IT General

SAVE $800: As of Nov. 18, get the LG 45-inch Ultragear OLED curved gaming monitor for $899.99, down from its usual price of $1,699.99. That's a discount of 47% and the lowest price we've seen.

Opens in a new window Credit: Amazon LG 45-inch Ultragear OLED curved gaming monitor $899.99 at Amazon
$1,699.99 Save $800   Get Deal

Looking for an easy way to make your favorite video games pop? A new monitor will do the trick nicely. If you're ready to indulge in a new addition to your setup, it might be time to treat yourself to a massive display that can give you those improvements you've been craving, especially since you can get one for an excellent price right now at Amazon.

As of Nov. 18, get the LG 45-inch Ultragear OLED curved gaming monitor for $899.99, down from its usual price of $1,699.99. That's $800 off and a discount of 47%. It's also the lowest price we've seen.

SEE ALSO: The best monitors in 2025

This massive 45-inch monitor boasts an 800R curve with a peak brightness of up to 1300 nits. It also has a 240Hz refresh rate with a 0.03ms response time, so your games are fast and smooth without lag. That all amounts to better play and even better-looking games in general. Of course, it's also compatible with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and NVIDIA G-Sync, so you have improved frame sync on both PC and consoles.

Its OLED picture ensures deeper, darker hues as well as colors that pop. Additionally, low glare and a flicker-free display gives you a more crisp, clear look at what's happening on your screen. Because you absolutely need fewer distractions if you're getting your game on, after all.

This monitor is a great way to give your setup a leg up, especially at its significantly lower price, so grab it while you still can.

SAVE $401.99: The 55-inch LG Class B4 Series OLED 4K TV is on sale at Walmart for $698, down from the normal price of $1,099.99. That's a 37% discount.

Opens in a new window Credit: LG 55-inch LG Class B4 Series OLED 4K TV $698 at Walmart
$1,099.99 Save $401.99   Get Deal

Now that it's dark by 4 p.m. and we're all ready for bed at 5 p.m., we're spending those remaining evening hours streaming our comfort TV shows. But not all TVs are worthy of your favorite shows and it's possible the bedroom TV's quality isn't quite as nice as the main TV in the house. If a TV in your home could use a 55-inch upgrade, check out this deal.

As of Nov. 18, the 55-inch LG Class B4 Series OLED 4K TV is on sale at Walmart for $698, marked down from the normal price of $1,099.99. That's a massive 37% discount that takes $401.99 off the list price.

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A 55-inch TV is ideal for a bedroom, smaller rec room, or a studio apartment. But just because it's not a massive 75-inch or larger TV doesn't mean it needs to skimp on quality. LG makes some of the best high-end TVs and this sale model is no exception.

The 4K LG TV uses the brand's α8 AI Processor which automatically detects what you're watching an adjusts to the best display possible. Plus, it could be an ideal model if you tend to move each year or once every few years since it only weighs 32 pounds with the stand.

SEE ALSO: This 100-inch Hisense QLED TV just hit a new all-time low

With a 120Hz refresh rate, four HDMI 2.1 ports, NVIDIA G-Sync, and AMD FreeSync Premium, you'll be in nice shape for gaming on this LG with most titles, including those on the Nintendo Switch 2. This model also comes with LG Channels which gives viewers access to over 300 free channels.

While it's over $400 off, upgrade streaming sessions with the 55-inch LG Class B4 Series OLED 4K TV at Walmart for under $700. Buying now means you'll avoid the major rush that'll happen later this week when Black Friday events officially begin.

TL;DR: AdGuard’s Family Plan gives you lifetime, device-wide protection from ads, trackers, and malicious sites for just $18.97 (reg. $169.99) with code FAMPLAN.

Opens in a new window Credit: AdGuard AdGuard Family Plan: Lifetime Subscription $18.97
$169.99 Save $151.02   Get Deal

If you’ve ever tried to troubleshoot constant pop-ups, frozen web pages, or those suspicious “Download Now” boxes that definitely shouldn’t be clicked, you already know how messy the internet can get.

AdGuard’s Family Plan is one of the easiest ways to clean all of that up — quietly, consistently, and without forcing everyone in the house to become a cybersecurity expert.

SEE ALSO: Should you pay for a VPN?

