For the 14th time, a Google product has hit 1 billion users. Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted on X that a billion people are using Gemini every month, and that Gemini is Google’s fastest-growing product ever.

A billion users is a huge milestone, but Google isn’t the first AI app to hit it. OpenAI’s ChatGPT hit the mark a few weeks ago, though the company buried the announcement that “more than 1 billion people are putting ChatGPT to work” in an otherwise anodyne blog post about how people use AI. External data suggested ChatGPT crossed 1 billion users as early as this June, but OpenAI hadn’t announced anything until that post on August 6th. OpenAI spokesperson Lindsay McCallum says ChatGPT crossed 1 billion monthly users some time ago, and hit a billion a week in July.

The metrics, and the growth they represent, are somewhat complicated here. OpenAI said that ChatGPT had 900 million weekly active users in February of this year, and reaching 1 billion five months later represents a significant slowdown in growth for ChatGPT, which was for years touted as the fastest-growing software ever. McCallum declined to say how many monthly users ChatGPT has.

Google, meanwhile, announced in February that Gemini had 750 million monthly users, before reporting 950 million in late July on its earnings call, and Google spokesperson Alex Joseph says it reached 1 billion last week before announcing it today. (Claude appears to be growing fast, but Anthropic doesn’t disclose its user data, and estimates put its user numbers in the tens of millions.) There’s no easy way to compare weekly and monthly users, of course, but the simplest read is that ChatGPT is the larger of the platforms but Gemini may be the faster growing.

These Google numbers, by the way, all appear to refer directly to the Gemini app itself, which would mean all the places Google has shoved Gemini into its other products don’t count. The Gemini that comes preinstalled on Android phones seemingly does, though, which is a huge win for Google — Gemini chief Josh Woodward posted that Gemini has more than 100 million active users on iOS, which would mean by extension that the vast majority of Gemini users are also Android users. You can see why OpenAI is so interested in building its own hardware.

The AI race in general has tightened significantly this year. Anthropic’s Claude Code became a phenomenon and forced OpenAI to catch up with Codex, while Google began integrating Gemini into seemingly every surface of its products. The companies’ models have consistently leapfrogged each other, and they’re all suddenly in a race with models coming out of China. But for a long time, ChatGPT was the de facto brand for AI chatbots, and while it’s still seemingly the most popular and well known of its kind, its once commanding lead appears to have largely evaporated. The race to a billion users is over — now these companies have to race to find things for those users to do, and ways to make money in the process.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 139, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, barbecue sauce, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been reading about Johnny Knoxville and Google Zero and the history of the bicycle, @all-ing everyone in all my WhatsApp chats just because I can now, rereading There Will Come Soft Rains because this week is when it happens, seeing if Sabbath can help fix my screentime problems, once again moving everything around in my home office, eating altogether too much of the fabulous Trader Joe’s snack mix, testing the Clicks Power Keyboard, and starting to prep for my fantasy football drafts. Because I will not finish last again.

I also have for you the return of a favorite TV show, some new bags for toting all your gear, a couple of exciting new Android apps, and much more. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / hacking into with your AI agent 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.)

