MacStories Weekly: Issue 81

In this issue: Pocket Casts, Hand Drawn Sticker Packs, Tim Nahumck’s Home screen, an interview with Jelly Bean Soup, plus the usual Workflow Corner, Weekly Q&A, Tip, Links, stickers, App Debuts, and recap of MacStories articles.

MACSTORIES RECOMMENDS

Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.

Pocket Casts

Ryan

iOS has no shortage of great apps for listening to podcasts. Besides Apple’s native Podcasts app, which is more powerful than many people realize, a couple of the more well-regarded options are Overcast and Castro, and Pocket Casts stands right alongside them in the top tier of apps.

Often podcast clients are known for a particular hallmark feature, such as Smart Speed in Overcast, or the triage system in Castro; Pocket Casts is not strongly associated with any single feature, but there is one thing that I find makes it unique: its strong filtering system. The main menu of the app includes several standard navigation options, but you can also create your own in the form of a filter. Tap the app’s ‘Create Episode Filter’ option to craft a custom filter that will be listed prominently in the navigation menu. Each filter can contain its own custom name, icon, accent color, and sort order. And with each one you create, you can adjust an assortment of granular details for controlling which podcasts show up in that filter. Options include:

Playing state (Unplayed, Unfinished, and/or Played)
Status (Downloaded and/or Not Downloaded)
Episode type (Audio and/or Video)
Episode release date
Included podcasts
Starred

This rich set of tools allows you to create a variety of filters, each of which will only contain the podcasts that match all criteria. If you only listen to a handful of shows, these tools will likely be overkill for you, but anyone subscribed to a wide variety of shows will find a lot of power and flexibility here in customizing the app to their liking.

Although the rich filter options make Pocket Casts unique, they are only a small part of the app’s strengths. It features a clean, beautiful design – in both light and dark themes. This is complemented by a smooth, responsive interface. The app is available on both iPhone and iPad, as well as Android. Podcast playback benefits from the options to trim silence and boost volume, the less-branded equivalents Overcast’s Smart Speed and Voice Boost. There’s chapter support, aided by useful buttons on the Now Playing screen to quickly skip ahead chapter by chapter. There’s even a type of queuing system with the Up Next list, accessible with a simple swipe on Now Playing.

Stack it up against any competing podcast client, and you’ll likely have a hard time finding anything missing from Pocket Casts. It’s been around a long time, and consistently remains one of the best podcasting apps on the App Store.

MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS

Hand Drawn Sticker Packs

John

We’ve seen a lot of trends develop on the iMessage App Store since it was introduced with the release of iOS 10. One of my favorites is sticker packs with an intentionally hand-drawn, doodle, or sketch style. It’s an approach that adds a homemade feel to messages – a touch of the analog world in a digital sea of text, which is refreshing and fun.

The New Yorker Today

The New Yorker is known for its cartoons. This is a small set of animated, black and white stickers that are full of personality. Each has a distinctive New Yorker feel with dark, bold lines and a touch of humor. My favorites are the cup of coffee with a mushroom cloud rising above it, the stick figure running after the subway, and the dinosaur eating a skyscraper.

Pencil Doodles

Pencil Doodles are the epitome of what I like about hand-drawn stickers. The name says it all. Each sticker looks like a doodle in a notebook. There’s everything from messages like ‘Yes!’ and ‘Congrats’ to arrows and coffee cups. Pencil Doodles is a big set that’s great for transforming a conversation, so it looks like it took place in the margin of a book.

MarcyMoji

MarcyMoji are more colorful than most of the other sticker packs featured in this collection and have been a MacStories favorite from the beginning. The stickers are an eclectic mix of objects with a slightly retro vibe to them. The collection comes with 30 free stickers with additional packs available as In-App Purchases or a monthly subscription. If you haven’t read it, check out Ryan’s profile on the couple who created and are constantly updating MarcyMoji while bicycling across Southeast Asia. It’s a great story to go along with one of my favorite hand-drawn sticker packs.

Bright Eyes

Add expressive eyes, a nose, and mouth to almost anything. There’s a lot of movement going on in these faces, which make them come alive. They share some common ground with standard emoji, but the big, bold expressions make them unique and well-suited for getting your point across with style.

Banana Animated Stickers

Banana Animated Stickers is one of the strangest packs I’ve downloaded. Each features a black and white cartoon screen dominated by a yellow banana that’s been substituted into the scene to replace everything from a guitar to bicycle wheels. The one where a banana is substituted in for the fin of a circling shark is my favorite of the bunch.

