Bloomberg’s headline calls it “dramatic.” 9to5 quotes a snippet of “the biggest revamp since iOS 7,” which is quite the tall order.

I’d like to go on record that I actually liked the iOS 7 redesign, or at least what it eventually turned into. The previous skeuomorphic language was cute and all, but I found it annoying when trying to figure out which playful bits of an app I could tap. A lot of non-techy folks I’ve worked with over the years found it flat-out frustrating. I also felt large bits of fake leather and notebook binding rings to simply be a waste of space. But I digress.

Apple has a lot of spinning plates in the air, and some of them have already slipped. Arguably the most important features of Apple Intelligence—the cornerstone of this year’s product upgrade and the pitch all over billboards and TV ads to buy an iPhone 16—was just delayed last Friday into Apple’s next product cycle, which likely starts around June with WWDC, if not later.

Remember ‘the next generation of CarPlay’ that we saw in 2022? That was supposed to debut in 2024? It quietly no-showed and it took Apple almost a month to publicly comment on it.

I could talk about what feels like a freshly souring sentiment I’ve seen across large Apple communities like r/Apple, r/iOS, and r/iPad. Maybe you could point out they are barely a drop in Apple’s billion-user bucket.

And maybe the timing of this ‘leak’ about Apple massively redesigning its three major platforms—right after a disastrous weekend news cycle about a high-profile failure to deliver a tentpole product feature—is just a coincidence.

The iPad mini has mainly been my book reading device, but I’ve started using it for more stuff around the house in the last couple years. When the mini 7 came around earlier this year, I decided to spring for cellular so I could start taking it, too, out of the house more often. However, a second data plan felt like overkill. Besides, I had heard you can transfer carrier plans between iPads, though I assumed it involved logging into a website or—shudder—calling someone.

Today I finally tried it so I could bring my iPad mini 7 on a walk for lunch. Dear reader, I’m not sure this process could get simpler, at least on T-Mobile.

The data plan switcheroo

For posterity, here are the relevant details:

• We’re on T-Mobile with a Magenta family plan
• That plan includes one data line that my iPad Pro has used for years
• iPad Pro M4 13” (previously the M1 Pro and other 12.9” models before that)
• iPad mini 7

Check out screenshots below, but here is the process in a nutshell: I started with Settings > Cellular on the mini 7, initiated the transfer, verified I wanted to make the change on the Pro, waited around 20-30 seconds for T-Mobile to (I assume) swap the data line to the eSIM in the mini 7, and boom I was off to Potbelly’s.

I wonder if this process is so smooth because iCloud is somehow involved; after all, it knows I have two cellular iPads. Maybe it somehow takes part in the eSIM switch? Otherwise, how would T-Mobile know the mini 7 is connected to me at all?

To finish this post, I switched the plan back to my Pro with no trouble. It was around an hour and a half from the start of this experiment, walking to and from lunch, and writing most of this post. I don’t know if T-Mobile has any kind of cap or cooldown on how often you can do this in a week or month. But I am pleasantly surprised at how easy this is, and I’m looking forward to bringing my mini with cellular out of the house more often.

Indie apps are just the best. They’re usually built by people who care about the problem they’re solving. They’re also often the first to adopt the great new OS features that make our devices easier, faster, and more delightful to use.

I’d like to shout out a bunch of indie apps I use on any sort of regular basis. Instead of turning this into some kind of series, I decided to try a speedrun of the ones that have earned their keep on my devices. No particular order, but you should definitely download and buy or subscribe to all their things. Or at least some of them, please. Let me know if you’d like me to delve further into how I use any of ’em.

Disclaimer: No, I have not rigorously vetted the financials or company structure of every app on this list. Maybe one or two are quietly owned by Microsoft or some sort of… app hedge fund? Are those a thing? Whatever. To the best of my knowledge, these all seem to be from indie crews and, in some cases, individual developers.

