Indie App Sales is back again for Spring 2024, offering discounts on a wide range of apps from independent developers for Tuesday—Wednesday of this week (March 12 & 13).
This period, there are over 250 apps participating, each offering their own discounts and sales as part of the program on up-front prices and in-app purchases.
Each entry comes with the app name, icon, developer, description, category, and relevant links to the App Store, website, or social media.
The site shows all the apps in a large table, and you can use the custom filters on the database to find the apps relevant to you – or use Command + F to search by keyword.
Check out IndieAppSales.com, and use #IndieAppSales if you’re sharing about a great app you found – and don’t forget to rate your new apps on the App Store!
We’re upgrading iA Writer’s integration with Apple Shortcuts today. With 18 built-in actions and 22 ready-made shortcuts, iA Writer 7.1 makes it easy to automate common tasks.
Open Star Wars on Disney Plus: Shows the Star Wars category of content in Disney+ like the three trilogies, TV shows, or animated series.
Open Pixar on Disney Plus: Opens the Pixar brand category in the Disney+ app to show content like Toy Story and Monster’s Inc.
Open Disney on Disney Plus: Opens the special Disney category in Disney+ to show their own-branded material like movies from Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Open Nat Geo on Disney Plus: Opens the National Geographic category in Disney+ to show content on topics like animals, space, and world history.
Edit Disney Plus profiles: Opens the “Edit Profiles” page which lets you select between your profiles and change the details.
Apple TV+ has launched a limited time collection of movies to stream for free as part of your Apple TV+ subscription. The company has done this occasionally in the past to coincide with the themed release of new originals, but this is by far the biggest drop.
and:
The move is perhaps a sign that Apple continues to experiment and ponder whether it should expand beyond its ‘all originals’ strategy for its streaming service.
Here’s the full list in the new “Great Movies on Apple TV+” collection:
I’d love to this into a shortcut for my TV app folder, but the URL currently doesn’t redirect on iOS or iPadOS – I’ve filed it as Feedback to Apple as FB13668679.
In celebration of going to the movies and seeing films like Dune 2 in theaters, I’ve made a set of shortcuts for the Fandango service.
This set of 8 shortcuts can be added to Siri or in a Home Screen widget to help you quickly find movies or theaters nearby, get to the theater on time and show them your ticket, and quickly access the rest of Fandango when needed – here’s how they work:
Getting A Ticket
When you’re in the movie-going spirit, the first thing to do is check what’s available in theaters now – you’ll find films you may know about already, plus some that snuck under-the-radar or came out in re-release.
When using Fandango, you’ll find this under the “Movies” banner at the URL https://www.fandango.com/movies-in-theaters. When run with the Open URL action in Shortcuts, this URL redirects into the app to the Movies tab – get my shortcut “Show movies in theaters” to do just that at any moment.
Similarly, the Theaters banner and tab of Fandango can be opened using the URL pattern https://www.fandango.com/[ZIP code]_movietimes, where the [ZIP code] portion automatically gets replaced by your local ZIP code once Fandango detects from the web browser or asks permission for your location.
Using Shortcuts, we can automatically detect your ZIP code and replace it in the URL using two methods – using the Get Current Location action, and a faster trick using Get Current Weather that provides an approximate location slightly quicker than making a full GPS call.
My shortcut “Show theaters nearby” uses the Weather technique, grabs the ZIP code using Get Details of Location, and then places it into the Fandango link – this works great on both Mac and mobile devices.
Getting Into The Theater
Once you’ve decide on a movie and location, you’ll want to purchase your ticket directly through Fandango – they should then email you a confirmation, which, if you use Apple Mail, is then detected by Siri automatically and added to your calendar (hence why I didn’t build a shortcut for this step).
Once you have the automatic calendar event set up, I have another shortcut for estimating the time it takes to get to theater and getting directions there – my “Leave for theater” shortcut.
This shortcut asks you to pick the upcoming calendar event (I decided to confirm which one rather than simply picking the next event, in case you check earlier in the day), then that chosen event’s location is used in the next few steps. From there, the event name and driving time to that location are extracted, to be used in the next prompt.
In the final prompt, “Leave for theater” delivers a message full of information about the trip, showing total travel time, the quickest route, and the arrival time – that way you know for sure when to get there to park, get food and drinks, and get seated before the show starts.
Once you’re at the theater, Fandango actually provides a native shortcut for “Find my ticket,” which opens the Fandango app and displays the upcoming ticket, so the ticket-taker can scan you in.
You can also see details about the which theater your movie in being shown in at this location, which I find helpful – knowing where to go once you’re inside can save time if you’re running late.
Admittedly, your ticket might already show on your device if you’ve added it as a pass in Apple Wallet, but I wanted to include Fandango’s only native Shortcuts action – perhaps they’ll take these URL-based shortcuts and turn them into native actions in the future?
Quick access to Fandango
While the previous four shortcuts are my favorite of the group, and the main ones I use on iPhone to manage my ticket-buying experience, the following I designed to round out the experience and are still helpful occasionally in my iPad widgets and via search on Mac.
