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mific) wrote2025-09-16 12:51 pm
kenjari) wrote2025-09-15 08:15 pm
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icanhascheezburger_feed) wrote2025-09-15 03:00 pmThe moment a cat parks on a lap, every plan on the calendar gets canceled. Coffee cools, legs tingle, and messages are typed with tiny dinosaur arms so the royal loaf stays undisturbed. This is the law of Lapland. If a fur monarch chooses the throne, the hooman must pawse all movement. Expect biscuit kneading, steady purrs, and a warm happiness that erases every errand.
Time stretches in cozy, cat shaped minutes. Hunger whispers, but the purr says stay. Emails ping, yet whiskers vote to deal with it later. The remote sits out of reach, which is fine, because gazing at a serene face beats television every time. Athletic excellence becomes a toe nudge that adjusts the blanket without shifting the queen. Negotiations are attempted, but the treaty always reads the same. Hooman remains seated until the sovereign dismisses court.
When the ruler finally stands, the lap imprint and glittering hairs prove official duties were performed. Important tasks were missed for very good reasons. Circulation returns, snacks are retrieved, and the seat stays warm for next time. In this house, purrsonal time always wins.
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fandomsecrets2025-09-15 07:00 pm
senmut) wrote in no_true_pair2025-09-15 06:02 pmsylvanwitch) wrote2025-09-15 06:22 pmicanhascheezburger_feed) wrote2025-09-15 02:00 pmThis pawrent is feeling pretty clawstrated right now. She worked hard to raise Briar as a happy, healthy indoor kitty. She's done leash training, outdoor adventures, trick sessions, and hunting play, but still get told they're being "too much." The aunt's cats roam free and she thinks Briar should too, calling her niece a helicopter pawrent for keeping boundaries. Ouch.
But here's the thing: Briar's life sounds pretty pawsome. Sunshine strolls? Check. Lizard chases? Check. Climbing trees, coming back in for games, brain workouts, and safe snuggles? Double check. This isn't a locked-up, bored fluffball. It's a well-rounded house panther with enrichment on tap. The pawrent's goal is keeping her safe from cars, fleas, and fights, not clipping her wings.
It's hard when other humans hiss their opinions, but staying firm isn't arrogance. It's advocacy. Briar clearly trusts her hooman and loves their routine. At the end of the day, that happy tail flick and cozy loaf say it all: Briar's living her best nine lives. Other people can mind their own litter box.
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lifehacker_feed) wrote2025-09-15 08:30 pmIn 2023, Apple introduced the Double Tap feature for Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2. This allows a user to perform common actions, like answering or starting a song, simply by quickly tapping their thumb and index finger together twice. It was an intuitive way to confirm when you wanted to do something on your watch without tapping a tiny touchscreen button, but what if you wanted to dismiss something? Now, with the release of watchOS 26, Wrist Flick is here to solve that problem.
Also available on Apple Watch Series 9 (and higher) as well as Apple Watch Ultra 2 (and higher), Wrist Flick is kind of like Double Tap’s evil twin. If you get a notification you don’t like, or a call you want to mute, now you can quickly twist your wrist to dismiss it, like you’re tossing it into a garbage bin.
To try it out, first install watchOS 26 on your Apple Watch. Using a paired iPhone with iOS 26 installed, open the Apple Watch app, navigate to General > Software Update, and start the upgrade to the new version of watchOS. Alternatively, you can simply ensure Automatic Updates are enabled, and so long as your iPhone has iOS 26, your watch will simply choose a time to update on its own while charging (likely overnight).
Then, once watchOS 26 is installed, put on your watch and navigate to Settings > Gestures. Toggle on Wrist Flick.
That’s it. You’ll simply need to wait for a notification or call to come in, or for a timer you want to silence to go off, and you’ll be able to turn it off with a quick flick of the wrist. It might take some practice, but essentially, you want to quickly rotate your wrist away from your body, as seen on this page on Apple’s website.
