Keep Hoping Machine Running

Posted by Stephen Johnson

https://lifehacker.com/tech/youtube-app-for-apple-vision-pro?utm_medium=RSS

YouTube has finally come to Apple Vision Pro. YouTube for Vision OS is a free, standalone app that lets users log into their existing YouTube accounts through their Vision headsets and stream videos like they would expect to, including standard videos, 180° videos, 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts. Vision Pro M5 users can stream 8K videos, and premium YouTube members can download videos directly to their headsets, a must for long flights.

Google, YouTube's parent company, has apparently been working on the app for a while. In 2024, a spokesperson confirmed that a standalone Vision Pro app was "on our roadmap," but until today, the only way Vision users could watch YouTube on their headsets was through the Safari web browser.

The new YouTube app is designed to fit into Vision's spatial computing environments. "Rather than just responding to different screen sizes, we needed something that responds to different spaces, volumes and use cases," YouTube's senior UX designer Brendan Polley told Apple. "We built an entirely new design system that isolated core elements—comments, the play button, 'like' and 'dislike'—to fit any layout."

Having downloaded the app, it works exactly as intended. If you're looking for something that demonstrates Vision Pro's immersive video capabilities, you should check out the just-released 360° videos from the Milano Cortina winter Olympics on NBC's channel. Immersive luge is terrifying!

https://lifehacker.com/tech/youtube-app-for-apple-vision-pro?utm_medium=RSS

Posted by Beth Skwarecki

https://lifehacker.com/what-are-activation-exercises?utm_medium=RSS

“Activation” exercises are often recommended at the beginnings of workouts. You might get the idea—whether from random TikToks or from a trainer you pay for their expertise—that activations are necessary to get your muscles firing correctly and able to take advantage of the workout to come. That’s not exactly true, though, so let’s dive in to what activations really do.

What does it mean to “activate” your muscles?

The explanation you’ll hear most often is that our muscles—often specifically our glutes, or butt muscles—“forget” how to fire correctly. But that isn’t really a thing that happens, as physical therapist Tyler Detmer told Lifehacker when discussing so-called gluteal amnesia. Our muscles don’t need specific exercises to be able to contract correctly.

But that doesn’t mean activation exercises are useless; it's better to think of these moves as warmups with a specific purpose. As I’ve written before, warmup exercises occupy a spectrum from general (like jogging on a treadmill before squats) to specific (doing lighter squats before doing heavier squats).

The warmups that are sometimes called “activation” exercises fall in the middle of that continuum. They can help you to get ready for your heavier exercises of the day, since they’re fairly specific to the muscles involved. If the person who designed your workout is good at their job, they're a great way to prepare for your working exercises. Unfortunately, not all activations are a good use of your time. So here are some of the cases where activation exercises are useful—and some where they aren’t.

Activation exercises help you “feel” a muscle

If you’re going to do isolation exercises, it helps to know what it feels like to work the muscle properly. Using glutes as our example again, a side-lying leg raise can be done in ways that really use the glutes (when your leg is slightly behind you) or in ways that distribute some of the load to other muscles (like when your leg is slightly in front of you). When you’re doing those leg raises, you can pay attention to whether you’re feeling your glutes—but to do that, you have to know what it feels like to work your glutes.

That’s where activation exercises come in. You do a movement that’s hard to do without using your glutes, and you get to feel the sensations that go along with using that muscle. You might feel a burning sensation as the muscle begins to fatigue, or a tight, full feeling as the muscle fills with fluid (this is what bodybuilders call a “pump”). All of this helps to direct your attention to that muscle and what it feels like. When you do your next exercise, you’ll remember that feeling.

Activation exercises are extra workouts in disguise

The more work you give a muscle, the bigger and stronger it tends to get. We often call that amount of work “volume” and measure that as the number of sets: You’ll build more muscle if you do six sets of squats at each workout than if you only do three.

Activation exercises, if they’re challenging enough, can count toward those sets. Imagine we have two people in the gym: One does three sets each of banded walks and single-leg glute bridges (both often classed as activation exercises) before doing three sets of barbell hip thrusts. The other just does the hip thrusts. That first person is giving their glutes more work than the second, regardless of how the exercises are labeled.

To use activation exercises this way, though, they have to be challenging. If you do your activations heavy enough that you’re at or near the point of failure by the end of each set, they’re adding to your total volume. But if they’re light and easy and you’re just going through the motions, they aren’t really adding anything.

Activation exercises aren’t ever necessary, but they can be helpful

I’ve described a few ways that activation exercises can help in your workouts, but that doesn’t mean that they’re unskippable. You don’t need to feel a muscle working to know that you’re giving it a good workout. And if you’d like to get more volume for a body part, you can do those extra sets before, after, or during your main workout; they don’t have to happen during the “activation” stage at the beginning.

So if you haven’t been doing activations, that’s fine. Just make sure you’re warming up in some kind of appropriate way. (If you’re not sure, read through this guide I wrote to putting together an effective warmup. A warmup is about what gets you ready to work, and it should really be personalized to your body and your workout.)

