Software & Apps - Page 34

Microsoft has rolled out the November Update for the Xbox app on Windows PCs, and it's a big one for fans of portable PC gaming devices like the ROG Ally from ASUS, Legion GO from Lenovo, or any of the various Windows-based handhelds from AYANEO. Although Valve's Steam Deck isn't a Windows device, the rise in popularity of these sorts of devices has led to the new Compact mode for the Xbox app.

As the naming suggests, it offers a more intuitive interface and streamlined version of the UI optimized for handhelds - with the side bar collapsing into icons to provide more space for browsing through your library and all of the latest PC Game Pass additions.

Accessing the new mode is simple: select your profile and then toggle between 'Compact Mode' on and off. As part of the update, Microsoft is partnering with companies like ASUS to ensure that Compact mode is enabled by default when firing up the Xbox app on PC gaming handhelds running Windows.

Microsoft Paint is a simple graphics editor that has been a part of Windows for decades, launching with the first version of the Operating System back in 1985. Released as a direct competitor to Apple's MacPaint for the Macintosh, the simple lo-fi MS Paint is a Microsoft Windows staple and, over the years, hasn't changed much, retaining its status as a simple-to-use and basic graphics editor.

It's no Photoshop, but fast forward to 2023, and Microsoft Paint is starting to make headlines thanks to new AI-powered features. In September, we reported on the app getting a one-click background removal function that was surprisingly powerful. And now, thanks to AI, Microsoft Paint can generate images using OpenAI's DALL-E via the app's latest addition - Paint Cocreator.

Available now for Windows Insiders, it might just be the easiest-to-use AI image generation tool on the market, thanks to Paint's simple and clean interface.

The Apple Card has been around for a few years at this point having launched in 2019, but it might not be around all that much longer. That's after a Wall Street Journal report claimed that the partnership between Apple and Goldman Sachs that makes the Apple Card possible is on the verge of being killed off.

The Apple Card is a Goldman Sachs-backed credit card that is entirely managed via the Wallet app on an iPhone and offers various cashback deals that are surprisingly competitive. But the card is only available in the United States four years after its 2019 debut, with little sign that it is going to expand beyond the country's borders. Now, the Wall Street Journal, says that Apple is pulling the plug on its credit card partnership with Goldman Sachs, with the deal possibly exited within the next 12 to 15 months. The exit would reportedly cover the entire consumer partnership, including the credit card itself.

However, it isn't clear what that would actually mean for customers of the Apple Card. Would they continue to be able to use their card with Apple picking up a new backer, or would their cards be converted to a standard Goldman Sachs credit card, and its management be moved away from the Wallet app entirely? That isn't yet known, but it seems that the decision to end the agreement is mutual.

When Apple released the iPod all those years ago it probably didn't know that music might not be the biggest thing to come out of it. Podcasts were born, and now they're big business and listened to by millions of people around the globe. There are tons of ways to listen to podcasts now, including Apple's own Podcasts app. And now the data collected by Apple Podcasts has been used to show us the most popular podcasts of the year.

Apple shared details of the most popular shows in a press release that was broken down into a few different categories. In terms of the most popular show, that honor fell to Crime Junkie while The Daily and Dateline NBC made up the top three podcasts.

For fans of finding new podcasts, the next category will be most interesting - top new shows. At the top of that list was Scamanda, while The Retrievals and The Deck Investigations rounded out the top three most popular new shows according to Apple Podcasts.

When it comes to reading books and listening to audiobooks there are a few ways to do that on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. But Apple Books is obviously the way route that Apple wants people to take, and now it's shared details on the most popular books that people have been reading and listening to in that particular app.

Apple says that a new Year in Review is available in the Read Now tab under the Top Picks section on the iPhone and iPad, giving people a new way to find more information about the books that they have been reading throughout the year. They'll learn about what kind of reader they are based on their reading history, while they will also see the total number of books read as well as the total number of minutes that they have been reading. It's all put together into a nice sharable format that can be published to social media, too.

In terms of the most popular books on the platform Apple broke its collections into four categories; nonfiction books, fiction books, nonfiction audiobooks, and fiction audiobooks.

