After testing the feature in the US and elsewhere, Spotify has launched synchronized song lyrics for users around the world, the company announced. The new feature is coming to the "majority" of Spotify tracks for both free and premium users, and will be powered in-app by Musixmatch . 

The feature will work across iOS and Android devices, desktop, TV and consoles. To use it, you tap on the "Now Playing View" on a song and swipe up from the bottom of the screen. From there, you'll see track lyrics that scroll in real time, along with a share button for social media. Spotify didn't say how many songs had the feature available, but "majority" implies more than half, at least. 

Spotify has previously dabbled with lyrics, showing the stories behind them with help from Genius, but the feature was limited to a handful of songs. It also teamed up with Musixmatch previously to show lyrics, but that experiment closed down in 2016. Spotify started testing the new feature early this year, but it has actually been active in 26 markets since mid-2020, including Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong and India.

In any case, the update puts Spotify on the level of Apple Music, which debuted its own song lyrics back in 2019, while Deezer also offers a similar feature. However, Spotify has more paid subscribers than both those services put together, meaning more people will be able to sing along to their favorite songs using the correct lyrics. 

The following only contains slight spoilers for the first episode of season four of 'Star Trek: Discovery.'

Since its debut back in 2017 (and even before then, really), Star Trek: Discovery has been a divisive show. There was a long laundry list of complaints: the series is too dark, everyone is mean, everyone cries too much, the Klingon designs suck, it shouldn’t be set before the original series, Michael Burnham is an unlikeable main character. While some changes have been made to the show over the years to smooth these rough edges, the elevation of Michael Burnham to the captain’s chair for season four has made it clear that Discovery is still largely going to do its own thing, regardless of what the fandom thinks.

In the past, season four for Star Trek series has always been a turning point, the moment when a show finally figures out what it wants to be. Season four of The Next Generation started with the riveting “The Best of Both Worlds,” and produced a number of classic episodes like “Family,” “Clues” and “The Drumhead.” Deep Space Nine added Worf to its crew in its fourth year, while Voyager got Seven of Nine. Enterprise’s final season is generally considered its best. So fans were curious to see if the pattern would continue in the Kurtzman era of Trek.

Things certainly looked promising at the end of last season. The crew of Discovery had jumped 900 years into the future, to a galaxy where dilithium fuel for space travel was in short supply and the Federation was in tatters thanks to an event known as “The Burn.” Burnham and the rest of the Discovery crew figured out the source of the disaster and solved the problem in last year’s finale, opening the doors to a show dedicated to rebuilding the Federation and its ideals. After three seasons of war, it finally looked like the USS Discovery could finally get down to Starfleet’s long-stated mandates of science and exploration.

Season four begins five months after the previous episode, with the Federation now in high gear reaching out to old members and allies. That’s where we join the USS Discovery, as Burnham and Cleveland Booker are attempting to give a shipment of dilithium to a species new to the Star Trek audience. The mission quickly goes awry, strongly reminiscent of the madcap opening of Star Trek Into Darkness.

CBS

The parallels to the weakest of the three Abrams-era films are not entirely an accident or even a homage: both Into Darkness and this week’s season premiere were co-penned by Star Trek head Alex Kurtzman. They exhibit some of the excesses of modern Trek like an emphasis on frantic action and quippy dialogue — at least there’s less lens flare this time around. And everyone seems to be in a good mood, a contrast to when everyone was just worn down in the 23rd century by years of war and secret experiments. 

The season opener is largely dedicated to showing off a new optimistic status quo, with Starfleet Academy being reestablished, Booker traveling to attend his nephew’s coming-of-age ritual and a new Federation president getting sworn in. It all seems rather staid, but Star Trek has always had its share of pomp and circumstance so it was actually a nice change of pace for the program. But things do go awry when the Discovery is tasked with rescuing a station crew and have to make a few hard choices, thus the title of the episode: “Kobayashi Maru.”

CBS

For those unfamiliar with Star Trek lore, the Kobayashi Maru is a test that all command-track cadets must take at Starfleet Academy. In the simulation, the cadets are faced with the choice of rescuing a ship stranded in enemy territory. To cross the border to rescue the craft is to risk war, but to preserve peace means to consign that crew to death. It’s been called a “no win” scenario,” and the Academy is interested in how a cadet reacts to it rather than the actual outcome. Kirk is known as the only person to have actually beaten it, because he reprogrammed the scenario; he cheated.

