Google is preparing a new Chrome security feature that would block policy-installed extensions from hijacking the New Tab page or changing the default search engine.

BleepingComputer spotted the protection in a chain of work-in-progress Chromium Gerrit changes. It has not shipped yet, but Google plans to enable it by default once the changes are approved.

“In low-trust environments (unmanaged consumer devices), enterprise policy force-installs and recommendations are abused to lock in search engine or new tab page hijackers,” Anunoy Ghosh, who works at Google, wrote in a post.

“This CL enables the kBlockDseNtpOverrideExtensionsOnUnmanagedDevices feature flag by default, activating the end-to-end blocking defense on unmanaged Windows and macOS devices.”

Right now, Chrome allows organizations to use enterprise policies to force-install extensions and control browser settings.

It’s not exactly bad on properly managed work devices connected to a domain or mobile device management system, but malware has been abusing the same feature on regular consumer PCs.

A malicious program can add local Chrome policy keys without your permission and force-install an extension that replaces the New Tab page, changes your search engine, or redirects searches to suspicious websites.

Chrome may then believe that the extension was installed by an administrator, which prevents you from removing or disabling it.

In some cases, Chrome also displays the confusing “Managed by your organization” message, even though the PC is not actually owned or managed by an organization.

Google describes these consumer PCs as “low-trust” environments because Chrome is reading policies stored locally without confirmation from a trusted authority, such as a domain or MDM service.

Under the proposed protection, Chrome would block attempts to install policy-controlled extensions that override the New Tab page or default search engine.

The installation would be canceled, and Chrome would save the extension ID in a blocked-extension preference.

Chrome would also stop trying to download the same blocked extension during future policy checks, which should prevent repeated installation attempts and unnecessary network activity.

Google is also addressing another trick used by malware

An extension that you installed manually would no longer be converted into a locked, policy-controlled extension. It would remain under your control, so you could still disable or remove it.

If a previously managed device loses its trusted management status but still has local policy keys, Chrome would automatically uninstall affected New Tab and search-engine override extensions.

Google is adding metrics to measure how often these policy-based hijackers appear and how frequently Chrome blocks them.

Legitimate administrators would also have access to an escape-hatch policy that disables the protection when a required enterprise extension overrides the New Tab page or search engine.

The Gerrit changes are still under review, so the feature is not available in stable Chrome yet.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

Get the whitepaper

The Malaysian government has ordered the shutdown of a startup-centric community called the Network School, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Billing itself as “a frontier community for techno-optimists,” the Network School reportedly grew out of entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan’s conviction that the United States is in irreversible decline; Srinivasan has said his goal is “to start a new country.”

So the Network School is supposed to represent the first step in a seven-stage plan (outlined in Srinivasan’s book “The Network State”) for building a new society. Based in an abandoned Malaysian hotel, the WSJ described the program as “part tech incubator, part self-improvement retreat.” Attendees, however, complained about moldy rooms, as well as a dearth of women and nightlife. 

After receiving questions from the WSJ, Srinivasan – who apparently renounced his American citizenship in 2023 — published a lengthy post on X declaring himself “a proud Singaporean” and complaining that the WSJ was working on a “hit piece” that would make him look like “an odd duck […] as opposed to an early adopter.”

And although the current Malaysian campus will reportedly need to shut down due to licensing issues, Srinivasan recently announced a new agreement for a campus in Kazakhstan.

Apple’s Mac sales rose by more than 25% in the last quarter, compared to the same time period in 2025, solely on the back of the MacBook Neo that incoming CEO John Ternus championed.

Shortly before John Ternus was announced as Apple’s next CEO, it was noticeable that he was the one championing the MacBook Neo instead of Tim Cook. As well as part of handing over the reigns, though, this was because the MacBook Neo project was driven by Ternus.

Now according to figures from Apple’s latest earnings call, the company’s Mac revenues climbed by 28.66% over the last quarter. This is mostly due to the only new product available just prior to the quarter, the MacBook Neo.

Mac quarterly revenue, as of Q3 2026

Advertisement

Apple reports that during the quarter ended June 27, 2026, it sold $10.35B worth of Macs. That compares to $8.05B for the same quarter in 2025.

