Category: Apps

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Apps Tips & Tricks

Tip: Long-Press to Skip The Custom Share Sheet on Threads (and Twitter Too) »

From @mosseri on Threads:

Hidden ? if you long press the share button on a thread it’ll pull up the OS share sheet instead of the Threads one in case you want to get there quicker.

If you’re trying to use the Share Sheet to capture Threads posts, you’ll find yourself clicking the Share icon, then “Share via…” every time – instead, you can long-press on the icon and the native Share Sheet will pop up again with your shortcuts ready to go.

Fun fact: I helped get this same functionality implemented in the Twitter app back in 2020 after mentioning how important it is for Shortcuts users – shoutout to fellow Shortcuts creator Robert Peterson for emphasizing my point in the, ahem, “thread.”

View the post on Threads.

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Apps Links

Test This iOS 17 Soundboard App With Interactive Widgets »

From @leomehlig:

iOS 17 only alert ⚠️‼️?

Using the new interactive widgets, I’ve built a soundboard app, which you can use right from your lock and Home Screen (turn on sound to hear them).

Early beta is already on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/tAISw1v8 pic.twitter.com/mPgdW7UEch

Back in June, I saw this tweet from Leo Mehlig, developer of Structured, teasing a new soundboard app he’s working on that uses the new interactive widget capabilities – in theory, this could even work from an iPhone on StandBy… ?

View the demo video in the tweet or join the TestFlight.

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Apps

View Your Order History, Shopping Cart, and Amazon Categories With These Shortcuts

A few months ago, I did my usual thing of making a full set of shortcuts to completely “automate” access to a website of choice – this time, with Amazon.com.

Available now in my Shortcuts Library, my folder of Amazon shortcuts contains deep links to all the sections of Amazon’s website that I felt were useful enough as shortcuts – 24 distinct pages found within their navigation menu.1

Continue reading “View Your Order History, Shopping Cart, and Amazon Categories With These Shortcuts”
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Apps

Bear 2 launches with new Export Note and Backup actions for Shortcuts on Mac

Bear 2, the minimalist note-taking app from developers Shiny Frog, has launched today after years in development – and with it, a handful of nice-to-have actions in Shortcuts to Export Notes and Backup (for macOS users only).

The Export Note action in particular is notable because it allows users to make a shortcut that, given a note from a previous action like “Search Notes,” can export the note into the following formats:

Continue reading “Bear 2 launches with new Export Note and Backup actions for Shortcuts on Mac”
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Apps

How To Get A Seamless Photo Carousel On Threads Using The Series App

Majd Taby, founder of photo-editing app Darkroom, shared an excellent photoset on Threads today of his visit to the Grand Canyon – in the image carousel, each shot is perfectly split, letting you swipe between photos without any break, creating a seamless split across the whole set.

In his caption, Majd mentions @seriesphotosapp, the account for Series, an app for customizable layouts from the developer Recentralized.

Series, which works on iOS and iPadOS, looks to be similar to many collage-style apps that have existed over the years for formatting photosets into nice-looking collages.

However, as demonstrated in their demo video on Threads, the app can be used to split photos perfectly – here’s how:

Continue reading “How To Get A Seamless Photo Carousel On Threads Using The Series App”
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Apps Links

Detail: A Modern, Machine Learning-Powered Approach to Video »

John Voorhees for MacStories (line breaks added for emphasis):

The sources above are the component parts of what Detail calls Scenes, which can use one or more sources to create a single-view Scene or a Combo Scene that comes in five different layouts.

That allows you to mix and match camera sources with screen-sharing sources and even other scenes into one composite video.

The result is a flexible system that can be easily adapted for video interviews, tutorials and help documentation, video conferencing apps like Zoom, and more.

Moreover, you can set up multiple scenes in advance and switch among them using keyboard shortcuts or Apple’s Shortcuts app.

I’ve had my eye on Detail for Mac for some time, and their latest Detail Duo for iPhone/iPad is intriguing too. Over on Mastodon, John and I had this back-and-forth about the update:

Continue reading “Detail: A Modern, Machine Learning-Powered Approach to Video »”
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Portal’s Mac app helps users focus with immersive backgrounds and audio »

Ivan Mehta writing for TechCrunch:

Productivity-enhancing app Portal has launched a Mac app. The company helps users regain focus and become more productive with immersive backgrounds and natural sounds.[…] Portal for Mac has more than 80 environments to choose from, which include high-quality looping videos captured by the company’s own team.

Further on:

Users can control the sound and motion or change the background through the menu bar icon too. Given that Portal is a native Mac app, it integrates with Siri Shortcuts as well.

I’m a huge fan of apps like Endel for its generative audio soundscapes – Portal looks like an interesting visual version of the same concept.

View the full story on TechCrunch.

