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Image: Elgato

Amazon Prime Day is just beginning, and Elgato is already dropping a sweet deal. Prime subscribers can get the limited-edition atomic purple version of Elgato’s Stream Deck MK. 2 for $124.99 ($35 off) at Amazon.

Normally, the standard Stream Deck MK. 2 comes in black or white and sells for $149.99 (or discounted as low as $109.99 during its biggest sales promos), so there is a bit of a premium on the limited-edition model and its aesthetics. But this is the first (and possibly only) time the atomic purple model has been discounted. Elgato only sells this variant on Amazon, and it claims the individually numbered run will no longer be available once it sells out. So you may want to consider jumping on this if you love the recent resurgence of transparent tech. I know I’m quite tempted myself.

The 15-key macro pad controls all kinds of functions across a Windows or Mac computer. It may have been initially designed to help Twitch streamers with quick access to complex OBS Studio controls while live, but it serves just as well to help control your everyday tasks like summoning selected apps or muting yourself on a Zoom call with one press.

What makes the Stream Deck special is its small LCD buttons, which you can program to do all kinds of functions — even ones linked to other devices in your smart home ecosystem. Think of it like a universal remote for your computer, and it’s at its most helpful when a single button press is faster and simpler than having to dig through a software menu with your mouse or remembering some cockamamie multikey shortcut on your keyboard.

Image: Elgato

Amazon Prime Day is just beginning, and Elgato is already dropping a sweet deal. Prime subscribers can get the limited-edition atomic purple version of Elgato’s Stream Deck MK. 2 for $124.99 ($35 off) at Amazon.

Normally, the standard Stream Deck MK. 2 comes in black or white and sells for $149.99 (or discounted as low as $109.99 during its biggest sales promos), so there is a bit of a premium on the limited-edition model and its aesthetics. But this is the first (and possibly only) time the atomic purple model has been discounted. Elgato only sells this variant on Amazon, and it claims the individually numbered run will no longer be available once it sells out. So you may want to consider jumping on this if you love the recent resurgence of transparent tech. I know I’m quite tempted myself.

The 15-key macro pad controls all kinds of functions across a Windows or Mac computer. It may have been initially designed to help Twitch streamers with quick access to complex OBS Studio controls while live, but it serves just as well to help control your everyday tasks like summoning selected apps or muting yourself on a Zoom call with one press.

What makes the Stream Deck special is its small LCD buttons, which you can program to do all kinds of functions — even ones linked to other devices in your smart home ecosystem. Think of it like a universal remote for your computer, and it’s at its most helpful when a single button press is faster and simpler than having to dig through a software menu with your mouse or remembering some cockamamie multikey shortcut on your keyboard.

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Image: Xreal

There are two possible paths for augmented reality devices. One path is the all-in-one approach, which you might call the smartphone path or the Vision Pro Path: you buy a full-fledged single device with everything you need, and when you need an upgrade, you buy a new one. The other path is the unbundled one: your AR system might be lots of devices rather than just one, and you’ll upgrade and swap things in as you need them. That path is more like building a home theater system than buying a new iPhone.
The Xreal Beam Pro, which I’ve been testing for the last couple of weeks, is a big bet on unbundling. It’s a $199 Android device that looks and works like a smartphone but is intended to be used mostly as a companion to Xreal’s AR glasses. Xreal has found some success in the last few years building AR glasses that are essentially just big displays; you can plug in almost anything and see it projected in front of your face. With the Beam Pro, the company is trying to find a way to give you more and cooler AR stuff to do, without compromising the whole premise of its devices.

Image: Adi Robertson / The Verge
The Beam Pro is a normal-looking Android device — other than those cameras, anyway.

It’s like the glasses and the tablet are in an open relationship; they’re best together but still have plenty of value apart. But the Beam Pro itself just feels a bit underpowered and unfinished. There are too many bugs in its AR-specific features and too many times I really felt the sacrifices required to get this thing under $200. Xreal has the beginning of something really clever here, but I’ll probably wait for the next one.
The Beam Pro has two main jobs, as far as I can tell. The first is just to be a content machine for Xreal glasses, which it handles fairly well. Since it has access to the Play Store, you can download all the streaming apps, game streaming services, and whatever else you might want to see on the big virtual screen in your glasses. It has 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM, which is less than I’d like for something so geared toward photos, videos, and games. For an extra $50, you can get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and I recommend spending the money. But either way, unfortunately, the Beam Pro’s other specs keep it from working well enough to recommend.
As a pure app machine, the Beam Pro really only has two advantages over the phone already in your pocket. For one, it has a dual camera rig on the back that shoots 1080p 3D video and 50-megapixel 3D photos that you can play back in your glasses. The results are crisp and fun enough that I’ve used this camera much more than I expected. The Beam Pro also has a second USB-C port, so you can charge the device and plug it into your glasses simultaneously. I’m not sure how to weigh that convenience against the extra hassle of carrying and maintaining another device, but it is a nice touch.

Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
The Beam Pro adds an app launcher to your AR space, which is helpful.

Beyond that, it’s all software. The Beam Pro runs NebulaOS, which is Xreal’s twist on Android designed to work better on your face. When you plug the Beam Pro into a pair of glasses, you see apps mirrored like you’d expect, but Xreal has also added some extra UI: there’s an app launcher with a grid of icons that looks a lot like the Vision Pro and a control center that lets you quickly capture footage or change settings, and you can arrange apps in space in front of your face. It’s not as free-form as you’d get from Meta or Apple — you basically just stick a couple of apps next to each other — but it’s better than just mirroring your screen like most Android devices.
When you’re wearing the glasses, NebulaOS has an app that turns the Beam Pro into a remote control. There’s a little round cursor that you move by moving the device in space, and you tap on the screen to select something. To scroll, you just swipe on the Beam Pro’s screen. It’s a good idea and a great use of the device, but it doesn’t always work very well. Sometimes the screen registers a swipe as a tap, sometimes it registers a tap as a double-tap, and sometimes it seems to not be able to match the location of the cursor with the tap on the screen. In the Netflix app, for instance, I eventually figured out how to go back and forward — by double-tapping on the screen while pointing the cursor way off to the side — but I still can’t make it pause.

Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
Nebula’s layout tools are handy — its penchant for misplacing things, less so.

There are little bugs like this all over NebulaOS. The Beam Pro’s in-glasses display can be set to follow your head as you move or stay anchored in one space, which you select by tapping the orange Mode button on the right side of the device. But in the following mode, the screen often flickers and judders and lags behind my head; when I set it to stay in one spot, it consistently drifts downward over time. The Beam Pro just constantly feels like it’s trying to do too much.
Even the hardware feels a bit like an identity crisis. With a 6.5-inch screen, it’s a little big to use in one hand, so the remote gestures are kind of awkward. The Qualcomm chip inside just isn’t powerful enough to make the AR stuff feel smooth and crisp. Xreal’s in a tough spot here: if the Beam Pro is $800, nobody’s going to buy it, but it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to build a $200 Android device powerful enough to run real-time AR stuff.

Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
I do love watching 3D videos of my dog in my glasses.

It’s certainly possible that some of the software features can get better over time. I’ve already gotten a bunch of software updates on the Beam Pro, which have fixed or at least helped with some issues I’ve had. But Xreal’s track record here isn’t great: a lot of people who bought the original Beam, a much more minimalist remote control and content machine, are still complaining about the same serious bugs and missing features even months later. You should never buy a device based on promises of future improvements, but definitely don’t do it here.
Ultimately, I like the Beam Pro most as a fun and relatively inexpensive 3D camera. I don’t know whether spatial video is the future of anything, but I do enjoy watching my dog splash in the pool with some extra depth. (You can also play Beam Pro content back on the Vision Pro, which is neat.) When it comes to the AR features, though, I’m mostly opting out. I like Xreal’s idea about using your devices to power your glasses, but the Beam Pro just doesn’t have the power. I’ll stick with just mirroring my screen.

Image: Xreal

There are two possible paths for augmented reality devices. One path is the all-in-one approach, which you might call the smartphone path or the Vision Pro Path: you buy a full-fledged single device with everything you need, and when you need an upgrade, you buy a new one. The other path is the unbundled one: your AR system might be lots of devices rather than just one, and you’ll upgrade and swap things in as you need them. That path is more like building a home theater system than buying a new iPhone.

The Xreal Beam Pro, which I’ve been testing for the last couple of weeks, is a big bet on unbundling. It’s a $199 Android device that looks and works like a smartphone but is intended to be used mostly as a companion to Xreal’s AR glasses. Xreal has found some success in the last few years building AR glasses that are essentially just big displays; you can plug in almost anything and see it projected in front of your face. With the Beam Pro, the company is trying to find a way to give you more and cooler AR stuff to do, without compromising the whole premise of its devices.

Image: Adi Robertson / The Verge
The Beam Pro is a normal-looking Android device — other than those cameras, anyway.

It’s like the glasses and the tablet are in an open relationship; they’re best together but still have plenty of value apart. But the Beam Pro itself just feels a bit underpowered and unfinished. There are too many bugs in its AR-specific features and too many times I really felt the sacrifices required to get this thing under $200. Xreal has the beginning of something really clever here, but I’ll probably wait for the next one.

The Beam Pro has two main jobs, as far as I can tell. The first is just to be a content machine for Xreal glasses, which it handles fairly well. Since it has access to the Play Store, you can download all the streaming apps, game streaming services, and whatever else you might want to see on the big virtual screen in your glasses. It has 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM, which is less than I’d like for something so geared toward photos, videos, and games. For an extra $50, you can get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and I recommend spending the money. But either way, unfortunately, the Beam Pro’s other specs keep it from working well enough to recommend.

As a pure app machine, the Beam Pro really only has two advantages over the phone already in your pocket. For one, it has a dual camera rig on the back that shoots 1080p 3D video and 50-megapixel 3D photos that you can play back in your glasses. The results are crisp and fun enough that I’ve used this camera much more than I expected. The Beam Pro also has a second USB-C port, so you can charge the device and plug it into your glasses simultaneously. I’m not sure how to weigh that convenience against the extra hassle of carrying and maintaining another device, but it is a nice touch.

Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
The Beam Pro adds an app launcher to your AR space, which is helpful.

Beyond that, it’s all software. The Beam Pro runs NebulaOS, which is Xreal’s twist on Android designed to work better on your face. When you plug the Beam Pro into a pair of glasses, you see apps mirrored like you’d expect, but Xreal has also added some extra UI: there’s an app launcher with a grid of icons that looks a lot like the Vision Pro and a control center that lets you quickly capture footage or change settings, and you can arrange apps in space in front of your face. It’s not as free-form as you’d get from Meta or Apple — you basically just stick a couple of apps next to each other — but it’s better than just mirroring your screen like most Android devices.

When you’re wearing the glasses, NebulaOS has an app that turns the Beam Pro into a remote control. There’s a little round cursor that you move by moving the device in space, and you tap on the screen to select something. To scroll, you just swipe on the Beam Pro’s screen. It’s a good idea and a great use of the device, but it doesn’t always work very well. Sometimes the screen registers a swipe as a tap, sometimes it registers a tap as a double-tap, and sometimes it seems to not be able to match the location of the cursor with the tap on the screen. In the Netflix app, for instance, I eventually figured out how to go back and forward — by double-tapping on the screen while pointing the cursor way off to the side — but I still can’t make it pause.

Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
Nebula’s layout tools are handy — its penchant for misplacing things, less so.

There are little bugs like this all over NebulaOS. The Beam Pro’s in-glasses display can be set to follow your head as you move or stay anchored in one space, which you select by tapping the orange Mode button on the right side of the device. But in the following mode, the screen often flickers and judders and lags behind my head; when I set it to stay in one spot, it consistently drifts downward over time. The Beam Pro just constantly feels like it’s trying to do too much.

Even the hardware feels a bit like an identity crisis. With a 6.5-inch screen, it’s a little big to use in one hand, so the remote gestures are kind of awkward. The Qualcomm chip inside just isn’t powerful enough to make the AR stuff feel smooth and crisp. Xreal’s in a tough spot here: if the Beam Pro is $800, nobody’s going to buy it, but it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to build a $200 Android device powerful enough to run real-time AR stuff.

Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
I do love watching 3D videos of my dog in my glasses.

It’s certainly possible that some of the software features can get better over time. I’ve already gotten a bunch of software updates on the Beam Pro, which have fixed or at least helped with some issues I’ve had. But Xreal’s track record here isn’t great: a lot of people who bought the original Beam, a much more minimalist remote control and content machine, are still complaining about the same serious bugs and missing features even months later. You should never buy a device based on promises of future improvements, but definitely don’t do it here.

Ultimately, I like the Beam Pro most as a fun and relatively inexpensive 3D camera. I don’t know whether spatial video is the future of anything, but I do enjoy watching my dog splash in the pool with some extra depth. (You can also play Beam Pro content back on the Vision Pro, which is neat.) When it comes to the AR features, though, I’m mostly opting out. I like Xreal’s idea about using your devices to power your glasses, but the Beam Pro just doesn’t have the power. I’ll stick with just mirroring my screen.

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Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple’s next major iOS, iPadOS, and macOS updates will add a new “Recovered” album in the Photos app to help you find photos and videos on your device that may have been lost or damaged, according to 9to5Mac.
When you update to iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, your device will scan for potential photos or videos that could appear in the Recovered album, 9to5Mac reports. If there are, the Recovered album will show up in the Utilities section of the app.
Note that the Recovered album is separate from the Recently Deleted album, where photos you delete are accessible for 30 days before they’re deleted permanently. I’ve asked Apple if photos or videos in the Recovered album will eventually auto-delete as well and will update this story with what I hear back.

The addition of a Recovered album follows Apple fixing a bug in iOS 17.5 that caused some users to unexpectedly find photos in their photo library that they thought they deleted. The company said the problem was a “rare issue” that could happen with “photos that experienced database corruption.”
Apple launched public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and more on Monday.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple’s next major iOS, iPadOS, and macOS updates will add a new “Recovered” album in the Photos app to help you find photos and videos on your device that may have been lost or damaged, according to 9to5Mac.

When you update to iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, your device will scan for potential photos or videos that could appear in the Recovered album, 9to5Mac reports. If there are, the Recovered album will show up in the Utilities section of the app.

Note that the Recovered album is separate from the Recently Deleted album, where photos you delete are accessible for 30 days before they’re deleted permanently. I’ve asked Apple if photos or videos in the Recovered album will eventually auto-delete as well and will update this story with what I hear back.

The addition of a Recovered album follows Apple fixing a bug in iOS 17.5 that caused some users to unexpectedly find photos in their photo library that they thought they deleted. The company said the problem was a “rare issue” that could happen with “photos that experienced database corruption.”

Apple launched public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and more on Monday.

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Powerful record labels, including UMG Recordings, Warner Music, and Sony Music, filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Verizon of intentionally ignoring its customers’ copyright violations for profit, reports Music Business Worldwide.
The plaintiffs say they are entitled to as much as $150,000 per violation under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which could add up to as much as $2.6 billion.
The lawsuit includes a list of 17,335 tracks from artists or bands, including Elvis Presley, Matchbox Twenty, Goo Goo Dolls, and Brandy. (Here’s the list if you’d like to dive further in — it starts with Sam Cooke and ends with Wiz Khalifa.) The labels say they’ve sent “nearly 350,000 infringement notices” to Verizon since 2020, alleging that the company ignored people repeatedly cited for illegally sharing files because they pay more for faster, better internet service.
Verizon’s failure to take meaningful action against its infringing subscribers drew subscribers engaging in Internet piracy to purchase Verizon’s services, so that those subscribers could infringe Plaintiffs’ (and others’) copyrights and avoid obtaining that copyrighted content through legitimate channels. Infringing subscribers were drawn to Verizon’s services both because of its lax policies concerning copyright infringement and faster internet speeds that facilitated the use of P2P protocols for those willing to pay more. Verizon fostered a safe haven for infringement in light of its lax policies and thus encouraged its subscribers to infringe. The specific infringing subscribers identified in Plaintiffs’ notices, including the particularly egregious infringers identified above, knew that Verizon would not terminate their accounts despite receiving multiple notices identifying them as infringers, and they remained Verizon subscribers so that they could continue illegally downloading copyrighted works.

The suit charges Verizon with both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, asking the judge to award labels the maximum penalty for every track on their list as well as attorney’s fees.
Previous copyright battles have included Viacom vs. YouTube, with the latter arguing successfully that it qualified for the DMCA’s “Safe Harbor” provision, while a $1 billion judgment against Cox Communications was overturned on appeal with the court saying the ISP didn’t profit by ignoring music piracy.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Powerful record labels, including UMG Recordings, Warner Music, and Sony Music, filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Verizon of intentionally ignoring its customers’ copyright violations for profit, reports Music Business Worldwide.

The plaintiffs say they are entitled to as much as $150,000 per violation under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which could add up to as much as $2.6 billion.

The lawsuit includes a list of 17,335 tracks from artists or bands, including Elvis Presley, Matchbox Twenty, Goo Goo Dolls, and Brandy. (Here’s the list if you’d like to dive further in — it starts with Sam Cooke and ends with Wiz Khalifa.) The labels say they’ve sent “nearly 350,000 infringement notices” to Verizon since 2020, alleging that the company ignored people repeatedly cited for illegally sharing files because they pay more for faster, better internet service.

Verizon’s failure to take meaningful action against its infringing subscribers drew subscribers engaging in Internet piracy to purchase Verizon’s services, so that those subscribers could infringe Plaintiffs’ (and others’) copyrights and avoid obtaining that copyrighted content through legitimate channels. Infringing subscribers were drawn to Verizon’s services both because of its lax policies concerning copyright infringement and faster internet speeds that facilitated the use of P2P protocols for those willing to pay more. Verizon fostered a safe haven for infringement in light of its lax policies and thus encouraged its subscribers to infringe. The specific infringing subscribers identified in Plaintiffs’ notices, including the particularly egregious infringers identified above, knew that Verizon would not terminate their accounts despite receiving multiple notices identifying them as infringers, and they remained Verizon subscribers so that they could continue illegally downloading copyrighted works.