For a limited time, you can grab lifetime access to the AdGuard Family Plan for just $18.97 (reg. $169.99) with code FAMPLAN through Nov. 20 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Once you activate it, your protection never expires. That alone puts it miles ahead of the usual annual subscription shuffle.

AdGuard works on browsers, smartphones, laptops, tablets — pretty much anything your household uses. And this subscription covers nine devices. It blocks intrusive ads before they even load, cuts off third-party trackers, keeps sketchy phishing attempts out of your family’s path, and generally makes the web run faster and cleaner.

Gamers benefit from fewer laggy ad scripts; kids get a safer browsing experience with parental controls; and adults get fewer annoyances across the sites they use every day. What people appreciate most is that it runs quietly in the background. There’s no pop-up nagging, no complicated security dashboard that needs constant tuning, and no learning curve.

If you’re looking for a simple, affordable way to protect everyone’s devices while making the internet feel faster and less chaotic, this deal is one of the easiest wins of the season. Don’t miss grabbing lifetime access to AdGuard’s Family Plan while it’s just $18.97 (reg. $169.99) through Nov. 20 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

TL;DR: If you’re tired of switching between different AI apps, the 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan gives you a single lifetime workspace powered by all the industry-leading models for just $74.97 (reg. $540).

Opens in a new window Credit: 1minAI 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan Lifetime Subscription $74.97
$540 Save $465.03   Get Deal

If you’ve ever tried to keep up with all the different AI platforms, you know how messy it can get. One app handles writing. Another can edit images. A different one processes audio. And don’t forget the video editor. Plus the PDF tool. Plus, the model that does translations. And on and on.

1min.AI’s Advanced Business Plan basically puts an end to that AI chaos.

SEE ALSO: A new AI platform is giving lifetime access to ChatGPT, Gemini, and more

For a one-time payment of $74.97 (reg. $540), you get lifetime access to a single platform that brings together the top AI models — OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Anthropic’s Claude 3 family, Google Gemini, Meta’s Llama 3, Mistral, Cohere, and more — inside one interface that’s designed to actually streamline your work instead of giving you 12 more logins.

What makes it especially useful is that the platform doesn’t just offer chat. It offers tools — real tools — for the work people actually do every day.

You can generate blog posts, rewrite content, create brand-consistent social captions, run keyword research, summarize long PDFs, extract info from documents, make images, edit photos, clean up audio, and even work with video.

The best part? Because all these features are powered by multiple models, you can pick whichever one fits your task. Need factual precision? Try Claude Opus. Want a creative brainstorm? Use GPT-4o. Need speed? Haiku or Gemini Pro are good options.

And since the subscription is lifetime, you’re not crossing your fingers waiting for a renewal discount next year.

Pick up lifetime access to the 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan while it’s just $74.97 (reg. $540).

StackSocial prices subject to change.

Arduino boards are a popular choice for DIY electronics, but it's not always clear how to get started with building projects and programming. There's now one more solution to that problem: a new starter kit built around the UNO R4 Wi-Fi board.

Cloudflare suffered a major outage on Nov. 18, and it took many major platforms down with it. OpenAI, Spotify, X, and Canva were among just some of the websites and services that went down Tuesday morning.

Feel like you're experiencing deja vu? Well, you're not. 

The recent Cloudflare outage is not to be confused with the recent Microsoft Azure outage, which resulted in Xbox, Minecraft, and other platforms going down. And don't forget the other major incident that occurred in October, when issues at Amazon Web Services (AWS) led to Amazon, Reddit, Snapchat, and other big platforms going offline. It's also completely separate from the June outage, when Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Cloudflare took down swaths of the internet

OK, so the internet's biggest websites and platforms have been going down a lot lately. What's going on here? 

Why do so many websites go down at the same time?

Those big social media platforms, e-commerce websites, and gaming networks are all using the same few major service providers to host and deliver their content, with Cloudflare being one of them.

Cloudflare is one of the largest Content Delivery Networks (CDN), which is a system that manages web traffic. When Cloudflare functions normally, it manages web traffic and protects platforms from attacks.

"CDNs are distributed infrastructures that accelerate content delivery and enhance user experience by caching and serving web content closer to users," explained Angelique Medina, Head of Internet Intelligence at the network intelligence company Cisco ThousandEyes, to Mashable. "They essentially serve as the 'front door' to websites and applications, with users connecting to Cloudflare’s servers instead of those of its customers."

