Building out a smart home with Home Assistant is easier than you may think. Once the basics are in place, locally managed lights, sensors, plugs, switches, thermostats, and dashboards are all well within reach. Add a Zigbee coordinator, pair a few devices, and suddenly you have the foundations for a surprisingly capable local smart home.

The Sense Pro is Schlage’s first Matter-over-Thread lock. It also supports hands-free unlocking via Apple Home Key, with Google and Samsung support coming soon through Aliro. The Schlage Sense Pro is a beautiful smart lock. Sleek, discreet, and simple to use, it's Schlage's smartest lock to date. Thanks to ultra-wideband (UWB), it unlocks as I walk up to my front door; I don't need to enter a code or tap my phone or press my finger against it. I've tested several hands-free unlocking systems that rely on geofencing and other radio technologies, and UWB is faster and more reliable. It's the first one I actually trust.The $399 Sense Pro is Schlage's first smart lock with ultra-wideband auto-unlock, its first to support Matter-over-Thread, and its first without a physical keyhole. It works with Apple Home Key for …Read the full story at The Verge.

My smart TV supports AirPlay, and so does my HomePod in the bedroom. When someone in my house wants to play music, I point them to my trusted Chromecast Audio. Yes, the 11-year-old gadget continues to work as a home music streamer available for everyone.

Anker’s Soundcore Boom 2 is fully waterproof. Bluetooth speakers with big sound and great features are hard to find for under $100, with most offerings being some variation of the same basic (and often small) design. Thankfully, through July 10th Woot has the Anker Soundcore Boom 2 on sale for $69.99, which is $20 cheaper than the discounted price at other retailers like Amazon, and about half its original $129.99 price. The waterproof Bluetooth speaker can run for up to 24 hours on a single charge, with big, bass-forward sound that’s great for a day by the water or just hanging out in the yard.Anker Soundcore Boom 2Where to Buy: $129.99 $69.99 at WootWhile size isn’t everything when it comes to Bluetooth speakers, the Soundcore Boom 2’s 50W subwoofer and pair of 15W tweeters should deliver louder, clearer sound than other speakers around the same price (which are often smaller). The IPX7 rating means it’s fully waterproof and submersible, and its design will let it pump out the tunes, or take calls with its built-in microphone, while it floats in water.The Boom 2 has a robust set of features for a speaker at this price point. You can adjust the equalizer and the built-in lighting behavior from the Anker app, plus the speaker charges your other devices at up to 5W from its built-in USB-A port. Its support for Anker PartyCast 2.0 lets the Boom 2 sync with other Anker speakers for larger audio. There’s no 3.5mm aux input, which isn’t irregular for waterproof speakers, so it’s Bluetooth only for playback.

OpenAI is already shutting down ChatGPT Atlas, its browser that could do tasks for you on your behalf, less than a year after launching it. Atlas was announced in October, but as part of its wave of news about ChatGPT Work today, the company confirmed that it will be "sunsetting" Atlas and is targeting an August 9th date for deprecation.The shutdown follows OpenAI's push to reduce "side quests" and catch up with Anthropic on productivity features. As part of that push, in March, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI planned to combine the ChatGPT app, Codex, and Atlas into a desktop "superapp" - ChatGPT Work appears to be the result …Read the full story at The Verge.

Google’s 2020 Nest Thermostat is $50 off. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge If you’re looking for a relatively affordable way to cut down on cooling costs, Google’s Nest Thermostat can help. It’s packed with smart controls and energy-saving features, and right now it’s on sale in white for $79 ($50 off), which is its best price of the year, at Amazon. Google Nest ThermostatWhere to Buy: $129.99 $79 at AmazonThe smart thermostat is quick to install and makes it easy to adjust your home’s temperature whether you’re relaxing in bed or on your way home thanks to the Google Home app. You can also create schedules and control it with your voice using Google Assistant, Alexa, or another Matter-compatible voice assistant.Once it’s set up, the Nest Thermostat can automatically turn the temperature down when you’re away to help reduce unnecessary energy use, while Google’s Savings Finder feature suggests additional ways to save over time. It also monitors your HVAC system and can alert you if something doesn’t seem right, making it easier to stay on top of maintenance before small issues become bigger, more expensive ones. If you’re eligible, Nest Renew can also automatically shift some of your heating and cooling to times when electricity is cleaner or cheaper.That said, this is Google’s entry-level model from 2020, so you do miss out on some of the premium features found on the latest Nest Learning Thermostat. Unlike the flagship version, it won’t learn your schedule automatically over time, for example, and lacks support for Nest Temperature Sensors that let you prioritize the temperature in a specific room. Even so, if all you want is an easy way to adjust your home’s temperature remotely and potentially lower your energy bills, the Nest Thermostat is still a solid investment at this price.Read our Google Nest Thermostat review.

You can see if ads on Google Search, Google Discover, and YouTube were made or edited using AI from a new section in Google's "My Ad Center," as reported earlier by TechCrunch. The update, announced on Thursday, adds a "created or edited with AI" label under the "how this ad was made" tab. Users can find it by tapping the three dots or info button on ads, which pulls up the same panel where you can also block or report ads.Google says it will automatically apply the AI label to any ads made with its own generative AI advertising tools, but AI ads made elsewhere will need to have the label applied manually. In some regions, Google's new AI …Read the full story at The Verge.

Local AI has become a lot more accessible and faster over the last few years, but the same cannot be said about recently released budget GPUs. If you go through what's available on the GPU market, you'll find both Blackwell and RDNA 4-class GPUs that still arrive with 8GB of VRAM, and that's a configuration that most people would write off as inadequate for any AI workload prima facie.

Windows 11 updates could soon include fixes for more security issues at once. Microsoft said in a blog post on Thursday that it's now using AI to "identify potential issues earlier," which means "customers will see a higher volume of security updates included in each security release." Hackers, even amateurs, have increasingly been using AI to quickly exploit security weaknesses over the past several months. Security researchers are also using AI to find issues faster, leading to more frequent high-severity vulnerabilities, like the "Copy Fail" exploit that impacted nearly every Linux distribution in May. Similarly, when Anthropic announce …Read the full story at The Verge.

For a few years, I relied heavily on Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom to edit the photos and images I use at XDA. The subscription price was (and still is) covered by my work, but for over half a year now, I've barely ever touched those programs, and instead, I use Affinity for all my editing.

About two weeks after OpenAI's GPT-5.6 was caught up in regulatory drama - rolled out only to government-approved organizations during a "limited preview" period - the company has received the Trump administration's greenlight for a public rollout of the model. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it "the best model we have ever produced."To celebrate, OpenAI also unveiled a new AI agent on the same day: ChatGPT Work. It's billed as a combination of ChatGPT and Codex, allowing the everyday non-technical user to take advantage of Codex's capabilities for non-coding tasks, and it's powered by the GPT-5.6 model suite (Sol, Terra, and Luna). "It can g …Read the full story at The Verge.

Jellyfin is one of the most versatile home media options available, but by default, its interface is rather bland. It works great, but it looks a bit dated. The good news? A few tweaks can make it look significantly more modern and feel more responsive.