Author: TechGeeks

If you use Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, you have probably noticed a floating Copilot button hovering over your documents. It has been there since December 2025, sitting at the bottom-right corner of your screen, and Microsoft is finally letting you move it.

Starting the last week of May 2026, an update will give users the option to send it back to the ribbon where it belongs.

Why did Microsoft add the floating Copilot button in the first place?

The short answer is numbers. Only around 3.3% of Microsoft 365 users actually pay for Copilot, and adoption has stayed well below what Microsoft expected. To push more people toward the feature, Microsoft rolled out what it calls the Copilot Dynamic Action Button, or DAB, and quietly expanded it to everyone by May 2026.

The idea was that making Copilot more visible would drive more clicks, which it did. However, it also drove a wave of complaints. Excel users were hit hardest, since the button floated directly over spreadsheet cells, blocking data with no easy way to dismiss it.

How to move the Copilot button off your screen

Once the update rolls out, you can right-click the Copilot icon and choose to move it back to the ribbon. Microsoft is not removing the dock option, so you will still be able to switch between the floating button, the docked version, and the ribbon placement depending on your preference.

Katie Kivett, partner group product manager at Microsoft, acknowledged the frustration, saying the company is making short-term adjustments while it figures out a better long-term approach.

This is not the first time Microsoft has quietly scaled back Copilot. Just a month ago, it began pulling Copilot buttons from various Windows 11 apps after similar pushback. It seems Microsoft is slowly learning that forcing AI into every corner of your workflow is not the same as making it useful.

Something extraordinary is unfolding across Namibia’s wildlife reserves. A satellite network named Icarus is now monitoring animal panic responses, potentially becoming the most potent anti‑poaching tool ever devised.

To grasp its importance, consider the poaching crisis. Over the past 15 years, more than 10,000 rhinos have been illegally killed in South Africa, and the threat shows no sign of abating. Rangers are outnumbered, protected areas are immense, and by the time a poacher’s presence is detected, it is often too late.

According to a recent BBC report, scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior have proposed an unconventional remedy. Instead of deploying additional rangers or cameras, they asked: why not let the animals do the watching?

How the technology operates

Whenever a danger moves through the bush, animals exhibit predictable panic behaviors. To accurately map these signatures, the researchers needed real‑world data, which meant staging simulated poaching events at Okambara, a private wildlife reserve in Namibia.

Armed hunters traversed the terrain, firing shots into the air while drones captured the exact reactions of each species. The goal was not to harm the animals but to record their fear response to an approaching poacher.

These panic patterns will train an algorithm that can issue instant alerts to rangers. As Martin Wikelski, a world‑leading movement ecologist heading the Max Planck Institute, explains, even the most unlikely creatures become valuable sensors. Giraffes, for example, rarely run; they simply stand, heads aligned, observing the threat from a safe distance. “That tells us where the poacher is,” Wikelski notes.

Central to the system are wildlife tracking tags that log GPS location, activity, heart rate, body temperature, and atmospheric pressure. The ambition is to have 100,000 animals tagged worldwide by 2030, each acting as a beacon in a global early‑warning network.

Can it really curb poaching?

In South Africa’s Kruger National Park, the system has already facilitated the rescue of 80 wild dogs caught in snares. However, real‑time poacher detection is still being refined. In November, Icarus launched its first satellite, with five more slated for deployment by 2027. Once the constellation is complete, it will stream live animal‑movement data from any corner of the globe, making it increasingly difficult for poachers to operate unseen.

I’ve been thinking about buying a new device, which is usually where reasonable plans go to die. I don’t want to spend big laptop money, partly because I know most of that laptop would sit on a desk pretending to be portable. I also don’t want to build my own desktop, because that becomes a hobby the moment you blink. Suddenly, I’m comparing cases, power supplies, cooling, GPUs, and other things I only wanted to think about for five minutes.

That’s how I ended up looking at mini PCs, possibly the least dramatic lane in personal computing. They’re small boxes that sit under a monitor and mind their business. Nobody looks at one and thinks, wow, the future finally arrived in matte black.

A boring box starts to make sense

Calling them boring almost feels unfair, because the plainness is doing actual work. A mini PC skips the built-in screen, battery, keyboard, webcam, hinge, and thin metal shell that help make laptops expensive. It also avoids the full-tower spiral, where every purchase quietly invites another opinion about airflow.

