Software & Apps News - Page 13

There are now more social networks out there than ever before and some of them are actually rather good, including Threads. The Meta-owned social network continues to grow with new features being added all the time. Now, the Instagram-linked social network has gained new support for tags but they're very different from the hashtags that you're familiar with on Instagram itself.

Tags have long been used in posts on special networks like Twitter and the aforementioned Instagram as a way for people to link multiple posts together. If you tag a post with #cats, that post will then show up in all searches for that tag, creating something of a saved search scenario. It's great for discoverability, and now Threads has tags of its own.

But where Threads differs from the norm is the way tags actually work. For starters, they don't have anything before them which means that the ugly hashtag has been removed entirely. Instagram's Adam Mosseri detailed how the new feature works, saying that people can choose any word to be a tag, and that tag can have special characters inside it. They can even have spaces, making for an easier reading experience.

If you're a YouTuber who has found themselves on the receiving end of trolling or just plain old hate in the comments you'll know that just turning them off is probably the best way to go. But YouTube has now rolled out another option that it hopes will act as a happy middle ground between letting people comment and blocking them for good.

The new feature, pausing of comments, allows people to pause comments to prevent new ones from being added. Those that are already approved will remain visible, but the addition of new ones will stop until the YouTuber chooses to reenable them. YouTube says that the aim here is to give people more flexibility rather than just turn comments off and lose all of those that were previously there.

The new feature is one that YouTube has been experimenting with since October with TechCrunch reporting that the experiment group reported they felt less overwhelmed when trying to manage the inflow of comments. Pausing them will allow time for the previous comments to be vetted without the backlog constantly being added to, something that can no doubt help with the anxiety created by having to vet the comments in the first place.

A few days ago we saw a report by MacRumors that suggested that Spotify was getting ready to bring in-app purchases back to the iPhone, potentially allowing music fans to sign up for Spotify Premium in-app for the first time in years. However, the streamer now says that isn't the case after all.

The original report by MacRumors claimed that there was an indication in the most recent Spotify beta app that there were references to a new in-app purchase system. Spotify hasn't allowed new subscribers to its Premium subscription to pay via the App Store's in-app purchase system in more than seven years. Nor can people pay for audiobooks in the app, either. It was suggested that might be about to change, but in a statement provided to The Verge, we're told that very much isn't the case after all.

Spotify's global head of corporate and policy communications, Farshad Shadloo, told The Verge that the company has no plans to witch in-app purchases on at the moment, which seems to fly in the face of what MacRumors reported.

While the world continues to discuss whether Apple should open iMessage to make it work with other platforms like WhatsApp, the meta-owned messaging service is pushing on with new features of its own. The app has had new features added over the last few months and now a new one is on the way after it appeared in the latest WhatsApp beta that's now available to testers.

The new feature adds support for filtering chat threads to make it easier to find the one that you're looking for. The WhatsApp beta watchers at WABetaInfo have reported on the change that is now available to users of the latest build that is now in the hands of those running the latest TestFlight beta.

The new WhatsApp feature adds a filter row to give users the chance to filter out chats that they don't want to see. One example is being able to filter unread messages so that they are easier to find in a sea of chat threads. Other options include the ability to filter group chats and more.

The instant messaging platform WhatsApp has announced a new feature that could well help keep voice messages more private after they have been sent. Normally, sending a voice message to someone means that the message is there forever and that the recipient can listen to it whenever they want to. However, a new change allows people to now send the same voice messages but have them automatically disappear immediately after they have been listened to.

Such listen-once voice messages can be used for sending messages that are only valid for a short period of time. WhatsApp's announcement blog post includes the example of reading out your credit card details to a friend, although we're not sure that's something you should be doing all that much anyway. Another example is when planning a surprise, too.

Voice messages of the listen-once variety are clearly marked as such so those who receive them will immediately know what the situation is before they listen to that message. The new voice messages work in much the same way as the existing view once photos and videos that are already supported by WhatsApp.

Meta, the company that makes Facebook Messenger and owns the similar instant-messaging platform WhatsApp, has announced that it finally supports end-to-end encryption as standard with that being the default for all new chats. The move comes after Meta promised to make this change some time ago. Messenger has been around since 2016 and launched against a very different instant messaging backdrop.

By adding end-to-end encryption Facebook Messenger ensures that all messages and calls are protected from snooping eyes before they leave the sending device. They are then unencrypted when they are received at the other end, with nobody between those two points able to decipher what was going on. That also goes for Meta, although that will change should the message be reported for violation of the Facebook Messenger terms.

Meta does say that it might take a little while for all chats to be updated with the new default, but there will be no limitation on the functionality that is available to the people using those chats once end-to-end encryption has been enabled.

In 2020, Meta, which at the time was called Facebook, announced it was going to merge direct-messaging between Instagram and Messenger, in a bid to unify the instant messaging experience. Now, three years later, the company is moving to disconnect it.

The severing of chatting across Instagram and Messenger comes from a new support page update that states cross-app chatting between the two aforementioned apps will no longer be available as of "mid-December 2023".

The support page details what the end of support (EOS) means for users that were taking advantage of the feature; users won't be able to start new conversations or calls with Facebook accounts from Instagram, existing chats will become read-only, Facebook accounts won't be able to view your Activity Status or "seen" in messages, and any existing chats with Facebook accounts will move to your inbox on Facebook or Messenger.

Microsoft has taken to its website to announce that Windows 10 has reached its end of support (EOS) phase, meaning Microsoft will sever support with the operating system.

It was only early last month that data from StatCounter revealed that Windows users are currently migrating to Windows 11 from Windows 10, with earlier operating systems such as Windows 7 and Windows 8 taking up a small percentage of total Windows users. Notably, Windows 10 remains the dominant Operating System with a massive 71.64% market share. More interestingly, Windows 10 market share hasn't changed for the past year, as figures from September 2023 are identical to September 2022.

Microsoft announcing its ending support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, is clearly a move to get users off of old operating systems onto new versions, and with this recent announcement, the move is likely going to work as users will want to be running the latest security updates. Microsoft writes, "Ensure that your organization isn't left running unsupported software that is no longer receiving security updates. Organizations running legacy software are vulnerable to significant security risk and potential compliance violations."

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has announced that Twitch will be shutting down its Korean division over unsustainable operating costs.

The CEO of the world's largest livestreaming company took to a blog post to publish an update on Twitch in Korea, where he explained that the cost for Twitch to operate in Korea is "prohibitively expensive", and despite efforts to reduce operating costs, the company has made little headway on reaching its goal. Clancy gave examples, such as trialing peer-to-peer streaming and restricting video quality to 720p, as attempts at reducing operational costs, and while they did reduce running costs, it simply wasn't enough.

"Twitch has been operating in Korea at a significant loss, and unfortunately there is no pathway forward for our business to run more sustainably in that country," writes Clancy.

Taiwan publication The Commercial Times reports that Microsoft's Windows 12 will launch in June 2024, and the operating system will feature several AI technologies. With that, Microsoft's next Windows will launch alongside a wave of new AI PCs from companies like Acer, MSI, GIGABYTE, and Quanta.

According to the report, 2024 is shaping up to be "the first year of AI PCs," with dedicated hardware built for generative AI. This means Microsoft is positioning Windows 12 as the first version of the operating system built for the age of AI - so it will be interesting to see what it brings to the table compared to Windows 11.

The publication doesn't say where it got the June 2024 launch info for Windows 11. However, the article does feature quotes from Acer CEO Jason Chen and Quanta's Barry Lam from the recent Taiwan Medical Technology Exhibition.