First, is “Browse Fandango,” which simply acts as a redirect to the main page of the Fandango website and app – here they curate categories like Coming Soon, Watch At Home, and Features that are nice to check out.
“Search Fandango” takes advantage of Shortcuts scripting to prompt you to enter a search term, uses Replace Text to swap out spaces for the + symbol, and includes that all in the URL pattern for their search results – run this, type your search, and see results on Fandango’s website.
Fandango also produces their own news content, including custom features, trailers, upcoming ticket sales, and more – my “Show movie news” shortcut takes you to the web page for it all at https://www.fandango.com/movie-news.
And finally, “Show purchase history” is the only shortcut that requires you to sign in to Fandango, after which you’ll be able to see your full list of movies you’ve been to – a fun experience to reflect on (and something that definitely prompted me to go to the movies more last summer once I realized I hadn’t been since Rise of Skywalker!).
See You At The Theaters
As someone who very much fell off of seeing movies in theaters the last couple years, I’ve enjoyed going back and watching a few new films on the big screen again – there’s something undeniable about the movie-going experience, from the massive visuals, blow-away sound, and just getting a bucket of popcorn & drinks to enjoy.
Since I usually buy my tickets from Fandango anyway, these shortcuts make the experience just a little bit smoother – and having the Shortcuts widget on my Home Screen next to the Fandango icon acts a nice reminder to check out what’s available and head to a theater nearby; something that’s just plain good for the soul.
Show movies in theaters: Opens Fandango to the section with movies available to go see now in theaters.
Show theaters nearby: Gets your current ZIP code, then opens Fandango to movie times in your area.
Leave for theater: Checks for a movie calendar event (automatically added via Gmail when you purchase tickets) and presents the total travel time estimates, then opens Apple Maps to get directions.
Find my ticket: Shows your recent movie ticket to be scanned by the tixket taker – or tap to open your ticket details.
Browse Fandango: Opens the Fandango app when run from iPhone or Fandango.com when run from other devices.
Search Fandango: Asks you to enter a query, then reformats it for Fandango’s search results and opens the URL into the app/website.
Show movie news: Opens the “Movie News” section of Fandango to show reporting on upcoming films.
Show purchase history: Opens the “My Purchases” section of your Fandango accounts to see recent tickets you’ve purchased.
Jason and Myke explore the rumors of AI enhancements to Siri and Spotlight in the upcoming release of iOS 18.
Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/qROj1S0DAEY
Subscribe to the podcast and support the show at https://relay.fm/upgrade
Great perspectives on AI, Siri, and the potential of the Spotlight brand – something I’ve been pondering as well the last few weeks.
Also, I really love that Jason and Myke are clipping out topics into full videos on YouTube now – I noticed it was much easier to link to this idea than a full episode, given that it already has a custom title, thumbnail, description, and start/stopping point.
On Tuesday, February 27th, I went live with Rafael Conde discussing how to use multiple desktops and the Spaces feature of macOS to create custom arrangements for your workspaces.
Rafael works at Sketch, a Mac design tool, and develops his own apps as well (check out his site at Rafa.design).
On Mastodon, I saw Rafa post: “We’re sharing how we use the Desktop and how we size/position windows on our Macs on our work Slack and it’s absolute madness.”
I replied “This is extremely my shit. I always want to automate this on Mac but I’ve worked alone for so long I have no idea how people arrange their digital workspaces” and then invited him on the show.
Throughout the 2-hour stream, we discussed being a Mac person, window management, using Spaces like an iPad Home Screen, and how the Shortcuts actions for this all should come to Apple Vision Pro.
We had a great conversation overall, and by the end got into some really interesting tangents that brought the whole discussion into new territory. I’m adding chapter markers, plus plans to clip sections and cover it in future blog posts.
There are quite a few new Shortcuts actions, so I’m going to list them all first before going into detail on several of them and how they could be used within the app:
Create scheduled posts
Get, reschedule, or delete scheduled posts
Send posts with media or poll attachments
Send replies to a specified post
Get the character limit of certain accounts
Split text for threading
Get, add, modify, or delete server-side filters linked to your Mastodon accounts
Get the post or profile currently displayed in the Mona app
Open the in-app post composer or search view
Adjust settings for video autoplay
Get and set image caption (e.g., combining with a third-party caption-generating action)
Get accessibility text of accounts or posts
Take a screenshot of a Mastodon post
Great set of options for Shortcuts users – I’ll definitely be testing Mona for scheduling posts.
Eek out every percentage of iPhone battery with these 10 Shortcuts and automations! From low power mode to adjusting brightness and disabling always-on display at critical battery levels, this video is your ultimate guide to extending your iPhone’s battery life.
YouTube on TV: Opens the YouTube app on the chosen Apple TV, then opens the YouTube app on your mobile device – this lets you connect the two and manage your TV queue from your phone or iPad.
Search YouTube: Prompts you to enter a query and then opens it YouTube in Safari.
Open my Home feed: Opens YouTube.com on the web or redirects to the Home tab in the app.
Open YouTube Shorts: Opens the YouTube Shorts feed in the iOS and iPad apps, or the YouTube Shorts page on web.