"When this 'front door' becomes unavailable, users lose the entry point to many sites and applications," Medina said. "Given the large number of customers and sites that they service, any meaningful disruption in their ability to deliver content could effectively render large parts of the internet unreachable to users."

Basically, the internet has consolidated, and we're all reaping the rewards of that consolidation.

“This isn’t just another technical setback," said Ramutė Varnelytė, CEO of IPXO, a leading IP resource management platform in Europe, in a statement provided to Mashable. "It’s further proof of how exposed [the] digital economy is to various malfunctions in just a few of the digital infrastructure service providers."

Are internet outages occurring more frequently?

Back in the earlier days of the internet, there were countless web hosting providers, and many companies even ran their own dedicated servers. Now, companies big and small are all utilizing the same few cloud service providers, whether it be AWS, GCP, or Azure. Cloudflare makes the internet even more vulnerable to disruption, as the company has no one-to-one direct competitor.

"The incident further emphasizes the inherent danger of the entire internet infrastructure relying on a few service providers," Varnelytė said.

But, is that it? And are these services really going down more than usual? According to Cisco ThousandEyes, which tracks outages and maps them, that's correct. Web downtime is actually not happening more than usual, even if it seems that way.

"Cisco ThousandEyes has not seen an increase in the frequency of service outages in cloud and other Internet infrastructure providers; however, the number of sites and applications dependent on these services has increased," Medina shared. "Because these services are increasingly a point of centralization — with a small number of companies handling large swaths of the Internet — if something goes wrong, it can lead to the disruption of many sites and applications around the globe."

In short, the number of disruptions isn't increasing. Rather, the shockwaves of individual incidents are getting bigger.

Self-hosting and homelabbing can be a great way to save money on subscriptions and reduce how much you depend on big tech companies for your essential services.

You don't need to pay to have something read out loud to you. The free tier of ChatGPT can read any text aloud in an impressively natural way. You can do it on your phone or desktop, and you're not limited to how long the text can be.

Meta has emerged victorious in its years-long legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission, which accused the company of maintaining an illegal monopoly over social networking.

In an opinion released Tuesday, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the FTC failed to prove its case. The agency first filed the lawsuit five years ago, arguing that Meta's ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp gave it outsized control over the market. But Boasberg wrote that even if Meta once held monopoly power, the FTC could not show that the company still "continues to hold such power now."

SEE ALSO: Apple rebukes Elon Musk’s App Store monopoly claims

Boasberg previously dismissed the case in 2021, saying the FTC did not provide enough evidence that Facebook, as the company was then known, had market power. The FTC later filed an amended complaint citing user metrics and comparisons to competitors like Snapchat, Google+, and MySpace, allowing the case to move forward. The long-delayed trial finally began earlier this year.

Meta's chief legal officer, Jennifer Newstead, praised the ruling in a statement to outlets, saying, "The Court's decision today recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition. Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth."

At the center of the case were Meta's high-profile acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC sought to unwind both deals and argued that users lacked meaningful alternatives to Meta-owned platforms for connecting with friends and family.

But Boasberg sided with Meta's position that the social media landscape has transformed dramatically since the early Facebook era. Apps like TikTok and YouTube now compete for the same time, attention, and content, undercutting the government's monopoly claim.

"While each of Meta's empirical showings can be quibbled with, they all tell a consistent story: people treat TikTok and YouTube as substitutes for Facebook and Instagram, and the amount of competitive overlap is economically important," Boasberg wrote.

Large speakers, to put it bluntly, are a pain. They're difficult to find just the right place for, and it's even worse if you are in a small space. Smart speakers can be a decent solution, but their designs may not be to everyone's tastes. Sure, a black or white speaker is the norm, but it can still look bad sitting on a shelf, especially if your decor is set up in a way that's less tech-focused.

GitHub is the world's biggest software development platform and code repository, and right now it's having some problems. Even though the GitHub site and most web functions are working as intended, Git operations are failing for many people.

The best early Black Friday laptop deals at a glance: Best MacBook deal Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) $749.99 (save $249.01) Get Deal Best gaming laptop deal Alienware 16X Aurora (Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) $1,649.99 (save $350) Get Deal Best Chromebook deal Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus (Intel Core i3-1315U, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) $349 (save $250) Get Deal

I write about all things laptops here at Mashable, and whenever a family member or friend comes to me for shopping recommendations, I always tell them this: "Unless it's an emergency, don't buy anything until Black Friday."

