When OpenAI released a ChatGPT app for the iPhone in May, it promised that Android users will get theirs soon. Now, the company has announced that ChatGPT for Android is rolling out to users sometime next week. Moreover, its Google Play listing is already up, and users can pre-register to get it as soon as it becomes available. 

It's unclear if the app will initially only be available in the US like the iPhone app, but I was able to pre-order it from Asia. OpenAI expanded the iOS app's reach to more regions just a few days after it was released, so the Android app will most likely be accessible in other countries soon even if it does launch only in the US. 

People can already access ChatGPT on Android through a browser, but the interface, while not exactly difficult to navigate, isn't ideal for mobile devices. A dedicated app means an interface optimized for mobile, as well as features tailored for users on the platform. iOS users, for instance, got support for Siri and Shortcuts in June. They can create a ChatGPT prompt in Shortcuts and save it as a link to send to friends, and they can ask Siri to fire up the app or create those Shortcuts, among other things. 

OpenAI has recently started testing a new opt-in feature for ChatGPT Plus subscribers that gives the AI chatbot a continuous memory. With the feature switched on, the chatbot remembers who the user is across conversations, which the company says can streamline queries. The feature was designed to work across the platform, meaning paying Android users who opt in will likely see continuous memory in their app when it comes out. 

You no longer need to try a beta to stream Android apps on your Chromebook. Google has released a Chrome OS M115 update that makes Android app streaming available to many more people. If you have Phone Hub enabled, you can run an Android app directly from your mobile device rather than installing it on the computer. The update allows you to reply to a message or check your lunch delivery without the distraction of reaching for your handset.

The feature is still limited to a handful of Android 13-capable phones from Google and Xiaomi. From Google, you'll need a Pixel 4a or later. Xiaomi fans, meanwhile, need at least a 12T. Both your Chromebook and phone must be on the same WiFi network and physically close by. Some networks might not support the feature, but you can use Chrome OS' Instant Tethering to establish a link if need be.

As during the beta, you won't want to use app streaming for games or other intensive Android apps. This is more for responding to notifications than any serious commitment — you'll still want to install apps for that. It gives Chromebooks some of the phone integration you find in macOS and Windows, though, and may help you stay focused while you work.

The M115 upgrade also lets you sign PDF documents and save signatures to use later. Google has also redesigned the keyboard-oriented Shortcut app with a new interface and easier in-app search.

Google says its Nearby Share app for Windows PCs is now officially available. A PC version of the app, which makes it a cinch to share files between devices like Android phones and Chromebooks, has been in beta for a few months, but it's now ready for prime time.

More than 1.7 million people installed the beta, Google says. They've used it to transfer more than 50 million files, primarily photos and videos. 

Google has added some new features to Nearby Share for Windows as it officially rolls out the app. You'll now see an estimated time for how long it will take to complete a file transfer. Device notifications will include an image preview to help you make sure you're sharing the correct file. Google plans to add more features and it's working with some PC manufacturers, including HP, to include the app on their systems.

To use Nearby Share for Windows, you'll need to enable your PC's WiFi and Bluetooth functions. Once you're set up, you just need to drag a file into the app or right-click it and select the Nearby Share option to send it to a nearby device. 

If you're logged into the same Google account on PC and your Android phone (or tablet or Chromebook), transfers will automatically be accepted on the receiving device. Either way, devices that you're transferring files between have to be within 16 feet of each other. There are device visibility settings to help prevent spam and unwanted file transfers.

TikTok has started inviting users in Australia, Mexico and Singapore to participate in a closed beta test for its new music streaming service, according to TechCrunch and CNBC. The short-form video hosting app initially launched beta testing for its fledgling streaming service in Brazil and Indonesia in early July. Now, it's expanding the scope of its music service's experimental phase and giving invited users in those regions a free three-month trial to be able to try it out. 

TikTok Music is a completely separate app that testers will be able to download from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. It does, however, connect to the main TikTok app, so users can find the full versions of songs that go viral on the video-sharing platform. The music streaming app reportedly offers personalized song recommendations, real-time lyrics, collaborative playlists and the ability to find songs through a lyrics search feature, as well. TechCrunch says it has a Shazam-like feature, which presumably means it can find songs by listening to it, and will let users download tracks for offline listening. 

