Welcome to 95 Mac Daily for Monday, January 19th, 2026.

I'm your host, Chance Miller.

We are sponsored this week by Stuff, the clean and powerful to-do list application.

Leading off today, Apple is testing a new design for App Store search ads on iPhone.

Some users on iOS 26.3 are noticing that the classic blue background that shows around sponsored results is no longer there. This is a change

that blurs the lines between what paid ad results look like in search results and what the real actual search results look like.

Historically, when you search for something on the App Store, you'll usually see a sponsored result at the top.

The sponsored result is clearly separated with a blue background and also a blue banner that says add.

With the changes that Apple is now testing,

the only differentiator between organic results and the promoted ad is the present of that small

ad banner next to the app icon. Apple hasn't commented on the change, and right now it appears

to be some sort of A-B test. Some users are seeing the

classic design with the blue background, while other users are seeing this new design. The change

could be related to Apple's announcement from December that App Store's search results would

soon start including more than one sponsored result for a given search query.

The removal of the blue background will mean that all of those ads will appear in the list

in a more integrated design.

But on the flip side, this also has the effect of making it harder for users to quickly

distinguish at a glance what is an ad and what isn't, potentially misleading users and basically

tricking them into clicking something that they don't know is an ad. We'll have to wait for

Apple's official confirmation to know whether this will roll out broadly or if it's just a small

test. Next of today, speaking of advertising, OpenAI has changes coming to ChatGPT.

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