After much speculation and waiting, Threads is finally launching in Europe. Meta’s social media app will likely release in the EU on December 14, just in time to post photos of holiday dinners or whatever. There’s no official announcement by Zuck and the gang, but there is a countdown timer on Instagram appearing for EU users. These users will find a ticket within the app that advertises the pending release for the Twitter-like platform.

The timer is also available on the Threads website, but only for those clicking from EU-based IP addresses, as reported by The Verge. Finally, European Instagram users can simply search for “ticket” to find a scannable QR code that announces the forthcoming launch. We don’t know, however, which countries in the EU will get the app on December 14. Engadget reached out to Meta and will update this story if we hear back.

So what’s been the holdup? Meta has had trouble complying with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Meta and other tech giants were designated as platform gatekeepers back in July, forcing stricter rules regarding user consent and data protection. It looks like the company worked everything out in time for this release, though it remains unclear if the app itself would change to accommodate the regulations. We’ll find out next week.

Threads has certainly had a topsy-turvy year, launching to much fanfare amidst the dumpster fire that is X. However, user engagement fell sharply once people realized there wasn’t that much to do on the platform. Meta, to its credit, has been quickly adding features and tools to the app. In the past few months, Threads has gotten searchable topics, also known as hashtags, and an edit button that doesn’t cost $8 per month, among other upgrades.

Depending on what you buy and where you shop, many online purchases should arrive before December 25th, so if you're still working through your gift list, it might not be too late. Even if you're just looking for deals in general, there are plenty out there. Despite the fact that the official "shopping holidays" have ended, retailers and brands are still discounting many gadgets and devices at prices that meet their Black Friday lows. Right now, you can save on Sonos speakers, Tile trackers, Google phones and tablets, and Amazon's most popular Echo device. We also found discounts on Xbox gift cards, a Nintendo Switch bundle and noted that a PS5 bundle was still selling for it's Cyber Monday low. Here are the best tech deals from the week that you can still get today. 

Sonos Era 100

As part of a larger sale, the Sonos Era 100 smart speaker is back down to $199 from the manufacturer's store front. That's $50 of the list price and matches the price we saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We named it the best midrange smart speaker in our guide and gave it an 88 in our review when it debuted earlier this year. It's an improvement over its predecessor, the Sonos One, which was in itself already pretty great. 

Upgrades include a new speaker array with two tweeters instead of one plus a woofer that’s 25 percent bigger. That lends the speaker impressive bass, a clear high-end and big volume. It connects via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and now also has a line-in USB-C port to directly connect a player (though you'll need an adapter to hook up a turntable). And the smart assistant duties come courtesy of Alexa or the music-focused Sonos assistant, unfortunately it doesn't support the Google Assistant.  

The Ray soundbar and the Sonos Move are also part of the Sonos sale with discounts of up to 25 percent off. 

Echo Show 5 + smart bulb

Amazon kicked of Black Friday early this year with discounts on their own devices. Many of the deals on Echo speaker and displays bundled with a free smart bulb didn't end with Cyber Week and are still live today. So you can save on an Echo Show 5 and smart bulb combo — and depending on where you're shipping, it should arrive by Christmas. The Echo Show 5 was refreshed in June and has a list price of $90. The Sengled light is $20 on its own. While both of them go on sale often, the bundle represents a 63 percent discount over buying them at full price. The set makes a nice smart home starter kit, as the Echo Show 5 gives you voice and touchscreen control over smart home devices like the Sengled bulb.  

Kobo Clara 2e

The best ereader, according to our guide is the Kobo Clara 2E. It's currently selling for $20 off the list price of $140, a discount it hit for Black Friday. It rarely goes on sale so this is a good chance to save on an ereader with a crisp 300 ppi screen with a waterproof build and warm LED front lights. Setting the device up is easy, even for those new to ereaders and the Kobo store is nearly as vast as Amazon's Kindle store, though without the Kindle Exclusive titles. You can also easily borrow books from your local library and read them on your Kobo for free. 

