Home Screens — Jonathan Buys

Jonathan Buys (website) shares his Home Screens this week. So, Jonathan, show us your Home Screens.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I’m a big fan of the classics. BBEdit is my text editor of choice, I’m subscribed to 192 blogs in NetNewsWire, all my passwords are stored in 1Password, and OmniFocus keeps the madness at bay. I use third-party apps when the first-party apps from Apple don’t cut it, but the truth is that a lot of time the Apple apps do everything I need. Safari, Mail, Calendar, and Notes are daily drivers, I listen to music through the Music app, read PDFs in Preview, keep in touch with friends and family with Messages, and get my work done in Terminal.

When writing, I also use the built-in Dictionary app with a copy of Webster’s Unabridged 1913 dictionary. The language of the definitions are a work of art.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Probably Apple News. I try to limit my access to bottomless pits with endless timelines I can scroll, but since I’m subscribed to Apple News+ I still get lost in there from time to time.

What app makes you most productive? 

Without a doubt that’s got to be OmniFocus. I’ve been using it for so long now it just fits with the way my brain works. I’ve tried a few other apps over the years, but only OmniFocus gives me both defer dates and due dates for tasks. I assign due dates to things that have to be done on a particular day, like taking the trash to the curb, but I use defer dates for things that I have the option to work on that day. I was a GTD proponent before OmniFocus, but the OmniFocus Field Guide was instrumental in helping me integrate OmniFocus into my life.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Without a doubt that’d have to be Shortcuts for iOS and soon to be for the Mac as well. I’m not sure if I have much use for it on my iPhone, but since it’s coming to my Mac soon I’m putting in an effort to learn it now.

What is the app you are still missing?

A really great Jekyll blogging app. What I’d love would be something like MarsEdit for GitHub Pages. I’ve thought a lot about building it myself, but there’s only so many hours in the day, and only so many of those that I want to spend in front of a computer and not outside.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

Too many! I try to keep my iPhone configured to be a tool and not an entertainment device. From time to time I’ll play a game on it, but for the most part my iPhone is my device for finding information, keeping in touch, and keeping me on track with my personal, professional, and health goals.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

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I actually had to swipe over to check and see what I had on the Today view. Looks like I use the default Smart Stack, the battery use widget, a Notes note(?) that I update occasionally when it makes sense, and the Screen Time widget to keep track of what I’m actually spending my time on.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

My favorite thing about my iPhone is how I can get to the information I need anytime, straight away. If I want to check the balance of a bank account, that’s a tap and a login with Face ID. If I’m at the hardware store and I need to know the exact model number of my weed eater, that’s in DEVONthink To Go. If we are out browsing at the furniture store and my wife points out a set she likes, I’ll snap a photo and save it in Notes. It’s an information super machine.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I wrote an article for my blog a few years ago about some changes I’d like to see made to macOS to make it more of a workhorse for knowledge workers. I’d like Siri to find related documents to what I’m looking at or have selected and have that available at a swipe in Notification Center. I’d like Siri to not only find documents for me, but file and name documents for me intelligently. Finally, I’d like iCloud Drive to encrypt everything end-to-end so I could finally use it without having to worry about sensitive company information leaking in what could possibly be career adverse ways!

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

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My wife bought me a Series 3 a few years ago and I’ve been wearing it every day since. I mostly use it for fitness tracking, keeping an eye on the weather, and, you know, telling time. I also enjoy how it unlocks my iMac for me 😀. I’ve got my eye on what Apple releases for the Series 7 in the Fall though, I increasingly want the always on screen in the Series 6.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

On my Mac it’s the default Big Sur wallpaper. I like how bright and colorful it is. On my iPhone it’s a photo of some leaves I took in the Fall a few years back, reminds me that this summer heat won’t last forever!

Anything else you’d like to share?

Following Apple and being part of the community has been a fun hobby and a constant source of joy in my life for years. The things we get into here are of small consequence in the grand scheme of things … but it is fun, and I think that fun is enough. The developers, designers, writers, podcasters, and creators of all kinds that come together to build and share the joy of a near future that we can almost see is something we don’t have enough of. Inside this community, every now and then we get a glimpse of the future, some amazing piece of tech or beautiful new design that inspires hope. The kind of hope that just breathes optimism into us all to consider that maybe we really can build a better tomorrow.

Thanks, Jonathan!

Home Screens — Jarrod Blundy

Jarrod Blundy (website) (Twitter) is sharing his home screens this week. He’s a pretty cool guy who has come up with some pretty nifty workflows. So, Jarrod, show us your Home Screens.

What are some of your favorite apps?

If I had to pick the Top Four apps that I’m in and out of every day, and that I love to use, it would be Reeder, Overcast, Things, and Drafts.

Reeder and Overcast are both for entertainment, and how I keep up on the news from my interests (technology, outdoor adventure, philosophy). I check my RSS feed in Reeder like other people check their social media and always have a healthy reading queue saved up (though I’d prefer to whittle that down — there’s just so much good stuff out there!). I used to use Pocket and Instapaper for saving articles, but Reeder’s built-in Read Later bucket, which syncs via iCloud, has met my needs well over a year now.

