Google Keep, the company's note-taking app, is getting a long-overdue feature that unfortunately doesn't seem fully baked. Google is adding a version history function, which could save you from having to manually retype a lot of text that you mistakenly deleted.

The tool allows you to download a text file with previous versions of your notes and lists, according to a support page. The help document states that Google is gradually rolling out the feature to everyone, so it may not be live for you yet. When it is, you can access it on the Keep web app, by clicking on the three-dot menu at the bottom of a note.

As Android Police points out, Keep's version history is only available on the web for now — you won't be able to see previous versions of your notes on the Android or iOS apps just yet. What's more, it doesn't cover images, so if you deleted a photo from a note, you won't be able to recover it using this option.

This is a fairly basic feature and it's somewhat baffling that Google hasn't offered it in Keep until now. After all, the company has long offered similar functions in Google Drive apps. The implementation is odd too. Rather than seeing the version history in the app and being able to revert to a previous incarnation of a note with a tap (like you can do in apps like Docs), having to download a file and copy text back in manually seems like a strange choice. That said, this is a step in the right direction for Keep.

Whether you just splurged on a new Surface device or you’re still working with a trusted, older machine, learning the basics like taking a screenshot will be quick and easy. There are several ways to take a screenshot on your PC. The most versatile though is probably Microsoft’s Snipping Tool, which lets you save your entire screen or a free-form screenshot. Here’s how to take a screenshot on a PC, including instructions for Windows 11 machines and older, Windows 7 devices, too.

How to take a screenshot of the entire screen

There are two different ways to screenshot on Windows. The first option is the Print Screen button: to capture your entire screen, press the Windows key and the PrtScn key simultaneously. If your PC doesn’t have the PrtSc button, instead press Fn + Windows key + Spacebar. To locate the image, open File Explorer, and go to the Pictures folder and then the Screenshots subfolder.

For any device with the most recent versions of Windows 11, pressing the Print Screen key will open the Snipping Tool, which you can read more about below.

Photo by Julia Mercado / Engadget

How to take a screenshot of an active window

If you only want to save an image of the window you’re currently in, press the Alt and PrtScn keys together. This will put the image into your clipboard. While your PC will save screenshots into a designated folder, partial screenshots like these will go to your clipboard. You will need to move them from your clipboard to an image editor like Photoshop, Windows’ default Photos app or even a document editor like Microsoft Office to save it in the file format of your choice.

Photo by Julia Mercado / Engadget

How to use the Snipping Tool

You can use Windows’ Snipping Tool to customize your screenshot further. For any Windows 10 or 11 machine, press either Windows key + Shift + S together or the PrtScn key to open the Snipping Tool. For those using Windows 8.1 or 7, you will need to search for the app in your Start menu. Both options will give you a toolbar where you can customize your “snip.”

From here, you can take free-form or rectangular images of your screen. Any screenshots captured by the Snipping Tool will be sent to your clipboard. From the clipboard, so you can save the image to the Screenshots folder, as well as rename the file and change the file format. You can also annotate your screenshots using the pen or highlighter icons.

There are several keyboard shortcuts for the Snipping Tool that will help you customize your screenshot experience:

• Ctrl and +: Save the Snip

• Ctrl + C: Copy the Snip

• Alt + M: Select a Snipping Mode

• Alt + D: Set a timer to your screenshot by 1-5 seconds

• Alt + M: Create another snip but with the same mode. For example, if you took a rectangular snip, you could make another one quickly using this method.

• Shift + arrows: Move between different types of snips

Bonus for Microsoft Surface users

If you have a Microsoft Surface device in tablet mode, press the Power button and the Volume Up button at the same time to take a screenshot. If you have an attached keyboard, you can take the steps listed above, too. Similar to a desktop, the screenshot can be found by going to the Pictures folder and then Screenshots.

Opera announced today that its Aria AI assistant has made its way to iOS. The feature launched on desktop in June and stems from a partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Opera says Aria, now available on all major desktop and mobile platforms, has tallied over a million users on desktop and Android.

