Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 133, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy belated Juneteenth, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Sam Bankman-Fried and PE Guy and admin nights (which we should totally all do together one of these days), listening to Paul McCartney on Song Exploder, trudging through the bugs of the iOS 27 beta in order to use the good new Siri, once again trying and failing to switch to YouTube Music, free trial-hopping my way through the World Cup, finally upgrading my camera setup with the Elgato Prompter, and seeing if this strange, cheap headband can help me fall asleep faster. So far… inconclusive.
I also have for you the new Pixar movie worth your time, a better way to hold your phone, a nice upgrade for Android users, a lovely new Windows laptop, and much more. Let’s do this.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / doing during commercials this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- Toy Story 5. The bad guy is an iPad! I love it. And by all accounts, the movie completely works both as a story and as a thoughtful look at the real pros and cons of screentime. We often talk about device use in all the wrong ways; leave it to Pixar to get it right. I’ll be in the theater Saturday morning.
- Lettera. Markdown editors are a dime a dozen right now, but hardly anybody does text editing better than Shiny Frog, the folks behind the great Bear app. This text editor is in beta, but it’s already super fast and stable at least for me. Gonna use this a lot.
- The PopSockets Low-Pro Grip. I might be the world’s most fervent supporter of PopSockets, and of phone grips of all kinds. (Phones are not comfortable to hold!) I’ve been using the kickstand PopSocket for a while, but am going to gladly trade it, and my $40, for the super-thin new model.
- Mastodon 4.6. I don’t spend that much time on Mastodon anymore, but this might help win me (and some others) back. Collections are a clever way to solve Mastodon’s big discovery and search problem, and a good way to help people get started on a new social network. Plus, you can let people sign up to get your posts sent via email. Fediverse, baby!
- Snap Specs. $2,195 for a pair of smart glasses! Wild. I confess I am not at all convinced anyone’s going to want these — they’re big and wonky and way too expensive. But I also think Snap understands how people actually want to use technology better than just about anybody. So I’m not writing these off just yet.
- Android 17. Coming soon to a Pixel near you: an easier way to capture reaction videos, floating app windows that seem like a very useful multitasking system that I hope iOS copies immediately, and a built-in controller for playing games on foldables. As always with Android, it’s only some features, for some phones… but I like where Android is headed.
- VSCO Studio Pro. VSCO makes nice photography stuff, and this app, which is made for editing huge sets of photos all at once, is very clever. “Make all my other photos look like this photo” is just such a useful editing trick! I’m not wild about the looming subscription model here, but I like what VSCO’s making.
- “The Music Industry is Broken.” Really good Drew Gooden video about how the business of music is changing thanks to streaming services, AI, ticketing monopolies, and more. There’s definitely some “you’re just mad at capitalism” going on here, but Drew does a good job at hitting on all the ways things have changed, and why it all feels bad.
- The Microsoft Surface Laptop 8. There’s a new Surface Pro, too, but I have long thought the more normal Surface Laptop (not to be confused with the Ultra) was one of the best Windows devices out there. If the new Qualcomm chips are as good as advertised, this should be a really useful all-purpose laptop. And it looks great in green.
- Songs of The Dead. The beginning of a new series coauthored by Installerverse favorite Brandon Sanderson, called The Strata Wars, this book is about music and magic and time and space and a million other things. Some reviewers seemed to find it a bit much, but others loved it. And I know a lot of us love Sanderson.
Josh Cajas just joined The Verge this week as a producer on The Vergecast. (Which is now publishing every day, and has cool merch, did you know??) Before he joined us, Josh had many lives: He worked in the US House of Representatives, he was in an extremely cool and good band, he has made many cool things and will make many more with us. He’s also just good people.
I like to have new Verge folks share their homescreen with us early in their tenure to see who they truly are before they’re dropped into a team full of mechanical keyboard weirdos and to-do list app maniacs. So here’s Josh’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: I have a Google Pixel 10.
The wallpaper: A photo I took last year during a trip to Japan of the Kiyomizu-dera shrine at sunset (shot on my Pixel 9 Pro XL). Kyoto is incredibly picturesque, especially at that time of day, and I was lucky enough to catch it during cherry blossom season.