Like Kirk, Michael Burnham also doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario. She always does what she feels is best, and it’s made her crew unfailingly loyal to her over the past few seasons. But it’s earned her a share of detractors off-screen, because Burnham often disobeys orders and ignores good advice. She’s the rebel cop who plays by their own rules. Except this is Star Trek, a franchise about teamwork. Michael’s actions — and the fact that they always succeed — often undermine her superiors and even her own crewmates.

CBS

Placing her in the captain’s chair should have alleviated some of this issue, since Burnham is now the one her crew has to listen to. But even then the show felt it needed some sort of conflict, bringing the Federation president along to question Michael’s judgment in front of her crew. I couldn’t help but be reminded of how before the show aired, the producers and writers were bragging about how they were going to break one of Gene Roddenberry’s key rules for the series: No inter-crew conflict. Watching that in action in this episode, however, was mildly uncomfortable and even a little embarrassing to see.

Not everything is rosy by the end of the adventure, but it’s still a better outcome than we’ve seen at the end of many Star Trek outings. But the new “happy” status quo is thrown out the door by an anomaly at the end of the episode. As seen in previews, this anomaly will be an ongoing concern for the USS Discovery and the entire Federation — not just as a threat to life, but as a threat to the Federation’s efforts to pull itself back together.

CBS

Unfortunately, this also means that Discovery won’t be doing a lot of discovering in its fourth season. Fans who love “planet of the week” adventures and were hoping for the show to embrace that format will come away disappointed for now. However, while episodes one and two are involved in setup for the ongoing anomaly plot line, episodes three and four still make room for some vaguely one-shot adventures, albeit ones designed to further character development.

But while Discovery doesn’t seem all that interested in changing how it does things, the environment around it has changed. It’s no longer the only Star Trek show on TV, thanks to the premieres of Picard and Lower Decks in 2020, last month’s kid-oriented Prodigy and the debut of Strange New Worlds next year. All of these shows tackle the Star Trek universe in their own way, and are not required viewing to understand what’s happening in other shows (though there are some references to Picard in the first episodes of Discovery). Viewers can choose the Trek that suits them best, removing the pressure from Discovery to be all things to all fans and making it even easier to just do its own thing.

You can now access your Apple Music account on LG smart TVs even if you don't have an Apple TV. The music streaming service is now available for all the brand's TVs running webOS version 4.0 and higher, over a year after it made its debut on TV platforms with Samsung. Since webOS 4.0 only rolled out in 2018, the Apple Music app will most likely be accessible on newer models.

If your TV can run Apple Music, you'll find yourself faced with an interface and navigation similar to what you'll see if you were using an Apple TV. They're also visually similar to the Apple Music experience on iPads, iPhones, Android devices and PC. The service's app for LG can access all its songs, playlists, 4K music videos and livestreamed Apple Music Radio. It supports tracks with time-synced lyrics, as well, so you can sing along while reading the lines on a big screen. 

The app's release on LG smart TVs stays true to Apple's strategy of focusing more attention on its services and making them available on non-Apple hardware. That way, the tech giant can reach more potential customers who aren't married to Apple devices and can work towards making its services more veritable rivals to competitors like Spotify and Netflix. 

When Riot Forge said it would soon provide more long-awaited details about League of Legends spin-off Ruined King, few fans would have expected Riot Games' publishing arm to suddenly thrust the game into the world. But hey, guess what? That's exactly what happened. 

Ruined King: A League of Legends Story is out today on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store. It costs $30 and it's backward compatible on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. A version of the game is in the works for those consoles and there'll be a free upgrade available from the previous-gen systems.

This is a single-player, turn-based RPG developed by Airship Syndicate, the studio behind Darksiders: Genesis. It features some familiar faces for League of Legends fans, including the Champions Miss Fortune, Illaoi, Braum, Pyke, Ahri and Yasuo. You'll assemble a party, explore Bilgewater and venture to the Shadow Isles to learn about the secrets behind the deadly Black Mist.

Ruined King was initially supposed to arrive earlier this year. Riot announced the RPG back at the 2019 edition of The Game Awards.

As it turns out, this isn't the only LoL spin-off you can play starting today. Side-scrolling rhythm runner Hextech Mayhem, which costs $10, also hit Switch and PC. It's also coming to Netflix's library of games in the near future at no extra cost to subscribers.

In addition, Riot Forge provided an update on another project it announced a while back, Conv/rgence: A League of Legends Story. Double Stallion is developing that game, which is now set to arrive on consoles and PC next year. Song of Nunu, from Tequila Works, is also scheduled to arrive next year. And that's not all. Riot Forge also revealed during its showcase that a game set in the Demacia region is in development.

