Meta (aka Facebook) today announced the introduction of Messenger "shortcuts," a new Slack-style command system that allows users to speed up communication and get messages to their intended recipients.
Building on the @username tagging method to direct a message to a specific person in a chat, the new system introduces @everyone for grabbing everyone's attention in a group chat, and /silent to send a message to members of a chat without them being immediately notified about it during their off hours.
Messenger is also gaining additional shortcuts over the next few weeks that aim to be both practical and fun, such as /Pay to send and receive money within one-on-one Messenger chats (U.S only) and /gif to easily find and send GIFs. Users need only type /gif and then their chosen topic to see GIF options appear.
Lastly, Messenger on iOS is soon to support /shrug and /tableflip to more easily convey the old-school text-based emoticons ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻. Meta says these are just the first of many more shortcuts coming to Messenger later this year.
Apple last week unveiled five new apps, with four announced at WWDC 2026 alongside its upcoming fall software updates, one released in beta for developers, and one released independently by its subsidiary Claris.
Siri AI App
One of the biggest announcements of WWDC 2026 was Siri AI, a ground-up rebuild of Apple's voice assistant that for the first time comes with a dedicated standalone...
Apple today detailed why five Apple Watch models will miss out on watchOS 27 and the new Siri AI features that come with it.
The Apple Watch Series 6, 7, 8, SE 2, and the original Apple Watch Ultra will not receive watchOS 27, and will only get basic security updates going forward. With the update, Apple is effectively dropping three years' worth of device support in a single software...
Apple's annual WWDC developers conference is in the rearview mirror, but there is still a lot to look forward to over the next year and beyond.
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman listed around 20 products that he expects Apple to release across the remainder of 2026 and 2027.
Now that the more intelligent and personal version of Siri has finally arrived in beta, a...