Tile Tracker Sale

Amazon is selling a two-pack of Tile Mate Bluetooth trackers for $33, which matches the record low the set hit for Prime Day in October. Or you can grab a four-pack of Tile Mates in grey directly from the manufacturer for 40 percent off. These handy fobs attach to your keys, backpack, or anything else you don't want to lose. The app works with both iPhone and Android and uses the community of other Tile users to locate items that you misplace out in the world. The smaller Tile Sticker is also on sale, currently 33 percent off, making it just $20. Or you can get our top pick for Androids in our Bluetooth tracker guide is the Tile Pro. It's down to $25, which is just $2 more than the record low it hit for Prime Day in July.  

Roku Ultra

The Roku Ultra is our recommendation for a set-top box in our guide to the best streaming devices. Right now it's down to $67 at Amazon and at Walmart. That's only about a dollar more than the lowest price it has sold for. It's been on sale for $70 for much of the past few weeks, so this is a chance to save a little more. While it's our favorite set-top streamer, it's not necessarily as good of a value as our top pick for a streamer, the Roku Streaming Stick 4K. That model is down to $39, which is a full $10 more than it went for during Black Friday but still $28 less than the Ultra.

Anker Soundcore Space A40 

The overall pick in our guide to the best budget earbuds is Anker's Soundcore Space A40 and right now they're on sale at Amazon for $54. That ties the all time low the buds hit for Black Friday. We like the light, evenly balanced design that's comfortable to wear for long sessions and the sound profile is warm and pleasant. We also think the active noise cancellation is great for the price. Just note that they don't auto pause when you remove a bud and the mic quality for calls could be better.

Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro

An unlocked Pixel 8 with 128GB of storage is back down to $549 at Amazon. That's a $150 discount and matches its Black Friday low. You can get the same deal from Amazon and at the Google Store. For a larger screen, you can get the Pixel 8 Pro, which is $200 off at Amazon, Best Buy and the Google Store, bringing the base configuration with 128GB down to $799. We named these phones the best Android handsets you can buy and gave them a 90 in our review, calling them "Google's most compelling phones in years."

Xbox and Nintendo gift cards

If you know someone who plays games on an Xbox or Switch, these two deals may make great gifts. Right now, Target is selling $50 Xbox or Nintendo eShop gift cards for $45. Both cards are delivered electronically to an email address and can be transferred to the user's balance as soon as they get the message. They can then use the funds to buy games and add-ons through their console. 

Switch gamers can also get a digital code for an individual annual Switch Online membership for $18, or a family membership for $31.50. Both are 10 percent off the going rate for a 12-month subscription. 

Google Pixel Tablet

Right now at Amazon, Target and directly from the Google Store, you can get the latest Google Pixel Tablet for $100 off the list price. That brings it to $399, which is a discount we've seen a few times previously and matches the low it went for during Black Friday sales. The standout feature for the slate is its ability to function as a smart display, as it comes complete with a stand that doubles (triples?) as a charging base and a much fuller speaker than any tablet can muster on its own. We gave the Pixel Tablet a review score of 85 when it debuted back in June and mention it as an alternative in our buyer's guide to tablets — noting that it's a good pick if you think you'll make use of the smart display option.  

MasterClass BOGO

MasterClass is offering two annual memberships — one for yourself and one to give away as a gift — for the price of one. If you're unfamiliar, MasterClass offers courses taught by famous people — like Spike Lee teaching directing, Aaron Sorkin teaching screenwriting and Alicia Keys teaching songwriting. Memberships start at $120 per year, which lets you watch on one device at a time and go up to $240 per year for download permissions and access on six devices simultaneously. The free membership will be at the same level you buy for yourself. The deal ends December 12th. 

