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The best apps download superpowers to your smartphone. The Verge covers the new and noteworthy Android apps, iPhone apps, and games, highlighting great design, impressive utility, and novel features. If it belongs on your phone, you’ll find it on The Verge.

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Court documents reveal how Facebook’s Onavo VPN tracked Snapchat data for “Project Ghostbusters.”

Facebook's “In App Panel” program ran from 2016 to 2019 using Onavo’s technology as a man-in-the-middle attack to decrypt secured Snapchat traffic. Court documents unsealed as part of an ongoing class-action antitrust lawsuit show how the program came together.

A June 2016 email included in the documents from Mark Zuckerberg says:

Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted we have no analytics about them. . . .

Given how quickly they’re growing, it seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them. Perhaps we need to do panels or write custom software. You should figure out how to do this.


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The Artifact news app isn’t dead yet.

To be fair, co-founder Kevin Systrom seems to think it’s still probably going to die. But he told TechCrunch that he and Mike Krieger are “exploring all possible routes for it going forward.” The Instagram co-founders did some really clever stuff with Artifact, before seemingly getting a little ahead of themselves with social features — maybe going back to basics will keep Artifact going. I hope so!


Google Chat now lets you subject coworkers to your celebrity impressions.

Google is rolling out voice messages for enterprise Workspace users. To send one, tap the microphone button to record yourself. Others can react to your message, quote it, or reply to it.

Only the Android / iOS Google Chat apps support voice recordings right now, but web users can receive them, and will get recording later.


A GIF showing Google Chat voice messages.
[Ron Swanson voice] “Veganism is the sad result of a morally corrupt mind.”
Image: Google
MTA’s redesigned subway app is now available, and it looks great.

Some big changes include the addition of real-time ETA, live train and bus tracking, service alerts, and multi-modal trip planning. If you already have the MTA app, it will automatically update. If not, it’s available for Android or iOS. I’m no New Yorker, but this looks way better than the app we have for Los Angeles public transit.


Graphic images of smartphones showing screenshots of the redesigned MTA app.
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Ready for 90 minutes of big feelings about productivity apps?

I went on the Waveform podcast this week to talk about productivity apps, getting stuff done, to-do lists, and the true chaos that is just using your Alarms app to remind you to do stuff. I think Marques and I successfully fixed Andrew... but we’ll see.


Tidal has found the right way to share music with friends.

Instead of sharing a Tidal-specific song link with friends, now you can let them choose the service they want to open it with — whether it’s Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music. Tidal is rolling out universal links today, and you can see how it looks in the screenshot below.


If only other music streaming services would adopt this.
If only other music streaming services would adopt this.
Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge

Here’s why AI search engines really can’t kill Google

The AI search tools are getting better — but they don’t yet understand what a search engine really is and how we really use them.

Federation is the future of social media, says Bluesky CEO Jay Graber

The head of Threads and Mastodon competitor Bluesky on why she thinks decentralization is the way forward in a post-Twitter internet.

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D2, but not The Mighty Ducks.

I spent a little bit today fiddling with this playground for open-source diagram scripting language D2 (not to be confused with the system programming language D, Dreamcast survival horror game D2, or data visualization library D3).

It’s not a programming game like, say, Swift Playgrounds, but it offers some of the same easy satisfaction of entering text and seeing an immediate result.


D2 Playground

[D2 Playground]

The biggest new battle royale is ready for your phone

Plus, in this week’s Installer: a peek at the Humane AI Pin, new Stardew Valley, 3 Body Problem, and much more.

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The Verge
It’s time to wave goodbye to Mint, Intuit’s free budgeting app.

The company was originally going to shut it down on January 1st, but now the end has finally come: Mint will disappear after tomorrow, March 23rd (so it’s a good time to finally download that data). Intuit has urged Mint users to move to Credit Karma, which is also free but not quite the same thing; however, there are alternatives. We’ve laid out a few for you:


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Another look at WhatsApp’s third-party chat support — now in video form.