Libuny

Libuny is a strangely squarish rabbit with a nearly expressionless face. The pack works because the unruffled bunny is put in all sorts of humorous settings that convey emotion or a simple message in a minimalistic way.

Rag Tag Classic Pack

Rag Tag’s dancing bacon is still an all-time favorite of mine, but this sticker pack has a lot of other charming hand-drawn stickers that are fun to use. The mic drop, thumbs up, and robot are always handy.

Hidden Folks

The Hidden Folks’ sticker pack is full of the tiny characters and items from the iOS game. Many of the stickers are animated, but what’s unique is that they’re tiny, just like in the game. With such small stickers, it’s easy to set up a whole scene with several stickers or just have an alligator chomping away at the end of a sentence without obscuring your text. If you use the animated ones sparingly, your recipient may not even notice these stickers until a subtle movement catches their eye and then they’ll be searching your messages for more characters, just as they’d do in the game.

Crapmojis

Crapmojis are crudely drawn but charming all the same. The drawings are simple, but fun renditions of smiley emojis. They add a little personal flare to familiar smileys that bring them to life and make each a good alternative to your favorite, but probably overused, emojis.

TIPS

Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.

Easily Dial Extensions on an iPhone

Ryan

If you regularly call a number that requires you to enter an extension to contact the person you’re trying to reach, iOS has a hidden trick to simplify the job. In the appropriate entry in Contacts, at the end of the phone number, press the +*# button in the lower left corner, then hit ‘pause’ followed by the extension number. This will cause your phone to dial the number, wait two seconds, then automatically dial the correct extension whenever you call. If you need it to wait more than two seconds, you can hit ‘pause’ multiple times in the Contacts entry to prolong the delay.

SHORTCUTS CORNER

Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.

Shortcuts Essentials

Automating File Conversions with CloudConvert

Federico

The most common questions from Club MacStories members involve some kind of file conversion. Whether it’s about converting PDFs to images (by far, the most frequent request we receive for this column) or exporting documents to formats that aren’t natively supported on iOS, I’ve read dozens of emails about converting files with Workflow over the past few months. I know what my solution was going to look like in the end, but I also wanted to take my time to do it right and provide a full-featured workflow that would solve everyone’s problems. This week, after I was done with my iOS 11 concept and before leaving for WWDC, I finally had the time to create the workflow I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I’ve been using a service called CloudConvert to handle “special” file conversions for the past year or so. CloudConvert is a web app and an API that integrates with other automation tools (such as Zapier) to receive files, convert them in the cloud, and feed them back to you in a different format. While a web service for file conversions may seem redundant, consider this: CloudConvert supports over 200 file types, and it can queue multiple conversions in the background and notify you when they’re done with a link to download the converted file. This means that it doesn’t matter if you don’t have an app that can convert PDFs to PNGs, and it won’t be an issue if your old iPad is too slow to encode a 200 MB .MOV video file to .MP4 – CloudConvert can process the conversion in the cloud on your behalf. CloudConvert’s support for multiple file formats (some examples: 3GP, FLAC, and even Numbers/Pages files), combined with its extensible platform, makes it possible to send anything we want to the service and integrate its API directly with Workflow on iOS.

Before I dig into the details of the workflows I created, I should mention that CloudConvert is a web service that requires you to upload files for conversion. You should be aware of this if you’re dealing with private documents that you wouldn’t want to be stored on any cloud service. I recommend reading CloudConvert’s privacy policy to understand how they will process your files. In addition, while CloudConvert can be used as a free service, there are daily limits for free users, and longer and more time-consuming conversions will require you to purchase paid packs of “conversion minutes”. There’s also a subscription option if prepaid packages aren’t enough for you.

The CloudConvert API can be used in web apps that display the status of a conversion in real-time and that embed native options to download converted files. Obviously, I wanted to offer something more straightforward in Workflow and that could integrate nicely with iOS apps, the share sheet, and the document picker. What I ended up creating is a CloudConvert workflow that supports converting both webpages (as URLs shared with the extension) and files (chosen from the document picker) and that previews the converted file inside Workflow, allowing you to share the result instantly with other apps.

