The new controls apply to both individual and family accounts. | Image: Spotify Spotify is adding new toggles to stop any and all video from playing inside the app, for both music and podcasts. The controls are rolling out worldwide, work across all platforms and devices, and can be used by managers of Family Plans to limit video content for every member on the subscription.The new controls haven't arrived on my UK account or devices yet, but will appear under the "Content and display" settings on a phone, or the "Display" section on desktop. The existing toggle to disable Canvas clips - the short, looping, autoplay videos that Spotify added to the app in 2019 - is joined by a new toggle that disables access to music …Read the full story at The Verge.

150Nm of raw climbing assist. | Image: Amflow Amflow, the e-bike brand spun out of DJI, is back with two impressive electric mountain bike ranges built around its incredibly dense Avinox motors. The e-MTBs aim to break the traditional tradeoff between power, range, and weight.Even better, if Amflow's bikes don't appeal to you then over 60 other e-bike makers have adopted Avinox drive systems, including Canyon, Mondraker, and Pivot. That should give you ample choice and puts competitors like Bosch firmly on notice.The flagship Amflow PX (weighing around 20kg / 44lbs) and the Amflow PR (weighing around 22kg / 49lbs) are powered by Avinox's new M2S and M2 drive systems, delivering up t …Read the full story at The Verge.

Whenever I run into Wi-Fi issues, I follow a familiar, frustrating routine: staring at a spinning loading icon, resetting my router for the third time in an hour, and contacting my ISP’s customer support line. I was convinced I was being throttled, overcharged, or simply ignored.

As the very device that got me into single-board computers, DIY projects, and (to some extent) the Linux ecosystem, the Raspberry Pi holds a special place in my heart. I’ve written dozens of articles centered around my Raspberry Pi 5 and Zero boards here on XDA, and even though I went down the home lab route a few years ago, I still use my pint-sized companions a lot in my tinkering adventures.

Google's Gemini is getting a feature called "notebooks" to help you organize things about certain topics in a single place while using the AI chatbot, the company announced on Wednesday. You can pull in things like files, past conversations, and custom instructions into notebooks that Gemini can then use as context while you're talking with it. Notebooks sound a lot like ChatGPT's Projects feature, which launched in 2024 and similarly lets users store things about a certain topic in one spot. Google says to "think of notebooks as personal knowledge bases shared across Google products, starting in Gemini." Gemini's Notebooks also sync with …Read the full story at The Verge.

Repurposing old PC components is always recommended, but sometimes, you can't figure out anything useful for hardware you're no longer actively using. That's what happened with my 250GB SATA SSD when I switched to NVMe storage years ago. The SATA drive was the first SSD I had ever used, and it transformed my PC experience. After the move to NVMe, though, the SATA SSD remained unused for years. Windows 10 was my primary OS, but when I needed to install Windows 11 for work, I finally found a good use for the SATA SSD. It was just large enough for a Windows partition, plus it saved me the hassle of dual-booting Windows 10 and 11. Additionally, the old drive was perfect as a testing ground for stuff I didn't want running on my primary NVMe SSD. I could also use the SATA SSD as an external or recovery SSD in the future, provided it remains healthy enough.

We love NotebookLM here at XDA. There isn't a week where someone in the team isn't playing around with it and finding new ways to boost their productivity with the handy app. Turns out, letting an AI manage your project notes and documents essentially turns it into a first-class assistant that helps you with your workload.

The Neo king of affordable laptops. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge When the MacBook Neo arrived last month, I knew Windows laptop makers were in trouble. For $599, the Neo offers fantastic build quality and solid performance in a sleek and ultra-portable package. Windows laptops in this price range tend to be ugly, cheap-feeling, and a little slow.Despite years of rumors, the MacBook Neo still seemed to take the Windows world by surprise. I expect proper competitors to pop up just as soon as the companies can manage, but I wanted to see what the competition in the PC space is like now. So I asked a bunch of laptop manufacturers to send me their best answers to the MacBook Neo.The MacBook Neo is a 13-i …Read the full story at The Verge.

Well, it's official; we've finally gotten to the point where we can just have an LLM dawdle around and do its own thing for our amusement. Granted, watching an LLM make something can be really therapeutic, especially when you're making something yourself. It makes for a nice body-doubling companion you can always rely on.

Nearly 17 years after Dyson first announced its Air Multiplier fans - one of its first big consumer products after vacuums - the company has miniaturized their design to create a handheld personal cooler called the HushJet Mini Cool. Like Dyson's larger Air Multipliers, humidifiers, air purifiers, and heaters, the HushJet Mini Cool doesn't have any visible spinning blades to nick fingers or get tangled up in clothing or jewelry. All of its moving parts are safely hidden away, which is important because, like Dyson's hair dryers, the HushJet Mini Cool is made to be held.A brushless 65,000rpm DC motor produces a blast of air at speeds of up …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you're looking for a Windows computing device that's compact, powerful, and versatile — the Asus ProArt PZ13 is going to be for you. We got some hands on time with this model, and for the most part, we were pretty happy with what it offered.

YouTube Shorts is rolling out a new AI-powered feature giving creators an easy way to realistically clone themselves on camera. The launch, hinted at earlier this year, reflects the platform's fraught relationship with AI-generated content, adding more generative features while struggling to contain AI slop, deepfake scams, and impersonations. YouTube says the new tool will let users create a digital version of themselves, called an avatar, that can be inserted into existing Shorts videos or used to generate entirely new ones. The company said avatars will "look and sound like you," framing them as a safer and more secure way to use AI to …Read the full story at The Verge.