Microsoft has been gradually updating its Seeing AI app since its launch in 2017, expanding language support and general functionality over the years. Today, the company is announcing a new feature that would let Seeing AI read out detailed information when users scan the barcodes of products by healthcare company Haleon. The feature is rolling out today for US and UK users on the free app, which is only available on iOS. The company says an Android version will be available "in the future."

In a press release, Microsoft and Haleon said "With today’s launch in honor of World Sight Day, people can now hear packaging information through the Microsoft Seeing AI app by scanning the barcode of Haleon products." Users who are blind, have trouble reading or have low literacy can use the app to scan more than 1,500 Haleon products like Advil, Excedrin, Theraflu, Emergen-C and more, and their device will read out product information, instructions, ingredients "and other crucial details."

The press release also noted that "The Seeing AI collaboration with Microsoft is one of Haleon’s first new initiatives to champion health inclusivity." We may be seeing more from the healthcare company in future, but for now, it's nice to see that people with visual impairments or low literacy can more easily and independently learn about the drugs they are considering or consuming. That is, at least, if they use iOS. 

The Donald Trump-backed Truth Social is live in Google’s Play Store following a months-long delay due to concerns over its content moderation policies. The two sides had been going back and forth about the app’s approval since late August, according toAxios.

Truth Social launched in Apple’s App Store back in February, but up until now Android users either had to use the web version of the service or sideload the app. Google had reportedly flagged content moderation issues on the app, including physical threats and content that incited violence.

Google requires that apps with user generated content have policies to prevent abusive behavior, like violent threats, as well as mechanisms for enforcing those rules. Truth Social’s service apparently didn’t meet those standards when it first tried to launch on Android in August. But the company has apparently now resolved those concerns.

“Apps may be distributed on Google Play provided they comply with our developer guidelines, including the requirement to effectively moderate user-generated content and remove objectionable posts such as those that incite violence,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

Truth Social isn’t the only app that’s received extra scrutiny over this policy. Google cited the same conditions when it took Parler out of its app store last January. The app was reinstated last month.

During its Surface event, Microsoft said Apple TV and Apple Music apps are coming to the operating system next year. You'll be able to check out previews of them in the Microsoft Store before the year is out. As such, those who use Apple's services soon won't need to use a web app or creaky old iTunes to access Apple Music or Apple TV on a Windows system.

Xbox users, meanwhile, can download an Apple Music app starting today, a year after the service landed on PS5. Apple TV has been available on Xbox consoles since late 2020.

In addition, you'll be able to access iCloud photo libraries in Windows without relying on a browser. These will be available to everyone through the Windows Photos app next month. Folks in the Windows Insider program can try the integration today by installing the latest version of the iCloud Windows app.

Apple's standalone Windows media apps have been a long time coming. The company was recruiting engineers to build them as far back as 2019, the same year Apple announced separate Music, TV and Podcast apps for Mac.

It has been two years since EA announced it was working on a replacement for its Origin PC client, and it's now starting to roll out the new app to Windows users. The publisher claims that the EA app, which has just concluded its open beta phase, is its fastest and lightest PC client to date.

EA is promising a streamlined design and suggests navigation will be easier. It seems the app has improved social features as well, since you'll be able to connect your EA account to platforms including Steam, Xbox and PlayStation — which could come in handy for games with cross-play support, such as Apex Legends and FIFA 23. You'll have a custom EA ID that should make it easy for your pals to recognize you.

The publisher says that it will soon invite Origin users to switch over to the new app. As you might imagine, all your stuff will be present, including your games, save data and friends list. It's worth noting that the new client will only be available on Windows PC for now. If you're a macOS user, you'll continue to use the Origin for Mac app for the foreseeable future. However, EA noted that it will have more to share on that front in the coming months.

Meta is warning 1 million Facebook users that their account information may have been compromised by third-party apps from Apple or Google’s stores. In a new report, the company’s security researchers say that in the last year they’ve identified more than 400 scammy apps designed to hijack users’ Facebook account credentials.

According to the company, the apps are disguised as “fun or useful” services, like photo editors, camera apps, VPN services, horoscope apps, and fitness tracking tools. The apps often require users to “Log In with Facebook” before they can access the promised features. But these login features are merely a means of stealing Facebook users’ account info. And Meta’s Director of Threat Disruption, David Agranovich, noted that many of the apps Meta identified were barely functional.

“Many of the apps provided little to no functionality before you logged in, and most provided no functionality even after a person agreed to login,” Agranovich said during a briefing with reporters.