Instead, it assumes you already have, or can choose, the stuff around it. A monitor. A keyboard. A mouse. Maybe some speakers. In return, it avoids a lot of the drama that makes a basic tech purchase feel weirdly inflated.

The Mac mini has helped make that idea feel normal again. The M4 model is available with 16GB of memory, which makes the tiny desktop idea look less like a niche experiment and more like a sane default. The Windows side is messier. Beelink, Geekom, Minisforum, Asus NUC-style machines, and other compact PCs turn this whole lane into something half practical and half suspicious Amazon listing.

The compromise is the whole appeal

The catch, obviously, is that mini PCs aren’t magic. Some are underpowered. Some are noisy. Some are sold with gaming claims that deserve a raised eyebrow and possibly a small investigation. Integrated graphics can be useful, but a little box doesn’t become a gaming tower just because the product page discovered neon lighting.

Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine makes that line even blurrier. Valve describes it as PC gaming packed into a roughly 6-inch cube, built for a desk or under a TV, which is basically the mini PC argument wearing a console hoodie. It’s not just another tiny desktop, but it does point in the same direction: fewer parts to obsess over, less build-your-own theater, and a box that tries to make PC gaming feel less like a weekend chore.

That limitation is useful because it keeps the promise small. For browsing, office work, media, light editing, and casual gaming, there’s a wide gap between what many people need and what they keep getting nudged to want. Mini PCs live in that gap. They’re more interesting as the machine you buy when you’re tired of pretending every purchase needs to be aspirational.

Just enough computer feels refreshing

That’s why mini PCs feel oddly refreshing. Computer buying has become bloated in ways that are easy to miss. Premium laptops sell polish. Gaming desktops sell power fantasies. Creator machines suggest every spreadsheet might secretly become a short film.

Mini PCs are less flattering. They ask what you actually need from a machine once you strip away the lifestyle packaging. That question feels especially sharp when a recent Tom’s Hardware survey found that 60% of PC gamers had no plans to build a new PC in the next two years, with pricing pressure and component shortages dragging down enthusiasm.

A mini PC won’t make anyone gasp. It probably won’t become the centerpiece of a desk setup video. But as an unshowy little desktop that does normal things without turning the purchase into a personal identity, it starts to look strangely exciting. Maybe “just enough computer” is the upgrade I actually want.

Researchers at MIT Media Lab have found a genuinely jaw-dropping use for the LiDAR sensor sitting inside your iPhone and iPad Pro. It can detect and track objects that are completely outside the camera’s field of view. Yes, that means seeing around corners.

This kind of imaging, called non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging, is not a new concept. But past demonstrations relied on powerful, expensive lab-grade lasers with little application in the real world.

What makes this research exciting is that the MIT team pulled it off using the same low-power LiDAR sensor already embedded in our smartphones.

How does it work?

The team is using the LiDAR sensor to allow us to look beyond corners at objects that are not directly in our line of sight. The secret sauce is motion. As your device moves, the system simultaneously tracks the object’s shape, the object’s position, and the camera’s position over time.

The team calls this an aperture sampling model, and it essentially stitches together a series of noisy, imperfect readings into something meaningful. The outputs are not crisp photos of what is hiding around the corner. Instead, you get progressively richer inferences. The system can tell you something is there, how it is moving, and what shape it roughly has. Think of it like echolocation, but with light.

What can it actually do?

The team demonstrated four specific capabilities: tracking a single object, reconstructing its shape, tracking multiple objects at once, and something particularly interesting for robotics, which is camera self-localization using hidden landmarks.

That last one is a big deal. A robot or autonomous system that can orient itself using objects it cannot directly see has a massive advantage in the real world. It can also help improve the self-driving tech or delivery drones for things like accident avoidance.

Sadly, you cannot try this on your smartphone right now, “as that would require these companies to release their raw data, which they often don’t do,” said Siddharth Somasundaram, one of the researchers on this project. That said, the researchers have made their code publicly available, and the sensor hardware can be assembled for under $50.