Before running the workflow, you’ll have to get your CloudConvert API key. You can find yours here after creating a CloudConvert account. As with other web-based workflows I’ve shared before, I recommend fetching the key from a text file in iCloud Drive rather than pasting it as plain text in a workflow. You can use this workflow to save the API key to a file named ‘CloudConvert.txt’ into iCloud Drive/Workflow/Logins.

The workflow supports converting both websites to images or PDF, as well as any other file type mentioned on CloudConvert’s website. At the beginning of the workflow, a ‘Get URLs from Input’ action tries to filter a URL received from the action extension; if a URL isn’t found, the workflow assumes you didn’t run it via the action extension and thus didn’t want to convert a webpage. In that case, the workflow will present the document picker instead, allowing you to pick any file you want from any storage location on your device.

Filtering URLs at the beginning of the workflow.

It was essential to keep the website and file conversions separate when the workflow starts because websites can only be converted to a subset of formats supported by CloudConvert. So while a webpage from Safari will only show three possible output options (JPG, PNG, and PDF), other files will present a longer menu with more popular choices, with an option to type a file extension manually. You can modify this list of file extensions to include anything you want as long as it matches the supported types described here.

Different conversion options for files and websites.

Once the workflow has a file (both websites and actual documents are treated as “files” in the API), a name, and extensions for input and output, a call to the CloudConvert API will be made to start a conversion process.

Starting a conversion process from Workflow.

Starting a process is an intermediary step that authenticates you with CloudConvert and checks whether the conversion you requested is possible. If you passed a conversion that isn’t available – such as converting an MP3 to EPUB – you’ll get an error message from CloudConvert and the workflow will stop. If the conversion can be made, CloudConvert will generate a process URL and move onto the actual POST request to perform the conversion.

The second ‘Get Contents of URL’ action is the one that passes the file to CloudConvert with specific parameters. A variable defines whether the “file” should be a URL or a base64-encoded file selected via the document picker; similarly, variables set in the initial If block provide the file name and extension that CloudConvert needs (amusingly, URLs have a “.website” file extension in the API). The output format is the extension selected from the list at the beginning.

CloudConvert’s conversion happening in Workflow.

I set this API action so that Workflow can wait while the conversion is occurring in the cloud and visualize the result inline with a Quick Look preview. In addition, the converted file will be saved in your CloudConvert dashboard and you’ll get an email notification with a link to download the converted file. This system ensures that files large and small can be passed by Workflow to CloudConvert and previewed inside the app after a conversion has been successful.

At the end, you can choose to share the converted file from the Quick Look preview itself or from the subsequent ‘Open In…’ menu.

From PDF to EPUB with CloudConvert in Workflow.

You can also customize the workflow if you don’t want to wait with the app open while the conversion is processing. To do so, delete the wait and download parameters from the action, delete the ‘Quick Look’ and ‘Open In…’ actions, and the workflow will simply send a file to CloudConvert. You’ll receive an email notification when the conversion is complete.

I tested this workflow with a variety of input files, and it always worked well. I converted .3gp videos from an old Nokia phone and received an .mp4 video file I could play in Workflow and save to the Photos app. I turned a note from Bear into a PDF and then converted the document to EPUB, which I sent to iBooks. The workflow successfully converted Numbers spreadsheets to JPEGs, .mp3 episodes from AppStories to .aac, and a .mov file of our concept video back to .mp4 – all through the CloudConvert API.

Bonus: Compress PDFs

In addition to converting files between formats, the CloudConvert API supports other modes, some of which I plan to explore in future issues of MacStories Weekly. However, one mode in particular stood out to me as it relates to another common request from Club members: compressing PDFs to reduce their size.

A compressed PDF returned by CloudConvert.

As a bonus for this week’s Workflow Corner, I created a separate workflow to upload a PDF to CloudConvert and receive a compressed version that can be saved elsewhere. The workflow is based on the main one detailed above: your CloudConvert API key is fetched from a text file, and you’ll have to choose a PDF file from the iCloud Drive document picker. The API calls are mostly the same, except that this workflow uses mode=compress to tell CloudConvert to optimize a PDF. As with the other workflow, you’ll be presented with a Quick Look preview after the conversion has finished, so you can hit the Share icon to copy the compressed PDF in other apps.

In my tests, CloudConvert successfully compressed PDFs up to 20%, but I haven’t been able to test with documents containing lots of graphics or spanning thousands of pages. You may be able to get even better results with heavier documents.

