I’ve been an Apple Music user since the day the service launched a decade ago. However, I still like to try Spotify from time to time to see if it’s worth switching. Now that Spotify has lossless audio as well, I gave it another shot and discovered some fun new features that are worth trying out. Note that some of these are Spotify Premium exclusive features, so you won’t be able to use them without a paid subscription. I’m not sure if they’re enough to sway me yet, but you might be different—try these newer Spotify features to make the most of the service.

Hide songs you don’t want to hear

Credit: Pranay Parab

Sometimes, Spotify likes to play songs I’ve heard way too many times already, or a song that I’m just not in the mood for. Luckily, when this happens, I can now quickly hide the song from the playlist. This is easy enough. In the Now Playing view, tap the three-dots button up top, and select the Hide in this playlist button. This will stop the song from playing when you listen to that playlist again, and you’ll see a red minus icon next to its name. You can tap the three-dots button again and hit Show in this playlist to undo this, if you no longer want to hide the song.

Snooze a song for 30 days

Credit: Pranay Parab

While it is a bit of a shame that Spotify doesn’t allow you to block certain songs entirely, you do get the chance to snooze them for a month at a time. I found this feature when Spotify played Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls way too many times over the same weekend for me. I like that song, but not so much that I can listen to it on repeat. Fortunately, I was able to hide it quickly. 

When you’re playing a song, expand the mini player and tap the X button next to the song’s name. On the pop-up that shows up, tap Don’t suggest this song anywhere for 30 days. It’ll still take Spotify some time to fully purge it from your algorithmic playlists and feed, but once that’s done, you won’t see the song for the rest of the month.

Premium users get better player controls

Credit: Pranay Parab

If you use Spotify Premium, you have access to better playback controls. The song queue now show buttons to quickly shuffle, repeat, or add a sleep timer to your listening. I love having big buttons for these features, as it makes it easy to access them.

Separately, if you’re on Spotify’s free plan, there’s a good chance that the service automatically enables Smart Shuffle and Autoplay for you. Smart Shuffle looks at the songs in your queue and adds recommended songs to your list, which I’m not a big fan of because it makes the queue twice as long by adding random music. Autoplay is the feature that adds recommended songs to the end of the queue, so that music keeps playing even after the queue ends.

On the free plan, you can’t get rid of Smart Shuffle, but you can disable Autoplay if you dislike it. Premium users can disable Smart Shuffle, too. Tap the profile icon in the top-left in Spotify and go to Settings and privacy > Playback, and scroll to the bottom. You can disable both Autoplay and Smart Shuffle here.

Tweak playlists to your liking

Credit: Pranay Parab

On Apple Music, I have lots of long playlists that I’ve painstakingly curated. Spotify has made managing its playlists a little easier now. You can use the Add, Edit, and Sort buttons to quickly build your own playlists. I enjoy the Add feature because it shows suggested songs, and as you add them, it updates the list to suggest similar music. This has made creating initial drafts of my playlists a lot faster.

In some regions, Spotify also now supports creating new playlists from your Liked Songs playlist. It lets you filter these new playlists by genre or mood, so you can match the mood of a specific track in your Liked Songs, and generate a whole new playlist for it. It goes without saying that you can also rename your playlists easily and add custom cover art, too. For cover art, you can try Spotify’s free playlist art maker, but I like using the excellent Denim app to get the job done.

Try smart filters for your song library

Credit: Spotify

Spotify Premium users also get to use smart filters to listen to certain types of music. I haven’t tried this feature yet because it’s still rolling out, but it sounds quite interesting. If you’re using Spotify Premium on mobile or tablet in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, or the US, you’ll get this feature soon.

Spotify says you can try it by tapping the filter icon in the top-left corner of the Your Library tab. Here, you’ll see a Smart Filters menu. Select a filter, and the Your Library tab will update to show only those types of music. You can filter music by a specific mood, genre, or activity. The good news is that Smart Filters includes options for music, podcasts, and audiobooks, so you can try it with all types of content.

