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Apps

Apple reveals 45 app and game finalists for the 2024 App Store Awards Β»

From the Apple Newsroom:

Every year, Apple honors the very best apps and games of the year through the App Store Awards β€” a recognition of exceptional user experience, design, and innovation from developers across the world. With 45 App Store Award finalists across 12 different categories, these apps and games have helped users accomplish more, be more creative, and better connect with friends and family. This year, the App Store Awards include a new Apple Vision Pro category, highlighting stunning achievements in the world of spatial computing. App Store Award winners chosen from this distinguished group of app and game developers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Excellent set of apps.

Next year, I want to see one of my clients’ apps in this list after building an Apple Intelligence integration for them… πŸ™‡πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ

View the original.

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Apps

Amazon Introduces Automatic App Shortcuts for Quick Access to Destinations

Amazon recently added App Shortcuts support to their iOS and iPadOS apps, making an β€œOpen Amazon” action available in Shortcuts and automatically generating 14 App Shortcuts you can use with Siri and Spotlight.

Screenshots combined side-by-side showing the Open Amazon action with no destination, then the list of destinations, and then one where the destination is selected.

The β€œOpen Amazon” action contains a parameter where you can select the Destination you want to open – Amazon offers the following destinations:

  • Search
  • Your Orders
  • Cart
  • Today’s Deals
  • Buy Again
  • In-Store Code
  • Your Lists
  • Inspire
  • Your Account
  • Amazon Lens
  • Amazon Fresh
  • Whole Foods Market
  • Pharmacy

When making this β€œOpen Amazon” action available, Amazon has preconfigured their App Shortcut so that Shortcuts automatically generates an instance of that App Shortcut for each destination, making it available in Spotlight, Siri, and Shortcuts as soon as the app is installed.

That way, rather than asking you which destination to open each time, you can specify a destination up-front with your trigger phrase and jump right to that page in the Amazon app – try saying β€œOpen Today’s Deals in Amazon” (if you have the app installed) and it should immediately work, without any extra setup.

Screenshot of the top three App Shortcuts for Amazon.
Screenshot of the top three App Shortcuts for Amazon.

When you search in Spotlight for Amazon, you’ll also see the top three results displayed as App Shortcuts for Spotlight – you can see icons for Search, Your Orders, and Cart.

Screenshot of an individual App Shortcut result for β€œYour Orders” shown as a Top Hit in Spotlight.
Screenshot of an individual App Shortcut result for β€œYour Orders” shown as a Top Hit in Spotlight.

Going further, searching for any specific destination will return the App Shortcut for that instance of the action – tap it and you’ll be taken into the correct spot in the app as well. Plus, all the parameterized versions of the App Shortcut will be available via search, not just the first three.

Finally, if you check the Amazon section in the App Shortcuts category of the Shortcuts app, you’ll see the a larger list of App Shortcuts available to select from and run – Amazon makes everything up to β€œYour Account” available here. Tapping on those lets you create a custom shortcut, plus use Add to Home Screen to put that destination onto your Home Screen.

I’ve taken a moment to create individual custom shortcuts for all the possible destinations and have made the folder of Amazon app shortcuts available in my Shortcuts Library – that way anybody can download them to change the trigger phrase, add it to their Shortcuts widget, or create a custom icon of their choosing.

Get the Amazon app shortcuts in the Shortcuts Library, and get the Amazon Shopping app from the App Store.

If you already have the app installed, try searching for β€œAmazon” and look for the App Shortcuts in Spotlight; try triggering one with Siri as well.

 

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Apps Shortcuts

Ulysses Adds Action Button & Control Center Shortcuts Alongside Table of Contents & Writing Tools Β»

From Ulysses’ v36 release notes:

  • You can now launch Ulysses from the Action button found on the latest iPhone models.
  • β€œNew Sheet” will launch Ulysses into a new, empty sheet in your Inbox.
  • β€œLast sheet” will open the last edited sheet.
  • β€œSearch” will launch Ulysses directly into Quick Open.
  • These actions are also available via Control Center on iOS 18.1.

