Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 103, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry everything’s so expensive this week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about gooning and Costco and protein bars and the Jonas Brothers, bingeing Nobody Wants This season two, trying to figure out how to save $4,500 for the new Rivian e-bike, telling anyone who will listen that T-Pain’s still got it, learning everything I can about the Louvre heist, playing a surprising amount of Fortnite on my iPad, and shopping for Yoto Players after about a dozen of you told me I should. Thanks for that.

I also have for you a nifty new e-reader, a new AI browser, a new version of a favorite old game, and much more.

Also, keep sending me your favorite endlessly rewatchable things! I’ve gotten so many responses already that I think next week’s issue might be entirely devoted to the subject… keep sending the shows, movies, TikToks, creators, all the things you come back to over and over and over!

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / watching / playing / printing / patching up with duct tape 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.)

John Higgins has forgotten more about TVs than I’ll ever know. He’s a couple of weeks into his tenure here as a senior reviewer for TVs and audio, and is already blowing my mind with his knowledge and his credentials — including the fact that he is a certified TV calibrator, which is now immediately my new life goal.

Anyway, you’ll be seeing John all over The Verge covering audio and video gear of all sorts. I asked him to share his homescreen, both because I like to feature new people and to see if maybe he sucked at phones and I could feel one tiny shred of superiority over him. Alas, no dice.

Here’s John’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: I’m on an iPhone 15 Pro Max at the moment, but considering upgrading to a 17.

The wallpaper: It’s a picture of a redwood from when I took a drive up the west coast from Los Angeles to a little north of Seattle in 2023. I camped for a few days amongst the redwoods, went hiking, and was just absolutely amazed to be surrounded by the nature of Endor… I mean, Northern California.

The apps: Wallet, Settings, Camera, Apple Maps, FaceTime, Reminders, Apple Notes, Chrome, Safari, Weather, Find My, Photos, SoCal Sound, Phone, Messages, Mail, Calendar.

I’m kinda terrible at organizing my apps (although I used this opportunity to clean them up a bit). I generally just download them and have them show up at the end of my list. I have six screens of apps at the moment, including a multitude of AV apps for each manufacturer.

My main screen includes the things I access most often: email, different social networking (like Instagram, Signal, WhatsApp, LinkedIn), my Home app for device control, a load of streaming apps, and of course the games I play most, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes (which I’ve been playing since just after it launched almost 10 years ago) and Marvel Strike Force.

I also asked John to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:

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.

“After setting up my NAS a few weeks ago, I moved from Google Photos to Immich, a self-hosted dupe which is nearly identical. The process of moving the photos over was painful, but now I own my own image server. I’ve started working on setting up Home Assistant, and my journey of self hosting (as much as I can) is well and truly underway.” — Craig

“Finished Task on HBO today. Incredibly well done, totally devastating in parts and uplifting in others.” — Óli

“I recently discovered a use case that, in my opinion, fully justifies its existence: loading board game instructions into NotebookLM and utilizing it as both a guide and, more importantly, a judge during arguments.” — Jakub

“Just finished reading Enshittification by Cory Doctorow this morning. Was an excellent read, and I would highly recommend.” — Nathaniel

“Just got this RayCue charger dock to add some functionalities to my Mac Mini M4. Waiting for NVMe SSD to add storage to my Mac.” — ‪Jean-François

“Been enjoying MD Vinyl. It’s just a great looking app that focuses on albums. These apps tend to be a dime a dozen, but this one has my phone on standby more often.” — Matthew

“Ball x Pit has taken over my life just like Balatro did once upon a time.” — Ronak

“Zen Browser recently got a great update that makes a lot of quality of life improvements, and generally over the last few months it has become fully capable of being my daily browser.” — Janego

“I really enjoy little cars racing down some serious tracks. 3DBotmaker is a YouTube channel where they do some awesome racing, and they’re in the middle of the DRC-X right now. It’s beautifully filmed, some great commentary, and it’s all about the big air, baby.” — Jasper

I am in an eternal struggle with what I call “the scrolling apps” on my phone. I’ll delete Reddit and Threads and Bluesky and Instagram and everything else, then find myself stuck in line at Costco and suddenly poof, they all reappear. Reading’s good, sure, and I like doing the crossword, but sometimes I want to look at my phone for 10 minutes, you know?

The best thing I’ve found, somewhat surprisingly, is Dropout. (I wrote this before John told me he also loves Dropout, I swear.) I only recently became a subscriber, and its giant library of good-vibes comedy games turns out to be the perfect thing to watch a few minutes at a time. (Sam Reich, if you’re reading this: give me a vertical video feed of all your social clips, in the app!) Loading up a Make Some Noise episode leaves me in a vastly better mood than doomscrolling does, and like the rest of the internet, I’m rapidly turning into a Brennan Lee Mulligan superfan. Highly recommended on all counts.