Meta

Of note, Meta found malicious apps in both Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store, though the vast majority were Android apps. Interestingly, while the malicious Android apps were mostly consumer apps, like photo filters, the 47 iOS apps were almost exclusively what Meta calls “business utility” apps. These services, with names like “Very Business Manager,” “Meta Business,” “FB Analytic” and “Ads Business Knowledge,” seemed to be targeted specifically at people using Facebook’s business tools.

Agranovich said that Meta shared its findings with both Apple and Google, but that it was ultimately up to the stores to ensure the apps are removed. In the meantime, Facebook is pushing warnings to 1 million people who may have used the apps. The notifications inform users their account info may have been compromised by an app — it doesn’t name which one — and recommends resetting their passwords.

Meta has sued companies doing business as "HeyMods," "Highlight Mobi" and "HeyWhatsApp" for stealing over a million accounts using unofficial WhatsApp Android apps, Bleeping Computer has reported. The malware-infested apps were available on several APK sites and even the Google Play Store, according to the complaint. 

"After victims installed the Malicious Applications, they were prompted to enter their WhatsApp user credentials," according to the suit filed in the US District Court in San Francisco. "The Defendants programmed the Malicious Applications to communicate the user's credentials to WhatsApp's computers and obtain the users' account keys and authentication information."

The apps in question are called "Theme Store for Zap" and "AppUpdater for WhatsPlus 2021 GB Yo FM HeyMods" among others. The latter app was installed more than a million times for the Google Play Store, according to Bleeping Computer. 

WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart warned users not to download the fake apps, saying they "were just a scam to steal personal information stored on people's phones." He added that Meta's findings were shared with Google, and in July, Google Play Protect was updated to detect and disable the fake apps. "We're also taking enforcement action against HeyMods... and will explore legal options to hold HeyMods and others like them accountable," he said. 

Meta said the developers effectively breached their agreements, though jurisdiction isn't clear as the complaint indicates that the companies are organized under the laws of three different regions (Hong Kong, Beijing and Taiwan). In any case, Cathcart gave some advice that applies universally to any app: "If you see friends or family using a different form of WhatsApp please encourage them to only use WhatsApp from a trusted app store or our official website directly at http://WhatsApp.com/dl."

With the launch of new Nest devices, Google has updated its Home app with a raft of new features. The main takeaways are faster and easier pairing of smart devices with Matter, new customization and personalization options, improve interoperability between devices and a better Nest camera experience.

The updated Home app takes advantage of Google's Matter smart home standard (launching later this year), particularly the Fast Pair feature. On an Android phone, it'll automatically detect a Matter device and let you set it up quickly, avoiding the current process that's often slow and clunky. Google is also updating its Nest speakers, displays and routers to control Matter devices.

Google

It's prioritizing customization and personalization as well. Users will be able to create personalized views of devices, actions and automations, letting you see live Nest streams and confirm that doors are locked as soon as you open the app, for example. It's also porting over the Nest app's "Spaces" view that lets you group devices by categories like lights, cameras, thermostats and network devices in one view. Later, it'll add even more customization that lets you group together, say, pet cams, cat feeders and robovacs. 

Another feature coming from the Nest app is the ability to see all your Nest wired and battery cameras (including Nest Doorbells) together in a single view. The new camera controller has a scrubbing option to help you find important moments in security footage, aided by machine learning. You can then label and organize them by type, person, package, vehicle, activity or animal. 

Google

Automation is also front and center in the Home app via a new tab. You can see and control automated activities like a routine that turns lights off, locks doors and lowers the thermostat. It's also expanding Routines to more smart home devices so those can be automated too. And for users who want more granular control, Google is launching a new script editor early next year with over a 100 new features and capabilities.

Finally, Google plans to launch the Home app on Wear OS and the web. That'll let you see what's going on with a glance to your wrist, or view all your Nest camera and doorbell feeds on a web page, home.google.com. The new Google Home app will first appear in a public preview, while Google Home on Wear OS 3 will arrive next week. The Google Home website, meanwhile, will roll out "in a few weeks," the company said. 

Twitter has started rolling out some changes for its Android app that gives people sliding into DMs a more visually appealing interface. The social network's Android app has remained largely the same over the years, but this update, while pretty minor, was meant to give users "a smoother, more consistent experience overall." Twitter says it set to work redesigning its DMs on Android after its teams evaluated the experience on the OS and determined that it needed an improvement. 

As you can see in the screenshots below, the messages view on the app look cleaner now, with rounder speech bubbles and text box at the bottom. The inbox itself also looks much less cluttered and is devoid of line breaks. Ditto for the message requests view, which now also shows an "x" button for each request that makes it easy to delete them. 