My logic is simple. The year-end shopping season is when I see the deepest discounts on laptops emerge across Amazon, Best Buy, and other major tech retailers. It's partly because these stores know that people are looking for good, giftable buys ahead of the holidays, but it's also because they're trying to offload their current inventories ahead of next-gen refreshes at the start of the following year. Enter: Record-low prices on MacBooks, Windows laptops, and Chromebooks. Voila: An upgrade that's normally out of your budget is suddenly affordable.

SEE ALSO: The 55+ best early Black Friday deals: Get big savings on MacBooks, Nintendo Switch 2, Keurig, and Samsung gear

I should note that most of the absolute best Black Friday laptop deals won't appear until Black Friday proper, which falls on Nov. 28 this year. However, I've stumbled upon half a dozen early offers that I don't expect to get much cheaper next week. (They're mainly MacBooks and Chromebooks so far; I'm not obsessed with any Windows laptop deals just yet — they're fine but not amazing.) If you see a deal featured in my list below, it's because I'd happily add it to my own cart right now if I was in the market for a new PC.

The M4 Apple MacBook Airs

Apple's latest MacBook Air is lightweight, quiet, and faster than 83% of the laptops in our entire testing database — it's a really impressive ultraportable. The 15-inch model is my top pick for most people, but the 13-inch model is great for college students and other users who want something a little cheaper and more portable. Both sizes were regularly on sale on Amazon for $200 off earlier this fall, and I really didn't think they'd get any cheaper at this point in their life cycles (considering they're still well under a year old). Shockingly, they're now $250 off in the lead-up to Black Friday.

For what it's worth, Costco is the only retailer that's been able to match Amazon's all-time lows on the M4 MacBook Airs thus far, and it's not reserving them for members, either. However, a one- to two-day delivery time à la Amazon Prime will cost you $9.86. (Standard shipping is free, and Costco members get the option of in-store pickup.)

Opens in a new window Credit: Apple Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) $749.99 at Amazon and Costco
$999 Save $249.01   Get Deal Opens in a new window Credit: Apple Apple MacBook Air, 15-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) $949.99 at Amazon and Costco
$1,199 Save $249.01   Get Deal The 14-inch M5 Apple MacBook Pro

The all-new MacBook Pro is my splurge pick if you want an Apple laptop with even more power, a brighter 120Hz display, more ports for creative work, and crazy-good stamina. (At 21 hours and 17 minutes, it has the longest battery life of any MacBook we've ever tried, and our tech editor loved it.) It debuted in mid-October at a starting price of $1,599 and hasn't stopped getting cheaper since. At the time of writing, the base configuration with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is marked down to just $1,473 — a savings of just over $125.

Opens in a new window Credit: Apple Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M5, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) $1,473 at Amazon
$1,599 Save $126   Get Deal A refurbished 13-inch M3 Apple MacBook Air

If you're in the market for a dirt-cheap-but-not-too-outdated MacBook, Best Buy has a refurbished 13-inch MacBook Air with last year's M3 chip on sale for only $569.99. (Walmart usually sells the M1 model from 2020 for $599, so this is a genuine steal.) It has a 1080p FaceTime camera and closed-lid support for two external displays, whereas the newer M4 version has a nicer 12MP webcam and open-lid support for two monitors. It also comes with half the RAM as the latest model and runs about 24% slower. Still, it's a fine pick for simple everyday tasks like web browsing and sending emails.

Opens in a new window Credit: Apple Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M3, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - Geek Squad Certified Refurbished $569.99 at Best Buy
$849 Save $279.01   Get Deal The Alienware 16X Aurora

For most people, the Alienware 16X Aurora is my new favorite gaming laptop, a mid-range model featuring a 240Hz matte display, one-zone RGB backlighting, an Intel Arrow Lake processor, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series graphics. Notably, it comes with a "Stealth Mode" hotkey that turns down its fan noise and backlighting while boosting its battery life — a nice-to-have when you're not using it for gaming. The variant I tested has a high-end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, an RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB of memory, and 1TB of storage; it's already pretty fairly priced at $1,999.99, but Dell is currently selling it for $1,649.99 (or 18% off) as an early Black Friday deal. Other configurations with lesser specs start at just $1,349.99.