The suit charges Verizon with both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, asking the judge to award labels the maximum penalty for every track on their list as well as attorney’s fees.

Previous copyright battles have included Viacom vs. YouTube, with the latter arguing successfully that it qualified for the DMCA’s “Safe Harbor” provision, while a $1 billion judgment against Cox Communications was overturned on appeal with the court saying the ISP didn’t profit by ignoring music piracy.

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Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

The FBI said it ‘gained access’ to the Trump rally shooter’s phone just two days after the attempted assassination. Just two days after the attempted assassination at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the FBI announced it “gained access” to the shooter’s phone. The bureau has not disclosed how it broke into the phone — or what has been found on it — but the speed with which it did so is significant, and security experts say it points to the increased efficacy of phone-hacking tools.
In a call with reporters on Sunday, the bureau said field agents in Pennsylvania had tried and failed to break into Thomas Matthew Crooks’ phone. The device was then sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.
“Almost every police department in the nation has a device called the Cellebrite”
Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that law enforcement agencies have several tools at their disposal to extract data from phones. “Almost every police department in the nation has a device called the Cellebrite, which is a device built for extracting data from phones, and it also has some capability to unlock phones,” Quintin said. Cellebrite, which is based in Israel, is one of several companies that provides mobile device extraction tools (MDTFs) to law enforcement. Third-party MDTFs vary in efficacy and cost, and the likely FBI has its own in-house tools as well. Last year, TechCrunch reported that Cellebrite asked users to keep use of its technology “hush hush.”
“It seems reasonable to me that the field office there [in Pennsylvania] wouldn’t have some of the more advanced techniques for breaking into modern phones that they have at Quantico,” Quintin told The Verge hours before the FBI announced it had successfully gained access to Crooks’ phone. “I have little doubt that Quantico will be able to break into this phone, whether that’s in-house or whether that’s through using outside help — like from Cellebrite, for example.
A 2020 investigation by the Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization Upturn found that more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia had access to MDTFs. GrayKey — among the most expensive and advanced of these tools — costs between $15,000 and $30,000, according to Upturn’s report. Grayshift, the company behind GrayKey, announced in March that its Magnet GrayKey device has “full support” for Apple iOS 17, Samsung Galaxy S24 Devices, and Pixel 6 and 7 devices.”
For law enforcement, third-party MDTFs are an effective way to get around tech companies’ hesitance to help break into customers’ phones.

In previous instances of mass shootings or domestic terrorism, the FBI has spent weeks or months trying to break into suspects’ phones. The bureau famously butted heads with Apple in late 2015 after the company refused to help law enforcement get around the encryption on the San Bernardino, California shooter’s iPhone. Early in the following year, Apple refused a federal court order to help the FBI access the shooter’s phone, which the company said would effectively require it to build a backdoor for the iPhone’s encryption software.
“The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a February 2016 open letter. The FBI did have access to the a backup of the shooter’s phone that had been uploaded to his iCloud account — but the last backup appeared to have occurred six weeks before the shooting, hence the FBI’s desire to unlock the phone. In his letter, Cook claimed that the FBI had asked Apple to modify its iOS so passcodes could be input electronically in what he called a “brute force” attack.
“The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor,” Cook wrote. “While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”
Trump — at the time one of several candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination — was among those who demanded that Apple cave to the FBI
Trump — at the time one of several candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination — was among those who demanded that Apple cave to the FBI. “First of all, Apple ought to give the security for that phone,” he told the crowd during one of his rallies. “What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such time as they give that security number.”
The FBI dropped its case against Apple in March 2016, three months after the shooting — not because Apple decided to comply with the FBI’s request, but because the bureau had obtained a break-in method from an “outside source” and no longer needed Apple’s assistance. Reuters initially reported that the Cellebrite had helped the FBI break into the device, which the bureau never confirmed, though then-director James Comey and Senator Dianne Feinstein did disclose that the FBI spent around $1 million to unlock the phone.
In 2021, the Washington Post reported that the Australian security firm Azimuth Security unlocked the San Bernardino shooter’s phone.
The San Bernardino shooting was not the only instance in which the FBI tried to compel Apple to break into an iPhone on its behalf. After a shooter opened fire at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida on December 2019, the FBI asked Apple to unlock two iPhones linked to the shooter. After Apple refused, Attorney General William Barr said the company had failed to provide “substantive assistance” in the case. Apple, for its part, maintained that it “produced a wide variety of information associated with the investigation,” and turned over “gigabytes of information” to the FBI, including “iCloud backups, account information and transactional data for multiple accounts” related to the shooter. But Apple once again refused to unlock the shooter’s phones.
The FBI said it was able to break into the shooter’s phones in March 2020, after several months of trying — and the bureau lambasted Apple in its announcement. “Thanks to the great work of the FBI — and no thanks to Apple — we were able to unlock Alshamrani’s phones,” Barr said at the time. FBI director Christopher Wray said this was done with “effectively no help from Apple.”
Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said the Pensacola shooting was one of the last times federal law enforcement agencies loudly denounced encryption.
“There are serious human rights risks when technology for breaking into people’s phones gets leveraged by undemocratic governments”
“That was over four years ago, and the technology on both sides of the equation has only evolved since then,” Pfefferkorn said in an email to The Verge.
Pfefferkorn said vendors and law enforcement agencies often gain access to phones by exploiting “a vulnerability in the software that’s running on the phone” or by guessing the password through brute force. “It takes a matter of minutes to brute-force a 4-digit passcode and a matter of hours for a 6-digit one,” Pfefferkorn said.
“In addition to the FBI’s own in-house tools, there are tools available from third-party vendors (as with the San Bernardino shooter’s phone), some of which are more scrupulous than others about who their customers are. There are serious human rights risks when technology for breaking into people’s phones gets leveraged by undemocratic governments, yet those tools are widely available for the right price.”

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

The FBI said it ‘gained access’ to the Trump rally shooter’s phone just two days after the attempted assassination.

Just two days after the attempted assassination at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the FBI announced it “gained access” to the shooter’s phone. The bureau has not disclosed how it broke into the phone — or what has been found on it — but the speed with which it did so is significant, and security experts say it points to the increased efficacy of phone-hacking tools.