The apps: Settings, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Keep, Phone, Messages, Edge, Camera, Play Store, Photos, Translate, TrainTime, ChatGPT, Focus Friend, Snipd.
I use the Microsoft Launcher to ditch the At a Glance widget and search bar, and to let me use icon theme packs. I’ve mostly used Flight Pack, Retro Mode – Neon, and Viral to give my apps more of a cohesive look. KWGT has also been great for building a custom Apple Music widget and utility bar on my homescreen. I also love the Google Photos widget cycling throughout the day, and my dog Butters makes an appearance in my screenshot!
My first page covers my essentials (work apps, socials, streaming services) and a favorites folder for shopping, banking, and food. Since it’s baseball season, my MLB app typically gets a lot of use. Not so much this year, though, with the way the Mets are playing.
My second page is for fitness and productivity. I’m a big Pixel Watch guy, so my Google Health widget is front and center, alongside my MyFitnessPal widget for daily calorie tracking. My favorite productivity app has been Focus Friend by Hank Green that’s equal parts Tamagotchi pet and focus timer. You earn beans every time you activate it and stay off your phone, which you can then spend on items for your Bean Friend’s environment. And for podcasts, I’ve used Snipd since it first launched and never left it. Its growing list of AI features like transcriptions, summaries, clips, and insights make it easy for jotting down ideas and catching up on my favorite shows.
I also asked Josh to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- I’m watching Mindy Kaling’s new show Not Suitable for Work on Hulu, and it’s surprisingly great for someone who doesn’t watch a lot of sitcoms. I’m a big Seinfeld guy, and it scratches that same itch of adults stumbling through life in NYC — but make it modern.
- I’ve fallen down the YouTube Shorts rabbit hole recently, and one of my favorite creators right now is AsamaPOV. If you’ve ever wanted to just “walk” through local restaurants in Japan without hopping on a plane, this is the guy you should watch. His interactions with the owners and cooks are incredibly wholesome, and the food he gets to eat looks amazing.
- I keep coming back to PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale on my PS Vita. I’m a PlayStation fanboy at heart, and while it’s no Smash Bros., I love the gameplay, stages, and finishing moves in this game. Especially PaRappa the Rapper’s!
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“I just watched Cunk on Life. It’s a BBC comedy/documentary on the topic of “life” from an absurdist’s perspective. It’s by Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror. I laughed so hard, I gave myself hiccups.” — Kelly
“Really enjoying Young Sherlock on Amazon Prime. It’s Guy Ritchie at his (almost) best: stylish, British, fast talking, crime-ridden, with a dash of humor and a healthy dose of fun.” — Logan
“I’ve been using Wildbirds since closed beta and it’s everything birders want from Instagram, but better.” — Michiel
“Playing Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and really hoping that these titles change at some point.” — Connor
“I’m studying for a technical exam and put all the materials into Claude. I had it break down the material into daily, 30-minute study chunks to be emailed to me over the next two weeks. Each email has a prompt to do a short quiz at the end. A little wonky to start but it’s working well so far.” — Ian
“I’ve been using the Dirty Little Zine website to make pocket-sized photography zines. Cheap, fun, and easy way to get your photos out of the digital wasteland and into the real world.” — Mark
“Finished reading the series of Silo books in advance of the next season coming in July.” — Chris
“I’m currently going through Craig Alanson’s Expeditionary Force sci-fi novels, they’re kinetic and silly and a bit rough around the edges at the same time, I’m having a blast.” — Carlo
“I’ve gotten back into playing PowerWash Simulator after work. I’m actually kind of excited about Star Wars again after watching The Mandalorian and Grogu a couple of weeks ago so now I am looking forward to the PWS2 Star Wars DLC next month.” — Salt Palace
There was some sneakily big, Installerverse-adjacent news this week: Google Calendar now has more colors! Instead of just Google’s bad ideas about green and blue, you can now color-code your calendar with 200 custom colors. The feature is rolling out now, and might genuinely change how I plan my days. I’ve been toying with the idea of just ditching a to-do list entirely and living my life out of my calendar — I continue to aspire to be a one-text-file kind of person — and now I can finally make my calendar look the way I want it to. I’m fighting the urge to get way too detailed with the color-coding, though I assume that’ll happen. For now I’m just back to timeblocking like a madman. Feeling powerful.
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