Author: Matthew Cassinelli

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Apps Links

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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Links

How to Use Custom File Names for Screenshots on an iPhone »

Yash Wate for MakeUseOf:

Apple uses a default naming scheme for all kinds of image files, including screenshots, on the iPhone. But for many of us, this isn’t ideal.

Thankfully, there’s a trick to get around this and use custom file names for your screenshots on the iPhone. It involves setting up a shortcut in the Shortcuts app.

View the full story on MakeUseOf.

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Links

If Apple wants its headset to win, it needs to reinvent the app »

David Pierce for The Verge (line breaks added for emphasis):

If you squint a little, you can see the larger vision here. Apple imagines an app ecosystem in which data flows freely between devices: you take a picture here, edit it there, share it over there, save it in that place, all with a few drags and drops.

It wants to make apps work between and across your devices.

You should be able to access your apps and the data inside them from just about anywhere on your device.

In Apple’s wildest dreams, apps aren’t each their own universe; they’re like stars in a solar system, each one part of a larger coherent thing.

Sounds like App Intents to me.

Read the full story on The Verge.

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Links

7 ways Apple is already a major player in AI »

Mahmoud Itani for XDA:

Siri Shortcuts is a prominent example of how Apple has already deployed some major AI features. This offering works by offering recommendations based on your location, app usage, habits, time of the day, and more. So, for example, iOS has learned about my commuting habits and surfaces the playlist I typically stream when on the go at the relevant time of day.

Similarly, if you have an upcoming flight in your Calendar app, then the trip number and its updates will surface in Spotlight Search. Additionally, Apple Wallet may surface your saved boarding pass when the time comes. That’s not to mention that Maps could suggest directions to the correct airport, and Weather may display the forecast of your destination.

Siri Shortcuts can appear in the Notification Center, Spotlight Search, Siri Shortcuts widget, and other locations. After using your device for a while, you will notice the system suggesting all sorts of different actions and useful information based on your usual habits.

View the full story on XDA.

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Links

Tasks to-do app gets major update with collaboration, more »

Felipe Esposito of 9to5Mac:

Tasks is one of my favorite to-do apps, and it has evolved a lot since I first wrote about it here on 9to5Mac. This week, Tasks was updated to version 3.0, which comes with a new design for the iOS app, a completely rebuilt macOS app, and new features like Tasks Cloud and collaboration

Plus, the goods:

Tasks has everything you expect from a great iOS and macOS app. It supports Dark Mode, drag-and-drop gestures, mouse and trackpad, multiple windows on iPad, and more. The app is even optimized for iPhone models with larger displays, featuring a two-column landscape layout. There’s also support for Siri Shortcuts, widgets, and Time Sensitive Notifications.

Congrats to developer Mustafa Yusuf on the big launch!

Get Tasks on the App Store and read about the update on 9to5Mac.

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Links

How to Enable iPhone Orientation Lock for Specific Apps »

Darryl Dsouza for MacObserver:

When you enable iPhone Orientation Lock it prevents the device from switching to landscape mode every time you tilt it. However, Orientation Lock does not turn on and off based on the apps you’re using. Moreover, iOS doesn’t even provide an option to set up Orientation Lock separately for individual apps. And, this gets really frustrating because you have to access the Control Center and toggle it on and off depending on the app.

Fortunately, you can set up automation through the Shortcuts app that will automatically toggle on or off Orientation Lock based on the app you’re currently using.

View the full story on MacObserver.

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Automations Shortcuts

How To Play A Headphones-Only Alarm On iPhone

@Esther on Mastodon:

Finally figured out how to play an alarm only through headphones on an #iPhone and NOT through speakers (for example when sleeping on a train and you don’t want to miss your stop but also not annoy others):

Open #iOS #Shortcuts, create an automation with a timer and have it play a music track that’ll wake you up. Turn off “ask before running” and “notify when run”.

Connect your headphones, set a good volume, and have a nap.

(Just don’t forget to disable it or else it’ll go off the next day too)

This is a great idea – to add onto it, you could also use the Alarm automation, set it to an “Existing” alarm, then choose one of your own Alarms and set the Sound to “None.”

That way, you can still snooze, toggle the alarm on/off regularly as needed, and avoid needing to disable the Automation each time – it’ll play Music from your Personal Automation instead of any alarm tone, headphones or not.

Otherwise, you could normally just have picked a Song in the Alarm menu – but this Automation also lets you choose playlists, radio stations, podcasts, or anything else you can think of!

View the original post on Mastodon.

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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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Links

Use This Automation To Protect Your iPhone If Stolen While Unlocked

Diego Jimenez on Twitter:

I made a quick Automation to protect my iPhone if someone steals it while unlocked:
If they turn on Airplane Mode (Find My), it asks for a passcode.
If wrong… it automatically locks the phone 🔒, turns ON all connectivity 📡 + Low Power Mode 🔋, and shares its current location📍

This is a clever use of the newest “Lock Screen” action available in iOS 16.5 – it’s a Personal Automation set up for the Airplane Mode trigger.

If your phone is already locked, a thief can’t get in to disable Find My; but, if your phone is grabbed out of your hands after entering your passcode, this shortcut will reverse any attempts to wipe the device, plus fully lock them out while enabling you to continue tracking it.

View the demo video on Twitter and check the ongoing thread for the latest version.

