This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
Spotify launches offline lyrics, translations, and lyric previews
4 Feb 2026, 2:31 pm by Stevie Bonifield
On Wednesday, Spotify announced a few new lyrics features aiming to make it easier to understand and access song lyrics, including translations, previews, and offline lyrics.
Lyric translations were originally introduced in 2022, but have only been available in specific markets so far. Now, they’re rolling out worldwide to both free and premium Spotify users, who will soon start seeing a translation icon in the lyrics section on the app. When you tap this, “translations will appear based on your device’s language,” if a translation is available.
Spotify is also rolling out lyric previews worldwide for free and premium users. This featur …
Amazon rolls out Alexa Plus nationwide and launches a new free tier
4 Feb 2026, 2:00 pm by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Amazon has announced that its generative AI-powered digital assistant Alexa Plus is now available to all Prime members in the US via any Alexa-enabled device, Alexa.com, and the Alexa mobile app. If you don’t have Prime, you can access the assistant on a new free tier on the web and app, or pay $20 a month for unlimited access to Alexa Plus, without Prime.
Alexa Plus initially launched in March 2025 in an Early Access program and, over the last year, has slowly expanded to tens of millions of users, Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Echo, told The Verge in an interview.
Now, the smarter, more conversational assistant is moving o …
Everyone is stealing TV
4 Feb 2026, 1:30 pm by Janko Roettgers
Walk the rows of the farmers market in a small, nondescript Texas town about an hour away from Austin, and you might stumble across something unexpected: In between booths selling fresh, local pickles and pies, there’s a table piled high with generic-looking streaming boxes, promising free access to NFL games, UFC fights, and any cable TV network you can think of.
It’s called the SuperBox, and it’s being demoed by Jason, who also has homemade banana bread, okra, and canned goods for sale. “People are sick and tired of giving Dish Network $200 a month for trash service,” Jason says. His pitch to rural would-be cord-cutters: Buy a SuperBox fo …
Anthropic says ‘Claude will remain ad-free,’ unlike ChatGPT
4 Feb 2026, 1:09 pm by Dominic Preston
Anthropic has announced that it won’t be bringing ads to its AI chatbot Claude, in sharp contrast to confirmed plans from OpenAI to allow advertising in ChatGPT. To hammer the point home further, the company is releasing a Super Bowl commercial that makes fun of unnamed rivals adding adverts to their AI.
“We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests,” the company says in a new blog post. “So we’ve made a choice: Claude will remain ad-free. Our users won’t see ‘sponsored’ links adjacent to their conversations with Claude; nor will Claude’s responses be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements our use …
Sen. Warren wants to know what Google Gemini’s built-in checkout means for user privacy
4 Feb 2026, 12:00 pm by Emma Roth
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is pressing Google for more information about its plans to build a checkout feature into its Gemini AI chatbot. In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Warren expresses concerns that the integration could allow Google and retailers “to exploit sensitive user data” or “manipulate consumers into spending more and paying higher prices.”
Last month, Google announced that it will soon allow users to buy products directly within Gemini through the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a standard it developed in partnership with Shopify, Target, Walmart, Wayfair, and Etsy. The UCP is supposed to make it easier for AI age …
Adobe actually won’t discontinue Animate
4 Feb 2026, 1:28 am by Jay Peters
Adobe is no longer planning to discontinue Adobe Animate on March 1st. In an FAQ, the company now says that Animate will now be in maintenance mode and that it has “no plans to discontinue or remove access” to the app. Animate will still receive “ongoing security and bug fixes” and will still be available for “both new and existing users,” but it won’t get new features.
Many creators expressed frustration after Adobe’s original discontinuation announcement from Monday (here’s a Wayback Machine link), and the application is still used by creators like David Firth, the person behind the animated web series Salad Fingers. Now, Adobe says that …
Republicans haul Netflix before Congress for being too ‘woke’
4 Feb 2026, 12:07 am by Lauren Feiner
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos was launched into the middle of a congressional culture war on Tuesday as he testified before a Senate subcommittee about the company’s attempt to buy a large part of Warner Bros Discovery.
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee highlighted an array of traditional merger concerns on both sides of the aisle: that the deal could potentially raise costs for consumers, limit their theater experiences, or shrink the market for entertainment jobs. But a large chunk of the session also focused on Netflix’s allegedly “woke” programming, including content that features transgender characters.
Netflix …
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