The Drop

• Ted Lasso season 4. Lots of good reviews for the new season, which is also kind of a soft reboot of the franchise. And all the bad ones are like, “why isn’t there any conflict, this show is too happy,” which I count as a good review anyway. Give me more shows that make me feel better at the end of every episode.
• The Peak Design City Backpack. The whole lineup of City products — which includes totes, crossbody bags, and more — looks great, but I’m a backpack guy at heart. Love a dedicated AirTag pocket, love an integrated hook, love the mix of clean design and tons of organization. I really don’t need a new backpack, and yet…
• Bose QuietComfort headphones. Noise-canceling headphones are like AI models, in that it seems every one’s the best until the next one comes out three days later. I’m excited about Bose’s adaptive EQ for dialogue and the improved passthrough when you want the ANC off. I also like the mint color. A lot. 
• Nothing’s CMF Clip Pro. More headphones! Nothing’s buds are generally hard to beat for $100. Also, open earbuds are awesome. Throw in the awesome orange color I already love in my Shokz headphones, and I’m getting alarmingly close to two headphone purchases this week.
• Tony. After BlackBerry, director Matt Johnson is officially in my “I will watch anything he does” category of filmmakers. Johnson’s latest, a story about how Anthony Bourdain got his start as a chef, has gotten good reviews and is very much at the intersection of all my interests.
• Sunbird. “iMessage for Android” is one of those ideas that just won’t quit, and now Sunbird is back with big promises about fixing its previous security issues. You should always tread super carefully with these messaging aggregators, but they really are a useful idea.
• Notability for Android. FINALLY. After months of promises and more months of beta tests, one of the most powerful note-taking apps is officially shipping to Android devices everywhere. I haven’t used it a ton, but so far it’s stable and fast — it’s a particularly big win if you’re the handwriting type.
• The Sega Dreamcast Watch. From Sega and SuperGroupies comes an extremely rad series of watches designed like old consoles. You can also get the Mega Drive and the Sega Saturn models, but for me there’s no beating the color pop of the Dreamcast’s controls. 

Screen share

JA Westenberg is one of those people who always seems to be blogging about what I’m thinking about. “I Deleted My Second Brain” still rattles around my head whenever I’m needlessly fiddling with a note-taking app, I used the word “cockroachmaxxing” unironically in conversation the other day, and I’m forever jealous of the insight that YouTube “looks increasingly like a single show with five million hosts.”

They’ve also built a couple of really cool productivity-adjacent apps, including Kerouac (which is basically like that GitHub commit chart but for writing) and recently Post Through It, which is basically a journaling app that looks like a private Twitter. Clever! 

Anyway, I asked JA to share their homescreen to see if they might have other sneaky tips up their sleeve, or more awesome apps to show. Here it is, plus some info on the apps they use and why:

The phone: I use an iPhone 17 Pro Max, 512GB.

The wallpaper: My wallpaper is Mors Imperator (“Death Is the Ruler”), by the German artist Hermione von Preuschen. It’s on display in Berlin right now and I fell in love with it on a recent trip. She was famously banned from displaying it, and instead rented a house and charged an entry fee to see it. Very punk rock / DIY for the 1800s.

The apps: Insight Timer, Beeper, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Buffer, Cursor, 1Password, Replit, Termius, Granola, Kilo, Kerouac, Post Through It, Buzz, Wikipedia, Marvel Unlimited, Linear, Medium, GenZD, The New York Times, Obsidian, Vimcal, Readwise Reader, Kobo.

My home screen is a mix of reading, working, playing etc. I definitely want to call out Kerouac (a writing studio for pro bloggers) and Post Through It (microblogging for one) which are PWAs of the apps I launched this year. I’m a big believer in web apps as a way to avoid app store gatekeeping, so I’m on a mission to make the PWAs of my own tools as top-notch as they can be, which means using them every day myself. 

I keep the Kobo app in my dock so I push myself to read an actual book instead of doomscrolling; and I don’t keep any social media apps installed. If I want to post, I have Buffer on my home screen, and it’s connected to my Hermes agent via MCP anyway. I use Beeper to manage my chats across Discord, Slack, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, etc; it’s a fantastic tool that probably rescues me from chat hell a thousand times a day. 

GenZD and Marvel Unlimited are my favorites. The first is a GZDoom client for playing Doom 1 and Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen, and their mods (3D shooters from the ’90s). The other is Marvel’s digital comics app, where I’m attempting to read every Spider-Man story since the inception of the character. Other than that, it’s work, note-taking and podcasts.