Open my Subscriptions: Opens the Subscriptions tab in the YouTube app to show only videos from people you’ve followed.
Show YouTube library: Opens the link to the Library tab of YouTube, which shows your History, Watch Later, Playlists, and Liked Videos.
Open my Watch Later: Opens the deep link into the Watch Later page of the YouTube website, where I can then watch videos in picture-in-picture. Requires opening in Safari after showing page.
Browse my movies on YouTube: Opens the YouTube section for purchased movies, including films synced with Movies Anywhere.
Open my YouTube Clips: Opens your personal feed on Clips saved from YouTube videos. Use this feature to capture important ideas and give them custom titles, and have a feed of personalized clips to view again later.
Show my Liked videos: Opens the automatic playlist for Liked videos created for every YouTube account.
Open my watch history: Opens the deep link into the History section of the YouTube library page in the app.
Manage subscribed YouTube Channels: Opens the feed of channels you’ve subscribed to on YouTube – use this to directly access channels using Search, or clean up your subscriptions by removing some.
Watch in YouTube app: Redirects a web URL for a YouTube into the mobile app by replacing https:// with youtube:// in the link.
Who’s live on YouTube?: Opens the Subscriptions feed sorted as a list so you can see who’s live at the top.
YouTube TV: Turns on my living room TV, opens the YouTube app, and shows the remote control on the current device so I can navigate the interface. When run from Mac, opens YouTube in Safari in fullscreen.
In Stephen Robles’ “Inside My iPhone Setup” video on YouTube, starting at 3:15, he talks about using the Today view to store the Shortcuts widget:
Dive into my full iPhone setup tour for 2024, where I showcase customized Home and Lock Screens, Today View widgets, Shortcuts, Focus Modes, and filters for maximal productivity. If you’re curious about how to tailor your iPhone to fit your daily routine or have any setup questions, drop them below!
I agree that this is the best place to start out when using Shortcuts – it’s always available, even from the Lock Screen.
After 5 months of experimenting with the iPhone Action Button, I’ve settled on one daily use that stands out above the rest. Discover the top 3 alternate uses that almost made the cut and why simplicity won the day for my action button setup.
I mentioned this video on Clockwise this week – my usage has definitely changed. And, as a teaser, Apple is making more actions for Shortcuts in iOS 17.4 that make dynamic Action button shortcuts easier to create…
In version 1.0 of Juno, there wasn’t a way to take a YouTube URL from Play (or any other app) and instantly open it in the app. Whenever I clicked a YouTube link in a visionOS app, it would take me to Safari, with no way to redirect that video to the Juno app instead. With the new Juno URL scheme in version 1.1, this is now possible. Simply replace https:// with juno:// in a YouTube URL, and you’ll be able to watch that video in Juno rather than YouTube’s website.
But we are refined and tasteful people with our Vision Pros, and no one should edit URLs by hand to watch a YouTube video in 2024. So I’ve built two shortcuts that you can install on your Vision Pro to simplify the process of reopening those links in Juno.
The first one is a basic shortcut that you can run on YouTube.com in Safari to open the video you’re watching in Juno. To use it, just select ‘From YouTube to Juno’ in the Safari share sheet, and the video will be opened in Juno, where you can watch it with a superior interface.
The second shortcut I’ve created is one to pick from a list of videos saved in the Play app and watch the selected video in Juno. Aptly named ‘From Play to Juno’, the shortcut is a nice way to go through your Play queue on the Vision Pro and take advantage of Juno’s native YouTube UI to watch your saved videos.
A few months ago, I decided to switch to Things as my default task manager. As I shared multiple times on AppStories and MacStories Weekly, I’m really happy with my decision: not only does the design of the Things app create a more relaxed environment for me to manage my responsibilities, but Cultured Code’s embrace of Shortcuts automation has allowed me to create dozens of custom enhancements for Things.
This is the reason why I fell in love with Things: the app’s “simple” design and structure leaves room for power users to make their own functionalities by taking advantage of the app’s integration with Shortcuts. Things doesn’t have a feature you need? Just make it yourself by choosing from the large catalog of Shortcuts actions available in the app.
I previously shared an initial set of shortcuts I created for Things; I also created ThingsBox, an advanced shortcut to intelligently save tasks to the Things inbox. Since those articles, I’ve built several more shortcuts and created personal automations to script certain behaviors of Things on a daily basis. So, exclusively for Club Plus and Premier members, today I’m sharing my full collection of Things shortcuts, which have vastly improved how I manage my tasks on the iPad Pro and capture them on the iPhone.
Let’s take a look.
Great set of shortcuts that solves some of the pain in managing tasks daily in Things.
This issue is full of Apple Vision Pro links, and my return to YouTube with one unboxing video, a livestream, and a concept video – plus handy media shortcuts, a fix from Feedback, app updates you might’ve missed, and new Tim Robinson-inspired AirTag gear?
On Wednesday, February 21, I had the pleasure of joining Dan Moren as a guest along with James Thompson and Rosemary Orchard on Clockwise to talk about:
How we’d use a HomePod with a screen, Apple’s new Sports app, Vision Pro impressions after a couple weeks, and what we use our iPhone’s Action button for.
