A new spin on a powerful calendar app

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 22, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

I also have for you a huge new Samsung phone, a couple of nifty calendar apps, a new riff on an old game, some more cool AI tools, and much more. Even a new late-night show! In 2024!

And I have a question: what’s your go-to news app? I mean “news” in the broadest way possible — when you’re like, “What’s new and interesting and happening,” do you turn to a social platform? A specific publisher’s app? Reddit? Flipboard? SmartNews? A bunch of browser bookmarks you cycle through? Something else I’ve never heard of? I know a lot of us were hoping Artifact might be the future of Finding The Good Links, but alas, it won’t. So I want to know all your favorite places to go!

Alright, lots to do this week. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What apps are you into right now? What are you watching, reading, listening to, crocheting, cooking, or learning about this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you want to get Installer in your inbox a day before it appears here, you can subscribe here.)

The Drop

Screen share

Vjeran Pavic is always taking pictures. Pictures for The Verge, where he’s our supervising producer for video and also a gadget-photo wizard. Pictures for Instagram. Pictures of his dog, his sick ski tricks, his cat, his travels, everything. Pictures, pictures, pictures. He’s always testing new cameras, too, from drones to GoPros to DSLRs.

I asked Vjeran to share his homescreen thinking he might have a hundred camera apps for a hundred different things. Turns out, not really! It’s just good old-fashioned Camera in there. But he makes really clever use of his photos on his phone, which I’ll let him explain. 

Here’s Vjeran’s homescreen, plus five of his many lock screen options, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 13 Pro Max (with probably better battery health than all y’all’s 15 Pros). 

The wallpaper: I like to keep it fresh, so I set up a few different ones that change each time I look at my phone. I picked about 10 different ones, and I swap them out every few months. All of the photos are taken by me and / or of things or people (animals) that are close or meaningful to me — or are simply photos that I think would look good as wallpaper. You’ll see photos of San Francisco and my home country, but the ones that make me the happiest are of my pets. 

Once the phone is unlocked, I prefer a very clean look, so my wallpaper is just one very blurred, colorful background. It’s easier on the eyes and has better separation between the apps, text, and the background. 

The apps: Messages, Threads (the app with both the most unpredictable and predictable algo out there), Apple Podcasts, Artifact (recently made it onto my first screen but looks like it won’t be there for too long), Apple News, Airmail, Safari, Camera (gotta have that quick access to the camera app, but I still prefer double-clicking the power button to access it like most Android phones do).

I’m not sure if people are utilizing iOS / iPad Focus modes, but I made a few different ones based on time of day, location, or activity. That means my homescreen changes based on a mode, but let’s look at this one, which is part of my most-used Focus mode. 

It mostly consists of widgets, which I don’t need to interact with; rather, they give me some info at a quick glance. Things like my fitness rings, weather, battery info. The only one I might swap out soon is the activity one since I also have an Apple Watch. Most of my Focus modes also have just one page of apps / widgets. I used to put everything in folders across multiple pages, but 99 percent of my input comes from just using Spotlight or App Library. 

I also asked Vjeran to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he said:

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 +1 203-570-8663 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.

“If you’re into romcoms, musicals, cringe, and honest portrayals of mental health issues, you probably want to see Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The only show where I’ve screamed “Nooooooo!” “That’s not trueeee!” or “Don’t do itttt!” multiple times in each episode.” – Xyan

“Mr Bates vs The Post Office! A fantastic show that has brought attention to a great injustice that was done to postal workers in the UK in the early 2000s!” – Jason

“PlayPilot is pretty much my go-to site for finding out where movies are streaming (or not). We save the stuff we want to see in there and then roll through the services over the year. I just wish they were integrated with LG TVs…” – Robert

“I’ve been digging into The Pale Beyond on Steam, and it’s a really evocative, desperate little narrative resource management game.” – Jordan

“Disclosure: Vox Media is a parent company of The Verge. That said, Unexplainable is such a great podcast. Huge variety of topics. Each episode is short enough to keep me from losing interest yet still manages to pack in a ton of info and be interesting. I learn so much!” – Kelly (Disclosure: I didn’t add this disclosure, I left it in because it’s hilarious.) 

“I tried adding Structured to my productivity stack for the new semester, and even though it didn’t stick for me (I’ve got too much structured time that lives in GCal, it turns out), it’s very pretty and fairly full-featured. I liked that it is a lot more forgiving of to-dos that take a nonstandard amount of time, and it builds in space to breathe between blocks without leaving white space begging to be filled.” – Ainslee

“I’m always looking out for iOS games I can play while listening to podcasts. They should be ‘mindless’ and preferably playable in bits while stuck in traffic. The game Holedown always filled that hole for me (no pun intended). But now I learned about the game Finity on Apple Arcade, and I can’t get enough of it.” – Mustapha

“Clear is back, and it looks stunning. And for those at home, there are collectibles: themes, icons, sounds, etc.” – Austin (Austin also sent their referral link, which gets everybody free stuff. Yay, free stuff!) 

“Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix is a great show. It’s about an outcast in feudal Japan after they closed themselves off from the rest of the world. Four white men remain in Japan in secret, and the outcast vows to kill them in revenge because being mixed race is a problem in their society. Extra twist: she’s a girl hiding her gender. Commentary on being a woman in that society ensues. Great show, story, characters, setting, and commentary. Comparisons to Mulan be damned.” – Joseph

Signing off

There are two genres of video I will always watch no matter the subject: videos about people who are really good at something explaining how they do it, and videos about super-niche competitions that people care deeply about. My latest discovery in the latter category: the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, in which a bunch of puzzlers pull a puzzle out of a bag and try to put it together as quickly as they can. Here’s a great video from a competitor, and the full five-hour livestream of the event. I love learning about the different solving strategies (start with the sky!), I love the drama, and I also want to puzzle competitively now. But I definitely couldn’t hang. I don’t puzzle like these folks puzzle.

See you next week!