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.
After last month’s acquisition of Runna, mostly to get at its running plans, Strava is repeating the trick in cycling. It just acquired The Breakaway, an iOS biking app with a focus on... AI training plans.
It comes as Strava closes a round of funding that valued the business at $2.2 billion. Yesterday it announced new AI route planning and improvements to its cheat detection.
“We’re excited to have Selig bring that same craft and community-first thinking to Digg, helping us build something that feels good to use and even better to be a part of,” Digg CEO Justin Mezzell says in a press release.
You can read more about Digg’s revival in our article from March. And, if you don’t remember, Selig was a key character in the protests on Reddit a couple years ago.
“No more weird burner accounts,” David Heinemeier Hansson says in a blog post. “Now you can sign up directly for a real email address in HEY, and if you like what we have to offer (and I think you will!), you’ll be able to pay the $99/year for a subscription via a web-based flow that it’s now kosher to link to from the app itself.”
At Rest of World, Reem Abd Ulhamid writes about community-sourced apps designed to help Palestinians navigate Israeli-enforced movement restrictions, like checkpoints, Israeli-only roads, and Israeli police. Traditional GPS apps like Google Maps and Waze “try to find the fastest route, [whereas] Palestinian digital networks focus on avoiding risks.”
Last year, Patreon asked creators to switch to subscription billing after Apple said Patreon had to use the company’s in-app payment method or “risk being kicked out of the App Store.” Thanks to the latest Epic Games v. Apple ruling, Patreon has lifted its November 2025 deadline for all creators to make the switch to subscription billing.
Additionally, Patreon creators will once again be able to let supporters purchase memberships at the price they’ve set on iOS.
The update puts a focus on Formula 1 racing in promotion of both upcoming Apple movie F1 and the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix race happening later this month. The update is full of special Monaco Grand Prix-related things, including little renders of Formula 1 cars at the pits and road closure advisories.
Not that any of us will ever use it — this is basically an update for Apple exec and known sports fan Eddy Cue, right?
After spotting early code for the functionality in March, Android Authority has managed to get it working in the latest beta build of Google’s RCS messaging app. For now it’s not triggering any extra notifications for people who get tagged though. Google is yet to confirm it’s working on mentions, so we don’t know how long it’ll take to roll out for real.
[androidauthority.com]
Slack has acknowledged an outage Monday evening as “...users are experiencing issues connecting to Slack and are unable to load threads,” with most reports noting problems beginning just after 6:30PM ET.
Some people are still connected, or can load certain threads and rooms, while others fail. According to Slack, “our backend database routing is contributing to error spikes with many Slack features,” affecting a percentage of users globally. There’s no ETA for a repair yet, but it might be a good time to take a break or just call it a day entirely.
Updated at 7:12PM ET.
Match Group, which owns Match.com and other big dating apps, announced its quarterly earnings today and announced a workforce reduction that new CEO Spencer Rascoff said will reduce “around 1 in 5 managers overall.” Based on its 2024 filing, Bloomberg says that’s about 325 jobs.
The company said recent developments have included rolling out a new AI-powered recommendation system for Hinge that “has driven a 15 percent increase in matches and contact exchanges.” Meanwhile, new “AI-enabled Discovery, Double Date, and The Game Game” launches for Tinder are targeting Gen Z users with “more social, low-pressure experiences.”
[ir.mtch.com]
After filing an appeal, Apple is now asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to pause the Epic vs. Apple injunction requirements that prevent the company from restricting external links in iOS apps and charging fees on purchases made outside the App Store.
Apple says compliance will cost the company “hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually,” and that the “extraordinary intrusions into Apple’s business will cause grave, irreparable harm” without a stay.
The WhatsApp beta for Android 2.25.15.12 update includes an in-development AI feature that summarizes messages in chats, groups, and channels using the Private Processing AI tech Meta announced last week, allowing users to quickly catch up on lengthy conversations.
It isn’t available for testing yet, but WABetaInfo notes the summarization feature won’t be available in chats where Advanced Chat Privacy is enabled when it does roll out.
[wabetainfo.com]