Like Microsoft’s Bing Copilot and Google’s Search Generative Experience, Aria can answer questions and respond to context around active web pages. The assistant taps into OpenAI’s GPT API while using Opera’s Composer architecture for real-time web results. “As an expert in both web navigation and browser functions, Aria facilitates AI collaboration in tasks such as information retrieval, text or code generation, and product inquiries,” Opera’s Kseniia Sycheva wrote in the company’s announcement post today.

Using the AI bot will require an Opera account, but nobody will be enrolled by default. “You have the autonomy to opt in based on your preference for engaging with AI services,” the company wrote. “Once activated, Aria offers intelligent insights, innovative ideas, and responsive voice commands.” As TechCrunchnotes, Aria is available from the “more” menu (the far right tab on the bottom) in the Opera iOS app.

In addition to the chatbot, Opera for iOS includes a built-in ad blocker and supports Apple Intelligent Tracking Prevention, which limits cross-site tracking. The browser also has a built-in VPN service you can use for free. The updated app with Aria is available today in 180 countries, including the US and the European Union.

Tweetdeck (now called X Pro), a version of Twitter (X) used by social media pros, journalists and others, has become part of the paid Blue subscription, TechCrunch has reported. Multiple users reported that they were prompted to subscribe when attempting to log on to the service. "Blue subscribers with a verified phone number will get a blue checkmark once approved," the message reads. 

The news is not unexpected, as code spotted earlier this year by researcher Jane Manchun Wong indicated that X Pro was on its way to becoming a paid app. However, the change only appears to apply to the new version, but not the older (better) version, at least until it's deprecated. 

Engadget

X has been testing the new version since last year, with changes like "a full Tweet composer, new advanced search features, new column types, and a new way to group columns into clean workspaces," the company said at the time. Some power users aren't loving it, though, as it's more difficult to clear columns and perform other common actions. 

The company has previously pondered a TweetDeck subscription service, asking users in 2017 if they'd be willing to pay up to $20 per month for a "more advanced TweetDeck experience." The new action is part of Elon Musk's attempt to monetize the app with Blue subscriptions, but the service only had about 700,000 subscribers as of last June. Musk has also vowed to make X an "everything app" used for content creation, payments and shopping on top of social networking. 

In the last few years, basically every platform of consequence has made its own take on TikTok's signature scrolling feed of vertical videos. YouTube Music is the latest. Today, the app will get a vertical video feed called Samples that YouTube describes as a one-tap way to quickly sample and find new music. 

Samples lives in a new tab at the bottom of the app, alongside the home feed, your library and the explore section. Tapping Samples automatically starts a short vertical video clip of a song that YouTube Music thinks you'll like. Naturally, it's pulling songs based on your taste profile, with an emphasis on artists that you like, and related ones who you might not have heard before. 

The app already has multiple playlists that are tuned to your listening habits, including a Supermix that pulls songs and artists together across all your listening habits. There's also a Discover playlist that, naturally, focuses on things you're not familiar with but might enjoy based on your history. YouTube Music product manager Gregor Dodson told Engadget that the algorithm for the Samples feed is a little different from both of those — it's trying to site in between the two playlists, highlighting artists that you may be familiar with but pulling clips you haven't watched before.

The clips you'll see in Samples are only 30 seconds long, but that's about enough to give you a sense of the song. If it's not what you're looking for, just swipe up and you'll jump to another song, and you can do this as much as you want. Spotify added its own vertical video feed recently, but that's less for discovery and more to offer a way to quickly scroll through previews of songs in its playlists. But with both Spotify and YouTube Music implementing such a new, it seems likely that we'll see more apps do the same soon.

I got to try Samples for a few days before it launched, and the thing I found most interesting was to use it as a jumping off point for a longer listening session, something Dodson confirmed was by design. "Short form video [and] the infinite scroll have really interesting applications in music discovery," he said. "It's a simple way to discover new music, but it's not the end of the journey — it's just the start of finding a new artist or song." 

