The price of solid-state drives (SSDs) has continued to fall in recent years, and it's now easier (and more affordable) than ever to upgrade your gaming PC with faster load times and more responsive gameplay. Thanks to these savings, it's possible to buy an SSD for not only storing and running the main operating system but also plenty of apps and games without spending an arm and a leg.

Image: Finji I used to hate jigsaw puzzles. I thought they were frustrating, messy, and took way too long to solve. But my wife showed me how those parts of jigsaw puzzles can actually be fun: there’s something satisfying and meditative about working through those frustrations, sorting through the mess, and putting a picture together, one piece at a time, over the course of a few hours. (Or days.)The makers of Wilmot Works It Out, a new puzzle game, understand this, and everything about the game is designed to make solving puzzles fun instead of annoying.In the game, you play as Wilmot, an adorable white square with a face who has a puzzle-by-mail subscription. (He’s the same smiley square from Wilmot’s Warehouse, a 2019 puzzle game also made by... Continue reading…

While OneNote has been a darling of Windows users, handy for jotting down quick notes, Evernote has rapidly become a strong contender among power users. Since being acquired by Bending Spoons, an Italy-based company, the popular note-taking app has rapidly gained new features. Its now right up there with OneNote and even beats Microsofts solution in some critical areas.

Microsoft recently refreshed the Xbox Series X, and while it comes with multiple improvements to power usage, one thing has been taken away. The new base model Robot White Xbox Series X with 1TB storage is all-digital, so the Blu-ray drive has been removed. Sure, it's $50 lower in price for that, but it's a worrying trend when access to physical media is shrinking fast. To get an optical drive on the Xbox now, you have to pony up for the 2TB version, which costs $600, or buy the older and more power-hungry model while it's still available. With optical drives disappearing on laptops, and PC gaming handhelds all being digital only, it really looks like the end of the road for physical media.

The yearly releases for Intel and AMD are almost done, with Arrow Lake receiving a lukewarm reception due to a mix of software and hardware snafus. AMD's 9000 series didn't fare much better, as while the CPUs are efficient and decently priced, they don't bring that much more performance than the previous generation. With this year being a reset of sorts in favor of more efficient CPUs, let's take a closer look at the two midrange CPUs, the Core Ultra 7 265K and Ryzen 7 9700X, to see which one is going to take the crown.

A smart home display that looks like the iMac G4 would be irresistible. | Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge The smart home display that Apple is rumored to be releasing next year could sport a look that harkens back to the iMac G4, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests in his Power On newsletter today.The new smart home display will apparently be small. Gurman writes it will have a square display angled above a small base that makes it “reminiscent of the circular bottom of the iMac G4 from a couple of decades ago.” It may have speakers, essentially making it the HomePod with a screen that’s been rumored as one of Apple’s possible smart home futures.Gurman didn’t say how much this device might cost but has hinted at an “affordable” smart home device with a square display in the past. Rumors have suggested Apple will release a $1,000 model with a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge While there aren’t a lot of new features in Android 15, it does offer some useful additions for your phone — and one of the most interesting is called “Private Space.” Think of it as a separate app vault that locks away specified apps on your Android device. Of course, the main lockscreen already stops other people from accessing your phone, but Private Space puts an extra barrier in place. The idea is that if you lend someone your device to make a call or look at a photo, they won’t accidentally (or deliberately) stumble into something they shouldn’t. It’s also an extra safety net if your phone is lost or stolen while it’s unlocked.I tried the feature on a Pixel 8 phone running Android 15. Here’s how it works.Setting up Private... Continue reading…

If you're getting the itch to upgrade your CPU, like many PC enthusiasts, you've no doubt been watching the releases of Intel's Arrow Lake and AMD's Ryzen 9000 series very closely. So you're probably already aware that both manufacturers have gone on a diet this year, with a push for more efficient CPUs instead of the generational performance boosts of prior releases. That means this year's best CPUs from Intel and from AMD might actually not be the best CPUs for you and the type of tasks you perform. The nuances of the conversation this year aren't just around new features or percentage performance increases, and many users can likely pause their upgrade for another few months at least.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge When the Mac Mini was first introduced in early 2005, it was pitched as a compact “stripped-down” desktop — and the most affordable Mac in Apple’s lineup. Steve Jobs referred to it as a “BYODKM” system: you’d bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse, and the Mini would provide a dependable computing experience with all the benefits of macOS. The Mac Mini has carried on ever since. There have been periods where the Mini has been sidelined and ignored by Apple for long stretches of time. But the debut of Apple Silicon gave it a new lease on life. Even if the overall design didn’t change much in the transition from Intel to Apple’s in-house chips, the Mini’s potential soared. But now, that design is about to change. And if the... Continue reading…

It's the final weekend before Halloween is here! Are you doing anything for the season? Whether you've been busy planning your spooky parties or getting your costume ready, there has been plenty

Have you ever wished your Raspberry Pi board was floppier? If you do, I'd love to hear what project spurred you to think that way. In the meantime, you can check out this new crowd-sourcing project that claims to be the world's first flexible Raspberry Pi Pico, and you can snag one for cheap if you act fast.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 58, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, Batman forever, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about Simone Giertz and billionaire assistants and Checo Pérez and Call Her Daddy, learning about “Earthrise,” listening to Quinta Brunson and Conan O’Brien talk comedy, trying to decide whether to get super into Bluesky or just quit social altogether, and throwing myself into baseball so I can pretend I know what I’m talking about during the World Series.I also have for you an excellent new VR game, a delightful new reading gadget, a nice RSS reader update, a new browser worth trying, and much... Continue reading…