Significantly, though, there were no new Macs released during this quarter at all — but the MacBook Neo ramped up to full availability. The quarter also saw steep price hikes across the whole Mac lineup, including adding $100 to the price of the MacBook Neo.

Mac quarterly revenue change year-on-year, as of Q3 2026

The timing of that price rise won’t have been chance, though, as it was announced on June 25, 2026. That means that the MacBook Neo only saw the higher price for two days of the quarter.

Consequently there’s no indication of whether the MacBook Neo can continue this huge success in the next quarter. But it’s a measure of how the lower-cost MacBook Neo was an immediate boost to Apple’s bottom line.

• AI growth keeps enterprise hard drive demand climbing across global cloud infrastructure
• Cloud providers continue expanding storage despite massive investment in AI accelerators
• Enterprise storage remains essential as artificial intelligence generates unprecedented data volumes

Enterprise demand for high-capacity hard drives continues accelerating as artificial intelligence generates expanding datasets requiring reliable, affordable storage throughout increasingly complex cloud environments.

That growing appetite for storage has intensified competition among cloud providers building artificial intelligence infrastructure, keeping enterprise hard drives firmly within long-term investment plans.

You’re not limited to only apps you can get on the Play Store.

Using Android Debug Bridge to sideload apps on Chromebook

Using Android Studio to run sideloaded apps on Chromebook

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

Space-Eyes, a Miami geospatial-intelligence company backed by Eric Trump, plans to go public through a $638 million blank-cheque deal, deepening the family’s defence-tech ties.

A defence-technology company backed by Eric Trump is preparing to go public through a $638 million SPAC merger, deepening the Trump family’s already extensive ties to the national-security industry.

Space-Eyes, a Miami-based geospatial intelligence firm, would list through a blank-cheque deal, following the path of Foundation, another Eric Trump-backed defence venture now winning Pentagon contracts.

Space-Eyes is a niche but strategic player. Founded in 2001, the roughly 35-person company builds satellite-based AI that tracks maritime activity, trade flows, and other security signals for governments and businesses.

Its focus sits at a sensitive intersection. Maritime domain awareness, the monitoring of ships and ports, has become a priority for Western militaries wary of sanctions-busting and grey-zone activity at sea.

The demand is timely. Shadow fleets moving sanctioned oil, illegal fishing, and threats to undersea cables have pushed navies and coast guards to hunt for better ways to watch the oceans, a market Space-Eyes is built to serve.

The listing would be a sharp step up. A $638 million deal values a small firm well above its modest funding history, reflecting how much investors will now pay for anything tied to defence and intelligence.

It fits a family pattern. Eric Trump and his brother Donald Trump Jr. have poured money into defence and manufacturing ventures over the past year, from drones to humanoid robots to a manufacturing SPAC.

The backdrop is a spending surge. Their bets have coincided with a Trump administration channelling record sums into defence technology, an overlap that critics say raises obvious conflict-of-interest questions.

Those concerns are not hypothetical. Reporting has documented how the president’s sons stand to profit from companies whose fortunes depend on federal contracts and policy set by their father’s government.

The SPAC route adds its own scrutiny. Blank-cheque mergers let companies reach public markets faster and with lighter disclosure than a traditional IPO, a structure that has burned retail investors before.

Blank-cheque deals are also back in fashion. After a long slump, SPAC listings have revived on the back of AI, crypto, and defence, and politically connected sponsors have been among the most active.

Space-Eyes joins a crowded field. Defence-tech valuations have soared as the Pentagon pushes for drones, autonomy, and AI, with firms like Mach Industries ballooning past a billion dollars.

The money is chasing a real shift. Western governments are rearming, and the Pentagon has been signing classified AI deals as it races to fuse data, autonomy, and intelligence into new capabilities.

Space-Eyes pitches itself into that gap. Its systems promise to turn raw orbital imagery into warnings about illicit shipping, trade anomalies, and security threats, the kind of tool agencies increasingly buy rather than build.

The Trump name is both an asset and a liability. It opens doors and draws capital, but it also invites the assumption that access, not just technology, is part of what investors are buying.