Google Pixel Watch 2

Google's Pixel Watch 2 just came out in October but we're already seeing a substantial discount of $50 off, making the Wi-Fi model just $300 at Amazon and from the Google Store. The LTE model is also $50 off and down to $350. The Pixel Watch 2 is an improvement over the previous model, with a longer-lasting battery that goes for 24 hours between charges. The Fitbit integration is even deeper this time, with a focus on stress levels using a new body-response sensor. We did find some flaws, however, such as the Fitbit branding throughout that felt like a disconnect from the Pixel brand. There were also software quirks and confusing data presentation that prevented us from giving it a glowing review. 

Apple iPad (10th gen)

The tenth generation iPad is on sale for $349 at Amazon, which is $100 off the list price and the same price it hit for Black Friday. It often sells for $399, so this is and additional $50 off the going rate. In our review we didn't call it a wild improvement over the previous generation, but we did appreciate that it orients the camera to the landscape edge, which is much better for video calls. The USB-C charging is more modern than the Lightning connector on the 9th gen iPad, but for some reason this model still works with the first generation Apple Pencil (even though the slate came out after the second-gen stylus).

Sonos Roam

The Sonos Roam is 25 percent off and down to $134, which is price it went for during Black Friday and has remained there since. It happens to be our top pick for a portable smart speaker thanks to its versatility as an indoor or outdoor smart speaker you can plonk down anywhere. You can control it with Alexa or the Google Assistant it and works on Wi-Fi or via Bluetooth. The sound isn’t as big as from larger speakers, but it still packs a surprising amount of bass and distinct highs

Amazon Echo Dot

Amazon's best selling speaker — and our top pick for a smart speaker under $50 — is the Echo Dot and it is still down to $23, the low price it hit for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The sound is surprisingly good for the size and price and it brings Alexa's weather-forecasting, timer-setting, joke-telling abilities into whatever room you set it in. I use it to control our smart plugs and my kid uses it to play "The Wellerman" for the 900th time. 

Google Pixel Buds

Last week, Wellbots sold the Google Pixel Buds Pro earbuds for $120 with a code. This week you can get the same $80 discount, no special letters and numbers required. That makes the buds just $3 more than their all-time low. We called these earbuds the company’s best effort to date in our official review, praising the deep and punchy bass, the useful touch controls, wireless charging options and more. They're currently our top pick for Android users in our guide to the best wireless earbuds.

PS5

This bundle has been on sale for a few weeks now. It pairs the $500 PS5 console with the new Spider-Man 2 game for no extra cost. We named the latest PlayStation one of the best gaming consoles you can get right now. We also liked the game, and called it better than its predecessor in our review. 

Meta Quest 2

The Meta Quest 2 bundled with a $50 store credit at the Meta Quest store is now $249 from Walmart. The headset by itself retails at $300 so this is essentially a $100 discount and matches similar discount-and-gift card combos we saw for Black Friday. Now that the improved Quest 3 is out in the world, this is harder sell. The new headset goes for $500 and isn't on sale at the moment, but if you can swing it, you'll get a better VR experience along with mixed reality improvements. That said, we're still impressed with the bargain the Quest 2 provides and named it our pick for those on a budget in our VR headset buying guide.

• 16-inch macbook pro (m3 pro, 18gb ram, 512gb ssd) for $2,249 —> ties BF price iirc

Nintendo Switch OLED + Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

If you're willing to transport your actual human body to a GameStop and walk in the door like it's 2009, you can save $25 on the Switch OLED bundled with a download code for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and three months of Nintendo Switch Online. Place your order online then select in-store pickup to get the deal. The bundle is going for $349 at most outlets across the internet, but if you bought the (pretty excellent) game at full price along with the console and subscription, you'd pay $68 more. Combined with the $25 it's a good way to get the console if you somehow don't have it already. Keep in mind that an updated Switch is likely on the horizon, but as for now, the Switch is our favorite console for gaming whilst traveling. 

