Our favorite stuff of 2025

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 .) Our favorite stuff of 2025 In this week’s Installer: All the things we loved to watch, read, play, build, and goof around with this year. In this week’s Installer: All the things we loved to watch, read, play, build, and goof around with this year. This week, I’ve been reading about mall Santas and and malleable software phone bans , wondering how I barely know any of the songs in , waiting patiently for Ugmonk’s DJ Earworm’s annual mashup to go back on sale, finally setting up my Layflat notebooks 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 Switch 2 Camera , and learning all the words to Justin Bieber’s rap verse in “ Craft ” because I saw someone do it on TikTok. Drummer Boy 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. . 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 Sony WH-1000XM6 The Nintendo Switch 2 . Much as I love the...

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