The apps, gadgets, and tools every reader needs

This week's guide highlights the ultimate tech setup for avid readers, featuring top-rated e-readers, note-taking apps, and digital tools. Plus, discover exciting new software updates, gadgets, and media recommendations.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 136, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope your neighborhood isn’t as smoky as mine, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

The apps, gadgets, and tools every reader needs

Plus, in this week’s Installer: Nolan did it again, a silly new AI gadget, a great update to a great notes app, and more.

This week, I’ve been recording the next season of ** Version History** (this season’s finale is out on Sunday!), reading about

data center heistsand

and

Backyard Baseballthe creator of

, canceling my October plans to see

Calvin and Hobbes30 or 40 times, taking on the new Knockout Tour routes in

Digger**, learning more than I ever intended about Staten Island thanks to**

Mario Kart World**, reading up on the history of**

Revisionist Historythe very first chatbot, and setting up my

Flipper Busy Bar. I love the thing, and have no idea what to use it for.

I also have for you the movie of the summer, a great update to a great note-taking app, a new app for organizing your photos, and much more. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / watching / playing / listening to / soldering together this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

The Odyssey**.I’ll be honest: I expected this movie to not be great. Hot director bites off too big a story, not even Christopher Nolan can hit every time, right? WRONG. The reviews are amazing, the whole thing actually feels very current, and I absolutely cannot wait to plant myself in an IMAX theater and soak in the epic-ness of this one. Several dozen times.Bear 2.9.Bear’s tag-based system has always felt a little too limiting to me, but expanding the idea into Workspaces makes it way more powerful without being any more complex. So clever, so useful, still one of the best apps to write in across Apple devices.The World Cup final.By just about any measure, Sunday’s game will be the biggest thing on TV… until we do this again in four years. This year’s tournament has been spectacular, and whether you like soccer or not, the final tends to be good TV. Treat it like the Super Bowl! Have a party!“How Microtransactions (Almost) Ruined Gaming, with Dan Soder.”Really good episode ofPablo Torre Finds Outthat makes an imperfect but very compelling argument that we have almost completely lost the plot when it comes to gaming. But the fight is not yet entirely lost.Aphera.I’ve been hearing good things about this new Mac-based photo editor, which is fast and powerful and aimed directly at replacing the ever-rising price of Adobe’s tools. Ditching Lightroom is a lot to ask, but I’m excited to give this a real shot.Parchment.Chris Lawley, friend ofInstaller, shipped his notes-and-tasks app for Apple devices this week, and it’s really well done! It goes hard on just showing you what matters right now and hiding everything else, and I kind of appreciate that.The Loading Museum.What a fun idea: a repository of all the things that have made us wait on our computers. Watch a photo load like it’s 1997, remember what it felt like to wait for the internet to connect, and learn what designers have always known about how to make slow things feel faster.The Codex Micro.**I love a shortcut button, and while I think $230 is an absurd price to pay for a bunch of buttons you could re-create with a Stream Deck or any number of other things, I do think these agent-controlling keys are pretty delightful. Work Louder stuff just tends to feel good.

Group project

(Tiny housekeeping note: From now on, when we do a special section like this, it’ll be in place of Screen Share for that week. I’ve heard from a bunch of folks that some issues are actually too much, and this feels like a good trade that also makes my life easier. Win-win!)

They say reading is dead. They are, in fact, incorrect. A couple of weeks ago, I asked you all to share your reading setups — the gadgets, the apps, the bookstores, the bookmark brands, the highlighter colors, everything. As always, you delivered! Since a bunch of you asked, before we get into all your great gear and advice, here’s my current setup:

I read mostly on one of three devices: a Kindle Paperwhite, aniPad Mini, or aBoox Palma 2. The iPad is for when I need to take lots of notes and highlights, the Palma goes everywhere with me, and the Paperwhite lives next to my bed. Almost all of my ebooks are in the Kindle universe; I wish that weren’t the case, and should probably switch to something more open, but it’s a hard change to make. - As a result, I mostly read books in the Kindle app, but all of the rest of my digital reading happens inReadwise Reader. I frequently dabble with bothInstapaperandMatter, but Reader’s search, organization tools, and ability to parse and convert PDFs into a nice reading experience are just unmatched. - I use Feedbinfor RSS reading. On my computer, I use Feedbin’s website; on mobile I mostly useUnread.
When I buy physical books, which I’m trying to do a lot more now that I have a toddler who sees me looking at screens all the time, I try to buy them from Bookshop.org. Or from my local library / bookstore. My book collection is growing for the first time in forever, and it’s a delight.

But enough about me! Here are the things I heard the most about from you:

The library! Yay libraries! So many of us are using LibbyandHooplaandMyLibroandSoraand so many other tools to make the most of our library cards. Absolutely love to see it. - The Kindleand theiPad Miniare the big winners among reading devices. No big surprise there, really. But I also heard from Kobo fans (bothClaraandLibra), more than one devoted iPod Touch fan, and lots of believers in theXteink X4. Oh, and of course, theBoox Palmaremains a winner. - The most popular reading apps were, also unsurprisingly, KindleandApple Books. But there are some devotedBookFusionfans out there, too, andBookshop.org’s app appears to be catching on. - We love a way to track our collection, and our progress. Both The StoryGraphandBook Trackerhave a lot of fans, and practically everyone either quit or is looking to quit Goodreads. - Lots of us like to listen to books, which of course means Audiblecame up a few times. But a lot of us are also making good use of the 15 hours of audio that come withSpotify Premium. BookBub, a great site for finding ebook sales, came up a bunch. So didChirp, its sister site for audiobooks.- Saving and syncing highlights is an ongoing project for a lot of us. Lots of Readwiseusers out there, syncing stuff toNotionandCraftandObsidian, but also a lot of folks building their own apps to make this easier. - I heard about, conservatively, 50 different RSS readers. UnreadandReederwere the RSS favorites, andInstapaper,Readwise Reader, andWallabagare the go-tos for saving stuff for later.

One last note: I heard from a *lot *of people that keeping up with newsletters is a hard and unsolved problem. Do you send everything to a reading app? An RSS feed? Try to manage it in Gmail? Who knows! As you may have guessed, I also have a lot of newsletters I don’t know how to manage. If you have tips, I’m all ears. And thanks to everyone who shared their reading setups!