Tired of Windows 11 but want to keep using a desktop operating system that resembles Microsoft's design language? There are a few choices available within the Linux community. You have the option of using a tailor-made distro with all the necessary bells and whistles preinstalled, or you can choose one of the many available to serve as a solid and secure foundation for creating your own Windows-like Linux-powered OS. What you shouldn't do, however, is use Winux. I downloaded this OS after seeing it covered by esteemed publications, and I'm struggling to see the appeal.

Sage green is one of Apple’s best colors this year. For a while now, choosing the standard iPhone has meant missing out. It's not just that you missed out on classic "pro" features like a more powerful processor or a telephoto lens - it's that you missed out on core make-your-phone better stuff. Stuff like the Dynamic Island or the Action Button or a screen that gets bright enough to read outdoors. Apple has slowly whittled down that list by bringing the most important features over to its standard phone, but the two biggest exclusions have, until now, remained: the always-on display and high-refresh-rate screen.This year, they've finally arrived. And for the first time in a while, choosing …Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft is getting ready to launch its Xbox full-screen experience on the new Xbox Ally devices next month, but it looks like you won’t need new hardware to get it. Windows enthusiasts have discovered a way to enable this new Xbox mode early in Windows 11, thanks to the latest 25H2 update to the operating system.The method, which involves installing a Release Preview version of Windows 11 and lots of tweaks, works on a variety of handheld gaming PCs — including MSI’s Claw devices and Asus’ ROG Ally range. I’ve been trying it out on the original ROG Ally today, and it allows the device to ignore Asus’ own software in favor of Microsoft’s Xbox app at boot.Microsoft’s new Xbox mode on Windows has leaked for any handheld. Windows enthusiasts have found a way to get the new Xbox full-screen experience running on Windows 11. Guide here: https://t.co/KvXqjQMr6A pic.twitter.com/w7iEbAtLAP— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) September 17, 2025The new Xbox full-screen experience doesn’t load the full Windows desktop or a bunch of background processes, freeing up more memory for games. It’s essentially not loading the Explorer shell and saving around 2GB of memory by suppressing all the unnecessary parts of a typical Windows 11 installation. You launch straight into the Xbox PC app instead, which includes all of your PC games from the Microsoft Store, Battle.net, Steam, and other storefronts. There’s a Game Bar for navigating around, and a new task view that’s a lot more handheld-friendly.You can also still swap into a Windows desktop mode, or access Windows apps and games directly in this full-screen Xbox mode. Microsoft warns that you’re exiting to the Windows desktop and that you should use touch or a mouse and keyboard “for the best experience,” and it’s the exact same Windows experience that exists on multiple devices right now.If you want to try this out for yourself, it’s a relatively easy process to get going. But be warned, fiddling with registry settings or the Windows Feature Store (known as Velocity) could result in system instability. If you’re willing to risk some issues that might need rolling back or require a reinstall of Windows, there’s a handy guide on Reddit for all the settings required.

As a freelance tech blogger and content marketer, my work life is all about flexibility. I don't have a traditional office, and my schedule changes constantly. This freedom is great, but it often leads to chaos. When I first started out, I struggled with multiple paid subscriptions for invoicing, project management, and file storage. It was expensive, complicated, and I never felt like I truly owned my data. I needed a simple, powerful, and affordable way to manage my entire business.