Twitter

Twitter didn't just give DMs on Android a shiny new veneer, though. The company said it also worked on its back-end and rebuilt it with proper architecture, improving its responsiveness and its scrolling performance. Twitter said it also redesigned the message composer, as well as the app's tweet forwarding capabilities. 

The company has historically been slow to bring new features to the Android app — search, for instance, had been available on iOS and the web for almost a couple of years before it came to the mobile platform. Earlier this year, Twitter expanded search's capability to make it easier to find the exact conversations users are looking for. That feature is available for both iOS and Android users.

Twitter

A third-party Instagram app, called “The OG App,” which promised an ad-free feed more like the original Instagram experience, has been pulled from Apple’s App Store just one day after it officially launched. It’s not clear if Apple pulled the app at the request of Meta, but the social network confirmed it had taken “enforcement actions” against the service.

“This app violates our policies and we’re taking all appropriate enforcement actions,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson declined to elaborate on what those actions were, or if it had been in contact with Apple, but pointed to a blog post outlining Meta’s policies barring clone sites.

“A clone site is a third-party site that duplicates, in whole or in part, the content of an existing site,” Meta explains. On Twitter, the developers of The OG App said their entire team had been permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram as a result of their ties to the service.

"Users deserve the right to control what they consume, and OG will continue to defend and fight for that right," Hardik Patil, on of the app's founder's told Engadget. He said he had received no direct communication from Meta.

The OG App had been in the works for more than a year, according toTechCrunch, which reported its initial launch. The app’s founders told the publication they wanted to provide a “cleaner” version of Instagram without advertising. The app featured customizable feeds without Reels, suggested posts and other newer features that have at times been controversial among longtime Instagram users. The Android version of the app is currently still available.

Meta’s policies have long barred third-party Instagram clients, and in recent years the company has filed a number of lawsuits against developers who break its rules, including those barring clone sites. At the same time, the company has also been accused of using those same policies to shut down legitimate researchers’ attempts to study the platform.

However, in this case, it seems the creators of the OG App were clearly breaking Instagram’s policies. The company doesn’t offer a public API for developers to build their own versions of Instagram, and on Twitter, The OG App said they had to “reverse engineer” the Android API. The app also raised privacy concerns about how the developers were protecting users’ account information.

Despite this, the app had already gained a lot of fans due to its more simplified — and ad-free — experience. Instagram has also been dealing with a backlash against its aggressive pushing of Reels and recommended content. The OG App said it had racked up more than 10,000 downloads before its removal from the App Store “because we listened to them and built what they wanted.”

Russia has removed all iOS apps from VK, the second largest tech company in Russia, The Verge has reported. That includes not just the VK social media app that's the fifth most popular in Russia, but others like Mail.ru and VK Music. The move was made in response to UK sanctions against the Russian government.  

VK confirmed that "some VK applications are blocked by Apple, so they are not available for download and update in the App Store," according to a (Google translated) press release. "Their core functionality will be familiar and stable... [but] there may be difficulties with notifications and payments. VK will continue to develop and support applications for iOS."

These apps are being distributed by developers majority-owned or majority-controlled by one or more parties sanctioned by the UK government. In order to comply with these sanctions, Apple terminated the developer accounts associated with these apps, and the apps cannot be downloaded from any App Store, regardless of location.

Apple confirmed that it removed the apps and shut down VK's developer accounts. "These apps are being distributed by developers majority-owned or majority-controlled by one or more parties sanctioned by the UK government," a spokesperson told The Verge. "In order to comply with these sanctions, Apple terminated the developer accounts associated with these apps, and the apps cannot be downloaded from any App Store, regardless of location. Users who have already downloaded these apps may continue to use them."

Earlier this week, the UK government imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs over the sham referendums held in Ukraine. Included in the list are executives from Gazprombank, a Russian bank with ties to VK. "Today’s sanctions will target those behind these sham votes, as well as the individuals that continue to prop up the Russian regime’s war of aggression," said UK foreign secretary James Cleverly in a statement. 

Russia's Ministry of Digital Affairs told state media site RT that it's investigating the reasons for the removal. The apps are still available on Google Play — Engadget has reached out to Google to see if it plans to follow Apple's lead. 

Earlier this year, Apple halted sales of all its products in Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion, while also limiting Apple Pay and pulling apps from outlets like RT and Sputnik. Last year, a Russian law went into effect that required Samsung, Apple and other manufacturers to pre-install Russian apps like VK and Yandex on devices sold there.