Over the past few years, Google has been trying to repair its reputation as a source for disinformation by launching multiple programs, particularly the Google News Initiative. Now, the company has teamed with PBS Student Report Labs (SRL) and other journalism organizations on programs designed to strengthen media literacy for students, educators and the public.

Google and Student Report Labs are creating educational resources aimed at teaching young people how to talk about misinformation with older family members and friends, Google wrote. "Through storytelling and co-production with students, we’ll explore the media literacy needs of different communities and generations, and how they can connect with each other to find solutions,” says SRL Founder Leah Clapman. As an example, Google referenced an SRL YouTube video called "What does a school board do?" (below).

Google also teamed with the News Literacy Project (NLP), a nonpartisan national education nonprofit, to again provide media literacy education to students, teachers and the public. Google aims to bring its "Newsroom to Classroom" initiative to more journalists and educators, helping NLP expand it to areas in California, Colorado, Texas, Iowa and Nebraska, "places hit particularly hard by the decline in local news," according to Google. 

Finally, Google is expanding its Spanish language outreach by teaming with Poynter's MediaWise project focused on students and seniors. It's joining forces with the team to translate their "How to Spot Misinformation Online" course in Spanish and creating a text-based version that will be delivered via SMS, "which is how many seniors find and share news," the company wrote. 

Google said the efforts will bolster its existing projects like Fact Check Explorer and "about this result" from Search. However, the company has a long way to go to assuage critics in the public and governments around the world that it's beating the misinformation that still plagues its various platforms. 

Snap has signed a music licensing deal with Sony Music Entertainment. The partnership means Snapchat users will have access to songs from Sony artists. With today’s announcement, the company has licensing deals with all the major music labels. And Snap plans to take advantage of the milestone by launching new AR music filters.

Sometime “soon,” the company says it will release a set that will feature pre-selected songs embedded in the filter. Additionally, they’ll be ones that allow you to make it look like you're singing along to a song and yet another set that adds you and a friend to an animated music video. In short, Snapchat is becoming more like TikTok and Instagram. You’ll know you’re about to add one of the new filters if there’s a musical note next to it.

You don’t have to look far to find out why Snap is doing this. Since launching the Sounds feature last year, the company notes its users have created more than 1.2 billion videos, leading to nearly 77 billion views. In other words, music has been great for Snapchat’s engagement metrics.

Twitter has acquired Threader. It’s one of a few apps that allow you to make threads easier to digest. By tagging Threader’s profile and typing “compile,” the bot will condense a series of tweets into an article-like form. “Today, we are bringing this experience to Twitter. We are both proud of what we’ve achieved together, especially as an independent team of two. We’re excited to bring the Threader experience to millions of people on Twitter,” the founders of Threader said.

As part of today’s announcement, Threader will shut down on December 15th, but its feature set will live on as part of Twitter Blue. Specifically in the Reader feature, which Twitter notes Threader co-founder Marie Denis helped build. Denis is joining the company's Longform team, where Twitter says she'll continue to work on ways to make it easier for people to read threads. Twitter did not disclose other terms of the acquisition. The deal follows the recent expansion of Twitter Blue to the US and New Zealand.

Rumors started swirling over the last few days that Microsoft will release the free Halo Infinite multiplayer mode before the full game. During its Xbox 20th anniversary event, the company confirmed that's the case. The standalone mode is now available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

The Halo Infinite campaign release date is still set for December 8th, though a few features will be missing at launch. The campaign co-op and Forge modes will be released later, because 343 Industries wanted to focus on the quality of the single-player and multiplayer modes.

Developing...

20 years ago today, the original Xbox was released. It’s a pretty big milestone for the entire gaming industry, because it’s hard to imagine console gaming without Xbox today. But back then it was pretty risky — Microsoft was the first American firm to release a gaming system in eight years, and the company wasn’t really well-known for being a game developer or publisher outside of the Flight Simulator series and built-in Windows games like Solitaire and Minesweeper.

Admittedly, the Xbox brand didn’t really take off until the release of the 360 in 2005. But the OG Xbox made a pretty good showing for its first try, thanks to a solid lineup of games and no thanks to its enormous Duke controller. Today a few Engadget staffers would like to chime in with their cherished Xbox memories, ones that really highlight the strength of this Microsoft’s first outing in the console world.

Strength #1: System Link

Halo: Combat Evolved

A year before Xbox Live launched and redefined console gaming forever, there was the multiplayer of Halo: Combat Evolved. It sounds archaic today: there were no such things as online play, bots or centralized player accounts. But there was System Link, an Xbox feature that allowed multiple consoles to connect together for offline LAN parties. Together with Halo's four-player split-screen support, System Link allowed up to 16 players to battle it out.