Very excited to see these new actions – I got a chance to talk with the Ulysses team at NSSpain and have been eagerly anticipating these.

These actions join the new Table of Contents feature and updates to support Apple Intelligence Writing Tools.

View the Release Notes on Ulysses’s site.

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Apps Links

Instapaper (Finally) Adds Tags for Better Organization Β»

From @Instapaper on Threads:

Introducing Tags for Better Organization!

Tags are a great way to organize your articles with increased flexibility over folders, and are now live across all platforms.

Instapaper will continue to support both Folders and Tags to organize articles, and we’ve made it easy to convert folders into tags.

I’m super excited for this – my biggest problem with Instapaper long-term was that any effort I spent organizing items into folders was lost once they went into the archive. Here’s a post from 2015 where I mention it, for example.

Now, I can tag & organize stories in the best read-it-later format available – Instapaper.

Plus, they’re adding a new multi-column view, seen here:

View the full thread.

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Apps Links

Just Announced – Cyberpunk 2077 Coming to Mac! Β»

Cyberpunk 2077 and its spy-thriller expansion Phantom Liberty will be coming to Mac. Taking full advantage of Apple silicon and advanced technologies of Metal, the world of the dark future is available to Mac gamers for the very first time. Players can enjoy advanced features like path tracing, frame generation, and built-in Spatial Audio for even more immersive gameplay and stunning visuals.

Available early next year on Macs with Apple silicon, the Ultimate Edition will launch on the Mac App Store, GOG.com, Steam and Epic Games Store.

Looking forward to this – and glad to see another AAA game come to the Mac. Hope it’s a tipping point for the platform.

View the update on the Cyberpunk website.

 

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Apps

EpocCam Turns Your iPhone into a Webcam For Your Mac Β»

From @elgato:

No webcam?

You can use EpocCam to turn your iPhone into a webcam for your PC/Mac. πŸ“±

Learn more: https://elgato.sjv.io/epoccam-mjc

For all my fellow Mac Mini users, or anyone stuck with a MacBook webcam… EpocCam provides an alternative to something like Continuity Camera.

Looks like it’s held up on the Mini Mount as well.

View the post and get EpocCam and the Mini Mount from Elgato.

P.S. You can use my Elgato Partner code ZZ-CASSINELLI for 5% off at checkout on other Elgato products.

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Apps Links

Apple releases new Final Cut Camera app, plus smart updates to Final Cut Pro for iPad and Mac Β»

From Apple Newsroom:

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

View the original.

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Apps Links

Arc Search Updated To Be Usable on iPad, Tablet Design Comes Later Β»

From Julia Roggatz at The Browser Company (and formerly of Muse) in a thread on Twitter:

Arc on iPad is here! πŸš€

(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 β€œArc 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.

View the tweet and get Arc Search for iPad.

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Apps

Arc Search Lets You β€œCall” For Answers (And Comes With Action Button Shortcuts)

Today, the Browser Company launched an update to their Arc browser for iOS that adds a new β€œCall” feature, as well as Apple Shortcuts support in the form of three App Shortcuts designed for the iPhone action button.

Arc’s new β€œCall” 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.

Get Arc Search for iPhone on the App Store and Arc for desktop on the web.

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Apps Shortcuts

iOS 17.5 Adds Quartiles to Apple News: Get These Puzzles Shortcuts

Today, Apple has released iOS 17.5 to the public, bringing with it a new game to the Apple News+ Puzzles section: Quartiles.

Quartiles divides a word into four parts, letting you select from the available tiles to form a word – each game has five rows, letting you adding up your score for each row to get the highest points possible.

Once you’ve visited the Puzzles, Crosswords, Crossword Mini, or Quartiles sections of the Apple News app (available for Apple News+ subscribers), the News app will β€œdonate” suggested actions to the Shortcuts app for each section, which you can add to your custom shortcuts and run to quickly jump into the corresponding part of the News app again.

I’ve collected all four sections as individual shortcuts, which you can get in the Apple News folder of my Shortcuts Library. You can place this in a Shortcuts widget, add these to any of your Home Screens, or even open them from the menu bar on Mac – that puzzle is yours to figure out.