I’ve been traveling more lately, which means I’ve also been doing the worst kind of pre-trip math: the kind where I convince myself I can pack less by bringing more accessories. Before one big trip, I started wondering what I could bring so I wouldn’t have to take my laptop. A tablet? A keyboard? Some tiny hub? Then, somehow, a portable monitor crossed my mind.

That’s a deranged little thought. A portable monitor is basically half a laptop without the half that makes it useful on its own. Still, the category keeps getting more tempting. You can now buy slim USB-C displays, touchscreen models, 4K travel screens, and magnetic setups built for remote work.

Why the idea makes sense

I’d love to call this nonsense, but the idea works. I use a second screen at home because it makes my day less miserable. One display holds the draft. The other holds notes, Slack, browser tabs, screenshots, or whatever else I’m pretending not to be distracted by. That setup genuinely makes work easier.

So when brands pitch travel screens as productivity tools, I get it. There are portable monitor mondels with USB-C, touchscreen support, and setups that work across laptops, tablets, and phones. Espresso’s 15.6-inch 4K Pro display even sells the idea as a serious remote-work companion, not some novelty screen for people allergic to packing light.

I can feel ads working on me faster than I’d like. My laptop is already the machine designed for portable work, yet the moment I imagine writing, editing, and juggling notes on the road, one screen starts to feel cramped.

Why the setup gets cursed

Things get less elegant once the gear hits an actual table. The monitor needs a sleeve so it doesn’t get scratched. It needs the one cable I’ll misplace at the worst possible time. It may need a stand, a magnetic mount, a hub, and enough table space to stop the whole thing from looking like a tiny product demo nobody asked to see.

That’s where the dream gets weird. A hotel desk or a cafe table becomes a workstation. An airport lounge becomes the place where I realize I’ve recreated the desk I was supposedly escaping.

I don’t want to dunk too hard on this, because the use case is real. Developers, video editors, spreadsheet people, and writers with too many tabs can all make a convincing argument for more screen space. I’m one of those people. I’m just not sure when “working anywhere” became “bring enough gear to make everywhere feel like work.”

Why I still want one

Portable monitors bother me because they make the creep feel normal. One more screen. One more cable. One more pouch in the bag. None of it sounds excessive on its own, which is how the tiny travel desk sneaks in.

The same thing is happening with the rest of the travel-work ecosystem. Laptop screen extenders, folding keyboards, wireless display adapters, compact docks, and desk-to-bag accessories all promise to make work easier. Then they quietly raise the standard for what “ready to work” looks like.

I still want one, begrudgingly, of course. I can already imagine using an extra display in a hotel room and feeling smug for about 12 minutes before realizing I’ve built a smaller, worse version of my home setup.

I hate portable monitors most when I’m honest about them. They’re ridiculous, a little depressing, and probably useful enough that I’d make room for one anyway.

A new set of leaked protective cases for the iPhone 18, iPhone 18 Pro, and iPhone 18 Pro Max has emerged, showing almost the same picture as earlier leaks. This year’s iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max appear to retain the same unibody aluminum chassis with a large camera island, which aligns with Apple’s habit of using a design for at least two generations.\n\nSo what’s different?\nThe case photos, obtained via MajinBuofficia, indicate that the iPhone 18 Pro lineup will be marginally thicker than its predecessor. While MacBook Pros are getting slimmer, the Pro iPhones seem to be gaining a bit of bulk.\n\nThe likely reason is the rumored 48MP variable‑aperture camera system that Apple is reportedly testing for the Pro models. Such hardware needs extra space, resulting in a thicker body. It also means last year’s cases won’t fit, nudging users toward new accessories.\n\nWe’ve heard similar speculation before; earlier leaks of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max already suggested this, and the fresh case images simply reinforce those expectations.\n\nWhy is there an iPhone 18 case in the mix?\nThe leaked set also includes a case for the standard iPhone 18, which is puzzling because the base model isn’t expected to arrive until spring 2027 under Apple’s rumored staggered launch plan. Whether Apple has altered its schedule or the leak is mistaken remains unclear. No official renders or design sketches for the iPhone 18 have surfaced yet, so treat this part with caution.\n\nFor the Pro models, besides the new cameras and a slightly larger waistline, we can anticipate a brand‑new A20 Pro chip built on a 2nm process, additional color choices, improved satellite connectivity, a smaller Dynamic Island, and more.\n\nThese upgrades may not be compelling enough for a yearly upgrade, but Apple is known for surprises, so we’ll have to wait until September before drawing conclusions.

