All the New AI Features Coming Soon to Google Photos

Most of our apps these days continue to receive AI upgrades—whether or not we actually want them. That's no surprise from a company like Google, who is among those leading the AI charge right now. If you use Chrome, Android, or Google Workspace, you've likely dealt with Gemini in some capacity.

The charge, as you might expect, continues to this day. On Tuesday, Google announced a set of new AI-powered features coming to Google Photos, for both iOS and Android users. Google doesn't yet have a definitive release date for these new features, but it seems they're rolling out soon. These are largely optional—you can keep using Photos as an image library, and avoid using the AI features if you wish. But if you have an interest, especially in AI image editing, here's what you can expect to see:

Nano Banana

Nano Banana is Google's current "big thing" in AI imaging. The model allows you to generate or edit images with greater flexibility than previous models—specifically, you can use it to change a single photo in multiple ways, while keeping the subjects consistent across edits. You can ask Nano Banana to change hairdos, outfits, sceneries, image styles, add or remove elements, stack edits, and even combine different attributes of multiple photos. If you take Google's word for it, it's a big deal.

Now, Google is making Nano Banana available in Google Photos' editor. You'll find the tool under the new "Help me edit" button when opening a photo in the app. Here, you'll be able to ask the app to make whatever changes you'd like. Google suggests prompts like turning you into the monarch on a deck of cards; transforming a picture into a tiled mosaic; or adding a winter theme to an image to make your family's holiday card.

Credit: Google

We will need to investigate whether Google Photos' Nano Banana editor stack up to the tool you've been able to use in Gemini. But the option is now there, should you choose to use it.

Personalized edits

What is a photo? You might think that's a simple one to answer: You point your camera at some, snap away, and boom: A picture is born. But companies like Google are changing the ways we take and edit photos, to the point where that question isn't so easy to answer. If you adjust the image itself to such a degree that much of the original data is no longer there, is that really a photo? Did that really capture reality? I'm not so sure.

That's how I'm feeling about Google's new "personalized edits" for Google Photos. The company says you can fix "minor flaws," such as blinks or sad faces, with the new "Help me edit" tool. If your kid had their eyes closed during the picture, for example, you can ask "Help me edit" to open their eyes. Google Photos then pulls data from other photos with your kid to generate a version of the photo with their eyes open. Again, I ask you: What is a photo?

Google has used this tech before: Best Take, for example, can snap a series of photos at once, then use the best version of each subject's face to composite the "best take." It's clever, but it's also strange, especially when the data is not pulled from a different version of the same scene, but from different images of that person from the past.

Google Photos for iPhone catches up to Android

Google is also rolling out new previously Android-only features for iPhone users with the Google Photos app. First, the iOS app now support "ask to edit," a feature that lets you use text or your voice to request edits from Google's AI. Now, of course, both apps use Nano Banana, but previously, only Android's app supported this natural language editing system.

In addition, iPhone users will notice a redesigned photo editor. This is the same one Google announced back in May for Android users. The new editor includes edit suggestions (powered by AI, of course) that apply multiple effects at once to your photos. You can also tap on an area of your photo to receive suggested tools for making edits.

Ask about your photos

I feel like I'm saying "ask" a lot in this article, but that's the crux of Google's new features here. To wit, the last new feature Google announced for Photos is simply the ability to ask about the images themselves. You can ask about the content of the picture, request similar images in your library, or, if you want, ask for edits. It seems Nano Banana follows you around in multiple places in this update.

Again, none of these new AI features are mandatory if you want to keep using Google Photos AI-free. You can still edit your images yourself; you'll just need to avoid the "Help me edit" button. You can look at your photo's metadata manually, instead of using the Ask button. But it does seem, for the foreseeable future, like Google is all-in on these AI features.

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My Favorite Amazon Deal of the Day: These Amazon Kindles

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Amazon announced its Black Friday and Cyber Monday plans this week—although it won't start until Nov. 20, you can already find early Black Friday deals on Amazon devices. Their "like-new" Kindle readers, in particular, have good discounts right now. The Kindle Paperwhite is $106.99 (originally $143.99), the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is $126.99 (originally $179.99), the 16GB Kindle Scribe is $212.99 (originally $309.99), and the 64GB Kindle Scribe is $278.99 (originally $404.99).

