New episode of Supercomputer out:
This week, Matthew ponders why you can’t get real work done on iOS, and Alex works herself into a tizzy about Pokemon and old men.
After another round of iOS maligning over the weekend, I started to get a little riled up on this episode.
No, I didn’t write the show notes ?
Listen to the show:
New episode of Supercomputer out:
In a caffeine-fueled rage, Alex & Matthew pleasantly discuss the viability of iPad Pros as computers.
I got a little hyped up on espresso and started ranting this week.
But, it turns out, I had something important to say.
Listen to the show:
New episode of Supercomputer out:
Your hosts’ iPads have arrived! Matthew wants to change the way we think about the philosophy of Apple, and Alex is very concerned about folios big and small.
This week, Alex and I talked using tablets & their covers.
Plus, I tried to reflect on how the Apple community talks about the leaders of the company.
Listen to the show:
Episode 11 of Supercomputer is now out – listen in if you’re curious about the new iPad Pros.
Alex talks about her concerns over USB-C, I tried to talk her down from the ledge, and we both ended up convincing ourselves to be excited about the new iPads.
Plus, we talked about the changes to Shortcuts 2.1 that I covered in my video earlier this week.
With this episode, we’re also making the switch to releasing on Fridays – we’re trying to guarantee the show is as good as possible, plus give us flexibility on recording days to account for any events as well as our schedule. New episodes every Friday – Supercomputer for the weekends!
Start prepping your daily routine plans for an upcoming episode, because we’ll be walking through those shortly – in the meantime, drop us any shortcuts requests in our submission form, we’ll be answering a few soon!
Get the episode:
P.S. Would anyone listen in Spotify or on YouTube? Let me know!
Today I released my fifth YouTube video, focusing on building an agenda for the day and walking people through the process of building it.
This is a full-Siri shortcut, meaning it’ll work on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, and CarPlay, with Siri speaking out the results to you:
Stu Maschowitz of Prolost has put a fantastic piece out on the Shortcuts app:
“To me, whether Jobs intended it this way or not, the “bicycle for the mind” is the tool that empowers you to repurpose it for your specific needs, not just to consume things with it, or use it in the same way as everyone else.”
On Friday, I published a shorter video demonstrating how to build a custom shortcut in the Shortcuts app in just under 3 minutes:
For the topic, I picked “how to make a GIF” because it’s not that easy on iOS, and everyone has a library full of bursts and Live Photos that are stuck in the camera roll.
With just a few actions, you can put together an animated loop of your bursts, Live Photos, or sets of photos, and easily share it with people.
Get the shortcut here if you want to make your own.
I could have made some improvements to the shortcut. Since I filmed this without a script, I didn’t add in Save to Photo Album at the end so that every GIF you made would be saved automatically – this is important because most people run shortcuts from the main library view, but you can only see the GIF in my version if you open the shortcut editor.1
I’m working on some new shorter videos, along with a longer main video each week – working out the process now, but I should be able to ramp up to get more videos out for all of you.
In the meantime, let me know if there’s anything particular you’d like to see from my channel2.
And, as always, linking to the video or retweeting it goes a long way – thank you to everyone who’s been supporting me so far.
On Thursday, Alex and I released our 9th episode of Supercomputer into the world. Titled “The Allegory of Dark Mode”, this episode follows up from our show two weeks ago on task managers.
After a short one-week break, we broke back into how we use our devices to get things done, plus went off a bit on how I use Twitter.
Near the end things got weirdly philosophical, which I’m totally okay with.
We talked about and shared a good number of shortcuts we use in the show notes, so if you’re not already subscribe to the show and add them as you listen along.
I also started a submission form for Shortcuts questions, so feel free to submit any places you’re getting stuck or shortcuts problems in the Airtable form any time!
Next week we’ll be talking about the home – HomePod, Apple TV, HomeKit, and more – looking forward to episode 10!
Last week, I published my third YouTube video. This one covered 10 great shortcuts that I’ve built over the years, with quick descriptions and demonstrations for each:1
I am incredibly amazed right now, because I launched my YouTube channel on Monday and my first video has gotten 20,000 views along with 2,304 subscribers as of publishing – last week I had 2.
Thank you so, so much if you shared my video over the past few days. I asked and you delivered, which really was heartwarming to see and it made a huge difference. Special thanks to Myke Hurley and Jason Snell for mentioning it on Upgrade, as well as Lory Gil for inviting me to link at the bottom of my iMore articles (which we’ve been updating with new information) – both helped a ton.
