The app for taking better photos — with no AI

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 48, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, get ready for a lot of books this week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

I’m back after a couple of weeks off — thanks to everyone who wished me a good vacation and sent over book recommendations! I wound up reading Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, She Rides Shotgun, and The Wager and highly recommend all three. Mostly, I spent two weeks chasing a toddler around various restaurants and playgrounds, and it was a good time, but I am oh so very glad to be back hanging with all of you. And it turns out I missed a lot of good stuff!

This week, I’ve been reading about Worldcoin and Conan O’Brien, watching Bad Monkey and rewatching The Night Manager, tweaking my recipe for a maple syrup Old Fashioned, listening to 99 Percent Invisible’s excellent series on The Power Broker, rebooting all my fantasy football leagues, and trying my damndest to switch from Spotify to YouTube Music.

I also have for you a new way to take smartphone photos, a new-ish HBO smash, a new podcast app, a clever use of AI for your notes, and much more. Let’s get into it.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be reading / watching / playing / buying / 3D printing? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

• Halide’s Process Zero. Halide was already one of the best camera apps for iPhone and iPad, but this feature — which strips out all the processing your phone does and gives you as raw an image as possible — is just so much fun to play with. Give it a whirl this weekend. (A lot of you also sent this in — thanks to everyone who did!)
• The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. The name is bad. The phone looks awesome. Google seems to have gotten the foldable phone design pretty right this time, and using Gemini side by side with an app is actually a great case for a larger screen. There are lots of new Pixel devices this week, but I’m most excited about the Fold.
• Gemini Live. Big week for chatty voice assistants! OpenAI rolled out Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT, which is both cool and creepy. And Google showed off Gemini Live, which, well, same. I’m curious to see if either of these can go from nifty novelty to actually useful feature.
• Alien: Romulus. I honestly don’t care if this movie’s any good. (And the reviews so far are… pretty mixed.) I’m thrilled to have a reason to get back into the Alien universe, and you better believe I’ll be seeing this in the biggest, loudest theater I can find.
• “First Look Inside Blue Origin’s New Glenn Factory w/ Jeff Bezos!” I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t watched any Everyday Astronaut videos before this one crossed my recommendations. I learned a ton from this long, deep, truly wild factory tour. Insta-subscribe.
• Meta Quest HDMI Link. If we’ve learned anything from the Vision Pro this year, it’s that VR headsets are just really, really big televisions. Meta’s new app means you can plug almost anything in and use your headset as the big screen it’s meant to be.
• Unread for Mac. This one’s like two weeks old, but I was on vacation, so I just saw it: my favorite RSS reader for iOS is now on the Mac, and it’s great. Fast, simple, nice to look at, works with everything, instantly part of my day-to-day workflow.
• Industry season 3. It took a while for this HBO show to get its flowers, but it totally deserves the belated love. It has some of the same chaotic energy as Succession, lots of the money and bad behavior, and plenty of good-looking people doing hateable stuff. Takes a couple of episodes to really get going, but it’s great once it does.
• Neuecast. I actually like the new Overcast design, but evidently, not everyone’s a fan. And if, for whatever reason, you’re looking for a new podcast app, this is a gorgeous, simple one that’s remarkably full-featured for being so new. I’ve been testing it for months, and it’s been good basically the whole time.

Earlier this summer, I mentioned how much I‘d been enjoying the Niagara Launcher, a minimalist Android launcher that reinvents your homescreen into something much more manageable and straightforward. And I heard from so many of you that you like it, too! 

I also happened to run into Peter Huber, the creator and developer behind Niagara, only a few days later. I figured it had to be fate, so I asked Peter to share his homescreen with us, figuring we might get a Niagara pro tip or two. 

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

The phone(s): Pixel 8 and Galaxy Z Fold 3. Since we need several phones to check if Niagara Launcher works properly on the vast Android landscape, I have the luxury of being able to use two phones. The Pixel is my daily driver, and I use my Fold 3 with its wide screen to relax and wind down in the evenings.

The wallpaper: The first one is based on a photograph from Annie Spratt, and the second is a blurred version of a wallpaper I did while tinkering with the fantastic 3D modeling software Blender. You can find the wallpapers in Niagara Launcher or on my Google Drive.

The launcher: I was tempted to post an iPhone setup here to see the reaction, but I’m using and testing Niagara Launcher. I prefer a simple setup, and everything you see — the icon packs, weather, calendar, and media widgets — comes with Niagara Launcher. The only exception is the Caprasimo font on the Fold. I tried a few extravagant fonts for upcoming homescreen setup presets. I noticed the star above the alphabet is too thin with this font, so I’ve kept it as a reminder to address this issue, and now the font has grown on me.

The apps: Gmail, Todoist, Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Firefox, YouTube, Harmonic.