Samsung Evo Select 256GB Micro SD card

Samsung's Evo Select MicroSD is $15 which is a 25 percent discount and matches its Black Friday pricing. This is the value pick in our buyer's guide to MicroSD cards, partly because it's often on sale. It doesn't match the sequential write speeds of our top picks, so you may not want to use it for your camera, but if you just need more space for your Switch games, this will work well.  

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Google’s NotebookLM, a note-taking app that’s infused with a large language model, is now available to everyone in the US. The company built NotebookLM to only pull information from a custom dataset. So you might use it, for instance, to help write a paper based on a specific set of PDFs and only rely on details from those documents.

The idea is that, by sticking to a custom dataset, the information NotebookLM handles will always be relevant to your specific needs as opposed to a more general chatbot that might draw from the entirety of the public internet. Google debuted NotebookLM as Project Tailwind at I/O this year before rebranding it and it says the tech is based on its Gemini Pro model. 

Google also notes that personal data isn't used to train NotebookLM, so any sensitive or private details in your sources will remain hidden. That is, unless you share the sources with collaborators.

Along with making NotebookLM more broadly available (Google has been granting access based on a waitlist over the last five months), Google has announced a string of new features for the software. It plans to roll these out over the next few weeks with the aim of easing the transition between reading, taking notes and writing.

Among other things, the chatbot can format your notes into a newsletter, script outline or a marketing plan draft and export everything to Google Docs with one click. You'll be able to pin notes to a Noteboard space above the chat box, save and pin responses from the chatbot as notes and hide the source material if you want to focus on jotting down your thoughts with fewer distractions. You'll soon be able to ask the AI to focus on certain sources (of which you'll be able to have up to 100 in total) or jump to a citation from a chat response or saved note.

NotebookLM will also suggest some actions based on selected text or notes. At the outset, you'll be able to combine notes, summarize several of them or create an outline or study guide.

We’ve covered Framework’s modular, easy-to-repair laptops plenty here at Engadget and with good reason. Its mission is to end the need for users to toss out an otherwise perfect machine when just one component goes dead. But, as the company matures, it also has to tackle the issue of what happens when people choose to upgrade for performance reasons. An early buyer might choose to swap their 11th-gen Intel mainboard for any of its successors, or leap across the aisle to get the newly-released AMD edition. That leaves them with an otherwise perfectly functional mainboard they either have to sell on, turn into a hobby project or, more likely, leave on a shelf gathering dust as a just-in-case option. That’s why the company hooked up with Cooler Master to give you a far better alternative.

The Framework x Cooler Master Mainboard Case is a $39 barebones chassis into which you can put your existing Framework mainboard. For that, you get a cool-looking plastic frame and a kickstand, with four VESA mount screws buried inside and, uh, not much else. That’s the point, since you can either cannibalize other components from your laptop, use any compatible spares that are lying around, or pick up fresh ones from Framework on the cheap. I’d say this is aimed not at Framework’s dedicated and talented hobbyist community, which has made a raft of great 3D-printed cases on their own. Instead, it’s pointed at people like me, who break into a sweat whenever a DIY Perks video mentions soldering. (If you’re reading this, doubtless you’ve seen that video about preserving broken laptops but I also bet you’ve never tried to actually do it.)

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

If you’re starting from a clean slate, you can probably pick up a better-specced mini PC for less cash. But if you’re already inside Framework’s ecosystem, and you have one of those boards to hand, as well as some other spare components, then this makes perfect sense. After all, that first generation model I tested was packing a Core i7-1165G7; more than enough power for everyday tasks like browsing, productivity work or for use as a media center. The case is flexible enough to let you pick and choose what accessories you need or use, including pre-drilled holes for you to add SMA antennas rather than reusing a laptop WiFi module. Oh, and you’ll need to buy a 100W charger since the mainboard was designed to be used with a battery.