Annotable

website
Solid utility for marking up images with arrows, shapes, redacted boxes, and more. Annotable has an editing extension that appears in Photos, which is probably 95% of the way I interact with it. iPhone, iPad

Play

website
A ‘watch it later’ app for YouTube, Vimeo, and many other services. It has lots of handy stuff like tags, a quick-access app extension, a Mac version, and an Apple TV version, which is where I actually watch stuff. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV

Tripsy

website
A personal, collaborative, and private travel app that feels more focused on vacations than other services, most of which seem business-first to me. You can add a wide variety of vacation-y activities (a concert, national park, tour, etc.) to an itinerary, view them as a rolling schedule, plot them all on a map, and collaborate on trips with other people. iPhone, iPad, Mac

Mematic

website
Nice, straightforward app for creating memes. It has a meme-specific search engine for templates, or you can use your own photos. iPhone, iPad

Ivory

website
A spiritual successor to the exceptional Tweetbot, built by the same devs. A great Mastodon app with nearly all the features I want (though I wish I could browse and interact with other public servers). iPhone, iPad, Mac

Callsheet

website
A full alternative to the IMDB, Callsheet finds info on films, TV shows, actors, and such. It also has clever features like the option to hide character names, episode titles, and even thumbnails in order to avoid spoilers. iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision

Darkroom

website
Not a camera, but a powerful way to edit and organize your photos and videos that basically sits on top of your Photos library. Delete a few shots in Darkroom, they’re gone from Photos. iPhone, iPad, Mac, iMessage

Sofa

website
A “downtime organizer” to collect and track things you want to watch, play, and read. Better than a simple notes app or bookmark tool, it automatically grabs stuff like trailers, release dates, and links to stream or buy the thing. You can even create custom categories to track whatever you want, like bike paths or recipes. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision

Drafts

website
“Where text starts.” Drafts is a fast, powerful way to get ideas out of your head and onto digital paper, then do something with them later—edit, publish, or send to another app. One of my favorite features is the Watch app can be set to launch directly into dictation mode, which is probably the primary way I use it. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch

MusicMatch

website
Find music on your preferred service. Someone shares a Shopify link to an album? MusicMatch will take you to it on Apple Music, or YouTube, or Pandora, etc. iPhone, iPad, Mac

SongShift

website
Copy and share playlists to different music services. Want to share a playlist with a friend who uses a different service? Are you switching form Spotify to YouTube, or Tidal to Apple Music? SongShift makes the dream happen. iPhone, iPad

Raindrop

website
Feature-packed bookmarking service that supports tags, folders and collections, automation, and saving a PDF copy of every link and article. It supports IFTTT too, so sky’s the limit. iPhone, iPad, and Mac via browser extension + web app

Carrot Weather

website
Beautiful, flexible, and optionally malicious weather app. It has a fake bot personality that can be as murderous or light-hearted as you choose. Its app layout and Apple Watch complications are exhaustively customizable, so you can dial in exactly the info you need, complete with multiple layouts. iPhone, iPad, Watch, Vision

GIFWrapped

website
Clever app for searching and collecting a library of GIFs. It has a Messages app for quick responses. I wish its UI was a little more useful when it comes time to grab something to paste into apps other than Messages, but it’s still good at what it does. iPhone, iPad, Mac, iMessage

Ulysses

website
Excellent Markdown writing app whether you want to journal, run a blog, write a book, or produce client work. Ulysses is quite flexible and packed with clever features. I’ve written the majority of Finer Things in Tech in it. iPhone, iPad, Mac

Keep It

website
A notes app packed with quite a few features, though my favorite is that it supports Document Providers in iOS and iPadOS. This means it can appear as a source alongside iCloud, OneDrive, and Dropbox in the Files app and anywhere you can up/download files. iPhone, iPad, Mac is a separate purchase

Things 3

website
A pinnacle of elegant, useful task and project management. Things 3 is beautiful and clever throughout. While I have my complaints—I really wish we could create headings in Areas, which are basically a place to organize projects—it splits my task needs with Apple Reminders. It’s a separate purchase for iPhone, iPad, Mac