I’m still trying to get it linked elsewhere because I really do want as many people to learn as possible and help them avoid confusion, so I’m excited to see how it keeps growing over time.1
Every year, it’s a staple in the Apple community to read Federico Viticci’s in-depth review of the latest version of iOS.
Federico has been running MacStories for years and always spends the summer drafting massive, book-length guides to the new changes that come to Apple’s iPhone and iPad software, quickly becoming the go-to place to pay attention when the new release drops.
This time, it’s very much the same, with Viticci publishing his entire review with 16 individual sections as pages (and 1 page for credits). Here’s the subhead introduction:
After years of unabated visual and functional changes, iOS 12 is Apple’s opportunity to regroup and reassess the foundation before the next big step – with one notable exception.
I had the honor of being on Relay FM‘s great new show Automators this week. Hosted by David Sparks and Rosemary Orchard, the show dives deep into automation with Apple products and covers a whole range of apps and devices.
With iOS 12 launching on Monday, David and Rosemary had me on their show to talk all about Shortcuts and walk people through two of my custom shortcuts – Open Twitter Lists and Golden Hour.
With the imminent release of the Shortcuts app for iOS, I’ve been hard at work creating new ways to share with everyone.
After Workflow was acquired by Apple, I took a contract position covering support while the process transitioned to Apple Support. I didn’t want to leave the Workflow community hanging without someone to help with problems, and in my time there helped thousands of people with their workflows – and read every tweet about us.
I had joined the small team to help people learn how to use this thing, and once I saw them continue to update it I took a leap of faith and left early before I learned too much about the plans.
Seeing Shortcuts at WWDC was awesome and a wonderful confirmation that this app is the future of automation on iOS.
Plus, while I was there, I met Alex Cox and she kept telling me to make a podcast about it all. When she said she’d host it with me, I immediately said yes, and Supercomputer was born.
Last week over on The Sweet Setup, I posted one of my personal favorite shortcuts that I built back when I worked at Workflow.
It interacts with all the Apple Music Mixes curated for me, letting me select which one to use, then lets me choose from five options:
I run this shortcut almost every day, either updating a playlist to the Master versions I’ve created, jumping in to pick something, and shuffling all the tracks when I don’t want to choose.
When you’re trying to buy any of the latest 4K Disney films like Star Wars and the Marvel movies, you’ll quickly find they’re not available in iTunes. For some reason the partnership hasn’t shaken out properly, which I’m hoping changes soon, but for now if you buy one in iTunes Movies it will only be 1080p for $19.99.
You might think that Movies Anywhere would handle this, because it makes movies you’ve bought on iTunes, Prime Video, VUDU, Google Play, or Fandango Now available to watch on each of the other services. But, it’s not that easy.
All of these Disney movies are available in 1080p on iTunes for $19.99 and on VUDU the 4K version (called UHD on their site) costs $24.99. However, even if you’ve unlocked the HD version by buying it in iTunes, you can’t just split the difference and pay $5 to upgrade to 4K within VUDU.
Instead, you’re stuck buying a second version of the same movie for full price, like I had to do for The Last Jedi.
But, if you buy through VUDU first in 4K, you can watch it in full resolution using their own Apple TV app1 instead of iTunes.
Note: When you’re trying to Own the movie instead of Rent, make sure to hit the dropdown and select UHD for 4K instead of HDX for 1080p quality.
And if you want watch it on a smaller screen in HD or add it offline on one of your devices, the movie purchase will still automatically sync to your iTunes account via Movies Anywhere in the background.
I just bought Avengers: Infinity War on VUDU’s website, and when I opened it in the TV app moments later I could already hit Play and start watching.
For me, this is a pretty solid solution, because now I can watch the same thing on my TV or iPhone or iPad—in the best quality available for the device—without paying for it twice.
You might’ve seen a few weekly recaps that I started up on this blog – in order to avoid as much weekend work as well as the monotony of similar posts, I’m combining those into this new monthly recap.
At the end of each month, I’ll be sharing things that I’ve published across the web, whether it be a post here, an article on The Sweet Setup or iMore, an appearance on a podcast, or anything else I might be up to.
I’m also sharing great work I find elsewhere (plus a few things of my own) in my new newsletter. I’ll be sharing it twice a month, but I’m not setting specific dates – once near the beginning and another near the end — so look for the first near the end of August!