If you're a Google Drive user who has noticed that you don't seem to have all of the files you might have expected, you aren't alone. In fact, a number of people have posted in the Google support forums that they have experienced the same loss of files, and it seems Google is aware that there is an issue.

According to a report by The Register some people have claimed that they are missing as much as six months of business data, something that is far from ideal to say the least. There isn't an awful lot of information on what's going on here, but some users say that the file synchronization from the Google Drive desktop app simply stopped working so the data stored in Google Drive's cloud essentially got cut off at that same date.

A comment by someone claiming to be from Google support told people not to go fiddling with their data to try and get things back after it was suggested that changes to cached files could be what was needed. Specifically, Google says that users should not make changes to the root/data folder to avoid making matters worse.

If you're a WhatsApp fan who makes use of Channels you're in for a treat with a future version of the app set to enable new sticker options. The latest version of WhatsApp, now available to those who have access to the TestFlight beta builds of the app, now includes the ability for people to post stickers to a Channel for the very first time.

The new feature was first spotted by the folks over at WABetaInfo with a new sticker option being added to the chat bar. Interestingly, the report also notes that some users of the latest version of WhatsApp that can be downloaded from the App Store also appear to have access to the new sticker feature, suggesting that this is all based on a server-side configuration rather than the actual software that is being run.

The added benefit of having stickers in Channels is obvious because it allows people to be more expressive and emotive without having to type things out. It's also much more familiar and friendly, something that may or may not match a specific channel and its users. However, as with so many things, the key here is that giving people the option to use stickers means that people can choose whether or not to use them for themselves.

A new report from The Wall Street Journal has claimed Meta's algorithm for Instagram Reels served up questionable content to accounts that were exclusively following pre-teen and teen influencers on the platform.

The WSJ conducted an experiment by taking a group of accounts and exclusively following pre-teen and teen influencers. The publication then monitored the type of content the account was being delivered through Instagram Reels, and according to the report, the content these accounts were being served was "risqué footage of children as well as overtly sexual adult videos". These types of ads aren't allowed on Meta's platforms, yet they were being served to accounts designed to simulate a typical child's account.

Additionally, the WSJ reports that some notable brands, such as Disney, Walmart, Pizza Hut, Bumble, Match Group, and The Wall Street Journal itself, had ads representing their brands served alongside this questionable content. The same issue recently took place on the social media platform formerly called Twitter, and now called X, as antisemitic featured ads from big brands that resulted in some advertising expenditure being pulled or at least paused.

Evernote has long been a popular note-taking app among those who like to keep everything on their computer, but its free tier appears to be in danger. Parent company Bending Spoons has been trying to find ways to generate more income for a while now, and it's been on something of a cost-cutting exercise of late. Now, in an attempt to move people from its free tier towards a paid-for one, Evernote is starting to get serious.

Currently, Evernote allows people to have a free account with limitations that include notes being a maximum of 25MB and a monthly cap on uploads. Those who want more flexibility can of course pay to save bigger notes and upload more data. And now Evernote is testing a new limitation that could force people to start paying.

TechCrunch reports that some people have started to see in-app language that says they are now limited to just a single notebook and a total of 50 notes until they pay for more. Evernote says that it's still finalizing things and is currently rolling the limit out to less than 1% of its users, but it seems like only a matter of time before this change is rolled out to all free-tier users.

One of the best privacy-focused features of the WhatsApp instant messaging platform is the ability to send photos and videos but only allow them to be viewed once before they are removed and recipients are unable to see them again. It's a feature that is available on WhatsApp's mobile apps for the iPhone and Android, and the desktop apps did have the same feature previously before it was removed. Now, it seems it's making a triumphant return.

While you might not see the ability to send ephemeral photos and videos yourself, the beta watchers at WABetaInfo do now report that some users can. It would appear that, in typical WhatsApp fashion, this change is starting to roll out to some people now before being made available to more people in a wider audience over the coming weeks. If you don't see the option to send view-once photos or videos just yet, don't worry. The feature should be with you soon enough.

