Software & Apps - Page 28

The Chromium-based Microsoft Edge web browser is set to get a new feature that will let you limit the amount of RAM it uses. If you're a Chrome or Edge user, you're probably aware that when it comes to RAM usage, both browsers are on the "let's take as much as we can get" side of things.

As part of a new test build for Windows, the option to limit RAM usage 'Always' or have it kick in as part of a 'PC Gaming' mode has appeared on the Microsoft Edge settings page (via @Leopeva64 on X). Being able to set a limit on RAM usage while playing games is an excellent feature, and it means that you won't have to close all your tabs and windows before firing up a game on Steam.

Microsoft Edge will also provide a detailed look at current RAM usage, how many tabs have been put to sleep, and how much memory is left.

Windows 11 has a new preview build, and while there aren't any noteworthy changes - it's mostly about bug fixes and minor tweaking - there's a hidden change to the Microsoft Store which is very worthwhile.

This is preview build 26100 for the Canary and Dev channels, and testers in these channels are getting those changes plus a new Microsoft Store rolling out, as highlighted by Sergio Pedri, a Senior Software Engineer at the company, on X (formerly Twitter).

The store has 'major performance improvements' and as you can see in the video clip in the tweet, it loads up pretty sharpish - with the ability to skip the splash screen, to boot.

Microsoft has already announced that it was ending support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 - where after this date, the company will no longer supply security updates or new features. With Windows 10 still the most popular Microsoft operating system and Windows 11 adoption slowing, there will be a way for users and businesses to get Extended Security Updates (ESU) after this date.

Microsoft announced this last year, easing some concerns for those who might not want to upgrade on October 14, 2025. However, it did mention that signing up for Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) will come at a cost. Today, we've got the costs - they're geared toward forcing users to upgrade to Windows 11 (or 12).

Paid security updates after Windows 10 becomes end-of-life will cost users and businesses $61 USD per device for Year 1. From there, the "price will double every consecutive year, for a maximum of three years," so that's $122 USD per device for Year 2 and $244 USD per device for Year 3.

Google Podcasts is no more, with the app and podcasting service shut down by Google this week in the US and later in June for the rest of the world. Google announced last year that the dedicated podcast service app would disappear and be replaced by a dedicated podcast section within YouTube Music.

Google has a long history of unceremoniously axing what it deems unsuccessful services, apps, and hardware - from the video app Google Duo to Google Hangouts to its cloud gaming Google Stadia service. The list is long, to the point that sites like 'Killed by Google' keep track of it all, creating a virtual Google Graveyard. Check it out; odds are there'll be a few "Oh, I remember that" moments as you scroll.

The reasoning for Google Podcasts's demise makes sense when you consider that most notable podcasts with a video component are hosted on YouTube, so presenting an audio version on the YouTube Music platform and app feels more like a lateral move. So this isn't Google abandoning podcasts altogether.

You've doubtless heard about the Copilot key - the dedicated physical key that's present on the keyboard of AI PCs running Windows 11 - but there's a surprising secret behind this new feature.

This was highlighted by Tom's Hardware, who did some digging with new Dell XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops that have the Copilot key on their respective keyboard decks, in an effort to find out how the key works.

In other words, what's behind the Copilot key in terms of mapping, and is it a new key with a new scan code? Well, the answer to that question is a short no.

If you're one of the Windows 11 users out there who missed the drag and drop functionality that once applied to File Explorer's address bar, well, you can breathe a sigh of relief - it's coming back.

This is the ability to grab a file in a folder and drag it over to place the file directly in another folder using the bar at the top of the folder window.

It's a pretty basic ability really, but it was removed with the Windows 11 23H2 Moment 4 update.

Facial recognition has been around for a while, with Windows Hello employing the tech so you can log into a Windows 11 device by simply looking at your webcam. This technology also exists in smartphones, surveillance, and security - AI also plays a role in how facial recognition technologies are trained and used.

According to a new patent (seen by Windows Report), Microsoft plans to integrate facial recognition technology with Windows 11 and OneDrive image search functionality. It will use facial recognition to review photos, determine the number of people shown and their identities, and then rank them accordingly.

If you're wondering where a patent fits into the picture, well, faces "determined to be friends or family" will be ranked higher than groups of fewer friends and family - so it's all about using the tech in a detailed searching tool.

If you own an iPhone you're already familiar with the option to use your passcode to secure it from prying eyes. You can also use Face ID or Touch ID if you prefer to go the biometric route, too. Some apps like banking apps can also give users the chance to protect them using in-app passcodes and biometrics, too. But what if you want to do that with an app that doesn't have the feature built in?