The wider trend is the blurring of lines. The boundary between Silicon Valley, private capital, and the Pentagon has thinned dramatically, a shift crystallised when a top venture capitalist joined the Pentagon’s board.

Ethics watchdogs have taken notice. They argue that when a president’s family profits from defence firms while that president directs defence spending, the appearance of impropriety is hard to avoid, whatever the legal reality.

The Trump camp frames it differently. Supporters cast these as legitimate private investments in American strength, part of a push to rebuild the country’s industrial and military edge.

For Space-Eyes, the immediate prize is capital. A successful listing would hand a small firm the funds to scale, and hand its high-profile backer a public-market endorsement of the defence-tech bet.

The deal still has to close. SPAC mergers can fall apart or reprice, and this one will be watched as much for who stands behind it as for what the company actually does.

Apps are back, or maybe they never left in the first place.

While some people debate whether people will shift away from apps as AI agents make accessing online services more efficient, we’ve found the App Store to be alive and well, with a recent explosion of fun, creative, and innovative tools, experiences, and other indie efforts.

Some of the more recent launches may be attributed to the rise of AI coding, which has enabled people to ship software more quickly, and allowed novices to participate in the app ecosystem. According to one report, new app launches have soared in 2026, with worldwide new app releases up 60% year-over-year as of the first quarter across both the Apple App Store and Google Play. On Apple’s iOS store alone, that figure was an even higher 80%.

While there’s valid concern that vibe-coded apps in particular could be cluttering the App Store with lower-quality content, there are plenty of interesting apps worth exploring, and those that resonate with consumers will rise to the top. Many also use AI under the hood to perform their magic — they’re just not promoted as being “AI-powered.”

Below is our latest collection of App Store hidden gems, which we’ve added to our Home Screen. You can also visit TechCrunch’s prior app round-ups, like our looks at next-generation social apps, Apple Watch, and iPad productivity tools, and apps for digitally decluttering your life.

Albo

Albo (previously Sortd, but not that Sortd) is an excellent tool for anyone who regularly bookmarks content from social media, then promptly forgets about it. With Albo, the idea is that you’ll instead share the link to the TikTok, Instagram Reel, YouTube video, or other website to the app. Albo will then automatically pull the details from the post and categorize and save the idea for you. That post and its notes will remain available in Albo, even if the original content creator deletes their post or video at some point in the future.

The app works with a variety of social apps, including Pinterest, X, LinkedIn, Threads, Reddit, and Facebook, plus browsers like Chrome and Safari. You can also add screenshots to Albo.

This makes it easy to save any sort of online inspiration for easy access, whether that’s travel ideas, local spots to try, movie or shows to watch, books to read, recipes to cook, or workouts to do. Your collections can also be shared with friends.

Albo hails from the London-based app studio The Feel Good Project, which focuses on tech that makes users feel inspired and satisfied instead of drained by doomscrolling.

The app is free to use with advanced features available via subscription. We didn’t love how heavy-handed it was in pushing the trial subscription during onboarding, however.

Available on iOS and Google Play.

Coop

The recent parasite outbreak in the U.S. has people thinking more carefully about where their food comes from. Buying from local growers and bakers may be the safer option — and better for the community — but not everyone has time to make it to the farmer’s market over the weekend.

Coop‘s app offers an alternative through its neighborhood marketplace, where you can buy real handmade and homegrown items from the people near you, even from the farmhouse down the road that offers fresh eggs, or a neighbor willing to barter their items for yours. The idea is to allow commerce to stay local, while helping people turn their own garden, field, or craft into an additional income stream.

On Coop, you can browse and discover nearby sellers, follow your favorites, see how far they are from you, and purchase from them via the app’s Stripe integration. The seller then receives the order and prepares it for pickup.

Available on iOS and Google Play.

PI.FYI by Perfectly Imperfect

A colorful and somewhat chaotic app, PI.FYI, promises to bring back the “old internet,” where you found recommendations through a network of friends, not algorithms. Having emerged from a cult newsletter, the app has been around for a couple of years, but still feels fresh and modern and very much like the alternative to social media it aims become.

