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.
Ahead of WWDC kicking off on Monday, the Apple Developer app on Vision Pro has been updated with a new Environment. This marks the first Environment available in the Apple Developer app, and it plays on Apple’s artwork for WWDC 2024:
This week will be my third time landing at the San Francisco International Airport to be around San Jose and meet developers from around the world.
I went to WWDC back in 2019 as a scholar and attended community events last year because I did not get the golden ticket.
However, this time, I got one to attend WWDC 2024!
I love impromptu planning, but, I still want to have an idea of how to make the best out of this US trip. After a lot of thinking, it turns out this is what makes me happy:
Hang out with old friends I made last year!
Enjoy with friends from X (formerly Twitter) whom I am excited to meet this year IRL, and
Meet new people!
Great post – this is definitely why I go to WWDC every year.
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.
I’ve been looking at SoFA Market in downtown San Jose as the best location – they have a sizable back patio, plenty of seating in the marketplace, and multiple restaurants to choose from. There’s also a huge parking lot located directly across the street at 300 S First St, San Jose, CA 95113 as well, so parking and food are easy.
Plus, it’s located directly next door to The California Theater, where John Gruber is hosting The Talk Show live starting at 6pm and will (likely/hopefully) be interviewing Apple executives.
I’ll be giving away the Stream Deck Neos and Prompters in-person at the event, plus can answer any questions about their other gear (as I have almost all of it for testing purposes now). I’m thankful to Elgato for being open to supporting this event and the greater Apple community – it’ll be tons of fun to give these all away.
So, if you can attend, join us to talk about Shortcuts and anything WWDC, win some Elgato gear, and get snacks or an early dinner before going to your next event. 🤓
P.S. If you’re not able to come you in-person, you can register interest for future events, regardless of location (anywhere in the world) – I am looking into international speaking events around App Intents for the future.
P.P.S. I’ve reached out to SoFA Market to rent their back patio officially, but unfortunately haven’t heard back yet to confirm. If I’m unable to rent it out, we can essentially go anyway without the guarantee of a private space. Otherwise, I have included Academic Coffee’s location on the venue page as an alternate backup spot – they’re only open until 4pm, however, and I’d push the time earlier an hour and show up at 2pm.
The Suti Magnetic PhoneBack is the perfect solution for the minimalist crowd out there. Bringing you a range of color options with one surprising action!
🛒 PURCHASE LINK: https://geni.us/oJHu
Cool product I hadn’t heard of yet – good summary from TechnicallyTee.
Apple Inc. is planning to overhaul its Siri virtual assistant with more advanced artificial intelligence, a move that will let users control individual app functions with their voice, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The new system will allow Siri to take command of all the features within apps for the first time, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the initiative isn’t public. That change required a revamp of Siri’s underlying software using large language models — a core technology behind generative AI — and will be one of the highlights of Apple’s renewed push into AI, they said.
An aspect of Mark’s report that stood out to me: iOS 18’s smarter Siri features seemingly aren’t launching until an iOS 18.x update in 2025. I’m sure Apple will preview this at WWDC, and then the features will probably have a “coming in early 2025” label on Apple’s website.
The new Keychron Ultra-Slim keyboards come in ivory white or space gray with a 100% layout with numpad or a 75% compact model without numpad.
One thing you lose compared to Apple’s Magic Keyboard is the option for Touch ID, but you get a number of benefits Apple doesn’t offer like 2.4GHz connectivity, much longer battery life, and USB-C at less than 50% of the cost.
I’ve long had a Keychron mechanical keyboard – might need to try one of these compact models as for a portable setup…
Made from a space gray aluminum that is meant to match Apple devices, the hub supports up to four extended monitors at 4K/60Hz resolution, or one display at 8K/60Hz. With four displays, two can be connected through Thunderbolt 4 and two through HDMI. Satechi says that this feature is designed to address the single display limit of M1, M2, and M3 chips. M1, M2, and M3 MacBook Pro models support up to three displays with Satechi’s dock, while the M3 MacBook Air supports four when in clamshell mode. Machines with Pro and Max chips support up to four displays through the hub.
Yes, it’s $300. But if you read about all the features, this thing looks like it packs a punch.
Today, Apple unveiled the lineup for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, including Keynote and Platforms State of the Union, and shared more information about what developers will learn and experience all week. The free online conference brings the global Apple developer community together to provide them with insights into the latest technologies, tools, and frameworks coming to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, and watchOS. Throughout the week, developers will be able to hear from Apple engineers, designers, and other experts through more than 100 technical sessions, in-depth consultations, and live forums for guidance on building even more innovative and platform-differentiating apps and games across all Apple products.
I have posted before about controlling the Prompter from the Stream Deck +, but now that I’ve had actually had both for a while it’s been excellent to actually use it in practice – the Stream Deck + is basically a must-have for the Prompter because it makes working with scripts so much better.
WWDC is just two weeks away and iOS 17.5 has been out along with new iPad Pros for a bit now, bringing new Shortcuts actions for Puzzles in Apple News, a Squeeze gesture for Apple Pencil Pro that can run a shortcut, and Vocal Shortcuts coming as an accessibility feature next year.
On my front, I’ve been guesting on MacRumors and Automators to wrap up the end of the year, gave a big presentation to the iOS Developer Happy Hour group about App Shortcuts for developers, and set up a variety of folders in the Shortcuts Catalog.
I also don’t normally like to tease stuff, but I’ve been reaching Peak Home Screen and Peak Stream Deck, with lots more in store for the summer – I have Elgato gear to give away at WWDC too 😈.