Google is working on a whole bunch of smart glasses. The first one running on the Android XR platform developed by Samsung is expected to arrive close to July. The slate, it seems, will get crowded pretty soon. Earlier today at the I/O 2026 Developers Conference, Google also showed off a new class of audio glasses that have been designed in partnership with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster.

But the most interesting of the bunch is the Xreal Project Aura smart glasses, which support full hand gesture support as well as mixed reality view for Android apps available through the Play Store. These smart glasses were first showcased in December 2025, but Xreal confirmed earlier today that the Project Aura smart glasses will hit the shelves in 2026. 

The Project AURA smart glasses by Xreal come equipped with a built-in display that offers a 70° field of view, which the company claims is the largest FOV that has ever been offered on a pair of AR glasses. Thanks to the built-in display, you can overlay digital content in your sight while still having a clear view of the world around you. The company notes that you can run multiple app windows and get the full Android app experience without any hacks.

This is the full-blown Android experience that we are talking about. So far, the Xreal smart glasses that have been available to customers have run a custom version of Xreal’s in-house software that is launched through an app. The only way you could access Android on the Xreal smart glasses is by mirroring them through your phone or by connecting them to a PC in order to run Windows or macOS.

They have supported multi-windows, offering a massive digital canvas for you to run different apps side by side. These virtual windows can be accessed either affixed in the air, or by making them track your head movements. With the Project Aura, Xreal is getting rid of the software limitations by making these smart glasses run the native Android XR experience, with plenty of Gemini experiences in tow. So far, the demo videos released by the company have shown these glasses connecting to a smartphone-shaped puck through a cable.

Unlike the audio glasses that Google showed off earlier today, these glasses won’t be able to run the full Android XR experience without a wired connection due to the processing limitations. Talking about processing, Qualcomm will supply the chip for the Xreal Project Aura smart glasses, promising a dual-chip design which includes a Snapdragon silicon as well as a custom X1S processor. 

Google is expanding how users discover apps and games on Google Play, with a series of new features announced at I/O 2026 that lean heavily on AI and short-form video.

Discovery beyond the store

The biggest shift is Google Play’s integration with the Gemini app. In the coming weeks, Google will enable app discovery in the Gemini app on Android and the web, connecting apps and games to Gemini users.

Later this year, Gemini will also start surfacing over 450,000 movies and TV shows, as well as where to stream live sports, and deep-link users directly into app content. The move reflects how Google is positioning Gemini as a discovery layer for apps, games, and other content on Google Play.

New ways to browse on Play

On the search side, Google is introducing Ask Play, a conversational AI overlay for finding apps. The company says Ask Play understands the full context of a user’s question and adapts to follow-ups to recommend the right app. A companion feature called Ask Play highlights will give users a high-level summary of complex searches directly on the search results page.

Google is also updating its Play Games Sidekick overlay with new social features, including the ability for players to see which friends are playing the same game and track their achievements, with a global rollout planned for this summer.

The Play updates are part of a broader push by Google to extend the store’s reach beyond its own surface, as AI assistants increasingly become where users start their searches for new apps, games, and content.

Google just walked into the video creation space, flipped the table, and handed everyone a powerful content creation tool, with no former camera or editing experience required. 

Announced at Google I/O 2026, Gemini Omni is the company’s most ambitious AI model yet. It doesn’t just generate video from text, but from anything like sketches, voice notes, shaky phone footage, a picture of your dog, and turns it into a polished, coherent video. 

Google’s own tagline? “Create anything from any input.” Bold, and for once, not entirely hollow.

So what actually makes Omni different from other AI video generators?

Until now, AI video generators felt mostly fragmented. Some excelled at visuals but struggled with audio, while others can’t keep characters or environments consistent between edits. That is the gap that Gemini Omni promises to bridge with continuity and conversation. 

Since the tool allows you to edit or create videos with voice-based inputs sent to Gemini, it always remembers the previous instructions, which, in practice, should keep the characters and story consistent across scenes. 

It’s like having a conversation with your video editor and getting videos edited with much more creative liberty. Omni can also adjust physics-aware details like lighting, motion, and environment, without the entire footage falling apart. It even understands gravity and fluid dynamics. 

Who actually gets access, and what’s the catch?

Gemini Omni Flash is rolling out right now. YouTube Shorts users get it completely free, but how it actually works in practice is something that I’m yet to find out. For the Gemini app and Google Flow, you’ll need an AI Plus, Pro, or Ultra subscription, starting at $7.99 per month. Enterprise API access arrives in the coming weeks. 

Every video created via Omni Flash gets SynthID watermarked invisibly. Whether that’s enough to stop misuse is a separate, much longer conversation. For now, Google has handed creators a genuinely powerful tool, and I have a feeling that the content landscape is about to get very loud. 

Google has been playing catch-up in generative video for two years. Veo was capable but clunky, a text-to-video tool in a world that had moved on to full creative pipelines. Gemini Omni is the course correction: a unified model that handles the whole workflow. 

Google is making a bigger play for the living room, and this time, it is not just about what you watch — it is also about how you interact with your TV. At Google I/O 2026, the company revealed a fresh batch of updates for Google TV and Android TV developers, all centered around one idea: TVs are no longer passive screens sitting in the corner of your house. With more than 300 million monthly active devices across Google TV and Android TV, Google clearly sees the television as its next major AI battleground. And Gemini is now at the center of that strategy.

The company says Gemini is already helping users discover content through natural voice interactions. But Google now wants the experience to feel more dynamic and conversational, almost like searching the web — except on your couch. Instead of only surfacing static results, Gemini on Google TV can now respond with a combination of visuals, videos, and text snippets to answer queries. So if someone asks for a thriller with a strong female lead or a documentary about space exploration, Gemini pulls contextual recommendations directly from streaming apps and their metadata.

For streaming platforms, that is a massive shift. Discovery on TVs has historically been messy, fragmented, and heavily dependent on whichever app you opened first. Google seems to be positioning Gemini as the layer that sits above all of that, acting as an intelligent content guide rather than a basic search tool.

Your TV remote is evolving

Interestingly, Google’s bigger announcement may not actually be Gemini itself. It is the remote control. The company says future Google TV devices will increasingly support “pointer remotes,” which bring motion and cursor-based navigation to televisions. Think of it as a halfway point between a traditional TV remote and a computer mouse. That might sound minor, but it changes how TV apps need to work.

Most TV interfaces today are designed around rigid D-pad navigation — up, down, left, right, select. Pointer controls introduce hovering, free-form movement, touchpad scrolling, and cursor clicks. Suddenly, TV apps have to behave more like desktop or tablet interfaces. Google is now asking developers to start preparing their apps for this transition. That includes adding hover states to buttons and UI elements, supporting smoother scrolling interactions, and ensuring apps can properly respond to cursor-based clicks instead of only directional focus controls.

And honestly, this feels overdue. TV interfaces have remained surprisingly clunky for years, especially compared to how fluid smartphones and tablets have become. Streaming apps often feel slow, restrictive, and awkward to navigate when you are browsing massive content libraries. Pointer-based interaction could make that experience significantly faster — assuming developers properly optimize their apps.

Google is pushing developers to prepare now

To help developers adapt, Google says apps built with Jetpack Compose already have an easier path forward because many modern interaction models are supported natively. The company is also encouraging developers to test these new interactions today using standard Bluetooth or wired mice connected to Google TV devices. That way, they can better understand how hover effects, scrolling behavior, and cursor inputs work on large-screen interfaces. Google notes, however, that pointer remotes are naturally less precise than an actual mouse because users are typically sitting several feet away from the television and making rough gestures from the couch. To compensate, developers are being advised to create larger interactive targets and more forgiving UI layouts.

Finally, developers can now officially declare pointer remote support on Google Play, making compatible TV apps easier for users with newer remotes to discover. All of this paints a fairly clear picture of where Google TV is heading next. TVs are slowly turning into more active, AI-driven computing platforms rather than simple streaming boxes. Gemini handles discovery, pointer remotes modernize navigation, and developers are being nudged to rethink the decade-old TV app experience altogether. Whether users actually embrace waving remotes around their living rooms is another question entirely. But Google clearly believes the future of TV interaction needs to feel smarter, faster, and a lot less dependent on endlessly clicking directional buttons.