Software & Apps - Page 47

Windows 11 was supposedly testing a new ability designed to help desktop PCs make a bit of savings with power usage, but it turns out that this functionality was not introduced at all.

The Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC) feature was expanded to include not just laptops on battery power, but also notebooks that were plugged in, and desktop PCs too. Or that's what Microsoft told us when preview build 23424 of Windows 11 was rolled out (in the Dev channel).

The feature cleverly adjusts areas of the display to dim them appropriately, saving a little power with no noticeable difference to the overall quality of the image on the screen.

In a move that will surprise almost nobody, music streamer Spotify is shutting down its live audio app Spotify Live. The move comes two years after the company bought the app in its original form, dubbed Locker Room.

Spotify confirmed that it is killing the app off in an email to users that was first reported by Music Ally.

Spotify Live was part of an industry-wide focus on live audio that was kicked into gear by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. That's when Clubhouse shot to prominence as a way for people to interact in voice-based rooms even when they weren't able to do so in person. Ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns around the world left people looking for ways to connect, and Clubhouse offered that.

Windows 11 has just sneaked over the 20% milestone for desktop OS market share, according to new stats from an analytics firm.

Statcounter has provided the figures on Windows adoption for March 2023 in which Windows 11 increased its share by 1.81%, ending up on 20.94%. Microsoft's newest OS is therefore on just over 1 in every 5 PCs out there.

Windows 10 also crept up a small amount, putting on 0.17%, so it's now on 73.48% of all PCs out there, going by Statcounter's estimations. (And remember - this is just one set of figures).

Microsoft might have thought better about its apparent plan to push notifications relating to Microsoft Accounts - that effectively look like advertising - in the Windows 11 Start menu.

This is going by findings in a new preview build of Windows 11, and while it doesn't represent the abandonment of the idea, it does at least allow for a way that users can opt out of seeing these notifications (or ads, depending on how you look at them - we'll come back to that point).

Note that this is far from concrete - it's a hidden option in a test build of Windows 11 - but at least it's there in build 23419 (for the Dev channel).

After months of waiting, Netflix subscribers can finally watch their ad-supported content on the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD streaming boxes. Before now, that tier didn't work thanks to an incompatibility with the tvOS version of the Netflix app. That meant that the only way to watch Netflix on the Apple TV was to pay for the tiers that didn't offer ads.

That has now finally changed after it was noticed by one Reddit user that a new Netflix app update has fixed things. The result is that those who have chosen to pay less and watch ads can now do so on their premium Apple streaming hardware.

The new update is version number 2.3.0 and if you have automatic app updates enabled you probably already have it installed without realizing it. The Apple TV doesn't do a good job of telling you when it has updated an app, unfortunately.

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology is now officially a part of the 3DMark benchmarking suite, with a new AMD FSR feature test available in the 3DMark Advanced and Professional Editions.

The test is a tool to gauge the potential performance improvements gained from enabling AMD FSR 2 technology. It also lets users compare the image quality between FSR and traditional rendering like TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing).

Image comparison is available via the 3DMark frame inspector tool that lets users compare image quality with an interactive side-by-side presentation that includes FSR and native rendering. The tool allows users to pan and zoom up to 32 times for a super close inspection which is excellent.

After months and months of rumors and the app making appearances in iOS beta code, Apple Music Classical is now available for download in the App Store.

The Apple Music Classical app is a free download, but you'll need to be an Apple Music subscriber in order to listen. You can be a subscriber at any tier, it seems, and you'll get access to Apple Music Classical as soon as you sign in.

Once you do sign in you'll notice an app that has been designed with Classical Music in mind. Apple says that everything has been built specifically for classical music, including new search capabilities that deal better with the unique nature of classical music.

Apple released iOS 16.4 and macOS Ventura 13.3 to the public earlier this week and the two updates brought with them a number of new features and improvements - not least more than 20 new emojis. But there were more important things going on under the hood.

According to one report, Apple's security website details that there were dozens of security fixes implemented across iOS 16.4 and macOS Ventura 13.3. And because the rest of Apple's software is based on versions of those releases, those same fixes applied to watchOS 9.,4 and tvOS 16.4 as well.

One example of a fix related to a security threat that could leave an app able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges, with Apple saying that it impacted the iPhone 8 or later, all iPad Pro models, and a number of iPad Air, iPad, and iPad mini tablets.

WhatsApp users who look at competing messaging services like iMessage and wish that they too could edit their sent messages, relax. WhatsApp is working on making messages editable on your platform of choice as well. Now the company is reportedly getting closer to launching the feature and has begun to test a new alert message relating to edited messages.

While WhatsApp has allowed messages to delete messages for some time, the ability to actually edit them in place has eluded its users for even longer. Apple added the ability to edit messages with iOS 16 in 2022 and now WhatsApp is playing catchup. A new report by the WhatsApp watchers at WABetaInfo shows that the testing continues and that WhatsApp is working on a new alert that will show when a message has been successfully edited for all participants of a chat.

WABetaInfo has shared a screenshot of a message being edited in the latest beta of WhatsApp that is available in TestFlight. That screenshot shows an alert confirming the message has been edited so that the person who edited it can be sure the change was completed for everyone. That means we won't be left wondering if the edited version has been pushed to everyone in the chat, at least.

Valve has announced - via a post on the Steam support forums - that it will officially end support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 from January 1, 2024. The statement is clear that the Steam client will no longer work on these operating systems after this date.

