IKEA’s new smart home line looks great

Hello friends! Welcome to Installer No. 105 is your guide to the best and edge-The most wonderful things in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I hope you’ve recovered from the decline of watches, and you can also read all the old editions at Installer Home.)

This week I was reading about it David Ellison and Joint crawling and Stephen Colbert, Catch up It’s always sunny in Philadelphia and The Great British Baking Show, Letting TikTok turn me on New song by Olivia Deen and A new musical on Broadwaya test Palma 2 Pro boxspending way too many hours trying to design my new home office/podcast studio, and packing everything I own into boxes. Another week until I move on, and life returns to normal. hope.

I also have a very exciting new collection of smart home gadgets, a new Apple TV show worth checking out, a great update to a great Android player, an app for your AirPods, and so much more.

Also, a quick housekeeping note: no Installer next week. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with some fun stuff before Black Friday, plus everything else. In the meantime, there’s a lot to do this week. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of… Installer These are your thoughts and advice. What have you been reading/watching/playing/listening to/turning to cider this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy it InstallerSend it to them and let them know Subscribe here.)

Ryder Carroll, creator Bullet journal methodis one of my favorite thinkers on the web. He did a good job of not only creating great theories about productivity, but actually building systems to put them into practice. I’ve tried using the full analog Bullet Journal before, but eventually settled on adapting many of its principles to whatever note-taking app I use.

I wanted to include Ryder Installer For a while, but wasn’t able to make it work. But then! He recently posted an adorable video About how he thought about his phone, and how he set it up to be exactly what he wanted it to be and nothing more.

There’s a lot to learn from what Ryder did here, so, for the first time in this space, I’m going to break down someone’s setup for them. Here’s the Ryder home screen:

Phone: iPhone 16 Pro Max.

wallpaper: Solid black.

Applications: Empty spaces. We’ve talked about this operator – and others like it, like Stupid phone — before, but it’s basically an iOS widget designed to replace your entire home screen with large, text-based app launchers. (Fair warning: It costs $4 per month, or $24 for life.) Ryder uses a very simple version of Blank, but it has huge Amount of customization options included.

I don’t want to spoil the whole video, which is full of good ideas and tips, but I do want to highlight some of the things Ryder did with his phone that I also did, and heard from you that work well too:

Even if you’re not ultimately worried about your relationship with your phone, or don’t want to do the work to get a setup like this, I’d really recommend blowing your entire system up periodically. Through this, Ryder discovered the same thing I’ve discovered over and over again: If you’re not careful, you’ll end up looking for more time, and for the wrong things, than you think.

Here’s what Installer community this week. I want to know what you’re up to now too! Email installer@theverge.com Or send me a message on Signal — @davidpierce.11 ​​— with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here each week. For more great recommendations, check out the responses to This post is on topics and This post is on Bluesky.

Stephen King’s son wrote an 800-page book called The king was sad This is (in short) the millennium He – she. The title is a conjured dragon that embodies the very idea of ​​evil. But it’s also a play on the author’s famous father, and his half-century of work. I would say read it, but don’t do it: go for an audiobook! —Chris

“I’ve been using Today’s budget For the past month I have radically changed the way I view my money. 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? – He wins

“Hey! I’ve been exploring.” n8n A platform for automating tasks (not only). I’ve built an automated system that sends me D&B events every day. I was pleasantly surprised by how powerful the n8n is! – Dima

“rapprochement! Adobe’s monopoly falls. — Jack

“I can recommend the game sendSome have described it as a game you can’t fail. It’s similar to Count the wordsWhere you can choose the dialog box and play some mini-games. Reminds me of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch“. – Bogdan

“Stax It is literally mind-bending. It’s a very lightweight matching card game (think… A) that has enough complexity to keep each game interesting but still accessible for younger children. But what determines Stax Aside from the visual design. It’s my favorite kind of card game: small package, stunning design, endlessly replayable, great for kids and adults. — Bone

“Anyone with even a passing interest in cooking should follow him Frank Brisenzano (I follow him on Instagram but he’s gone). Start learning his methods (not his recipes) and start changing your life! -Scott

“If you haven’t watched Pantheon On Netflix, it’s worth it.” — Michael

“I recently got… Mac studio And stay Tail scale and Jellyfish To access all your media (legally obtained) from anywhere around the world. Tailscale creates a live and private VPN for your devices. Jellyfin is a much better open source alternative to Plex. Mac Studio’s fast wizard can quickly convert video to lower resolution. Everything works well together. – Sheyan

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but… love Bad Christmas movies. (I’d call it a guilty pleasure, but I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it.) A big-city executive returns to her hometown, to find love. and Holiday spirit? Yes please, every time, a thousand times a year.

Anyway, it looks like this year is going to be a very special one on the holiday movie front. And if you care as much as I do, you should bookmark it this TVLine story Which lists every one coming over the next two months, sorted by streaming platform. Did you know there’s a Jonas Brothers movie coming next week?!?! Really happy holiday.