When I’m driving, doing dishes, laundry, or anytime I don’t need to focus too closely on the task at hand, I’ve usually got a podcast playing in my ears. While the playful design of other podcast apps, like Castro, have me giving some side-eye, I don’t think I could ever leave Overcast. The quality is too good, and it’s congruent with how my brain thinks podcasts should work. There, too, I’ve got more episodes lined up than I could listen to. That’s why my “Don’t Miss” smart playlist is where I turn first each day, and where Mac Power Users is surfaced as my Sunday cleaning podcast.

To-do items that are started in Drafts get sent to Things (there are many excellent actions to get them there), which is where all my projects live. I’ve tried all the task management apps — all of them — and Things has just enough complexity between Areas, Projects, and Tags to keep me organized without spending all my time fiddling around. It’s also the most beautiful.

I’ve worked hard over the past few years to get to-dos out of my head, and the combination of Drafts and Things has been vital. They also have great widgets, which I use on my iPhone and iPad to stay on-task with just a glance.

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Layout:

On my first page, I’ve got “app pairs” between the Dock and just above it. Message/Phone, Safari/Spark, Things/Reminders, and Drafts/Notes just make sense in my head, and that’s where they’ve been for years.

The second page is for quickly dipping into entertainment and social media. I’ve got a stack of sound-related widgets above the apps. The main one you see in the screenshot is from Soor, and it lets you bookmark your most-used playlists, radio stations, and albums for easy access. I use two shortcuts as icons (TV Menu and YouTube) to get specific places in apps and the other apps on that page. Everything else is in the App Library.

Honorable Mentions:

iA Writer - A simple, beautiful, and powerful text editor for fleshing out ideas and writing longer pieces (like this one).

Spark - Again, I’ve tried all the big players in the email — most recently Big Mail — but I keep coming back to Spark. I don’t rely on a complicated folder structure, so the faster I can review mail and archive it, the better, and Spark has consistently been the best. It’s got a few power-user features like email templates, quick replies, and integration with Things, which I use regularly.

Swift Playgrounds - One of my newest hobbies is learning to code. There are many great resources and apps out there, but Playgrounds is where I’ve started. It turns out that turning lessons into games works for adults too, and I’ve been having a ton of fun learning to “speak” to a computer using code.

TV Forecast - This app helps me keep track of where I am in the seasons of TV I’m watching and stay updated on upcoming episodes. It integrates with the Trakt.tv service, and dispenses of extra features to deliver a straightforward and pleasing experience. Letterboxd is similar, but is for movies and isn’t quite as simplified.

Experiments:

Scan Thing - After Scannable by Evernote showed signs of neglect, I searched for an app that used the native document scanner and got me from scan to share as quickly as possible. Scan Thing does that and as a bonus has neat object scanning and text scanning (à la Text Sniper or Live Text).

Weather Strip - I’ve been a Dark Sky user for years and years, but I dabble with other weather apps too. Weather Strip is new to me and has one of the most intuitive ways of visualizing upcoming weather that I’ve ever seen. It’s like Weather Line but shows temperature, cloudiness, precipitation chance, and more all on the same graph. It’s got a generous one-month free trial and an inexpensive subscription after that. My only wish is for some alternative app icons.

All Trails - It’s not featured on my Home Screen, but I’ve been getting a lot of joy out of this app which highlights local hiking and biking trails. You can search anywhere in the world, and since many of the trails are crowdsourced, you’re able to find routes that you might not see on a local map.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

If I go off my Screen Time data, it’s got to be a tie between Twitter and YouTube, but for very different reasons. Like my RSS feed in Reeder, I’ve got a growing list of YouTube channels that keep me entertained and learning. Signing up for YouTube Premium was a worthwhile investment since it cuts out so much time wasted watching or trying to skip ads, and I can keep my Watch Later playlist downloaded on my iPad for catching up anytime and anywhere.

My Twitter usage has drastically ramped up since WWDC last month. So many great new OS tidbits were shared there that it’s pulled me back in. I’ve been fortunate that my feed is still mostly filled with joy, and I’m not afraid to unfollow if someone gets too negative. Despite Twitter playing around with third-party API access, I think it’s neat that Twitter (the service) can still be a design playground for developers. I’ve been trying out Tweetbot and Aviary, which are both opinionated and both great. And, I’ll say it, the algorithmic timeline in the official Twitter app is perfect for quickly catching up on tweets.

What app makes you most productive?

That’s a tricky question because I’m between jobs right now. In my most recent position, it was Spark for unending email and Basecamp for collaborative projects. Until my new job starts, though, I’d have to say that Drafts and iA Writer keep me busiest writing blog posts. But my wife might tell you that Things makes me most productive because I’ve been able to catch up on some home projects that I’ve had saved there for months.