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The Nothing Phone 3 Is Over $100 Off Right Now

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Amazon just marked down the Nothing Phone 3 to $678.99, its lowest price yet, according to price trackers. That’s about $120 off the usual $799 tag for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage base model.

Nothing Phone 3 Cell Phone

$678.99 at Amazon

$799.00 Save $120.01

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$799.00 Save $120.01

It’s the company’s most ambitious phone to date, moving confidently into flagship territory while keeping intact its trademark minimalist aesthetic. This PCMag review calls it “the company’s best yet,” awarding it an "excellent" rating for performance, design, and camera improvements.

The Phone 3 keeps Nothing’s signature transparent back, now redesigned with a Glyph Matrix—a ring of 489 micro-LEDs that light up for notifications, timers, and even playful “Glyph Toys” like a mini clock or a spin-the-bottle game. It’s a fun detail, though one you’ll probably either love or switch off entirely. The phone feels sturdy, built from 100% recycled aluminum and shielded by Gorilla Glass 7i, with an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. Its 6.67-inch AMOLED display is sharp and bright, with a 2,800 x 1,260 resolution and a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate that keeps scrolling and animations smooth.

Under the hood, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chip powers through everything from multitasking to heavy games like Genshin Impact without a hitch. The 5,150mAh battery lasted about 15 hours in PCMag’s rundown test and supports 65W wired charging, 15W wireless charging, and reverse charging for smaller devices.

Camera performance is another step forward for Nothing. The triple 50MP setup covers wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto ranges, producing images with crisp detail and accurate colors. The software side feels clean, too—Nothing OS 3.5, layered on Android 15, keeps things simple without unnecessary clutter. It’s not loaded with AI features like some rivals, but it gets the basics right, offering five years of Android updates and seven years of security patches (which is reassuring longevity).

The only major drawbacks are the lack of mmWave 5G support and the still-limited AI integration, which might bother future-focused users. But overall, the Nothing Phone 3 manages to feel refreshing in a market where everything looks the same.

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The Four Most Helpful ‘Laws’ of Productivity

Your personal productivity may be dependent on your unique needs, personality, and circumstances, but there are still general “laws” governing time management and potential output that apply to pretty much everyone—like, actual "laws" named after the people who came up with them. Economists, philosophers, and scientists have spent a lot of their own time researching what practices make a person more productive. Here’s an overview of the rules all that research has given us. 

The Yerkes-Dodson Law

The Yerkes-Dodson Law says a person is most productive when they have just the right amount of stress pushing them—not too much and not too little. It models the relationship between stress levels and performance, resulting in an upside-down, U-shaped curve on a quadrant. Across the X axis, you have your low-stress moments on the left, high-stress moments on the right, and a peak of productivity in the middle. The Y axis shows your peak performance at the top, which is aligned with times when you have just a the right amount of stress behind your work. 

This means that you shouldn’t give yourself too much time to do a task, but should definitely not wait until the last minute. The way to do this is to create airtight to-do lists. Try the 1-3-5 method, which has you structure your day around one major task, three medium-sized ones, and five little ones. By breaking your day down and timing it just right, you can make sure everything gets done when it needs to, optimizing your stress in honor of psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson.

Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law is another one that governs how long you should spend on any given task. In fact, it goes hand-in-hand with Yerkes-Dodson, because it says that the longer you give yourself to do something, the longer you'll naturally take to get it done. C. Northcote Parkinson popularized it in a 1955 essay for The Economist, concluding that you’ll ultimately procrastinate or over-complicate the task, dragging it out by not working on it enough or working on it way too long. 

Here, it helps to prioritize your to-dos and schedule your days and weeks thoroughly. Having a smaller window in which to work on pressing tasks will up the urgency, aligning you more with the peak of Yerkes-Dodson. Pre-plan your weeks using prioritization techniques like the Eisenhower Matrix and task batching, thinking about when you'll have just the right amount of urgency to motivate you to do each task.

Once you've pre-plannned, try shaving the amount of time you give yourself to do things. If a project is due a week from now, don’t give yourself a whole week to get it done. Instead, Give yourself a personal deadline of five or even four days from now. Setting private deadlines ahead of your real ones is a good way to give your work some urgency while leaving a little wiggle room in case you don’t finish up in time for your personal deadline. It stops you from procrastinating or getting too in the weeds on busywork at the end. 