But if your trainer has given you activation exercises, or if you’ve seen a few you’d like to try online, go ahead and do them. They’ll give you extra work for the target muscle, and you might find that they help you to feel ready by the time you begin the main sets of your workout.

https://lifehacker.com/what-are-activation-exercises?utm_medium=RSS

Posted by Jake Peterson

https://lifehacker.com/tech/apple-and-google-just-made-it-easier-to-switch-between-iphone-and-android?utm_medium=RSS

When it's time to buy a new car, you don't necessarily need to stick with the one you had before. You don't lose your cloud-based photos by switching from Toyota to Subaru, nor will your friends yell at you for ruining the group chat by buying a Kia. That's not the case with smartphones: When you buy an iPhone, it's tough to switch away from it. The same goes for Android: While it's easy enough to switch within the Android ecosystem, such as between Pixel or Galaxy, moving from Android to iPhone can also be a pain. Tech companies tend to make it tempting to stick with their platform, and introduce friction when you try to leave.

That, of course, is entirely business-based. Apple hasn't traditionally made it easy to move to Android, because, well, you might actually do it. It doesn't have to be this way, either. There's nothing inherent to smartphones that should make it so challenging to break out of any particular ecosystem. All it takes is some intentional design: If smartphones were made to be traded, you could migrate from one to another, without worrying about losing pictures, messages, or any other important data or processes.

It's now easier than ever to switch between iPhone and Android

As it happens, that intentional design is here. Apple and Google actually worked together to make it easier to transfer data between iPhone and Androids, which makes switching between the two platforms more seamless.

News first broke about this partnership back in December, and, at that time, Google released some of this progress as part of the latest Android Canary, the company's earliest pre-release software. Shortly after, Apple released the first beta for iOS 26.3, which featured the transfer tool. Now, iOS 26.3 is here, and with it, an easier way to switch from iPhone to a device made by Google, Samsung, or any other Android OEM.

How to use the new iPhone-to-Android option in iOS 26.3

The feature seems easy enough to use. Once you update your iPhone to iOS 26.3, you can head to Settings > General, then scroll down to "Transfer or Reset iPhone." Tap this option, then choose "Transfer to Android." Here, iOS will present a pop-up, telling you to place your iPhone next to your new Android device, where you can transfer photos, messages, and apps, among other data points. (That said, health data, devices paired with Bluetooth, and "protected items" cannot be transferred.)

You'll need to make sure both devices are running the latest updates, are connected to wifi, and have Bluetooth enabled. However, Apple also says your Android device should be in the "setup process," which means you likely won't be able to use this feature if your Android phone is already set up. From here, your iPhone will ask you to scan a QR code that should appear on your Android device. Alternatively, you'll be able to tap "Other Options" on your iPhone to enter the Session ID and Pairing Code that should appear on your Android.

Now, you can choose the data you want to transfer, including photos, contacts, calendars, call history, and messages. Tap "Continue" once complete, then choose to transfer your eSIM, if applicable. (You'll need to double-click the side of your iPhone when prompted to complete the eSIM transfer.) This works in the other direction too, though Apple says you do still need to use the Move to iOS app on Android—at least until Google sets up a similar protocol on its end.

More flexibility from Apple and Google is better for everyone

Apple and Google might not be motivated by charity, of course, as the EU has been cracking down on restrictive practices by tech companies in recent years. But while both companies may see this as a way to lose customers, it's also a way to gain them: Sure, some iPhone users may switch to Android if it's easier to do so, but some Android users may do the reverse for the same reasons.

More choice is good for everyone—even if it doesn't guarantee exponential growth to shareholders.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/apple-and-google-just-made-it-easier-to-switch-between-iphone-and-android?utm_medium=RSS

Posted by Emily Long

https://lifehacker.com/tech/apple-just-patched-its-first-zero-day-security-vulnerability-of-2026?utm_medium=RSS

It's once again time to update your Apple devices. The company just released a whole host of security patches, including a fix for an actively exploited zero-day affecting iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe. These updates arrived alongside the official release of iOS 26.3, which includes features like more seamless data transfer between iPhone and Android. Other security patches address bugs in Photos, VoiceOver, and Screenshots, to name a few.

iOS 26.3 patches a zero-day affecting dyld

According to Apple's latest security bulletin, the zero-day—tracked as CVE-2026-20700—is a memory corruption issue in dyld, Apple's "Dynamic Link Editor." The flaw could allow attackers with memory write capability to execute arbitrary code—or, in other words, run their own code on your device.

Apple says that the vulnerability may have been exploited in an "extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals" in earlier versions of iOS alongside CVE-2025-14174 and CVE-2025-43529. Those at greatest risk with this bug are likely high-profile users with access to sensitive data—users who might be inclined to use Apple's Lockdown Mode—but everyone should install the update to patch the issue.

The patch for this flaw is available for the following iOS and iPadOS devices, in addition to all Macs that run macOS Tahoe:

• iPhone 11 and later

• iPad Pro 12.9-inch 3rd generation and later

• iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later

• iPad Air 3rd generation and later

• iPad 8th generation and later

• iPad mini 5th generation and later

How to install the latest security update for iPhone

You should have automatic updates enabled to ensure you receive critical security patches ASAP, but you can confirm that you're on the latest OS version under Settings > General > Software Update. As a reminder, Apple won't message you urging you to click links, download attachments, or install apps related to security updates. Always go through your device settings to receive official fixes.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/apple-just-patched-its-first-zero-day-security-vulnerability-of-2026?utm_medium=RSS