I’ll add that Brain.fm is a huge help for keeping me focused, no matter the task. Lyrical music distracts me and listening to lo-fi, jazz, or classical music for hours in Apple Music alters my recommendations. On the other hand, I’ve found that Brain.fm’s catalog of “music” is stimulating and has enough variety not to get repetitive.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Shortcuts. While I’ve been using Shortcuts since the Workflow days, I feel that I’ve barely scratched the surface. I have more shortcuts saved than I regularly use, but there’s so much to explore. It’s the first automation platform that clicked with me, so I’ve been having fun creating tools that speed things up on my devices. What I also appreciate about Shortcuts is the community that has been built around it, and that it’s so easy to adapt tools shared by great folks like Matthew Cassinelli, the guys at MacStories, Chris Lawley, and more, to craft them to do what I need.

What is the app you are still missing?

As you might have been able to tell, I’m a big “save-it-for-later” guy. So articles get saved in Reeder, podcasts in Overcast, and videos in YouTube — not to mention lists of books in Goodreads, TV Shows in TV Forecast, and movies in Letterboxd. What I’m missing is a bucket for music.

My music influx is from various sources — new albums from artists I follow in Music Harbor, recommendations via blogs and Twitter, discovery in the Music app — and it’s hard to keep track of all that. I’m reluctant to save something to my library without vetting it first, so I’ve been sending everything to a “Listen Later” playlist. It’s okay, but playlists aren’t meant for that bulk-in/bulk-out kind of management. For a while, I used Raindrop.io as a place to bookmark albums, but it bounced me around via Safari and wasn’t great.

My dream is a simple music-specific bookmarking app where I can send music.apple.com links. It would integrate with MusicKit to listen in-app and take action (send to a playlist, save to library, love, etc.) on the album, song, or playlist right there. Bonus points if it can keep track of the items I’ve finished listening to or that are still in progress, so I don’t have to remember what’s safe to archive. Double bonus points if it can accept links from other music services and convert them to Apple Music items.

How many times a day do you use your devices?

I’m a heavy screen user, especially while I’ve got some extra time at home, but I flow pretty seamlessly between my iPhone, iPad, and Mac throughout the day. Screen Time snitches on me, reporting an average of 10 hours of usage and 84 pickups per day across my devices. That’s higher than I’d prefer, but all of my creative work is happening on those devices. I’m actually watching fewer TV shows and movies these days because I’m spending my time reading, writing, and learning — it just all happens on those devices.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

After years of absolutely cramming the Today View with widgets, I’ve now focused it to be a source for more timely information and actions.

It’s dominated by a stack of large widgets containing Fantstical, Things, and CARROT Weather. These help me to stay on top of my schedule and dress appropriately.

Then I have a Day One stack which flips between the “On This Day” and the “Daily Prompt” medium widgets. I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with journaling, so the stack is placed there in the hope that it encourages me to write more.

Beneath that, and still visible without scrolling, is the small Batteries widget and a stack of shortcuts that pull up a menu for travel and control Overcast. Those shortcuts are conveniently just a swipe away from the lock screen.

Last, I keep an eye on upcoming deliveries with the large Parcel widget.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

It wasn’t long ago that I was asked about my favorite feature iPhone feature to demo for others. My answer then, as it is now, was Shortcuts. I just think that making automation simple is powerful because it teaches people to bend their device to their will, rather contort themselves to use their device. Shortcuts don’t have to be monstrosities like Federico Viticci’s Apple Frames shortcut used to frame these device screenshots. It’s the simple ones, like a shortcut that queues up the last few photos taken into an iMessage, or that help you keep your Apple Watch streaks going, which unlock people’s creativity and encourage them use their devices more efficiently. It did for me.

Apple’s commitment to Shortcuts being the future of automation on the Mac has me all the more excited to see what’s next.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

Do I only get one thing?

Apple’s hardware is on a solid run, so I don’t have many requests, but there is one crucial thing missing: an affordable Apple display.

My dream display would take the panel from the recent iMacs and marry it to a hinge like on Microsoft’s Surface Studio. Why such a versatile hinge? Because I think a modern Apple display should work as well with an iPad as it does a Mac, and should, therefore, have some amount of Multi-Touch and Apple Pencil support and ergonomics to use it. I’d love to pull that expansive screen down to a drafting table position and use iPadOS with its incredible creative apps like Procreate with an Apple Pencil. iPadOS would undoubtedly need more advanced external display support, and I would introduce it alongside the fantasy display, just like iPad pointer support was introduced alongside the Magic Keyboard.

(Less selfishly, I’d focus on repairing third-party developer relationships, starting by allowing alternative in-app payment methods or at least linking out to the web for alternative payments.)

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I do! An Apple Watch has been strapped to my wrist ever since the Series 2 debuted in 2016. These days, I’m rocking a cellular 40mm Series 5 Apple Watch Nike. (Wow, that’s a mouthful.) I wouldn’t say that I’m an Apple Watch power user, but I do love it. Like many, I value the fitness tracking, notifications, and other short interactions I get by wearing one. I also think of it as a modern iPod for listening to music and podcasts on the go without my phone.

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I switch between three faces most days. My morning face is the Activity Digital one, which motivates me to start filling my rings. It’s got complications for starting a workout, CARROT’s weather status, and Now Playing. Most of the day, the watch is set to the Infograph Modular face with complications for the Activity Rings, hourly weather from CARROT, Drafts, Waterminder, and Things. Those three bottom complications open stand-out watch apps which feature that quick interaction model that I so enjoy. Drafts opens directly into dictation mode to capture ideas as text. Waterminder keeps my daily water intake front and center and allows me to log a bottle with just a tap. Things lets me add new items directly to the Inbox or Today lists and check off completed items.

