Mario and Spider-Man are both back in a big way

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 11, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome to the Installerverse, which is officially a thing now — we did it, everybody — and you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

I’m traveling this week, so I’ve got a slightly abbreviated issue for you. But there’s just way too much good stuff not to share. 

I also have for you a new Mario game, an old tech magazine, overlooked TV shows, AI image makers, and much more.

As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: if you’re getting this in your inbox, just reply to this email and tell me everything. Otherwise, you can always hit up installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.

Alright, Mario has waited long enough. Let’s go.

The Drop

Screen share

Remember a few weeks ago when everyone on Threads was sharing their homescreens? There were a lot of cool ones, but I was taken with one in particular: it had an amazing wallpaper, this super-clean set of icons, and a really nice widget. The vibes, as they say, were immaculate. I messaged its owner, hoping they’d tell me more.

That person turned out to be Bart Claeys, a designer at Meta. I needed Bart to tell me everything, and he did!

Here’s Bart’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: A Pixel 7 — I may switch to Pixel 8 (Pro) using my $400 Google Fi credit (but I’ve got until January 2024 for this, so waiting things out until there are more Pixel 8 reviews).

The wallpaper: “Mountastic” by Kxnt from the Backdrops app. I picked this particular image because it strikes a great balance between being inspirational, matches the Cascade and Olympic mountains where I live, and has areas allowing for icons and widgets. Additionally, it matches my phone case.

The launcher: I am a loyal user of Nova Launcher, allowing me to customize a lot of parts of the user interface, among which is setting a custom grid, removing app labels, and changing each icon individually. I’ve got two areas for icons: a 4 x 4 grid featuring my most-used apps — all using the Whicons icon pack — located at the lower half of the phone, optimized for single-hand usage. Then, you have smaller icons on the bottom from the Min icon pack. Removing colors from icons allows me to be more intentional about which app to use without being lured in by color. And finally, I have two additional mini clock widgets from the regular Google Clock app.

The apps: Facebook, Threads, Hue Lights, Starbucks, Messages, Chrome, Google Maps, WhatsApp, Calendar, Google News, Google Photos, Google Keep, Google Tasks, Instagram, YouTube Music, Authy.

I also asked Bart 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 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. 

“I think of Remix as Instagram meets AI. I’ve had a lot of fun with it, as my prompting skill improves the more I use it. There’s also the concept of ‘remixing,’ which creates threads of related posts. Quite fun!” – Jason

“As a Canadian, we often are introduced to the pros (and cons) of culture from both the United States and the English Commonwealth. These two series — Gangs of London and Mr Inbetween — are sorely overlooked in the US, one from the UK and the other from Australia. Among my group of friends, these two are among our favorite shows, and both top my top five shows of the last decade.” – Don

“As a Simpsons fan, this book just hit preorder stages, and I’m very excited to eventually get into it. It’s basically a collection of various memorabilia and merchandise throughout the course of the lifetime of the show.” – Joseph

“Catchup is a simple but polished utility for keeping track of when you last talked to people close to you. You set how frequently you want to be in touch with each person (weekly, monthly, etc.) and see who’s due for a call. Catchup helping me FaceTime friends more regularly makes me more of the person I want to be, especially while living abroad right now, so it’s central on my iPhone homescreen as a push toward one of the most rewarding uses of my iPhone.” – Lachlan

“Just finished Cocoon on PS5. Brilliant puzzle adventure game where you’re carrying orbs that house different realms and traversing between them. It’s also by one of the minds behind Inside and Limbo. Short, sweet, and a perfect precursor to Spider-Man 2.” – Jackson

“Offsuit, AI offline poker app. Really clean interface, leaderboards, etc.” – Jonathan

“Putting all my social apps in a folder on my homescreen has completely prevented the weird, ‘automatic opening’ I used to do. That single layer of not having the app within one click has completely tanked my random clicking of apps, and my screen time has gone down a bit. Still monitoring to see if it stays down long term, but it’s been very noticeable so far!” – Nicholas

Signing off

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks deep down the self-hosting rabbit hole working on some Vergecast stuff coming soon. I have this idea that I might be able to replace a lot of the (increasingly unreliable) cloud services I use with some self-hosted ones. So far, I have mostly failed. But I did buy a mini PC and turn it into a Plex server and a Nextcloud file-storage system, so I’m already feeling like a capital-h Hacker over here. But the best thing I’ve found so far is Derek Sivers’ step-by-step guide to “Tech Independence”: it’s a super-detailed manual for setting up your own domain, moving all your services to systems you own, and ditching the tech giants for good. I didn’t do everything Sivers recommended — I’m good with Gmail, honestly — but if you’re looking for a fun and empowering weekend project, this is an excellent one.

See you next week!