I’m aware of native iOS apps that can convert multiple file types (including CloudConvert’s own client), but I wanted to create a system that supported automation and the service’s API. CloudConvert is a powerful service that abstracts much of the complexity (and computing time) involved with converting and encoding files to different formats. If you have to deal with file conversions on iOS regularly, I strongly recommend Workflow and CloudConvert to save precious time.

You can get the workflows here:

Submit a Workflow Request

Submit a Shortcut Request

WEEKLY Q&A

Your weekly correspondence with the MacStories team.

Question: Is there any way I can mimic Evernote’s Presentation Mode? They recently removed this great feature. It basically spaced out your text and cleaned up your screen to easily view your note. I just purchased DEVONthink for iOS and I’d love to find a way to take a rich text note and clean it up. Any ideas? (Andrew, @andreweml)

Ryan

Presentation Mode was a great feature on iOS, and I hope Evernote adds it back in the future. Unfortunately there’s no good way to replicate it using DEVONthink, but another app you may be interested in trying is Scrivener. It’s a rich-text editor that contains a wide array of options for formatting text, making it possible to closely duplicate the beautiful simplicity of Presentation Mode. There’s a setting for Text Width, where you can choose from Paperback, Page, Wide, and Full settings. When writing, you can select from a variety of Paragraph Format Presets to create different headings and other distinct categories of content. One of my favorite features is the way you can easily adjust text size using pinch-to-zoom anywhere on-screen, so you could keep text smaller while writing, then quickly blow it up for a nicer reading experience. These options, combined with a wealth of other settings available to tweak to your heart’s content, may be the closest you can get on iOS to recreating that Presentation Mode look.

Question: How can I stay up to date on the new apps in the App Store? (Ramón, @rcanet62)

John

I’m biased, but two great places to start are MacStories and Club MacStories because so much of our coverage is dedicated to apps, but there are lots of other ways to stay up to date about apps too. Developers contact us, which is one way we discover new apps that we think would interest readers, but I also spend a lot of time looking through the App Store. Apple’s curation of apps has improved a lot, but the store is too big and cumbersome to rely on exclusively as a way to stay up to date, so I also mine Twitter for new apps to try by following other people who are also interested in apps. Another good resource is Product Hunt. Because it incorporates a voting system, the most interesting apps tend to rise to the top of the Product Hunt heap quickly.

Submit your own question

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

Fast Company interviewed John Giannandrea, Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering to talk about how Google is bringing AI to its products, cloud services, mobile devices, and the open source community. (Link)

Intel is building Thunderbolt 3 support into its CPUs and offering the specification to third parties royalty-free next year as a way of trying to accelerate adoption of the port. (Link)

Belkin will roll out HomeKit integration for its WeMo line of products later this year with WeMo Bridge, which will directly communicate with the HomeKit protocol and translate commands for legacy WeMo accessories. (Link)

Owen Williams on replacing essential Mac apps with Windows counterparts. Williams switched from macOS to Windows and is writing a series about the transition. (Link)

Google Photos and iCloud Photo Library, compared by Jason Snell at Macworld. Google recently introduced major changes to sharing for Google Photos, which make it easy to share albums and entire libraries with friends and family members. (Link)

Walt Mossberg’s last weekly column takes a look at how tech has changed since 1991 and considers the rise of ambient computing. (Link)

Jeremy Burge, king of emoji, tests inTextMoji – an app that installs a custom font on iOS to send alternative emoji in text messages. Clever workaround. (Link)

THE ALBUM

We love stickers in iMessage, and here we'll share some of our favorites.

John

Fingerprint Me

Fingerprint characters are a fun art project to do with kids. These stickers leave the mess behind and let you share these cute cartoon characters in your conversations.

Animated Pipe Machine

This set of stickers doesn’t screenshot well, but it’s a fun way to connect messages in a conversation with leaky pipes. Connected to blue iMessage bubbles, these stickers create the illusion that water is dripping from your messages.

My Doodlecats

These stickers fit in nicely with this week’s Collection. Each hand-drawn cat is full of animated personality. Cool cat is my favorite.

Mixtape Stickers

I have a soft spot in my heart for mixtapes. Unlike Federico though, my first mixtapes were on cassettes (usually TDK SA-X 90s). These colorful stickers capture the look and feel of cassette mixtapes, but with messages written on their labels instead of a mixtape name.

Punny Animals

Groan-worthy animal puns. Okay, some are not technically puns, but the artwork is cute, and the messages made me chuckle.

