Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 110, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy holidays, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about mall Santas and malleable software and phone bans**, **wondering how I barely know any of the songs in DJ Earworm’s annual mashup, waiting patiently for Ugmonk’s Layflat notebooks to go back on sale, finally setting up my Switch 2 Camera for some holiday gaming, trying desperately to not come in last place in my fantasy football league, using MCP to build some really weird note-taking workflows in Craft, and learning all the words to Justin Bieber’s rap verse in “Drummer Boy” because I saw someone do it on TikTok.

I also have for you a huge list of all of our favorite stuff from this year. Stuff to read, stuff to watch, apps to try, games to play — this is your holiday season, and probably your 2026, totally sorted. Let’s get into it.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / putting marshmallows into right now? 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.)

My favorite stuff of 2025

By my count (and by “my count” I mean a quick search of Google Docs), we published 45 issues of *Installer *this year. That’s a lot of stuff! You probably forgot to check out some of it. Heck, I probably forgot to check some of it. But I did a lot of reading, watching, listening, downloading, and everything else-ing this year and wanted to share some of my favorite new (or at least new to me) things from 2025. Here’s a top 10, in no particular order:

• Enshittification***. ***Cory Doctorow’s book was very fun to read, while simultaneously filling me with rage on every page. It explains the world in that way that is just really satisfying and helpful, a real *oh so it’s not just me *sort of feeling.
• The Sony WH-1000XM6. I bought both these and a pair of AirPods Pro 3 this year and like them both a great deal, but the Sonys are just a cut above. I can wear them all day, they sound great, their noise cancellation is ridiculous. Am I ashamed to admit I wore these a lot while holding screaming newborns this year? A little. But here we are.
• The Nintendo Switch 2. Much as I love the headphones, this is my gadget purchase of the year. I spent years saying all I wanted was a better, faster Switch, and that’s exactly what I got. Life in *Mario Kart World *is still really good.
• Claude Code. There’s a lot of crappy AI out there, but there’s simply no question that large language models can write workable code for simple projects. I’ve spent the year retuning my brain to solve all my tiny problems by building one-off apps and browser extensions, and suddenly my power knows no bounds.
• Antinote. For all my note-taking systems, I am constantly in need of a quick scratchpad to just do some math or write stuff down. This Mac app is a scratchpad that doubles as a calculator, a timer, a list-maker, and much more. I use it (and the iOS beta!) a million times a day.
• The Studio***. ***Take my 2025 TV recommendations with a grain of salt, because for a lot of life and work reasons I’ve never been so behind on great shows. (*Pluribus *is about to be my Christmas present to myself.) But I absolutely inhaled this show, which was inventive and weird and made me laugh in a way very few things do.
• Amazon’s Echo Dot Max**. **I haven’t been a smart speaker guy for years, but we moved into a new house this fall, and I took the opportunity to install some smart lights and a new speaker. Turns out, yes, it’s mostly for music and timers, but having a pretty responsive, pretty nice-sounding music and timers machine is pretty great?
• Philips Hue Essentials**. **Smart lights are expensive. They also *rule. *I’ve rigged mine up so that my once too-bright-and-too-cold house now feels cozy and warm all the time. Plus, as a person prone to just leaving lights on all the time for no reason, I am grateful to have a way to darken the whole house without getting out of bed.
• Good Hang*. *It takes a lot for a new podcast to enter my rotation, and I don’t listen to many celeb-to-celeb podcasts. And yet, I’ve listened to every single one of these Amy Poehler chats. (And judging by the charts, so has everybody else.) The Martin Short episode is one of the most delightful hours you’ll find anywhere.
• Puzzmo. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find better things to do on my phone, and the trade I recommend most is swapping social media scrolling for five minutes of puzzle games. From *Really Bad Chess *to *Pile-Up Poker, *Puzzmo is now one of the few apps I use every single day.

Screen share

He’s going to hate that I’m saying this, but Jason Kottke is kind of the godfather of the Installerverse. He’s been curating and writing about the internet for decades and is still better at finding unexpected and great things than anyone I know. (He also writes a heck of a gift guide.) So it would not surprise you that he’s been on my screen share list since the very beginning.