• Todoist: Almost every thought I want to write down lands here first. It’s fast, feels native, and syncs seamlessly with Google Calendar. The developers have put a lot of thought and care into it.
• Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack — if you message me on any of these, expect to encounter a fair share of “Hide the Pain Harold” stickers or reactions.
• Firefox: In the morning and on breaks, I use it to check the news on The Verge and Reddit, but I want to reduce my Reddit use. Lately, I often browse ArtStation or Stash before going to sleep; looking at beautiful art has some soothing character.
• Harmonic is a wonderful Hacker News client.
• While not an app, DebugAction is my handy developer shortcut for Niagara Launcher that lets me perform actions to fine-tune a feature, like refreshing all app icons when designing a new icon pack.

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

• YouTube videos I recommend watching: a video about phantom islands by Map Men, a British duo teaching geography in the funniest way possible; a discussion from a fitness forum turned into an Ace Attorney case (warning: profane language); and Captain Disillusion’s latest debunk video, packed with his usual meticulous details and humor — highly recommended if you want to learn more about special effects.
• While I’m not exactly “into”: writing a Master’s thesis. It’s the thing I have invested a lot of time into recently (or at least I should — maybe promising to work on it more here will motivate me). However, I have no right to complain because I was allowed to choose the topic I’m passionate about. My goal is to investigate reducing unwanted phone use like procrastination on YouTube, instead of, let’s say, writing a Master’s thesis. Unfortunately, there is no scientific consensus on how to assess unwanted phone use (heck, it’s even debatable if smartphones can be addictive, at least in the pathological sense). The common advice is to get extra hardware like a second phone or a dumb phone, which can help but is expensive and often inconvenient if you need your phone to be smart. I want to figure out a solution that is accessible to more people. 
• I’m playing Wario Land 4, a short and quirky Game Boy Advance platformer with so much character! Another short game I want to play again after beating Wario Land is the rooftop runner game Mirror’s Edge. The first time I missed a jump and fell, it gave me goosebumps. Also, how could an almost 16-year-old game achieve such great lighting? Its stylized city looks even better than its successor’s! I also had a few good Super Smash Bros. Ultimate rounds with my team after the last sprint meeting. We have the unhealthy tradition that the last match has to end with a special attack called a “spike.” Otherwise, it’s not the last match.

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. And for even more recommendations than I could fit here, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“I followed Jeff Cable’s photography blog during the Olympics. There are technical, logistical, and emotional articles. Working in post-production, I wondered how many cameras were being used during the Olympics. Found this blog post about Olympic Broadcasting Services.” — Sinan

“Denim has been my favorite utility to create great-looking custom covers for playlists on Apple Music.” — Krishna

“A Psalm for the Wild-Built. It’s set in a future where humans and robots have gone their separate ways and really paints a portrait of a world where I think many of us would like to live. Becky Chambers’ work has been called ‘comfort sci-fi,’ and honestly, I can’t think of anything more perfect for a reprieve. Reading this is like drinking a warm cup of tea. You’ll love it.” — Nolan

“Really into this black and white E Ink smartphone I was crazy enough to preorder from China. Think ‘slightly less expensive Boox Palma,’ and also, you could put a SIM card in it if you really wanted, but the bands it supports really limit what carrier you could use and what kind of speeds you’ll get in the US” — Christopher

“I’m enjoying Quick Journal, a simple text-only journaling app for iOS.” — Joe

“I relistened to ‘The Case of the Missing Hit’ from Reply All and forgot how much I loved it. It got me thinking of podcasts I’ve listened to that had me on the edge of my seat, and I remembered Dr. Death. It has multiple seasons now, but the first one is on Christopher Duntsch, a spinal surgeon gone wrong and how the laws of malpractice and hospital fire and hire practices will fill you with rage!” — David

“GuestCast. I’ve been using this site to follow my tech reporters and politicians when they go on random podcasts.” — Ben

“Match Land. It hasn’t been updated in a super long time but still works. I have yet to find a match RPG game that can replace it. For me, it has the perfect game physics as far as speed and moving tiles, and nothing else I’ve tried is as satisfying.” — Justin

“Based on your clear interest in note-taking apps, I assume you’ve already read How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. If you haven’t, check it out — you might like it. It’s short, to the point, and interesting for people who take a lot of notes for future articles / books / papers.” — Robert

“The new day calendar view in Todoist is absolutely amazing and makes it super simple to plan tasks around meetings.“ — Glenn

I don’t remember how I discovered The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, but I’m really glad I did. Every episode is a dissection of one of the Lonely Island’s SNL digital shorts, a shocking number of which ended up being kind of culturally iconic. I wouldn’t binge the show since a few of the episodes are a little same-y – “we made it last minute, it was huge, wasn’t that neat!” — but there’s a lot of interesting behind-the-scenes stuff throughout. And I will never tire of the fact that “Lazy Sunday” is both an all-time great SNL sketch and a sneakily crucial part of internet history. (And not just because there’s a MapQuest shoutout!) That episode was particularly great, but I’ve really enjoyed the whole show so far.

See you next week!