YouTube

To that end, the Samples video view is overlaid with a number of controls. From any Sample, you can tap the thumbs-up to save the song to your "liked songs" playlist. You can also save the song to any playlist you've created. Between these two options, it's pretty easy to quickly scan through Samples and save a bunch of songs to check out further. And if you hear something you want to immediately play in full, just tap the big old play button in the corner of the screen.

Since this is YouTube we're talking about, there's also a "Shorts" button that pops you into the main YouTube app. It'll show you other Shorts clips created with the audio you picked and let you jump into making your own clip with the song. Finally, the share button does just what you'd think — you get a link that can drop into a host of other apps like Messages, Reddit, Facebook and whatever else you might have installed. 

In the overflow menu, you can find a lot of other options, like starting a continuous radio station from the song, jumping into the artist's page to find more music, saving the track to your library and so forth. I with the "start radio" button was featured more prominently in the Samples video, because I found that to be a great way to jump into a auto-generated set of tunes with the same vibe as the Sample that initially caught my eye (and ear). 

My main issue with Samples is one of UI. Specifically, it's not always clear where exactly you'll end up in the app when you switch views. Tapping the Samples tab starts the video scroll, and to exit it you can tap one of the other bottom navigation tabs; tapping the "play" button opens up the familiar YouTube Music player controls. Finally, swiping back down to hide the player interface returns you to Samples. Seems pretty clear. But at one point, I had hit the play button to hear a song and then rotated my phone to landscape to see the video in full screen. When the next song started, I rotated my phone back to landscape, and the app threw me immediately back into the Samples view, with the clip of the song I had already heard still playing.

Another time, I started playing a song, and the hit the toggle at the top of the Now Playing screen to switch the video off and just hear the song. I listened to a few more songs from the auto-generated station of similar music, and then swiped down to hide the Now Playing UI and browse around the app. I was again tossed back into the Samples view. That does make some logical sense, as that's where the whole listening experience started. But I'm to used to being able to hide the Now Playing screen and browse around the app while still playing music that it was a bit jarring. That said, I could then hit the "Home" tab at the bottom and resume what I was playing. It works, but the addition of Samples does change a few of the app's expected behaviors.

These quibbles aside, Samples seems like a pretty handy addition to the YouTube Music app. In the few days I had to test it, it consistently served up music from artists I liked, and the song selections were indeed things I was usually less familiar with. The video clip aspect of it doesn't really matter to me, but given how many artists are making excellent videos these days, it's fun to remember that these visuals are worth checking out sometimes. (Thanks, YouTube Music, for surfacing the wild video for "I Know the End" by Phoebe Bridgers.) More importantly, it did work well as a jumping-off point for digging into some artists I had forgotten about or finding a tune to set the mood for a playlist or station.

YouTube says that the Samples feature is rolling out globally starting today for both Android and iOS users. As with most new features, it might not hit your app immediately, so you might need to be a little patient.

Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a hacking group known for its activist endeavors, built an open source tool for developers to build secure apps. Veilid, launched at DEF CON on Friday, has options like letting users opt out of data collection and online tracking as a part of the group’s mission to fight against the commercialization of the internet.

“We feel that at some point, the internet became less of a landscape of knowledge and idea sharing, and more of a monetized corporate machine,” cDc leader Katelyn “medus4” Bowden said. “Our idea of what the internet should be looks more like the open landscape it once was, before our data became a commodity.”

Similar to other privacy products like Tor, cDc said there’s no profit motive behind the product, which was created “to promote ideals without the compromise of capitalism.” The group emphasized the focus on building for good, not profit, by throwing slight shade at a competing conference for industry professionals, Black Hat, held in Las Vegas at the same time as DEF CON. “If you wanted to go make a bunch of money, you’d be over at Black Hat right now,” Bowden said to the audience of hackers.