[[federico]]

Spoopy Squad

A collection of poop-inspired stickers featuring little monsters with various emotions. These are actually quite lovely.

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Ryan

Castro

My podcast player of choice received a nice update today to version 2.4. The standout feature of the update is called Enhanced Audio, a feature similar to Overcast’s ‘Voice Boost’ that aims to improve the listening experience in a couple different ways. When a podcast features voices playing at different levels, Enhanced Audio helps bring everything into greater balance, and it also works to simply make all voices louder and easier to hear in noisy environments. Other improvements in 2.4 include the Continuous Play toggle moving to the playback screen, the CarPlay app removing tabs, and support for iOS 10.3’s new rating prompt.

John

Synchronicity

Synchronicity lets you compare your music library with friends. You can compare with nearby friends or use iMessage to do the same. If you have a big library, it takes a little while to generate a message, but once it’s sent, a friend with the app can see how much overlap there is between your libraries broken down by artists, albums, and songs. You can also listen to music and purchase it on the iTunes Store from within Synchronicity. I tried the app with Federico, and 45% of our music libraries are the same. I’m not sure how useful that information is, but it was still fun to browse through some of the artists to see which we have in common.

Handy Keyboard

If you’re an iPad user and miss the split keyboard on your 12.9-inch iPad Pro, you might want to give the Handy Keyboard a try. The on-screen keyboard is split in the middle with half of the keys reachable by each of your thumbs. There are also dark and light modes that can be toggled depending on which you prefer. There isn’t much to Handy other than that, but if you’ve missed the split keyboard, this third-party option is worth a look.

ImageFramer

ImageFramer from Apparent Software received a big update this week. Version 4.0 lets you place virtual frames around your digital photographs. There are hundreds of frame styles from which to choose, extensions for Photoshop and Apple’s Photos app, and loads of adjustments that can be made to each frame, so your pictures look their best.

The update adds batch processing to the Pro version of the app so you can apply templates to multiple photographs at one time. Frames you design can now be exported from ImageFramer as standalone files that can be shared with others or even sold. Import functionality has also been added to make it simple to bring shared frames into your copy of the app. There is a long list of usability and other improvements made to version 4.0 that you can check out here.

Poster

Poster is a handy desktop app for viewing Instagram. Under the hood, the app is using Nativefier, which can turn any web app into a native app. The web view experience isn’t perfect. I was prompted several times to open photos in the app (presumably because it thought I was on a mobile device with the Instagram app installed and not my MacBook Pro), but for a quick check of Instagram on your Mac, Poster, which is free to download, is useful.

Telegram got a big update with video messages and the ability to purchase things from bots. Video messages are circular video snippets you can take from within the Telegram messaging app and are added to a conversation. Video messages can also be used in public channels and are given a unique URL that can be shared beyond the Telegram service. Adding commerce to bots is an interesting way to keep users inside the Telegram app for all their needs.

Prison Architect: Mobile

Prison Architect is a highly-acclaimed prison construction and management simulation game from Introversion Software. The game has been around for quite a while on consoles, Windows, macOS, and Linux, but this week, it was released for the first time as a mobile app for iOS and Android. The iOS version of the top-down simulation is limited to the iPad and probably unlikely to gain iPhone support given the screen real estate needed to properly run a maximum security prison. The game is free to download and try, but to play the complete game requires an In-App Purchase of $14.99.

CLUB INTERVIEWS

A brief chat with friends of Club MacStories.

Jelly Bean Soup (née Daniel Farrelly)

Twitter: @jellybeansoup. Co-host of the independence podcast and creator of GIFwrapped.

Where did you get the nickname Jelly?

When I was a kid, our dog at the time was always having litters of puppies, and my sister and I would name every one. One such puppy ended up with the name “jellybeansoup”, which stuck with me until I signed up for my first online account as a teenager, and it’s been my online handle ever since.

Jelly, the name I am almost universally known by these days, is obviously a shortened version of that. Over the years I’ve gotten more and more comfortable introducing myself — and referring to myself — that way, and so it’s leaked into every facet of my life. These days, it’s more or less who I am and how people recognise me.

It’s also kinda handy when you have to give your name to a cashier. They can’t really mess it up too badly, and it’s a lot less common than “Daniel”.

How did you get your start in iOS development?

The first app I ever wrote was Progressions, which I started writing a couple of months after the iPhone 3Gs was released in Australia. At that time, I was working as a front-end web developer in a government agency and was super interested in what was happening in the mobile space.