I don’t need the precise time at the end of the day, so it switches to the California dial. I think the colors are beautiful and calming. I keep just the day/date complication and the Activity Rings on that face to make sure I get them closed by the day’s end.

Okay, confession, I do have a “night watch.” Battery life still isn’t where I’d like it to be on the Apple Watch, so I keep around an older version to wear while sleeping. That keeps my main watch ready to go for the day, and I can take advantage of sleep tracking and silent alarms. Furthermore, I’m the kind of person who has trouble calming down their brain at night. With the complications on its Modular face (all in red to preserve night vision), I can open Drafts and get ideas out of my head, or control music and podcasts while I drift off without risking distraction by using my phone.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

For my lock screen, I use one of the built-in dynamic wallpapers. The abstract mountain and river scene is stunning, and the way it changes through the day (not just for light and dark mode) is delightful. I use the same one on my Mac for that reason. I hope that iOS will someday support these multi-scene dynamic images from third parties like the Mac does today.

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For my Home Screen, I’m using the Leopard wallpaper from Hector Simpson’s Aqueux collection. It’s a gorgeous combination of two of my all-time favorite desktop pictures from OS X. All of the Aqueux wallpapers are exquisite and are a steal at just $3.

Anything else you’d like to share?

While I’m not running the beta on my iPhone, I have my iPad loaded up with iPadOS 15 to give it a spin this summer. So I thought I’d share how the beta has changed my Home Screen there.

Like on my iPhone, I’ve consolidated my app pages down to just two. The second page on both devices is dedicated to entertainment (video, games, social media) with several of the usual suspects. I dig the extra-large TV app widget for jumping into the next episode of my ongoing shows, plus a collection of shortcuts for controlling other video sources. I’ve got Photo’s Memories and Music Harbor’s medium widgets there, too.

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For my main Home Screen on the iPad, I wanted to create something like a writing dashboard. So while the lefthand column retains the widgets that I used to have pinned in the Today View (Fantastical, Things, and Weather), the rest of the page is full of apps I use for my latest hobbies: writing and learning to code. The Dock, accessible anywhere, is full of apps that you’d recognize from my iPhone’s first Home Screen page.

For widgets on the first page, I’ve got Drafts showing posts tagged blog and two music-focused widgets. The righthand one is from the Music app and the other is from Longplay, which tiles up album artwork and plays an album from beginning to end with one tap. Longplay can be sorted by recency (the latest stuff you’ve added), negligence (albums you haven’t listened to in a while), and more — I’m trying it out, and I’m a fan of how quickly it gets me into playing an album. Plus, it reminds me of good ol’ Cover Flow.

I use the apps on page one to find topics (Reeder) and then write about them (iA Writer, Grammarly, and Day One). Then I’ve got Swift Playgrounds and a couple of background noise apps (Brain.fm, and Dark Noise). Finally, the bottom two icons are custom shortcuts for taking action on things for my site, including one for uploading images to reference in my Markdown files.

The App Library’s introduction on iPad has allowed me to get rid of all the folders I had for organizing apps on my iPad. Moreover, any app can now easily be brought into multitasking via the App Library, so I no longer need to keep apps for slide-over in the Dock either.

I’m really happy with how these screens have worked out so far; their dedicated nature has brought clarity to my iPad usage. Next, I’d like to experiment with Focus to bring forward other Home Screens specific to the task at hand.

Thanks, Jarrod!

Home Screens — John Gerard

This week, John Gerard (Twitter) (Instagram) is sharing his home screens. John is a photographer in the Mid-west who helps promote local business. He also teaches photography and post processing to photography clubs and individuals interested in learning to use Lightroom & Photoshop. So, John, show us your home screens.

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What are some of your favorite apps?
Managing the household budget may not be exciting, but YNAB is one of my favorite apps. My wife and I have used YNAB for years and the developers have continued to improve features and functionality year after year. Entering purchases throughout the day is easy, and YNAB is location aware so it auto-fills the name of the store as the payee if you add the expense while you are still in the store.

I use Spark (by Readdle) across all my devices for email. I am certainly not an email power user, but I prefer the user interface in Spark over Apple Mail. Having a consistent email experience from one device to the next is important to me and one of the reasons I didn’t go with some of the other email apps. The speed of the swipe actions in Spark to archive, delete, pin, snooze, etc. allows me to run through my email quickly when I have a few minutes and then move on to other tasks.

Overcast is my preferred podcast app, and it may be my most used app. I have Overcast playing every time I get into the car or when I go for a walk. On weekends I have Overcast playing while I mow the lawn or tackle any of my household chores. Overcast’s Apple Watch app is great for rewinding or skipping ahead quickly without needing to pick up the phone.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?
I keep coming back to Alto’s Adventure. It’s easy to pick up, and it’s a fun way to pass the time while you’re standing in line or sitting in a waiting room. The nice thing about Alto’s Adventure is how quickly you can put it away when your attention is needed elsewhere. I never feel so invested in the game that I can’t just turn it off and start again later. However, if you are having a particularly good run, the pause button is right there so you can pick up where you left off should you feel compelled to reach the next benchmark.