The design standards behind Veilid are “like Tor and IPFS had sex and produced this thing,” cDc hacker Christien “DilDog” Rioux said at DEF CON. Tor is the privacy-focused web browser best known for its connections to the “dark web,” or unlisted websites. Run as a non-profit, the developers behind Tor run a system that routes web traffic through various “tunnels” to obscure who you are and what you’re browsing on the web. IPFS, or the InterPlanetary File System, is an open-source set of protocols behind the internet, mainly used for file sharing or publishing data on a decentralized network.

The bigger Veilid gets, the more secure it will be as well, according to Rioux. The strength doesn’t come from the number of apps made on the framework, but by how many people use the apps to further the routing of nodes that make up the network. “The network gains strength by a single popular app,” Rioux said. “The big Veilid network is supported by the entire ecosystem not just your app.” In the presentation, cDc likened the nodes to mutual aid in the sense that they work to strengthen and support each other to make the entire network more secure.

Rious explained that VLD0 will be the cryptography — the protocols that keep information secure — behind Veilid. It’s a mix of existing cryptography frameworks, like Ed25519 to support authentication efforts and xChaCha20-Poy1305 as its 192-bit encryption support. But, recognizing that advancing technology will change cryptography needs over time, cDc already has a plan to handle updates. “Every new version of our crypto system is supported alongside the old ones” so that there are no gaps in security, Rioux said. cDc also put other measures in place like anti-spoofing, end-to-end encryption even at rest and data protection even if you lose your device.

Veiled and cDc aim to build an approachable internet with fewer ads and more privacy, according to Bowden. Veilid Chat, a messaging app similar to Signal, will be the first app built on the framework. You’ll be able to sign up without using a phone number, to decrease personal identifiers, Bowden told Engadget in an email.

cDc is currently in the process of putting together a community and foundation to support the project. “There are a lot of folks who can’t see past web3 as far as privacy (we are more like the web2 we should have had), and really can’t process the idea that we’re doing this without a profit motive,” Bowden said.

Known as the “original hacking supergroup,” cDc’s most noted accomplishments include inventing hacktivism, helping to develop Tor and pushing top companies to take privacy seriously. Notable members include former US representative from Texas, Beto O'Rourke.

As Elon Musk awaits his doctor’s permission to fight Mark Zuckerberg in an on-again / off-again cage match, the two billionaires’ companies continue to spar in the consumer adoption arena. Meta forged ahead with Threads’ aggressive update schedule today as it tries to challenge Musk’s erratic X (rebranded Twitter). Zuckerberg announced today that the young platform now supports sharing posts to Instagram DMs, custom alt text for photos and videos and a new mention button.

The Send on Instagram option lets users publish their Threads posts directly to Instagram DMs via the Send button. The feature could be seen as one of the “retention-driving hooks” Meta cooked up to ensure “people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads,” as Reutersreported Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said in a recent company meeting. The strategy is allegedly tied to reports of falling engagement after the fledgling platform added over 100 million users in less than a week. Zuckerberg reportedly described the decline as “normal” and expected retention to grow as Meta continues to flesh out the social channel, which launched in early July.

Meta

Meanwhile, the custom alt-text option is an accessibility feature allowing Threads users to add (or edit existing auto-generated) alt text for photos and videos before uploading. The new mention button makes it easier to tag profiles in your Threads posts. Finally, the platform is making it easier to verify your identity on fediverse platforms like Mastodon. “You can now add your Threads profile link on supported platforms to verify your identity,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted today.

These are only the latest additions Meta has rolled out in the past few weeks. It announced earlier this month that a much-needed web version is on the way, offering desktop use for the first time, along with a proper search function. Other post-launch additions include a chronological feed and the ability to sort your following list and view your liked posts.

Epic Games has lost an attempt to force Apple to change its App Store payment practices sooner rather than later. The Fortnite maker asked the Supreme Court to overturn a US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that delayed an injunction against Apple over App Store rules. However, Justice Elena Kagan denied the request without providing an explanation, as Bloomberg reports.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals originally upheld the injunction in April. However, it suspended the injunction in July so Apple could take the case to the Supreme Court. 

