You can grab a four-pack Apple AirTag for $85 again, if you missed your chance to do so last time it was on sale for the same price. Previously, you could get the discounted AirTags on Amazon and Walmart — now, it's Adorama that's selling the four-pack bundle for $14 less its usual price. It's a great deal if you're looking to keep track of several belongings, such as keys, wallets or the suitcases you're checking in whenever you fly. The bundle also remains unavailable on Apple's Amazon storefront, so here's your chance to grab it at a discount.

AirTags are, perhaps, the best tracking device you could use if you have an iPhone. They come with Apple's U1 ultra-wideband chip that enables precise tracking for more recent iPhones, so you could more easily find where your item is with the distance and directions you'll see on your phone. You could also make the AirTag play sounds through the Find My App to help you look for your items. If whatever you're tracking is out of range, a network of nearby Apple devices can detect the Bluetooth signals AirTags give out and upload their location to iCloud, allowing you to find your belonging. 

One downside to using AirTags is that they don't come with a built-in keyring or attachment. They're coin-like devices with no holes or hooks either. To help with that issue, we put together a list of accessories you could use to attach the AirTag to your items, including cases, holders and mounts with clips and straps. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

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. 

If you have an older Samsung foldable phone, tablet or watch, you may soon see some new features trickling down from the latest devices. The company announced today that the One UI 5.1.1 update — Samsung’s latest custom UI sitting atop Android — will roll out soon, bringing enhancements from the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Z Flip 5, Tab S9 series and Watch 6 series to pre-2023 gear. The features will support most of Samsung’s foldable phones and its recent tablets and smartwatches.

The One UI 5.1.1 update will support a long list of recent Samsung devices, but some may have to wait. It will roll out to Samsung’s stable of foldable phones, scheduled to reach the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4 “starting this month,” while the Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3, Z Fold 2 and Z Flip will receive it “sequentially” later. Tablet multitasking updates will arrive for the Galaxy Tab S8, Tab S8+, Tab S8 Ultra, Tab S7, Tab S7+, Tab S7 FE, Tab S6 Lite, Tab A8, Tab A7 Lite, Tab Active 3 and Tab Active 4 Pro. Finally, new smartwatch features will support the Galaxy Watch 5, Watch 5 Pro, Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic.

Samsung’s foldable phone updates in One UI 5.1.1 make it easier to show or hide the Flex Mode Panel (the controls appearing on the bottom half of the screen when the phone is semi-folded). “When folding your phone in Flex Mode, the panel’s icon will float up the screen, allowing you easy access,” the company wrote. “Enjoy a more personalized Flex Mode Panel experience by simply dragging and dropping the icon on the toolbar.” In addition, Samsung says the media play bar button (now including 10-second fast forward and rewind buttons) will be more prominent and simpler to find when the Flex Mode Panel activates. You’ll also be able to press down on the timeline to scrub through media more efficiently.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Samsung is tweaking multitasking on recent tablets and foldables, making switching to multi-window from pop-up window modes easier by long-pressing the handle. It also adds two-handed drag and drop, which lets you hold your finger down on a document from one app, use your other hand to open something else and then drag the file onto it for sharing or storage. The company also says the Z Fold 4 and Tab S8’s taskbar will be faster and include more recent apps. “Now, the Taskbar enables lightning-fast task switching with access to up to four recent apps,” Samsung said.

On the smartwatch front, the company is adding sleep-tracking upgrades from the Galaxy Watch 6 to older wearables. The changes include “a more intuitive UI” with the additions of Sleep Score Factors, Sleep Consistency and Sleep Animal Symbols. Sleep Coaching will also be available on the watch without looking at your paired phone. The Galaxy Watch can also automatically adjust SmartThings home devices for a more rest-inducing ambiance at bedtime.

Sam Rutherford / Engadget

Smartwatches will also receive fitness updates. The Watch 6’s Personalized Heart Rate Zone feature trickles down; it analyzes your physical abilities and “defines five optimal running intensity levels to help users set their own goals based on their ability — from burning fat to high intensity workout.” The Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 4 series will also add Irregular Heart Rhythm Notifications in the update, which could be a lifesaver for some.

Meanwhile, Track Run, which (as its name suggests) records your runs on a track, also makes its way from the Watch 6. The Galaxy Watch 5 Pro will have access to a GPX File Database for downloading map data to your watch. Finally, One UI 5.1.1. lets you control the Flip 4’s camera with a paired Galaxy Watch. A new quick-access button will let you use your watch as a remote shutter, and it also lets you switch camera modes and control zoom levels.