In 2023, DJI created a massive hit with the Osmo Pocket 3, a tiny steadicam with a far bigger one-inch-type sensor that dramatically improved the quality of video you could get with so tiny a gadget. Today, the company may be doing the same with its most popular portable line of drones — and with better battery life than ever.The DJI Mini 5 Pro is the company’s first compact drone with a 50-megapixel one-inch-type sensor, up from 1/1.3-inch in the Mini 4 Pro. At 15.19 x 11.11mm, it offers more than twice the sensor area, which could mean capturing more light; DJI claims 14 stops of dynamic range. DJI tells us it could deliver even slightly better results than the one in the bigger and pricier DJI Air 3S from 2024, with “enhanced portrait performance” at close range, “improved brightness in shadow areas,” and that it won’t oversharpen vegetation like the Air 3S sometimes could. Plus, DJI is quoting two extra minutes of battery life from the Mini 5 Pro over the Mini 4 Pro without increasing weight beyond the all-important 250-gram mark, at 36 minutes vs. 34. Or, if you opt for the company’s extended battery, DJI claims you can hit 52 minutes at a go, beating the old Mini 3 for the longest longest battery life ever in a non-industrial DJI drone. DJI won’t sell that extended battery in Europe, though, to help comply with laws around heavier drones. Otherwise, the DJI Mini 5 Pro, like the Mini 4 Pro before it, is mostly a story of catching up to the high bar set by DJI’s Air line. The Mini already had omnidirectional obstacle avoidance; now it gets the Air’s upgraded low-light version with forward-facing LiDAR so it can more easily return home at night, and can “memorize flight routes, enabling safe takeoff and return even without a satellite signal.” The Mini 5 Pro can now climb twice as fast at 10 meters per second (22mph), just like the Air, and flies slightly faster horizontally (42mph vs. 36mph) than the Mini 4 Pro too. You also get faster 4K120 shooting like the Air, plus the same expanded ISO range of 12800 in normal shooting and 3200 in HDR and D-Log M. And like the Air, you can store 42GB of video on the drone itself, whereas previous minis required an SD card for more than a tiny 2GB clip. And though DJI’s wireless transmission range hasn’t really improved, it now offers Wi-Fi 6 for up to 100MB/s downloads.It’s even trying to ape the Air’s secondary telephoto camera with a new “48mm Med-Tele mode”; while that digital zoom likely won’t compare to the Air’s 70mm optical, we were mildly impressed with the 40mm lossless 2x digital zoom on the Osmo Pocket 3 and sometimes genuinely use it. The Mini 5 Pro does get a couple new tricks from other drones besides the Air. Like the Mavic 4 Pro, it now offers a gimbal that can freely roll for more than just vertical filming, though here you get 225 degrees of rotation instead of 360. And like the DJI Flip, it can automatically power on when you unfold its arms, no more press-and-release-and-hold necessary. It can’t perform DJI’s QuickShots filming maneuvers without a controller, though.As with the Air 3S, the Mavic 4 Pro, and frankly, every DJI product from here on out, the question is: will you actually be able to buy one? In the United States, the answer isn’t great. Not only will DJI not officially sell this drone in the US, it won’t even create a US product website for it, and we were not offered a review unit — though you might be able to find small batches at other retailers like previously, if US customs doesn’t block those shipments. If you do, DJI spokeperson Daisy Kong makes it sound like the company should still honor its warranty, though it depends on “the product issue, usage, purchase details, and whether the product is within the warranty period or not.”In Canada, the DJI Mini 5 Pro will cost $769 USD, but Kong cautions that’s not the price it would necessarily sell for in the US. It’ll also cost £689 in the UK, €798 in Europe, and ¥106,700 in Japan, all of which represent that DJI isn’t really raising the price this year — so if the Mini 5 Pro costs far more than that at US retailers like Adorama and B&H, it’s likely the result of Trump’s tariffs.As with many previous drones, the company will ship it in bundles with additional batteries, accessories, and screen-equipped controllers if you prefer. You can’t swap propellers or ND filters between the Mini 5 Pro and Mini 4 Pro, and the new batteries don’t work on the older drone. “Technically, the Mini 5 Pro can use batteries from previous drones, but we do not recommend it,” writes Kong.

Little wonder. The iPhone Air is as much a statement as it is a phone. It says something about the person using it: that they don't mind giving up a few things for a phone that's meaningfully thinner and lighter. That they can give up all those extra cameras on the back and just live with one. That they, well, went out and bought The New iPhone - one that makes everyone go "Whooooaaa" when they hold it for the first time. That's a hell of a lot of things for a 6.5-inch slab of titanium and glass to say, but then again, the iPhone Air isn't your average phone.You've already heard this a lot, but I'll go ahead and say it because it bears repeating: the i …Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple’s new iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro. It's a tricky year to review the iPhone Pro. It's long been the go-to choice for anyone who wants an iPhone with the nicest screen, longest battery, and great cameras. But the display is no longer unique to the Pro, cameras have largely gotten "good enough" on most phones, and Apple has a new model, the Air, which might be even more compelling. This is the first time the iPhone Pro feels like it's truly targeted at creators - people who need the longest battery life and the best cameras to record video and photos. I'm not a creator, but I've always bought the Pro Max for its bigger, higher-refresh-rate screen as much as for its beefy batte …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has been getting a lot of classic games added to the Switch Online classic console sections. The most recent addition was Forsaken 64, a sci-fi shooter that was brought to the Nintendo 64 mature games sections of Switch Online. As of now, there are only four games accessible within the library of titles on the app, with more possibly coming in the future. But with so many mature Nintendo 64 games that were released back in the day, there's no shortage of great games that could be added to Switch Online to build up its selection of classics.

Ever since I got my MacBook earlier this year, I’ve been experimenting with different apps and tools that I could never run on my Windows, Linux, and even Hackintosh setups. This includes everything from the macOS-exclusive Affinity software stack to macOS’ new containerization platform with the unimaginative name of Apple Container.

Most of us have an old 1080p monitor collecting dust in a closet or shoved into a corner. Instead of letting it go to waste, I decided to repurpose mine into a dedicated dashboard for my budding home lab. A central hub where I can keep an eye on servers, containers, and network services without cluttering my main workstation. With just a bit of setup and the right software, that forgotten screen transformed into one of the most useful parts of my lab.

I've been a long-time user of Alfred on my MacBook, and as someone who tried out Raycast before switching to Alfred, it never really clicked with me. To be honest, it was so long ago that I can't even remember why Alfred fit my workflow more than Raycast did, I just know that it did. However, like Raycast, Alfred was a Mac exclusive, and even though Windows alternatives such as Flow Launcher exist, they never really felt the same.

I’ve lost count of how many productivity apps I’ve tried. They all promise to fix my scattered brain, but many just end up overcomplicating things. Between syncing, paywalls, and 50 different “views”, I often end up spending more time managing the tool than getting work done. All I really need is something to help me keep track of the stuff I usually forget and organize it in a digestible way, without turning it into a second job.