Sarah Perez
Reporter
The Latest from Sarah Perez
Cozy houseplants and self-care: How one startup is reimagining mobile gameplay as a healing activity
Mobile well-being apps topped 1.2 billion downloads last year, while leading meditation app Calm alone pulled in $118.2 million in revenue, data from Sensor Tower indicates. That may leave some to thi
Spotify revamps in-app concert discovery with new Live Events Feed
Spotify is introducing a new feature that will allow users to better discover nearby events and concerts. The streaming service today announced it’s replacing its in-app Concert Hub with a new L
Spotify is developing ‘Community,’ a new place to see your friends’ activity in the mobile app
Spotify is developing a new feature called Community that would allow mobile users to see what sort of music their friends are streaming in real time as well as what playlists they’ve recently u
Twitter partners with Shopify to bring merchants’ products to Twitter Shopping
As part of its ongoing efforts to expand into e-commerce, Twitter today announced a new partnership with Shopify. The deal will see Twitter launching a sales channel app that will be made available to
Twitter to expand into long-form content with upcoming Twitter Notes feature (Update: confirmed)
In what could be one of Twitter’s more significant changes since doubling the character count from 140 to 280 characters, the company is preparing to launch a new feature that would support the
Twitter is bringing back its long-lost Chirp Developer Conference in November
As Twitter continues to woo developers back to its platform, the company today announced the return of its developer conference, Chirp. The event was first held in 2010 but was then canceled the very
This Week in Apps: Apple’s Sherlocks, Instagram’s ‘nudges’ and a TikTok-Oracle deal
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a re
Grace debuts privacy-focused parental controls for iOS devices built with Apple’s Screen Time API
A new startup called Grace is launching to make it easier for parents to monitor and manage their kids’ screen time and app usage on iOS devices. Although Apple offers built-in parental controls
Instagram chases TikTok with a new full-screen feed, changes to photos and navigation to come
Instagram announced today it will begin testing a new version of its full-screen feed, similar to TikTok’s, which aims to improve upon the way photos appear in this new format. The company said
The next big social platform is the smartphone’s homescreen
BeReal, LiveIn, Locket… what do these new consumer social apps have in common besides a highly ranked position on the App Store’s Top Charts? They engage their users through a combination of push
YouTube Shorts tops 1.5B logged-in monthly users, touted as feeder to long-form content
In an effort to present itself as a viable competitor to the reigning short-form video platform TikTok, YouTube announced today its rival service YouTube Shorts is now being watched by over 1.5 billio
PayPal expands its ‘pay later’ options with a more flexible ‘PayPal Pay Monthly’ service
After Apple shook up the buy now, pay later market with news that it would now be a competitor to established firms, PayPal this morning is introducing another buy now, pay later product to follow the
Pinterest turns its TikTok-like Idea Pins into ads
Last year, Pinterest began its pivot from being an online image board to being more of a creator platform with the launch of Idea Pins. The new feature allows Pinterest users to tell their stories usi
This Week in Apps, Apple WWDC review: Blurred lines, new APIs and a brand-new Lock Screen
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a re
Amazon gets into AR shopping with launch of ‘Virtual Try-On for Shoes’
Amazon is tapping into augmented reality in an attempt to appeal to sneakerheads shopping its site. The retailer this morning announced a new feature called Virtual Try-On for Shoes that will allow cu
Amid growing concerns around app addiction, TikTok rolls out more screen tools
TikTok users regularly complain of hours lost on the platform, thanks to the video app’s unmatched ability to distract, entertain and engage users by way of its advanced recommendation technolog
Spotify hypes the revenue potential of podcasts and audiobooks at its second Investor Day event
In its second Investor Day, streaming service Spotify updated the financial community about its potential for further growth and monetization, despite the overall economic downturn impacting the tech
Twitter’s latest feature lets merchants tease upcoming product drops, remind customers to shop
Twitter’s future may still be undecided, but the company is continuing to move forward with product releases in several key areas of focus including, as it turns out, e-commerce. The social medi
In iOS 16, apps can trigger real-world actions hands-free
New functionality arriving in iOS 16 will enable apps to trigger real-world actions hands-free. That means users could do things like start playing music just by walking into a room or turning on an e
Apple’s iOS 16 will fix annoying ‘Tapback’ spam
This spring, Google updated its Messages app to support handling iMessage reactions. That is, instead of spamming a group chat with separate messages whenever someone responded to a text using one of