The ByteDance-owned app told TechCrunch that once the testers' trial period is done, it will cost them AUD12 (US$8.16) per month in Australia, Mex$115 (US$6.86) in Mexico and S$9.90 (US$7.48) in Singapore to be able to keep using the service. TikTok already has a music streaming service called Resso available in India, Brazil and Indonesia, but it's shutting the app down in the last two countries in September. The company has yet to announce if and when its music app is also coming to the US, but it did file a trademark application for "TikTok Music" in the country back in May 2022. 

Meta’s Threads app is coming back down to Earth after a blockbuster first week that saw the app become the fastest growing of all time. New data from analytics firm SimilarWeb suggests that the app’s engagement has since declined from initial highs despite its status as the fastest-growing app of all time.

Threads saw daily active users decline from 49 million on July 7th, to 23.6 million on July 14th, SimilarWeb writes in a new report. And in the United States, which reportedly saw the highest engagement, usage declined from 21 minutes per day to just over six minutes in the same time period.

While SimilarWeb cautions that its data is based only on Android usage of Threads, its findings line up with those of other companies. Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower reported a similar decline in engagement, writing in a report that the app “has experienced a double-digit decline in DAUs [daily active users] and user engagement since launch.”

On some level, the drop-off is expected. Threads launched at a moment when many Twitter users were seeking alternatives, and its ties to Instagram made it extraordinarily easy for users to sign up and port over their existing social graph. At the same time, the app is missing a lot of basic features, including a non-algorithmic feed not easily dominated by brands and influencers.

In a Threads post on Friday, Instagram’s top exec, Adam Mosseri, suggested the company wasn’t particularly focused on engagement metrics at this stage. “Our focus right now is not engagement, which has been amazing, but getting past the initial peak and trough we see with every new product, and building new features, dialing in performance, and improving ranking,” he wrote.

Whether or not Meta is able to fully take advantage of those conditions though will likely depend on how quickly it can add new features to keep its users coming back, as well as whether it’s able to launch within the European Union. The company is also dealing with issues around spam, according to Mosseri, who said Threads would be putting rate limits and other protections. “Spam attacks have picked up so we're going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives),” he wrote.

While the declining engagement with Threads may seem like good news for Twitter, the company still has plenty of reasons to worry about its latest competitor. As SimilarWeb’s Senior Insights Manager David Carr writes, there are “some signs” that at least some of Threads’ engagement has come at the expense of Twitter’s. “In the first two full days that Threads was generally available, Thursday and Friday, web traffic to twitter.com was down 5% compared with the same days of the previous week and Android app usage, by time spent, was down 4.3%,” Carr says. He also notes that “Twitter user retention has been on the decline” since last year.

Just a year ago, Apple announced the biggest software update the iPad has ever seen. iPadOS 16 ushered in Stage Manager, a completely revamped multitasking mode that brought overlapping, resizable windows to the iPad, along with robust external display support (provided you had compatible hardware).

There were a host of other new features, as usual, but Stage Manager in particular brought the iPad closer than ever to a Mac or Windows PC experience. iPadOS 17, on the other hand, is a more subtle update. That’s usually the case, with one year bringing big new features and the next offering tweaks and stability improvements. And while there isn’t one singular headline feature in iPadOS 17, the totality of myriad smaller changes definitely adds up. I’ve been using iPadOS 17 in beta for a few weeks, and now that the public beta is live, you can do the same.

A note on stability: Even though this is a public beta, the “beta” still applies. It’s probably not ideal to install on a machine you rely on for daily use, as you’ll surely run into some bugs and crashes. And it’s always a bit of a crapshoot how well third-party apps work on a beta. All that said, I haven’t run into anything particularly severe. Occasionally, an app will just toss me back to the Home Screen, or you might find some weird UI issues where apps haven’t quite been optimized yet. But over the last few years, Apple has gained a reputation for releasing public betas in solid, usable states, and that’s the case here as well. Just remember that “downgrading” to iPadOS 16 final releases isn’t exactly a simple process.

Stage Manager updates

While Stage Manager opened up some major new multitasking features for the iPad, it was also a lot more rigid than the windows management system you’d find on a Mac. This year, Apple has tweaked things to make it easier to set up your ideal workspace. Previously, apps would snap to a handful of predetermined sizes to fit your display, and the specific placement of each individual window was up to iPadOS to decide. Now, app windows have a lot more granularity in how you can size and place them. For example, I can make the Notes app that I’m typing into right now a tiny window half of my screen’s height and about a quarter of its width. From there, I can make it as tall or wide as I want; there are still specific sizes that it snaps to, but there’s far more flexibility than there was last year.

iPadOS 17 is also a lot more flexible about how you arrange multiple apps, something that wasn’t the case last year. When you added a second app to a space, iPadOS automatically decided where the two windows should go. You could resize them both as you wanted, but it was basically impossible to show two apps side-by-side without any overlap, for example. That’s no longer the case. Now, it’s a simple matter of grabbing the top of a window and dropping it where you want.