In a call with reporters on Sunday, the bureau said field agents in Pennsylvania had tried and failed to break into Thomas Matthew Crooks’ phone. The device was then sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.

Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that law enforcement agencies have several tools at their disposal to extract data from phones. “Almost every police department in the nation has a device called the Cellebrite, which is a device built for extracting data from phones, and it also has some capability to unlock phones,” Quintin said. Cellebrite, which is based in Israel, is one of several companies that provides mobile device extraction tools (MDTFs) to law enforcement. Third-party MDTFs vary in efficacy and cost, and the likely FBI has its own in-house tools as well. Last year, TechCrunch reported that Cellebrite asked users to keep use of its technology “hush hush.”

“It seems reasonable to me that the field office there [in Pennsylvania] wouldn’t have some of the more advanced techniques for breaking into modern phones that they have at Quantico,” Quintin told The Verge hours before the FBI announced it had successfully gained access to Crooks’ phone. “I have little doubt that Quantico will be able to break into this phone, whether that’s in-house or whether that’s through using outside help — like from Cellebrite, for example.

A 2020 investigation by the Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization Upturn found that more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia had access to MDTFs. GrayKey — among the most expensive and advanced of these tools — costs between $15,000 and $30,000, according to Upturn’s report. Grayshift, the company behind GrayKey, announced in March that its Magnet GrayKey device has “full support” for Apple iOS 17, Samsung Galaxy S24 Devices, and Pixel 6 and 7 devices.”

For law enforcement, third-party MDTFs are an effective way to get around tech companies’ hesitance to help break into customers’ phones.

In previous instances of mass shootings or domestic terrorism, the FBI has spent weeks or months trying to break into suspects’ phones. The bureau famously butted heads with Apple in late 2015 after the company refused to help law enforcement get around the encryption on the San Bernardino, California shooter’s iPhone. Early in the following year, Apple refused a federal court order to help the FBI access the shooter’s phone, which the company said would effectively require it to build a backdoor for the iPhone’s encryption software.

“The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a February 2016 open letter. The FBI did have access to the a backup of the shooter’s phone that had been uploaded to his iCloud account — but the last backup appeared to have occurred six weeks before the shooting, hence the FBI’s desire to unlock the phone. In his letter, Cook claimed that the FBI had asked Apple to modify its iOS so passcodes could be input electronically in what he called a “brute force” attack.

“The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor,” Cook wrote. “While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”

Trump — at the time one of several candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination — was among those who demanded that Apple cave to the FBI. “First of all, Apple ought to give the security for that phone,” he told the crowd during one of his rallies. “What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such time as they give that security number.”

The FBI dropped its case against Apple in March 2016, three months after the shooting — not because Apple decided to comply with the FBI’s request, but because the bureau had obtained a break-in method from an “outside source” and no longer needed Apple’s assistance. Reuters initially reported that the Cellebrite had helped the FBI break into the device, which the bureau never confirmed, though then-director James Comey and Senator Dianne Feinstein did disclose that the FBI spent around $1 million to unlock the phone.

In 2021, the Washington Post reported that the Australian security firm Azimuth Security unlocked the San Bernardino shooter’s phone.

The San Bernardino shooting was not the only instance in which the FBI tried to compel Apple to break into an iPhone on its behalf. After a shooter opened fire at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida on December 2019, the FBI asked Apple to unlock two iPhones linked to the shooter. After Apple refused, Attorney General William Barr said the company had failed to provide “substantive assistance” in the case. Apple, for its part, maintained that it “produced a wide variety of information associated with the investigation,” and turned over “gigabytes of information” to the FBI, including “iCloud backups, account information and transactional data for multiple accounts” related to the shooter. But Apple once again refused to unlock the shooter’s phones.

The FBI said it was able to break into the shooter’s phones in March 2020, after several months of trying — and the bureau lambasted Apple in its announcement. “Thanks to the great work of the FBI — and no thanks to Apple — we were able to unlock Alshamrani’s phones,” Barr said at the time. FBI director Christopher Wray said this was done with “effectively no help from Apple.”

Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said the Pensacola shooting was one of the last times federal law enforcement agencies loudly denounced encryption.

“That was over four years ago, and the technology on both sides of the equation has only evolved since then,” Pfefferkorn said in an email to The Verge.

Pfefferkorn said vendors and law enforcement agencies often gain access to phones by exploiting “a vulnerability in the software that’s running on the phone” or by guessing the password through brute force. “It takes a matter of minutes to brute-force a 4-digit passcode and a matter of hours for a 6-digit one,” Pfefferkorn said.

“In addition to the FBI’s own in-house tools, there are tools available from third-party vendors (as with the San Bernardino shooter’s phone), some of which are more scrupulous than others about who their customers are. There are serious human rights risks when technology for breaking into people’s phones gets leveraged by undemocratic governments, yet those tools are widely available for the right price.”

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Image: The Verge

News moves fast following shocking events. But the hustlers trying to make a quick buck might move even faster.
Within hours of a shooter attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally on Saturday, countless products emblazoned with an image of Trump, bloodied and fist raised, were for sale on e-commerce platforms. A shirt on Temu with an image from the rally and the words “TRUMP BULLETPROOF” is for sale for $9.59. (One person died at the rally and two were critically injured.) On Amazon, many of the top-selling men’s novelty T-shirts are nearly identical: some version of an image of Trump at the rally, alongside phrases like “FIGHT!” and “NEVER SURRENDER.”