Inside, I’ll be curating articles, tweets, videos, podcasts, and music, plus new shortcuts that I’m building. These shortcuts will be exclusive in the newsletter for 10 days, then I’ll be sharing them elsewhere online so everyone can get them even if they don’t want to sign up.
The main theme will be technology, but it won’t just be about Apple stuff – subjects will change over time but I’m also into topics like philosophy, data visualization, marketing, video games, and more, plus I want to expand as time goes on.
I also want to hear from you if you’re on the mailing list. Please reply if you have anything to say and I’ll read your emails (I may even feature some with responses in the future, if you’re open it).
Anyway, here’s what I wrote in July (and here’s the workflow/shortcut I used to generate this list):
I slowed down slightly at the end on my own site, and I may dabble with tweaking my style & some shorter posts to mix up my flow. There’s much to say but making sure it’s just right has held me back.
I am insanely excited about August (particularly next Wednesday), and September will probably be even better when I assume Shortcuts will drop with iOS 12.
Going to be a great next two months.
The coffee shop below where I used to work, and where I first met the RelayFM team during RelayCon just weeks before I started at Workflow. (Source)
During week 29 of the year, I wrote one piece here and one for The Sweet Setup.
On Monday, I saw YouTuber Peter McKinnon1 tweeting about accidental screenshots and remembered my old workflow for cleaning them out of Photos, so I updated it for Shortcuts and shared it as the post “How to delete unplanned screenshots with Shortcuts”. I really enjoy the handiness of shortcuts like this that solve a small problem well, even though that’s only one of the many ways I use the app.
On Thursday, the first out of a batch of posts I wrote for The Sweet Setup was published – How to group smart accessories in the Home app – and the rest will be coming out across the next few Thursdays. I know a ton of quick tips around Apple devices beyond shortcuts too, so I’m sharing them there regularly as well here on my site (alongside tons more Shortcuts coverage too, that is).
As for the photo at the top of this post, I’m shooting an original photo each week to use as the header for these recaps. It’ll be an exercise in using my camera more and capturing random moments as stock-like photography, plus I want to push the overall visual quality of my blog.
Trying something new this week – curating different tweets I’ve come across about Shortcuts, since seeing how other people use it will be most of the fun for me:
I can’t wait to get Siri Shortcuts so I can say “Hey Siri, this is a jam!” and have it added to my Running and Dance playlists at the same time, while putting it on repeat for the next 30 minutes.
— Marls Barkley (@m_rlons) July 16, 2018
Good good shortcuts. pic.twitter.com/1NwapT6qR6
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) July 15, 2018
iOS12 suggestions are pretty good so far. pic.twitter.com/weABOnNqgT
— Robb Lewis (@rmlewisuk) July 22, 2018
Updated this week’s “Chart Party” post to reveal the iOS solution to the same problem, with help from @mattcassinelli and @viticci!https://t.co/dGOEZNIRij
— Six Colors (@bleedsixcolors) July 20, 2018
Not that exciting, but the first background-enabled custom intent Shortcut is running in a Drafts beta. pic.twitter.com/DCsZcntTiE
— Greg Pierce (@agiletortoise) July 16, 2018
Here’s a selection of good links I came across this week – I’m a bit behind on my normal reading so there’s a few tweets in here that got me thinking as well:
Command + Control + 2 a lot in Safari from now on:Pretty sure this is new (and not documented yet), but in iOS 12 Safari you can use ⌘1…9 to navigate to tabs with an external iPad keyboard. You can also do ⌘⌃1/2 to open Bookmarks and Reading List, respectively ?
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) July 15, 2018
Finally, quick shout-out to the other amazing folks I’ve worked with at iMore over the years: @russellholly @journeydan @Asacco @rstevens @jessiechar @jmetzendorf @jsnell @mattcassinelli + way too much other talent to fit.
And the @_RelayFM crew. You know what you did. ?
— Serenity Caldwell (@settern) July 19, 2018
you can type -pinterest.com in the search and it will remove pinterest results, makes google images usable again
— taruan (@taruan_) July 20, 2018
Maybe I’ll just start marking up screenshots with the Apple Pencil? pic.twitter.com/WGYz4PBCbI
— Drew Coffman (@DrewCoffman) July 22, 2018
Also, in case you’re curious, here are the links to all the articles I’ve written on other sites:
Last item of the week: there was a lot of embedded tweets in this post – what do you think of that? Does it work alright if you’re subscribed to the RSS feed? Thanks for letting me know!