These basic controls have been available on Windows and macOS for decades, but it’s still a new paradigm for the iPad. I’m definitely glad that Apple seems to be trusting its users more by giving them more flexibility rather than letting iPadOS make major decisions about how you lay out your screen. Stage Manager is still somewhat of a niche feature, given that lots of iPads can’t run it, but people who want to push their iPads further will definitely appreciate these updates.

Lock Screen and interactive widgets

Probably the most obvious user-facing update is the revamped Lock Screen. It should also be very familiar, because Apple first introduced it on the iPhone a year ago. Basically, you can now set up multiple lock screens, each with its own wallpaper, widgets and design elements (like fonts and color filters). To jump between different styles you’ve set up, you can just press and hold on the Lock Screen and then choose what suits you. Finally, you can also set a specific Focus setting for each Lock Screen, so you can set up a whole profile for work mode or vacation time.

There’s also a great new wallpaper picker – this, too, borrowed from the iPhone. There are some new styles here specifically for the iPad, though, including striking views of every planet in the solar system stem. And in a nod to the iPad’s history, they brought back the original Pyramid Lake wallpaper (shot by photographer Richard Misrach) from the first iPad back in 2010. I’m a sucker for nostalgia and love the photo, so Apple won me over here.

Beyond the aesthetics, having widgets on the Lock Screen makes the iPad’s large display more useful — there’s a ton of space, so why not show more than just the time and your notifications? But widgets are getting a big improvement beyond just being able to drop them on the Lock Screen. At long last, they’re interactive. That means if you have a Reminders widget, you can tap a specific item to check it off without having to open the app. Or, with the Apple Music widget, you can automatically start playing an album or playlist.

Previously, widgets let you tap specific parts to jump to that place in the app, so they weren’t just static information displays, but this takes their functionality a lot further. We’re going to need third-party developers to add this functionality to their widgets to really take full advantage of the feature, but I’m looking forward to seeing how apps incorporate it when iPadOS 17 is out in the wild.

Health

There aren’t many Apple apps on the iPhone that you can’t also get on the iPad. Health was one, but that’s been remedied this year. It’s just what you’d expect: Health data tracked from your iPhone and Apple Watch is available for you to review on the iPad, with a design that’s better suited to the larger screen. While there’s nothing revolutionary here, the Health app can include so much data that it’s actually a bit easier to dig through everything here.

Everything syncs from your iPhone, but so far that sync process hasn’t been the most reliable. Even though the Health app on my iPad says it synced two minutes ago, it hasn't pulled in updated steps data since 7AM this morning. My activity rings from my Apple Watch are similarly hours out of date. I wager this will get settled before iPadOS 17 is finished, though.

Apple announced a handful of features relating to mental health as part of the latest iPad and iOS updates, including a dedicated journaling app and mood trackers in the health app. While the journal app isn’t coming until “later this year,” sometime after iPadOS 17 and iOS 17 officially launch, the mood tracking features are available in the Health app. I’ve long been in the habit of tracking my daily mood, and this isn’t a bad place to do it. It’s pretty simple, with a slider to pick your overall mood and a few follow-up questions, but the idea is for it to be quick and painless so you do it repeatedly. There’s also a mental health questionnaire you can take that claims to assess your anxiety and depression levels that reminds me of questions I’ve answered from a doctor in the past. I did reach out to Apple to find out where they’re sourcing this set of questions from so we can know more about their validity and approach.

Safari, Messages, Notes and more

As always, Apple’s core apps are getting lots of little but potentially meaningful updates. Safari’s biggest new feature is arguably the ability to set up multiple profiles. Each profile can access all your bookmarks, saved passwords and reading list, but it keeps things like logins to sites and tab groups separate. I did the basic “personal and work” profiles, with logins to work-specific tools kept separate. It’s also pretty easy to move things between profiles if you accidentally open windows in your personal profile that you’d rather have with your work tabs. And, of course, this all syncs via iCloud to other devices — I have the macOS Sonoma beta installed as well, and things were shared seamlessly.