What app makes you most productive?
Apple Reminders. Yes, yes, I know there are a thousand other choices for my task list, but Apple Reminders has improved so much that I find it has all the power I need to manage my various task lists. I used OmniFocus for years and, as great as it is, I found I just spent too much time fiddling with features I don’t need. Once Apple added recurring reminders and the ability to trigger reminders by location, I had all the features I wanted in an app that can be opened on my iPhone, iPad, iMac and Apple Watch. It takes less time to add a new task from the Apple Watch than it takes to read this sentence. When it’s easy, I use it, and when I use it, I stay on task.

What app do you know you're underutilizing?
Without a doubt, Shortcuts. I’ve dabbled with the app and created a few of my own, so I know it won’t take me long to wrap my head around Shortcuts, but I just haven’t set aside the time to figure out where I could apply a shortcut and then create one to scratch that itch.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?
My iPhone is always with me, but I still do the majority of my work on my iMac. Adobe has done a great job with Lightroom and Photoshop for iOS, but I still prefer the 27-inch iMac for image editing.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?
I have Siri Suggestions and the weather widgets on my home screen. Siri Suggestions does a good job of recommending the app I’m looking for. It’s not perfect, but it gets it right enough of the time to leave it on my home screen. For example, it always has my Sam’s Club app available when I walk into the store, and it knows I like to check the Stocks app in the morning and the evening. The one app I need to search for more often than I should is Photos. For some reason, Photos is only available as a recommend app about half the time I want to open it, but a quick flip to the next screen and it’s right where I can find it. Over on the “Widgets” screen I have the Top Stories, my Next Appointment and the battery indicators at the top of the screen for quick reference.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
The iPhone camera is pretty amazing. When I’m not using my pro gear, I love having a great camera in my pocket.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I would like Apple to make more iCloud storage available on the free tier. I’m not asking for unlimited storage, but it would be nice to have an iCloud storage plan that expanded based on the number Apple devices you purchase and the available memory on those devices.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.
I really like the Infograph watch face. It has room for all my favorite complications. Most of the complications are just handy for quick updates on stocks, weather, next appointment, etc. But I also like having the timer handy, especially when cooking dinner.

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What's your wallpaper and why?
My lock screen usually has a picture of one of our dogs. This time it’s Boomer, but Bandit gets his time on the lock screen as well. With my screen full of apps, I prefer to have a simple background so I use a grey to black gradient.

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Thanks, John!

Home Screens — Tim Nahumck

Tim Nahumck (Website) (Twitter) is our go-to guest on the Automators podcast (episodes 23 and 73) when we want to talk about Drafts automation. He’s also a pretty swell guy and, based on his picture here, a complete bad-ass. So, Tim, show us your Home Screen.

What widgets are you using and why?

I only use a single page for my Home Screen, but I have multiple widgets stacked on top of one another in a four small and one medium widget layout. I like having the information density with this configuration. For each stack, I have one widget in each that belongs to Clear Spaces. This allows me to have a clean Home Screen at the end of the day. When I'm done with a particular stack, I simply swipe it to a clear space, and the entire stack is hidden. This started off as a purely neat trick I could do, but I started realizing how much of a productivity hack it ended up being.

The two left small widgets are for calendars and tasks. The top-left widget is Calendar, and the middle-left widget is a stack of Reminders and my Work workspace in Drafts to manage my tasks. The top-right widget is all Carrot Weather. I have a Forecast, Daily, and Hourly widget for when I want to see different aspects of the weather.

The middle-right widget is the health stack, including both fitness and food. I have Fitness, FoodNoms, Fitbod, the meal planning note that I share with my wife, and the Grocery list for quick access to add an item when I'm not using Siri.

The bottom stack is two Drafts and one Shorcuts medium widgets. They are all a grid, so I have quite a bit of power right at my fingertips (which is also why it is located at the bottom). I have quick access to my workspaces and widget-friendly actions in Drafts; for Shortcuts, I have a few frequently used shortcuts in each widget, most of which can be run using Compact UI.

For the Today View, I have a few installed: A small Battery widget and a small Shortcuts widget which runs my Garage Hub shortcut, allowing me to utilize Shortcuts to open or close my garage. Sometimes I need these quickly and don't want to open the phone and can simply swipe left to get them. I then use two medium widgets for Carrot Weather, for the access reason I just mentioned. The last widget I use in the Today view is PCalc. This is the old style of widget, which allows for it to be interactive. I wish there were interactive widgets with iOS 14, and I remain hopeful this will come to iOS / iPadOS 15.