Screenshot: Temu

With the Republican National Convention in full swing in Milwaukee, vendors of far-right apparel and merchandise are cashing in — but it’s not just companies that are politically aligned with Trump that are pushing out cheap, fast products.
Take sellers on Etsy, the platform that largely focuses on craft goods and indie products. One shop on the platform offers apparel with slogans and designs that otherwise seem fairly innocent: sweatshirts with animated smiling ghosts for Halloween and camping-themed apparel. Also listed in the shop are shirts promoting gay rights and indigenous identities. In the last few days, though, the shop has pushed out various pro-Trump products, including several with imagery from the rally.
A search for “Trump” on Etsy returns a slew of listings for other similar products — almost all of which feature photos of mockups of products, not actual physical items, suggesting these are print-on-demand operations endlessly churning out whatever people are looking for. And right now, some people are apparently looking for bloody, post-assassination T-shirts of questionable taste.
Etsy didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether products with this imagery violate rules around violent content.
Other sellers are capitalizing on the moment in even more obvious ways: one brand on Amazon — creatively named Trump Fist Bumped Shirt — sells a half-dozen T-shirts all in the same vein, ranging from $13 to $19. Amazon also did not respond to requests about whether this type of product was allowed on its marketplace, which allows third-party vendors to sell their merchandise.
Any enterprising sellers with two free minutes and a Redbubble account can get in on the action — and so far, platforms seem willing to accommodate the merch. And if there’s money to be made, you can bet someone out there will try to make it.

Image: The Verge

News moves fast following shocking events. But the hustlers trying to make a quick buck might move even faster.

Within hours of a shooter attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally on Saturday, countless products emblazoned with an image of Trump, bloodied and fist raised, were for sale on e-commerce platforms. A shirt on Temu with an image from the rally and the words “TRUMP BULLETPROOF” is for sale for $9.59. (One person died at the rally and two were critically injured.) On Amazon, many of the top-selling men’s novelty T-shirts are nearly identical: some version of an image of Trump at the rally, alongside phrases like “FIGHT!” and “NEVER SURRENDER.”

Screenshot: Temu

With the Republican National Convention in full swing in Milwaukee, vendors of far-right apparel and merchandise are cashing in — but it’s not just companies that are politically aligned with Trump that are pushing out cheap, fast products.

Take sellers on Etsy, the platform that largely focuses on craft goods and indie products. One shop on the platform offers apparel with slogans and designs that otherwise seem fairly innocent: sweatshirts with animated smiling ghosts for Halloween and camping-themed apparel. Also listed in the shop are shirts promoting gay rights and indigenous identities. In the last few days, though, the shop has pushed out various pro-Trump products, including several with imagery from the rally.

A search for “Trump” on Etsy returns a slew of listings for other similar products — almost all of which feature photos of mockups of products, not actual physical items, suggesting these are print-on-demand operations endlessly churning out whatever people are looking for. And right now, some people are apparently looking for bloody, post-assassination T-shirts of questionable taste.

Etsy didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether products with this imagery violate rules around violent content.

Other sellers are capitalizing on the moment in even more obvious ways: one brand on Amazon — creatively named Trump Fist Bumped Shirt — sells a half-dozen T-shirts all in the same vein, ranging from $13 to $19. Amazon also did not respond to requests about whether this type of product was allowed on its marketplace, which allows third-party vendors to sell their merchandise.

Any enterprising sellers with two free minutes and a Redbubble account can get in on the action — and so far, platforms seem willing to accommodate the merch. And if there’s money to be made, you can bet someone out there will try to make it.

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Image: Lattice

“Today Lattice is making AI history,” CEO Sarah Franklin wrote in a July 9th blog post. “We will be the first to give digital workers official employee records in Lattice. Digital workers will be securely onboarded, trained, and assigned goals, performance metrics, appropriate systems access, and even a manager. Just as any person would be.”
On July 12th, after a very predictable backlash, Lattice posted an update saying it “will not further pursue digital workers in the product.”
Here’s a sample of the responses to Lattice’s original announcement:

“I have questions,” Hebba Youssef, chief people officer at Workweek, said on LinkedIn. “My biggest one: why??”
“Based on my experience in and around AI and HR, it appears to me that we’ve skipped several steps,” HR professional Amanda Halle said in another LinkedIn post.
“This strategy and messaging misses the mark in a big way, and I say that as someone building an AI company,” said Sawyer Middeleer, chief of staff at Aomni, in a comment to a post from Franklin on LinkedIn.

Franklin’s original post did acknowledge that there are questions about what it means to integrate an AI worker into processes for managing real people. And Franklin has posted comments on LinkedIn to explain Lattice’s thinking about the feature. “I’m not advocating for the personification of AI,” Franklin said in one.
There are many companies exploring the idea of digital workers — Franklin’s blog post pointed to Cognition AI’s Devin software engineer and Qualified’s Piper AI sales representative. It appears Lattice was trying to respond to these sorts of AI bots, but its attempt backfired, especially among the people who might care about it the most.
Lattice didn’t reply to a request for comment.

Image: Lattice

“Today Lattice is making AI history,” CEO Sarah Franklin wrote in a July 9th blog post. “We will be the first to give digital workers official employee records in Lattice. Digital workers will be securely onboarded, trained, and assigned goals, performance metrics, appropriate systems access, and even a manager. Just as any person would be.”

On July 12th, after a very predictable backlash, Lattice posted an update saying it “will not further pursue digital workers in the product.”

Here’s a sample of the responses to Lattice’s original announcement:

“I have questions,” Hebba Youssef, chief people officer at Workweek, said on LinkedIn. “My biggest one: why??”
“Based on my experience in and around AI and HR, it appears to me that we’ve skipped several steps,” HR professional Amanda Halle said in another LinkedIn post.
“This strategy and messaging misses the mark in a big way, and I say that as someone building an AI company,” said Sawyer Middeleer, chief of staff at Aomni, in a comment to a post from Franklin on LinkedIn.

Franklin’s original post did acknowledge that there are questions about what it means to integrate an AI worker into processes for managing real people. And Franklin has posted comments on LinkedIn to explain Lattice’s thinking about the feature. “I’m not advocating for the personification of AI,” Franklin said in one.

There are many companies exploring the idea of digital workers — Franklin’s blog post pointed to Cognition AI’s Devin software engineer and Qualified’s Piper AI sales representative. It appears Lattice was trying to respond to these sorts of AI bots, but its attempt backfired, especially among the people who might care about it the most.

Lattice didn’t reply to a request for comment.

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The Modular Ultra face now allows you to have bezels for your training load and vitals.