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Links

How to Automate Your Life With Apple’s Shortcuts App »

Lance Whitney for PCMag:

You probably spend a lot of time on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac running one task after another after another across a variety of apps. Think how much time you could save if you automated those tasks or combined them into a single action. You can do all that and more with Apple’s Shortcuts app.

This resource covers all the basics of Shortcuts – like how to run a shortcut, create a shortcut, create an automation, add shortcuts to the share sheet/widget/Apple Watch, and how to find shortcuts online.

Read the full story on PCMag.

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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 Links Shortcuts

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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How To

How to coordinate across timezones in Discord with timestamps

If you’re trying to coordinate with other folks over Discord, you might run into timezone issues – often people in disparate communities live all across the world, and trying to specify exactly when everyone should arrive in their relative time can actually prove to be quite hard.

Thankfully, the folks at Discord ran into this enough themselves that a solution is actually built into the application: a special <t:{timestamp}> message (plus an optional :{format} you can append).

Once you send this timestamp, each person will see the correct time in their timezone. Great!

Now you just need a timestamp… which you can get… how??

Oddly, Discord has no way of actually creating this message itself – it requires a Unix timestamp, which seems to be intended for developers who might be programming a chatbot, for example, rather than everyday users.

Thankfully, you can create that timestamp—and take advantage of Discord’s formatting options—using Apple’s Shortcuts app. Here’s how (plus, what a Unix timestamp really is in the first place):

Continue reading “How to coordinate across timezones in Discord with timestamps”
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How To Shortcuts

How to quickly link all your YouTube chapter markers using Shortcuts

Earlier this week, I was putting together my “offsite” blog post for the YouTube stream I recorded while editing in Final Cut Pro for iPad and wanted to make a linked list of all the chapter markers that I added to the livestream.

Each chapter on YouTube must be formatted as a timecode, but making YouTube links to specific timestamps requires a “total seconds” value at the end of the URL, like &amp;t=3600 – something I wasn’t about to do manually for all 90 chapters.

In order to convert everything to the right format quickly and generate URLs to each chapter, I built two shortcuts:

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Links Offsite

90 Moments Testing Final Cut Pro for iPad Live

Last Thursday, I streamed a live test of Apple’s new release of Final Cut Pro for iPad for about 2 hours, covering:

  • learning the interface
  • marking Ins/Outs while importing
  • fine edits with the jog wheel
  • workflow considerations,
  • and much more

Overall, I added 90 chapter markers at each significant moment in the stream, so jump into the video and skip around to the bits that you’re interested in watching – I had some genuine moments of joy while discovering new features, like this one:

Here’s the full list of chapters:

Continue reading “90 Moments Testing Final Cut Pro for iPad Live”
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News

What’s New in Shortcuts in iOS and iPadOS 16.5, macOS 13.4, and watchOS 9.5 »

From the Apple Support website:

This update includes enhancements to existing actions and reliability improvements to editing and running shortcuts.

Updated Actions

  • Send Message now supports images and attachments when “Show When Run” is off
  • Make Rich Text From Markdown now displays a preview instead of an HTML file on macOS
  • Ask For Input now correctly uses the “Default Date” when asking for dates
  • Calculate now correctly computes Modulus operations for decimal numbers
  • Choose From List now supports “Select All Initially” when a dictionary is passed in as input, and works from Siri on watchOS when “Select Multiple” is on
  • Open URL correctly handles URLs that contain variables, and now works from the Action Button on watchOS
  • Take Photo runs more reliably when “Show Camera Preview” is off

View the release notes on Apple.com.

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Membership

Notes on “Design great actions for Shortcuts, Siri, and Suggestions” 🔒

Hey members,

I wanted to share this mind map of notes I created while watching Apple’s Developer session from WWDC ’21 on how to Design great actions for Shortcuts, Siri, and Suggestions.

The session is focused on how developers can build out a set of actions for their app, but it actually provides a lot of insight into how “Shortcuts authors” (as we are called in the session) can build their shortcuts thoughtfully – here’s the last slide:

I noticed at least 10 individual topics I’d like to cover for members in future posts, but I wanted to share my full mind map ahead of time in case you wanted to watch the session and read along yourself:

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Offsite

Guest spot — iOS Today #652: Pro Tips & Tricks For Your iPhone, iPad, and More!

On Tuesday, May 2, I had the pleasure of joining TWiT as a guest on iOS Today to talk about our latest tips, tricks, and, of course, Shortcuts:

iOS is deep, super deep. So what are some extra special ways to tap into its power with expert precision? Rosemary Orchard and Matthew Cassinelli take you there with a few extra key tips and shortcuts that’ll give you total control.

Check out iOS Today in Apple Podcasts or listen to the episode below:

Continue reading “Guest spot — iOS Today #652: Pro Tips & Tricks For Your iPhone, iPad, and More!”
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Links

Shortcut to set Alarms for today’s Calendar events »

Twitter user @LoriTira shared this shortcut for set Clock alarms for today’s Calendar events:

The shortcut looks at all the upcoming events for the next day and repeats through the list, subtracting 5 minutes from the start time and setting your alarm so you have time to get ready before the meeting starts.

As someone who doesn’t often have meetings and doesn’t need to check their calendar every day, I could see this being useful as a daily Automation to alert me to the occasional call I might’ve missed on my schedule.

Get the shortcut from LoriTira’s tweet.

P.S. Add additional Filters to add more criteria, like specifying only a certain set of Calendars or “Is Not All Day” events.