Used together with Double Tap, the goal is that you won’t need to fiddle with your watch’s touchscreen for most basic activities anymore, so you won’t have to interrupt your workout (or, if you’re like me, you’re leisurely sit on the subway) by tapping away at it. The only limitation is that, while Double Tap has some basic mapping functions that let you customize what exactly it does, Wrist Flick currently doesn’t offer that level of control, instead sticking to Apple’s default “dismissing” behavior. That means you won’t be able to use it to, say, go back one tile in your Smart Stack, like how you can set Double Tap to advance you by one tile. Here’s hoping Apple expands its functionality soon.
lifehacker_feed) wrote2025-09-15 08:00 pmDid you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.
Spotify is finally giving its free-tier customers a feature that’s been requested since the music streaming platform launched nearly 20 years ago: the ability to listen to any song they choose. That's right: The days of searching for a song, then hitting “skip” until it rolls around on a Spotify-generated playlist are over.
Free-tier users can choose songs in three ways: through the search function, by clicking on any song from the Spotify interface, or by clicking on a link shared by other users. Free-tier users can also listen to podcasts through Spotify, and create and listen to playlists too. Spotify's previous "six skips per hour" rule also appears to be no more.
There are still limitations to Spotify’s free accounts, of course. The most obvious is that you still have to listen to ads. Free users will also face a cap on how many minutes of music they can listen to on demand, won’t be able to queue tracks, and won’t be able to access Spotify’s “AI DJ” feature. (No great loss; trust me.)
They also won't have access to another new Spotify feature exclusive to paid accounts: lossless audio.
"Premium" Spotify perks are improving too. The first, most important upgrade in the long-awaited launch of lossless audio on the service. Lossless audio (streaming files that are bit-for-bit copies of the source material) is rolling out to over 50 Spotify markets from now through October.
Premium users will also be able to send private messaging, to make music-sharing easier, and add and customize transitions between songs within a playlist.
The upgrades to both levels of Spotify’s service aren’t really about making life better for users; they’re about staying relevant and profitable in a crowded and ever-changing marketplace. The hope from Spotify is to increase ad revenue by increasing the number of ears listening to ads, entice more free users to upgrade to pay services, and shed fewer customers who leave for other services.
Until the change, Spotify’s free tier was close to a radio service—you could listen to music that you kind of wanted to hear, maybe, if you also put up with frequent ads. This model may have made sense when streaming was newer, but more and more younger users are turning to YouTube, where you can listen to whatever song you want (and see a video for it) on demand, and for free. And young people are discovering music on TikTok, not on Spotify.
Changes to Spotify’s premium service are aimed at the more “mature” listener. Lossless audio doesn’t make a ton of difference without decent headphones or speakers. But “our music is lossless” has long been a selling point for Apple Music and Tidal, but it won’t be anymore.
icanhascheezburger_feed) wrote2025-09-15 01:00 pmSome people are morning people. They love the fresh and crisp air touching their face, they feel more alive and more productive when they can get up early and seize the day. And then some people are night people. They dream of coming home, getting into their pajamas, doing their haircare routine and taking a warm bath. People who take "Netflix and chill" to the extreme. For these people who are worshippers of the cozy things in life, they might have a cat or two to lull to sleep with them after their long day.
There's something magical about the quiet moments before bed. The world slows down, the lights dim, and even the most chaotic day softens at the edges. Add a dose of kitten memes, and suddenly bedtime feels like a warm hug for your soul. These cutie kitties are here to help you rest, digest, and drift off with a smile.
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setsuled) wrote2025-09-16 06:17 am
icanhascheezburger_feed) wrote2025-09-15 12:00 pmDog people, why do we even bother with them. Honestly, the best that we can get out of them is some sort of semi-ashamed admission that cats are amazing and even that is somewhat half-hearted, even though they mean it with all their hearts. And in the worst case, well, you get stories like this one we are covering today, which in all honesty just hurts to hear about.
