Hello, buddies! Welcome to Installer No. 121, your information to one of the best and Verge-iest stuff on the planet. (Should you’re new right here, welcome, good luck within the Elite Eight, and likewise you may learn all of the previous editions on the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been studying about Will Wright and sync music and the smartphone principle of all the things, choosing up The Soul of a New Machine once more after listening to that Tracy Kidder died, including SNL UK to my weekly YouTube clip rotation, watching all my favourite issues collide when Hilary Duff went on Scorching Ones, shifting all my music into Parachord, enjoying with the NewsBlur Android beta, listening to the brand new podcast from the Serial of us, enjoying a bunch of Ball x Pit on my cellphone, and making an attempt desperately to kick this silly chilly.
I even have for you an app to make your travels simpler, a weird and pleasant new present to observe, a brand new motive to play an previous Mario sport, and way more. Let’s do it.
(As all the time, one of the best a part of Installer is your concepts and suggestions. What are you watching / studying / enjoying / downloading / vibe-coding this week? Inform me all the things: installer@theverge.com. And if another person who may get pleasure from Installer, ahead it to them and inform them to subscribe right here.)
- Flighty. Ordinarily I’d solely suggest Flighty to individuals who journey lots — it’s a tremendous app, however not low-cost, and really a lot for energy customers. Proper now, although, we might all use a little bit assist navigating safety strains, delays, and modifications. The brand new Airport Intelligence function may pay for itself fairly quick.
- Bait. The premise of this present — about an actor auditioning to be James Bond, and all of the bizarre stuff that follows — is so totally internet-pilled and meta that it positively shouldn’t work. However not less than from what I’ve seen to this point, it fully does. Although to be truthful, I’ll watch Riz Ahmed in something.
- Tremendous Mario Bros. Marvel. Like my colleague Andrew Webster says, it’s all the time a very good time to get again into this sport. The brand new Swap 2 replace comes with a bunch of latest ranges, boss battles, and characters — it’s not a ton of latest content material, however for me it was an excellent motive to mainly begin the sport yet again. Zero regrets.
- The HTML Assessment difficulty 05. This on-line journal stays one of many coolest issues moving into digital literature. This yr’s difficulty is, as all the time, full of lovely writing and cartoons and interactive design — the net is so cool, y’all.
- Dropzone 5.0 for Mac. My favourite apps are those that simply appear to be clearly a part of how your machine all the time labored. Dropzone is like that: it’s simply a simple, customizable technique to save / share / obtain / no matter all kinds of issues, simply by dragging a file or a hyperlink. The brand new design appears to be like nice, and the app is simply so helpful.
- “The Ten Kilos Episode.” I discussed this present in passing final week, however there’s something about Mates Hold Secrets and techniques that I simply can’t cease watching. It’s a celeb podcast meets trashy actuality present, filmed and introduced in essentially the most fascinating method. I don’t even know if I prefer it! However I’m hooked.
- Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. I’ve a listing of reveals and films I believe might have been hits, besides they have been ruined by silly names. (The checklist is known as for Kevin Can F*ck Himself, an unimaginable present nobody watched.) This film is bizarre and enjoyable! I’d inform you to observe it if I might keep in mind the identify.
- Notion 3.4. I proceed to assume Notion is a exceptional piece of software program that’s simply gradual and annoying sufficient to make me consistently need to swap. However these are very nice modifications: tabs and heading upgrades, a vastly cleaner sidebar, archives in databases, and extra. Hey app builders all over the place? Give me fewer AI issues and extra updates like this.
Casey Liss and I are going to hang around in individual one in every of as of late. He’s been one in every of my favourite podcasters for years, as one of many hosts of Unintentional Tech Podcast. (Latest episodes are getting me dangerously near going all-in on self-hosting…) He’s additionally the developer of Callsheet, a terrific app for locating film info and the first-ever factor to be featured in Installer. He additionally lives like 90 minutes away from me. We have to lunch, Casey.
Anyway, I requested Casey to share his homescreen with us, curious to see how his many lives and occupations coalesce on his cellphone. Right here it’s, plus some data on the apps he makes use of and why:
The cellphone: iPhone 17 Professional, 512 GB, in no matter Apple calls “blue” this yr.
The wallpaper: Only a blueish gradient I set utilizing Apple’s personal instruments. Boring, I do know.
The apps: AnyList, Settings, Apple Notes, Apple Maps, Apple Music, Sonos, Overcast, Day One, Instagram, Indigo, Slack, NetNewsWire, Residence Assistant, Callsheet, Due, Pictures, Fastmail, Messages, Fantastical, Safari.
Loads of what’s on my homescreen shouldn’t be shocking. Probably the most shocking factor to me is a swap I made some time in the past: I switched from 4 semi-organized homescreens (and by no means utilizing Highlight) to 2 homescreens, and utilizing Highlight consistently. I additionally turned on massive icons as a result of I choose the aesthetics. The principle homescreen has climate on the prime, and 16 of my most-used apps. (Talking of aesthetics, workforce light-in-the-day-and-dark-at-night.)
The second display has two widget stacks: pictures from today (from the Pictures app and Widgetsmith), Fantastical and Parcel, a small Foodnoms widget, and 4 different regularly used apps. The apps are Pushover, which receives push notifications I ship myself from apps like Residence Assistant, n8n, and extra; Sports activities Alerts for sports activities scores, Banktivity for monetary monitoring, and UniFi Shield to see cameras at house.
