The best apps download superpowers to your smartphone. The Verge covers the new and noteworthy Android apps, iPhone apps, and games, highlighting great design, impressive utility, and novel features. If it belongs on your phone, you’ll find it on The Verge.
The new setting would also stop photos and videos from being automatically saved to phones.
Plus, in this week’s Installer: TikTok for Bluesky, the Minecraft movie, Microsoft turns 50, and much more.
Attorney General Pam Bondi sent Apple a letter “telling the company it should follow President Donald Trump’s executive order” extending ByteDance’s deadline to sell TikTok by 75 more days, reports Bloomberg. The outlet had reported a similar letter sent to both Google and Apple prior to their decision to restore the app to their online marketplaces in February, too.
Can you ever use too much software? Yes, but hear me out first.
Samsung TV owners belting out their favorite tunes using the Stingray Karaoke app can now reach for their smartphones to level up their performance. The Samsung SmartThings app can turn smartphones — including Samsung Galaxy S22, S23, S2, and S25 models and the iPhone 15 and 16 — into a wireless microphone.
TVs supporting the Mobile Microphone feature include certain 2025 Samsung smart TV models like the Neo QLED and The Frame.
Correction, April 2nd: An earlier version of this article misstated that the Stingray Karaoke app turns smartphones into microphones. It is the Samsung SmartThings mobile app.
Nintendo chose to announce a release window for its live-action The Legend of Zelda movie in the new Nintendo Today! app that only launched 24 hours ago. However, there was enough demand to pull up the brief video clip that Nintendo of Japan had to tweet about the issues.
I haven’t seen the information shared directly via Nintendo’s social media channels on X, Instagram, or YouTube -- if this is how we find out key info about the Switch 2 next week, then I hope it’s up to the task.
So-called “User Choice Billing” — which allows app developers to offer users payment providers other than Google Play for purchases — will be available to British users from March 29th, starting with non-gaming apps. The option is already available to users in the US, Europe, and a handful of other countries.
It saves devs from a four percent payment processing fee, though the real saving will be lower since other payment processors charge fees too.
[blog.google]
Nintendo has expanded its Music app’s catalog with tracks from the Game Boy and NES versions of Tetris, Dr. Mario, and the Switch’s Kirby and the Forgotten Land. On a support page on its website, Nintendo also revealed details about an October 2025 update, as spotted by Nintendo Life.
Using the app requires a Switch Online subscription, but later this year those who unsubscribe will still be able to access, edit, and share playlists they created.
That’s according to WABetaInfo, which spotted that a recent beta of the Android app supports sharing motion photos, Android’s GIF-like animations that accompany some photos, similar to the Live Photos feature found on iPhones (and which, the outlet notes, WhatsApp for iOS already supports).
[wabetainfo.com]
During his weekly AMA, Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged that “we really should build” a small-but-important feature that competitors like TikTok and YouTube offer: picture-in-picture (PIP). Maybe you’ll be able to multitask and watch reels soon.
Also, Instagram is working to improve its search feature this year — including the ability to search for content, not just other accounts.
Google has felt like a product in decline for a long time. Kagi offers a new, better vision for search, but the only way it works is if you’re willing to pay.
I tried out the new productivity app Touch Grass, which just came out for iOS. It blocks apps of your choosing and only unblocks them after you take a picture of your hand literally touching grass. I even tried tricking it with fake grass with mixed results. You can block two apps in the free version of Touch Grass and an unlimited number of apps in the subscription version, which costs $5.99/month or $49.99/year.