Messages is possibly Apple’s most important app, and every year it gets usability tweaks and new features. A bunch of those are focused around audio messages, which I haven’t really had a chance to check out much. One thing I do like, though, is that replying in a thread is a lot easier than it used to be. Now, swiping right on a message opens the reply interface, which is definitely quicker than holding down on a message, waiting for the menu to pop up and selecting the “reply” option.

The search experience has also been upgraded with filters. For example, you can first search for a specific contact, and then search just their conversation for keywords. The results naturally include specific messages as well as relevant links, images and more.

But the update I’ve had the most fun with so far is definitely Stickers. You can now easily create your own stickers from images in your photo gallery. If you tap on a subject in a photo, you can pull it out from the background and save it as a sticker, so you can easily use it again. Live Photos can be turned into live stickers — and let me tell you, the live sticker I made of my dog laying down is adorable and I will spam everyone with it.

Your own stickers can live alongside sticker packs from other apps, emoji and Memoji. And the stickers you’ve created will be available to use in third-party apps, as well. Basically, stickers you create as well as those from apps should be easier to share outside of just Apple’s Messages app, which is a nice change from the previously walled-off approach Apple took.

Notes, quietly one of Apple’s most useful apps, has gotten more improvements this year too. You can now embed PDFs right into a Notes doc and they display full-width, so you can easily browse through a PDF and make notes on it below. You can also naturally mark it up with an Apple Pencil or collaborate on it in a note shared with other people.

PDF support system-wide has been improved. For example, opening a PDF document from the Files app will open it in its own window, provided you’re running Stage Manager. This makes it easier to put a PDF side-by-side with another app while still having full access to the Files app. Auto-filling fields in PDFs has also been improved system-wide; Apple says it’s using an on-device neural network to identify documents that have fields that need to be filled in across the system, and you’ll be able to AutoFill details like names and addresses the same way you can on websites.

Another useful trick is the ability to link directly to a specific note in your library. Other note-taking apps like Bear have had this feature for a while, but it’s undeniably handy to link related notes together so you can easily jump between them instead of having to go back to the sidebar and search for the one you’re looking for.

The rest

This just scratches the surface of iPadOS 17. Lots of new features, like the changes to Messages, work best when other people you know are also running the new software. And other things, like the journal app, won’t be available to try for months to come. Finally, there are plenty of iOS 17 features like Facetime updates and a smarter keyboard will be in iPadOS 17 as well. If you want to give this all a shot months before Apple finalizes everything, you can install the iPadOS 17 public beta now. But as always, think hard about whether you’re up for some instability before you take the plunge.

Spotify is notifying users who’ve subscribed to its Premium service through Apple’s in-app purchase system that it will no longer be supporting it as a payment method. As a refresher, Spotify hasn’t allowed users to subscribe through Apple’s in-app purchase since 2016. However, those who had already subscribed via that method years ago could keep paying Spotify that way until now.

As reported by Variety, the company is emailing affected subscribers about the upcoming change. The email reads, “We’re contacting you because when you joined Spotify Premium you used Apple’s billing service to subscribe. Unfortunately, we no longer accept that billing method as a form of payment.” Spotify continues to say that those users will automatically be switched to the company’s Free, ad-supported tier at the end of the current billing cycle. “If you wish to keep your Premium subscription, you will need to re-subscribe after your last billing period has ended and your account has been moved on to the Free account.”

But that’s probably for the best. Due to Apple taking 30 percent of in-app purchases, Spotify users who were subscribed through in-app purchases were being charged an extra $3 per month compared to subscribing through Spotify directly. That’s despite the fact that Apple now reduces its commission rate to 15 percent on subscriptions after the first year. Apple said in a regulatory filing from 2019 that it collected that 15 percent fee on roughly 680,000 Spotify customers. Users transitioning from Apple’s payments can subscribe to Premium via a credit card or PayPal.

Both Apple and Google charge a “tax” on their respective app stores, regardless if a user is purchasing apps or subscribing through in-app purchase. Early last year, Google announced that it would be piloting a program that would allow third-party billing systems on Android, beginning with Spotify called User Choice Billing (UCB). Google began rolling out UCB to Spotify users late last year. Though, it’s unclear how many users are subscribing via UCB compared to using Google’s standard in-app purchase system. While there have been rumors about Apple allowing third-party app stores on iOS, there aren’t any official plans for those or for accepting third-party billing.