In many ways, Halo's multiplayer was the logical evolution of Goldeneye, the first console shooter to enthrall a generation of gamers. And while System Link may sound like a pain to set up, it was perfectly suited to large networks, like the one at my college. That's how I found myself spending hours with my roommates, huddled in front of a basic 20-inch TV, learning the intricacies of Halo's combat. I never quite mastered the three-shot kill — two in the center, one in the head — but I got close.

I can recall one heated match as if it was a war story. My team and I were huddled in the middle of Blood Gulch, one of Halo's iconic maps featuring a long canyon with two bases at each end. The scores were neck-and-neck, never more than a few kills leading on either side. All seemed lost. We were sitting ducks in No Man's Land, with only the protection of a few hills in front of us. I had a sniper rifle, but very little ammo. In a moment of desperation, I poked my head up and, miraculously, took an enemy out in front of their base. When another person popped up, I was able to headshot them with the same clip. Game over.

I later learned that someone from the opposing team threw a chair against a wall when they lost. I can't imagine an online match with some randos provoking the same sort of visceral response. That's just Halo multiplayer, baby. No internet required. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor

Strength #2: PC ports

Morrowind

I have a confession to make: I’m not much of a console gamer. Coming from the former Yugoslavia, where Nintendo products were exorbitantly expensive, the one constant in my gaming life has always been the PC. While other kids in Canada, where my family eventually settled, grew up on Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, my favorite childhood games were Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Dune II and The Secret of Monkey Island.

So when Microsoft released the Xbox in 2001, I wasn’t excited for it until the release of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in 2002. I didn’t own an Xbox, but my best friend did. At the time, neither of us had a PC capable of running Morrowind at a playable framerate. So when he bought a copy of the game, one of the first things I did was come over to watch him create his first character. Mind you, we played countless hours of Halo: Combat Evolved together, but Morrowind was the game that consistently ignited our imaginations.

To this day, we talk about some of the ways he managed to break the game. For example, he eventually became the leader of both House Hlaalu and Telvanni. And at one point, he received a quest to assassinate a Hlaalu landholder. He travelled to the estate only to find out he was its owner, so there was no way for him to finish the quest. By modern standards, that’s janky design, but it’s those quirks that made me fall in love with Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls series at large. — Igor Bonifacic, Contributing Editor

Strength #3: Exclusives

Jet Set Radio Future

My time with the original Xbox was limited, and I remember looking at games like Halo and Fable with awe. And the fact that it got a lot of games that would normally only be on PC — like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic — was also swoon-worthy. But then and now, there was really only one reason I wanted an Xbox, and that was to play Jet Set Radio Future.

The original game, Jet Grind Radio, was probably one of my favorite Dreamcast titles at the time. I loved the look of it, the gameplay and oh, the soundtrack. Especially the soundtrack. But when the Dreamcast was discontinued, it left some great franchises stranded. Games that Microsoft was perfectly happy to pick up for its foray into the console market, like Shenmue and my beloved Jet Grind Radio, which was switched back to its Japanese monkier for the sequel here in the US.

The gameplay remained mostly the same, with your skaters tasked with spray painting walls with their tags, battling against other gangs and avoiding the police. But Future also dispensed with time limits and enclosed stages, allowing you to skate between one section and the next. And the soundtrack, of course, was a banger. Guitar Vader, Cibo Matto and Bis. (Okay, maybe I’m the only person who cares about Bis. They wrote The Powerpuff Girls end theme! 'Social Dancing' is a great album!) — Kris Naudus, Buyer's Guide Editor

Move over, Mando. It's Boba Fett's time to run amok in Fortnite. Epic Games will add the bounty hunter on December 24th at 7PM ET. That's the weekend before The Book of Boba Fett makes its Disney+ debut on December 29th. Epic hasn't said much more about the crossover, but judging by the teaser art the studio shared, Fett's partner Fennec Shand will also make an appearance. Whether it will offer skins of both characters for players to purchase, Epic hasn't said yet, but that's probably a safe bet.

The announcement comes on the same day Disney shared all of its Disney+ Day news. That includes first looks at Obi-Wan Kenobi and Baymax!, and early details on a dozen new Marvel shows coming to the streaming service in 2022 and beyond. Ahead of the premiere of The Book of Boba Fett, Star Wars fans can watch Under the Helmet: The Legacy of Boba Fett. The documentary details the history of the character and is available to watch on Disney+ now.