This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
Abxylute’s new Switch 2 controller prototype has one big problem
19 Feb 2026, 2:00 pm by Cameron Faulkner
Gaming accessory company Abxylute has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its upcoming N6 and GameCube-style N9C Switch 2 dock-style controllers. If the ergonomics of Nintendo’s Joy-Cons don’t jibe with you, these aim to be solid alternatives, particularly for people with medium-to-large-size hands.
Both of Abxylute’s new controllers have bigger, more comfortable grips than Joy-Cons offer, along with longer-lasting Hall effect joysticks. I tested a functioning prototype of the N6, and it has almost everything that people might be looking for to level up their gaming experience: full-size sticks, vibration, motion controls, customizable bac …
It’s MAGA v Broligarch in the battle over prediction markets
19 Feb 2026, 1:50 pm by Tina Nguyen
Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about the love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship between Silicon Valley and Washington. I hope everyone got to celebrate George Washington’s birthday in their preferred manner: skiing, staycationing, subscribing to The Verge if you haven’t already, etc.
Prediction: this is going to be a mess
Political alliances are rarely permanent, so it’s somewhat predictable that the MAGA-tech bro alliance seems to have fallen apart in the span of a single year. Which side the administration would actually choose, though, was more difficult to foresee.
Last winter, it appeared that …
Google adds a camera to Snapseed on iOS
19 Feb 2026, 1:49 pm by Dominic Preston
Google has updated the iPhone version of its photo editing app Snapseed with its own camera, including a suite of manual controls and retro film emulation effects. It’s the second major update to the app in less than 12 months, after it had previously been left to languish by Google for years.
The Snapseed camera defaults to an automatic mode, but also includes optional controls for ISO, shutter speed, and focus, along with flash and zoom. It allows you to shoot using saved looks and edit stacks from the app, which can be altered after the shot is taken, along with a range of preset film effects inspired by specific films from Kodak, Fujifi …
The RAM shortage is coming for everything you care about
19 Feb 2026, 1:00 pm by Sean Hollister
Maybe you’ve heard: Memory is expensive now. The price of RAM has tripled, quadrupled, even sextupled depending on the type of chip, all because AI companies are gobbling it up.
But maybe you’ve thought: I don’t buy memory sticks! I don’t build my own PCs! It won’t affect me, right?
I’m here to tell you RAM is coming for your wallet anyhow.
Do you have a phone in your pocket you’d like to upgrade in the next few years? Fancy a game console or handheld? A laptop, perhaps? Will you need a new router, whether you’re purchasing outright or renting from your ISP? Each of these devices is expected to have shortages, price hikes, or both in 2 …
The biggest app in the whole wide world
19 Feb 2026, 11:00 am by David Pierce
Last summer, Bria Sullivan was getting ready to launch her app, an adorable companion called Focus Friend meant to help people manage their screen time. Her outlandish dream was to get 100,000 downloads. She’d been building the app with Hank Green, a creator with a huge audience, so she thought maybe, maybe, Focus Friend could be a top-10 app in the productivity category. Even that felt like a stretch, though. “Our category has ChatGPT, it has Google,” she says. “I mean, productivity includes Gmail!”
Sullivan initially dropped the app into the iOS App Store without really telling anyone. But in August, thanks to a lot of promotion from Gr …
Mark Zuckerberg and his Ray-Ban entourage have their day in court
19 Feb 2026, 4:13 am by Lauren Feiner
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg entered a downtown Los Angeles courthouse in largely the same way as all the attorneys, reporters, and advocates who’d come to watch his landmark trial testimony, but with one notable difference: he was flanked by an entourage that appeared to be wearing Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. To get to the courtroom, he walked past a crowd of parents whose children died after struggling with issues they attribute to the design of social media platforms including those that Meta makes. He would spend the next eight hours often answering questions in his signature matter-of-fact (or less charitably, monotone) cadence, denying h …
The RAM crunch could kill products and even entire companies, memory exec admits
19 Feb 2026, 12:32 am by Sean Hollister
Phison is one of the leading makers of controller chips for SSDs and other flash memory devices – and CEO Pua Khein-Seng has now become a leading voice for just how bad the RAM shortage might get.
Companies may need to cut back their product lines in the second half of 2026, and some companies will even die if they can’t get the components they need, he agreed, in a televised interview with Ningguan Chen of Taiwanese broadcaster Next TV.
While the interview’s entirely in Chinese, friends of The Verge stepped forward to confirm parts of a machine-translated summary that’s been making headlines. They also note, importantly, that it’s the int …
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