The byword is flexibility both in letting you choose how you want to craft your system, but also a comment on the build quality. $39 doesn’t buy you a lot, and the two halves of the plastic case are a lot flimsier than I would like. It doesn’t help that you don’t so much mount the components onto the backboard as place them in, and then they’re held in place when you screw the lid in. It’s easy enough to drop all of the parts in – although a lack of cable routing for the WiFi was an issue when it came to seal this all up. Not to mention, the first time I screwed it all in, the USB-C ports for the expansion cards didn’t sit properly over the holes for them to pass through.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

The only other roadblock to my initial setup was that I couldn’t get the unit to push video to the TV. You need to set the mainboard into Standalone mode, but the iFixit-style guides don’t make it massively clear about how you go about doing that. Especially if you spend half an hour in the BIOS looking for the setting to no avail before and after installing a batch of updates. In the end I just dumped the board back in the case to see if anything had changed and, to my surprise, it booted straight to the screen. It’s worth hoping Framework remembers its user base might have a broader range of abilities than it expects and that no instruction should be made off-hand.

Once I’d dealt with those teething woes and poked the WiFi cables back into place by shoving a screwdriver through the VESA mount hole, I was ready to go. Since this is a Framework laptop just outside its usual chassis, you get the same pick of USB-C expansion cards as usual. With a HDMI-out and a couple of USB-A ports for peripherals, I was streaming 4K video without issue just as soon as I’d signed into Plex. Fundamentally, for those of us too timid to even think about rolling their own hobby project, it’s tools like this that make these projects accessible.

The Sonos Era 100 wireless bookshelf speaker is back down to $199, matching prices found during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That’s a discount of around $50, as the MSRP for this speaker is $250. If you squint, it’s almost like the holiday spending season never ended. (That’s because it mostly didn’t.)

This sale is for the both the black and white colorways, suiting those with diverging aesthetic preferences. The Sonos Era 100 boasts touch controls and voice controls, like many modern speakers. It’s wireless via Bluetooth or WiFi, which is handy, but also features a line in for connecting record players, home stereo systems and other audio devices that require an analog input.

We admired the Sonos Era 100 in our official review, calling out the excellent sound quality for the price, the simple yet attractive form factor and the built-in mics that allow for easy TruePlay tuning. For the uninitiated, TruePlay measures how sound reflects off of your walls and furniture to fine tune the speakers for optimal playback.

It has Alexa built-in, but recently lost support for Google Assistant, which is a bummer. You can, however, also access proprietary voice controls. The stereo separation is minimal, but that comes with the territory of trying to use a single speaker to complete the work of a matched stereo pair.

Sonos is also selling other speakers at Black Friday/Cyber Monday prices. The wireless soundbar Beam is down to $400 instead of $500 and the portable Roam speaker now costs $134 instead of $180. All of these speakers make for great stocking stuffers, except for the fact that they likely won’t actually fit in stockings.

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This one-of-a-kind PS5 console was customized with the PS1’s retro gray finish, and classic quad-color PS logo. Even the DualSense controller was given a late-90s makeover, with a cute plug cover for the PS5’s front USB-C port to mimic the first-ever PlayStation’s controller.

No, this won’t go on sale. It’s a farewell gift for SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) President and CEO Jim Ryan, who is retiring in March 2024. At a thank-you party this week, the outgoing PlayStation boss was honored by many industry legends, including the “father of PlayStation” Ken Kutaragi, Gran Turismo’s Kazunori Yamauchi, Team Asobi’s Nicolas Doucet and, of course, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida.

It was a gaming-heavy 24 hours, actually. This year’s Game Awards barraged us with new trailers and game news. Surprise, free DLC, an RPG set on an entirely procedurally generated world and a... Blade game?

— Mat Smith

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The biggest stories you might have missed

Sega is resurrecting its classics including Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi and Golden Axe

Hideo Kojima’s Xbox game is the cinematic horrorfest OD

Here’s how to move your subscriptions off Google Podcasts before it shuts down

Meta’s Threads is getting searchable hashtags that aren’t quite hashtags

The company is trying to prevent “engagement hacking.”