Quartiles is quite fun and, being so Wordle-adjacent, could attract casual gamers who might not be drawn to the Crosswords or Crossword mini features of Apple News – I’m sure Apple wouldn’t mind, since gaming is a fairly significant driver of revenue for the news business.

Happy gaming!

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Apps Links

Personal Link App Plinky Launches To Help You Enjoy The Vast Internet

From Joe Fabisevich on macaw.social:

For the last two years I’ve been working on Plinky, sharing my work publicly while the app has been in beta.

Today it’s finally ready to go live in the App Store, and I’d like to not only share the app with you but share more about why I built it.

plinky.app/download

What is Plinky?

Check out Joe’s launch story on Mastodon and get Plinky.

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Apps Links

Elite Hoops Coach Whiteboard Adds Widgets and Shortcuts For Basketball Teams of Any Size

From Jordan Morgan on mastodon.social:

My update for Elite Hoops with an emphasis on iOS features is out now! I’d love it if you checked it out, even if you aren’t a coach or the target market.

The widgets, especially, turned out fun. And you may dig some of the animations and stuff from the “What’s New” screens.

Elite Hoops is such a cool app, I wish I could use it coach a rag-tag team of up-and-coming basketball players at my local community center to victory at the Big Game – but for real, check it out.

Get Elite Hoops on the App Store, read the blog post, and view the original post.

 

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Apps Links

How To Make Mac-Style App Icons Easily With Squircle

MikΓ‘ Kruschel on mastodon.social:

Inspired by @rafa’s https://docktor.site, I created Squircle – a free Mac app that adds the correct corner radius, padding, and shadow to square app icons following Apple’s design guidelines. Just drop the square icon in and out you get a single png or an appiconset for Xcode.

Take a regular icon, drop it into this app to get the right style, and then use Get Info on an Application and drop the PNG into the icon on the top left – once you launch it again on your Mac, the icon will update.

Get Squircle for free on the Mac App Store, and view the launch post from MikΓ .

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Apps

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Launches New AI-Powered Group Photo Sharing App Shine

After leaving her position as CEO of Yahoo in 2017, former Google employee No. 20 Marissa Mayer is back with a new group photo sharing app called Shine from her company Sunshine, aimed at solving the β€œsend me that photo” problem according to her Twitter thread around the new release.

With Shine, you create an album for a time and place, choose the type of selection process, and then share with other people – the selection part is where the β€œmagic” happens, since Shine lets you optionally let AI select the best photos for you (or you can choose manually). Shine can also suggest albums automatically after-the-fact too.

The β€œMagic Mode” automatically uploads the best photos identified by AI as they’re taken, and when in manual mode you’ll still get suggestions but the app lets you approve them before sharing.

Shine lets you share photos in full resolution, automatically removes duplicates, and lets viewers download the photos from the app or see them with an album code, link, or QR code.

The app also has comments and reactions built right in, turning each album into a psuedo-social network for each event. After the event, these interactions are shared into an Activity feed, making the entire app a feed of comments around event’s you’ve attended.

Shine looks super interesting as a Minimum Viable Product from Marissa Mayer’s team, not only because it seems to truly take a honest stab at solving this problem well, but also because it’s backed by a powerhouse in the tech space. Right now there’s only an iPhone app and no web interface, and some of the design leaves a little to be desired (the app generally seems to lack padding) – things that are easily fixable over time, however.

I think the drawbacks actually speak to the true MVP nature of this app – it’s clearly not the best version of the app product itself, but I do think how they’re approaching this problem is novel and still worth addressing, even in 2024. I’m glad Shine focused their energy on solving the core problem properly first, and over time they can invest in making the app experience even better.

Get Shine on the App Store and read Marissa Meyer’s thread on the launch.

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Apps

Deckset Brings Beautiful Markdown Presentations to iOS and iPadOS

Today, developer PaweΕ‚ Dudek has brought their beautiful Markdown slide-creation app Deckset from Mac to mobile with an iOS and iPadOS version, now available on the App Store as a separate free purchase with in-app subscription.