One other thing to note about my Home Screen are the dock icons. They aren't widgets, but they are shortcuts. Each one of these are launchers for other apps. The shortcut provides a menu, and allows me to select other apps with a couple of taps. I recently made a change to my dock and have the outboard icons mirrored. I thought of this as a "left brain" and "right brain": left brain is for creative and media apps, right brain is for more analytical items. The center icon is for social apps like Messages, Twitter, etc. I'm sure there are other ways for me to get to the apps, but I appreciate that not having icons on the home screen that are badged are better for me. Badges generally give me a minor level of anxiety, and I feel compelled to check them.

Combined with my widgets and the dock shortcuts, I have a multi-functional Home Screen layout that works for me and helps keep me focused. 

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Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Definitely a few games. On the iPhone, it's Sneaky Sasquatch on Apple Arcade. It might be one of the most fun games I've played on iOS. The gameplay is a mix of cute with just a hint of intricacy that makes it fun for not only me, but my youngest son as well. It's been regularly updated and has a ton of new adventures and challenges to complete. I haven't even been able to keep up with it given everything else I have going on! For iPad, it's Need for Speed No Limits. I do love some car racing.

What app makes you most productive?

Drafts. I know, I know—this is SHOCKING. But it's true. I'm in it many, many times a day on my devices. In my life, Drafts is the central hub from which my productivity flows. Need to write? I'm in Drafts. Need to get some notes down? I'm in Drafts, sometimes with my Apple Pencil. Need to send an email or a message or a tweet? All started there. I even use it schedule events and reminders, send them to the native Calendar and Reminders apps, respectively. Over the years, I've written extensively about Drafts on my site and MacStories, and recommend starting there if you're diving in.

What app do you know you're under-utilizing?

My mind says Shortcuts. My waist says Fitness/FoodNoms. I'm working on being better at both.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

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I have multiple watch faces, but I keep going back to two: Infograph Modular and Modular. The Infograph Modular face in multicolor gives me the best visual to what I feel is critical on my wrist: the date/time, weather via Carrot Weather, my rings via Activity, heart rate using HeartWatch, and my Reminders (though I wish I could specify a specific Reminders list like you can in widgets). The Modular face is red for nighttime wearing, and contains the time, the moon phase; it's the darkest color and minimal amount of information I need to see. I do use two Shortcuts automations to set them at specific times of the day to switch contexts visually, and remind myself that it's either time to get more alert for work or time to start shutting down for sleep.

What's your wallpaper and why?

I'm a big fan of black-and-white backgrounds. Always have been. They tend to make the colors pop in widgets or icons. For a while, I would get different pictures and make them black and white. Since iOS 14 came out, I've been going more with abstract art. I searched to find a wallpaper that had some dimension, and stumbled upon this wallpaper. Of course, I tweaked it myself into a black-and-white version. It adds some texture to my phone, and fits well with the widgets and neumorphic dock icons I have.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I'm very much an iOS-only person. And if I were in charge of Apple, I'd treat the iPad as a first-class computing device. Give me XCode. Give me Logic. Give me Audio Hijack and the ability to record a podcast just like I would on a Mac with multiple audio streams. Let me side-load music into my iCloud Music Library without having another computer around me. Let me plug into an external monitor and have the device morph into more of a desktop-like experience. At the same time, let me have widgets in more than one space. Keep developing on the Apple Pencil. Let me run 3 apps side-by-side-by-side.

I'm not claiming to have the answers on how to fix all this. I'm not sure how some of this would be possible. But don't hinder my ability to be creative and make me choose between one device or the other because of my pocketbook. Let me choose freely what works best for me to get the most out of my iPad.

Thanks, Tim!

Home Screens — Jake Kahana

This week’s home screen features Jake Kahana (Twitter) (website), one of the founders of Caveday.org and a very intentional guy. So Jake, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I've been getting more and more into Notion. We started using it as a project management and notetaking tool for Caveday. And in the last few months I've put my entire personal system on there. Book notes, meeting notes, goal setting, job tracking, etc.

I'm a fan of Superhuman and feel like my relationship to email is a bit healthier since using it.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

NY Times Crossword, maybe?

Or more realistically, based on my usage, Zillow and Redfin.

What app makes you most productive?

And I love Freedom. I love that it syncs across devices. It blocks internet when I need and just minimizes distractions. I love their "Pause" Chrome plugin too. That 5-second delay before I go to a social media or news site is enough friction to usually close the window.

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Notion. While I love it and so much of my life is on it, I know there are so many other features (database tools, cross-database features, widgets, and what-not) that could make it more powerful. Part of my goal this year, overall, is to learn more shortcuts and use snippets in email, in my design tools like the Adobe Creative Suite and Sketch, and definitely in Notion.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I don't have an iPad, but I try my best to put my iPhone away when I'm working, often in another room or at least across the room, so I'll check it maybe once an hour or less.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Airplane Mode! When I really need to do my most focused work, I'll open a Google Doc, make it available offline, and just get to work.

But maybe more functionally is AirDrop. I'll send stuff from my phone to my computer and to my wife's phone all the time. So easy.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I'm really disappointed by the idea of planned obsolescence. When it comes to being the best designed tech out there, I'd say aesthetically that's true. User experience-wise, it may be true as well. But thinking about environmental impacts and functionality of hardware, there's a lot of waste that comes from replacing phones and computers every 3-4 years. What might it look like to have devices that had a 100+ year lifespan that just needed a small upgrade here and there to replace certain parts or pieces, or to have upcycled digital hardware?