Opens in a new window Credit: Alienware Alienware 16X Aurora (Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) $1,649.99 at Dell
$1,999.99 Save $350   Get Deal The Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus

Lenovo's convertible Chromebook Plus is my favorite Chromebook for most buyers because of its stellar build quality, decent performance, great speakers, nice keyboard, and 12-hour battery life. There are two configurations available: One with an Intel Core i5-1334U processor and 256GB of storage, and another with a less powerful Intel Core i3-1315U processor and 128GB of storage. They both retail for $599 at full price.

The first configuration is the model we tested, and it's a Costco exclusive (though you can buy it without a membership). It's marked down to $529.99 ahead of Black Friday, which is actually the first time I've ever seen it on sale. The other, more pared-down version is a worse value at full price, but Best Buy is currently selling it for $349 (or $250 off), making it a great option for budget buyers with basic needs.

Opens in a new window Credit: Lenovo Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus (Intel Core i5-1334U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) $529.99 at Costco
$599.99 Save $70   Get Deal Opens in a new window Credit: Lenovo Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus (Intel Core i3-1315U, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) $349 at Best Buy
$599 Save $250   Get Deal The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514

Acer's all-new Chromebook Plus Spin 514 features an unrivaled 18-hour battery life and a fast processor (relatively speaking) with an NPU that supports two exclusive AI features. The version Acer sells on its website has 16GB of memory, a backlit keyboard, a fingerprint reader, and a 2.8K touchscreen display. It's overkill for most people, but it's worth considering if you want a high-end, super-future-proofed Chromebook. It's on sale for $769.99 right now (normally $799.99). That's not a huge discount, but it's never been on sale before.

Opens in a new window Credit: Acer Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 (MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) $769.99 at Acer
$799.99 Save $30   Get Deal

Desk space is a limited and highly valuable resource. If you have a gaming PC, you know how quickly accessories, peripherals, and gadgets pile up. Fortunately, with a single accessory, I managed to move most of the clutter off my desk without sacrificing functionality or convenience.

SAVE $130: As of Nov. 18, get the Shark FlexStyle for $199.99 — its lowest price ever. That saves you $130 for 38% off ahead of Black Friday 2025.

Opens in a new window Credit: Shark Shark FlexStyle in Copper $199.99 at Amazon
$329.99 Save $130   Get Deal

Working as a shopping reporter, it's easy to be jaded about deals. I've covered all the big events for years, Prime Day and Black Friday, so it takes a lot to stop me in my tracks, but maybe more so, it takes a lot for me to hit 'add to cart'. Last year, I made exactly one Black Friday purchase — the Shark FlexStyle in the coveted Wicked color. Unfortunately the Wicked collab is no longer available, however, the Shark FlexStyle is back on sale — it just hit its lowest price ever ahead of Black Friday.

I'd endorse buying the Shark FlexStyle at any price, it's our preferred Dyson Airwrap dupe here at Mashable, but I'd especially recommend buying it when it's on sale. Right now, the Shark FlexStyle in Copper is down to $199.99 at Amazon, its lowest recorded price. That saves you $130 off of its $329.99 price tag, for 38% savings. This is an objectively stellar deal, but why should you shop it?

I'm not speaking in hyperbole when I say my hair has never looked better since using the Shark FlexStyle. I got the hair styler leading up to my 2025 wedding with the ambition of doing my own hair for the big day — which I did, and the FlexStyle played a huge role. I am certainly no hair expert, I previously used a Revlon One-Step to dry my hair in a pinch, but I never loved it. The Shark FlexStyle makes at-home blowouts a breeze. My hair looks full and frizz-free when using the Shark FlexStyle, especially when I use the oval brush attachment.

Not to mention, I know I can use it in a pinch. Just this morning, I needed to dry my hair but be out the door in 10 minutes. With the Shark FlexStyle my hair was dry and smooth in just seven minutes. The Shark FlexStyle is an incredible hair tool, and it's even better one sale. Ahead of Black Friday 2025, get the Shark FlexStyle for $199.99 and save $130.

Google just released Antigravity, a brand new agent-first development platform that was announced alongside the Gemini 3 Pro model. This is an integrated development environment, or IDE, with a chatbot that takes the lead on complex, multi-step tasks.

