If you’ve just purchased the updated Beats Pill from Apple, you’re probably looking for how to turn it off, since Apple oddly left it out of the packaging and user guide. Here’s how:
Press and hold the Power button for more than 1 second, but less than 3 seconds.
One of my main points of contention with the new Pill is how few buttons it has for its plethora of controls. For instance, the power button has six different functions.
Power on/off (hold for more than 0.8 seconds, but less than three)
Pairing (press and hold for over three seconds)
Voice Assistant (double tap)
Battery status (quick tap, less than 0.8 seconds)
Change charging direction (triple tap)
USB-C audio pass through (press and hold button while plugging in USB-C cable)
This is way too much for one button.
That’s not even including the six functions for the center button as well, which the linked story covers.
Further in the same piece, Brad also highlighted the same issue that I found – Apple never actually tells you how to power down your Beats Pill, anywhere. Here he is again talking about the physical manual:
When you unfold it, there are a few quick controls laid out, but it doesn’t even mention how to turn the speaker off, which as I found out, is more complex than it needs to be.
Instructions for how to actually turn off your Beats Pill don’t come in the manual that comes with the speaker, are not in the user guide linked on the QR code that’s on the manual, and are nowhere online except Brad’s article – hence why I’m writing a dedicated piece to help people discover this explicit.
To help further illustrate the power instructions, I created this custom graphic from an amalgamation of the images in the User Guide and SF Symbols.
Also, to illustrate the USB-C instructions, I created this second graphic as well with SF Symbols – Apple probably wouldn’t label this with the Losslessbadge or the USB-C image, but I find it helpful for remembering those functions.
After reading reviews on Tuesday about Apple’s new Beats Pill, I went and tried to pick one up – only to realize it was on sale on Thursday. So today, I went to the Apple Store and actually picked one up.
The Beats Pill’s streamlined design features a 20-degree upward tilt to help deliver sound waves towards your head, away from objects that might obstruct them.
Enjoy up to 24 hours of battery life for all-day continuous playback.³ The Beats Pill can even be used to charge your phone and other devices via USB-C cable.
IP67-rated for dust and water resistance for outstanding durability on the go.²
Designed for ultimate portability, including the removable lanyard and soft-grip silicone backing.
Dual compatibility for both iOS and Android enables one-touch Bluetooth® pairing, automatic pairing across your other devices, and Find My or Find My Device.
From Jared Newman at FastCompany, after interviewing yours truly last week:
Matthew Cassinelli, a writer and consultant on iOS automation who worked on the app that eventually became Shortcuts, believes Apple will succeed because of all the years it spent laying the ground work.
After all, App Intents aren’t just about Siri. They’re also an essential building block for other iOS features, such as widgets, Spotlight search, Live Activities, and iOS 18’s expanded Control Center and lock screen toggles. Developers that support these features will also be expanding Siri by extension.
“They’ve done a very good job of seeding this to developers in a way that’s key to their entire ecosystem and how it runs,” Cassinelli says.
Apple’s also going to benefit from the ongoing AI hype wave. Instead of just promoting a better version of Siri, Apple can wrap it in the broader “Apple Intelligence” branding, with a marketing push aimed at both users and app makers. Cassinelli says he’s already seeing a change in attitude toward App Intents from the latter group.
“They announced Apple Intelligence stuff, and since then, every app developer’s like, ‘Alright, I’m doing this now,’” he says.
And:
As Matthew Cassinelli points out, those companies must also still figure out how developers can monetize virtual assistant support. That’s not a problem for Apple, whose developers are simply building out Siri support atop their existing apps.
“Apple’s ability just to let you make money on the App Store alone, it’s very powerful compared to something like Google Assistant or Alexa, where they’d have to start a whole business just for that sort of thing,” he says.
Check out the rest of the piece for quotes from developers as well.
Developers, indies, and organizations – let’s work together to make your App Intents and Apple Intelligence implementation the best!