The feature speaks for itself and the use cases are obvious. Being able to send a photo or video that can only be viewed a single time can help protect privacy and sensitive information, and it's something that should always have been available in the desktop apps. The lack of such a feature was baffling, but it's now clear that WhatsApp has come to its senses.

When Apple announced the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max in September it also announced that the new phones would get support for USB 3 data transfer speeds via their USB-C ports which makes for much faster file transfers. As part of that, it was also confirmed that the new iPhones would allow creatives to record their videos directly to an external SSD to save space on the iPhone's internal storage. The catch was that individual apps would need to be updated to add support for such a feature but now one of the most popular has done exactly that, allowing content on an external SSD to be edited with ease.

That app is of course LumaFusion from LumaTouch with an updated app now available for download from the App Store. It's version 4.1.1 and it's a free download for those who already have the app installed. In fact, those of you with automatic updates enabled might already have it without realizing it.

The new app update means that those who want to create longer videos are no longer limited by the amount of free storage space that they have on their iPhones. Simply connect a USB-C SSD to the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max's USB-C port and new content will be available for editing there once the updated LumaFusion has been configured just so.

Editing photos on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac just changed completely after the popular Photomator app from Pixelmator got a new update that adds support for new HDR features. The new update is now available in the App Store on all platforms and those who have the automatic update function enabled likely already have it installed without even knowing it.

The update, which Pixelmator announced via a press release, adds full HDR support for the first time. From now on, the release notes, users can choose to always work with HDR photos in Photomator or continue to work with SDR photos instead. All the usual editing tools will continue to work, and they've all been upgraded to add HDR support. However, users will need to have iOS 17 or later installed on the iPhone, iPadOS 17 or later on the iPad, or macOS Sonoma or later on the Mac for any of the new HDR editing to work.

Pixelmator also announced Smart HDR, a new feature that allows people to convert standard SDR photos to HDR. The press release says that users can now click a single button and then instantly convert an SDR photo into an HDR one. Those photos can then be edited just like any other HDR photo, we're told.

It sometimes feels like you can't take two steps in any direction without falling over a new AI feature right now and WhatsApp is no different. The popular Meta-owned instant messaging platform is reportedly testing a new feature that will make it easier for people to quickly access an AI-powered chat, although it's in very limited testing right now.

The new feature is only available to those who have the latest beta versions of the WhatsApp app installed on an iPhone or Android phone and even then, we're told your account needs to be enabled for you to see it. The number of people who fall into that category is a small one, so don't worry if you haven't seen this tweak yet.

The change was first reported by the WhatsApp beta watchers at WABetaInfo and apparently adds a new button to make it quicker to access a new AI-powered chat. The button is in the Chats tab which means that people can create a new chat with the help of AI without having to go through their chat list to find a previous AI chat.

Whenever you see a cool Instagram Reel and want to save it for later, the chances are that you have always had to just save it to Instagram. That is, unless you live in the United States where people have been able to download Reels ever since June. However, that's all changing now with the news that Instagram is rolling out downloadable Reels to everyone all around the globe.

The new change was announced by Instagram chief Adam Mosseri in a post to his Instagram channel and comes after months of only those in the United States having the option to physically download Reels.

However, there is still going to be a catch. As TechCrunch points out, Reels that are downloaded from Instagram will have a watermark that has the Instagram logo and the account's name. That isn't new of course, because we already see the same thing done by TikTok and YouTube and it's obvious why - it's to ensure that anything ripped from one service shows where it came from if it's uploaded somewhere else.

Keeping your files in the cloud is a great way to make sure that you always have access to them when you need them. It's also possible to use that cloud storage as a kind of way to back up your data, although it's important to remember that anything that syncs isn't strictly backup. Regardless, encrypting that data is important and now Mac owners have another option for storing their data online.

Proton Drive launched on the web a few months back and then launched mobile and Windows versions of its apps. Until now, the encrypted cloud storage service was only available to Mac users when they visited the Proton Drive website, but that's all changed with the launch of a proper Mac app for the first time.