For this, our last issue of the year, Jason agreed to share his homescreen with us, which I’m taking as a sign that he’s not totally furious with me for stealing links from him all the time. Victory. Here it is, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

Screenshot

**The phone: **iPhone 17 Pro. Not orange. I’ve never used another smartphone aside from the iPhone. I like my groove / rut. I do not like Liquid Glass though.

**The wallpaper: **It’s a photo I took of a sandbar while on vacation in Mexico a few years ago. I generally rotate photos every few months, when I shoot or find something new, but I keep coming back to this one.

**The apps: **Pedometer, Apple Sports, Apple Notes, Tesla, Calendar, Passwords, App Store, Photos, Amazon, AllTrails, Kottke.org, Camera, Weather, Clock, Feedbin, Google Maps, Strava, Swarm, Gmail, Settings, Phone, Messages, Safari.

Welcome to my normcore homescreen. I don’t really spend a lot of time evaluating new apps or whatever. I probably have more stock Apple apps on my homescreen than your usual interviewee: Notes, Weather, Camera, Photos, Sports (for football — not handegg football, foot football), Calendar, Passwords, Phone, Messages, Settings, and Clock. I dunno, they work fine for me… my life isn’t that complicated and I want to keep it that way. The odd app out is probably Swarm; I’ve been using Foursquare / Swarm to check in to places since they launched. I find it very useful as a database of places I’ve been.

I moved all of my social apps to screens further inland, in the hopes that I’d use them less, but I’m always swiping over to them anyway because they are tiny casinos with a hold on my brain and also my job. (Not a great position to be in sometimes TBH!)

I also asked Jason to share a few things they’re into right now. Here’s what he sent back:

• You know who’s really great at their jobs? Ken Burns and his collaborators. I’ve been watching The American Revolution on PBS, and it’s just so interesting. It’s the kind of show I put on and 10 minutes in, I’m like, oh no, I actually wanted to go to sleep before 1AM tonight...
• Opus 4.5 and Claude Code are sort of magical. It’s stunning what it can do with very little hand-holding. A true disruptive inflection point.
• I’m trying to get serious about saving links and notes, so I’ve been experimenting with throwing everything I might want to see again into Raindrop. Input works smoothly, but I haven’t had much chance to grab stuff out of it yet. Gotta sow before you reap.

Crowdsourced

Now it’s your turn: Here’s what the Installer community loved this year. Thanks as always to everyone who emails, texts, DMs, and sends carrier pigeons every week! I read every single thing that comes through, though I confess I’m not as good at responding to everything as I’d like to be. (Especially on weeks like this, when I open the inbox to so much good stuff!) Please know that even if I don’t respond, I’m very grateful… and also that I feel bad and wish I responded more often.

As always, you can mail installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything. Tell me what you get and give for the holidays! I want to hear all about it. Now, without further ado:

“The Keychron Q1 HE keyboard that I’m currently tapping away on. It’s heavy as a brick, wonderful to type on, can be customised up the wazoo and is very slick to look at, in black, cream and a single red Escape key (the ANSI version apparently has a red Enter key as well, but not the ISO I’m using...).” — Anders

“Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I got back into reading this summer and read all three of his novels. Only after I finished Project Hail Mary did I figure out it’s coming out as a movie next year, so that was fun!” — Michael

“Home Assistant Green. I was hesitant to go for it and I don’t regret it. It’s an amazing thing. I have several sensors connected via Zigbee and I love automation. I only buy new things that can be integrated into Home Assistant. I highly recommend it.” — Andris

“In April 2024 I became a father, and have been obsessively taking photos on my iPhone. I got sick of how every photo looked the same and in May 2025, bought a used Fujifilm X100V (after reading the Verge review of the X Half and going down a rabbit hole of what camera I wanted). I love being that dad with a camera around my neck and the photos are great.” — Zayd

