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Received — 10 October 2026 ⏭ Lifehacker

Four New Features Coming to Your iPhone in iOS 27.2 (and One That Will Be Missing)

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By: Jake Peterson
14 October 2026 at 13:30

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If you're like most people, you might still be getting used to iOS 27 on your iPhone. Perhaps you haven't even installed it yet, or maybe you're confused about why iOS 27.0.1 exists. (The short answer: The iPhone 18 Pro is a bit glitchy.) But there's a new iPhone update on the horizon that adds even more new features and changes to the mix: iOS 27.2. While this update isn't nearly as big of an overhaul as iOS 27 itself, it's still impactful—even if Apple already removed its best new feature. Here's what's new.

The update is currently in testing, so if you want to try it out early, you can enroll your iPhone in Apple's beta and check these features out today. Just know that all betas come with some level of risk, so if you decide to go down this path, create a proper backup of all important data before installing the beta.

iOS 27.2 expands "Call Context"

Call Context is an excellent use of Apple Intelligence. When you're on a phone call, Apple Intelligence checks if the phone number you're calling is related to a business that you have relevant information for elsewhere on your device. If so, it fetches that information for you and displays it on the call screen. For example, if you're talking with your airline's customer service line, Call Context can proactively display your flight number based on the itinerary it finds in your email.

With iOS 27.2, Call Context now includes anniversary alerts. If you're on a phone call with someone you have a saved anniversary for, that alert will appear on-screen. That way, you can get a small reminder if you call a friend on their birthday, but you happened to forget the occasion. (Thank you, technology, for saving some of us from our thoughtlessness, even if you are enabling bad habits.)

FaceTime is getting ASL support

As part of a previous announcement of accessibility features, Apple revealed it was adding a new API to FaceTime that supports adding a human interpreter to video calls. This feature did not make it to iOS 27, but it appears to be rolling out in Apple's next update, making video calls more accessible going forward.

Apple TV profiles are coming to iPhone and iPad

If you have an Apple TV, you likely know you can set up profiles, so individual users can personalize the experience when watching shows and movies. As MacRumors highlights, these profiles are now coming to the Apple TV app in iOS and iPadOS 27.2. That way, multiple users can personalize the Apple TV experience on a single device: If your family shares an iPad, for example, each user can switch to their Apple TV profile when it's their turn to watch. Now, if we could only get system-level profiles too, Apple.

Siri AI is coming in more languages

At launch, Siri AI is only available in English. But with iOS 27.2, Apple is expanding that list. Once you update to the latest version, you'll be able to use Siri AI in French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.

iOS 27.2 introduces small UI changes

Apple isn't thrilled with how some of its apps look in iOS 27, apparently. MacRumors also spotted that in the Music app, Apple removed some of the red accents and turned certain buttons from red to black—including the Play and Shuffle buttons, and the icons in the Library sections. In subsequent betas, Apple introduced a subtle new Apple Music icon, with a black music note against a white background, and changed the "active tab" color from red to blue.

In the Clock app, "AM" and "PM" are now smaller than the time when setting alarms. In Podcasts, "Up Next" is now "New Episodes," perhaps adding a touch more clarity. Finally, Apple changed "App Access" in Siri to "Excluded Apps," and now allows you to exclude multiple apps from Siri at once.

Apple was testing a new Health app with iOS 27.2

With the first iOS 27.2 betas, Apple totally overhauled the Health app. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem destined for release just yet. With iOS 27.2 beta 4, Apple removed the new version of the Health app, reverting it to the one you'll find in iOS 27. As such, when I first published this article, there were five new features coming to iOS 27.2. Now, there are four.

When Apple does roll out the new Health app, fitness users will likely welcome many of these new features. With the new Health app, you'll be able to see your Fitness rings within the Health app, rather than the Fitness app; there's a new "Longevity" tab that gives you insights into key aspects of your long-term health, including mental wellbeing, nutrition, daily movement, heart health, metabolic health, sleep, and hearing health. There are also new assessments you can take to analyze your current overall health and where you can improve, including a new "Health Age" feature. You can even allow your iPhone's camera to watch you exercise in order to rate your fitness in categories like flexibility, balance, VO2max, and strength.