Halide

website
A powerful camera with a simple design to control everything when taking photos—white balance, exposure, focus, etc. It has an optional, handy beginner’s email course if you’re new to taking the reigns of your photography, and a new “Process Zero” mode that can remove as much of Apple’s automatic processing as possible. iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch

Tailor

website
A single-serving utility that automatically stitches together multiple screenshots of long, scrolled content. Not just for chat threads, it can stitch together webpages, articles, a long list of tasks, a ‘tall’ screen in an app, just about anything I’ve thrown at it. iPhone only, though I wish there was an iPad version

Honorable Mentions

This is the category of “I own and like these apps but do not yet use them as often as I wish I did.”

Spectre

website
From the Halide folks, Spectre is a long-exposure app for taking unique photos you can’t get any other way. It can blur a waterfall, make lights linger and dance, or on the other end of this spectrum, make a crowd disappear from a busy tourist spot. I’m taking a vacation with my wife soon, I really want to try that last idea at a couple landmarks. iPhone only

Nebula

website
A creator-owned video platform that is mostly the smart, interesting stuff from YouTube without the ads—video essays, culture analysis, podcasts, and some original series now too. I think you can find most of this stuff cross-posted to YouTube for obvious reasons. But creators also post exclusive stuff here and, as I think I heard somewhere, get a larger cut of sub revenue. iPhone, iPad, Apple TV

Streaks

website
A habit tracker I recently dusted off with a refreshingly simple UI. I’m bad at creating and keeping habits, so here goes nothing. One feature I like about it is the option of a sort of ‘anti-habit’ to track things you want to stop doing, like biting your nails. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch, Vision

Hashtag lists

These are solid. You can exclude tags, watch just your local instance, and limit results to media. I had a couple hashtag lists set up in the web UI to watch for stuff like video game conversations, photography, and announcements from apps I care about. It’ll be nice to have those in Ivory now, where I spend 99% of my Mastodon time. Although, technically, that last list is just a regular list of accounts like @Iconfactory, @CARROT, and @drafts.

Share sheet

This redesign is quite welcome, but it seems like they dropped the feature that helped with hashtags. It had wonky behavior before, like resetting the keyboard’s display when starting a tag, so I don’t blame them. Would be nice if they can bring it back with more polish later, though.

Go get Ivory

It’s free to try, though I forget where the paywalls start. Plans are:

• $1.99/month for iPhone + iPad
• $14.99/year for iPhone + iPad
• $24.99/year for iPhone + iPad + Mac

I’ve had the + Mac plan since they launched and been quite happy. Ivory’s a great app. Go get it.

Ivory 2.0 for Mastodon what’s new

• Hashtag Lists! You can now add up to 4 hashtags to a list to create custom hashtag-based timelines.
• Redesigned Hashtags Tab. Better organization so it’s easier to find what you are looking for.
• Brand new Share Sheet Extension! We know it wasn’t a very high bar to improve it.
• New media view in post details.
• New Behavior to change context menu order. You know those menus that pop up in reverse order depending on where the button is on screen? Well now you can set it the way you prefer and can stop yelling at us in frustration!
• Added subtle shadow to media overlay buttons for better visibility on light images.
• Added option (hold down on link) to force open URL in Ivory if you know it is an ActivityPub URL, but Ivory can’t detect it.
• Fixed the disappearing drafts bug (we hope!)
• Fixed the issue with uploading vertical video.
• Improvements to video uploads.
• Fixed the bug where searching for certain strings would cause a crash.
• Bug fixes related to opening links in Ivory or in Safari instead.
• Various other bug fixes

Our long, national, single-stop directions nightmare is over. In iOS 16 and macOS Ventura (13.0), Apple Maps finally gained the option to add multiple stops for driving directions. I specify driving because this option disappears for transit, walking, and bike directions.