Because it seems that even the abundance and bounty of hooman love cannot bridge the gap that lives between cat lovers and dog lovers. Which is why we are so happy for our clever cat lady, who bounced her boyfriend after he was just abhorrent towards her one and only cat child. It was completely the right thing to do, especially when you find out what that belligerent boyfriend did…he got everything that he deserved and then some.
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andersenmom) wrote in 100ships2025-09-15 02:43 pm
andersenmomlifehacker_feed) wrote2025-09-15 07:30 pmApple’s iOS 26 drops today, and with it comes a bunch of small tweaks and improvements to how your iPhone works. The catch? A lot of them are opt-in, so you need to turn them on before you can reap their benefits. Here are the settings you should turn on after updating your iPhone to Apple’s latest operating system, although note that some of them require an iPhone 15 Pro or later, as they rely on Apple Intelligence.
If you’re like me, you can never decide whether it’s worth it to swap your phone over to Battery Saver mode. Now, if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, your iPhone can make the decision for you.
Apple’s new Adaptive Power mode uses Apple Intelligence to intelligently determine when your battery usage is running higher than usual, and makes small tweaks to bring it back under control. These might include slightly dimming your display or slowing down less important tasks, like those that are running in the background or are particularly intensive. Then, once your phone’s been on an even keel for a while, it’ll start turning things back to normal. Think of it as a less aggressive “low power” mode that only affects certain processes, and can make adjustments based on more than your phone’s remaining charge. To try it out, simply navigate to Settings > Battery > Power Mode. Just don’t forget to turn it back off if you find its compromises aren’t worth the extra battery life.
I’ll be honest—I barely pick up phone calls anymore. Instead, I usually prefer to wait until after the call, and then call back if the caller was someone I knew or if it was important enough to leave a message. This usually works out for me, but I’ll admit, sometimes I do feel a bit bad for leaving people who call me in the lurch, especially if it turns out they had a good reason to dial me up. That’s where Apple’s new Call Screening feature comes in.
This one doesn’t require Apple Intelligence, so it’ll work on any iPhone running iOS 26. Simply open your Settings, then under Apps, tap Phone and look for the Screen Unknown Callers option.
You’ll have three choices. Never will work just like before, with calls ringing for a bit before they go to your Recents list. But now, you’ve got two additional options you can choose instead.
First is Silence, which will turn off your ringer for calls from unsaved numbers, then send them to Voicemail and display them in the Recents list. Essentially, it just cuts out the middle-man of having to wait for the caller to give up before you move on with figuring out what they wanted.
But the more exciting addition is Ask Reason for Calling. Choose this, and your iPhone will pick up calls from unsaved numbers for you, then ask the caller a few questions about their reason for calling. You’ll see a transcript of their answers on screen, and then you’ll be able to choose whether you want to pick up.
It’s a clever trick, and should make me feel a little less bad for anyone who tries to chat with me over the phone. I do wish it worked for Contacts as well, to be honest, but I can understand why my family might not be enthused to call me and get a robot secretary instead.
With iOS 26, Apple’s added a few new default ringtones to pick from. Six are variations of the classic “Reflection” ringtone, but there’s also a new one called “Little Bird.” You can find them all under Settings > Sound & Haptics > Ringtone, or check out the embeds below to hear them for yourself.
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Personally, “Bouyant” is probably my favorite, although my colleague Jake Peterson likes “Dreamer” the most. I’ll probably still stick with my custom ringtone, but if you’d rather not bother downloading a ringtone manually, you now have more choice than ever.
This next one is technically about turning a feature off instead of turning it on, but I couldn’t ignore it. With iOS 26, Apple’s redesigned its design language to focus on transparency, and not everyone’s a fan. If you remember the transparent bezels Microsoft added to app windows in Windows Vista, it’s a lot like that, but more aggressive. Essentially, instead of showing a solid background, many buttons and overlays will now appear clear, allowing a blurred version of whatever is underneath them to bleed through.