Talk to your Spotify DJ

Credit: Spotify

Spotify has a built-in “AI DJ” that can find and play songs for you. This year, Spotify has begun rolling out the ability to talk to your DJ to request specific songs. I’m still waiting for this to be rolled to my region, but it’s available in 60 countries at time of writing, so you should try it out. In Spotify’s search tab, look for “DJ,” press play, and the AI DJ will play a mix of music and commentary. You can then press and hold the DJ button on the right, and talk to the DJ to send in your music requests. 

Fix your Discover Weekly playlist

Credit: Pranay Parab

If you are unhappy with what Spotify’s been serving up in your Discover Weekly playlist, you can easily refresh it. At the top of Discover Weekly, Premium users will see genre buttons, and tapping any button will create a new 30-song playlist of music from that genre. 

Keith Rabois, co-founder and newly minted board chair of Opendoor, said remote work and a “bloated” workforce have been a drag on the online real estate platform’s culture, as he vowed to slash headcount. CNBC: “There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of them do. We don’t need more than 200 of them,” Rabois told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Apple announced the Apple Watch Series 11 earlier this week, one of its headlining new features was “hypertension notifications.” Since then, it’s been revealed that these will actually be coming to some older Apple watches as well, but regardless, everyone was set to wait a bit. That’s because Apple was still waiting on FDA approval for the new feature, even as it announced the new watch. Now, though, it seems that’s been taken care of.

While Apple initially only promised the feature sometime “this month,” in a statement sent to press just last night, Apple said that its hypertension notifications have now been approved by the FDA and will be releasing alongside watchOS 26 when it launches to the public on Monday. That means no delay for the update—it’ll be ready for the Apple Watch Series 11 at launch, and owners of the Series 9 and Series 10 will get a chance to play with it before then. If your tastes skew a bit fancier, then yes, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is also set to get the notifications at launch, and the Ultra 2 will be among the older watches getting them on Monday.

This is all great news for my family, which does have a history of heart problems. While these notifications aren’t set to replace a full-on blood pressure cuff, the idea is that they’ll help tip you off to potential issues early, so you can know to bring them up to your doctor or pay more attention to them. According to Apple, the way it works is that the watch will use its existing optical heart rate sensor to passively check “how your blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart” over a 30-day period, and then will send you a warning if it detects signs of high blood pressure. After that, it’ll encourage you to log your blood pressure for a week using a third-party cuff, and set up an appointment with your doctor.

In other words, it won’t give you exact numbers, but might let you know if you’re at risk. Given that high blood pressure often goes undiagnosed until it’s too late, Apple is hoping these notifications will help change that.

Personally, I’m inclined to believe it. Earlier this year, my husband actually had surgery to treat a separate heart condition called AFib, and his Apple Watch Series 10 played a big part in detecting and tracking it before it became a problem. As part of his treatment, he’s had to regularly check his blood pressure with a cuff, but we’re both looking forward to the extra data his watch will now give him.

Apple says its hypertension notifications were developed using data from over 100,000 testing participants, and then validated using data from 2,000 additional patients. While I can’t guarantee that they’ll work perfectly for you out of the box, that’s a good sign, even if Apple warns that the new feature “will not detect all instances of hypertension.” Interestingly, this follows the FDA’s rejection of a similar feature from Whoop, although that feature purports to provide more data than Apple’s.

If you want to try Apple’s hypertension notifications for yourself, there’s nothing you need to do for now. Simply ensure you have a compatible Apple Watch, then allow it to update to watchOS 26 on Monday and try to wear it as often as you can over the next 30 days to give it ample opportunities to collect data.

A anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft AI launched its first in-house models last month, adding to the already complicated relationship with its OpenAI partner. Now, Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says the company is making “significant investments” in the compute capacity required to Microsoft’s own future frontier models.

