rewrite this title Toy Story 5 has the right take on tech

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 133, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy belated Juneteenth, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about Sam Bankman-Fried and PE Guy and admin nights (which we should totally all do together one of these days), listening to Paul McCartney on Song Exploder, trudging through the bugs of the iOS 27 beta in order to use the good new Siri, once again trying and failing to switch to YouTube Music, free trial-hopping my way through the World Cup, finally upgrading my camera setup with the Elgato Prompter, and seeing if this strange, cheap headband can help me fall asleep faster. So far… inconclusive.

I also have for you the new Pixar movie worth your time, a better way to hold your phone, a nice upgrade for Android users, a lovely new Windows laptop, 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 / doing during commercials 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.)

Josh Cajas just joined The Verge this week as a producer on The Vergecast. (Which is now publishing every day, and has cool merch, did you know??) Before he joined us, Josh had many lives: He worked in the US House of Representatives, he was in an extremely cool and good band, he has made many cool things and will make many more with us. He’s also just good people.

I like to have new Verge folks share their homescreen with us early in their tenure to see who they truly are before they’re dropped into a team full of mechanical keyboard weirdos and to-do list app maniacs. So here’s Josh’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: I have a Google Pixel 10.

The wallpaper: A photo I took last year during a trip to Japan of the Kiyomizu-dera shrine at sunset (shot on my Pixel 9 Pro XL). Kyoto is incredibly picturesque, especially at that time of day, and I was lucky enough to catch it during cherry blossom season.

The apps: Settings, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Keep, Phone, Messages, Edge, Camera, Play Store, Photos, Translate, TrainTime, ChatGPT, Focus Friend, Snipd.

I use the Microsoft Launcher to ditch the At a Glance widget and search bar, and to let me use icon theme packs. I’ve mostly used Flight Pack, Retro Mode – Neon, and Viral to give my apps more of a cohesive look. KWGT has also been great for building a custom Apple Music widget and utility bar on my homescreen. I also love the Google Photos widget cycling throughout the day, and my dog Butters makes an appearance in my screenshot!

My first page covers my essentials (work apps, socials, streaming services) and a favorites folder for shopping, banking, and food. Since it’s baseball season, my MLB app typically gets a lot of use. Not so much this year, though, with the way the Mets are playing.

My second page is for fitness and productivity. I’m a big Pixel Watch guy, so my Google Health widget is front and center, alongside my MyFitnessPal widget for daily calorie tracking. My favorite productivity app has been Focus Friend by Hank Green that’s equal parts Tamagotchi pet and focus timer. You earn beans every time you activate it and stay off your phone, which you can then spend on items for your Bean Friend’s environment. And for podcasts, I’ve used Snipd since it first launched and never left it. Its growing list of AI features like transcriptions, summaries, clips, and insights make it easy for jotting down ideas and catching up on my favorite shows.

I also asked Josh 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.

“I just watched Cunk on Life. It’s a BBC comedy/documentary on the topic of “life” from an absurdist’s perspective. It’s by Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror. I laughed so hard, I gave myself hiccups.” — Kelly

“Really enjoying Young Sherlock on Amazon Prime. It’s Guy Ritchie at his (almost) best: stylish, British, fast talking, crime-ridden, with a dash of humor and a healthy dose of fun.” — Logan

“I’ve been using Wildbirds since closed beta and it’s everything birders want from Instagram, but better.” — Michiel

“Playing Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and really hoping that these titles change at some point.” — Connor

“I’m studying for a technical exam and put all the materials into Claude. I had it break down the material into daily, 30-minute study chunks to be emailed to me over the next two weeks. Each email has a prompt to do a short quiz at the end. A little wonky to start but it’s working well so far.” — Ian

“I’ve been using the Dirty Little Zine website to make pocket-sized photography zines. Cheap, fun, and easy way to get your photos out of the digital wasteland and into the real world.” — Mark

“Finished reading the series of Silo books in advance of the next season coming in July.” — Chris

“I’m currently going through Craig Alanson’s Expeditionary Force sci-fi novels, they’re kinetic and silly and a bit rough around the edges at the same time, I’m having a blast.” — Carlo

“I’ve gotten back into playing PowerWash Simulator after work. I’m actually kind of excited about Star Wars again after watching The Mandalorian and Grogu a couple of weeks ago so now I am looking forward to the PWS2 Star Wars DLC next month.” — Salt Palace

There was some sneakily big, Installerverse-adjacent news this week: Google Calendar now has more colors! Instead of just Google’s bad ideas about green and blue, you can now color-code your calendar with 200 custom colors. The feature is rolling out now, and might genuinely change how I plan my days. I’ve been toying with the idea of just ditching a to-do list entirely and living my life out of my calendar — I continue to aspire to be a one-text-file kind of person — and now I can finally make my calendar look the way I want it to. I’m fighting the urge to get way too detailed with the color-coding, though I assume that’ll happen. For now I’m just back to timeblocking like a madman. Feeling powerful.