"In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam," Valve writes. "Users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows."

The change is because Steam relies on an embedded version of Google Chrome within the client, which will no longer function on older versions of Windows. This news follows Microsoft's big move from earlier this year, where the company stopped releasing updates and security fixes for these older versions of Windows as of January 2023.

WhatsApp user who wants to make sure that they stay fully up to speed on the latest goings on and new features? You could soon be getting all of that information right inside WhatsApp.

The Meta-owned instant messaging service has started to roll out its own group chat that will allow people to get information about WhatsApp including new features and more.

This feature has been in the works for a little while according to the folks at WABetaInfo, but some people have now started to see the chat appearing in their list of messages for the first time. Unfortunately, there doesn't currently appear to be any way to manually enter that chat, so it's a waiting game we're afraid.

Microsoft's idea for a 'Cloud PC' feature appears to be progressing, at least going by hidden clues unearthed in a Windows 11 test build.

This comes courtesy of well-known Microsoft leaker Albacore, who has been peeking under the hood in the recent Windows 11 build 23419, and found that the feature is being fleshed out in the background.

There's now an option to access the Cloud PC in two different ways - you can do so either directly from the desktop, or via an app.

Windows users who like to grab optional preview updates will be glad to hear that Microsoft is ushering in a change to the timing of their release that'll make for a better experience.

Specifically, this change to deployment timeframes for Windows 11 and Windows 10 patching pertains to 'optional non-security preview' updates.

Starting from April 2023, the new model will have one optional update arriving in the fourth week of the month, instead of the existing situation where what are known as 'C' and 'D' releases are rolled out in the third and fourth weeks of the month.

WhatsApp has announced a brand new Windows app that it says will be a big improvement over the one that people have had to make do with until today.

The new app was announced via a blog post on the WhatsApp and Meta blogs, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also posted about it on his Instagram channel.

The big news is that this is a native Windows app which means that it is built to load faster than the previous Electron monstrosity. That also brings with it a few other improvements, not least an interface that will be familiar because it more closely mimics the look and feel of the WhatsApp mobile apps on iPhone and Android.

A new WhatsApp update adds a valuable feature that will give group administrators new powers to control who can, and cannot, join up.

Group chats have become a huge deal for WhatsApp and they can be used for all kinds of things. Some of those group chats sometimes need tighter control over who can join them, and until now even administrators didn't have the powers that they needed.

Now, WhatsApp has been updated to give group administrators more options, with Meta announcing the news via a blog post.

Windows 11 has had something of a torrid relationship with the Bing AI - first, the chatbot was in the taskbar, then it was gone (although we then found out it was actually put into a 'rotation'), but now, Bing is back on the bar, you'll either be pleased or perhaps annoyed to hear.

Either way, the implementation of the Bing AI remains the same fudged addition to the taskbar that we saw initially in Windows 11, which is a sad state of affairs.

That means it remains in the form of an icon to click in the search box, linking through to Bing in the Edge browser, as opposed to an actual integration of the chatbot into the taskbar, so you could carry out queries right there on the desktop.

Google Drive is famous among Android users as a trustworthy backup storage option. Often, Android users store their essential data and media files on Google Drive over the internet to restore them when demanded.

Google Drive also lets users save their WhatsApp chat history and restore it seamlessly in no time. But what if your Android phone is lost, or you want it on your new iPhone? iOS and Android have different operating systems, and you cannot directly transfer your WhatsApp backup to iPhones without using safe and secure third-party software.

Before you go elsewhere, iToolab WatsGo can be your easiest and perfect pick to restore WhatsApp backup on iOS and Android devices. So stay tuned to restore WhatsApp backup from Google Drive to Android and iPhone devices with simple solutions and be in for exclusive features and usage process of iToolab WatsGo to get the job done more simply.

Windows 11 can be run on unsupported PCs, but Microsoft isn't keen on you doing this and has recently doubled-down on a policy of shaming systems that don't meet the official spec requirements.

As you may have noticed in the past, Microsoft's method of shaming such PCs is to put an annoying watermark on the desktop which is permanently there, stating 'System requirements not met' and telling the user to head to the Settings panel to find out more.

As Windows Latest reports, while this used to be a problem with PCs running preview (test) versions of Windows 11, it's increasingly being rolled out to devices in production, or in other words, those running the release version of the OS.

Users of WhatsApp who also happen to own iPhones can now make use of a cool new feature that can pull text right out of a photo.

The new text feature can look at an image that someone received in a chat and then allow them to pull the text out for use elsewhere. However, the feature does require that the iPhone also be running iOS 16 or later - it requires an API that was made available by Apple as part of the September 2022 software update.

The new feature was spotted by WABetaInfo and isn't actually mentioned in the WhatsApp App Store release notes, which is a little strange. The outlet says that WhatsApp often releases new features like this slowly, so it's possible that there needs to be a server-side change made to your account if you aren't yet able to make use of this new feature.

Apple is testing a new look for the TV app on the Mac, and it's going to bring some much-needed changes to how the app works.

The latest macOS 13.3 beta includes the revamped TV app, but you can't test it yourself. In fact, Apple appears to have hidden the new app and it's only by digging into the code and stealthily enabling it that 9to5Mac is able to report on the changes.

The main change that people will notice when this newly updated TV app ships is the addition of a new sidebar that provides quick and easy access to a number of features and content types that might otherwise be somewhat hidden.