“We should have the capacity to build world class frontier models in house of all sizes, but we should be very pragmatic and use other models where we need to,” said Suleyman during Microsoft’s employee-only town hall on Thursday. “We’re also going to be making significant investments in our own cluster, so today MAI-1-preview was only trained on 15,000 H100s, a tiny cluster in the grand scheme of things.”

Suleyman hinted that Microsoft has ambitions to train models that are comparable to Meta, Google, and xAI’s efforts on clusters that are “six to ten times larger in size” than what Microsoft used for its MAI-1-preview. “Much more to do, but it’s good to take the first steps,” said Suleyman.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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In the wake of Apple’s “Awe Dropping” event this week, you might think the AirPods Pro 3 are the best fitness earbuds you can get for your iPhone. That might be true, but Apple sells another pair of “pro” earbuds that might make more sense for you, especially if you find traditional earbuds frequently fall out of your ears.

Apple released the Powerbeat Pro 2 earlier this year, offering the AirPods features in a package that might be better suited for fitness junkies. Like the AirPods Pro, the Powerbeats Pro 2 comes with noise cancellation and transparency mode, but unlike AirPods, these earbuds have “earhooks” to keep them in your ears. Plus, the Powerbeats Pro 2 were the first Apple earbuds to introduce a built-in heart rate monitor—though Lifehacker Senior Health Editor Beth Skwarecki found the sensor to be unreliable.

AirPods Pro 3 also have a heart rate monitor, and come with some additional new features, like Fitness app integration. But just because Powerbeats Pro 2 didn’t ship with some of these fitness features, that doesn’t mean you need the newest AirPods to get them. Beats shared some new iOS 26 features coming to Powerbeats Pro 2 with 9to5Mac, which should come as good news for anyone who already purchased a pair sometime this year.

Here’s what you can expect:

Apple Fitness app integration

Like the AirPods Pro 3, Powerbeats Pro 2 will now let you track workouts through the Fitness app. 9to5Mac says you can start one of 50 different workout types on your iPhone, and track your heart rate through your Powerbeats Pro 2.

Apple Fitness+ integration

If you subscribe to Apple Fitness+, you’ll be able to see track and view real-time data for your heart rate and calories burned, as well as the Burn Bar, which lets you compare how much effort you’re exerting to others who have done the same workout. This data will be pulled, of course, from your Powerbeats Pro 2.

Heart rate data

Powerbeats Pro 2 will have “multiple sources of heart rate data,” with the goal of improving accuracy. There’s also a broader algorithm update coming to both iOS and Android that will improve performance for faster heart rate readings, and users will get alerts to adjust the fit of their buds in order to improve heart rate tracking.

Beats doesn’t seem to elaborate on what the specific changes to the algorithm are, but perhaps this will help with the issues Beth experienced when reviewing the earbuds.

Single earbud heart rate tracking

In addition to these improvements, you’ll be able to track your heart rate with just one earbud. We’ll have to test this feature out to see if it’s any less reliable than using two buds at once.

Step counter

With iOS 26, Powerbeats Pro 2 will be able to track your steps without the need for an Apple Watch or iPhone. I never thought you could totally replace all other fitness tracking devices with a pair of earbuds, but that seems like Beats’ goal here.

Hands-free gestures

Once you update your iPhone, you’ll be able to use hands-free gestures to control Siri while wearing Powerbeats Pro 2, similar to the controls you get on certain AirPods. That includes nodding to say yes, or shaking your head to say no when Siri asks you about incoming calls and messages.

Whenever there’s a Nintendo Direct in September, you can be pretty sure that it’ll be a major edition of the showcase. Given that Friday’s one was scheduled to be about an hour long and that Nintendo has a whole new console to put games on, it was already likely that there was going to be a lot of news. 

Even then, it managed to be a jam-packed Direct. Let’s take a look at all the biggest announcements from the showcase, including what’s obviously the most important one: a Switch 2 version of Overcooked 2.