I also asked JA to share a few things they’re into right now. Here’s what they sent back:

• I have rediscovered my love for MC Lars. He’s a “nerdcore” indie rapper who came to fame with songs about Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare etc. He’s been a favorite of mine for years, but I introduced my kid to his music this year, and he’s been in constant rotation since. “I Was Never Afraid” is his all time best song. 
• The Paradox are the best band I’ve heard in a decade. They play pop punk the way it should be played, with so much energy and joy I can’t not jump out of my seat when I hear it. I recommend their track “Good For Me,” which I think is going to be on their new EP in October. 
• I’ve been reading Barbarians at the Gate: the Fall of RJR Nabisco, by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. A wild story of leveraged buyouts, Wall Street excess, and the unhinged market economics of the 1980s. An absolute page turner, even if you’re not usually interested in the subject matter.
• My brother has started us on a Daggerheart campaign. It’s a tabletop RPG that came out last year, with a heavy emphasis on storytelling, and it’s the freshest take on roleplaying I’ve experienced in a while. Really makes you want to get inside the character you’re running and think about who they are — which is a great exercise for me as a writer. 

Crowdsourced

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.

“Madden NFL 27 Mobile came out! The wild part? The Apple Arcade version removes **ALL** of the recent enshittification: ads, virtual currencies, paywalls, etc. Add in the controller and Apple TV support, and it feels like playing Madden from the early 2000s, in the best way.” — Brian

“I’m waiting for my Retroid Pocket Nova so I can replay Rogue Squadron on GameCube and Need for Speed: Carbon on PS2, and I’m organizing my ROM library before it arrives.” — Josue

“Moved my gaming PC to CachyOS (tried Bazzite before and got a little frustrated). So far it’s been amazing. Also, I just upgraded my PC case from an old NZXT one to a Fractal North. These cases are no joke. So well made.” — Kolin

“Silo season three.” — Amanda

“Biological War: A Scenario from Annie Jacobsen, the author of Nuclear War: A Scenario. I honestly cannot believe it’s that easy to wipe us off the planet.” — Dawit

“Found this neat little Mac OS app, Hoy, for communicating via iCloud. Quite digging the simple UI and how it ‘sits’ nicely inside my menu bar.” — Julius

“Reading John Ousterhout’s excellent A Philosophy of Software Design to get ready for a presentation I’m making at the gRPC conference next month.” — Tim

“Watching the anime Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia. I’m enjoying learning about that period of history (the show took me into a Wikipedia hole), and I’m excited to see how the magic elements come into play.” — J

Signing off

I’m about to go on parental leave, which previously in my life has been a good time to change stuff on my phone. I delete all the work apps, turn off some notifications, all that stuff. But you know what’s really making me do it this time? The Google Health app. I haven’t been wearing my Fitbit Air recently — no good reason, just haven’t been finding it useful — and every single day the app sends me a sad notification that’s like, “Oh no, I haven’t collected any data, pretty please let’s get the Fitbit back on?” No thanks, I hate it.

Anyway, I’ve also been noticing that some of the smartest people I know are always showing that they “have notifications silenced” in iMessage. So I’m learning from them, and turning everything off. From now on, my phone will have no buzzing or noise-making notifications other than phone calls. I’ll see things when I decide to check my phone… which hopefully won’t be very often. Silent phones forever!

In theory, I’m here next week before I head out. If not, you’ll be in the very capable hands of Jay Peters for a while. Either way, see you next week!

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 138, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy August, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been reading about microwave sounds and Meta glasses and Alex vs. Alix, testing the Logitech Alto Keys K98M to see if I’m ready for the mechanical keyboard life, digging into the history of the first chatbot, clearing space on my desk for a Bob Ross deskmat, doing a full Ted Lasso rewatch ahead of the new season next week, finally getting into Cyberpunk 2077 now that it’s so cheap, cackling and nodding at this Adobe hate post, and upgrading my home camera setup with the truly enormous Elgato Prompter XL. 