I’m now available for consultation work on Apple’s App Intents and Shortcuts implementations for app developer of all sizes, whether you’re a team, an indie dev, or part of a larger organization.
With my 10+ years of experience working in Shortcuts (as a former member of the Workflow team), I’ve built out a consulting process to educate, strategize, design, and build on top of a complete App Intents and Shortcuts implementation for your app.
I’ll explain the history of Shortcuts, how we got from Workflow to Apple Intelligence, walk you through the developer sessions, recommend intents specific to your needs, share personalized feedback on your implementations, provide extensive documentation and copywriting, and even create any number of custom workflows on top of what we build together, extending your app to the ecosystem with hand-built third-party integrations.
Plus, we can do everything mentioned above together, or just a few parts – let’s schedule a one-hour meeting and discuss what you need.
Pricing depends varies per engagement, but I’m happy to customize anything depending on your goals and timeline.
Now is the time – let’s build App Intents for the rest of us.
As discovered by Scotty Jackson, there are new Reminders actions in the Shortcuts app in iOS 18 developer beta 2. The new actions are “Create Reminder” and “Open Any List,” both of which still seem to be in testing.
Create Reminder and Open Any List are both updated versions—but distinct from—their respective counterparts “Add New Reminder” and “Open Reminders List” (and “Open Smart List).
New Reminders actions
Create Reminder has more options than Add New Reminder, including new fields for List Section (within the Target List) and Subtasks. Plus, the action changes the Alert field to separate All-Day and Due Date fields, losing the “When Messaging,” “When I Leave,” and “When I Arrive” options in the process as well – it remains to be seen if these will be restored somehow. There’s also a new “Assign Reminder” field that does not current return any results in my testing.
Open Any List provides a single variable for “Any List” which lets you pick a specific List from Reminders and, when run, open it – this appears to be a replacement for the separate “Open Reminders List” action (which came first) and the “Open Smart List” action (which came later), combining the two under a more-logical single action going forward. However, this action is also oddly-implemented in both its name and the fact that it includes an “Open When Run” toggle that’s not functional and should be built-in to the action, not available as a toggle.
Neither has the Parameter Summary feature implemented, so both actions do not read like a natural sentence with a parameter inline and instead hide it below the fold – this goes against Apple’s own recommendations, so it appears that both actions are an earlier implementation and hopefully will change in future betas.
App Intents for Apple teams too
Overall, seeing updates to these Reminders actions is a good sign for the Shortcuts ecosystem, as it’s the first signal that Apple is updating their native Shortcuts actions with App Intents-based replacements in iOS 18.
Since the inception of many of these actions in Workflow when Shortcuts was a third-party app, many actions have been built on longstanding external-facing developer APIs (hence actions like “Get Upcoming Reminders”) and then later custom intents from within teams at Apple – they either stayed the same as the Workflow actions, or got piece-by-piece updates for new features each year like Tags in Reminders.
However, as is the nature of intents development, Apple also has tried not to break anything or remove features that are being used in existing shortcuts – but rather than deprecating actions over time, they either have been updated-in-place, added as separate actions (like “Open Smart List”), or simply not implemented in Shortcuts at all.
Now, it appears that we’re seeing the first evidence of an Apple team seeding new actions in betas, hopefully testing and iterating on them, and then likely replacing the Workflow- and custom intents-era actions with modern App Intents actions that can be extended with new features more easily and updated going forward.
More to come
I hope Apple eventually replaces all the native Shortcuts actions from the Workflow days with full-featured, modern App Intents actions for all of their apps, as well as adopt their own recommendation that “Everything in your app should be an App Intent.”
That’s because developers will take absolutely notice when Apple leads the way, and, furthermore, many Shortcuts users have been waiting (somewhat) patiently for about 7 years for Apple to take the promise of Workflow and run with it for their own apps in a big way.
Apple Intelligence and App Intents for third-party developers will be fantastic, but Apple’s own teams need best-in-class integrations as well – hopefully these Reminders actions are a sign of more to come.