For those apps, App Lock is available in the App Tore and it does exactly what you think it will do based on that name. Once configured, App Lock lets people completely hide apps and lock them behind Face ID or Touch ID. It's all made possible using the Screen Time API to control access to apps so there are no hacks or potential privacy implications here. What's more, users can even choose to have the app disappear from the Home Screen entirely. In fact, the apps will even be hidden from the App Library. too.

Choosing apps to be locked behind biometrics is simple and users can even decide to have entire categories covered, too.

If you're an Apple Maps user on the iPhone you might be about to get a whole new feature for choosing the route that you take when using driving directions, according to a new report. It's said that Apple is working on a new custom route feature and that Apple Maps users will be able to choose different routes rather than the one that Apple picks out.

Users are not currently allowed to change anything to do with the route that they take and are instead left to follow the route that Apple Maps chooses for them. However, that could all change later this year with MacRumors noting that code reviewed by the website suggests the change is coming when iOS 18 arrives.

While Google Maps does offer a similar feature to edit the route chosen for drivers, that feature is only available via the Google Maps website and has not yet made its way to the iPhone app.

If you've ever formatted a disk using Windows, you've probably noticed that the UI and design of the Format tool haven't changed in a while. In fact, it's basically the same as it was in 1994 - which is impressive considering so much of everything else in Windows has changed. However, it was only meant to be temporary.

Microsoft programmer Dave W. Plummer shared some history of the Format tool and UI on X - which he created while working on Windows 95. As Microsoft's big update brought over many features of Windows NT, the Format tool had to be customized based on differences between the two operating systems.

"I wrote this Format dialog back on a rainy Thursday morning at Microsoft in late 1994," Dave writes. "I got out a piece of paper and wrote down all the options and choices you could make regarding formatting a disk, like a filesystem, label, cluster size, compression, encryption, and so on."

Windows 11 users should look out for a Copilot app which may have sneaked onto their system potentially, or so a German tech site reports.

Anecdotally, other users have discovered this Copilot app flagged up by Deskmodder.de by checking the roster of apps installed on their PC - so you might want to hop on over to that yourself.

If the app is present you'll find it listed under Installed Apps, but it appears to be just an empty shell at this point.

In the visually-driven world of digital media, clarity isn't just a luxury; it's a necessity. With the rise of artificial intelligence, AI image upscaling has become a key trend, allowing us to turn low-resolution images into high-definition masterpieces.

This technology is not just expanding the size of pictures; it's calculating and generating more meaningful pixels by massive training with existing high-resolution images. Social networks, online stores, and art platforms all benefit from the improved engagement that high-quality images provide.

In this article, we will explore the world of AI image upscalers and their main features in enhancing image resolution and clarity. By examining the features and pros and cons of each upscaler, we hope you can find the one that suits your needs best.

Microsoft is busy fleshing out a number of the higher-profile default apps in Windows 11, and Notepad is the latest application to get some attention with the addition of a very useful feature.

This is a spellcheck ability that's now rolling out in testing for the Canary and Dev channels, and you'll see it with Notepad version 11.2402.18.0.

As you might imagine, this will highlight spelling mistakes just as the spellcheck does in Word, and you can choose from a bunch of options for a correction. And just as with Word, you can elect to add any word to the dictionary if it has been flagged up, but isn't actually incorrect.

Winxvideo AI is a powerful suite that includes AI tools for enhancing images and video quality, a versatile video converter and compressor, a screen recorder, a video editor, and even a downloader that can download media from various streaming sources. It does all of this while leveraging the power of graphics cards with full hardware acceleration for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs.

At the heart of Winxvideo AI is the AI video enhancer, which offers three AI tools to enhance video quality. The first is AI Upscaling, which can take a low-quality or low-resolution source and upscale it to 720p, 1080p, and even 4K. This is great for improving the quality of older videos, removing unwanted noise, and enhancing image fidelity.

The second is AI Frame Interpolation, similar to what DLSS 3 and Frame Generation bring to games; it increases the frame rate by a factor of 2X, 3X, 4X, or even 5X. With a one-click 'slow-motion' option, it is perfect for creating smooth videos similar to what you might see in a sports broadcast replay.

WhatsApp is already one of the world's most popular instant messaging apps and parent company Meta continues to make steady improvements to the list of features that the app has to offer across a wide range of platforms. Now we're hearing that one of the improvements still being developed is the ability to pin more than three different chats for the first time.