What's your wallpaper and why?

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My lock screen and home screen (and my computer desktop) are all photos of my daughter. It's a bit cliché, sure, but it's a great reminder for me for why I'm doing the work I'm doing (to make her proud, and to make enough money that I can stop working every day and spend time with her, and so she has what she needs). The photos themselves are moments of play and joy and wonder, which is another good reminder for me to stop and try and find joy and wonder in what I'm doing (and think of her).

Anything else you'd like to share?

I try a lot of productivity apps out to write about them and recommend them (or to recommend AGAINST them) for my company, Caveday. We're all about helping people find focus in a distracting world and so a lot of my favorite apps and features are therefore focus-related. I've curated some of my favorite tips, plugins, apps, and books on the subject at caveday.org/tools

Home Screens — Jake Pugh

Meet Jake Pugh. So, Jake, show us your home screens.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Day-to-day, my most used apps are definitely Overcast (for what might be termed a small podcast addiction) for entertainment, Foreflight as the one-stop shop for all of my aviation needs, and Home+4 to really dig deep into managing my setup.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I'm not much of a gamer, so I'd have to say that getting rid of Twitter would probably save me a depressingly large number of hours per week. I also spend way too much time messing around creating playlists in Apple Music.

What app makes you most productive?

The latest version of Fantastical is the app I've been waiting for to manage both personal and work calendars, and I've recently tried to simplify my to-do management by mostly moving to Reminders, from OmniFocus.

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Drafts. So much power, and I use like 1% of what it's capable of. I'm trying to retrain old habits and making an effort to really use it for all text input (like answering these questions!).

What is the app you are still missing?

Since being forced to move to full-time work from home, I would very much like Overcast for the Mac. Other than that, the main thing that keeps me from 100% iPad use is the lack of ability to easily create podcasts on the iPad with a remote co-host.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use them basically all day long. At my physical office, the iPad is my primary working device as I can move around, read and edit documents, and take notes in meetings. Now working at home, the iPad has taken up residence as a permanent second screen to my Mac Mini via sidecar.

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What Today View widgets are you using and why?

CARROT Weather - Fun and snarky weather to tell me when I should take a break and walk the dog or go for a run.

Fantastical - Integrates calendars and reminders together in one widget.

HomeCam for HomeKit - Allows me to keep an eye on the kids from the (home) office while, at least nominally, getting work done.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

With two little kids, the camera gets used everyday to capture the littlest things. At this point, it really is my upgrade driver each year, and I am AMAZED by what I can capture and how far we've come. I am as far from a pro photographer as you get, but the iPhone hides that a bit:)

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

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I'm all in on the Apple Watch. I've used it is since it was released, as a fitness tracker (WorkOutDoors and Activity), sleep tracker (AutoSleep) and to keep up with important notifications throughout the day without relying on the phone as much. There's a real part of me that would love it to be independent enough to survive with Watch/iPad and forego the phone, but that's a ways off yet.

I want ALL the complications on the Watch face, so I currently use the Infograph, with a mix of productive (Reminders, Fantastical) and fitness (Activity and WorkOutDoors), along with CARROT Weather, Messages and FlickType for easier text entry. One of my wishes for a future WatchOS would be automatic face switching, based on time or location. I would love a "work" face to show up at the office, a "home" one at home and a "sleep" one at bedtime.

What's your wallpaper and why?

On the iPad, the wallpaper is a high-res shot of the local area VFR aviation sectional chart because I'd almost always rather be flying!

On the iPhone, it is a monochrome Hamilton wallpaper that I keep since my mom passed away last year, and the last thing she and I did was see Hamilton in Chicago.

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Thanks, Jake!

Home Screens — Ally Rilling

Allow me to introduce Ally Rilling. She is 19 years old and a freshman majoring in computer science and finance at University of Wisconsin–Madison. Ally used to rely on running Shortcuts from the widget screen but after listening to some MPU podcasts and watching some You Tube videos (e.g., Shortcuts-Based Home Screen and Shortcuts Home Screen, Evolved), she learned how convenient it is to to have them on the Home Screen. She shared with me how happy she was with the new functionality this has, so I asked her to show us her Home Screens.

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What are some of your favorite apps?

Tempo is a great running companion app. I initially got the recommendation from Zac Hall on his Watch Time podcast, and I’ve been in love with it ever since. In high school, I did volleyball, basketball, and high jump on the track team, but was never really a fan of distance running. However, last summer I became interested in finding a form of exercise I could sustain in college and subsequently found—or more accurately, fell in love with—running. Tempo helps me track durations, distances, and intensities of runs so I can make sure I don’t overdo it. The dashboard view is perfect for analyzing how many miles I’ve done recently and how hard I’ve gone during those miles. It is a great app with a practical and beautiful design that makes going for a run even more rewarding.

What app makes you most productive? 

I was surprised to find that I enjoy using OneNote for note taking at school. It works great with both text and Apple Pencil input on my iPad, and honestly, I don’t think I could do school without it. I haven’t really tried other note-taking apps, but I feel like with OneNote, I don’t even need to. The only feature request I have is that they add multi-window support for different notes. Other than that, it works great for me!

