TechGadgetsStreamingA gadget to make your dumb house smarterPlus, in this week’s Installer: a Space Race history, an Apple TV heist flick, a Wikipedia podcast, and much more.Plus, in this week’s Installer: a Space Race history, an Apple TV heist flick, a Wikipedia podcast, and much more.by David PierceNov 14, 2026, 1:00 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. 152, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, thank you for taking time away from Zelda to be here, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I’ve been reading about school apps and AI benches and sports gambling and Megaspeed, watching the surprisingly emotional Dane Cook documentary, learning way more than I ever expected about dial-up sounds, digging out my old Xbox One since it’s apparently my best shot at playing GTA VI, seeing what I can get done with Claude Duet, and trying a bunch of third-party iPhone keyboards in the hope of voice-typing my way through everything forever.I also have for you a great new space history performance, new apps for writers and podcast listeners, a fun podcast about Wikipedia, and much more.
Let’s dig in.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / warming up on the stove 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 Home Assistant Connect Aux-2.
A very simple box that helps you add devices to your smart home (with particular emphasis on music gear), which also kind of acts as a universal controller for all the Bluetooth devices and dumb appliances in your house. Nothing you couldn’t build yourself, but much easier than doing so.We Chose to Go to the Moon. I was blown away by this live history of the Space Race, complemented by great music and beautiful visuals. Such a cool way to present a story like this, and kept me hooked the whole two hours.
I would have watched a bunch more.TK. A new app from Medium with a bunch of really interesting ideas about how to share your ideas and work with other people without having to do it completely in public. Also just a nice web and mobile app for writing! I’m here for anything that makes people want to blog again.Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death.
From what I’ve seen so far, this is a pretty unsparing look at the horrifying things men are doing to themselves in the name of becoming more attractive. Turns out the story goes back much further than Clavicular, and comes from some pretty bleak places.Tripod. A lovely new podcast app from Ben Rice McCarthy, who also makes a great camera app and a great social app and is just very good at apps. It has some clever organization features, but it’s also just really well designed, and that is a rare thing to find in a podcast app.12 12 12.
The consensus seems to be that this new Apple TV heist thriller might be too clever by half, but what I’ve seen so far is also just a lot of fun. And at this point? Apple’s track record is good enough that I’ll give almost any new title a few episodes.Click Through. I am wildly jealous of this podcast idea: Two hosts play The Wikipedia Game, trying to get from one thing to another as fast as possible, narrating and going on tangents the whole way.
The first episode is very funny and a very good hang, and I… learned a lot about Greenwich Village?Google Tabletop. This is just an early prototype of an app, but I love the idea: a collaborative workspace like a Google Doc that can take the form of whatever tool or mini app you need. I immediately have 100 uses for it; I hope Google doesn’t immediately kill it.The Ring Drone Cam. A drone that can go inspect and see anything in your house: useful!
Also terrifying dystopia hellscape! I am desperately curious to know everything about how this $250 gizmo works — though I can tell you confidently my wife will never allow it in our house.A lot of you out there in the Installerverse have become iPhone Duo users over the last few weeks, and I’ve heard a lot about how you’re all using Apple’s new foldable phone. (I’d say the sentiment in my inbox is roughly 80 percent positive, 5 percent negative, 15 percent deeply confused about interface choices.) I’ve also gotten some questions about which Duo apps are great, and how best to set yours up.Alas, I do not have a Duo. So I turned to The Verge’s Allison Johnson, who coauthored our review of the device and has used it as aggressively as anyone I know. I asked her to share how she’s wielding the Duo, and she sent over a truly unhinged color scheme and otherwise a bunch of very good ideas.
Her’s her homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:The phone: iPhone Duo.The wallpaper: It’s one of those color gradient options you can pick in iOS. I was trying to go for a minimalist thing.The apps: NYT Games, Kindle, Headspace, Spotify, Google Maps, Safari, Messages, Mail.So I tried the whole aspirational “dress for the homescreen you want” thing for a few days, with just a few apps like Headspace and NYT Games, and it was a miserable failure. It just made me mad every time I had to search for Messages. I added a row of essential apps to the bottom of the screen and a big calendar widget, and things have been much better.There’s a big widget / shortcut to TypeDraw, which is a fantastic app on the Duo that makes the whole phone behave like a physical notebook.
It’s great with the Apple Pencil. I also realized I need weather close by, so I added a giant widget to the left panel of the homescreen.I also have a shortcut for the built-in lo-fi playlists on iOS, which is handy if I need to pop in earbuds and play something instrumental so I can focus real quick. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn’t discovered these yet and also gets overstimulated! They’re already on your phone!I did nuke the dock entirely in my minimalist experiment and I’m actually fine with it.
Maybe I’ll never go back to the dock again.I also asked Allison to share a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she sent back:I don’t have a Switch 2 so I’m having extreme Zelda FOMO right now. I WISH I was playing Ocarina of Time but I’m just playing through every last bit of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on my PS5 to distract myself.I’m like 20 minutes away from finishing Widow’s Bay and that has been a really fun watch.I just finished reading the Planet Money book, which is like, The Economy For Dummies. It’s pretty entertaining and was very helpful for an economy dummy like me.I also got a book called Coffee, For Here by an award-winning barista and creator named Morgan Eckroth.
They have lots of specialty drink recipes you can make with a home espresso setup. I made one over the weekend and I’m still thinking about how good it was. The photos are beautiful too.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.“Search, a browser developed by a small Parisian design studio of all things. I’d say they have created the classy European cousin of Arc, based on Webkit so it’s super light & responsive on Mac while also having the flexibility of Chrome extensions.” — Elliot“Trying out Monarch to potentially break my years-long Quicken habit. So far I’m about 90% sure I’m switching
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