If you’re not familiar, Deckset is a wonderful app that makes building presentations easy by taking Markdown-formatted text and letting you quickly building colorful, impactful slides immediately.

By using importing normal markup from a Markdown document, Deckset can read any separators (---) as a slide separator, automatically creating new slides for each block of text and styling it using your formatting markup.

Deckset users can pick from a wide variety of colorful and thoughtfully-designed themes, or create their own and change the style of their presentation on the fly.

Slides can also include videos, GIFs, tables, TeX formulas, making it much more feasible and frankly fairly easy to create high-quality decks right from your iPhone or iPad, while also avoiding the complex UI of dedicated presentation software.

You can present the entire slide deck from either iPhone or iPad, but you can take advantage of a special presenter mode on iPad, showing the slides via AirPlay on an Apple TV or an external display.

Your presentations from Mac can also work, but they need to be converted to TextBundle, the format used by their iOS app – I’m familiar with this format through apps like Ulysses, which use it to store Markdown + images in a single container.

This is the one limitation compared to the Mac app, where Markdown documents can be saved anywhere in the filesystem – however, there, you must manage all your file and video references, whereas Deckset for iOS imports those files directly into the TextBundle format (unless you’re using a direct image URL as your reference link).

Deckset has long been available for Mac (their Twitter shows they joined in December 2013) for a one-time payment of $35 – I’ve been a happy customer of that product for a long time.

That being said, 35 bucks clearly doesn’t far stretch across a literal decade, and I’m sure investing in building Deckset for iOS has been hard while funded from the single up-front payment of the Mac app – that’s why I’m glad Deckset for iOS and iPadOS has moved to a subscription model.

Now, Deckset for iOS and iPadOS is $2.99 per month or $19.99/year, making it easy to purchase a subscription for just a few months if you have a big presentation coming up, or investing in the app for the long-term to save 44% annually. Plus, the Mac app is still a one-time payment if that’s all you need – and you can subscribe freely on mobile when you need it.

I’m very glad to see Deckset come to iPhone and iPad, rounding out the capability for all Apple users to easily create and present Markdown slides – Deckset makes your decks look very good with minimal effort (and a minimal design). Plus, I hope the subscription pricing enables sustainable, long-term development – I’d love to see Shortcuts support, for example πŸ˜‡.

Check out Deckset on the App Store and on the web.

Categories
Apps News

Save On 250 Apps with Indie App Sales’ Spring 2024 Release

Indie App Sales is back again for Spring 2024, offering discounts on a wide range of apps from independent developers for Tuesdayβ€”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!

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Apps Links

iAΒ Writer Adds All-New Shortcuts in v7.1 Β»

From the iA blog:

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.

Check out their Shortcuts Gallery with these categories:

Read the full post (where you can check out their promo video as well).

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Apps Links

Juno 1.1 for visionOS Adds the Ability to Open YouTube.com URLs in the App Β»

From Federico Viticci on MacStories:

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 β€˜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 β€˜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.

Get the shortcuts on MacStories.

Categories
Apps

31 More Apps From Apple Vision Pro Developers

Last week, I shared a great set of apps for Apple Vision Pro from developers who shared their links on Threads.

However, since I am apparently somewhat blending reality and spatial computing, I apparently forgot to collect the other half the people I asked – here’s more apps you can try on the headset:

