Siri's ability to speak notifications is great in the right circumstances, but if it won't shut up about incoming alerts in the car, you can turn this off. Back in Settings on your phone, choose Notifications Announce Notifications. If you want to use this feature outside of CarPlay, keep the top toggle on and select the CarPlay menu. There, disable Announce Messages and Siri won't read anything that comes in during a trip. Back on the Announce Notifications page, you might also want to turn on Reply Without Confirmation.

Google VP Josh Woodward just announced that users will be able to remove visible watermarks from AI-generated images and videos. A toggle will soon be available for the Nano Banana, Omni and Lyria models, which all use the familiar sparkle icon to denote AI. This kind of defeats the whole point of visible watermarks, as they exist to give people a fast way to spot AI-generated content out in the wild. However, users will still have slightly harder methods to identify this type of thing. This move will not impact the invisible SynthID watermark and C2PA metadata, as there are are no toggles to shut those off.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Tired of the'Try the new Outlook' button? Here's how to permanently remove the Try the new Outlook toggle from classic Outlook using a simple registry edit. For several months now, the'Try the new Outlook' button has been appearing in the classic Outlook, allowing you to switch to the new version of the email program. Microsoft hopes that as many users as possible will make the switch as soon as possible.

A recent update made video playback the default for songs and podcasts with a visual component. If you just want to listen to music--and save your data and battery--follow these tips. Spotify, it's fair to say, has made some weird user-experience choices. There are a number of panels in the app, and the layout is confusing. The service constantly tracks your activity.

Google's Pixel phones are chock-full of helpful, smart features, and they capture some of the best-looking photographs on a mobile device. But like several of its peers, Google doesn't have many of its best features turned on by default. For example, Call Screening blocks unwanted phone calls on your behalf, and you need to turn it on yourself. I test smartphones for a living, and I'm constantly switching to a new device every week or two. I'm an expert at running through the settings of every phone I test and toggling on the features I want.

Apple's software design strives to be intuitive, but each iteration of iOS contains so many additions and tweaks that it's easy to miss some useful iPhone settings. Apple focused on artificial intelligence when it unveiled iOS 18 in 2024, but there's a lot under the hood that adds to the steady stream of intriguing customizations and lesser-known features from the last few years. Several helpful settings are turned off by default, and it's not immediately obvious how to switch off some annoying features. We're here to help you get the most out of your Apple phone. Once you have things set up the way you want, it's a breeze to copy everything, including settings, when you switch to a new iPhone.

Please enable Javascript in your browser to view Slate interactives. Read about it in Slate: Move aside, Wall-E. The next great environmentalist children's movie is here.The Wild Robot is surprisingly mature about nature, nurture, and the wonders of life. Get Slate Games in your inbox every week day. You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time.

These settings allow your iPhone to share data that helps third parties target advertisements to you and measure advertisement engagement. Chip Hallett, author of The Ultimate Privacy Playbook, explained how to turn these'dangerous' settings off to ensure that your data is always kept private. To disable them, start by opening the settings app. Then scroll down and tap'Safari.' Then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen where it says'Advanced.' Tap this tab, and you should see a toggle on/off button next to'Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement.'

If you've ever got an advert on social media for something you were just talking about, it might be more than an uncanny coincidence. Thanks to virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, your smartphone isconstantly listening to everything you say. Worryingly, as long as you have consented to the terms and conditions, there is nothing illegal about using that data to bombard you with hyper-specific adverts. Luckily, experts at NordVPN have devised a simple test to work out if your phone is really eavesdropping on your conversations. By deliberately discussing random topics within earshot of your phone, you can see how long it takes for these subjects to appear in your social media feeds.