Mario’s 40th anniversary

September 13 is the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. in Japan, which is a big reason why this Direct took place on a Friday (a highly unusual day for Nintendo to hold one of its showcases). Following news of Mario-related updates for the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, the company revealed the title for the next Mario movie. It’s called The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it’s coming to cinemas in the US on April 3. We’ll have to wait a little longer for a trailer, though.

There was no announcement of an upcoming 3D Mario game today, unfortunately, but there was still plenty of other news. Mario Tennis Fever is coming to Switch 2 in February as the first new Mario Tennis game since 2018. Yoshi’s getting another adventure of his own with the Switch 2 platformer Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, which is set to arrive next spring. A Switch 2 version of Super Mario Bros. Wonder with fresh multiplayer modes will drop around that time too. 

Before all of that, though, Nintendo is bringing the wonderful Wii games Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 to Switch on October 2. They’ll be available separately or as a bundle on the eShop and as a combined edition on a $70 physical cartridge. On Switch 2, you’ll be able to play these two classics in 4K. 

Two Mario Galaxy Amiibo figures are coming in April as well. Even though I’m not typically an Amiibo collector, I really want those because Luma is just adorable. In addition, Nintendo plans to release a physical collectible of the Talking Flower from Super Mario Bros. Wonder next spring.

Donkey Kong Bananza DLC out today

If you’ve already smashed everything to smithereens in Donkey Kong Bananza and have been yearning for more to do in one of the biggest Switch 2 exclusives to date, you’re in luck. Nintendo revealed a paid expansion for the platformer during the Direct. It’s called DK Island & Emerald Rush and it’s out today for $20.

You’ll be able to barrel around Donkey Kong’s home island and meet up with some familiar faces. After you’ve beaten the story in the main game, you’ll be able to try the Emerald Rush mode. This will see you undertaking timed runs in DK Island and the main game’s layers to collect emerald ore, smash fossils and collect Banandium Gems. 

Meanwhile, Nintendo has released a demo for the main game. So, if you have a Switch 2 and haven’t played Donkey Kong Bananza yet, you’ll be able to find out for yourself why the other cool kids are saying “ooh, banana!” all the time.

Pokémon Pokopia

Quite a few people were expecting/hoping for news of a new Animal Crossing during the Nintendo Direct. While that didn’t happen, Nintendo had arguably something even more exciting to announce — especially if you’re both an Animal Crossing and Pokémon fan.

Pokémon Pokopia is the first Pokémon life simulation game. You’ll play as a Ditto who has been transformed to look like a human and turn empty land into a cozy paradise for both yourself and Pokémon. Ditto can learn abilities from Pokémon, such as using Squirtle’s Water Gun to give life to flora. 

It looks utterly lovely. Pokémon Pokopia is coming to Switch 2 in 2026.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave

Nintendo used this Direct to seriously start filling out its Switch 2 slate for 2026. One of the games it’s publishing for the system next year is a new entry in the Fire Emblem series. It announced Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave during the showcase.

As ever, this will be a turn-based tactical RPG. The debut trailer touched on the story and characters in the upcoming game. 

Metroid Prime 4 and Hades 2 release dates

We had a feeling these were coming soon, but release dates for both Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Hades 2 were both major announcements during the Direct. Samus has a rad, Tron-esque bike in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which will arrive on Switch and Switch 2 on December 4.

Hades 2, meanwhile, will arrive on Switch and Switch 2 on September 25. The full game will be available on Steam and Epic Games Store on the same day as it will exit early access on PC. There were be cross-save support across PC and Switch/Switch 2. The Switch 2 version will support 120fps gameplay when the console is docked. That Hades 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong are dropping in the same month is pretty wild. Apologies to any designs you had on getting some sleep in September.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment release date

Nintendo announced Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment during a dedicated launch direct for Switch 2 back in April, and now there’s a release date for this hack and slash game. It’s coming to the console on November 6.