Despite the US ethos that you’ll be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, law enforcement finding an excuse to search your digital devices only requires a presumption of wrongdoing. The tech to do this already exists, and murky legislation lets it happen, speakers from the Legal Aid Society said at DEF CON last Friday.

“Technically and legally there's not much really truly blocking the government from getting the information they want if they want it,” Allison Young, digital forensics analyst at The Legal Aid Society, told Engadget. It’s easy, too. Without picking up any new skills or tools, Young was able to find sensitive data that could be used to, for example, prosecute someone being targeted for getting an abortion as it becomes increasingly illegal across the country.

The problem isn’t just the state of local law either, but it’s embedded in the Constitution. As Diane Akerman, digital forensics attorney at the Legal Aid Society explained, the Fourth Amendment hasn’t been updated to account for modern problems like digital data. The Fourth Amendment intends to protect people from “unreasonable searches and seizures” by the US government. This is where we get legal protections like warrants, where law enforcement needs court approval to look for evidence in your home, car or elsewhere.

Today, that includes your digital belongings too, from your phone to the cloud and beyond, making way for legal loopholes as tech advancements outpace the law. For example, there’s no way to challenge a search warrant prior to it being executed, Akerman said. For physical evidence that makes some sense because we don’t want someone flushing evidence down a toilet.

That’s not how your social media accounts or data in the cloud work though, because those digital records are much harder to scrub. So, law enforcement can get a warrant to search your device, and there’s no process to litigate in advance whether the warrant is appropriate. Even if there’s reason for the warrant, Akerman and Young showed that officers can use intentionally vague language to search your entire cell phone when they know the evidence may only be in one account.

“You litigate the issues once they already have the data, which means cat is out of the bag a lot of the time and even if it's suppressed in court, there's still other ways it can be used in court,” Akerman said. “There's no oversight for the way the government is executing words on digital devices.”

The issue only exacerbates across the third-party apps you use. According to the Fourth Amendment, if you give your information to a third party you’ve lost any sense of privacy, Akerman said. The government can often very easily get information from the cloud because of that, even if it’s not entirely relevant to the case. “You would be furious if police busted down your door and copied five years of texts for you walking out on a parking ticket five years ago, it's just not proportional,” Young said.

There are no easy ways for an individual to better protect themselves from these searches. On a case by case basis, there are ways to lock down your device, but that changes with every update or new feature, Young said. Instead, both speakers pushed to put the onus back on the systems and structures that uphold this law, not the individuals affected by it.

“I live in a world where I have to opt out of modern society to not have other people housing my data in some way,” Akerman said. “The question really should be like, what responsibility do those people have to us, since they have made us into their profit, rather than forcing me to opt out in order to protect myself?”

Google Photos just got a major update that adds generative AI to its popular Memories view. This toolset already creates scrapbook montages using your photos and videos, but now these montages will be even more personalized, with collections that make sense according to your life. AI-enhanced algorithms will collect the images into relevant categories, a recent vacation as an example, and create a catchy title to accompany the montage. The app already does this, more or less, but the update should be something of a radical improvement. Of course, this is AI so it won’t always get things right. In other words, you can rename collections or edit montages if necessary. 

All of these scrapbook montages are now collected in a dedicated view, called Memories, so you only interact with them when you want to. Before this, Google Photos users received a push notification every time a new scrapbook was available for perusal. Just click on the Memories tab and get going. The new tab also provides access to previously-released features, like adding music to scrapbook montages and sharing memories via the app.

The update even allows these scrapbook entries to be co-created by friends and family. Invite anyone to collaborate and they can contribute their own photos and videos. Everyone involved can delete any photos that don’t match the theme or make simple edits, and the system itself will recommend photos based on geotagging and the like. As for more robust sharing options, Google says you’ll soon be able to save these collections as popular video formats to send via messaging and social media apps.

The new Google Photos update begins rolling out today in the United States, but the company says it’ll be a few months before a true global launch. This isn’t the first time this year the company has squeezed generative AI into Google Photos. Back in May, Google used the technology to improve its Magic Editor toolset, which leverages AI to remove unwanted artifacts from photos.

Google is testing a new capability for its generative AI in search that will make it a more veritable rival to Microsoft's AI Copilot in Edge. The tech giant has launched an early experiment for its generative AI-powered Search experience (SGE) that breaks out of Search itself. Called "SGE while browsing," the feature can quickly generate the most salient points of long-form content found on the web. The tech giant positions it as a tool you can use to more easily digest complex topics that might require extensive research. However, the tool will not be able to provide key points for paywalled articles, only for some web pages that you can view free of charge. 