Illich’s Law

The third law here is cautioning against the same thing as the first two: You shouldn’t have too much time to work on any one thing. The reasons behind all three laws are different, though, which means the solutions to overcoming them are unique, too. Illich’s Law, or the Law of Diminishing Returns, says that after working for a while, your productivity decreases. Eventually, it goes negative, meaning your work isn’t even good anymore. At best, you're churning out something less than ideal. At worst, you'll waste more time in the future having to redo it.

To defeat it, don’t just cut your deadlines down to combat Parkinson's Law; cut down how long you have to work on each task on your to-do list. Use time-tracking software or a simple spreadsheet for two weeks to track how long your usual duties typically take you, as well as when you start feeling bored or unproductive. After two weeks, cut the time you give yourself to do each task, ideally down to exactly how long it takes you to get bored or unproductive. In the gaps that appear in your schedule, make sure you take breaks. What Yerkes-Dodson and Parkinson’s Law don’t fully account for is the value of breaks to productivity. Giving yourself set times to work and set times to chill is foundational to all kinds of productivity methods because burnout is an output killer. You can (and should) always get back to work once you’re done with a little personal time. 

Carlson’s Law

Finally, the fourth law, Carlson’s Law, is all about how you work, not how much you work. Swedish economist Sune Carlson’s assertion was that interrupted work is always less effective and more time-consuming than uninterrupted work. If you’re distracted, your work will be of a poorer quality and take longer—and as you can tell, work that takes longer is no good, for all kinds of reasons. 

Like the other laws, the trick to nailing this one is to schedule carefully every day. Not only do you need to schedule your day based on what needs to be done and how long it will take, but on when you can reasonably do it all without distraction. Time boxing, or the practice of scheduling every minute of your day in your calendar, blocking it all out down to the minute, is central to basically every productivity tip.

In line with both Illich's and Carlson's Laws, not only should you keep in mind that you should give yourself less time to work than you think you need, but you should reflect that cut-down in your time boxes. When you do that, you'll see gaps or breaks start to appear in your daily calendar. Embrace those. Breaks are elemental to productivity, so you should be scheduling those as seriously as you do your work.

Finally, when you’re aiming to defeat Carlson’s Law, you should take the extra step of making sure your now-thorough calendar is viewable by others in your organization or anyone who might interrupt you. If you’re likely to be distracted at a given time, don’t try to work on anything important then; wait until you can give it your full attention. In addition, never multitask. You can’t do two things at once. That’s just another form of distraction. Move from chore to chore, one at a time, to make sure you’re being efficient at all of them. 

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How to Beat ‘Carlson’s Law’ and Be More Productive

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To do deep work, you have to focus on one task, and to focus, you have to avoid distractions. That's a common-sense idea, and it's the basis for Carlson’s Law, named for Swedish economist Sune Carlson. He determined that interrupted work is always less effective and more time-consuming than un-interrupted work.

It's a lofty goal, but that doesn't mean a distraction-free zone is easy to achieve. If you want to beat Carlson's Law, you have to have a plan.

How to eliminate distractions when trying to focus

Before getting to work on anything, make sure your space is free from distractions—not just physically, but mentally. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Work somewhere with a door and keep it closed so others know you’re busy and not to interrupt you.

• Try earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones to minimize noise. 

• Turn on a white noise machine to drown out distractions. I sometimes use white noise playlists on Spotify or white noise channels on my Roku, depending where I am and what I have access to. (They're free!) Here are some of my favorite white noise YouTube channels, too.

• Use apps, extensions, and software that prevent you from accessing social media or other distracting platforms. I have two favorites: Steppin, which blocks all your distracting apps and forces you to trade minutes you earn by walking around to access them; and FocusPomo, which initiates "focus sessions" that block your apps for a pre-determined period.

If you don’t think you can work on something without getting distracted—say, if your kids are due home from school and will burst in loudly, or there are free bagels in the break room and everyone is walking past you to get one—don’t. Carlson’s Law is all about how the work you do if you’re distracted will be lower quality than what you can do if you’re focused. When you’re focused, it takes less time, too, so you’ll make up for skipping work if it’s not feasible to do it at a given time. If you work when you're distracted, not only will you produce something subpar, but you'll waste even more time going back and redoing it. Sometimes, strategizing and choosing to do nothing for the moment is the most productive thing you can do.