  1. Everlog – Daily journal: App Store | Social
  2. MoneyCoach – Budget planner: App Store | Social
  3. CamPlan – 3D home layouts: App Store | Social
  4. No Meat Today – Meatless tracking: App Store | Social
  5. Decky Dashboard – Social columns: App Store | Social
  6. NowPlaying – IMDb for music : App Store | Social
  7. Numerics – Business dashboard: App Store | Social
  8. Mercury Weather – Visualize weather: App Store | Social
  9. Bezel – iPhone mirroring: App Store | Social
  10. Timely – Virtual spatial clock: App Store | Social
  11. Tizipizi – Time zone converter: App Store | Social
  12. Study Snacks – Vocabulary and learning: App Store | Social
  13. JigSpace – 3D presentations: App Store | Social
  14. TV Launcher β€“ Launch US channels: App Store | Social
  15. TV Remote β€“ Universal Remote: App Store | Social
  16. AppJournal – Log developer achievements: App Store | Social
  17. Ambre – Recipes and cooking: App Store | Social
  18. LookUp – Visual dictionary: App Store | Social
  19. The Assembler – Learn coding with pixel art: App Store | Social
  20. Chess Dreams – Immersive chess: App Store | Social
  21. FilmNoir – Track films and TV shows: App Store | Social
  22. Heypster – GIF platform without tracking: App Store | Social
  23. Minghin – 3D memory game: App Store | Social
  24. Ploppy Pairs – Cute pairing game: App Store | Social
  25. Where is Ploppy? – Cute hidden object game: App Store | Social
  26. CrossCraft – Craft crosswords on topics you love: App Store | Social
  27. Orbit Meditation – Immersive meditation: App Store | Social
  28. Email Me – Fastest way to capture notes: App Store | Social
  29. amuz – Swipe through immersive photos: App Store | Social
  30. Focus – Minimalist pomodoro timer: App Store | Social
  31. Sunlight – Daily key observable events: App Store | Social

Check out the first post β€œ26 New Apps for Apple Vision Pro” and check out the Apple Vision Pro tag on my website – I have many more apps to share coming soon!

Categories
Apps

Easily Design Custom Stream Deck Icons with Button Creator for macOS

If you find yourself creating custom buttons on the Stream Deck from Elgato, you will likely run into an issue – how do I create icons that fit my style?

button-creator-stream-deck-iconselgato-marketplacescreenshot

Elgato helpfully provides a dedicated section for Stream Deck icons in their Marketplace, where you can install icon packs from a variety of creators across various categories – this is a great one-and-done solution to get icons at-scale.

If you’re looking for further customization, however, you might end up in that awkward gap between trying to design your own in tools like Canva or Figma, or feeling like you’d need to request an entire custom set from someone with more creative skills than yourself (this is about me).

button-creator-stream-deck-iconsmac-app-storescreenshot

Instead, developer Christian Lobach has a solution for Mac users – the Button Creator for Stream Deck app, which lets you use a simple interface to create your own icons.

button-creator-stream-deck-iconsinterfacescreenshot

With Button Creator, you can customize the foreground or background colors, pick a glyph using the SF Symbols library, emoji, or your own images, and even customize a text label so you don’t have to duplicate the title in the Stream Deck app.

button-creator-stream-deck-iconstemplatescreenshot

Plus, you can save your creations as templates, making it easy to start again with the same style and have a consistent look across your icons.

button-creator-stream-deck-iconspixelmator-pro-gradientscreenshot

So far, I’m quite happy with the customization features of Button Creator – there’s lots of control and, in most places, more than enough for what I need. I’d like to see more text styling controls, and I’d potentially also like more Gradient controls, including the option to change the rotation by a specific degree, change from linear to radial or angular, and handles to control the placement. Admittedly, that might be a lot for what’s otherwise a simple app, but it’d add a cool layer of customization – I’ve been trying to make better gradient maps in Pixelmator Pro and want to get really nice-looking icons over time.

button-creator-stream-iconshortcutscreenshot

Otherwise, Shortcuts support could take this app very far – letting me pass in parameters and output icons would be incredibly powerful, and I could programmatically create icons for my entire library in seconds. Right now I’m able to use Get My Shortcuts to export exact icons, but without any customization – combining that with Button Creator actions could let me automatically apply short titles and avoid manually adding them in the Stream Deck app, for example.

button-creator-stream-iconsadd-to-home-screenscreenshot

As you can guess from the name, Button Creator for Stream Deck is, well, designed pretty specifically for Stream Deck users – however, these icons can also be repurposed as Home Screen icons using the β€œAdd to Home Screen“feature in Shortcuts on iPhone and iPad – or for any other purpose, for that matter.

Get Button Creator for $4.99 on the Mac App Store and check out the Stream Deck from Elgato.

Note: I am an Elgato Partner – this post uses my partner URLs for Elgato links.