This is by far the Health app's biggest revamp in years, and I'm looking forward to exploring the new features when Apple eventually releases it, hopefully in iOS 27.3. For more on what's new with this upgraded Health app, check out Lifehacker senior health editor Beth Skwarecki's guide here. (Beth is particularly fond of the new step count that appears at the top of both the Health and Fitness apps.)

health app metrics
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

There's Now a Better Way to Turn Off AI 'Insights' in the Google Health App

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By: Beth Skwarecki
9 October 2026 at 14:00

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Ever since the Fitbit app became the Google Health app, the app’s AI features became impossible to avoid for Premium users—or at least it may seem that way. There are two ways to avoid the long-winded, sometimes judgy insights that pop up on your screen multiple times a day. I'll show you both: a way to turn off the AI entirely, and a way to get those insights to go away without turning off all the AI-enabled features.  

Why you may want to turn off the Google Health Coach

The AI-based Health Coach is the centerpiece of the Google Health app, at least if you have a premium subscription. You may have accepted a three-month free trial of Google Health Premium when you connected a new device, or you may pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra, which includes the Health Coach. 

When the Coach is enabled, it updates the main screen of the app with a few paragraphs of text several times a day. (You’ll also get a notification with each of these updates). The Coach will tell you how well you slept, congratulate you on a hard workout, or suggest workouts for the day given how recovered you seem to be. 

But, as I wrote in my Fitbit Air review, the Coach hallucinates pretty often, misreporting your workout data or misunderstanding what you’ve told it are your goals. One user, returning to their normal routine after surgery, posted to Reddit that the Coach keeps trying to talk them out of doing workouts. They called it a “Demotivation Coach.” Others have pointed out that the Coach doesn’t seem to be reading its own data correctly. On a more personal note, the Coach uses a tone that I find insufferable: arrogant and excessively positive, except when it’s being unnecessarily negative. I’d prefer neutral, factual feedback or none at all.

To be fair to Google, the team has been hard at work on the Coach, and I've noticed its insights become a little more readable and a little less random since the feature first launched. But I'm still not always in the mood to see the Coach's chipper little pep talks.

How to turn off the Coach "insights" without losing other AI features

Screenshots of the app without Insights
Left: the Today screen with no insights. Right: asking the Coach for an insight on-demand still works. Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Those unprompted pep talks are what the Google Health app calls "insights." Google quietly added a setting to turn them off in the August 2026 feature update. Tap on your profile picture, then Google Health Settings, then Coaching, and select No Coach Insights.

Once I turned off the feature, the insights stopped, as promised. But if I miss them, I can still tap Ask Coach in the bottom right corner of the screen, and ask the Coach how my day is going. All other features still work, including the AI-powered ones, like logging nutrition and workouts from the chat interface.

How to turn off the Google Health Coach entirely

Screenshots for turning off Google Health Coach (see written instructions)
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

If you're sick of the entire Google Health Coach, you can disable it: The same August update that gave us the "no insights" switch also made the Health Coach easier to turn off. To reach it, tap on your profile picture, then Google Health Settings, then Coaching. Then you can tap Turn off Google Health Coach. As the next screen explains, "your app will stop providing tailored guidance like fitness plans, recommendations, and proactive summaries of your sleep, fitness, and health trends. You also won't be able to ask questions or log your progress by chatting with the coach. You can turn this back on anytime."

Confirm your decision, and the AI will be gone. When you return to the Google Health app, you’ll still see the paragraphs of text that the Health Coach previously wrote, but you won’t get any new ones. There will be a card inviting you to re-enable the Health Coach, but you can tap “not now.” You can re-enable the Coach at any time by hitting the “Ask Coach” button in the corner (it does not go away) and following the prompts to turn it back on. 

I Tried the At-Home Flu Vaccine, and It Was Great

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
9 October 2026 at 13:30

If I ever skip my flu shot, or fail to get one for my kids, it's because I didn't find time to get to the pharmacy during flu shot season. But that changed with FluMist at Home, a mail order flu vaccine (covered by insurance!) that I've used two years running. The vaccine comes in the form of a nasal spray, so you don't have to inject anything.

The at-home version of the vaccine was approved in 2024, and became available for the first time in 2025. I used it then, and the process was so painless I did it again this year. I placed an order online, and one day a refrigerated box of vaccines showed up at my doorstep, one for each member of the family. We administered them in minutes, and could check "get flu shot" off our to-do lists.

How to get the at-home flu vaccine

The nasal spray vaccine, called FluMist, still needs to be prescribed by a medical provider. But since nearly everyone aged 2 through 49 is eligible, FluMist’s maker (AstraZeneca) has a created a telehealth website that bundles the provider's approval with an order to an online pharmacy. The process takes about five minutes on average, the company says, and I found that to be accurate.

The first time I ordered, last year, I had already gotten a flu shot, so I ordered just for my kids. The website allowed me to add multiple people to the same order, so I filled out the questionnaire for each child, giving their names, ages, allergies, and so on.

The website then reached into some big data cloud out there and told me it already knew their insurance information (existentially frightening, yet convenient!) and presented me with my bill: an $8.99 fee, which included $2.50 for physician evaluation and $6.49 for shipping and processing. Insurance covers the cost of the vaccine itself.

This year was similar, except that I ordered the vaccine for five people in total, one of whom had a different insurance plan than the rest. It took some extra time to manually enter that person's info, but otherwise the process was the same. The $8.99 fee only covers up to four vaccines, so in total I had to pay $17.98 for all five.

Who can use the at-home flu vaccine? 

The at-home vaccine is the same as regular FluMist, which is approved for ages 2 through 49. That means babies and older adults will still need to visit a provider for the regular, injectable flu vaccine. Children can get flu shots starting at the age of six months.

FluMist uses a live, weakened virus. It can't give you the actual flu, but it can cause some respiratory symptoms in people with weakened immune systems. So it's not recommended for people who are pregnant, have certain medical conditions, or are immunocompromised or have close contact with an immunocompromised person. If that's you, talk to a provider about your best options. You may be advised to get the regular injectable type, which doesn't include any live virus.

What happens when the at-home flu vaccine arrives

When I placed the first order, I had to choose a delivery date (to be sure I'd be home and ready to receive it). This year, there was no option to choose the date, but perhaps that's because I ordered it in mid-September, a few weeks before it actually shipped. Each time the box arrived via FedEx, with multiple texts ahead of time letting me know it was on its way. The vaccine needs to stay at refrigerator temperature, so you don't want it sitting out on your porch all weekend. I thought I would have to refrigerate it immediately—the instructions say as much—but it can actually be unrefrigerated for up to 12 hours before administration.

So the box arrives, insulated and with the vaccine packages surrounded by cold packs. There is a "TiveTag" sticker on the interior box, so when I received my first order I followed the instructions to download the TiveTag app from a QR code on the package. (This year, I had the app installed already.) It installed quickly, and then I just had to hold the top of my phone up to the RFID sticker on the box while my daughter said "now kith." I felt a buzz and a green checkmark appeared, telling me that the box had stayed at an appropriate temperature the whole time. We were good to go.

How to give yourself the at-home flu vaccine

Giving the vaccine to yourself or a child takes seconds, with no special preparation. All you have to do is remove the rubber cap, squirt the vaccine into one nostril, then take off the little spacer around the plunger and squirt into the second nostril. (The spacer makes sure that you get half the vaccine into each nostril.)

I hate having things in my nose, but this wasn't bad even for me. It isn't much liquid, and you don't have to inhale or do anything special. Just squirt and you're done. If you've gotten a FluMist at a pharmacy, it's the same idea.

Adults can administer it to themselves, and children will need an adult to do it for them. Instructions are, of course, provided. After I gave it to my kids, I clicked a link in a text message to "report vaccination," which supposedly updates their health records in, again, some big ol' data cloud. That cloud didn't convey the message to their pediatrician, though, so I just made sure to tell them at the next appointment.

After you administer the vaccine, there is a prepaid envelope you can use to return the sprayers for disposal. The paper packages and inserts obviously could be recycled. That left me with a cardboard box from each shipment, its insulated foam liner, and six liquid cold packs that the FluMist site says are filled with "non-toxic water" and can be either poured out and recycled, or reused as ice packs if I'd like.

I Tested Google’s New AI Image Detector, and It’s Difficult (but Not Impossible) to Trick

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By: David Nield
9 October 2026 at 13:00

An abundance of AI imagery is something we all have to live with these days—from school posters to restaurant menus—and while there are still certain tells that indicate something was made with AI, they're not always present. In a lot of cases, it can be almost impossible to distinguish an AI image from a real one.

This is a problem for all kinds of reasons, and, as such, the AI companies are attempting to address it. Images produced by Gemini and ChatGPT come with an invisible watermark called SynthID. That way, AI-generated images don't need visible branding in order to identify their origins. Of course, you need access to a detector to know whether this watermark is present. As it happens, Google just launched a standalone SynthID checker tool on the web, free for anyone to use. I gave "SynthID Detector" a shot, and while it largely works as expected, it isn't perfect.

How Google's SynthID Detector works

SynthID Detector
SynthID doesn't promise to always detect AI. Credit: Lifehacker

For a while now, Gemini has let you upload an image and ask if it is AI-generated. With the new online portal, it's even easier to check—though you do still need to sign in with your Google account. Once in, you can check a wide variety of files. This checker supports JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, WEBP, AVIF, HEIC, HEIF, TIFF, TIF, and GIF image formats; MP4, MOV, and WEBM for videos, and WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, and M4A for audio. As long as a file was made by a SynthID-supporting AI, it should have a watermark. (The SynthID watermark is a standard supported by Nvidia, OpenAI, Kakao, and Google, though OpenAI has its own detection tool.)

Google doesn't say exactly how SynthID works, presumably to make it more difficult to get around, but does confirm the watermark is "robust against common transformations." It also says the watermark is "woven into the content itself", which means pixels for images and video, and frequency components for audio. The company also admits its detection tool isn't infallible. What it calls "heavy modifications" can degrade the watermark sign, as can multiple "transformations" applied to the same image. The recommendation is to use files that are as high quality as possible, so it seems to me that more data makes detection more reliable (similar to AI text detectors).

Google also says the SynthID watermarks are "imperceptible" to humans, so you don't need to look or listen out for them—they're only revealed by an AI detector tool like this. If you're generating images, video, or audio with AI, the watermarking shouldn't impact the quality of the end result in any way.

Putting SynthID Detector to the test

I started with some easy tests. The detector correctly spotted that images created in Gemini and ChatGPT, and downloaded directly to disk, were indeed fake. It only took a few seconds to confirm, and it also identified the AI tool that had been used to make them.

It also correctly marked one of my own photos as AI-free, although it did hedge its answer a little, saying that it was "unlikely" that the media was made with AI. All the detector could say with confidence was that there was no SynthID watermark, showing that it's this watermark in particular that it's checking for. It's not looking for any other signs of AI.

SynthID Detector
In the majority of tests, the detector worked flawlessly. Credit: Lifehacker

I then tried screengrabs of the same AI images, and the detector correctly flagged that they came from Google and Anthropic's AI tools. This shows there's something buried deep in the pixels, rather than in the file metadata itself, revealing the SynthID watermark. You can't just copy and paste to get around it. Applying an oil painting filter in Photoshop to an AI image didn't trip up the detector, nor did adding a slight blur. Adjusting color, contrast, and tone made no difference, and the detector still spotted SynthID when I cropped and combined two different AI images: one from Gemini, one from ChatGPT.

Eventually, I did beat the detector. Once, when I heavily pixelated an AI image—at which point I rather suspect my disinformation campaign would be pretty ineffective anyway—and once when I created a composite image, which was 75% real, 25% AI-generated. With less AI to work with, the detector can falter.

SynthID Detector
Only the man in the foreground in this photo is AI—but the detector flagged it as fake. Credit: Lifehacker

On the back of that result, I used ChatGPT to add an extra person into an otherwise genuine group photo, though this time the tool detected SynthID—even though less of the overall image was AI. There might be some work to do in images that are only partly AI, which is understandable as the detector has less data to work with.

There is a quota limit here, which seems to be around 10 files per day—but 10 each for images, videos, and audio files. Once you've hit your limit, you need to wait 24 hours to try again. As far as I could tell, the SynthID Detector is exactly what Google says it is: a useful check to have, but far from a guarantee one way or the other.

10 Shows Like 'Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story' You Should Watch Next

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By: Ross Johnson
9 October 2026 at 12:30

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The Ian Brennan/Ryan Murphy true crime anthology series Monster is back with its first trip into the more distant past, taking us back to 1892 to examine one of the most famous and discussed murderers in American history: Lizzie Borden, a woman said to have killed her father and stepmother with an axe. Borden was never convicted; controversy and conspiracy theories linger; and though it happened more than a century ago, the crime was recent enough that we can pore over police files and crime-scene photos and argue over the facts, which makes for thrilling dramatic television.

After all, while a story about an evil killer is one thing, one following an ambiguous, possibly sympathetic killer? That's the stuff of truly juicy true crime. If you're looking for more in the same violent vein, here are 10 shows to stream next.

Candy (2022)

The real-life Candy Montgomery has been portrayed multiple times—by Barbara Hershey in a 1990 CBS movie, by Jessica Biel in this Hulu miniseries, and, more recently, by Elizabeth Olsen in HBO Max's Love & Death. Like Lizzie Borden, Candy is a woman killer (maybe?) who we can't seem to get enough of. Jessica Biel is so good here, though, that this one earns extra points. In an impeccably reproduced 1980, Candy was accused of murdering her neighbor, Betty Gore (Melanie Lynskey), following the woman's affair with Candy's husband, Allan (Pablo Schreiber). And with an axe, no less. Was it cold-blooded murder, or self-defense? Stream Candy on Hulu.

The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015)

This TV movie could be described as speculative—it plays a bit like high-end Lizzie Borden fan fiction (or perhaps a fever dream), with a phenomenal cast led by Christina Ricci. Set after Lizzie Borden's acquittal for crimes that, the movie makes clear, she absolutely did commit, we find Lizzie and Emma (Clea DuVall) trying to get on with their lives, even as a Pinkerton agent (Cole Hauser) dogs their every move. A trip to New York City finds Lizzie in a love triangle involving a playwright and a sex worker, a woman whose pimp tries to extort our young murderer. That turns out to be every bit as bad an idea as you might expect. Stream The Lizzie Borden Chronicles on Prime Video.

The Staircase (2022)

Inspired by a documentary of the same name, The Staircase sidesteps true crime tropes by taking a meta approach to its twisty story. Colin Firth stars as real-life crime novelist Michael Peterson alongside Toni Collette as his wife and, perhaps, his victim, Kathleen, who dies following a fall down a flight of stairs. Peterson was convicted of murder, a charge later reduced to voluntary manslaughter, but there are a lot of lingering questions about the case, and the drama focuses on many of the tangential players—lawyers, family members, and the French film crew that turns up to document everything—offering a glimpse of what life might be like inside of such a whirlwind. Stream The Staircase on HBO Max.

The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox (2025)

In 2007, 19-year-old American student Amanda Knox was studying in Perugia, Italy, only to find herself arrested and accused of the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher. The prosecution did a remarkable job at smearing Knox's name in the Italian press, such that she was eventually convicted of the crime despite an almost total lack of evidence, and the fact that the actual killer had already been tried and convicted. Grace Van Patten is great in the lead, and the series does a phenomenal job of dramatizing the various missteps and fabrications that lead to a conviction. A bit of fascinating behind-the-scenes with this one: While the family of Meredith Kercher did not participate, Knox herself executive produced alongside Monica Lewinsky, another person who knows what it is to be tried in the media. Stream The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox on Hulu.

The Act (2019)

As its subject has become something of a social media influencer and a reality star in the years since, the story of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard has become more complex, not less, since this show's 2019 debut. At the time, though, the series earned rave reviews for its exploration of the childhood of Gypsy-Rose (Joey King), who ultimately conspired in the murder of her mother, Dee Dee (Patricia Arquette), after years of apparent psychological abuse. Stream The Act on Hulu.

Why Women Kill (2019 – 2021)

Marc Cherry (Desperate Housewives) created this dark comedy series with a title that makes the premise entirely clear: it’s the story of women (Ginnifer Goodwin, Lucy Liu, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and Allison Tolman) with reasons to kill. The first season took place in three time periods (the '60s, the '80s, and the present) with three main characters linked by a single home, each caught in a web of lies and infidelity that pushes them to the brink of murder, or beyond. The stronger second season sticks to 1949 Los Angeles. It’s a gorgeously photographed and deliciously soapy series—not true crime per se, though it does explore the big themes of the Lizzie Borden story: What drives a seemingly contented woman to contemplate murder, and how much can we blame her? Stream Why Women Kill on Paramount+.

The Girl from Plainville (2022)

Another true crime story that's been dramatized multiple times, The Girl from Plainville doesn't redeem its murderer, but does add nuance to our understanding in the manner of the best true crime dramas. Elle Fanning is Michelle Carter, who undertook an extended campaign to encourage her emotionally fragile boyfriend, Conrad (Colton Ryan), toward a death by suicide, mostly via text messages. Elle Fanning is phenomenal, as is Chloë Sevigny (who, incidentally, played Lizzie Borden back in 2018) as Conrad's grief-stricken mother. Stream The Girl from Plainville on Hulu.

A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story (2025)

Set in the 1950s, the miniseries dramatizes the story of nightclub performer Ruth Ellis, the last woman to have been executed in the United Kingdom (in the U.S., we're clearly far less chivalrous). Lucy Boynton is phenomenal in the lead role as Ruth, a tough and sometimes callous woman who found herself seeking escape from an abusive relationship with an emotionally manipulative lover. When she shot David Blakely dead, there was really no chance whatsoever that the British press or legal system were going to have any pity on her, despite the best efforts of her attorney, John Bickford (Toby Jones). This series might have impacted her conditional pardon in 2026, a reprieve that came around 70 years too late for Ruth. Stream A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story on Britbox.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (2018)

Another Ryan Murphy true crime epic (for better and worse, given the creator's penchant for the operatic), this one stars Darren Criss as sociopath and serial killer Andrew Cunanan, whose last victim was legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez). With an emphasis on the sun-soaked sex and party life of Miami Beach in the 1990s, Murphy here refined his signature style: polish, heightened drama, and a focus on the killer that borders on the sympathetic. Stream The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (Season Two) on Hulu.

Alias Grace (2017)

The other big Margaret Atwood novel adaptation (existing in the shadow of the buzzier Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments), this miniseries is every bit as biting and well-crafted. It’s based on the true story of a poor Irish immigrant found guilty of a double homicide in 1843 under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and following a life of trauma. Years later, a psychiatrist comes to examine her and explores her past and the circumstances that might (just might) have led a disenfranchised and powerless girl to kill. As with the best explorations of Lizzie Borden, the show understands that knowing whether or not she did it isn't as interesting as understanding what might have gotten her to that point. Stream Alias Grace on Netflix.

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