I had no real clue as to what I was doing — mobile development is so different to web development — but after several months of working on the app in my downtime, I ended up just diving in and devoting a month of full-time work into finishing it, and released it just before the end of 2010. Looking back at that code now is like watching a horror movie, as I’ve learned so much since then — and the platform itself has changed a whole lot — but I can’t help but be thankful that I received that opportunity.

GIFs can be large files. How do you manage to handle large GIF libraries in GIFwrapped?

Large libraries are tricky! Some users have large files, which are hard to share, and others just have lots and lots and lots and lots of GIFs in their collection. To get it right, I constantly re-evaluate how things are managed, and make every attempt to improve everything from the Dropbox sync engine, to more conceptual things like providing tools to easily find and share GIFs.

The important factor has been to grow my own library to levels that I’m not necessarily comfortable with (my brain remembers all of two things at a time, neither of which is to eat lunch), and then to try and improve the app to compensate. It’s an ongoing process: things are by no means perfect. I have a lot of improvements in the pipeline already, and even more planned for later.

What have you learned from developing GIFwrapped and what’s next for the app?

Developing GIFwrapped has been a constant learning process, filled with more ups and downs than a rollercoaster with a death wish. One of the most important lessons has been that very little software is ever “finished”. Apps tend to be living things, growing and changing over time, adapting to users’ needs and desires, and reflecting the soul of their creators.

As a result, I’ve tried not to be shy about changing the app in ways that help my fellow GIF connoisseurs better manage their libraries, and I’m planning some big — and really cool — interface changes for later this year that will allow me to push that even further.

I’m also going to be pushing forward with my plan for “GIFwrapped everywhere” by adding more extensions and expanding the capabilities that GIFwrapped has for interacting with other apps.

Tell me about your new podcast ‘Independence.’ What’s it about? Who’s it for? Who are your co-hosts?

For as long as I can remember, working on my own stuff has been something that I’ve wanted to achieve in my life, but it’s a big leap to go from “I wrote an app and put it on the store” to “I make my living from this”. Independence, which I co-host along with Belle B. Cooper and Curtis Herbert, looks at the various ins and outs of actually being indie and everything that entails. We’ll be discussing the everyday decisions indies have to deal with, and attempt to make those conversations useful and informative.

Honestly, I’m just looking to learn as much as I can from my two incredibly talented, savvy and attractive co-hosts. As much as this podcast is to sow back into the community, for me it’s an opportunity to discuss and learn about successfully being an independent developer so I can improve my own practices.

What would you like to see introduced during the WWDC keynote this year?

Last year, we saw Apple more than double the number of extension points available to developers, with iMessage apps, Siri intents, and the like. As far as I’m concerned, iOS can still do a lot to improve interaction between apps. It would seem that they have plans to do so (they purchased Workflow, didn’t they?), and it’d be amazing to see something as simple as the ability to provide actions for Workflow from within apps, the way action or share extensions are.

HOME SCREENS

Friends of MacStories share their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch Home screens.

Tim Nahumck

Twitter: @nahumck. Co-host of the Fundamentally Broken podcast and author of nahumck.me

Setting up Home screens can be a huge mental burden. Choosing the right wallpaper, layouts, apps, etc. can be painstaking for some. For me, creating the ideal Home screen layout starts with the wallpaper. My current wallpaper is one that I found via Twitter, and I use it on both my iPhone and iPad Pro. I tend to prefer darker backgrounds, even if it has some splashes of color.

From there, I move on to my Docks. My iPhone Dock has remained unchanged for quite some time. I am in the three-icon camp when it comes to my Dock. At the center of my Dock, and therefore all of my productivity, is Drafts: I know, I know — you’re shocked. Drafts is always at the center, and is by far my favorite and most-used app on iOS. It’s the only app that I can’t imagine not having on my devices, and I would be lost without it. Flanking it are Messages and my task management app of choice at any particular time; currently, this happens to be OmniFocus as I’m studying GTD, but it often changes depending on the state of my life.

My iPad Pro Dock has five apps: Workflow, OmniFocus, Safari, Messages, and Drafts. I keep Workflow and Drafts on the outer corners so that I can quickly reach up from my Logitech Create Keyboard to access parts of my workflow. The Dock is specific to the way I use this device, and while it’s not the exact same layout as the iPhone, it serves its function well.