Thanks to the Digital Markets Act, Meta is gearing up to allow WhatsApp and Messenger to send and receive messages from other services. We’ve already seen screenshots of how the feature might look thanks to WABetaInfo, and now TheSpAndroid has gone one better with a video of the onboarding process, and also reports that WhatsApp could soon offer new AI-powered image editing tools; backdrop, restyle, and expand.


We need more easy to read transportation apps.

Maybe it’s because I relocated to New Jersey, but its increasingly clear that transportation apps and APIs in most of the US kind of suck. Apparently, New Jersey Transit has a gnarly one.

But thankfully the PATH, an inexpensive commuter rail that runs between New York and New Jersey, has a robust enough API to make up for its often buggy app. That’s meant one developer has built a very handy app and widget that gives you exactly what you need: an easy to read train schedule.


An image of a train schedule.
Screenshot by Alex Cranz/The Verge
Proton’s password manager now supports passkeys.

After rolling out its end-to-end encrypted password manager last year, Proton has announced that it will now let you manage passkeys across mobile and desktop devices, allowing you to log into sites without a password.


Image: Proton
What’s cooler than pinning a WhatsApp message? Pinning three.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that WhatsApp is rolling out the option to pin as many as three messages to the top of a chat, up from the single message that’s been possible to pin since late last year. According to WABetaInfo, which previously spotted the feature in beta, Meta is already working on the option of pinning even more.


A screenshot of WhatsApp with a pinned message up top.
Pinned messages are handy for keeping important chat details easily accessible.
Image: WhatsApp
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Reddit’s IPO could cost $34 per share.

Reddit’s IPO, which will have the ticker symbol RDDT, is making its debut tomorrow. Sources tell CNBC it’s priced at the “top” of the $31 to $34 range it targeted, which puts the social platform at a valuation of around $6.5 billion.


These toddler games for iPad are actually good — and that’s all too rare

Sago Mini’s adorable games don’t make me want to throw my toddler’s tablet into the sea.

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Google is rolling out a way to manage custom contact ringtones in one place.

Look for the new “Contact ringtones” option in the Fix & manage tab of the Google Contacts app. I have it, but Android specialist Mishaal Rahman notes that may not be true for all yet.

In honor of this (and as the only Verge staffer who still uses custom ringtones, apparently) I’d like to point out that you, too, can hear a Brak song when your partner calls you.


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The Verge
Threads will now show trending topics for all users in the US.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the feature is no longer in testing, which means you’ll now get to keep tabs on what people are talking about from the app’s search tab and For You feed.


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You can watch March Madness games for free in the Vision Pro.

The NCAA’s March Madness Live app is also getting a new, swipeable vertical video highlights feed.

The “Vision Pro compatibility” means the iPad app, so you won’t get any “spatial” features, but at least it’s there (unlike, say, YouTube). What, did the Samsung Gear VR app not do well or something?

The NCAA also says it’s offering “expanded live game radio” for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.


Opera’s mobile browser is getting a lot of new users in the EU.

The company credits the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) for the 164 percent increase in new iOS users it saw from March 5th to the 7th. Opera also saw significant user growth in specific countries, including a 402 percent spike in France and a 143 percent boost in Spain.

Apple started letting iPhone users choose their default browser as part of its compliance with the DMA earlier this month. Besides Opera, Brave and Firefox are also seeing more iPhone users in the EU.


A chart seeing user growth for Opera’s browser
Image: Opera
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OpenAI’s custom chatbots are easier to make than market.

The Information reports on GPT Store developers disappointed by a lack of customers for their ChatGPT-style products and limited analytics support. One developer claims his role-playing chatbot “could have gotten more traffic by partnering with a small influencer on TikTok” after being featured for two weeks.

Verge reporter Emilia David had questions about the value of the GPT Store after struggling to “find a use” for chatbots made by other users, and it’s not clear if there are any great answers yet.