After being a religious Spotify individual for eternally, I finally converted to Apple Music, since it’s a part of the Apple One bundle. It’s… high quality. I’m additionally an enormous Sonos fan, and have 5 rooms in the home with some form of speaker in it. I nearly by no means AirPlay to them, and as an alternative, use the app. They’re principally by way of the darkish days of 2025 now, fortunately.
Since covid, I’ve journaled mainly day by day. This sounds very fancy, however in actuality, it’s often only a transient entry with some photograph I’ve taken through the day. I’ve used Day One for this eternally, and haven’t any intention to stop.
The purple-ish icon with the lowercase “i” is Indigo, a forthcoming app from my buddies Ben McCarthy and Aaron Vegh that I’m beta testing. It’s a unified Mastodon and Bluesky consumer that interleaves the 2 timelines as one. It’s actually nice, and has made it a lot much less burdensome to maintain up with each my nerds (Mastodon) and common individuals (Bluesky). I take advantage of NetNewsWire as my RSS reader, the place I get a ton of each nerdy and native information. Because of my The Verge membership, I lastly have full-text RSS for right here, as nicely! 🤩
The clapperboard is my app, Callsheet! Think about if IMDB was written and designed by somebody who… nicely… cares. As an alternative of people who find themselves simply making an attempt to funnel you into shopping for junk on Amazon. Or auto-playing movies. Or begging you to log in once more. Callsheet tries to sit down in the identical house as IMDB, but it surely’s designed with individuals in thoughts. It’s designed to be quick, to reply no matter query you’ll have, after which get out of your method.
Subsequent to Callsheet is Due, which I stay by. Due will frequently re-remind you of issues till you clear that job. It’s as shut as I get to any form of formal job administration system.
Lastly, my spouse and I are all-in on Apple Pictures, and Shared Photograph Library. It’s been surprisingly bulletproof for us.
I additionally requested Casey to share a number of issues he’s into proper now. Right here’s what he despatched again:
- I’m an unapologetic Scrubs fan, and I used to be very nervous concerning the reboot. As I write this, we’re a number of episodes in, and… it appears actually good! They’ve not less than acknowledged most of the issues concerning the unique Scrubs that didn’t age nicely, and are additionally taking characters in new instructions.
- I’m a Imaginative and prescient Professional proprietor — it was for my work, I swear! — and I watched the Raye Live performance for One when it was new a pair years in the past. I not too long ago performed her album My twenty first Century Blues; it guidelines. I really feel like everybody knew this however me.
- I not too long ago stumbled onto the slowest — however coolest — web site on the web. The Auto Catalog Archive, which has brochures from zillions of vehicles.
Right here’s what the Installer group is into this week. I need to know what you’re into proper now as nicely! E mail installer@theverge.com or message me on Sign — @davidpierce.11 — along with your suggestions for something and all the things, and we’ll function a few of our favorites right here each week. For much more nice suggestions, try the replies to this put up on Threads and this put up on Bluesky.
“I’m enjoying a bunch of Pokémon ROM hacks (like Everlasting X and Renegade Platinum) on my AYN Thor and having absolutely the time of my life.” — NEAL
“Giving Noteful a strive on iPad. It’s good and filled with lots of good options. However I don’t know that I’ll ever be capable to completely ditch pen and paper.” — Nick
“Huge into the Bambu Printer A2. In search of good 3D prints!” – Zach
“Watching The Seize on BBC iPlayer which could be very superb and I like to recommend. Massively into my MacBook Neo, which I purchased sans Contact ID as a result of you may allow register by way of Apple Watch.” — Nathan
“I can’t consider I missed the decision for pocket book feedback! For what it’s price, Beechmore Books is the undisputed champ of paper that doesn’t bleed by way of. I haven’t discovered any (apart from devoted sketchbooks) that do it as nicely. And it’s typically corresponding to Leuchtturm1917. I now have one on recurring order with Amazon. “ — Bruce
“I put on a Bulova Computron. Particularly the black and pink one. It’s wonderful. Like a lil ‘90s alarm clock radio on my wrist.” — Aidan
“Persevering with to play with my Synology NAS setup with issues like Plex, Jellyfin, the ARR suite, and many others… to be ready for the subscription apocalypse and re-rise of bodily media.” — Jamison
“With all of the hubbub round the brand new episode, I FINALLY made time to observe The Superb Digital Circus. Tons of enjoyable (and psychological torment), I hope indie animation retains on rising extra highly effective.” – Hanna
“I discovered a improbable E Ink reader, the Xteink X4. Its foremost options are that it’s pocket-sized and it doesn’t help any DRM. Carrying all my books on an e-reader that matches in my pocket is one thing else. You’ll be able to even flash its firmware with an open-source undertaking that makes it even higher!“ — Alric
“I counsel you try Brad Dowdy at The Pen Addict. (Begin together with his Prime 5 Pens checklist.) He additionally has a protracted working podcast, additionally referred to as The Pen Addict.” — Dan
I found an internet site referred to as Out of date Sounds this week, and instantly fell in love. It’s precisely what it seems like: a trove of sounds you by no means hear anymore, from a winding pocket watch to a number-crunching calculating machine to melting glacier ice. Totally half of those must be become white-noise machines.
And truly, to that finish: Cities and Reminiscence, the group that hosts Out of date Sounds, hosts an (I believe) annual occasion by which it opens up its sound library to anybody who needs to play with and remix them. Listening again to the submissions from final yr is a visit. Seeing each what individuals document, and what others do with these seemingly mundane sounds, is already altering how I hear the world round me. So cool.
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