Strategically allocate your time

In addition to blocking out external distractions, you have to tamp down on your personal distractions, too. That means no multitasking. Every task you do should be a single mission. Don’t answer emails and work on a project. Don’t plan dinner while you’re in a meeting. When you’re doing two things, you’re distracted and neither of them will be done as efficiently as they would be if you did them one at a time. It might seem counterintuitive, but I've noticed improvements in the personal projects I care most about now that I've abandoned multitasking.

To accomplish this, you need a few rules and guidelines in place. First, organize your responsibilities in order of importance. Try using the 1-3-5 method to make your to-do list every morning, planning on completing one big task, three medium-sized tasks, and five small ones. You can use the Eisenhower matrix to figure out what those nine task should be, organizing them by urgency and timeliness using a quadrant. 

Once you figure out your tasks and the order they need to happen in, put time on your calendar for them. Even the small tasks should get their own designated “timebox” on the calendar—as should your downtime and breaks, which are as elemental to true productivity as working without distractions.

When you glance at the calendar, you’ll see each item separated and know exactly how much time you have for it. This way, they won’t run into each other, you won’t end up multitasking, and you’ll be able to focus on each action item one by one. Bonus points if you do this on a shared office calendar or one that’s visible to people around you, so they can easily see when you’re busy—and not come around and distract you. 

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You Can Get a Costco Executive Gold Star Membership Plus a $60 Shop Card on Sale for $130 Right Now

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You get a one-year Costco Executive Gold Star Membership plus a $60 Digital Costco Shop Card on sale for just $130 on StackSocial right now. The card works both online and in-store, and it arrives via email within two weeks of activation, providing an immediate way to recoup nearly half of the membership cost. This offer is available to new members only, or to those whose membership expired at least 18 months ago, and must be redeemed online before visiting a Costco location. The offer is valid until January 21, 2026. Once activated, you can shop at any of the 800+ Costco warehouses worldwide or on Costco.com, and your membership will be valid for one year.

The Executive level is a step above the standard Gold Star plan, adding a few perks that can actually pay off if you shop regularly. Executive Members earn a 2% annual reward (up to $1,250) on most Costco and Costco Travel purchases, which can easily cover the extra $65 upgrade fee if you spend around $3,000 a year. The plan also includes access to early shopping hours starting at 9 a.m., extra discounts on Costco Services, and a $10 monthly credit for SameDay.Costco.com or Costco via Instacart with qualifying orders of $150 or more. Whether you’re stocking up on groceries, planning a vacation through Costco Travel, or refilling prescriptions at the pharmacy, the membership stretches far beyond warehouse shopping.

That said, it’s worth considering how often you’ll use it. If you only make the occasional Costco trip, the regular Gold Star membership might make more sense. The digital shop card doesn’t arrive instantly; it can take up to two weeks, and this deal can’t be used to renew an existing membership. There’s also no refund once the code is redeemed, so you’ll want to activate it with a plan to use it. Still, for frequent Costco shoppers or families who already buy in bulk, this is an easy upgrade. The $60 shop card helps offset the upfront cost, and the annual 2% reward gives regular members a reason to stay in the Executive tier.

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Try This Free Plex Alternative Client If You Hate the New Interface

Plex has been rolling out a new user interface for a while now, and to say it's been divisive among users would be an understatement. Users on Reddit regularly complain about the interface being confusing and slow; others wish the application would focus on personal media servers instead of things like movie rentals.

Plezy is an alternative Plex client that solves these issues. The application, which is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, focuses entirely on personal media servers.

Plez has a simple user interface, but the real advantage over the official Plex app is its speed. Everything about Plezy is faster than the official Plex app—it launches faster, searches faster, and starts playing videos faster. If you've ever found yourself frustrated waiting for Plex to load, Plezy might be the answer you're looking for.

Credit: Justin Pot

Having said that, Plezy isn't perfect. A few prominent Plex features, including live TV and offline downloads,aren't supported at all. There are no applications for Roku, Apple TV, or any TV-based platform. The application also can't combine shows and movies from multiple servers, even for search or the "now watching" list, meaning anyone who uses multiple servers may have to switch between servers regularly. That's a small annoyance more than balanced by the performance improvements.

But if you just want a quick way to play personal media on a computer, phone, or tablet, Plezy does the job faster, and with less clutter, than the official Plex app. Plex is a great way to build your own personal streaming service, but the company has been downplaying that particular use case for a while—it's nice to see an alternative client with focus.