Following a blockbuster trial between Apple and Epic Games in 2021, a lower-court judge ruled that Apple violated California's Unfair Competition law by blocking third-party developers from directing users to alternative payment options. The judge issued the injunction to stop that practice.

For the last three years, the companies have been battling over the issue of in-app payments on iOS. Epic raised the ire of Apple (and Google) when it told mobile Fortnite players they'd get a discount on the in-game V-Bucks currency if they bypassed the iOS and Android payment systems. Apple and Google take up to a 30 percent cut of in-app transactions on iOS and Android.

The mobile platform holders swiftly yanked Fortnite from their respective app stores, Epic sued them both and the legal battles are still rumbling on. The Google case (in which Match Group is involved as a plaintiff) is set to go to trial this November.

Regardless of what happens in the US, Apple and Google are already being forced to open up their platforms to third-party payments systems in certain markets, such as South Korea and the Netherlands. It has also been reported that Apple plans to allow third-party app stores on the iPhone as soon as next year, in large part to comply with incoming European Union rules. Epic is already prepared for that, as its own mobile app store is ready to go.

Netflix’s push into video games continues, as the company just dropped a dedicated controller app for iOS devices. The app, simply called “Netflix Game Controller,” lets you use your phone or tablet as a gamepad once you pair the device with your TV. This will allow you to play games available through Netflix’s service on the TV, while controlling things from your mobile device.

Though the app is already available for download, further news remains scant. For instance, we don’t know what games it will support or any details surrounding the pairing process. We also don’t know if and when this will be followed up by an Android app. The app’s description just teases that the gamepad functionality is “coming soon to Netflix.”

This isn’t a huge surprise, given the company’s expanding growth as an indie game publisher. Netflix Games has published or hosted nearly 70 titles in the past two years, some of which are accessible via the regular Netflix streaming app with others available on mobile devices and gaming consoles. These aren’t throwaway titles, either, as games like Oxenfree II: Lost Signals released to critical acclaim. Oxenfree developer Night School has gone on to become Netflix’s first in-house studio.

Other titles coming to the Netflix platform in the coming months include indie standouts like Storytellers, Paper Trail and the Monument Valley series. There’s also an Assassin’s Creed game in the works, along with a port of the mobile title LEGO: Legacy Heroes Unboxed. It’s a safe assumption that you should be able to use the recently-launched controller app to play some of these games. Engadget reached out to Netflix to inquire about compatibility and the possibility of an Android release. A company spokesperson said that it isn't making comments at this time. 

Microsoft wasn't subtle in announcing its plans to add AI functionality to any and all of its existing products. On Monday, the company announced that, in addition to its availability on the Edge mobile browser, as well as standalone Android and iOS apps, Microsoft's Bing Chat AI chatbot will now be accessible through third-party browsers like Safari and Chrome.

The news comes as part of Microsoft's six-month commemoration of Bing Chat's public availability. The company also notes that in that time, users have engaged in more than a billion conversations with the AI and have had it generate three-quarters of a billion images. 

"This next step in the journey allows Bing to showcase the incredible value of summarized answers, image creation and more, to a broader array of people," the company release reads. Features like "longer conversations [and] chat history" remain Edge mobile exclusives, however. 

Microsoft began opening access to Bing Chat in late July, when it became available on 3rd-party desktop browsers. That version is limited as well, offering only 2,000 words per prompt on Chrome and Safari versus 4,000 on Edge. 

Bing Chat is powered by ChatGPT-4 from OpenAI but offers more up-to-date information than the system its built on, thanks to Bing Chat's access to Bing Search, which allows it access to information on events that have happened since the model was trained. In addition to the third-party browser access, the newest version of Bing Chat will also offer multimodal search, meaning users will be able to upload a photo and have the AI answer specific questions about its contents, as well as a dark mode for after-hours AI queries.