How often do you stick around on the Windows 10 lock screen? It seems that Microsoft wants it to be a hub for information about your PC, but it has been sitting kind of barren for a while now, and there's not much to do past moving past it to use your PC. However, Microsoft is planning to change that with a new update for Windows 10. Available now on the Preview branch, you can add weather, traffic, and financial information to your lock screen, along with some other handy features.

Are you using Bing as your search engine? Not a lot of people do, and Microsoft knows it. The company has been on a quest to try to convince people to give its search engine a shot. Perform any action in Windows that opens a webpage, and there's a good chance it'll open in Edge. The company has even been pestering Chrome users to switch to Bing in recent days. Now the company is adding a Bing search bar to Edge error pages, in hopes that you'd use it to figure out what's wrong.

Image: Google Google Meet is rolling out filters you can use to “lightly” touch up your complexion before you head into a meeting. The company first launched the feature on mobile last year, but now it’s coming to Google Meet’s web app.You can choose from two different filters: subtle and smoothing. While Google says the subtle filter applies “very light” complexion smoothing, under-eye lightening, and eye whitening, the smoothing filter makes all three effects slightly more noticeable. GIF: Google Judging by the GIF provided by Google, it doesn’t look like either option dramatically changes your appearance like some of the filters you’ll find on Snapchat. Instead, it seems to apply much lighter effects that make it look like... Continue reading…

From AAA blockbusters to indie cult classics, there are tons of games up to 95 percent off. | Valve / Steam You’d think most gamers would have indulged enough over the long winter season that they wouldn’t want to spend the first moments of spring doing the same, but rainy days are still a thing, yeah? And the grind never truly stops for many of us. That’s why I can appreciate the Steam spring sale, happening now through March 21st. It happens around this time every year and offers up to 90 percent off thousands of titles. You can find deals on game-of-the-year-worthy titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 for $53.99 ($6 off), for example, while Diablo IV is 50 percent off no matter which version you buy, whether it’s the base game going for $34.99 or the Ultimate Edition for $49.99.It’s also a great chance to check out older titles you may have passed... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge This week, Spotify announced a new feature to let audiobook authors and publishers tease their new releases. Countdown Pages, which debuted for music artists last year and has been used by the likes of Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, let fans pre-save an upcoming title and have it pop into their library when it’s released. The page is adorned with a large countdown clock — with a timer going down to the second — to get listeners excited. The feature’s not revolutionary, but it is in line with how Spotify differentiates itself as an audiobook provider.Getting ahead of a new audiobook is pretty standard. On traditional platforms like Audible, you can preorder the title, and it will show up in your library on release day. But most people... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is reportedly working on a PlayStation 5 Pro model that may well include a far more powerful GPU that’s up to three times faster than the existing PS5 models. YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead claims to have gotten access to a technical overview document for the PS5 Pro, codenamed Trinity, and now Tom Henderson at Insider Gaming reports that the leaked specifications are accurate and the console is currently set to release during the holiday 2024 period.Screenshots from the technical document include a mention of 67 teraflops of 16-bit floating point calculations, which works out to around 33.5 teraflops of single-precision compute. That reportedly works out to a 45 percent rendering performance improvement over the PS5. The existing... Continue reading…

Subscriptions are all around us at this point; first came Netflix, which allowed us to cut the cord and give in to the world of video on demand. Largely regarded as a consumer convenience, it led to the growth of other platforms such as Spotify. Spotify launched a year after Netflix started streaming, and it too offered users a convenient way to legally consume music anywhere in the world. Since then, we've seen company after company launch its own subscription service, laying the bill at the foot of the consumer while ensuring a positive cash flow month to month.

Image: Playstack I’m sorry, there’s simply no escape. The addictive magic roguelike poker game Balatro, which grossed $1M in eight hours, sold 500,000 copies in 10 days, and has now been played for 1,742 years, is now coming to iPhone and Android too. That’s the word directly from the game’s anonymous solo developer LocalThunk and their publisher Playstack Games, who participated in a verified Reddit AMA earlier this week. The game originally shipped for consoles and Windows PCs — and was briefly banned from some storefronts over a ratings mistake. It’s back, and there’s also now a MacOS port that you can access by buying the game on Steam. The full Reddit AMA has loads of insight into Balatro’s development process, including their biggest... Continue reading…

Although Windows 11 has an array of security features and drive encryption powered by BitLocker, there is no straightforward way to lock a folder on Microsoft's desktop OS. Adding an extra layer of security over private folders is important before sharing your Windows laptop or PC with someone else. Here are the effective ways to password-protect any folder on Windows 11.

Thanks to their small size, decently capable specs, and large community, the Raspberry Pi SBCs remain some of the best devices for home projects. Like the average desktop, the operating system is one aspect every mainline entry in the Raspberry Pi lineup needs to function.

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images An unusually fast process. A classified briefing. Phone lines clogged with teenagers “in near tears.” The bill, meant to force the sale of TikTok, passed by a landslide. Continue reading…

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos via Getty Images In an opinion signed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court established a test to determine when a public official can be considered to be engaging in state action in blocking someone from their social media account. The official must have both “(1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf on a particular matter, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when speaking in the relevant social-media posts.”The court issued a unanimous decision in Lindke v. Freed, a case about whether Port Huron, Michigan city manager James Freed violated the First Amendment by blocking and deleting comments on his Facebook page from resident Kevin Lindke, who critiqued Freed’s pandemic policies. The test creates a new way to... Continue reading…