Adding another stop is simple:

• Before tapping ‘Go’ to start the route, tap the ‘Add Stop’ button below the current destination’s name
• Add the next stop
• Optionally, you can reorder stops in the list by tap-and-dragging their handles on the right
• Go

I’m also interested in all the little features on the way—swiping through stacks of shared photos in Messages; browsing an album or artist from a track playing in Music; the new ‘Assigned to Me’ section in Reminders.

Naturally, I have a growing list of little features that I hope Apple will add to iOS someday. Since WWDC 2021 was not that day, I’ll share them here.

Widgets default on Today sheet

Know when you pull down the Today sheet to see notifications, and you can swipe right to see widgets? I wish we had the option to swap the two—pull down for widgets, swipe right for notifications.

Set any photo as wallpaper

Since day one of iPhone OS, the only way to set a wallpaper is to first save the image to Photos. This means my actual photos have always been cluttered with wallpapers of fictional landscapes, abstract art, and game fandom. It’s tedious on multiple levels.

Since nearly day one of iPhone OS, I’ve wished we could set a wallpaper from any photo laying around on the web, in an app, and now Files. The Mac has been able to do this for… decades?

Related feature: Rotate wallpapers automatically from a folder. I’ve used this feature in macOS.

Auto-pause for outdoor walks

Please allow watchOS a brief cameo. I thoroughly enjoy walking, and it’s good for us. While the built-in Workout app can automatically pause for runs and outdoor cycling, it can’t pause when tracking a walk. Why is Apple prejudice against walkers.

Quickly define words

One of the littlest of little features, I use the macOS dictionary popup surprisingly often. Mouse over a word, then press Command + Control + D for a popover with a definition, thesaurus, and sometimes other info from sources like Wikipedia. I’d love to have this option on iPadOS.

Settings in Split View on iPad

Does it seem weird to anyone else that Settings has never support Split View or Slide Over? Seems weird to me.

Avatars in Mail

This is one of the little features I appreciate in Airmail, the client I’ve used for years. I don’t know which directories it checks to power this, but it’s a nice way to bring a little humanity into email.

Interactive widgets

I want to complete tasks, save my clipboard to apps, and toggle (third-party) switches without having to open their entire corresponding app.

Require apps to support Files

Photos hasn’t been the only tool we can use to save and upload images for four years. I think it’s long overdue for Apple to require apps to support it as an option.

Sort songs in playlists

We’ve been able to sort songs in iTunes Music for decades. How has iOS never inherited this basic feature of organizing our music?

When Safari detects content on a page in a language other than your default, it will offer a translation option. Click it, and the page will reload with the content translated.

• Mac: The translation button appears in the Smart Search field
• iPhone and iPad: The translation button appears in the menu on the left of the Smart Search field
  

The Mac’s menu allows you to mange preferred languages for translation. I can’t find this option in Safari on the iPhone and iPad, and it doesn’t seem to be in Settings either. According to Apple’s support doc, the available languages vary by country and region.

Step 1: Hide alerts

In any group iMessage chat, tap the top icon, then the (i) info button. Scroll down, then enable Hide Alerts. This prevents push notifications for every ‘lol’ and side conversations that don’t involve you.

Step 2: Use mentions

Yep, iMessage supports mentions now. You don’t even need an @. Just type the first name of someone in the group chat, and iMessage will turn it gray. Tap their name, confirm the person you want to mention, and they’ll get a notification. Next, simply convince all your friends to get on board.

I think this is a great balance for hiding alerts for every message, but still getting notified when it’s important.

Just in case you don’t want even these alerts, you can disable them for all conversations in Settings > Messages. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to do this per-conversation.

Step 3 (Optional): Use threads

Threads also arrived in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur. Visually, they look and work a little differently than Slack’s implementation. But they’re still a good way to have a cohesive side conversation in a group chat, or simply create a connected trail.

To start a thread in a group chat, tap or click and hold on a message as if you wanted to add a reaction or copy it. One of the options is to reply. Tap that and the rest of the conversation blurs out, presenting just that message and a text box.

Once you tap send, your reply appears inline for everyone to see, but with a visual line and small preview of the original message. Tap that, and you can see the full thread.