One thing always irked me about the Apple Watch. Rain or shine, in sickness and in health, it pushed me to close my rings. Never mind if I had covid-19, shin splints, or was mentally in a dark place. It nudged me to be a “better” version of myself, so long as better didn’t involve a day off. But with watchOS 11 — the public beta of which arrives today — it feels like my Apple Watch is finally cutting me some slack.
This is largely due to a trio of new features: the new Vitals app, Training Load feature, and the ability to pause your Activity Rings. I waxed lyrical about the latter right after WWDC, but after spending some time with the developer beta, I’m convinced these are the smartest fitness updates Apple’s rolled out in years.

The Vitals app and Training Load feature are technically two separate things, but in practice, they very much go hand in hand. The Vitals app contextualizes a set of metrics: heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and sleep duration. These are all recovery metrics, most commonly packaged in other apps as a readiness score, except Apple’s version doesn’t give you a single score. Rather, it shows you whether your metrics are “typical” or an “outlier.” If two or more metrics are out of range, you’ll get a notification and some possibilities as to why certain metrics are out of whack.
The Training Load feature is also straightforward. It compares and visualizes your seven-day versus 28-day exercise load. Based on that, you can see whether you’re well below, below, steady, above, or well above your usual activity levels. It breaks this down not only by overall activity but also by individual activity types (i.e., running, pilates, cycling, etc.). After a workout, you can also rate your perceived effort level. For popular workouts, like running, it’ll automatically set your effort level. (You can manually edit it if you disagree, which I occasionally did, though it’s broadly accurate.)

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
There are multiple ways to view Training Load and Vitals — both on your wrist and on your iPhone.

It’s been nice to have both of these features over the past month, though, like most of the updates in watchOS 11, they’re a bit passive. For example, I’ve not had a single Vitals notification because, well, all my vital metrics have stayed within their typical range. Yay me for being consistent! This isn’t a bad thing — you don’t want to get frequent notifications. It’s more that having the quick visual of “is everything hunky dory?” is helpful when you’re on the fence about whether to push it or take a rest day.
That’s the benefit of Training Load, too, especially for folks newer to exercise or training. I’m experienced enough to know that my current Training Load is a little skewed because I took a whole week off of training while on vacation. (Right around the time when I downloaded the beta.) Yet it is a helpful visual reminder for me when I am well above my 28-day baseline that I can take a break for a day. A rest day isn’t going to set me back.

Screenshot: Apple
It’s not explicit in telling you to rest, but this is a step in the right direction.

Screenshot: Apple
Vitals can be viewed in the Training Load feature on your phone.

Apple isn’t doing anything here that we haven’t seen from Garmin, Polar, Oura, Fitbit, Whoop, or any other health and fitness tracker in the past five years. Rather, Apple’s version makes these concepts easily digestible for beginners. It’s also less data overload for burnt-out athletes. Combined with the ability to pause rings or customize your goals based on the day of the week, you’ve got a much more flexible fitness tracking experience on the world’s most popular smartwatch. That’s a huge deal.
Ultimately, these features make the Apple Watch’s fitness tracking platform more personalized, which seems to be the overarching theme of watchOS 11. Instead of a blanket approach of always doing more, you can make alternative choices based on your actual day-to-day circumstances. I’m still testing a bunch of other watchOS 11 features, but as far as the marquee fitness tracking updates go, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how it’s encouraged me to be kinder to myself.
My main gripe is that Apple still doesn’t tell you to outright take a rest day. You have to infer from phrases like “recover as needed if you start feeling run down” or “you’ve been in the above or well above range for 14 days.” I also lost a couple nights’ worth of Vitals data because I had to charge my watch overnight — a reminder that battery life and charging schedules remain the Achilles’ heel of smartwatches. But overall, that’s still much more sustainable long term for most people than the previous blanket approach of “always do more.” Maybe in watchOS 12, my Apple Watch will finally bully me into putting my feet up on the couch. But for now, baby steps are still steps in the right direction.

The Modular Ultra face now allows you to have bezels for your training load and vitals.

One thing always irked me about the Apple Watch. Rain or shine, in sickness and in health, it pushed me to close my rings. Never mind if I had covid-19, shin splints, or was mentally in a dark place. It nudged me to be a “better” version of myself, so long as better didn’t involve a day off. But with watchOS 11 — the public beta of which arrives today — it feels like my Apple Watch is finally cutting me some slack.

This is largely due to a trio of new features: the new Vitals app, Training Load feature, and the ability to pause your Activity Rings. I waxed lyrical about the latter right after WWDC, but after spending some time with the developer beta, I’m convinced these are the smartest fitness updates Apple’s rolled out in years.

The Vitals app and Training Load feature are technically two separate things, but in practice, they very much go hand in hand. The Vitals app contextualizes a set of metrics: heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and sleep duration. These are all recovery metrics, most commonly packaged in other apps as a readiness score, except Apple’s version doesn’t give you a single score. Rather, it shows you whether your metrics are “typical” or an “outlier.” If two or more metrics are out of range, you’ll get a notification and some possibilities as to why certain metrics are out of whack.

The Training Load feature is also straightforward. It compares and visualizes your seven-day versus 28-day exercise load. Based on that, you can see whether you’re well below, below, steady, above, or well above your usual activity levels. It breaks this down not only by overall activity but also by individual activity types (i.e., running, pilates, cycling, etc.). After a workout, you can also rate your perceived effort level. For popular workouts, like running, it’ll automatically set your effort level. (You can manually edit it if you disagree, which I occasionally did, though it’s broadly accurate.)

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
There are multiple ways to view Training Load and Vitals — both on your wrist and on your iPhone.

It’s been nice to have both of these features over the past month, though, like most of the updates in watchOS 11, they’re a bit passive. For example, I’ve not had a single Vitals notification because, well, all my vital metrics have stayed within their typical range. Yay me for being consistent! This isn’t a bad thing — you don’t want to get frequent notifications. It’s more that having the quick visual of “is everything hunky dory?” is helpful when you’re on the fence about whether to push it or take a rest day.

That’s the benefit of Training Load, too, especially for folks newer to exercise or training. I’m experienced enough to know that my current Training Load is a little skewed because I took a whole week off of training while on vacation. (Right around the time when I downloaded the beta.) Yet it is a helpful visual reminder for me when I am well above my 28-day baseline that I can take a break for a day. A rest day isn’t going to set me back.