The desktop version of Plezy—macOS, Windows, and Linux—is available for free. The iOS version costs $4. The Google Play link was not yet active while I was writing this, though you could download the APK file from Github and sideload it.

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How to Stop Bluetooth Speakers From Disconnecting Your AirPods

There are times when I feel like my AirPods are pure magic. It's always impressive how they automatically shift from my Mac to my iPhone when I get a call, or how I don’t need to reconnect them to my iPad when I want to start watching a show. But when it comes to automatically swapping my audio over to Bluetooth speakers, they can get pretty jarring.

Often, speakers and audio outputs will take over audio from my AirPods when I’m wearing them. This happens every time I get in my car while wearing a single AirPod, usually while listening to music or podcasts (I would not recommend driving while using both AirPods). As soon as I turn on my car, bam, the media starts blaring through my car speakers, whether I want it to or not. Until recently, there was no remedy for this (other than manually pausing and then resuming playback from the AirPods themselves).

It seems like I wasn’t the only person annoyed be this, though. In iOS 26, Apple has introduced a dedicated setting that stops speakers from taking over your audio when you’re wearing your AirPods, or any other wireless headsets.

Here's how to try it. On your iPhone running iOS 26 and above, go to Settings > General > AirPlay & Continuity and then enable the new “Keep Audio with Headphones” setting.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Don't worry. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use your car speakers or other audio outputs. Your device will still connect to your car speakers when they're available, and you can switch to them manually using the Control Center.

As for the rest of your car, in iOS 26, Apple is also starting to play nice with AirPods and CarPlay, adding official support for AirPods in CarPlay systems. So, if you're accessing content through CayPlay, you can continue using your AirPods to listen to music, or answer calls.

The best part? This won’t take away your AirPods' auto-switching feature, as that’s powered by Handoff. If you want your AirPods to never automatically switch between any device, you can disable the Handoff feature from the AirPlay & Continuity menu.

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'Illich's Law' Can Help You Be More Productive

How you allocate and use your time every day is as important to productivity as the work you actually do, which is why it's important to pre-plan your schedule down to the minute. You have to be smart and strategic about when you work, what you work on, and how long you do it—otherwise, some of your time may be wasted. Illich’s Law, or the Law of Diminishing Returns, says that after working for a while, your productivity decreases—then becomes negative.

What does Illich’s Law mean?

We often think of being productive as getting a lot done, but productivity can—and should—also focus on the quality of that work, too. Some good work is, in most cases, better than a lot of shoddy work. 

Illich’s Law, conceptualized by philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich, suggests that not only does your productivity decrease after you’ve spent too much time on something, but it gets counterproductive. The work you produce after being at it too long could actually be straight-up bad—you shouldn’t have even done it in the first place. Often, you'll end up redoing it, which wastes time you could be spending on other pursuits and makes you less productive.

How to defeat Illich’s Law

To prevent a decline in your work, you need a strategy. First, use time-tracking software or a simple spreadsheet for a week or two to figure out how much time you spend on your typical tasks. Make sure to take notes on when you feel yourself becoming fatigued, bored, or less productive. As always, use timeboxing to structure your calendar, giving every task its own entry and defining timelines through the day. Stick to those timelines rigidly and stop working when your allotted time is up unless you absolutely have to keep going (which shouldn't happen often if you're planning well enough).

After you’ve collected some data, assess the time you give yourself to do things. Try reducing the time allotment for each task, so you stop before that bored or unproductive feeling kicks in. Don’t be afraid you’re giving yourself “too little” time, either: The Yerkes-Dodson Law says that your peak of productivity comes when you have just the right amount of stress. Having less time to do something will not only make you more productive under Illich’s Law, but Yerkes-Dodson and Parkinson’s Law, which says you’ll over-complicate work if you have too long to attend to it. Basically, a bunch of major theorists all agree one one thing for various reasons: Working on anything for too long just ain’t it. 

Once you’ve reduced how much time you’re giving yourself to do things, return to your calendar, which has your timeboxes in it. Change the timing parameters for each entry to your new allotments. This will leave you with small breaks visible in the calendar throughout the day. Schedule breaks in there. The second thing Illich’s law emphasizes is that people need breaks in addition to a reduction in work on specific tasks. Don’t just give yourself less time for each task and move from one to another faster; take breaks in between. 