I’ll update this post if these Reminders get updates in future releases, and check back for more action coverage after each new developer beta this summer.
Here’s the description from Apple (with line breaks added for readability):
Learn about improvements and refinements to App Intents, and discover how this framework can help you expose your app’s functionality to Siri and all-new features.
We’ll show you how to make your entities more meaningful to the platform with the Transferable API, File Representations, new IntentFile APIs, and Spotlight Indexing, opening up powerful functionality in Siri and the Shortcuts app.
Empower your intents to take people deep into your app with URL Representable Entities.
Explore new techniques to model your entities and intents with new APIs for error handling and union values.
Before I begin, this video also also assumes you’re already aware of the basics of the App Intents API, building off the main sessions from 2022 and 2023 (which you should watch if you haven’t yet).
In many ways, the extended lifespan of this API is why Apple has released other new videos to explain why you should add App Intents and how to design them (which I’ll cover in future posts) in an updated context for 2024.
In reintroducing App Intents in 2024, developer Kenny York starts off the video emphasizing the variety of experience App Intents already powers, including Shortcuts, Spotlight, widgets, the Action button, and the new Apple Pencil squeeze (introduced in May 2024).
This year, those experiences now extend to includes Apple Intelligence and the new Controls experience in Control Center (both covered in future posts).
The App Intents framework itself is also expanding beyond intents and App Shortcuts to emphasize entities, helping the system understand and use them directly when invoked. And finally, developer improvements are designed at making it easier to make App Intents, so they’re not as hard to implement now that developers will be building a lot more.
By default, opening Spotlight on your device already creates a rich experience showing content you might want to see, from suggested apps and actions to a daily summary or recent searches.
Spotlight also helps you search for specific content inside an app (including a new preview experience that I’ve yet to discover how to design on your own).
Last year, Apple improved this experience by allowing developers to create App Shortcuts specifically for the Spotlight experience (as covered in their “Explore enhancement to App Intents” video) and emphasize the most important actions (and entities) from their apps.
IndexedEntity protocol
In order to take this even further, Apple has introduced a new IndexedEntity protocol that lets you index the entities from an app, making it available to the new powerful semantic search capabilities of your device new in iOS 18.
With this protocol, developers can create an index of all the items (or entities) from their app, giving each item a set of attributes, (including keywords), and even assign them priority to match features like favorites lists.
Then, by handing it off to Spotlight when the app is launched or updated, all that data is indexed and searchable, plus more easily matched when queried using natural language.
In order to add an extra layer of meaning beyond the App Entity and attributes, Apple is allowing developers to declare how their entities can be converted into new formats, which formats their App Intents can accept, and also securely provide files themselves in lieu of direct access.
Transferable AppEntity
Another issue with expanding the AppEntity protocol and making all the items in your apps accessible via AppIntents is what ends up being a format issue – how does data from one app properly convert into the right data for another app? In their example, a trail entity from their app could become a PDF in another when passed via App Intents.
To help with this, Apple now allows developers to extend their entities with Transferable, an API introduced in 2022 designed to convert formats from one type to another.
With Transferable, developers can actually specific which types of data they want their entity to convert to, including fallback options sorted by priority.
For anyone with a long history of Shortcuts and its original independent version Workflow, this acts like a modern-day version of the Content Graph engine, which is what powered Workflows inputs/outputs to intelligently convert data types when needed. Now, it’s built into App Intents, powered by a Swift API, and developers have control over which data types it gets converted into and when.
Improvements to IntentFile
On the flip side, when an App Intent is designed to receive an entity, developers can specify which of these content types it can support, what’s available from the other app, and which one to pick.
Plus, when that content type isn’t supported, it can give the app the original URL of the content and pass it to Transferable for conversion.
FileEntity
Finally, Apple has also addressed limitations for document-based apps where the file itself is the entity, and not a representation of an object from your database – in these cases, the FileEntity API is needed to operate on the actual file itself.