Apple has a ‘Smart Stack’ of widgets for its own apps, but it’s easy to make your own for any apps. Simply drag a widget on top of any other widget of the same size, and they’ll stack. I think seven is the max for each stack.

In my example here, I drop a Lumy widget on top of a widget for Apollo, a superb Reddit client.

To remove widgets from a stack, get into edit mode, tap the stack for a list of its widgets, then swipe left on one.

Shared lists in Reminder got a nice upgrade in iOS/iPadOS 14. We can now assign people to tasks, and it’s easy to see who is responsible for each task at a glance.

To assign someone to a task in a shared list, tap the task, then tap the people button in the toolbar that appears.

To start sharing a Reminders task list, tap the (…) button at the top of any list, then tap Manage Shared List.

Unlike the last couple years, I waited to jump on the public beta until this week (public beta 7, dev beta 8). Aside from one of my most anticipated features being pulled mid-beta, I’m pretty happy so far. Here are some quick thoughts.

Widgets on the homescreen are great

But I think I need time to learn how to get the most out of them. Launch Center Pro is a shoe-in for me here, but we’ll see what else.

Dark Mode, finally

It is quite welcome, especially the option to automatically toggle it with sunup and down. I’m excited for more apps to support it.

Multitasking for Slide Over apps is fantastic

I frequently work in Split View with an app in Slide Over, but I often switch Slide Over apps. This removes a huge point of friction for me.

New text editing gestures go back to the roots

I still remember watching the original iPad keynote while on a company cruise at 1Password. Jobs struck a cord with me about being able to touch content and apps. I think it still rings true today, it’s one of my favorite things about the iPad experience.

These new gestures to pinch and zoom for copy and paste (respectively) feel like a return to iPad fundamentals. Popup and popover menus are fine but, just as with traditional computers, they’re also a proxy for manipulating content. They aren’t quite… iPad.

Like dragging a link from Safari into a Messages conversation, these gestures just feel right to me. And even in the beta, they’re implemented well. I can see them becoming new muscle memory, and another success for removing friction.

A big change to the share sheet

I’ll need some time to get used to the big share sheet redesign, but I like where this went. I frequently share things to specific people, so I like the new, dedicated row for recents contacts now.

While I still like and use AirDrop, I appreciate the reduction of its presence in the sheet (it’s an app icon now which you cannot remove or reorder on that row). I’m still unsure about the distinction between app icons (second row) and actions (scrolling list at the bottom), but I think I like this too.

Shared iCloud folders are still missing

I really hope Apple gets this working either for release or shortly after. Shared folders have been one of iCloud’s embarrassing deficiencies for the better part of a decade, and surely one of the big reasons many people stick with something like Dropbox or Google Drive.

Considering Apple is light years behind with this feature, it actually worries me to see it appear in a beta only to be pulled quickly. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Lots of quality-of-life changes are a big improvement

As you may know, the little changes are often my favorite, and geeze do iPadOS and iOS 13 have a lot of little changes.

A small change to the share sheet

The share sheet now sticks around after you finish sharing to another app. It’s simple to dismiss with a tap anywhere, but I really appreciate this change.

I often find myself sharing a link or photo to multiple apps, people, or services, but this workflow usually isn’t a good fit for automation with Shortcuts. Now that the share sheet stays persistent until dismissed, I save a bit of time during this frequent process.

Name files when saving them to Files

We can finally name a file as we save it somewhere with the Files app (just tap the file name). In fact, that’s what I did with all the screenshots I took while writing this.

The new Safari menu

Lots of disparate controls now collected under a handy menu. Nice. I especially appreciate the dedicated new “Hide Toolbar” button; triggering that manually was always clunky.

Screen Time can set limits for apps

Previously we could only set limits for app categories which causes all kinds of problems, especially catching false positives.

Honorary iPhone mention: Force Touch triggers much faster

I use and like Force Touch, and it’s nice to see it become more speedy and useful in iOS 13.