This should end up mirroring the Pomodoro technique, or at least approximating it. With Pomodoro, you work for 25 minutes, take a five-minute break, get back to it for 25 more, and keep cycling that way until you've done it four times and earn a larger break. That timing doesn't work for everyone, so feel free to modify the work blocks and break blocks, but keep in mind that your work needs to be followed by at least a little downtime.

In general, your productivity needs more breaks, so give yourself a scheduled time to go grab a coffee, scroll social media, or make a personal call. 

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13 Shows Like 'It: Welcome to Derry' You Should Watch Next

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Pennywise is back, baby, and pop culture's favorite freaky clown is going back in time to kill the kids of Derry, Maine, in 1962, with future seasons (should they materialize) visiting other time periods. If my hometown saw mass slaughterings of children every generation or so, I might be tempted to pick up stakes and head on out—but the Stephen King IP train must keep rolling, and so here we are.

So far, the show isn't hitting the heights of previous It adaptations, but it's shown an admirable willingness to shock—the opening scene includes an impressively graphic and rather unconventional birthing sequence, and the show has quickly made clear that no characters are safe from the dark deeds of Pennywise. While you're waiting for new episodes to drop, you might enjoy these other horror series (including other King adaptations) that hit some of the same notes.

Castle Rock (2018 – 2019)

Castle Rock, canceled after two (rather excellent) seasons, was a victim of failed marketing. The show was promoted as a dive into some kind of Stephen King connected universe, promising Easter eggs without suggesting much by way of storytelling. And yet! There are actual stories here, with real dramatic heft—the first season’s “The Queen,” told from the unstable perspective of a character (played by Sissy Spacek) with worsening dementia, was one of the best, and most existentially horrifying, things on television that year. The second season introduces young Annie Wilkes, (Lizzy Caplan), the Kathy Bates character we know from Misery. The cast across the two seasons is stellar, and includes Bill Skarsgård, a creepy character not named Pennywise. There’s plenty of stuff for King fans to sink their teeth into as we dive into the backstory of a different Stephen King town, but it all works rather well on its own, as well. Stream Castle Rock on Hulu.

Castle Rock

at Hulu

at Hulu

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Talamasca: The Secret Order (2025 – )

The third series in what AMC is calling its Immortal Universe of shows based on the works of Anne Rice, this one stars Nicholas Denton as Guy Anatole, a new recruit to the title organization of supernatural spies and watchers, William Fichtner as a vampire making a play for control of the organization, all while Downton Abbey's Elizabeth McGovern brings us yet another delightfully confusing accent playing the leader of the Talamasca's New York motherhouse. The show is impressively spry and lively—a bit of a surprise, given the heavy emo vibes of Interview with the Vampire and The Mayfair Witches. We're only a couple of episodes in, but the show kicks off with a rather brutal dismembering in the style of It. Stream Talamasca on AMC+.

Talamasca: The Secret Order (2025 – )

at AMC+

at AMC+

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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023 – )

This is more of an action thriller than a gloopy It-style horror show, but the shows still have a couple of things in common. First, they both provide previously uncharted backstories for popular film properties; second, they're both full of monsters. Monarch does a surprisingly effective job of telling its own story within the universe of all the American Godzilla movies of the past decade or so, bringing the bigger stories back down to Earth while building out an entire decades-long monster-verse mythology in the process. Anna Sawai stars as a young teacher searching for her father, missing since Godzilla's attack on San Francisco (depicted in the 2014 film), and who finds herself drawn into the past and present of a secret government agency. Wyatt and Kurt Russell play the past and present incarnations of the Army colonel who helped set the whole thing in motion way back in 1959. Stream Monarch on Apple TV+.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

at Apple TV+

at Apple TV+

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Dark (2017 – 2020)

Dark began as a mystery involving a missing child and evolved, over its three seasons, into a wildly complex narrative: a time travel-driven story that explores dark family secrets over the course of several generations. If it's not quite as bloody as Welcome to Derry, it shares with that show a willingness to put kids and teens through the wringer. Youth may be a sort of protection in some horror stories, but not here—not even a little tiny bit. The German import has a striking look and incredibly atmospheric feel, with an ensemble cast of teens and adults whose narratives are deftly intertwined across decades in a story that starts when a child goes missing (one of the least bad things that happens to the people of fictional Winden, Germany). Stream Dark on Netflix.

Dark (2017 – 2020)

at Netflix

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