The news comes via the WhatsApp beta watchers over at WABetaInfo and sure enough, it's the latest Android beta version of the WhatsApp app that has given us our first look at the feature in action.

The feature is currently live in the WhatsApp 2.24.6.13 beta release that's available for download by beta testers via the Google Play Store and the ability to pin more than three chats is working currently. There's a screenshot showing the feature above and the screenshot does suggest that there is still a limit with five being the maximum number of chats that can be pinned in this version.

OmniFocus is a task management app that has been around for what feels like forever, and it quite possibly has actually been around that long. It's already available for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and the web - and now it's also available as a native visionOS app on the Apple Vision Pro for the first time.

The update, which is available for download from the visionOS App Store as OmniFocus 41 right now, joins other OmniGroup app OmniPlan and is sure to not be the last Apple Vision Pro app from the long-time Apple platform developer.

In a blog post detailing the new update, OmniGroup says that this release includes all the same functionality that was introduced in OmniFocus 4.0 across the other platforms but with a decidedly spatial twist. As an example of that, bad counts now float over the Perspectives Bar in a three-dimensional space in a way that simply isn't possible on other platforms. The Inspector and commonly-used buttons are also in a new location outside the application window, something else that couldn't be done elsewhere.

When Apple released the iOS 17.4 update earlier this month it made a few big changes to the way the iPhone is used in the European Union. One of those changes was to allow support for third-party app stores while allowing developers to offer their apps for installation via their own website is a feature that will come in due course. But one notable change was a new screen that appears the first time someone opens Safari and asks whether they would like to choose a different default browser.

The list of browsers that are shown is generated at random, but the company that makes one of those browsers says that it has already noticed a huge spike in the number of downloads as a result of this change, suggesting that Apple's Safari did indeed have an outsized portion of the market as a result of being the default browser on iPhones.

While Apple has offered users the chance to change the default web browser for some time now, it's a feature that has perhaps not been that well-known among users. For that reason, it was argued that Apple should present the option to choose a new default the first time that Safari is launched after installing the iOS 17.4 update. Brave is one of the browsers listed as an option and in a post on the X social network the company shared a graph that shows the boost in downloads the app has seen since the update arrived.

If you're a Spotify Premium subscriber in one of a number of countries you will soon be able to watch music videos as you listen to your favorite songs. That's what Spotify has today confirmed in a press release that notes the feature is still in a beta form and that it will roll out to 11 countries starting today.

The list of countries that will see the new music video feature arrive starting today includes the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya. Spotify Premium subscribers in those markets can now watch music videos via the iPhone, Android, and desktop apps as well as their TV by selecting the "Switch to Video" toggle on supported songs.

It's important to remember that music videos are not currently available for all songs that can be listened to via Spotify, but the limited collection right now includes songs from global artists like Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, and Ice Spice, or local favorites like Aluna and Asake. Spotify does say that it hopes to expand the catalog of music videos and bring the feature to more countries in the future, so hang fire if your country isn't listed or your favorite artist's videos aren't yet available.

Apple released the macOS Sonoma 14.4 software update recently and while it doesn't bring any huge new features, it does seem to be causing some new problems for owners of USB hubs. Many people use hubs to allow them to connect multiple devices to computers like the MacBook Air thanks to its lack of ports, while plugging HDMI monitors in can require such a hub thanks to the lack of HDMI connectivity on some laptops. That means that such hubs can be vital and having them not work as they should can be hugely problematic.

A new MacRumors report says that people have started to complain on its forums and social media like X and Reddit, reporting that their hubs aren't always working as intended. They say that accessories and devices that are plugged into those hubs are sometimes not detected and that the issue only started after they installed the macOS Sonoma 14.4 update.

Monitors seem to be particularly problematic, the report notes, with people reporting that those who have monitors connected to Macs via hubs are no longer able to make them work. Mice and other input peripherals are similarly impacted.

AIDA64 is a powerful tool for enthusiasts. It offers detailed system information covering hardware and software, as well as 64-bit benchmarks and stress tests to push everything from memory, storage, CPUs, and GPUs to their limit. For those who want to be in complete control or monitor their PC, AIDA64 can be invaluable.

Developer FinalWare has just dropped AIDA64 v7.20, a notable update that brings some welcome additions and updates to the app. First up, on the purely cosmetic front, there's a new Dark Mode with three different themes designed to match Windows Dark Mode settings. If you're a fan of Dark Mode for apps and browsing, like me, this is excellent news.

AIDA64's massive library has been expanded on the hardware front to support the new GeForce RTX 40 SUPER GPUs from NVIDIA and the Radeon RX 7600 XT from AMD.