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Apps Links

Track time in the Dynamic Island with Timery’s updated Shortcuts actions

@Timery on Mastodon:

Timery 1.5.3 is available! This update has four new Shortcuts actions and several small improvements & fixes!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1425368544

What’s new in Shortcuts:
• Start Recent Timer
• Find Recent Timers
• Export Saved Report
• Start Live Activity

What else is new:
• Improvements to reordering saved timers
• Easier-to-tap time-adjustment buttons
• More project colors for paid Toggl accounts
• Fix for exporting reports on Mac
• VoiceOver improvements

Here are some more details […]:

Developer Joe Hribar of Timery has revamped some of the Shortcuts actions for his app to activate the Live Activities feature, which begins a timer in the Dynamic Island if you have an iPhone 14 Pro – neat. ?

Check out the thread for more on the update and get Timery on the App Store.

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Apps Games

No Man’s Sky for Mac now available; no iPad yet

@NoMansSky/Sean Murray on Twitter this morning:

No Man’s Sky Mac ?

?Cross Play
?Cross Save
?Metal 3
?High Performance
?‍?Apple Silicon and Intel
?MetalFX Temporal & Spatial Upscaling
?Optimised Loading
?️Full Controller Support
?7 years of updates

Free to millions of existing Steam Players

https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No\_Mans\_Sky/

From Apple’s press release last year:

The power of Apple silicon enables every new Mac to run AAA games with ease, including upcoming titles such as EA’s GRID Legends and Capcom’s Resident Evil Village.
[…]
And since Apple silicon also powers iPad, game developers can bring their AAA games to even more users, like No Man’s Sky from Hello Games, which is coming to both Mac and iPad later this year.

After being delayed, the Mac version of No Man’s Sky from developer Hello Games launched today.

Despite only having played a bit on Xbox, I’m looking forward to diving in with cross-play support once it rolls out to iPad (and any other platforms) – this is one of the first AAA games for Apple devices that I care about and seems a perfect launch title for a top-tier gaming experience outside the confines of my console setup.

Get No Man’s Sky on Steam ($59.99 new, free if already purchased on Steam for another platform).1

  1. The lack of a Mac App Store release is interesting, especially given the relationship with Apple.

    No Man’s Sky has also been tweeting some very telling teasers ahead of WWDC, which I am having fun theorizing about on Mastodon. ↩

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Apps Links

Elsewhen: Time zones, translated »

Zach Knox, replying to my post about Discord timestamps:

I would also highly recommend Elsewhen, which has a shortcuts action to do exactly that apps.apple.com/us/app/elsewhen… (though of course learning how those timestamps work is still quite valuable!)

Zach is totally right, I’d forgotten about Elsewhen for Mac, iPad, and iPhone – a handy utility from developer Benjamin Cardy that shows a visual representation of the Discord timestamp formats.

Plus, Elsewhen includes another great feature for actually laying out alternate timezones for specific countries, for making announcement posts like I do with my streams:

Continue reading “Elsewhen: Time zones, translated »”
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Apps Custom Shortcuts Links

Zenitizer, a clean and simple meditation timer »

@Zenitizer on Mastodon:

Dear Fediverse ? Zenitizer launched on the App Store today ??

? Clean & Simple Meditation Timer
? Soothing Sounds
❤️ Apple Health Support
? Siri & Shortcuts Support
⭐️ Goals and Streaks
? Glanceable Widgets and Apple Watch Complications

1️⃣ Download: zenitizer.app/install

Congrats to developer Manuel Kehl on his launch last Thursday. ?

Get Zenitizer on the App Store.

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Apps Custom Shortcuts Links

Shortcut to redirect YouTube links into the iOS app »

Stephen Robles of AppleInsider shared a shortcut for redirecting YouTube links into the app:

The shortcut works by replacing the https with youtube – using Stephen’s own YouTube channel URL as an example, it’d appear like youtube://www.youtube.com/@beardfm.

Time to add this to my YouTube collection 🙂

Get the Watch In YouTube shortcut from Stephen’s tweet.

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Apps Custom Shortcuts

Making a simple Menu Bar applet to replace Shortcuts’ progress meter

Yesterday on Six Colors, Jason Snell wrote a post called Create visual feedback for running Shortcuts about a method he’s using to check his progress in a long-running shortcut using a Menu Bar utility.

His post was born out of frustration with the Shortcuts menu bar applet, which we discussed on Mastodon as being somewhat unobvious as a signal for progression:

Earlier today, I was complaining to Shortcuts expert Matthew Cassinelli about how there’s no really good way to view progress of a running Shortcut on macOS. Yes, the Shortcuts menu item in the menu bar sort of tries to display progress, but… it doesn’t provide any information I find particularly valuable.

I’m frustrated because I do have some Shortcuts that take time to run, yet unless I have them beep or display a notification when they reach a certain point in the process, I have no idea what they’re doing or if they’re even working.