Apple isn’t doing anything here that we haven’t seen from Garmin, Polar, Oura, Fitbit, Whoop, or any other health and fitness tracker in the past five years. Rather, Apple’s version makes these concepts easily digestible for beginners. It’s also less data overload for burnt-out athletes. Combined with the ability to pause rings or customize your goals based on the day of the week, you’ve got a much more flexible fitness tracking experience on the world’s most popular smartwatch. That’s a huge deal.

Ultimately, these features make the Apple Watch’s fitness tracking platform more personalized, which seems to be the overarching theme of watchOS 11. Instead of a blanket approach of always doing more, you can make alternative choices based on your actual day-to-day circumstances. I’m still testing a bunch of other watchOS 11 features, but as far as the marquee fitness tracking updates go, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how it’s encouraged me to be kinder to myself.

My main gripe is that Apple still doesn’t tell you to outright take a rest day. You have to infer from phrases like “recover as needed if you start feeling run down” or “you’ve been in the above or well above range for 14 days.” I also lost a couple nights’ worth of Vitals data because I had to charge my watch overnight — a reminder that battery life and charging schedules remain the Achilles’ heel of smartwatches. But overall, that’s still much more sustainable long term for most people than the previous blanket approach of “always do more.” Maybe in watchOS 12, my Apple Watch will finally bully me into putting my feet up on the couch. But for now, baby steps are still steps in the right direction.

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Illustration: The Verge

Apple lets the public in on beta testing, but Apple Intelligence is likely still months away. Apple has released the first public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11, giving those who haven’t jumped into the deep end of the developer betas their first taste of the new operating systems. We have instructions for installing iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 public betas here.
The betas launched without any of the big Apple Intelligence features Apple announced at WWDC 2024 — those are expected in beta versions for compatible devices later in the fall — but there’s still plenty to try out. The iPhone and iPad are finally letting you put icons wherever you want, there’s a new option to apply a universal tint to all of your apps, and the iPad finally has a built-in calculator. There are also slick updates to macOS that let you mirror and even control your iPhone on your desktop or laptop screen.
When the later betas arrive, expect a much better Siri with more natural interactions and capabilities. Apple has also said ChatGPT integration will arrive in the release version of iOS 18 before the year is through, and it’s possible beta testers will get to try that out even sooner.

Illustration: The Verge

Apple lets the public in on beta testing, but Apple Intelligence is likely still months away.

Apple has released the first public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11, giving those who haven’t jumped into the deep end of the developer betas their first taste of the new operating systems. We have instructions for installing iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 public betas here.

The betas launched without any of the big Apple Intelligence features Apple announced at WWDC 2024 — those are expected in beta versions for compatible devices later in the fall — but there’s still plenty to try out. The iPhone and iPad are finally letting you put icons wherever you want, there’s a new option to apply a universal tint to all of your apps, and the iPad finally has a built-in calculator. There are also slick updates to macOS that let you mirror and even control your iPhone on your desktop or laptop screen.

When the later betas arrive, expect a much better Siri with more natural interactions and capabilities. Apple has also said ChatGPT integration will arrive in the release version of iOS 18 before the year is through, and it’s possible beta testers will get to try that out even sooner.

Read More 

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

You can now download the public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11. Apple’s updated operating systems will eventually include Apple Intelligence AI features and a better Siri — if you have the right device, that is. For now, the betas will bring less exciting but still useful features to the various Apple devices.
The public iOS 18 beta will bring with it key updates to the way the iPhone software works, including support for RCS messaging and new customization options that let users put apps wherever they want to on the homescreen (finally) or apply a tint to the icons and widgets. It also comes with a new layout for the Photos app, a redesigned, more customizable Control Center, and dark mode icons. Similar updates are in the iPadOS 18 public beta, which also brings a native Calculator app to the iPad.

What iOS 18 won’t have yet is Apple Intelligence features. Apple is saving that for future software betas in the fall. They’ll be limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max as well as M1 and up Macs and iPads. So far, Apple hasn’t announced Apple Intelligence for any of its other platforms, including the Apple Watch.
The new watchOS 11 public beta introduces features like rest days and Apple’s Vitals app for glanceable details on your overnight health metrics. And for Macs, the Sequoia public beta enables the ability to mirror your iPhone on your screen, among other features.
One more thing to keep in mind: while you can roll back most of these devices to a stable, current version of their operating system, you can’t roll back the Apple Watch. You’ll have to wait for the stable version in the fall, so keep that in mind before you apply the beta to your Apple Watch. You can try out the public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and others by enrolling in the Apple beta program. Check Apple’s website for each device’s installation instructions.

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

You can now download the public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11. Apple’s updated operating systems will eventually include Apple Intelligence AI features and a better Siri — if you have the right device, that is. For now, the betas will bring less exciting but still useful features to the various Apple devices.

The public iOS 18 beta will bring with it key updates to the way the iPhone software works, including support for RCS messaging and new customization options that let users put apps wherever they want to on the homescreen (finally) or apply a tint to the icons and widgets. It also comes with a new layout for the Photos app, a redesigned, more customizable Control Center, and dark mode icons. Similar updates are in the iPadOS 18 public beta, which also brings a native Calculator app to the iPad.

What iOS 18 won’t have yet is Apple Intelligence features. Apple is saving that for future software betas in the fall. They’ll be limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max as well as M1 and up Macs and iPads. So far, Apple hasn’t announced Apple Intelligence for any of its other platforms, including the Apple Watch.

The new watchOS 11 public beta introduces features like rest days and Apple’s Vitals app for glanceable details on your overnight health metrics. And for Macs, the Sequoia public beta enables the ability to mirror your iPhone on your screen, among other features.

One more thing to keep in mind: while you can roll back most of these devices to a stable, current version of their operating system, you can’t roll back the Apple Watch. You’ll have to wait for the stable version in the fall, so keep that in mind before you apply the beta to your Apple Watch. You can try out the public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and others by enrolling in the Apple beta program. Check Apple’s website for each device’s installation instructions.

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