The GoPro Max2 is an action camera worth going outside for

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 99, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy pumpkin spice season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about Lizzo and Uniqlo and book thieves and Max Verstappen, obsessing over both Black Rabbit and The Lowdown, eating aggressively too many Pop’ums pretzels, listening to everything in the AirPods Pro 3s, updating my old Ray-Ban Metas to see if the AI is any good, meal planning with Crouton, and posting all my junk for free on Nextdoor.

I also have for you an impressive new GoPro, an email service worth trying, a couple of exciting new games, and much more. Oh, and send me more info about your lists! I’ve gotten a million great emails about what lists you make and how you make them — we’re going to do something big here next week, and I’d love to feature everybody’s thoughts.

Finally, a big change to tell you about: in a couple of weeks, Installer is becoming one of The Verge’s subscriber-only newsletters! That means going forward, the only way to get Installer will be to subscribe to The Verge. Why? Because building a community of subscribers is the best way forward for The Verge, and making the subscription worth paying for is how we get there. Our list of subscriber perks is full of good stuff, and going forward that includes this newsletter.

If you have any questions, hit me up, I’ll answer them all as best I can. Here are a couple of key things:

If all goes well, this change should go into effect the week after next, with issue 101. But I’ll keep you posted. Anyway, enough housekeeping! Let’s get into the good stuff.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you excited about this week? What have you been reading / watching / playing / listening to / building out of Legos? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)

I like to share my homescreen here every six months or so, since as Installer’s number one Tryer Of Things I am perpetually changing it up. Since next week is Installer 100, and I have a fun (and much-requested) person lined up already, I figured I’d share this week instead. The last few months have included a lot of self-reflection about what, exactly, my phone is for. I uninstalled TikTok and Instagram, and haven’t missed them a bit. Any app that is designed to be looked at — watching something, scrolling, whatever — I either deleted or made harder to find. As much as possible, I want my phone to be for doing a task, and then putting the phone away. Except for podcasts, music, and reading. Those things are fine. They’re allowed.

All of that is to say, here’s my homescreen now, plus some info on the apps I use and why:

The phone: An iPhone 16, in blue. I still really love the color. I don’t love how quickly my battery dies, only a year later.

The wallpaper: Solid black. I’d been experimenting with this for a while, but once iOS 26 showed up and Liquid Glass made everything more chaotic and colorful, the all-black look just made everything feel a little calmer. I miss looking at my kid every time I turn my phone on — but the idea is to look at my actual kid a little more often, you know?

The apps: Google Maps, Diarly, Phone, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Camera, Messages, Notion Calendar, Workflowy, Arc Search, Joi Planner, Remind Me Faster, Craft, Instant Notion.

The first page is the apps I use, and want to use, every single day. The only one that might go away is Diarly – I just can’t decide whether I like it or Day One more. Everything else is probably unsurprising, except maybe Workflowy, an infinite outliner of a notes app that just works the way my brain does. That team has been shipping a lot recently, and they got me back in the app over the summer. It’s now where I manage everything… until I end up going back to Notion or Craft again.

The second page is all super-fast input. The top row is all Apple Shortcuts stuff for adding links or text to different places — my daily notes, a running list of stuff to include in Installer, that sort of thing. Joi Planner is the best-looking app I’ve found for just seeing Apple Reminders and calendar events in one place; I look at it every morning planning my day. Remind Me Faster is for super-fast Reminders input, and Instant Notion adds stuff to Notion way faster than opening the app itself. I use them both all the time.

So far this setup is working really well. I’m not sure it’s making me use my phone any less… but I’m definitely not catching myself infinite-scrolling as much. Small wins, you know?

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email [email protected] 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 Bluesky and this post on Threads.

“The new Ramble feature of Todoist is a game changer — can just brain-dump by talking, and it orders everything into perfect tasks with descriptions and due dates.” — Jim

“I’ve got my whole team using Klack now. We’re now slacking *with purpose.*” — Brett

“Slow Horses is back, that’s really all I care about this week.” — Eli

“When my wife heard you got back from paternity leave, she said that i have to recommend this app to you. It’s called Dairy Bar, it’s made by another mom to help track pumped milk that goes into storage, so you can ensure you use the breast milk while it is at its best and stay on top of the storage supply!” — Pradeep

“Borderlands 4, or as it should be called, Fourderlands. Turns out nailing headshots with a revolver sniper rifle is a timeless formula.” — Will

“This week I bought my first NAS: I got the AOOSTAR 4 Bay NAS with 4x4TB IronWolf drives. I’m a photographer and I’m finally done paying for Google Photos AND OneDrive, I’ll be using Plex to store all my media and continue on my journey to take back control of my data after recently moving from Windows to Linux!” — Craig

“Rogue Words for iOS is the next Wordle. I’m calling it now. Completely free, made by one dude. It’s Scrabble meets Balatro and it’s addicting as hell.” — Ryan

“Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition is weirdly popular 25 years after the original AoE2 came out. Spending a lot of time playing and watching streamer T90 recap low ELO player games (i.e. people who play poorly like me).” — Ian

“Huge fan of Wednesday Season 2, but after watching it, I ended up bingeing A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and honestly enjoyed it way more. Totally hooked!” — Srirudran

I generally try not to do too much self-promotion here in Installer, so apologies while I aggressively do just that: we’re launching a new show, it’s called Version History, and I am VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT. I’ve been noodling on this idea for a long time, and the pitch is basically “let’s do a rewatch show about technology.” (Watch the trailer here!) We’re telling the stories of the most important products ever, while also hanging out and chatting about our experiences with the products, their legacies, how we feel about them now, and so much more. We’ve already made eight episodes, and they’re coming out over the course of the next two months.

If you like… stuff, I think you’ll like Version History! And it would mean the world to me if you’d subscribe and give it a whirl. The show launches next Sunday, and I swear, eventually I’ll stop talking about it. Just not yet.