Did you know that Energizer started making laptops recently? I didn’t either. The iconic battery company’s laptop is pretty on-brand, though—it has a massive battery in it that’s supposed to last for up to 28 hours of actual use.

On Tuesday afternoon, Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht apologized to the internet.

After Cloudflare resolved an outage that caused widespread problems across the internet ecosystem, Knecht took to X to offer his apologies. The CTO wrote, "I won’t mince words: earlier today we failed our customers and the broader Internet when a problem in @Cloudflare network impacted large amounts of traffic that rely on us. The sites, businesses, and organizations that rely on Cloudflare depend on us being available and I apologize for the impact that we caused."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

His mea culpa continued: "That issue, impact it caused, and time to resolution is unacceptable. Work is already underway to make sure it does not happen again, but I know it caused real pain today."

Knect also posted an update on the outage on X, promising a full explanation for the underlying issue.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

On Tuesday mornings, the Cloudflare outage caused a broad range of services, apps, and websites to go down for many users. The website Downdetector showed user-reported issues at X, ChatGPT, Canva, Spotify, League of Legends, Canva, DoorDash, Claude, Uber, and YouTube. Even Grindr went down temporarily. (Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by Ziff Davis, Mashable's parent company.)

In an emailed statement to Mashable on Tuesday morning, Cloudflare said the problem was caused by a crash in a software system that handled traffic for many of its customers.

"To be clear, there is no evidence that this was the result of an attack or caused by malicious activity," the statement added. "We expect that some Cloudflare services will be briefly degraded as traffic naturally spikes post incident but we expect all services to return to normal in the next few hours. A detailed explanation will be posted soon on blog.cloudflare.com. Given the importance of Cloudflare's services, any outage is unacceptable. We apologize to our customers and the Internet in general for letting you down today. We will learn from today's incident and improve."

If this internet outage feels familiar, it's because it's the third major outage in 2025. Just last month, we reported on a widespread Amazon Web Services outage. And before that, a Google Cloud Platform outage likewise took down swaths of the internet.

AMD's RX 9000 GPUs represent a cheaper alternative to NVIDIA's ultra-powerful, but ultra-expensive RTX 5000 GPUs, but they're not quite the budget kings they used to be. Now, they might be getting even more expensive. And you can probably blame AI for this.

The developer of the popular open source Playnite game library manager, which has so far been limited to Windows, announced that we can expect the first Linux release in 2026. This coding push is part of the developer's personal interest in leaving Windows in favor of Linux as an operating system.

Amazon gift cards usually come with the starting balance printed on the physical card or mentioned in the email if you receive an eGift card. But what if you want to check the balance on a gift card that you previously redeemed to see if you have enough left over to splurge during Amazon's Black Friday sale in 2025 (which officially kicks off on Nov. 20)? Or maybe you want to reload a gift card you've already used up? Check the state of your gift cards before your shopping spree this season by following the steps below.

How to check your Amazon gift card balance on your desktop

Follow these simple steps to check or reload your Amazon gift card balance:

Total Time

• 2 minutes

What You Need

• Computer

Step 1: Navigate to Amazon

Open the Amazon website.

Step 2: Accounts & Lists

Click on Accounts & Lists in the top right corner of the screen.

Credit: Screenshot: Amazon website

Step 3: Select Gift cards

A new menu page will open on the website. Select Gift cards.

Credit: Screenshot: Amazon website

Step 4: Redeem or reload gift card

Once you click, you'll be able to see the existing balance on your gift card. If you are checking the balance on an unredeemed gift card and wish to redeem it, you can click on Redeem a Gift card. You can also opt to Reload your card in this menu or check your transaction history, which is listed below the gift card balance.

Credit: Screenshot: Amazon website How to check your Amazon gift card balance in the app Total Time

• 2 minutes

What You Need

• Smartphone

Step 1: Go to Account

Open the app and click on the account icon at the bottom of the landing page (the little person illustration). Then choose Account at the top of the landing page.

Credit: Screenshot: Amazon

Step 2: Navigate to Payments

Scroll down until you see the Payments section.

Step 3: Manage gift card balance

In the Payments section, click on Manage gift card balance.

Credit: Screenshot: Amazon

Step 4: Check balance or reload

Use the new menu that opens to check your gift card balance, reload your gift card, or check past activity.

Credit: Screenshot: Amazon