“My favorite tech-thing of the year is vibe coding! I’m a marketer with a very low level in development (I vaguely understand html and css). This year, thanks to Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude, I’ve created working web apps, from my personal website to an NFT minting page to a directory of self-hosted websites! My advice is that if you have this little idea in your head, talk about it with Gemini, you’ll be surprised to see how far it can go.” — Rémi

“Loving the new-to-me Apple Vision Pro. Work, entertainment etc are awesome in it. Couldn’t convince myself at MSRP, but at under $2,000 in the used market it’s awesome. Wish I had gotten one last year!” — Tony

“For me it’s TRMNL. It’s such a nice and well thought out device supported by a great software platform. It allows me to tinker, but also to just use the ready made plugins without hassle.” — Estof

“I started leasing a Riddara EV pickup, and I honestly love it. Coolest thing about it was reverse charging, even though I didn’t use it but just in case I’m running out of battery on my other EVs, I could use it to top it off. In terms of performance, it’s instantly fast, doing 0-60 in 4.5 seconds! Such a fun EV pickup!” — Abdulla

“Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series wrapped up in 2025, and it is far and away the sci-fi space opera I’ve ever read. I’d encourage fans of strong prose, deep and long tailed character development and tens-of-chapters long battles to dive in.” — Jon

“Mine would have to be Android handhelds like the AYN Odin 2 Portal. Think of an ARM-based Steam Deck. It can run Android, emulation, and Steam games. The latter using Gamehub. Also has WiFi 7 and an OLED screen. Because it’s ARM, the battery life is much better than x86 handhelds.” — Alric

“The book Apple in China by Patrick McGee was hands down my favorite read of the year. Illuminates Apple’s larger-than-the-Marshall Plan impact on the Chinese technology manufacturing since the late 90s. So much to unpack from this masterfully told story.” — Cary

“AirPods Pro and the Dungeons and Daddies podcast! Many late nights with headphones in listening to this D&D podcast about four dads searching the realm for their kids. Turns out professional actors/comedians playing *D&D *is the best?” — Matt

“My favourite new-to-me thing of this year was discovering the wonders of the HP-1xC calculators. Launched in 1981/82, this series of calculators covered three very different domains of calculation: financial (HP-12C), scientific (HP-11C and HP-15C) and programming (HP-16C). They were programmable, highly versatile and ruggedly built. Their batteries lasted decades. And, being HP, they of course used Reverse Polish Notation. Despite being intended merely as a stopgap, the series was sold for most of the 1980s but the HP-12C has never been discontinued and is still being sold today.” — William

“Mymind. Simply brilliant, fast, intuitive, elegant and useful.” — Nicos

“The Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. As the title implies, it’s a vampire story. It’s bloody and brutal, the world lives in eternal winter, it’s surprisingly Catholic in its lore, one of the main characters is queer. And it’s told in a neat way: The protagonist is prompted by his enemy to tell his life story. This put me in a vampire binge over the spring and summer.” — Hannes

“I picked up a Selphy Photo Printer in late November to bring to life a ‘Movie Wall’ I’ve been wanting to do forever. From Thanksgiving to Christmas we only watch holiday movies + TV. I wanted a way to visualize our choices in a more fun way to avoid the dreaded ‘What are we going to watch?’ conversation.” — Taylor

Signing off

One more time, I just want to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who sends me recommendations, because *Installer *literally wouldn’t happen without you. (Every week, I’m afraid it’s the week no one will share, and every week I’m grateful I’m wrong.) Thank you to everyone who clicks the links — I hear from creators and developers every single week who are thrilled at how many *Installer *readers are checking out their stuff, and it makes me so happy to be able to shine a light on good things. Thank you to everyone who sends Group Project ideas, which I want to do even more of next year. Thank you even to everyone who subscribes and then never opens a single email, because the number still goes up, you know?

There’s so much out there vying for your time and attention, and one of the things I hope to do here is be a source of stuff worthy of them both. I have lots of ideas for how to do that even better next year, but please know that none of it works without you. I hope you all have a lovely holiday season, get some rest, and come ready to rock in 2026.

See you next year!

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• David Pierce