TechGadgetsStreamingIt’s time to find a new browserPlus, in this week’s Installer: Call of Duty is back, Kindle Plus is sort of new, and you need to watch Wildwood.Plus, in this week’s Installer: Call of Duty is back, Kindle Plus is sort of new, and you need to watch Wildwood.by David PierceOct 24, 2026, 12:00 PM UTCShareGiftIf you buy something from a link, The Verge may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.Image: David Pierce / The VergeDavid Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 149, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy It Actually Feels Like Fall Now At Least In My Neighborhood), and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I’ve been reading about Demis Hassabis and computer chips and permafrost, enjoying the first episodes of Machine Gods,filming the next season of Version History (pet season!), seeing You Can See Everythingand then reading and listening to absolutely everything about it, painstakingly updating all the stuff in my 1Password, making tiny documents with Tiny Little Office, watching Conan O’Brien own Subway Takesthe way he once owned Hot Ones,finally getting properly good at CapCut, and blasting the soundtrack to The Mandalorian and Grogu all workday long.I also have for you a new AI assistant, the most Duo-y new app for the iPhone Duo, my hunt for the next great browser, and much more.
Let’s do this.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you playing / reading / watching / listening to / modding with Claude 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.)Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.
Obviously, Grand Theft Auto VI is the biggest game release of the year, but a new COD is always a big deal. This one doesn’t sound like some grand reinvention of the form, but rather an even more playable, even more powerful version of what works. I was particularly excited to hear that the campaign mode is a huge improvement this time.The Blink Mini 4K. Ring cameras get a lot more shine, but Amazon’s cheaper brand also makes some pretty good stuff.
This one’s part of a whole new lineup of devices, but $80 for a 4K camera with two-way audio and plenty of smart security features? Not a bad deal.JustWatch TV. As streaming services get incessantly more expensive, I’m starting to bail on some paid services and spend more time on the free ones. JustWatch’s new service is surprisingly well-stocked out of the gate — I suspect they’ve been watching what people search for, and making some smart content bets.Claude Duet.
Here’s Anthropic’s answer to Muse, Instinct, and Dots. Duet seems to be focused on helping you get stuff done at work by making to-do lists, coordinating meetings, and compiling data for you. Still waitlist-only right now, but it’ll be interesting to see if it’s as thirsty for attention as Muse is.Wildwood. Before you see this gorgeous, by all accounts excellent stop-motion movie, read everything you can about how it was made.
Not a pixel of generative AI in sight, just an unbelievable amount of hard work and human creativity. Humans rock, artists rock, this movie rocks.The Teenage Engineering EP-35. When you go to buy this thing, it’s technically called “Life is fantastic!” Which, sure. This thing is a battery powered, multi-input, multi-instrument amp with lots of effects.
As always, it is extremely cool-looking. I have no use for it, and I want it quite badly.Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. Nintendo basically hasn’t changed the formula here since Wii Sports from two decades ago, and I have absolutely no problem with that. Anything that gives me that super-active tennis and bowling (plus volleyball, boxing, thumb wrestling, and more) is a win in my book.Delta 2.0.
The next couple of weeks are going to be full of interesting app updates as developers try to figure out what to make of Apple’s foldable phone. But one of the best is already available; Delta can now pretty successfully cosplay as any handheld console ever. (Plus the Sega Genesis!)Kindle Plus. This is mostly just a rebranding of Kindle Unlimited, but Amazon put a couple of interesting new features in its $12 monthly reading subscription, including AI-narrated audiobooks. I am dubious of those, but excited about expanding access to audiobooks.
We’ll see.The worst news of the week here in the Installerverse is that Arc is going away. This was obviously coming: The Browser Company bailed on Arc two years ago in favor of the more AI-centric Dia, and Arc has been in maintenance mode ever since. But now it’s not just being ignored, it’s going away. By Christmas, you won’t even be able to use the app anymore.So now a lot of us are stuck looking for another browser.
There are a million new ones out there, many of them somewhere between “heavily inspired by Arc” and “a direct copy of Arc I made in Codex this morning.” I need to test a lot of them. I don’t know exactly where I’ll land yet, but I figured I’d share a bunch of the ones I’m looking at:Dia. It has recently gotten a lot of Arc’s best features, and some of the AI stuff is pretty cool. (And mercifully easy to turn off.) The Browser Company’s attention to aesthetic detail remains the best in the biz, so I’m starting here.Zen. A total ripoff of Arc, and I mean that as a compliment.
Zen runs on Mozilla’s Gecko engine rather than Chromium, which is a win for anyone looking for a little less Google influence in their lives. Last time I tried Zen it was a little buggy and unpolished, but I’ve heard it’s come a long way.Orion. I am a dedicated and very happy Kagi user, and I’ve heard good things about how simple and resource-friendly the company’s browser is. Given the seamless Kagi integration, I sort of hope this one wins for me.Vivaldi.
I used Vivaldi for a while, and I love how customizable it is. I eventually got it set up exactly the way I wanted it. But right next to all that customization is just a feeling of fiddliness, and I couldn’t quite get comfortable in the browser. Might try again.Helium.
The opposite of Vivaldi, this is a super minimalist, no-frills browser. It’s probably what I need, honestly.Firefox. Its confusing stance on AI aside, I like a lot of the recent design and feature choices Firefox has made. I’m also intrigued by some of the Firefox forks, like Waterfox and Floorp, which give it even more customization options.Brave.
Brave has always felt too heavy to me, and like it’s always trying to convince me to use more of its own proprietary (and often underpowered) features. But it seems to always win in privacy comparisons, so I might need to give it a go again.On mobile, it’s easy. Quiche is my favorite iOS browser by a mile. Arc was never great on Android, so I’m betting most of us never switched there in the first place.There are also the default browsers, of course, like Chrome, Safari, and Edge.
But each of those browsers continues to fail me in one way or another, and so my search continues. If you’ve found your browser of the future, tell me all about it! Otherwise, I’ll report back here periodically through my journey.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.“Youth is an absolute SCREAM on HBO Max at the moment.” — Jonathan“Todoist
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