In these cases, FileEntity allows Siri and Shortcuts to securely access the files, perform the operation, and pass it along to the next step using an ID instead of the file itself.
With this method, apps can provide information about their files and other apps can operate on those files, but handled properly through App Intents instead of direct access.
Beyond making it easier to meaningfully search for content within your app, Apple is also improving deep linking to those specific entities using Universal Links.
While the slide above is in full developer-speak, what Apple has introduced this year is the ability to generate and open links to any item, page, or action within your app. In essence, every part of every app is now represented by a URL – which makes sense, since it is a universal resource locator.
Now, App Intents allows URL to redirect to everything section, every thing you see, and every action you can take in your app.
In practice, this will mostly be used by developers as the universal method of accessing said item from another action step in Shortcuts, another app when it is requesting Transferable operate on an entity, or specifying to open content after creating it anew.
However, I’m fascinated by the larger implications here – everything in every app is linkable now… I’ll have to do more research to really flesh out what this means for apps that are also web services.
Now that developers can use App Intents to index all of their entities, make them meaningful to Spotlight and Siri, and interlink between any entity, action, or section, there’s a lot of App Intents work to be done by developers.
Thankfully, Apple already designed App Intents from the ground up to make the entire framework functional in code only (compared to the Xcode UI for custom intents), extendable by only requiring you to add onto existing App Intents implementations, and, in most cases, already in-use for features like widgets.
This year, they’re building off the improvements of the last few years in two specific ways – a new UnionValue macro that makes multiple parameters or properties representable under one type, and the ability for Xcode 16.0 to generate title strings automatically.
UnionValue
For developers, UnionValue means they can let users choose between more complex data types in a union under a new, single value – Apple describes it as an “or” parameter.
Generated titles
And for developers creating lots of App Intents can avoid duplicating unnecessary work in designing titles for their intents that are already implied in the struct’s property – instead of adding the title “Location” to a location, Xcode can simply figure it out. And when developers still want that control to specify a unique title, they can add it back in.
Framework improvements
Finally, in order to make App Intents work better with the new changes to App Entities, Apple has removed limitations on the interaction between the two and lets you define app entities in a framework and reference them from your app and extension targets.
However, it should be noted that Apple hasn’t expanded this to libraries outside of a framework – for now, libraries are not supported.
Apple also explicitly mentioned that not all the changes to App Intents are covered in this video, as some changes are directly relevant to other sessions on Apple Intelligence and Controls, and those changes are only covered in those sessions.
Here’s the full list from the graphic above for any developers searching through the App Intents documentation for everything new:
This year, Apple has expanded the App Intents framework to act as an all-encompassing tool from defining intents and building App Shortcuts on top of them to fully indexing all the entities from your apps, making them meaningful, linkable, and transferable, and in general making it easier to develop, integrate, and maintain a balanced App Intents integration with less effort or roadblocks.
Developers For developers, this means making your app, its objects, capabilities, and interface accessible to the rest of the ecosystem in a thoughtful and secure way.
Users For users, this means all your apps have added a layer that Apple Intelligence can understand, you can control from within the Shortcuts app, and will continue to be developer against for years to come.
Apple For Apple, this means that Siri and your devices can finally understand what your apps can do, what you’ve created with them, and the connections between it all – and in a private way that doesn’t allow apps, users, or even themselves to abuse that access.
In many ways, App Intents is a new operating system for apps themselves, letting them talk to the system, tell it what’s possible, and be ready for anything when the time comes.
Apple is also pushing App Intents in a huge way – I’ll cover it in the next session, but they’re declaring “Everything in your app should be an App Intent.” That means this is the API for how your apps work now, and will be going forward.
For most Apple users, they’ll simply experience App Intents by way of better Spotlight, the enhanced Siri integrations, and via features like widgets or the Action button, never having heard of this technology powering it all.
But behind the scenes, App Intents will be working hard to make sure everything functions properly – Siri will have gotten better “overnight,” while Apple has been building up App Intents for years to get us to here.