Activate Voice Search: Opens Arc Search and activates the voice search mode (available by long-pressing on the + button in the app).
Search the web with Arc: Asks you to enter a query, then passes it to Arc Search and opens the results.
Browse for me: Asks you to enter a query, then passes it to Arc Search with “Browse for me” enabled to collect links and summarize results automatically.
Dictate to Arc: Starts dictation, then stops after you pause and passes your dictation to Arc Search as a query.
Call Arc: Opens Arc Search and activates the “Call” feature that lets you talk to Arc like it’s a virtual directory assistance helper.
Today, the Browser Company launched an update to their Arc browser for iOS that adds a new “Call” feature, as well as Apple Shortcuts support in the form of three App Shortcuts designed for the iPhone action button.
Introducing ☎️ CALL ARC, a brand new way to get an answer on the go.
Say you’re walking to the train and you’ve got a quick question.
Arc’s new “Call” feature is a clever mobile interaction for the act of look something up online using AI, but framed as calling Arc, asking your question, getting waiting music while it finds the answer, and getting a response back – it’s like dialing a phone directory, but for the entire internet.
Plus, you can just raise the device to your ear to activate the voice mode – such a good idea.
Post by @chris
View on Threads
For its Shortcuts support, Arc has added three App Shortcuts for Call, Search, and Voice Search that let users ask Siri, search in Spotlight, assign as their action button, or run via Shortcuts in the multitude of ways available – a great way to build new browsing habits with Arc.
I’ve had a somewhat lukewarm reaction to the Browser Company so far – we seem to agree that computing is fundamentally changing, but I’m not fully sold that one better browser fixes all the things. But I can’t lie, adding Shortcuts support is a good way to get me to actually try it out, and this new Call feature is also drawing me in – I am very glad people are thinking uniquely in this space, especially with the Action button as a new interface for any app, and raise-to-speak as a UI paradigm.
Matthew Cassinelli is an expert on Shortcuts that has been writing articles and making YouTube videos about the subject for years. He was nice enough to give a presentation on App Intents and Shortcuts for developers at our May event.
iOSDevHappyHour🍻 is a place where current and aspiring iOS devs can come together and enjoy a good time once a month.
I’ve just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of ChatGPT shortcuts that take advantage of ChatGPT’s native actions for Shortcuts.
You can use these to start voice conversations, have back-and-forth chats with any model, create custom GPTs, or save your prompts and responses elsewhere:
Start voice chat: Opens ChatGPT and activates the voice conversation feature, letting you talk hands-free with ChatGPT and have it respond with voice.
Start conversation with ChatGPT-4o: Starts a new continuous chat with ChatGPT-4o, where it will prompt you to start a conversation and replies until you stop responding.
Ask ChatGPT-4: Prompts you to enter a query, then asks ChatGPT your given message using GPT-4, the shows you the response after copying it to your clipboard for pasting elsewhere.
Chat with GPT-4: Starts a new continuous conversation with ChatGPT-4, starting with a prompt of your own.
Spell check with ChatGPT: Accepts text from the shortcut input and asks the default ChatGPT-3.5 model to spell check the text, returning only the corrected text.
Summarize with ChatGPT: Accepts text from the shortcut input and asks the more-advanced ChatGPT-4 model to summarize the text, returning only the summary.
Rewrite with ChatGPT: Accepts text from the shortcut input, asks you to type out your preferred style, then asks ChatGPT-4 to update your text, returning only the summary.
Capture ChatGPT response: Asks you to enter a prompt for ChatGPT-4, then saves the prompt, response, and date into a new note in Bear.
Start new convo with ChatGPT: Starts a new continuous conversation with ChatGPT, asking you to pick which model before starting the chat.
Use these to control the main window size and position, open or collapse the sidebar, and open new chats as needed.
Set up ChatGPT: Opens the ChatGPT app for Mac, resizes it to a default 980×658 dimensions, then moves it to the middle left (with 18px of padding against the edge of the screen).
Activate ChatGPT launcher: Runs AppleScript to press the key code for Option + Space, the keyboard shortcut for ChatGPT’s launcher.
Open new chat: Runs AppleScript to activate the keyboard shortcut Command + N to create a new chat in the ChatGPT app for Mac.
Open new temporary chat: Runs AppleScript to activate the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + N to create a new temporary chat in ChatGPT that doesn’t get saved.
Toggle ChatGPT sidebar: Runs AppleScript to open ChatGPT for Mac, then activates the keyboard shortcut for Command + S to toggle the Sidebar for the app.
Open ChatGPT in single-thread mode: Opens ChatGPT, toggles the Sidebar, waits for it to resize, then shrinks the window to the smallest possible 400px wide and 658px tall on the left side – for a better single-chat experience
Make ChatGPT full-screen: Opens the ChatGPT app for Mac and uses AppleScript to press Command + Option + Control + F to Enter Full Screen.
Open ChatGPT settings: Runs AppleScript that opens the ChatGPT app and activates the keyboard shortcut for Command + , (which opens the Settings page for the app
Which webcam should you get, Facecam MK.2 or Facecam Pro?
Here’s what you need to know:
I recently got the Facecam Mk. 2 and it’s actually quite good – a big step up from the Mk. 1 which I had trouble getting to a place I liked.
Since I really only need 4K on the main webcam, I’m still using my old webcam there for now and the Mk. 2 for my picture-in-picture stream camera off to the side.