The rest of my Home screen often changes, but what I tend to do is focus on making the layout functional. For example, having Workflow and Settings.app on the right of my iPhone layout means that I can easily 3D Touch on those icons; the same can be said for the bottom row of the iPhone Home screen as well. On the iPad, I try to be cognizant of the accessibility of the apps from my keyboard without too much effort to increase my efficiency. Once I have that part set, I try as best I can to organize the apps in a way that looks presentable. It’s an ever-evolving process, as apps may change or shift in priority for me.

Aside from the Dock apps, I have some essential apps on both devices:

1Password: The best password manager available.
Settings: I have this on the screen for quick access; on the iPhone, it’s great for 3D Touch access to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Battery settings.
Notes.app: This is for long-term notes, notes that require documents attached, or shared notes with others. I’ve been using a single note for my read-later needs, meal planning, and use it for the show notes for the podcast.
Ulysses: This is used for most of my writing. I really like the way I can visualize the text when I write, applying color to differentiate syntaxes. The publication option directly from Ulysses to my WordPress-powered blog is phenomenal. The sync between the iPhone and iPad is seamless. While my ideas may start in Drafts, I can quickly send over my thoughts to expand on them later.
ecobee: We just got a new ecobee3 Wi-Fi Thermostat, and I’m messing around a lot with the apps on both the iPhone and iPad.
Slack: For group communication. I’ve made some fantastic connections using it.
Tweetbot: My Twitter client of choice.
DEVONthink: I’m trying to get more into this app. It’s something that many others have said is phenomenal, and I’m anxious to really get into it. It’s on my Home screens to remind me to get after it.
AnyList: This is the app I use for my grocery shopping. List sharing with my wife and oldest son is great for compiling the grocery list. I use my Apple Watch as I shop so I don’t have to pull out my phone.
MindNode: I’ve been using this app more and more as of late. With my day job being as busy as it has been, my thoughts on most topics have been scattered. MindNode allows me to gather these thoughts and focus them into something more coherent. I’m going to be using this as a starting point for a big review I have planned for the fall, and I’m anxious to see how that all works out.

I generally listen to audio on my iPhone: Music.app for music, Audible for audiobooks, and Pocket Casts for podcasts; the only time I might listen to audio on my iPad is through TV.app, which gives me access to all the video apps I use on iOS. I also only use my iPhone for fitness-related apps in conjunction with the Apple Watch. The only other app that I specifically use on my iPhone over my iPad is Calendar.app. Yes, I use the stock Calendar app. It suits my needs just fine, and with the ability to set Travel Time reminders, it’s more useful for the calendar needs of myself and my family.

Now that I finally have my iPad Pro, there are some workflows that are changing for me. A few notable examples are with reading and editing. I tend to read all of my news and current books on the iPad via News.app and iBooks, respectively: I’ll typically have Drafts and Safari/News/iBooks in Split View to take notes as I go. I edit my podcast Fundamentally Broken, and every bit of it has been done in Ferrite. It’s a really amazing app, and I’m still learning more as I go along. I typically will edit images in Pixelmator for iOS (like the one above) or Graphic for posting to my website. I used to do all of this on my iPhone Plus, but I’ve started to use each device based on its strength(s).

As I’m exploring more of what I want to use my iPad Pro for, I have two apps that I use for note taking, sketching, and anything else Pencil related: Linea and Notes Plus. I’m still figuring out how these will fit into my daily workflows, but I’m constantly messing around with their capabilities. Linea is so great for drawing, but it has also helped me with communication. Notes Plus has fantastic handwriting recognition and has been useful in many meetings to capture notes; the benefit with this app is that as long as my handwriting is legible, it can capture handwriting and convert it to text.

The second Home screen on both devices is comprised of folders, grouped by a general category. I tend not to worry about how these are arranged and it changes frequently. I don’t need these apps too often, or else they’re something I want out of sight – like games – so I don’t get sucked in. I usually will launch these apps using the Spotlight pull-down gesture or the ⌘ Space keyboard shortcut. Any apps I’m testing for betas or ideas generally fall on the second screen also.

Our devices are an extensible part of us now, and the Home screen is our chance to tinker in our own little worlds. I’m sure that with more time, these layouts will be different, my reasoning behind the apps I use will change, and everything except the Dock will move around. But I’m always going to focus the layouts on utility, which is the single biggest key for embracing this process of experimentation.

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