Features like:

Drag and drop

Why is it still not possible to drag a PDF or ZIP from Slack into Messages, or Files, or Airmail? Or to drag a photo into Slack? Why can’t we drag a product from Amazon’s app into Messages to share a link, or into a notes app for research?

Document Providers

Odd name, essential feature. If you open the Files app and edit the sidebar, you should see at least a few app sources that can be enabled like Dropbox, Documents, Creative Cloud, etc.

These are document providers, and they are supposed to be available as sources when we want to upload anything to an app; we shouldn’t be stuck only with Photos.

Picture in Picture

The iPad can play video in a floating box that can be moved to any corner of the screen. It can be resized or hidden by swiping it off screen. Try it with Apple’s TV app or Vimeo by tapping the icon of a box with an arrow pointing out of it. I’d say the largest offender here is probably YouTube, but there are plenty more.

Honorable mention: Split View and Slide Over

I feel these two features have seen pretty strong adoption. I still run into occasional surprises, though, the most recent being Amazon. Also, Tumblr. WTH Tumblr. Oh, and Settings.

A related issue here is that many apps which do support these features still don’t behave well in Slide Over. A common problem is that, when the iPad is connected to a keyboard, an app in Slide Over will not move its bottom text box or toolbar to appear above the keyboard suggestion bar, effectively blocking interaction.

I wager I missed other essential—what do you think? Let me know on Mastodon, Tumblr, or Twitter.

Note: While this page is specifically about iPadOS, I imagine that most of the features which make sense on the iPhone will come to iOS as well. We’ll probably hear about those at the fall event.

• Redesigned volume control – The redesigned volume control appears in the upper-left corner, so it doesn’t interfere with your content.
• Photo upload resize – Choose to resize your photo to small, medium, large, or actual size before you upload it.
• Auto-playing Live Photos and videos – Throughout the Photos tab, muted Live Photos and videos begin playing as you scroll, bringing your photo library to life.
• Control Center – You can now select Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth accessories right from Control Center.
• Birthday mode – If you have birthdays assigned to people in your People album, the Photos tab will highlight your photos of them on their birthday.
• New Share Sheet actions – You can customize options for the content you’re sharing, like removing the Live Photo action or location information from a picture you’re sending to a friend.
• Apple Maps Collections – Build collections of your favorite and soon‑to‑be‑favorite locations and share them with friends and family.
• Apple Mail, mute thread – Easily mute notifications from an overly active email thread across all your Apple devices.
• Apple Books, reading goals – Read a book or listen to an audiobook for five minutes while in line for coffee, on your commute, or before bed to achieve your Daily Reading Goal. Build streaks to celebrate your achievements and share books you’ve finished with the Books Read this Year collection.
• Business Chat suggestions – When you call supported businesses, iPadOS offers to start a Business Chat instead, so you can interact with a business from a text instead of waiting on hold.
• Add attachments to events – iPadOS supports adding attachments to events in Calendar.
• Contacts (hey, remember Contacts? Apparently Apple just did!), new relationship labels – Hundreds of new, more specific relationship labels in Contacts help users manage their growing contact lists.
• Find my iPhone/Friends becomes a new app, gets Find Offline Devices feature – Locate a missing device even if it’s not connected to Wi‑Fi or cellular using crowd‑sourced location. When you mark your device as missing and another Apple user’s device is nearby, it can detect your device’s Bluetooth signal and report its location to you. It’s completely anonymous and encrypted end‑to‑end, so everyone’s privacy is protected.
• Language selection per app – Use third‑party apps in a different language from your system language.
• Persistent personal hotspot – Remain connected to your nearby iPad personal hotspot even when your device sleeps, so you can receive incoming messages and push notifications.

That’s about all I found for now. Did I miss any other gems? Let me know on Mastodon, Tumblr, or Twitter.

They’re both designed to help you quickly blog articles you’ve found. Most text style options are available in the draft screen that appears. Both will grab things like the page title and link, as well as any text selected on the page.

The publish extension will publish your post immediately, after allowing you to select a blog connected to your WordPress account. The draft extension sends posts straight to drafts. It’s a nice way to quickly collect posts in a single place to polish and publish later.