Whenever Google's AI can generate key points for the page you're visiting, you'll see an option that says "Get AI-generated key points" at the bottom of the screen on mobile or in the sidebar on desktop. Each key point links straight to the part of the page it's referencing, so you can jump to it right away. There's also an "Explore on page" section that shows the questions the article answers. At the moment, the feature is only available within the Google app on Android and iOS, but it is coming to Chrome on desktop in the next few days. The tool is automatically switched on if you've already opted in to try out SGE, but you can also switch it on as a standalone experiment in Search Labs. Like any other experiment, it could evolve over time, depending on testers' feedback. 

Google

Google will also soon roll out a new feature that could help you get better acquainted with new concepts and terms related to STEM, economics, history and other topics. To be more precise, it's improving its AI-generated responses to those topics, so that when you hover over certain words, you'll see previews of definitions and related diagrams or images. It could provide a quick way for you to understand its AI's answers to your questions without having to do a deep-dive for all the concepts you aren't familiar with. 

Finally, if you're a programmer who's not opposed to using AI tools for coding, Google has also added new capabilities to SGE that could help you better understand and debug the codes it generates. Starting today, elements like keywords, comments and strings will be color-coded and highlighted in segments of codes in overviews, so that you can quickly parse the AI's output and determine if it will work as intended. 

If you've been looking to pick up Samsung's new Galaxy Z Flip 5, the foldable phone is now down to $900 at Amazon for a 256GB model. That's a $100 discount for a device that only officially went on sale last week. You'll just need to clip an on-page coupon to see the deal at checkout. 

Previously, Amazon ran a pre-order deal that bundled the 512GB version of the Z Flip 5 with a $150 Amazon gift card for $1,000. This new offer isn't quite as strong of a value, but it's the first cash discount we've seen for the device. If you shop at Amazon regularly, you can still get the 256GB model with that $150 gift card, but you have to pay $1,000 upfront. 

In any event, we gave the Galaxy Z Flip 5 a review score of 88 earlier this month, and we currently list it as the "best foldable for selfies" in our guide to the best smartphones. As our Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low notes in her review, the big upgrade this year is a roomier cover display; at 3.4 inches, it's much more useful for replying to texts, checking notifications, using apps, and yes, taking selfies without having to physically unfold the phone. You have to jump through a few hoops to get any app to work in full on the outer display, but once you do, it becomes a bit more versatile. 

Beyond that, there's a new hinge that lets the whole thing fold flat when closed. The device is still capable as a "normal" phone, with a flagship-level Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and a vibrant 6.7-inch OLED interior display. Samsung also promises four years of OS updates and five years of security patches, which is more extensive than many Android manufacturers.

The Galaxy Z Flip 5 is still a foldable, so you'll have to take more care than usual when handling it. Its IPX8 water-resistance rating means it can survive a brief dunking, but it may be more susceptible to damage from dust or sand. Its camera performance isn't as impressive as the best standard phones in its price range, particularly in low-light settings, and its battery life is only so-so by comparison. There's a visible crease on the interior display as well. Nevertheless, this is the best flip-style foldable you can buy, and this deal makes it a little more affordable.  

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Apple has a thing for 10th anniversaries: The iPhone X made its debut a decade after the first iPhone arrived. The rumor mill says Apple Watch’s 10th birthday justifies a similarly dramatic reworking of its original template. Reports suggest 2025’s Apple Watch X will ditch the slide-in lugs in favor of magnetic band attachments. Doing so gives Apple more room to make the case bigger, and with it a bigger display and battery, but make the overall package thinner.

We might also see a bigger, brighter and more efficient microLED screen replacing the existing OLED display. And the X might also add an optical blood pressure sensor to its suite of health-tracking features. (It’s worth saying that optical blood pressure sensing is still a fairly novel technology outside of clinical settings and some niche wearables.)

With so many features coming to Watch X, the Watch 9 – which we’re expecting to see arrive this fall – might be a skip. Rumors suggest we could see a faster processor and different case colors, but otherwise it’s probably worth waiting for whatever’s coming next.

– Dan Cooper

You can get these reports delivered daily, direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!​​​​

The biggest stories you might have missed

The best budget gaming laptops for 2023

The best wireless chargers in 2023

Amazon's Kindle Scribe is $60 off right now

Telegram Stories is no longer limited to paid users

Sony's WH-CH720N headphones are back on sale for $98

Amazon's latest smart speaker sale includes the Echo Studio for $160

Netflix tests game streaming on select devices, smart TVs and desktop browsers

Testers can play Oxenfree on their TV.