Also, I have some personal news: I’m having a baby! (If your response to this is, Didn’t you just have like 37 other babies, yes, yes I did. Pray for me.) I’m planning to be out from about mid-August to the beginning of October, but I’m also in could-happen-anytime land now. So if I’m suddenly gone, that’s why! Just like last year, my colleague Jay Peters will be taking over Installer while I’m out, and just like last year, he’s going to be great.

But for now, I’m still here! I also have for you a new superhero movie, a new take on an old game, some great Musk-related comedy, and much more. Let’s do it.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / putting in a blender 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.)

The Drop

• Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The Tom Holland Spidey era just never seems to miss. It’s pretty impressive to pull off a more or less full story reboot while keeping all the same actors and characters, but by all accounts this one pulls it off. Since I still can’t get IMAX Odyssey tickets, this one’s at the top of my to-watch list.
• Pastebot 3. Missed this one last week! Great clipboard managers are right up there with launchers and text expanders in the “how did I ever use a computer without this” category, and Pastebot is one of the Mac’s best. The new version has smart organization options, support for all kinds of media, and much more. The kind of app you’ll find new uses for… forever.
• President Curtis. I was going to describe this as “basically a Rick and Morty spinoff” before I realized it’s actually a Rick and Morty spinoff. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people seem to either love it or hate it. I think most of us would agree R&M is not what it once was, but the idea of throwing all its chaotic energy into the US government does pay off at least a few times. And it’s not not political commentary, you know?
• “Why Is So Much AI Tech Useless?” Two of my favorite people on the internet — Joanna Stern and Hasan Minhaj — go deep on where AI is, and isn’t, actually good and useful in our lives. Minhaj’s complete disbelief at all these overhyped products just gives me life.
• Halo: Campaign Evolved. Confession: I was always terrible at Halo, and I’ve always been unfairly mad at the series because of it. The new remake appears to be a mediocre game (with terrible dialogue) but great nostalgia bait, and that might be enough for a lot of people looking to get Master Chief back into their lives.
• Leafy Corner. This game exists somewhere on the spectrum between Animal Crossing and RollerCoaster Tycoon, and I mean both as a compliment. It’s a quiet, cozy game, but also something of a management sim, all in the confines of a plant shop. Adorable.
• Spotify Running Mode. I actually think Spotify’s last take on running, with adaptive tempos and generative beats, was both cooler and a more interesting take on AI. But Spotify’s prompted playlists have generally been pretty good, and I appreciate having the timing updates built in instead of having some other app constantly ducking my music to tell me I’m too slow.
• “Elon’s Epic Ego Explained.” Nobody does topical comedy like Josh Johnson, and this is my favorite of his recent sets. It’s not just 45 minutes of making fun of Musk — it’s also about The Odyssey and a bunch of other things — but it’s both ruthless and right about the world’s richest man.
• The SwitchBot Battery Circulator Fan 2 Pro. My colleague Thomas Ricker has successfully convinced me that SwitchBot’s fans are worth a look over the “whatever’s on the shelf at Target” models I’ve been buying for years. This new $120 model is quiet and powerful, charges over USB-C, and is going to live on my patio the rest of the summer.

Screen share

I buried the lede here: The biggest new thing of the week, at least in my book, is Instapaper 10. Instapaper is one of the original read-later apps, and has continued to be among the best on the market. After some weird ownership stuff over the years, Instapaper has been in the hands of Brian Donohue, who has been steadily improving the service in lots of ways. This week’s launch comes with a really nice redesign, a way better web app, and a lot of helpful organization and reading tools. I’ve been testing it, and I think it’s back to being my go-to recommendation for reading apps. (For power users I still think Readwise is the move.)

With the new app out, I asked Brian to share his homescreen with us — I wanted to see how he organized his stuff, and if he might be working on even more cool stuff. Turns out he is! Here’s his homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 16 Pro. I almost always purchase iPhones every other generation. Maybe a foldable this year?

The wallpaper: My daughter, as a reminder that my apps must be good otherwise she will not have food on the table.