A common complaint I’ve seen since Touch ID’s early days is that the sensor can eventually lose accuracy, requiring multiple attempts to unlock the device. Most of the time, Touch ID just needs to be reset and re-trained, which makes me wonder if the technology has trouble with changes to our fingerprints and environment.

While I have seen people have trouble with Face ID recognizing them, it feels to me like this occurs less frequently than Touch ID.

One group I have regularly seen have trouble with Touch ID across the board is aging people and senior citizens. As far as I can tell, Touch ID has a much higher failure rate with them, including at setup. Throw in factors like drying skin and fingers that can change significantly with age, and I suspect the tech just can’t keep up.

On the other hand, Face ID seems to have a much higher success rate with older folks. Apple touts the tech’s ability to learn as our faces change with makeup, beards, wrinkles, and hats. Whether it’s by design or an indirect perk, I wonder if Face ID is more adept at authenticating us throughout the days of our lives.

When you take a screenshot on recent versions of iOS, a small thumbnail of it will appear at the bottom of your screen before being saved to Photos.

You can tap this preview to open Apple’s Markup feature, which has a few tools to make edits and annotations. You can share the screenshot from Markup, then choose to save or delete it without having to dig into Photos.

If you just want to quickly share the screenshot, long-tap the thumbnail. The share sheet will appear whether you’re on the homescreen or in an app.

Over the last couple years, I’ve grown to enjoy using AnyList and my Apple Watch for grocery shopping and other errands. This setup offers a few nice conveniences like sharing lists with Jessi, a directory of things we regularly buy, and easy glance-ability when I’m actually doing the thing.

AnyList offers a bunch of perks when it comes to organizing lists. You can share one or multiple lists with other people, and they have a super affordable family plan that covers multiple users.

As you add items, AnyList creates a directory to save you typing the next time you need to shop. Instead of typing “Triscuits Family Size Less-Fat” every time I need some, I usually can just type “tri” and tap once to re-add it to our grocery list. It also automatically categorizes items by typical store departments, making it easy to grab related stuff together.

The Watch app is pretty darn good. The app is overall fast and responsive, and sync and navigation are snappy. You also can use Siri to add items to lists, although in my experience this seems to create a new item in the directory each time, even if you repeat an existing item’s name verbatim.

My habit now is to add things to our shopping list over time, and/or have Jessi add a few things while I’m on my way for an impromptu run. But when I get to the store, I like being able to put my phone away and quickly glance at my wrist for my next scavenging targets. For me, it reduces a lot of friction from carrying a printed list or keeping my (droppable) phone at the ready and constantly unlocking it.

I use the Watch option that, upon every wrist raise, displays the current app on screen for an hour from last use (Watch app on iPhone > General > On Screen Wake Show Last App). I can quickly flip my wrist for the agenda, tap items as I pick them up, and scroll to the next section.

This works really well for me. If you’re interested in a way to use your Watch in more aspects of your life, I definitely recommend giving it a shot for cases like this. AnyList is a great app and Watch companion.