Luckily, there’s a pre-existing accessibility control that essentially sets your iPhone back to how it was before. Simply navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size, then toggle on Reduce Transparency. This will bring back solid background across your entire iPhone, which you can see in effect here. Notice how the play button no longer allows blurred album artwork to bleed into it? If you prefer that flatter, more contrast-y look, this could be for you.
This one’s just fun. Now, in iMessage, you set custom backgrounds for your conversations and group chats on a per-chat basis. These include presets, like Water and Sky, but you can also pick solid colors, choose a photo from your library, or if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, generate a background using Apple Intelligence.
To get started, open a chat, click its title towards the top of the page, then choose Backgrounds.
Note that your chosen background will appear for everyone in the chat, but if you don’t like a background someone else set, you don’t have to live with it. Go to Settings > Apps > Messages and disable Conversation Backgrounds to turn the feature off.
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, Apple is actually bringing back a previously deleted feature with iOS 26: Notification summaries for news and entertainment apps.
These initially launched in the iOS 18.3 beta, but were quickly pulled after Apple’s AI had misrepresented some major BBC headlines, including one about United Healthcare shooting suspect Luigi Mangione.
Now, Apple is confident enough to bring these notification summaries back, although with a new warning that says “Summarization may change the meaning of the original headlines. Verify information.”
If you’re comfortable with that, according to my colleagues over at CNET, you don’t have to do much to turn them on. Apple will actually greet you with a splash screen once you download the iOS 26 update, which will ask your preferences for which apps will get notification summaries. You’ll have three options, and you can select as many as you wish. All other apps will summarize notifications from non-social apps, like Maps, while Communication & Social will throw in notification summaries for apps like TikTok and Mail. These were available already. What’s new (again) is the News & Entertainment option, which will add notification summaries for apps including BBC or Netflix.
Simply make your choices, and you’re good to go. If you change your mind later, you can adjust your summaries under Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications. You can also adjust notification summaries on a per-app basis here, which isn’t available in the splash screen you get after installing iOS 26.
Let’s say you actually like Liquid Glass, but think it doesn’t go far enough. In that case, you might want to turn your icons clear too, so you can see your background through them. I promise I won’t judge.
To turn your app icons clear in iOS 26, simply long press on your home screen’s background until your apps start jiggling. Then, tap Edit in the top-left corner, followed by Customize. Then, choose Clear. You can also choose between Clear Light or Clear Dark, with the dark mode opting for a more subdued tint.
This will make your app icons look like frosted glass, similar to iOS 26’s new lock screen clock. You do you.
(If you’re like me, you might prefer the new Tinted Light Mode option instead, which finally allows you to set a custom color for your app icons’ graphical elements alongside a bright background. You can find it in the Tinted option next to Clear while selecting your app icon appearance).
iOS 26 gives you more control over how your phone looks while locked than ever before. To get started, lock your phone, then press the power button, tap and hold on the lock screen, and tap Customize.
First off, you can now adjust the size of your clock by grabbing one of its corners and dragging it down, although this will only work with certain fonts.
Second, you can now justify your widgets box to the bottom of the lock screen, as well as add an Apple Music search widget to it, if you like. If you actually start playing something, you’ll notice it’ll enable a large Now Playing interface that shows album art.
Finally, there’s support for Spatial Scenes. When selecting a Photo wallpaper, you can now tap on a small icon of a mountain and a sun to separate the photo’s subject from the background. Now, when moving your iPhone, the subject will move with it, to help them pop. Your clock might also move to fill up space in the photo, including slightly behind the subject, to help give an illusion of depth. Or, your widgets might automatically shift to the bottom of the screen if placed elsewhere, to better frame the photo subject.
There’s plenty more you can do to make iOS 26 truly yours. If the above changes aren’t enough for you, here are 36 other tweaks you can make to get the most out of your iPhone’s new operating system.