In PI.FYI, you can track what you’re into, share your taste, and browse by category or “scenes,” like music, whimsy, retro, and literature, to find your community, read interesting articles, make lists, gather local recommendations, and play games with friends. The app exudes a retro vibe itself, as if it were built when the internet was a little less polished, too.

Available on iOS and Google Play.

Lettre

OK, it might not be as fun as sharing a letter via pigeon post, but the app for pen pals, Lettre, also embraces the fun of snail mail in a digital format. This letter-writing app lets you start new friendships with pen pals around the world, discovered through the app, or with anyone whose email address you already know. Unfortunately, letters are sent digitally through the app or email for now, but the company’s FAQ suggests it is considering a postal mail option for the future, which would be so much fun.

Available on iOS only.

Sofa Time

While not a brand-new app, Sofa Time is one of several that is picking up where the recently shuttered TV Time app left off. The app has an easy-to-use, uncluttered interface for tracking the movies and TV shows you’re watching, organizing your watchlist, discovering what to stream next, and getting reminders about new releases.

While Sofa Time’s commenting section doesn’t yet rival TV Time’s forums, the app’s social elements leave room for the community to grow, as it supports the ability to react with a GIF or image alongside your text, and includes built-in translation features to support a global audience.

Available on iOS and Google Play.

ThingsBook

ThingsBook, a new writing-focused app from South Korean internet giant Naver’s U.S. subsidiary, is hardly an indie effort, but it’s an interesting premise for what the future of social media could look like. Instead of doomscrolling, ThingsBook offers a flexible space where you can capture what you care about, whether that’s through journaling, logging ideas, or collecting things like books, travels, meals, hobbies, and goals into structured lists you can revisit and expand.

The company explains that the app’s purpose is not to focus on “fleeting trends” but to become a “living record of who you are and what you love.”

Available on iOS and Google Play.

Pressed Petals

App or artistic project? Pressed Petals is both. An indie effort from designer Cynthia Chen, the app turns the photos of flowers you find on your walks into a pressed specimen, like one you’d find in a “vintage botanical journal.” The app automatically saves the location where you spotted the flower, and the date and time, turning your nature walks into interactive experiences. It also identifies the flower by name, both its scientific name and its common name.

You can try the app to press two flowers for free, then pay a one-time fee of $4.99 to unlock the full experience. This could be a fun app for luring your little ones outside, as it gives them something else to do beyond the hike itself.

Available on iOS only.

Moods Faster

We’re suckers for single-purpose apps that are built well. Moods Faster by Nick Leith is a perfect example, as it offers a way to log your moods for tracking in Apple Health in just two taps — one to select the mood and a second to save it.

You can choose between logging your current mood or your overall mood for the day, and can also optionally add information about the context and emotions you’re experiencing at the time of logging. In the settings, you can pick between different color schemes for your moods, though some are paywalled.

At $1.95 per month, it’s a reasonably priced subscription for anyone who regularly tracks their moods and emotions for mental health purposes.

Available on iOS only.

Activate Fitness

Originally pitched as a way to encourage kids to exercise, Activate Fitness has recently expanded its screen-time-earning app to include the whole family, which, frankly, makes it better. (The kids will just hate their parents for using this otherwise. Plus, it could turn outdoor time or exercise into a dreaded chore in kids’ minds, which defeats the purpose.)

For adults, the app could allow you to accomplish your own personal goals, like no doomscrolling until you get your steps in for the day.

Available on iOS only.

This post was originally published on July 28, 2026.

RGB backlighting and Super Quantum Dot (SQD) technology are mounting the strongest challenge yet to OLED’s dominance in 2026. After testing and reviewing the year’s major contenders, we are ready to reveal our picks for the best TVs of 2026 so far. Join Senior Reviewer Al Griffin, and Editor-at-Large Chris Boylan as they break down their favorite models, explain what sets each one apart, and debate whether OLED still deserves the crown.

Watch it on YouTube

Sponsor: Thank you to our podcast sponsor SVS.

This episode was recorded on July 29, 2026.

On the Panel:

Related Podcasts: