Technologies

Snapchat year in review: How to see and send your look back at 2021

See highlights like early mornings, late nights and pictures with pets.

It’s mid-December, and Snapchat has joined Facebook, Instagram and Spotify in launching its year in review feature.

A Look Back at 2021 will round up a random assortment of your snaps from the year across categories like pets, water, filters and staying in.

Here’s how to see, send and save your 2021 Snapchat highlights

1. Open the Snapchat app to the camera screen.

2. Click the photo icon, which is to the left of the circle you press to take a snap (the icon you would normally click to see your snaps from this day last year).

3. You’ll see a yellow tile labeled A Look Back at 2021 appear at the top of your feed.

4. Click that and watch through the highlights chosen by Snapchat.

5. You can then select certain highlights to send to individual people or post to your story, you can edit the 2021 highlights and you can save the entire highlight reel to your phone.

Snapchat has included sections like snaps you took during 2021 in the early mornings, late nights, while staying at home, with pets, around water, with filters and with captions that included the laughing emoji or a smiling face.

For more year enders, check out how to create your Instagram 2021 Playback stories highlight, how to see your Facebook year in review, how to get your Spotify Wrapped on Apple Music, YouTube Music or Tidal and how to see your Reddit year in review.

Technologies

AT&T Says It’s Pumping $250 Billion Into New Infrastructure Improvements

Technologies

Apple’s New Smart Home Display Delayed Until Fall Over Siri Issues

It has been nearly a year and a half since the company announced the AI-powered product.

Your home could get smarter with Apple’s Siri, but it will have to wait a few more months. Bloomberg reported the iPad-shaped AI home hub won’t be ready until September, several months after the company was hoping to launch it this spring. Apple engineers first need to complete work on a new and improved Siri assistant for the home device, code-named J490, according to Bloomberg.

Apple was hoping to release J490 this month, along with a slew of other new devices, including the iPhone 17e, MacBook Neo, MacBook Air M5, new Pro models, and iPad Air M4. Apple first teased the smart home display in November 2024.

A representative for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Siri is Apple’s virtual assistant that uses voice recognition and AI to fulfill a variety of tasks and commands, along with intriguing uses. You might use Siri to find your iPhone — «Hey Siri, where are you?» — or to hear the weather forecast — «Siri, what will the weather be today?» Siri is available on iPhones, MacBooks and iPads. It was launched in 2011 as a feature of the iPhone 4S.

As CNET reported last month, Apple engineers have struggled to push the upgraded Siri assistant out the door. It isn’t fast enough, gets confused by complex commands and doesn’t interact well with other Apple AI models. The company is also wrestling with how much personal data to access to inform the AI, and the new Siri is not yet able to complete in-app tasks, such as finding a photo and posting it to socials, all with one command.

It has been nearly two years since Apple announced that it would give Siri a major upgrade. In the meantime, competitors like Alexa Plus and Gemini for Home have entered the marketplace.

Tech tester Jon Rettinger, whose YouTube channel has 1.66 million subscribers, says the repeated delays in upgrading Siri can «erode» confidence in Apple’s ability to keep up in the AI race.

«Apple as a whole is still one of the strongest companies on the planet. But their AI play is clearly the weakest link in an otherwise very strong chain,» Rettinger told CNET.

Rettinger said he has had issues getting Siri to complete basic commands, such as setting two alarms at the same time, and that it’s a bit of «a mess» right now.

«Having said that, the iPhone has such massive market penetration that I’m not sure it will actually matter in the end. Which is kind of wild when you think about it,» Rettinger said.

Facial recognition for residents

The hardware for the forthcoming smart home display has already been finished. It resembles an iPad and can be either attached to a wall or rest on a half-domed-shaped base, the Bloomberg report said.

The device will be equipped with facial recognition, so when residents walk up to it, they will be shown personalized data such as music preferences, news headlines, appointments, reminders, tasks and so on.

The screen interface will include a bunch of circular app icons, similar to the display on an Apple Watch. The Bloomberg report said the smart home display will be the first of several home devices by Apple. Future products include a tabletop robotic limb with a 9-inch screen, a smart security camera and a Face ID-enabled smart doorbell.