linux version a reality.