iOS: If the kid doubling as a monster wrangler in your life is hooked on catching oddly-shaped fictional animals (or if you're addicted to the game yourself), you'd better hope they have got a recent phone on which to play their favourite game. Pokemon GO developer Niantic has announced an upcoming update that will incorporate Apple's ARKit, resulting in a more polished augmented reality experience, but bar devices unable to run iOS 11 from playing the game. Sorry, trainers.

For one brief moment in time, Pokemon Go was a true cultural phenomenon. Unfortunately, it wasn't actually very good, with a host of technical glitches, battery issues and ham-fisted "improvements" significantly dampening people's enjoyment.

Despite this, approximately 65 million active users have never stopped playing. Last week, these players were rewarded for their loyalty with a huge new update. If you're keen to get back into the world of pocket monsters, here are the main improvements you need to know about.

2016 was an exciting year for Android fans. Google released Android Nougat which finally added split-screen mode,a pair of brand new Pixel phones hit the streets, and did we mention Pokémon Go came out? Here are our biggest posts and downloads for Android this year.

If you're still playing Pokemon GO, there's some good news for you. At least seven baby Pokemon have been released in the game. Read on to find out which ones are available and how you can get them.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: the weirdest horror movies from the 1970s, how Niantic Labs is slowly killing off Pokemon Go, Sony Xperia XZ Australian review.

Pokémon Go is in rapid decline. Since launching in July and soaring in popularity, it had lost at least a third of its daily users by the middle of August. By mid-September, daily revenues had fallen from US$16m per day to US$2m (excluding the 30% app store fee) and daily downloads had declined from a peak of 27 million to 700,000. So what happened?

Android: Over the weekend, Pokemon GO rolled out an update that will allow you to set one Pokemon as your buddy. Neat! It also stealthily blocks the game from anyone with root access. Not as neat. Here's how to get around this limitation and play anyway.

Pokemon Go has received a major update that adds the Buddy Pokemon system. The new feature lets trainers pick a Pokemon to walk around with them to earn Candy for levelling up. Here's what you need to know.

Pokemon GO fever might have died down a little, but it still remains the world's most popular and profitable mobile gaming app by a significant margin. If you're still trying to collect 'em all, this infographic provides some handy hunting tips for the rarest pocket monsters of the bunch.

In Pokemon GO's latest update, you can summon your faction's trainer from their busy schedule to come and check out your Pokemon. While their advice seems broad and mostly useless, you can actually use it to calculate the exact hidden stats that your Pokemon has.

Pokemon GO is dead. Or dying. Apparently. That's the latest story, after the game's rapid popularity spike began levelling off. The reality: Pokemon GO is still one of the top apps, and the top game (in terms of both revenue and active users). It's most likely going to stay that way for a while. Let's take a look at the statistics.

If you're struggling to manage your monsters and items in Pokemon GO, you're not alone: the game's limited storage space has been causing headaches for countless players. This infographic contains plenty of tips and tricks for better inventory management: from keeping your bag limit in check to the items you should never trash.

While Pokemon Go, the hugely popular augmented reality game, is officially only available for mobile devices, there are ways to play it on PC (we have a guide for it here). But going down the unofficial route does come with its own risks. If you download the game from a dubious source, you may potentially fall prey to nefarious software created by cybercriminals. One example is a new ransomware that impersonates a Pokemon GO application for Windows. Here's what you need to know.

If you want to be the greatest Pokemon trainer there ever was, you should know the strengths and weaknesses of not only your own Pokemon, but also of other Pokemon that you want to fight or tame. This cheatsheet from Pokemon Go Database lets you quickly reference how your own Pokemon measure up against others.

Gyms in Pokemon GO can be intimidating if you don't know what you're doing. These tips will turn you into a Pokemon trainer so good that other players will have to start giving you badges.

Video: Keeping track of which Pokemon are spawning in your area in Pokemon GO usually requires you to keep your phone open and running. Over on Adafruit, they show off a way to build your own Pokemon detector using a Raspberry Pi Zero.

It's no secret that Pokemon GO destroys your battery, so it was weird when developer Niantic pulled the battery-saving feature from the iOS version last week. Thankfully, it's back now alongside the ability to change your nickname. There's also a new nearby feature that's being tested out for a small subset of users.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: Everything you need to know about Census 2016, the best video game gun, the 10 most expensive flops in television history.

If it seems like some pocket monsters in Pokemon GO are a lot harder to catch than others, you're not crazy. Every Pokemon in the game has a predetermined base difficulty when you try to catch them. Here's what you need to know.