Age of Imprisonment, which was developed by Koei Tecmo’s AAA Games Studio, sees Princess Zelda traveling back in time and meeting Rauro and Sonia, the first king and queen of Hyrule. You’ll try to take down Ganondorf (yes, again) in what’s known as the Imprisoning War. Zonai devices will be at your disposal. According to the trailer, you’ll “uncover ancient truths that were only glimpsed in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.”

There’s two-player co-op support via split-screen and GameShare. Zelda, Rauru and Sonia are among the playable characters, and you’ll be able to swap between them. You can also play as a Korok for a change instead of torturing the poor creatures, you monsters.

AAA third-party games coming to Switch 2

Nintendo confirmed during the Direct that Resident Evil Requiem is coming to Switch 2. It’ll arrive on February 27, the same day the next entry in Capcom’s classic survival horror series debuts on other platforms. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village will also land on Switch on on February 27.

We learned back in April that the first installment of the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy was bound for Switch 2 and now there’s a release date for that. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is coming to the system on January 22.

Switch 2 versions of indie classics

The Nintendo Switch was such an important platform for indie games, and several that became huge hits are getting Switch 2 versions. Overcooked 2 (the ultimate relationship test, in my opinion) will have support for 4K visuals, 60fps gameplay, GameShare and CameraPlay — the feature that allows you to see you and your teammate’s faces on screen as you play —in its Switch 2 version. That’s on the way this holiday season.

Stardew Valley will also support GameShare for co-op play on Switch 2. Mouse controls will be available, as well as four-player splitscreen and eight-player online action. Those who have the game on Switch already will get a free upgrade when the Switch 2 version arrives this fall.

Human Fall Flat is headed to Switch 2 in Spring 2026. That will also have support for mouse controls, GameShare and eight-person multiplayer.

It’s far too early to say whether Powerwash Simulator 2 will become an indie classic, but the original game was terrific and its sequel is getting a Switch 2 version as well. There’s no exact release date for Powerwash Simulator 2 as yet, but it’s still slated to arrive this fall.

Suika Game gets a sequel

Suika Game was a huge hit, and the sequel promises to soak up even more of my time. Suika Game Planet adds an extra dimension to the puzzle action. Instead of dropping fruit into a bucket and trying to combine two of the same items into a larger one, this time there’s a circular stage. That might be a fun wrinkle for anyone (me, hi) who gets frustrated about not being able to reach large fruit at the bottom of the container.

Suika Game Planet is coming to Switch and Switch 2 this winter and I might not be able to do anything else with my time after it drops. The Switch 2 version will support a GameShare mode that allows up to four players to work together.

Virtual Boy is back

Last but not least, Nintendo had an absolute shocker when it came to Switch Online + Expansion Pack. No, it’s not adding Super Mario Sunshine to the Gamecube app just yet. The company is bringing Virtual Boy games to the service, which is more bananas than anything you’ll find in Donkey Kong Bananza. 

To play those games from a system that was notoriously undercooked (partly because Nintendo was placing much more focus on the massively more successful Nintendo 64 around that time), you’ll need an accessory. A $100 plastic tabletop one that looks just like the original Virtual Boy and a $25 cardboard version are on the way. They’re compatible with the Nintendo Switch, Switch 2 and, if it’s an authentic Virtual Boy experience, probably some eye strain.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/mario-metroid-virtual-boy-and-more-all-the-biggest-announcements-from-todays-nintendo-direct-165722897.html?src=rss

It’s official. The Switch 2 is getting the next entry in the long-running Fire Emblem series. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave will be available sometime in 2026, though we have nothing more specific than that.

We do have a trailer and it looks gorgeous. It showed off the game’s tactical combat, which is a mainstay for the franchise, and teased the story. It involves some sort of gladiator-like contest called the Heroic Games. There are plenty of new combat units and many of them boast gladiatorial flair of some kind.