The apps: Safari, Google Calendar, Emerald, Google Maps, Weather, Photos, Instapaper, Kobo Books, Reddit, 1Password, Google Authenticator, Slack, Google Docs, Google Sheets, ForeFlight, Flight Circle, Claude, Linear, Phone, Sunflower, Messages, Spotify.

I’ll start with the ones not yet in the App Store: Emerald and Sunflower.

Emerald is a Markdown editor I’m working on that solves two personal pain points: native iOS / macOS client, and collaboration on markdown files. I have been a big Obsidian user the past two years, but it’s been failing me in those areas. I’ve been writing with Emerald exclusively for the past few months and it’s almost ready for beta testing. Waitlist in the link.

Sunflower is a new email client from Bobby Goodlatte and friends. It’s beautifully designed and has some tasteful AI features, like summarizing your inbox, chatting with your email, and an Autopilot feature which seems to be perpetually “Coming Soon.” I’ve been trying a few clients in the “AI email” space like Extra, and an autopilot tool called Cora, which didn’t stick.

Instapaper’s big launch this week included a new home screen widget. It fits nicely in the widget stack alongside the Apple News, Stocks, and Weather widgets.

Additionally, you have many of the usual suspects. I am doing a huge amount of my work with Claude and Linear these days, both of which have fantastic iOS apps.

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

• I’ve always been inspired by creative builders, and two come to mind right now. The first is Andrew Jones, who has been building free & open-source alternatives to paid software (e.g. Granola, Wispr Flow) — fingers crossed Instapaper is not next. The second is Q, a designer who has been building small, single-purpose websites for himself that I find inspiring. It almost reminds me of a purer, distant version of the Internet, where you built a bunch of Geocities pages for fun and without expectations of fame and fortune.
• Hyper Mesh. Q has been exploring image reveal animations, and built a tool to tweak presets on the initial mask and the animation that reveals the image.
• SVG Star Editor. Create a star from different settings and export to SVG.
• Chess Moves. Q is learning how to play chess with his girlfriend and made this tutorial website as a companion tool.

Crowdsourced

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.

“I am hopelessly hooked on the game Murdoku. It’s free online, or you can play old school through books. It’s a logic game where you solve crimes by process of elimination.” — Kurt

“I’ve been loving Paradiso for finding movie showtimes. Not only does it alert you when something on your Letterboxd watchlist is playing near you, it also beats Fandango or other apps for simply browsing first run showtimes.” — Mike

“My friend recently ordered a Galaxy Z Fold 8 and I had to introduce them to Good Lock.” — B

“I love Anker stuff and tend to choose it over everything else. But I have the Anker 3-in-1 travel charger and… this ESR one (a brand I hadn’t really heard of) is the better product in every way. The Apple Watch charger is in a better place, it’s thinner, and the cooling fan works better. I can’t vouch for long-term reliability yet, but I have one by my bedside and one in my travel bag!” — Peter

“Finally switched from a mess of read-it-later apps to a second brain with Obsidian + Claude, inspired by Karpathy’s LLM Wiki concept. Hoping this setup is the one that actually sticks…” — Kartik

“I use Readwise Reader for all my newsletters. It has unique email addresses to either add newsletters to your library or RSS feed. I love keeping all my things to read all in the same app, read later, newsletters, pdfs…” — Rich

“HIGHLY recommend the movie Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender. It’s a crime and shame that Paramount isn’t putting this into more theaters, AND that the movie was leaked on X earlier this year. Amazing film with all-time stunning visuals that honestly left me angry I was watching it on TV at home. Deserves bettering than being dumped on Paramount Plus.” — Nolan

“Watching the restored version of Lawrence of Arabia. Peter O’Toole’s blue eyes are dreamy.” — SaltedPork

Signing off

The coolest internet experience I had this week was scrolling through the Everything Machine, a deep and detailed breakdown of how your phone works. It’s only the first chapter of what I hope will be a very long exploration of how smartphones changed everything, and I love the way it seems to interact with your phone as you scroll. Our phones are such a “This is water” thing in our lives now, and I really enjoy anything that makes me pay a little more attention to the object, the cultural force, and the economic engine that takes up so much of my life. Highly recommend taking a scroll.