Developers, are you looking for help with your App Intents implementation?
Today, Apple released Final Cut Pro for iPad 2, transforming iPad into an even more powerful production studio, and Final Cut Pro for Mac 10.8 with important artificial intelligence-driven organizational updates that make workflows more efficient.
On the Live Multicam feature and Final Cut Camera app:
With the all-new Live Multicam feature, users can wirelessly connect and preview up to four cameras at once, all in one place. Using a combination of iPhone and iPad devices, users will have a director’s view of each camera and manual control of their preferences using the all-new pro app Final Cut Camera. Final Cut Camera powers Live Multicam and also works as a standalone recording app on iPhone and iPad, with the ability to adjust settings like manual focus, shutter speed, ISO, and more.
On Final Cut Pro for iPad 2:
For more storage flexibility while working with large files, Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 now supports external projects, a top-requested feature.2 Users can create new projects or open an existing project without taking up internal storage space.
On Final Cut Pro for Mac 10.8:
Enhance Light and Color automatically adjusts video for color correction, while Smooth Slo-Mo intelligently blends video frames for the highest-quality movement. Also, new organizational tools improve efficiencies in post-production workflows, including custom names for color corrections and video effects in the inspector; the ability to search for and navigate to clips with missing media or effects in the timeline index; and text-based timeline search with information like reel, scene, camera angle, and more
From Julia Roggatz at The Browser Company (and formerly of Muse) in a thread on Twitter:
Arc on iPad is here! 🚀
(Well, sort of…)
We heard you loud and clear, and today’s update of Arc Search will finally be usable on your iPad.
Arc Search was designed for your phone, and we’ll continue to make it our core mission to bring you the best browsing experience on the go.
But so many of you have asked for a better experience on the iPad as well, and we don’t want to keep you waiting.
Arc Search now comes with an iPad version that has all your favorite features and a browsing experience that’s streamlined for a larger screen.
[…]
While we hope to eventually explore a version of “Arc on iPad” that’s reimagined for the tablet form factor from the ground up, we wanted to give you something that we can build fast, and that you can use today.
I honestly love this approach and wish more apps would do this. iPad users are willing to wait for better versions, but leaving us without anything now means your app can’t be part of our workflow at all.
If you’re a developer looking to update your App Intents implementation for iOS 18, use this page as a resource for links to all the relevant videos, sessions, documentation, and forums you might need to access from Apple.
Apple has also put significant work into its developer forums in recent years and revamped the entire experience – here’s the tag for App Intents (among many others):
Hey members, here’s my mind map of notes that I took during the keynote for WWDC’24 while attending the WWDC.Community watch party.
Please note that this is not a complete breakdown of what was in the keynote – I wanted to share exactly what I captured, as an example of how I use mind-mapping software like MindNode to ingest and organize information in real-time.
Hey members, here’s my mind map of notes that I took during the keynote for WWDC’24 while attending the WWDC.Community Watch Party.
Please note that this is not a complete breakdown of what was in the keynote – I wanted to share exactly what I captured, as an example of how I use mind-mapping software like MindNode to ingest and organize information in real-time.
Often times I’ll start with these main bullets, bring them into my notes, and eventually write individual stories or build shortcuts for each feature.
John Gruber is joined by special guests John Giannandrea, Craig Federighi, and Greg Joswiak to discuss Apple’s announcements at WWDC 2024. Recorded in front of a live (and lively) audience at The California Theatre in San Jose, Tuesday 11 June 2024.
Time Stamps:
00:00:00 – Welcome
00:01:34 – iMazing
00:03:41 – Flexibits
00:06:53 – Flighty
00:09:25 – Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak: Platforms
My second-ever Shortcuts meetup was a great success1, with an excellent group of folks chatting at SoFA Market for a few hours on Tuesday afternoon at WWDC.
We talked about Apple Intelligence, the prominence of App Intents and my new consulting gig to help developers implement everything, and, thanks to some special guests, had excellent discussions about the Shortcuts app.