It also looks to take place in the same universe as the immensely popular Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which came out for the original Switch console. There are some visual similarities and one character seems to be a grown-up version of someone from Three Houses.

This makes a certain kind of sense, given that Three Houses is the most financially successful game in franchise history and considered by critics to be a stone-cold classic. The more recent Fire Emblem: Engage wasn’t nearly as popular, despite being a solid entry.

For the uninitiated, this series is all about tactical turn-based combat, factional rivalries and robust storylines involving numerous characters. It was a niche franchise here in the USA until the 3DS era and the release of Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem: Fates.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/fire-emblem-fortunes-weave-comes-out-for-the-switch-2-in-2026-162127483.html?src=rss

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Amazon and Google misled advertisers regarding the pricing and terms for their ads. As first reported by Bloomberg, the investigation is being conducted by the agency’s consumer protection unit, and centers around the auction-style sale of advertising space by the companies.

Google sells ads using automated auctions that run after a user enters a search query. These auctions take place in less than a second. Amazon uses real-time auctions to place ads within its listings, which users would recognize as “sponsored listings” or “sponsored ads” when searching for specific products.

The investigation questions whether Amazon disclosed so-called “reserve pricing” for some of its ads, which is a price floor that advertisers must meet before they can buy an ad. For Google’s part, the FTC is looking at certain practices by the search giant including its internal pricing process and whether it was surreptitiously increasing the cost of ads in ways that advertisers weren’t privy to.

The FTC isn’t the only federal agency keeping a close eye on big tech. Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that Google held a monopoly in online ad tech after the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued to break up the giant’s ad business. Google also recently escaped mostly unscathed from a Department of Justice monopoly case involving its Chrome browser.

FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has previously said that big tech is one of the agency’s top priorities. These investigations move forward against a backdrop of top tech CEOs continuing to try to curry favor with President Trump via lavish personal gifts and sweeping (if potentially unrealistic) promises of investment in the US economy.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/ftc-investigating-ad-sale-practices-at-google-and-amazon-160236895.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shares a report: Medical researchers at some institutions in Canada, the United States and Italy are using data created by artificial intelligence (AI) from real patient information in their experiments without the need for permission from their institutional ethics boards, Nature has learnt.

To generate what is called ‘synthetic data’, researchers train generative AI models using real human medical information, then ask the models to create data sets with statistical properties that represent, but do not include, human data.

Typically, when research involves human data, an ethics board must review how studies affect participants’ rights, safety, dignity and well-being. However, institutions including the IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan, Italy, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in Ottawa and the Ottawa Hospital, both in Canada, and Washington University School of Medicine (WashU Medicine) in St. Louis, Missouri, have waived these requirements for research involving synthetic data.

The reasons the institutions use to justify this decision differ. However, the potential benefits of using synthetic data include protecting patient privacy, being more easily able to share data between sites and speeding up research, says Khaled El Emam, a medical AI researcher at the CHEO Research Institute and the University of Ottawa.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Friday, CBC News reported that a major education reform document prepared for the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador contains at least 15 fabricated citations that academics suspect were generated by an AI language model—despite the same report calling for “ethical” AI use in schools.

“A Vision for the Future: Transforming and Modernizing Education,” released August 28, serves as a 10-year roadmap for modernizing the province’s public schools and post-secondary institutions. The 418-page document took 18 months to complete and was unveiled by co-chairs Anne Burke and Karen Goodnough, both professors at Memorial University’s Faculty of Education, alongside Education Minister Bernard Davis.

One of the fake citations references a 2008 National Film Board movie called “Schoolyard Games” that does not exist, according to a board spokesperson. The exact citation reportedly appears in a University of Victoria style guide, a document that teaches students how to format references using fictional examples. The style guide warns on its first page that “Many citations in this guide are fictitious,” meaning they are made-up examples used only to demonstrate proper formatting. Yet someone (or some AI chatbot) copied the fake example directly into the Education Accord report as if it were a real source.