Meta’s latest update for Threads brings the long-awaited ability to search for topics, with tags. Although the feature is under the familiar # symbol, Threads’ tags are slightly different to hashtags. Instagram head Adam Mosseri explained Threads tags can contain spaces and special characters, and can only use a single tag per post, so choose wisely.

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The makers of No Man’s Sky will simulate a whole planet for Light No Fire

Hello Games’ new title is an Earth-sized multiplayer RPG sandbox.

TGA

UK indie studio Hello Games has announced its next game, Light No Fire, which will bring the procedural generation of No Man’s Sky to an entire planet on an incredibly detailed scale. It will combine open-world exploration with multiplayer community building, set on a planet the size of Earth, apparently. Light No Fire has been in development for five years by about a dozen developers at Hello Games, but there’s no release window yet.

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Google admits it staged a Gemini AI demo video

There was no voice interaction, nor did the demo happen in real time

Google

As Google scales up its AI battle with OpenAI and ChatGPT, the company has now admitted one demo, shown in the video “Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI,” was edited to speed up the results. The interactions, too, weren’t based on voice but text input.

The demo used “still image frames from the footage and prompting via text,” rather than having Gemini respond to — or even predict — a drawing or change of objects on the table in real time. It’s all a little less impressive and comes when Google’s most cutting-edge AI models don’t differ hugely from OpenAI’s latest GPT tricks.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on Xbox Series X/S

The official Game of the Year is finally on Microsoft consoles.

Developer and publisher Larian Studios had pledged to release the Xbox version of this year’s Game of the Year by… the end of the year and said it would reveal the exact date at The Game Awards. True to its word, Larian announced the Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 is out right now.

The delay was due to a technical problem with the Series S, and the inability to make the game’s split-screen feature on the lower-powered console. However, Larian said it had a solution to support split-screen on Series X, but not Series S, and had permission to do so from Xbox bosses.

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Some Android users are getting an update that could literally save their lives one day. Android users who have a device with the Personal Safety app can now opt-in to sharing medical information with first responders when calling or texting 911. The feature has been available for iPhone and Apple Watch users since the rollout of iOS 13.5 in 2020.

Android users can add information such as caller name, allergies, emergency contacts and preexisting medical conditions. "This is when the information you put inside your phone becomes useful to 911," Tenea Reddick, ECC director at Baltimore City Fire Department, said in a statement. "This information is available to use before the dispatch, and before the responders arrive. It saves so much time because we already know what we're responding to and what we need." The feature is especially beneficial if the person contacting 911 is unable to communicate.

For now, this feature is only available on Androids with the Personal Safety app, such as the Nothing Phone 1 and the Google Pixel 4 through Google Pixel 8 Pro. Anyone with these devices can enable the new feature by going to the "Your info" section of the Personal Safety app. From there, they can click "Emergency info access" and then "Share during emergency call." 

Android and Apple's services are run by RapidSOS, a safety platform that securely shares critical information in times of crisis to over 16,000 911 and field responder agencies. Apple users can access Medical ID, a feature in the Health app that, similar to Android's Personal Safety app, stores information such as blood type, emergency contacts, allergies and preexisting medical conditions. RapidSOS shares this data with first responders, who can also determine a person's location if they call 911 in an area with Enhanced Emergency Data services. Android users have also had the ability to send location data through RapidSOS since 2018. 

Apple built more iPhone 15s in India than any past model and it plans to continue that trend. The company will shift a quarter of its iPhone production — more than 50 million phones — to the nation within the next two to three years, The Wall Street Journal reported. China would still remain the largest iPhone supplier by a good margin, though.

Foxconn and other Apple suppliers reportedly believe that the push into India has been proceeding well, so they're setting the stage for future expansion. The company proceeded slowly at first due to infrastructure problems and powerful unions that have helped set more restrictive labor rules — pushing back against 12-hour work days, for example.  