Plus, for fun, I was able to give away 10 Stream Deck Neos and two Prompters, courtesy of Elgato – below are some great photos from (most of) the winners. Unfortunately, I only thought to take a group photo right at the very end when some folks had already left – however, I’ll remember each and every one of you in my heart.
In order to pick winners, I had to do something on-brand – so I ran this shortcut every 10 minutes while we were at the event, letting Siri pick from the list of attendees from the event page to choose a winner.
Thanks again to everyone who was able to make it on such short notice – I’m already working on plans for next year, so be on the lookout a few months before WWDC’25.
P.S. Special thanks to Ben McCarthy and Adam Tow for the help managing the Elgato gear and with nametags.
P.P.S. While not technically representative of the entire group, I am fully aware that the main photo is 100% men, and it is my failing that there was not a wider diversity – I am already making plans to affect this for next year.
We had at least 5x the turnout the original 4-person meetup back in 2019. ↩
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is underway for 2024 and one of the big announcements out of their keynote is Apple Intelligence, their big artificial intelligence play.
Check out the recap of the announcement and all the capabilities coming – and stay tuned for follow-up videos where I cover each feature in-depth.
Hello developers, creators, and Apple enthusiasts in the Bay Area – let’s gather together for an informal Shortcuts User Group meetup to talk post-WWDC in downtown San Jose on Tuesday, June 11 from 3-5 pm.
Let’s talk Shortcuts, WWDC, and all things Apple – plus, I’ll have gear from my Elgato partnership to give away to attendees – including the Prompter and Stream Deck Neo.
Gear is here, and I’m getting packed – this is going to be fun!
Tickets for the back patio are almost gone – get yours today!
The 3-in-1 Multifunction Pen from Craft Design Technology is like the grown up version of those plastic multicolor pens we all had as kids. Simply twist the barrel to change from black ink to red ink to a mechanical pencil. It uses a unique oil and water-based ink formula that’s long lasting and creates a super smooth writing experience. The metal body is decorated with the brand’s signature graphic pattern which provides a nice, comfortable grip.
This new 3-in-1 pen/pencil from Ugmonk looks fantastic.
You don’t have to wait to start using ChatGPT with Siri on your iPhone.
If the rumors are true, Apple will be integrating Open AI’s ChatGPT into iOS 18 in one way or another. This and other AI announcements could be on tap at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which you can watch live next week on June 10. But even if the ChatGPT integration with Siri is announced, we most likely won’t see iOS 18 released broadly until later this year.
Still, if you have the ChatGPT app on your iPhone, you can integrate it with Siri right now. Here’s what you need and how to do it.
The USB-C to SD Card Reader transfers high-resolution photos and videos at UHS-II speeds to your USB-C enabled Mac, iPad, or iPhone. Designed so it won’t block your other ports, it works with UHS-II SD cards and is backward compatible with other SD cards and adapters.
For years, Apple didn’t make these anymore and relied on a third-party model from SanDisk (which I still use). However, since I always lose the dang thing right when I need it most, I figured I should get another ahead of WWDC.
Watch Developer sessions: When run from Mac, opens the Apple Developer app and presses Command + 2 to switch to your Bookmarks. When run from iPhone or iPad, opens the Developer app on the Apple TV.
Browse Apple Developer topics: Presents a list of categories from Apple’s developer pages, then reformats the option of your choosing into the URL for that category and opens it.
Prep for session screenshots: Resizes the Apple Developer window to the second screen at my preferred size for taking screenshots, then opens Craft and centers it on the main display.
Search Apple Developer sessions: Asks you to enter a search query, then URL encodes the result, and opens the results on the web.
Today, I’m happy to share version 2 of Watch History Journal, the shortcut I made for logging what you watch in your favorite journal app. This update includes two major additions:
the ability to use media-tracking app Sequel as your watch history source
advanced options to adjust the shortcut’s behavior to fit your needs
Devon’s shortcut (and site) is great – check it out.