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I love when technology works in a way that meets my particular needs—and that’s the case with this fun new tool I found on Depop, a resale platform I use almost exclusively as a buyer. One inconspicuous little button helps you create a visual representation of an outfit made up of clothing and accessories across various listings.

What is the new Depop tool?

A few days ago, a little scissors icon appeared on all the listings I was browsing, right above the like and bookmark icons I am used to using to save items I want to revisit and possibly purchase. I tapped on it with curiousity and was taken to a page called My Outfits, where I could remove the background from the photo of the listing and add it to a kind of vision board.

Here’s how it works: Let’s say you see a sweater you like while you’re browsing, but you aren’t sure what you’d wear it with. A little while later, you see some jeans you love and start to wonder how they’d look with that sweater. With this new feature, you can add both to your My Outfits tab, where the backgrounds of the listing photos will be removed and you can drag the pieces around on a blank screen, helping yourself visualize how they’d look together before you buy them. Your created outfits stay saved to your account and you can tap them any time to review or change them—plus they link back to the pieces they contain, so when you’re ready to buy, you can just go from there.

I love shopping resale because you can get items that are unique and not everyone is wearing (or you can get the things everyone is wearing for way less money). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an idea for an outfit cobbled together from various listings and tried to visualize it on my own, nor how many times I’ve struck out when the components of the outfit all arrive and I can actually try them on. It happened to me this week, actually: I ordered some pants and a top that I thought would go great together. They did not. Usually, I screenshot each item, then text them to a friend so they line up on top of each other in our iMessage thread. It’s rudimentary, but it gave me a vague sense of how things might look together.

With the new Depop feature, you can make vision boards of outfit ideas and there are no limits. Add shoes, a bag, a hair accessory, a top, a jacket, and pants—even (or especially) if all of those are from different sellers.

A few areas for improvement

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Google’s Doppl app, which is supposed to help you visualize how an article of clothing will look on your body using AI. That app really disappointed me and I wrote at the time that I’d like to see it expanded so I could dress my AI avatar in multiple pieces to get a sense of how they looked together. Right now, Doppl just lets you “try on” one thing and AI-generates the rest of the outfit. Sort of useless! Depop’s new feature wipes the floor with it that way; but it could stand to incorporate some way to borrow the Doppl feature that allows you to dress up a digital version of yourself. I’d like to see not just the outfit, but the outfit on me, with my hair and eye color, etc.

There are some flaws that will be harder to address. The most pressing one is that the photos the My Outfits tool uses are just pictures sellers take. As a seller myself, I’m not always taking high-quality images. Unlike a lot of other sellers, I never use mannequins or studio lighting. If I feel like it, I’ll don the article of clothing and take a mirror selfie, but that’s about as far as I’ll go—and a lot of people are like me. Plenty of sellers snap one or two pics of a dimly-lit pair of jeans or shoes and call it a day. We’re not professionals; we’re regular people trying to get some extra cash. When it comes to My Outfits, that means you may be importing less-than-quality images and trying, based on those, to figure out how an outfit looks. The quality of your My Outfit mockup actually depends on the quality of the photos, and you can’t control that at all.

The other issue is the same one you’ll always run into when online shopping: No matter how many measurements a listing includes, you won’t really know how it fits until you try it on. Arranging a top above a skirt in My Outfits can give you a sense of if the colors go well together (assuming the resellers took their photos in decent lighting), but it can’t tell you how high the skirt will rise on your torso or how low the hem of the shirt will sit. Will you have exposed skin? Will there be an overlap? My Outfits can’t tell you; your body measurements and the measurements of the garments will determine that.

Still, it’s innovative and fun; I’ve been making up outfits all week. I told my friends about it but even after updating their apps, they don’t have the feature yet, so it appears to still be rolling out.