If you didn’t know, the Shortcuts menu bar icon changes while a shortcut is running to indicate progression.

Continue reading “Making a simple Menu Bar applet to replace Shortcuts’ progress meter”
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Apps News

Apple adds Shortcuts for Mac support to Pages, Numbers, Keynote

Today, Apple released updates to their iWork suite of apps that adds actions in Shortcuts for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote on macOS, bringing powerful first-party actions that Mac users can take advantage to automate their work:

New First-Party Actions

Across all three iWork apps, there are now actions for “Open” and “Create” – plus Numbers has added “Add Row to Top or Bottom of Table” and Keynote has added “Open in Rehearsal Mode” and “Open in Show Mode.”

The Create actions all also include the templates/themes available in the iWork apps, which makes it quick to generate 40+ samples from Pages, Numbers, and Keynote each for a total of over 120+ templates.

Here’s the full list of actions:

Continue reading “Apple adds Shortcuts for Mac support to Pages, Numbers, Keynote”
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Apps Links Offsite Video

Walking through the Home app (with Joey Banks)

On Thursday March 25, I streamed with my designer friend Joey Banks and walked him through some of the oddities of the Home app, working on scenes, grouping devices, and HomeKit automations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie5DZ_p_6F4

Catch the replay on YouTube – and add my livestream calendar to tune into future streams.

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Transit’s Apple Watch app returns after two-year hiatus

Jon Fingas, writing for Endgaget about Transit for iOS releasing a new version of their Apple Watch app:

The popular public transportation tool is now a native app, of course, but it also gives you considerably more detail than just arrival times, including future arrivals and a map indicating where to go. 

I’m glad to see more apps slowly returning to the Apple Watch (or adopting it for the first time). Will be trying this out over the weekend ?.

Read the full article.

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Apps

New DuetCam app shoots video with both cameras at once

Today, as first noticed by 9to5Mac, developer Marcel Schmitz launched a brand new app called DuetCam for $2.99 that takes advantage of iOS 13’s ability to record video with both the front-facing camera and one of the back cameras at the same time.

Schmitz’ app basically lets you film what’s in front of you while also recording yourself in a smaller picture-in-picture box, creating an immersive experience where you can talk to the camera while showing what you’re looking at.

Continue reading “New DuetCam app shoots video with both cameras at once”
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Apps Links Tips & Tricks

Audible update lets you use credits to buy books in iOS app

In the latest app update on iOS, Audible now lets users actually buy audiobooks inside the app using existing credits.

According to a tweet from Chris Fralic of First Round (originally sourced by Joshua Topolosky of The Outline), the “Add to Library” button in Audible will show the message “You can now use credits without leaving the app!”:

Continue reading “Audible update lets you use credits to buy books in iOS app”
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Apps Links Tips & Tricks

“Make your Mac dance” with MacSparky’s Keyboard Maestro Field Guide

Yesterday, David Sparks released the Keyboard Maestro Field Guide, the seventh paid course offered through his Learn MacSparky site1. This 4-hour block of videos covers 76 different screencasts about Keyboard Maestro, the Mac automation application that provides significantly deep capabilities and makes them available to use across your Apple desktop or laptop.

As usual, David’s course is well-paced, insightful, and makes it easy to learn complex topics like Keyboard Maestro’s slightly esoteric design language.

Continue reading ““Make your Mac dance” with MacSparky’s Keyboard Maestro Field Guide”
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Apps

Reeder is back and better than ever (my new favorite RSS app)

Want to read this in iBooks? Get an ePub of this article here and use this shortcut to extract from the .zip.

iPad users who have been holding out hope for an update to Reeder for iOS can relax – a new version was released today with full support for all devices on all platforms and some interesting new features.

See, previously, Reeder 3 wasn’t updated for the new iPad Pro models – after 7 months without proper support in sight, many iOS power users like me sought out new RSS readers. And while apparently Reeder 3 had resolved layout issues a month ago, I had honestly already deleted it since it didn’t work on half my devices.

But that all changes today with the latest release of Reeder 4.

Reeder 4 for iPad Pro 12.9″ in both Light and Dark modes.

Available as a new purchase costing $4.99 on the App Store and $9.99 on the Mac App Store, bringing with it a refreshed design, some unique reading features, and a unified code base across iOS and Mac that will make it easier to update in the future.

I bought the app as soon as I heard about it this morning – here’s why I think my money was well-spent.

Table of contents

  • Why I like Reeder
    • The Many Views of Reeder
    • Styling
    • Customization and control
  • New features
    • Redesigned
    • Bionic Reading
    • Instapaper Tags
    • Read Later
  • Small changes
  • Keyboard shortcuts adjustments
  • Ideas for expansion
  • Conclusion
Continue reading “Reeder is back and better than ever (my new favorite RSS app)”