The Amazing Digital Circus is the YouTube phenomenon coming to the big screen

Hello friends! Welcome to Installer No. 131, your guide to the best and edge-The most wonderful things in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy week of productivity before the World Cup starts, and you can also read all the old issues at Installer Home.)

This week I was reading about it World Cup and Peptides and Parasocial mediacatch up Clarkson Farm Before the new season, buy literally every new product Edge Shop,watch a lot BTS concert clips On my social feeds, to brainstorm ways Reviving my old Facebook portala test Pronunciation To see if this was the right dictation app for me, I stuck with it for a full year GeForce Now Just to play 007 first light. No regrets.

I also have a YouTube phenomenon turned Hollywood, a collection of Lego sets I bet you’ll love, and new places to play Final fantasyNew headphones, speakers and more. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of… Installer These are your thoughts and advice. What are you watching/reading/listening to/playing/knitting 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.)

Last week, I finally gave in and bought the little one Extinc The e-reader that has been all over my social feed for the past few months. The first thing you did after opening the box? Install the CrossPoint firmware, an open source project that has been a hit in the e-reading community. (And the center of some interesting drama – I have a story about it soon.)

The person at the CrossPoint Center is Justin Mitchella developer I’ve known for a long time. I think we first met in a conversation about Newton Mail, which is one of my favorite email apps ever. He’s also worked on a great voice notes app called Cleft Notes, and a bunch of other cool projects.

After Justin and I talked this week about the state and future of CrossPoint, I asked him to share his home screen with us. I kind of thought he was going to send a picture of his Xteink, but what I got back from him was even more surprising. And cheerful. This is Justin’s home screen, plus some information about which apps he uses and why:

Phone: Unihertz Titan 2. Full QWERTY keyboard and huge screen/battery = I just work from my phone most days, don’t need a laptop. You didn’t ask but I also use earbuds and headphones.

wallpaper: It’s really veered into a minimalist style and dark mode only for home screens over the past few years. Visual stimulation is not allowed.

Applications: Email, Slack, Messaging, WhatsApp, Vivaldi, Discord, Reddit, Ex.

I always manage amazing Niagara bomber. I have a custom widget for an app I created called In Your Space, which is a shameless iOS app rip-off In your face. The amazing thing about the world we live in now is that I can just code the perfect meeting reminder app using AI, and I don’t even need to share it with anyone else! This app only exists on my phone and does exactly what I need it to do, right down to the most personal and unique details about how my life is going, not yours or any other user’s life.

I’m running Audio bookshelf For audio books, and Vivaldi For surfers. No YouTube, no TikTok, just pure productivity and connection. Claude It also alerts me about some code it wrote in my notification banner.

I also asked Justin to share some of the things he’s interested in right now. Here’s what he sent back:

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 Posted on bluesky.

“I had fun with Perch. It’s a messaging app that quickly delivers a message to any bird you send. — Michelle

“I just started using it LazyVimand it may replace a niche use case for me. I use Jet brains For most code, but every now and then I just need to edit the Python or JS script and not wait for PyCharm or VS Code to run. LazyVim gives me the IDE experience without the bloat. -Kevin

“Widow’s Bay It’s still the best thing right now. Each week is a countdown until the next episode. —Beep

I’m constantly monitoring for updates on my Power keyboard clickswhich has now started shipping to people. I can’t wait to start typing without having to use the full (large) clipboard on my Pixel 10 Pro.” – Josh

“Use tuna To configure my workflow on a newly acquired IBM M2 keyboard. There are a lot of Mac platforms out there, but Tuna is fast. It’s also configurable enough to make it powerful, but it doesn’t feel overkill like Raycast. — Mike

“Hank Green has a new podcast, Humans.” – Stefan

“Marathon Season 2 is now spooky, with the Night Map already dark, and gear cleared, so everyone is (soon) on equal footing. It’s a great match and deserves more praise and attention.” – Honorary Man Coaching

“sesame. It’s a voice dialogue with an AI bot to talk about almost anything. They don’t mention friendship or anything like that, although that’s probably possible. I used it to detail some topics I needed to learn about. The conversations are very realistic. It’s almost like what Alexa should be but isn’t. —Jay

“Unlike traditional clipboard managers that rely on keyboard shortcuts, cache It was designed from the ground up to be activated via trackpad gestures. The app’s design and gesture-first approach convinced me to switch Messi. Because I already use it swish As for window management, adding another trackpad gesture to my workflow feels completely natural. Despite some early glitches, the basic concept remains solid. -Travis

“I’ve got it Ringcon 2nd Generation Air About a year ago for $200. There’s no subscription, it’s like any other smart ring, its battery lasts a week, and it tracks workouts and sleep. I think for people (like me!) who don’t need all the Oura bells and whistles, a ring like this is an obvious choice. — Bruce

there a lot One of the big movies coming out this summer, but in my house, it’s the only one that matters Toy Story 5. The movie comes out in a couple of weeks, but the media tour has already begun, and it looks like we’re gearing up for a lot of great discussions about screen time, technology, and what it means to be human. Introduced by Andrew Stanton, the film’s director Great interview for ribbed With a great perspective on all this, and why screens actually aren’t just evil. Tom Hanks He has some ideasalso. I’d love for a “kids movie” to be the best chance we’ll ever have to have these conversations for real.

And also: we have arrived New song by Taylor Swift To go with the movie. So it’s already a win.