• I would love to set lock screen and home screen wallpapers from any photo in Safari and other apps, without having to first save it in Photos
• If we tap a link in an app and the Safari in-app viewer appears, we can tap a Safari icon in the corner to open that link in the main Safari app. If we do that, I wish the app would automatically hide the in-app viewer
• Please, oh please, let the audio overlay rumor be true. In iOS 12, Apple gave developers the option to use a less obtrusive volume indicator when playing video or other media. But many developers haven’t updated or perhaps didn’t know about it. Rumors has it that this indicator will become standard in iOS 13
• With 230 more emoji on the horizon, a search option for the emoji picker, like macOS has, is long overdue
• On an iPad with a hardware keyboard and apps in Split View or Slide Over, too many apps still exhibit weird behavior. One common example is that the keyboard suggestion bar sometimes covers the text input of an app. I don’t know if this is on Apple or developers to test and fix, but I would much welcome some kind of solution
• In Screen Time, I’d like the option to have more granular control over each app’s category. Tags would be ideal. For example, I use Twitterrific for some of my client work (the iCloud timeline sync makes it easy to pick up where I left off across devices. Why don’t more personal and professional social apps do this?). Of course, Screen Time thinks this is personal social media, but it isn’t. I swear
• Ban the YouTube app from the App Store until it supports iOS Picture in Picture on iPad (yes, you can PiP within the YouTube app and browse other videos. But you can’t pop video out of the app. No, not even if you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber, which I am). I realize this has nothing to do with iOS, but desperate times call for drastic measures
• I’d love the two-column widget view to return to the iPad’s Today screen. It was super duper useful
• Spam calls are getting bad. Call blocking/identifying apps and plugins for the Phone app are great. But even better would be an option to block or send to voicemail all numbers not in Contacts
• 3D Touch is great, I will fight you on this, and I want to see Apple push it for more developers to adopt
• Developer-created faces for Apple Watch would be great, and I’m sure a new source of revenue for everyone
• Improve drag and drop on iPad, both in iOS and with third party developers. Far, far too many apps still don’t support it. Like Discord and Slack. What the hell

I think that about covers it for now. Let me know what you think or if you have a good one I should add to the list.

On iPhone and iPad, you can quickly rotate a video stored in Photos with iMovie’s app extension. Many video apps simply don’t offer this option, so it’s nice to have for those quick fixes while browsing videos.

To use this (and most) editing app extensions for Photos:

• In Photos, tap a video to view it full size
• Tap Edit
• Tap the (…) app extension button, usually next to the play button
• In the menu of app extensions that appears, tap iMovie
• (Optional) If iMovie isn’t an option yet in that menu, swipe all the way left, tap More (…), and enable it
• Once the iMovie extension loads with your selected video, place two fingers on the video and twist them left or right
• When you’re happy with your rotated video, tap Done

Credit to Serenity Caldwell for this tip

If you need a primer on Mastodon, how it works, or why I think it’s important, I wrote a simple, plain-language overview of Mastodon’s mission and advantages. I also maintain a Dropmark collection of Mastodon guides, links, tips, and tools. But if you want my elevator pitch: Mastodon is a social network run by and for its users. “Community-owned and ad-free,” says the landing page.

You can post all the typical stuff publicly or keep it private to your followers. There is no advertising or tracking, and none of the insidious, destructive incentives that come with it. There is also no central company to ruin things, and it has a growing, open API that welcomes apps and even other services.

I’m on Mastodon at toot.cafe/@chartier. And speaking of apps, let’s get to them.

Mast for iPhone [Update: now also iPad]

Mast launched just last week and has the best design in my opinion. It supports all the big features I can think of, including Direct Messages and Content Warnings to hide spoilers and sensitive posts. It also has an impressive amount of customization such as long-press gestures, themes, always displaying all sensitive content, and lots of other good stuff.

One caveat though: Mast can be a little buggy at times, though its developer has been quick with bug fixes and responses. Also, an iPad version just entered beta testing.

Update: The iPad version has left beta and is now included with the iPhone version.

Toot for iPad and iPhone

I helped test Toot in beta for a while before it too launched last week. Toot also supports all the main features I can think of and takes a more whimsical approach to its interface. There are subtle and less subtle animations in various places. Toot also has a unique wheel on the right of the tab bar for switching between accounts and instances—basically, different communities of Mastodon users.

Tootdon for iPad and iPhone

Probably the most traditional in terms of interface, Tootdon is also a full-featured Mastodon app with a unique approach. Its UI is in the ballpark of Twitterrific and it has a good amount of customizability. But Tootdon is also good for exploring a little bit of what’s going on across the “fediverse”—other instances, hashtags, and users you might not otherwise see in your normal feed and searches.

It’s worth noting that there are plenty of other iOS apps for Mastodon available, but I haven’t tried them all. At the least, I think it’s great to see a service embrace an open API and a community starting to mature around it.