There are many reasons to love Spotify, and just as many to dislike it. One of its many failings has been the fact that audio quality has been – to be diplomatic – less than perfect.

Now, thanks to the long-awaited arrival of lossless audio, this is finally changing. The ability to hear tracks at the best possible quality is something that will be celebrated by Spotify users... but not everyone.

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The rollout of Windows 11 25H2 is now underway – at least to anyone signed up for the Windows Insider Release Preview channel. When the rollout started, there was disappointment when Microsoft did not have the ISOs for the build ready, saying that they would be coming soon.

But now the company has released the Windows 11 25H2 ISOs which is great news for anyone who likes to keep an offline. It is also extremely useful for people looking to install Windows 11 25H2 on multiple machines – ISOs just make things easier.

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Read receipts in WhatsApp are getting an upgrade. The two-tick system that appears below the sent message is loved and hated; yes, it lets you know that a message is sending, that it has been received, and that it has been read – but why is there no response now you know that it has been read!?

Putting aside concerns about why someone may be ignoring you, themes in WhatsApp which change the color of the messaging app can be problematic. If you’d become used to read receipts having blue check marks, the fact that some themes changed that had the potential for confusion. Now WhatsApp is addressing this.

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Bluesky was one of the social media platforms that enjoyed a surge of interest as people voted with their feet against Elon Musk. Still somewhat in its infancy, Bluesky continues to evolve and is slowly adding features that are common on many of its rivals.

The latest addition is bookmarking, or Saved Posts, a simple way to save a post so you can easily return to it at a later time. Unlike liking a post, bookmarking or saving is not public, so no other user will be aware of what you would like to look at again.

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History appears to be repeating. Plex has announced that it has suffered a security breach, exposing user data. The last time this happened was in 2022, and users are being advised to change passwords as soon as possible.

The company is referring to it as a “security incident that may potentially involve your Plex account information”. While Plex tries to downplay the severity of the breach, the fact that “an unauthorized third party accessed a limited subset of customer data from one of our databases” is concerning – especially when you consider that this is not the first time.

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In an age where there is increased concern about privacy and security, people are embracing messaging platforms such as Signal. While Signal and other apps of its ilk mean enjoying a security boost, such apps are playing catch-up with mainstream messaging platforms in terms of other features and options.

Signal has just announced the availability of secure backups for chats, promising an easy way to restore your messaging history to a new device. This is something that Signal users have been begging for, and now it is here. As you might expect with a platform associated with security and privacy, backups are not a simple matter with Signal.

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Microsoft has released a new Canary build of Windows 11, and among the additions is the arrival of AI actions in File Explorer. The company implores users to “leverage[e] the power of AI” to summarize documents and edit images directly from File Explorer new AI Actions context menu entry.

For Microsoft, this is the highlight of Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27938, but there is much more to this release. There are, of course, lots of bug fixes but there are also new clock options including the ability to show seconds.

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There is much to get frustrated about in relation to AI, not least of which is that there are so many AI tools to choose from. But there is also the fact that each AI app and service has its own limitations, and it can be difficult – or impossible – to know what these limits are until you hit them.

It has been this way with Google Gemini. Google has, until now, been a little fuzzy when it comes to telling users about limits. Being told that the company “may have to cap how much you can use some features” is not very helpful, certainly not very specific. But now Google has published much more detailed information to help users know where they stand.

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If you are a fan of Lite apps – those mobile apps that are light on data usage and small in size – prepare to mourn the loss of Outlook Lite. Microsoft has announced plans to kill off the lightweight email app, and will start by blocking new installations.

The company does not use the words “streamlining" or “money saving”, but says that the decision was taken so “we can focus our investments on the Outlook Mobile app, our flagship Android experience, which provides better functionality and user experience”.

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Depending on where you are typing, entering an em dash or an en dash can be simple, or a nightmare. In the latest Insider builds of Windows 11, however, it is getting a whole lot easier thanks to keyboard shortcuts being added.

Microsoft has quietly added a couple of new keyboard shortcuts that can be used to type these handy punctuation marks. For now, they are hidden away in the Dev and Beta builds; here is how to access them.

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Next month sees Windows 10 finally reaching the end of (mainstream) support. Microsoft has been pushing people towards Windows 11 for what feels like forever, and it worked – for a while.

The latest market figures show that this is changing. The statistics for August 2025 from statcounter Global Stats show a marked drop in Windows 11’s share of the desktop market.

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Google has added an important feature to the popular translation feature of Circle to Search. While the dedicated Google Translate app or web site are perfect for translating between languages in numerous scenarios, Circle to Search provides another means of accessing the handy functionality.

The fact that Circle to Search offers translation is not new – so much so that Google is quick to point out that “translation is one of the most-used features in Circle to Search”. What is new is the ability to translate while scrolling.

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Anyone who was a Facebook user in the early days of the social platform (at least when it was a global platform, not just one limited to students) will remember Facebook Pokes. Poking someone on Facebook (oh, do grow up!) was a wordless – slightly creepy – way of interacting with another person.

A Soke did not really serve any purpose beyond reminding someone of your existence in a somewhat passive-aggressive way. Having experimented with reviving the Poke, Facebook is having another go at making the idea relevant in 2025. This is more than just the return of the Poke; this is the Poke on steroids.

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Microsoft has admitted that the security updates released for Windows in August caused problems for a lot of users. Affected users experienced a series of unexpected UAC (User Account Control) prompts.

The scale of the issue is large. This is not a problem that is limited to a particular version of Windows – every supported version of Windows that received the August 2025 security update is affected. This means that Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Server 2022 and Windows Server 2025 have all been hit with the UAC prompts.

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Even Instagram would concede that it has taken too long, but the wait is finally over. Instagram for iPad is real, and it is here right now.

For far too long, the Instagram experience has been based around using the small screen of a mobile, not a tablet. But now, this changes – at least for anyone invested in the world of Apple. Android tablet users will have to wait a little longer.

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