Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 105, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you’ve recovered from the clocks falling back, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about David Ellison and Common Crawl and Stephen Colbert, catching up on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Great British Baking Show, letting TikTok turn me on to a new Olivia Dean song and a new Broadway musical, testing the Boox Palma 2 Pro, spending way too many hours trying to design my new home office / podcast studio, and packing every single thing I own in boxes. One more week until I move, and life goes back to normal. I hope.
I also have for you a very exciting new line of smart home stuff, a new Apple TV show worth watching, a great update to a great Android launcher, an app for your AirPods, and much more.
Also, quick housekeeping note: no Installer next week. We’ll be back in two weeks with some fun pre-Black Friday stuff, in addition to everything else. In the meantime, lots to do this week. Let’s go.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What have you been reading / watching / playing / listening to / turning into cider 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.)
- Ikea Bilresa. If anyone is going to really democratize the idea of the smart home, it’s Ikea. I am into most of the nearly two dozen Matter-compatible things the company announced this week, from lights to sensors to controllers, but the super customizable Bilresa buttons and remotes won me over immediately. They’re not on sale yet, but I’m putting them here now because I think they’re gonna be worth waiting for.
- Predator: Badlands. Whenever a movie gets reviews that are like, “It’s well-made and a great time but it’s not exactly High Art,” I confess I immediately get excited. Give me more dumb fun! This appears to be a little dumb and a lot of fun. I’m in.
- Pluribus. “Created by Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul” is literally all the pitch this show requires for me. But the fact that it’s a sci-fi show — about a world in which everyone is a little too happy — makes it even more exciting.
- Sora for Android. The Sora hype continues! Honestly I’m getting tired of seeing AI-generated stuff all over my social feeds, but I keep hearing from folks who love making videos of themselves in all sorts of funny situations. Now that it’s on Android, too, maybe everything can stay in the app and off my Instagram feed? Please?
- Europa Universalis V. I didn’t know anything about this game, or even this series, until this week. But a massive, world-conquering strategy game is extremely up my alley. I almost lost a lot of friends over Risk games… I wonder how this’ll go.
- Shuffalo. A new daily game from The New Yorker in which you have to make progressively longer words with progressively more letters. Scratches my Bananagrams-loving brain so nicely.
- Niagara Launcher’s Artistic Update. Niagara remains my favorite Android launcher, and I really like the direction this update takes the product: The team tapped a bunch of great artists to make not just cool wallpapers but whole themes that reimagine everything about your device. Also, the new dark icon pack? Gorgeous.
- BeeBot. Super clever new app from Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, which he refers to as “Waze meets Gossip Girl.” Basically, it’s an audio-only app that will pipe up in your headphones and periodically tell you about what’s happening nearby.
- WhatsApp for Apple Watch. This, plus the recent iPad app, suggests to me that WhatsApp is really pushing hard to become your default messaging service across all devices and platforms. For me it’s mostly a group chat platform, but I’m pumped to be able to do tapback reactions from my wrist.
- Operation Space Station. The first of this two-part PBS series on the International Space Station is, in a word, epic. I always figured building a city in space would be hard, and I had no idea. This is way more dramatic than any space movie.
Ryder Carroll, the creator of the Bullet Journal Method, is one of my favorite thinkers on the web. He’s done such a good job of not just having Big Theories About Productivity, but actually building systems to put them into practice. I’ve tried to go full-analog Bullet Journal before, but have ultimately settled for just adapting a lot of his principles into whatever note-taking app I’m using.
I’ve been wanting to have Ryder in Installer for a while, but was never able to make it work. But then! He recently posted a great video about how he thinks about his phone, and how he has set it up to be exactly what he wants and nothing more.
There’s a lot to learn from what Ryder’s done here, so for the first time in this space I’m just going to deconstruct someone’s setup for them. Here’s Ryder’s homescreen:
The phone: iPhone 16 Pro Max.
The wallpaper: Solid black.
The apps: Blank Spaces. We’ve talked about this launcher — and others like it, such as Dumb Phone — before, but it’s basically an iOS widget designed to replace your entire homescreen with big, text-based app launchers. (Fair warning: it costs $4 a month, or $24 lifetime.) Ryder’s using a pretty simple version of Blank, but it has a huge amount of built-in customization options.
I don’t want to spoil his whole video, which is full of good thoughts and tips, but I want to highlight a couple of things Ryder did to his phone that I’ve also done, and heard from you works well too:
- Get colorless. I never managed to stick to a full grayscale phone like Ryder has, but switching to an all-black wallpaper and ditching as many app icons as possible in favor of simple, productive widgets has been a huge help.
- Delete all algorithmic apps. I could quibble forever with the precise definition here, but I support the theory of getting rid of anything designed to keep your attention as long as possible.
- Use Focus modes. I like the way he thinks about these modes, especially in combination with the very simple verb-based homescreen he built. He has Focus modes that shift throughout the day, as a way to unsubtly dictate what he ought to be doing right now. I love this.
Even if you’re ultimately not worried about your relationship with your phone, or don’t want to do the work to get a setup like this, I really do recommend periodically just blowing up your whole system. Going through this, Ryder discovered the same thing I have over and over: that if you’re not careful, you’ll end up looking down for more time, and at the wrong things, than you think.
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.
“Stephen King’s son wrote an 800 page book called King Sorrow that is (reductively) Millennial It. The title is a conjured dragon that embodies the very notion of evil. But it’s also a play on the author’s famous father, and his half-century of work. I’d say read it, but don’t do that: go audiobook!” — Chris
“I’ve been using Today’s Budget for the past month and it fundamentally changed how I view my finances. Created by just two people, the app answers a simple question that no other app can easily answer: How much can you actually spend today?” — Win
“Hi! I’ve been exploring the n8n platform for automating (not only) tasks. I’ve built an automation which sends me D&B events everyday. I was pleasantly surprised how powerful n8n is!” — Dima
“Affinity! Down with the Adobe monopoly.” — Jack
“I can recommend the game Dispatch, some described it as a game where you cannot fail. It’s similar to Telltale, where you choose the dialog and do some mini games. Reminds me of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.” — Bogdan
“Staccs is literally mind-bending. It’s a super lightweight matching card game (think Uno) that has just enough complexity to keep every game interesting but still accessible enough for younger kids. But what sets Staccs apart is the visual design. It’s my favorite kind of card game: small package, amazing design, endlessly replayable, great for kids and adults.” — Bone
“Anyone with even a passing interest in cooking needs to follow Frank Prisinzano (I follow on instagram but he’s all over). Start learning his methods (not recipes) and start changing your life!” — Scott
“If you haven’t watched Pantheon on Netflix, it’s worth it.” — Michael
“I recently got a Mac Studio and set up Tailscale and Jellyfin to get access to all of my (legally obtained) media from anywhere across the world. Tailscale creates a direct and private VPN to your devices. Jellyfin is a much better open source alternative to Plex. The Mac Studio’s fast processor can transcode the video to lower resolutions on the fly. It all works well together.” — Xyan
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I love bad Christmas movies. (I was going to call it a guilty pleasure, but I don’t feel one tiny bit of guilt about it.) Hotshot executive from the big city goes back to her hometown, finds love and the spirit of the holidays? Yes please, every time, a thousand times a year.
Anyway this year is shaping up to be a pretty special one on the holiday movie front. And if you care as much as I do, you should bookmark this TVLine story that lists every single one coming over the next couple months, sorted by streaming platform. Did you know there’s a Jonas Brothers movie coming next week?!?! Happy holidays indeed.
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