See you next week!

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 137, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy phone season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been reading about Google Zero and armored cars for rich people, watching a lot of That’s a Bad Idea videos now that YouTube knows my love for Curry Barker, testing the new 2Do redesign for my tasks, watching this excellent doc about the legendary designer Susan Kare, obsessing over every sound on the Jauffre’s Sounds TikTok, sending myself lockscreen notes with the new Mononote app, and trying to vibe-code a searchable archive of everything that’s ever been in Installer. I think we’re gonna need more tokens.

I also have for you a couple of exciting new ideas about phones, a tiny e-reader you might love, a fun way into the Linux world, and much more. Let’s do this.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / plugging into a generator 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.)

The Drop

• The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. I haven’t held this new wide foldable yet, but almost everyone who does seems to immediately think it’s the right shape and size. Yes, it’s still twice the price it needs to be to really be competitive, but I think Samsung is finally starting to make a compelling argument for foldables. Also: love the purple.
• Tagline. Fun new game from the folks at Merriam-Webster in which you have to solve three puzzles with words made from the same seven letters. It is tough! It’s also a perfect middle ground between word games and trivia games, and I’m very much enjoying failing at it every day.
• The Xteink X4 Pro. Tiny e-readers are officially a thing. (Even Boox is making one!) I could take or leave the touchscreen on the new $99 model, but the built-in light makes it immediately the best of the bunch. I cannot believe how many people tell me they love these little devices. 
• “Technically Competent: Installing Linux.” I love the McElroy family (MBMBAM forever), but I did not expect to be here appreciating their tech prowess! But this is a fun, funny video that is also a helpful and approachable intro to the Linux world. It’s nice to know dongles break for everyone, you know?
• The Dink. Is this recommendation completely biased by my love for Jake Johnson and New Girl? Very much so. But I do think pickleball culture is a perfect setting for jokes, and boy are there not enough 100-minute comedy movies out there now. I’m in on this one.
• Splatoon Raiders. The Splatoon aesthetic, with paintball fights and hyper-colored everything, is very much my thing. Online team-based shooters… aren’t, really. This one is much more single-player, much lower-stakes, and much more my speed.
• “It’s been a wild year.” I’ve really enjoyed C. Scott Brown’s YouTube channel, and really appreciated his raw take on his first year as a YouTuber. Lots of real talk about how hard it is to make it as a creator, the ups and downs of the life, and the deep strangeness of life at the mercy of YouTube.
• The Peak Design Field Bracket. A really clever camera accessory from a company that knows how to make ’em. Between the two models, it supports most cameras, and in addition to more easy vertical shooting it also adds Find My compatibility, new straps, and ways to add even more accessories. I’ve been starting to slowly shop for a new DSLR, and this makes me want a new one to play with ASAP.
• Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender. The Avatar lore is so deep that this new movie apparently has a whole “Previously On” sequence at the beginning! Love that. The consensus for this one seems to be something along the lines of “looks great, meh story,” which means it’ll probably at least be a good time.

Screen share

I’ve been following the journey of the Light Phone since the very beginning. The Light Flip, which the company announced this week, looks like both its best idea and its best product yet. It’s a beautiful, $299 block of a minimalist flip phone, designed not to replace your phone but just to convince you to leave it at home from time to time. It’s not shipping until early next year, but I’m getting on the preorder list as soon as I can. I think Light may have finally nailed it.

To mark the launch, I asked Kai Tang, Light’s CEO and cofounder, to share his homescreen with us. I told him I knew he was hiding a smartphone somewhere, and that I wanted to see it. He swears he’s not, he’s all in on the Light Phone life, and sent his homescreen in the smallest image file I’ve ever received. Here it is, plus some info on how Kai’s device is set up:

The phone: A Light Phone III.