Apple is initiating one last-ditch effort to maintain a cut of in-app sales, asking the Supreme Court to hear its appeal of Epic Games' anti-trust case, Reuters reports. Two lower courts ruled that Apple must drop its guidelines preventing apps from including their own payment options, a policy that helped Apple's bottom line. 

The fight began in 2020 when Epic rolled out a new Fortnite update that allowed gamers to purchase digital coins through a direct payment feature. The move violated Apple's policy that required all iOS games to use in-app purchases — and gave Apple a 30 percent cut of the profits. Apple removed Fortnite from its App Store in response, despite its regular status as one of its highest-grossing games. In retaliation, Epic sued Apple to end its "unfair and anti-competitive actions" with the goal of changing its policy versus seeking any damages. 

The lawsuit was a mixed bag for both parties involved: In 2021, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Epic knowingly violated Apple's rules and the iPhone maker wasn't required to add Fortnite back to its App Store. Rogers also stated that Apple wasn't acting like a monopoly but that the company must allow apps to provide their users with third-party payment systems. The change went into effect last year, and the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the entire injunction this past April. 

In their filing, Apple's lawyers claim that the ruling extends beyond Epic Games and "exceeds the district court's authority under Article III, which limits federal court jurisdiction to actual cases and controversies." Basically, they argue that the court overreached and asked the Supreme Court to acknowledge that and let its App Store go back to business as usual (developers giving but cuts of sales to Apple). One way or another, Apple will at least have to adapt in some countries, with new European Union regulations requiring the company to allow third-party app stores by 2024.

We've known for quite a while that Meta has been building a Twitter competitor, but now we have a more solid idea of when it will become available. A listing for the app called Threads has popped up in the iOS App Store with an estimated release date of July 6th. In May, a report came out saying that the microblogging service was nearing completion and could be out as soon as the end of June. While an end-of-June launch didn't quite happen, the app could be arriving at a time when Twitter users are more willing (and maybe even eager) to try an alternative. 

Twitter recently put a cap on how many tweets an unverified account can read per day. In a post, Elon Musk announced that verified accounts — which translates to paying users — can read 6,000 posts a day, while unverified/nonpaying users can only read 600. He said the website is adopting the measure to "address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation." A regular user can easily hit 600 posts, so people who haven't been paying $8 to $11 a month for blue checkmark have been getting locked out of their feeds as a result. 

Meta describes Threads as "Instagram's text-based conversation app." Based on the screenshots posted in the listing, users can keep their Instagram handle and follow the same accounts they follow on the photo-sharing platform. That means users will have a pre-existing following and circles on the new app, giving it an edge over other Twitter rivals. Users will also be able to choose the privacy of their posts and make them visible to anyone, to the profiles they follow or only to the accounts they mention. They will be able to heart, send and share other people's posts, as well. 

Previous reports said Meta's Twitter competitor would be a decentralized service that's compatible with Mastodon, but it's unclear if that's still the case when it launches. We'll know for sure within a few days. 

ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company, has debuted a new app designed to make it easier for creators to compose and edit music they could use for their content. The app called Ripple is only available in the US for now, and the company is testing it in a closed beta environment. ByteDance says it can assist creators in the way portable smart digital audio workstations (DAWs) can and is perhaps most useful for beginners and anybody who'd rather not deal with more complex systems. It was also designed to make it easier for creators to add custom soundtracks to their short-form videos for TikTok and other platforms.

Ripple can create songs in various genres based on a melody the user hums. The app prompts them into humming into the phone mic and then generates instrumentals they can use, such as drums, bass and piano. The length of the song output will match the length of the input, though — the app can't generate a full soundtrack from just a few seconds of humming. Also, Ripple can only generate instrumental music, leaving the vocal work to creators.

ByteDance told us that Ripple's model was trained on music it owns and music that was licensed to the company. The company also said that it's committed to respecting the rights of its artists and its rightsholder partners. To note, there have been concerns about the source of data used to train artificial intelligence systems and algorithms. Just recently, a lawsuit seeking class action status was filed against OpenAI, accusing it of violating the copyrights and privacy of countless individuals by using data scraped from the internet to train the model used for ChatGPT. 

At the moment, Ripple is invite-only, and ByteDance doesn't have further rollout plans yet. Those who want to check it out before anybody else can visit Ripple.club, where they can find a download link for the app on iOS and from where they can request an invite.