Netflix

Netflix is testing if its streaming infrastructure can deliver games to smart TVs as well as other devices. It’s an extension of its nascent games project that, so far, is only on iOS and Android apps. The beta is running in the UK and Canada on select platforms, where users can play Oxenfree and Molehew’s Mining Adventure. Could this be the start of Netflix’s emergence as the cloud gaming provider Stadia could, and should, have been?

Continue Reading.

Xiaomi's third foldable phone adds a zoom camera but keeps the slim frame

And now it supports hover mode.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi has announced the Mix Fold 3, its latest folding flagship that gains wireless charging and a 5x periscope zoom lens over its predecessor. The China-only handset may not be as thin and light as, say, Honor’s Magic V2, but Richard Lai seems pleased with the improvements on show. Especially as Xiaomi has taken a leaf out of Samsung’s book to make hover mode enough of a feature that you should be able to get the best out of the Fold 3’s many cameras.

Continue Reading.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage will arrive one week early on October 5

Ubisoft says this is a less bloated title than some of its predecessors.

Ubisoft

Assassin’s Creed Mirage will now arrive on October 5, a week earlier than its planned release date. It’ll help space out a fall schedule full of blockbuster open world titles, including Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which arrives October 20. It’s rare for a game to be early, rather than forever delayed, so let’s give Ubisoft some credit for this welcome blast of punctuality.

Continue Reading.

Ford's advanced BlueCruise driver assist features will only be available as a subscription

Your car just got swallowed by Recurring Revenue.

Ford

It may have started out as an optional extra, but now Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving will be on all new supported vehicles. Would-be buyers can activate the tools at purchase or as an optional subscription at some point down the road. It’ll cost $75 a month, $800 for a year, or $2,100 if you buy three years’ worth in a single bundle, with Ford saying – rather terrifyingly – drivers will spend a lot more time with their hands off the wheel.

Continue Reading.

No matter how old you get, something happens inside your brain in mid-August that signals it's time to buy new supplies. As a child preparing to go back to school, this might have been notebooks and erasers. As an adult, it can be a little bigger — especially if sales are going on — like a new iPad. Currently, Apple's 64GB ninth-generation iPad is back down from $330 to its all-time low price of $250 in both Space Gray and Silver. Now this deal is a little tricky in that you will initially see a markdown to $269, but when you head to checkout, it will drop further to $250. 

Apple's ninth-gen iPad isn't the newest model, having first come out in 2021 and followed by a 10th-gen version the following year. We gave the earlier model an 86 in our initial review and, while it wasn't a massive upgrade from its predecessor, found it to be a great option if you're looking for a well-working device with all the basics at a solid price — even on sale, the 10th-gen iPad is $150 more. 

The 10.2-inch iPad has a retina display, A13 Bionic chip and 12MP Ultra Wide front camera. It's compatible with the first Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard. The ninth-gen model still has a lightning connector versus the newer model's USB-C port and has a physical home button. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Netflix is officially bringing its games to more devices. So far, the company's impressive library of games has only been available on iOS and Android. Now, though, Netflix is starting to use its streaming tech to publicly test its titles on TVs and computers.

"Our goal has always been to have a game for everyone, and we are working hard to meet members where they are with an accessible, smooth and ubiquitous service," Mike Verdu, Netflix's vice-president of games, wrote in a blog post. "Today, we’re taking the first step in making games playable on every device where our members enjoy Netflix."

The test appears to be very limited for now. Just two games will be available at the outset: Oxenfree (Netflix just released the sequel as its first game from an in-house studio) and gem-mining arcade title Molehew’s Mining Adventure.

The beta is only open to a small number of Netflix subscribers in the UK and Canada on Amazon Fire TV streaming media players, Chromecast with Google TV, LG TVs, NVIDIA Shield TV, Roku devices and TVs, Samsung smart TVs and Walmart ONN. The company will add support for more devices later.

To play Netflix games on a TV, you can use a controller app that the company just released. When you select a game, your TV will display a QR code. Scan this with your phone to use it as your controller.

The games will also be available to try on Netflix's website via supported desktop browsers in the next few weeks. You'll be able to use your keyboard and mouse to control them on PCs and Macs.

Netflix says the goal of the test is to put its game streaming tech and controller app through their paces. Given the complex nature of rights agreements with various publishers, it's not yet clear whether Netflix will bring all of the games in its library to TVs and web browsers. For instance, you'll need a Netflix subscription to play Kentucky Route Zero,Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge or Immortality natively on your phone, but those games are all available on other platforms. In any case, there's a big new player coming to the cloud gaming space.