The wallpaper: There is no wallpaper or background setting on the Light Phone III. So it’s either matte black or light grey. I have it in black. I like my phone visually muted.

The apps: Phone, Alarm, Weather, Directions, Music, Language.

Most of the tools on my phones are pretty straightforward: phone for calls and texts, directions / maps, music, etc. The “Language” tool is a customized tool we created for Dave Free and Kendrick Lamar’s pgLang back in 2023. The limited edition Light Phones that have this tool preinstalled sold out in the first few hours, which was so exciting. We are also big fans of their music. The tool is basically an Eight Ball tool but named “Language.” You can shake the phone for a random answer, i.e., “ask again, but less aggressive,” “not much doubt,” or “I’d rather not say.”

It’s not available publicly, but it was almost sentimental for me from that collaboration three years ago, so I kept it on my homescreen.

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

• NASA’s public image and video library! I can spend hours looking at those and pondering how insignificant and at the same time magical we are here on this spinning/flying ball called Earth. 

• I also joined a local astronomy club called Rockland Astronomy Club, a non-profit astronomy education organization. I found them while I was trying to find a real dark site near NYC to stargaze, and they are only a few hours’ drive away from the city! Although I wish I had more time to go to their events. 
• I saw Hamilton, one of the best Broadway shows, and I loved it. 
• And lastly, I have been enjoying the Lincoln Center’s “Summer For The City” $5 pay-as-you-wish Orchestra events. Highly recommended! 

Crowdsourced

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.

“The Incident at Galley House was released last week and I finished it yesterday. It’s a brilliantly voice-acted, lushly-illustrated remake of last year’s Type Help, one of the best deduction games I’ve ever played.” — Andy

“The Hawk on Netflix. Will Ferrell is like a comfort hug for a millennial 😂” — Tyler

“The New Guys audiobook is a delightful author-read book about the Shuttle series of astronauts. I cannot recommend it enough as a sequel to A Man on the Moon.” — James

“My wife and I have been playing Unrailed on Switch Online with her sister and husband… it’s like Overcooked but more laid back.” — Dan

“The Boroughs is a really cool show starring an older cast and it’s very cool to see a hip, relevant sci-fi show led by an older cast, touching on really relevant social topics. It’s fantastic so far.” — Shane

“The App Store is full of great film-simulation camera apps, but those kinds of apps on Android are sketchy garbage that take bad photos. Not Candela Camera, though! It properly uses the Android camera API with high-quality film simulation, built-in & imported LUTs, and it’s $5 for a lifetime license!” — Evancito

“Reading Dead Hand Rule by Max Gladstone. Necromantic lawyers, magic capitalism, it’s a real vibe. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’ve enjoyed every book he’s written in the setting.” — Vernacular Ham

“Open Minis. After reading Federico Viticci’s article, I immediately installed it and linked it to Claude. Watching it do agentic things ON MY PHONE is mesmerizing. I’m an iOS-first kind of person, and being able to describe a complicated Home Assistant automation, from my phone, and watch it figure out the APIs, is truly next level.” —  Burns

“I recently started playing some video games again. I was doing some Game Boy emulation. Touch controls kinda stink, so I grabbed a used Backbone Pro and was instantly a convert. The experience is great and is a great way to turn any phone into a top-tier game console.” — Tanner

Signing off

Last week, when we talked about reading setups, I ended by asking you for tips on dealing with newsletters. I got a bunch, but the vast majority of them amounted to something like: “I just get them in my email and deal with it.” Fair enough! Same, honestly. But there is one tool I heard about a few times. It’s called Kill the Newsletter. It gives you an email address with which to subscribe to newsletters, and then dumps everything sent to that address into a feed you can read anywhere. Pipe that feed into an RSS reader, show it to your favorite AI chatbot, do with it all as you please! If I were starting a newsletter habit now, this is exactly what I’d start with. Let me know if you use it, or have any other great newslettering tips!

See you next week!