India's commerce minister said at the beginning of 2023 that Apple planned to build 25 percent of its phones in the nation, but there was never any timeframe attached to that. Two to three years would represent a fairly dramatic ramp-up, considering that the iPhone 15 marked the first time it had released a model made in India on launch day. 

It's also been known that Apple contractor Foxconn would manufacture more iPhone 15s than past models its facility in Tamil Nadu, India. It's part of Apple's plan to diversify manufacturing in the face of supply chain risks due to tensions between the US and China. Foxconn is currently building a plant in the southern Karnataka state expected to open in April 2024, and has another megaplant on the drawing board as well, according to the WSJ's sources. 

To date, Apple has only built a small percentage of its iPhones in India, and production previously lagged behind China by up to nine months. That changed with the iPhone 14, which started manufacturing the same month as in China, and iPhone 15s built in India were available in stores at launch. 

Relations between US and China are delicate at the moment, with the US recently taking measures to block access to advanced technology in the nation. Apple continues to stress the nation's importance, though, with CEO Tim Cook having traveled there twice in 2023. Apple also sells a large number of phones in China, accounting for about 19 percent of its total revenue — while stressing that all phones in sold China through authorized channels are also built in China and use local suppliers. 

Earlier this year, Google announced it would shut down its standalone podcast app in 2024. Since then, the company has started moving podcasts into YouTube and its companion app YouTube Music. As a way to ease the transition, Google will be rolling out a migration tool for its current podcast app users. With the tool, users in the US will be able to move their favorite pod subscriptions from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music, or export them for use in other podcast apps.

In the coming weeks, the migration tool will be available through a banner in Google Podcasts. There are step-by-step instructions on how to use the migration tool in Google's Help Center. The entire process is just four steps and you’ll need to have both Google Podcasts and YouTube Music installed on your device to complete the transfer. After the transfer, Google notes it may take a few minutes for everything to show up in your YouTube Music library.

Google's move to ditch its standalone podcast app doesn't come as a total surprise. Google Podcasts has been around since 2018 but it never quite took off like similar apps, including Overcast and Spotify. And YouTube is already a popular destination for podcast fans, with a recent study claiming over 23 percent of podcasts listeners use YouTube as their primary player. Many of today's trending podcasts are already available on YouTube. For podcasts that are not available on the platform, users can add shows directly to their YouTube Music library via RSS feed. This isn't Google's first rodeo. Back in 2020, the company nixed its standalone music app, Google Play Music, in favor of YouTube Music, and it also offered a comprehensive tool to transfer libraries to the new app.

Google Podcasts will remain live for listening through March 2024, after which users will be able to migrate or export their subscriptions through July 2024.

Content creation experts Streamlabs has partnered with beleaguered social media platform X to offer a “seamless go-live experience”. This is part of X’s long-promised integration of game streaming to the site. To that end, it’ll allow X users to initiate streams without having to manually input stream keys and it’ll let those same users sign into the Streamlabs desktop app or the mobile app using social media credentials.

The system also integrates with X’s new live broadcast chat functionality, so you can monitor chat messages in the Streamlabs desktop add as you stream. The desktop app also lets you adjust monetization options on the fly, including custom alerts for tipping and overlays for branded content. Additionally, content creators have access to the Streamlabs merch store so they can hawk branded products while they stream. Creators using X will also have access to the company's line of widgets for increased engagement.

For regular users, this partnership will allow people to chat with their favorite streamers in real-time straight from X, though this feature looks to be paywalled behind one of those Blue subscriptions, or Premium or whatever it’s called these days. The one that gets you the universally-beloved blue check mark.

Of course, there’s the massive antisemitic elephant in the room. This is a strange time to announce a partnership with X, given Musk’s recent behavior and the ongoing exodus of advertisers from the social media platform. So far this exodus has included Apple, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Warner Brothers Discovery and others. It looks like Streamlabs, and by extension Logitech, has decided to buck trends and tie its horse to the X wagon. Still, new livestreaming tools are never a bad thing.