Apps

The app economy continues to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores. Keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place, with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

WhatsApp’s massive 500 million users in India have supercharged Meta’s AI ambitions. Meta CFO Susan Li said Wednesday that India is the largest market in terms of Meta AI usage,…

Meta says India is the largest market for Meta AI usage

If you are on the developer beta, you can only use Apple Intelligence features if your language is set to U.S. English and region is set to U.S.

How to enable Apple Intelligence on your iPhone

Match Group announced Tuesday that it has discontinued livestreaming services in its dating apps, resulting in a 6% reduction in workforce. The news was delivered during the dating app giant’s second-quarter…

Match Group cuts 6% of staff as it shuts down livestreaming in dating apps

Bending Spoons said that it will continue reserving 30% of WeTransfer’s advertising space to give back campaigns and editorial content.

Bending Spoons acquires file transfer service WeTransfer

You can even upload a screenshot of a ticket, or a list of cities you are visiting and ask Mindtrip’s assistant to suggest places to visit, bars and restaurants.

Travel startup Mindtrip’s new feature lets you build an itinerary from a screenshot, YouTube or TikTok video

Threads users in the U.S. can now see a label that highlights related trending topics above posts.

Threads now highlights relevant trending topics above posts

Back in May, Spotify quietly started putting lyrics behind a paywall, limiting free users to lyrics for three songs per month. The move was a bid to push more users…

Spotify expands lyrics access for free users

Meta said Monday that it is rolling out its AI studio to all creators in the U.S. to let them make personalized AI-powered chatbots. The company first announced the AI…

Meta is rolling out its AI Studio in the US for creators to build AI chatbots

Uber is now letting riders in India book up to three rides simultaneously.

Uber now lets users in India book three trips at once

iCloud Private Relay has not been working for some Apple users across major markets, including the U.S., Europe, India and Japan.

Apple reports iCloud Private Relay global outages for some users

Sound Search on TikTok is somewhat similar to YouTube Music’s song detection tool that lets you find the name of a song by singing, humming or playing it. 

TikTok rolls out a new feature that lets you find songs by singing or humming them

The good news is that you can switch off the new data-sharing setting and also delete your conversation history with the AI. 

Here’s how to disable X (Twitter) from using your data to train its Grok AI

The Floorr offers tools for conducting sales, hosting tailored styling sessions, creating mood boards, and engaging in text or voice chats with clients, all in one place. 

Luxury fashion startup The Floorr empowers personal stylists with tools to grow their businesses

OpenAI may have designs to get into the search game — challenging not only upstarts like Perplexity, but Google and Bing, too. The company on Thursday unveiled SearchGPT, a search…

With Google in its sights, OpenAI unveils SearchGPT

WhatsApp has recently ramped up its marketing push in the U.S.

Mark Zuckerberg says WhatsApp has 100M monthly active users in the US

In its bid to maintain pace with generative AI rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI, Google is rolling out updates to the no-fee tier of Gemini, its AI-powered chatbot. The updates…

Google makes its Gemini chatbot faster and more widely available

Substack is rolling out the ability for writers to draft and publish new posts directly from their phone via its iOS app, the company announced on Thursday. Until now, users…

Substack writers can now draft and publish posts in iOS app

Google Maps is improving navigation through flyovers and narrow roads in India through new feature updates.

Google Maps adds a slew of features to entice Indian drivers, commuters and travelers

CRED, an Indian fintech startup, has rolled out a new feature that will help its customers manage and gain deeper insights into their cash flow, as the startup seeks to…

CRED launches personal finance manager for India’s affluent

A powerful new video-generating AI model became widely available today — but there’s a catch: The model appears to be censoring topics deemed too politically sensitive by the government in…

A new Chinese video-generating model appears to be censoring politically sensitive topics

Apple announced on Wednesday that Apple Maps is now available on the web via a public beta, which means you can now access the service directly from your browser. The…

Apple Maps launches on the web to challenge Google Maps

AltStore, an alternative app store, has launched its first batch of third-party iOS apps in the European Union. The rollout comes a few months after the company launched an updated…

Alternative app store AltStore PAL adds third-party iOS apps in wake of EU Apple ruling

Microsoft this afternoon previewed its answer to Google’s AI-powered search experiences: Bing generative search. Available for only a “small percentage” of users at the moment, Bing generative search, underpinned by…

Bing previews its answer to Google’s AI Overviews

Since launching xAI last year, Elon Musk has been using X as a sandbox to test some of the Grok model’s AI capabilities. Beyond the basic chatbot, X uses the…

X launches underwhelming Grok-powered ‘More About This Account’ feature

Alongside a slew of announcements for Play — such as AI-powered app comparisons and a feature that bundles similar apps — Google has introduced new “Curated Spaces,” hubs dedicated to…

Google Play gets ‘Comics’ feature for manga readers in Japan

Play Store is getting AI-powered app comparisons, automatically organized categories for similar apps, dedicated hubs for content, data personalization controls, support for playing multiple mobile games on PCs, and more…

Google adds AI-powered comparisons, collections and more data controls to Play Store

The outcome of the Spanish authority’s probe could take up to two years to complete, and leave Apple on the hook for fines in the billions.

Apple’s App Store hit with antitrust probe in Spain

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says the streaming service is still in the “early days” of its plans to bring hi-fi support to the platform. During the company’s earnings call on…

Spotify CEO says company is in ‘early days’ of hi-fi audio plans

Meta AI, Meta’s AI-powered assistant across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the web, can now speak in more languages and create stylized selfies. And, starting today, Meta AI users can route…

Meta AI gets new ‘Imagine me’ selfie feature

Meta’s latest open source AI model is its biggest yet. Today, Meta said it is releasing Llama 3.1 405B, a model containing 405 billion parameters. Parameters roughly correspond to a…

Meta releases its biggest ‘open’ AI model yet