If you’re an iPhone X or Apple Watch user, you may have a bunch of screenshots you’ve unintentionally taken recently filling up your camera roll…
Maybe you’re accidentally gripping the volume up button as you also press power to turn off your iPhone, or you’re pressing the Digital Crown and side button at the same time to pause an Apple Watch workout1 – either way, you probably don’t want most of the screenshots that are filling up your library.
With the Shortcuts app if you’re not on the beta), you can set up a three-action script to get your latest screenshots, pick which ones to delete, and delete them all in one go.
This week I only had time to publish one post – here on my website.
On Monday, I shared about creating all-in-one screenshots using StitchPics to combine multiple together. I’ll probably be using this app a ton, because it’s perfect for sharing Shortcuts in a highly visual way.
I hope Apple restores the ability to share by link as was possible in Workflow, but for now the limitation is actually helping me clean my library up and save anything I don’t need as .shortcuts files.
I also enjoyed some of the follow-up to my TechCrunch piece – because it happened on Sunday, many people saw it on Monday morning.
I was super pumped when I went to go copy the link and found my piece right at the top of their site – later I found out it was in the Stocks app too![1]
@mattcassinelli This is from the Stocks app! You are hitting it out of the park on your Shortcuts features! pic.twitter.com/2KXuaisFV5
— gwhizkids (@gwhizkids) July 9, 2018
This week was the 10-year anniversary of the App Store, and so there was some good sharing around how the changes have impacted us since then.
Apple wrote a long piece, MacStories covered a huge swath of stories, interviews, and reflections, and people took to Twitter to share their first apps downloaded from the App Store.
I stayed on brand and tweeted my first apps alongside my first few shortcuts in the app.
This was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tweet, but I am fascinated to think another 10 years from now what it’ll be like to interact with Apple’s platform as something like Shortcuts becomes prevalent exactly 10 years in.
Otherwise I’ve been staying busy with consulting (only so much time before Shortcuts launches!), writing ahead for future posts, and continuing forward on my secret project.
I didn’t get a chance to share much about Shortcuts (though following my Twitter feed may not seem like it) so there’s more coming soon.
I’m also planning on sharing my Launch Center Pro setup soon since I’ve been recommending it to people as a trigger mechanism for shortcuts – just need to update it a bit first.
If you’re an app developer and you’re integrating Shortcuts into your app, please send me a TestFlight invite at matthew.cassinelli@gmail.com and message me if you want specific feedback.
For larger integrations or consulting for your brand, I have some limited time available if you want to work together before the release of iOS 12.
Read the last recap from Week 27.
With the sharing feature that was in Workflow not being available in Shortcuts1, many people are resorting to sharing screenshots to show people how their shortcuts work.
Oddly, this has had a great benefit for the fledgling community – shortcuts are very visual, and a bunch of hyperlinks links on Twitter might not have had the same effect as a good photoset2:
BRB, making Harry Potter spells into Siri Shortcuts. pic.twitter.com/ceK3bBuyEh
— Ben Markowitz (@bpmarkowitz) July 6, 2018
But longer shortcuts with more than a handful of actions can’t fit onto one screen, so users have to resort to more creative options.
My recommendation is StitchPics, a simple but very functional app to combine photos that’s free with a $1.99 in-app purchase to add more than 8 images3.
Made by a Chinese developer, the app isn’t fully translated, the logo is somewhat inexplicably an L, and on iPad it only works in portrait orientation.
That being said, I’m definitely glad I bought it. That’s because, beyond basic auto-stitching, StitchPics has a fantastic pinch-based method of combing images that’s super reliable for getting things exactly right.
Here’s a quick example:
[videopress 6TEyzPrb]
Once it takes a guess at how to put your images together, you can slide either image up or down behind the crossover point and collapse parts you want to be hidden.
Especially with longer shortcuts where you may need to take many screenshots, it makes aligning the different actions much easier.
StitchPics is also great for getting images of complete webpages on mobile – just take screenshots as you scroll and stitch them together in the app.
A popular alternative is Tailor, but historically I’ve found it is unreliable at parsing multiple screenshots from Workflow (and the same is true for Shortcuts). The actions just look too similar across many images and it doesn’t know how to handle it.
Tailor is also free (but with a watermark removable by in-app purchase) and should work fine for simpler shortcuts. However, it is only available for iPhone.
That’s why I’ve been using StitchPics – it ain’t pretty, but it gets the job done, and a bit better, on both my devices.
Get StitchPics on the App Store.
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