The new app means that Proton Drive is now properly multi-platform and that's good news for people who want to rely on it because it means they can access their data in more ways. The new Mac app is now available for download and promises full encryption of files and folders by default. It gives users 1GB of data storage for free with additional options for those who need extra capacity. Plans start at $4 per month for 200GB of storage and versioning is available on each file for up to 10 years, which is handy should something go awry.

Spotify is reportedly testing a tweak that will allow music fans to turn off its popular personalized recommendations system. That system currently allows Spotify to recommend new music based on the songs and artists that a user likes and frequently listens to, but a new report claims that there is work afoot to give people the ability to disable all of that.

The testing was first reported by MacRumors, although it isn't yet clear how it will work or how Spotify will market it. However, it seems likely that Spotify will give users the opportunity to temporarily disable the personalized recommendation system to allow them to listen to songs without having those songs negatively impact future recommendations. The most obvious use for such a feature is road trips where a family member's songs could alter recommendations moving forward. Nobody wants Baby Shark to have an effect on which songs they're recommended, do they?

If that all sounds familiar, it should. Apple recently started testing a similar function in the current iOS 17.2 beta that allows people to disable Apple Music's listening history when they are in a particular Focus Mode. With that in mind, music fans with a Driving Focus Mode could have their listening history disabled when driving but then have it automatically turn back on when they aren't.

When making what he saw as a stand against ugly URL cards posted by online publishers, Elon Musk took the decision to have X remove headlines from those cards in the name of 'aesthetics'. However, that meant that readers would have to open the link just to see what it was about, which in turn made for a terrible experience. Now, Musk seems to have seen the error of his ways and is now turning this car around - and headlines are coming back.

In a post to the X social network, previously known as Twitter, Musk confirmed that X will overlay the title in the upper portion of the image posted on a URL card, making it easier for people to understand what they are about to read without having to first open it. This comes a few weeks after the initial change that saw publishers find new and interesting ways to convey their message.

For some that involved simply putting the title of the piece in the X post itself, while others got more creative and chose to embed the title in the imagery instead. However, it now appears that none of those workarounds will be required soon.

If you've been following along with the OpenAI controversy over the last few days you will know that the company fired its CEO, hired another one, and then got rid of them and took the original CEO back all in the space of a weekend and change. But after all of that, the company still managed to find the time to launch a new feature.

To be more specific, it took an old feature and rolled it out to more people. The ChatGPT voice chat feature was previously limited to people who paid for the Plus or Enterprise subscriptions which meant that those who use the free version of ChatGPT were unable to take advantage of it. However, that's all changed after co-founder Greg Brockman shared the news via a post on X, the social network previously known as Twitter.

The ChatGPT voice chat feature allows iPhone and Android app users to speak to the chatbot and then have it answer back using a synthesized voice. It's similar to Siri and other digital assistants in that sense, but it's backed by the OpenAI Large Language Model that has made ChatGPT such a huge deal for people around the world of late. That also means that it's lightyears ahead of Siri and those similar assistants.

Whenever you sign into WhatsApp you have to wait for the instant messaging service to send through an SMS with a six-digit code for you to enter. And that's fine most of the time, except when it isn't. And for those times WhatsApp is now implementing a whole new way to verify that you're who you say you are.

As noted by the WhatsApp watchers at WABetaInfo, a new version of the WhatsApp app now available in the App Store seems to have enabled a new feature that allows users to verify themselves using their email address for the first time. The change means that users can now request the verification code be sent to their email address, allowing them to sign in that way.

This is of course huge news for people who need to sign into their WhatsApp account but don't have an active cellular connection. That could be when they are outside of cell service, for example, and is one of those very times when something like WhatsApp could be so vital.

Those wanting to use the Media Creation Tool to install the latest version of Windows 11, the 2023 Update (or 23H2), will be pleased to hear this is now possible.

Normally, this would be the case pretty much straightaway following the release of a new version of Windows, and indeed Microsoft updated the current version of the Media Creation Tool to indicate it would install 23H2 just after the upgrade was launched.

However, to the confusion of those using the tool, it actually fetched the 22H2 version of Windows 11 instead.