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

I am definitely underutilizing Shortcuts. I have been using the app ever since it was released as Shortcuts for simple automations, but I am sure there is more I could be doing with it.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

If it is a weekday at school, I use my phone very little (about an hour or less). My iPad is the powerhouse during the week. I can do pretty much everything for my classes (except write code) with my iPad, so that generally gets five or more hours of use.

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What Today View widgets are you using and why?

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The main widgets I use are Shortcuts, Dark Sky, and Sundial. I use Shortcuts because running a Shortcut from here is quicker as it doesn’t open the app. I use the other two because I enjoy weather and weather data.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

That, in addition to the Apple Watch, it can track and analyze so many things. I love data, especially heath and fitness data, and the iPhone allows me to see all that data in one place. With the updates to the health app in iOS 13 and the increasing capabilities of the Apple Watch, I’m very excited to see what new kind of data I will be able to collect in the future.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I wish Apple had more options for customization in iOS. I understand that Apple doesn’t want people walking around with ugly iPhones, but I would love some more settings and options within stock apps and on the lock and home screens. It would be cool to have widgets on the lock screen/home screen, change what is in the status bar, and just generally be able to control how information is displayed to us.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

Yes, I have an Apple Watch Series 5 and I wear it all the time! The workout app is great for running, getting notifications on my wrist is super convenient, and I love having a bunch of weather and health data always visible on my wrist. 

Currently, I switch between three watch faces. First, my weather face combines the stock, Dark Sky, and Sundial complications for a relatively comprehensive weather picture. Next, my workout face is basically just a launcher for the workout app and allows me to quickly glance at my rings and heart rate. Lastly, my heath face features complications from AutoSleep, HabitMinder (for water and steps), and some stock complications. 

I usually begin my day with the weather face, switch to the workout face when it’s time to workout, and then finish off the day with the health face. Like many watch owners, I would like more customization/third-party faces, but am generally happy with what the watch offers today.

What's your wallpaper and why?

My Home Screen wallpaper is black because I like to take advantage of the OLED screen and so that, using black icons, I can place apps where I want. I drew/traced a bunch of icons with black backgrounds for my shortcuts, so they seem like they are floating.

Thanks, Ally!

Home Screens — Stephen Hackett

This week’s home screen features Stephen Hackett (Twitter) (Website). I was sad to see Katie leave the Mac Power Users but I could have found no better replacement in Stephen. He’s wicked smart about Apple, full of great ideas, and he’s a good friend. So, Stephen, show us your home screen.

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I was looking at my last entry in this series, and it's from right after we launched Relay FM, and well before I went full-time with it. I am surprised at how little those changes have impacted my iPhone home screen, and how many of the changes that are here are for other reasons

Over the last couple of years, I've slowly removed social media applications from being within easy reach when I unlock my devices. Tweetbot, for instance, is now buried in a folder somewhere as opposed to being front and center.

Another big change is that I've swapped Messages and Phone: the former is now on my Dock, as it's my primary mode of communication other than Slack.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Overcast continues to hold this place for me. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and Overcast is my preferred app for that. Its audio features are fantastic, and I think its ability to speed up shows by shortening the silences is still the most natural sounding out of its competitors.

Day One deserves a mention here as well. I'm doing a lot more journaling than I used to, and Day One is the final resting place for those photos and words. I do a fair amount of this in a series of small notebooks, and I snap photos of those pages and save them into Day One. I have a handful of journals set up within the app to make it easier to find and sort things. I have Day One installed on all of my devices, but the copy on my iPhone gets the most use by far.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I don't play a lot of games, but right now, I'm loving Two Spies. It's a turn-based game with a clever idea and even better haptics.

What app makes you most productive?

I know some people will balk at this, but for me, it's Slack. Almost everything that keeps Relay FM running behind the scenes takes place in Slack. There are currently about 60 people in there, and countless rooms for things like individual podcasts, various internal projects, sales, and more. While the General channel can be quite chatty, most of the time, the others are pretty quiet. As the primary mode of communication for the company, I can get a lot done in Slack every day. 

For tasks that are mine to handle, I am currently using Todoist, primarily for its excellent integration with Zapier. For example, I have a task automatically added to my list for linking to new episodes of my podcasts on 512 Pixels. Zapier watches the RSS feeds for those shows, gathers relevant information, and creates tasks for me without any intervention. It's great.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

I just opened Screen Time. It says my daily average number of pickups over the last week is 72. I have no idea if that's good or bad.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

Here they are, in order from top to bottom:

- Up Next — I like having a quick way to see what's coming up on my calendar.

- CARROT Weather — I have it show the forecast and current conditions.

- CalZones — I work with people across multiple time zones, and this makes it easy to check the time where they are.

- Todoist — A snapshot of today's tasks.

- Shortcuts — A quick way to fire commonly used Shortcuts, including one I wrote to quickly jump to the Google Doc for any given podcast.

- Batteries — Gotta check on the charge of my stuff!

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

That, in a pinch, it can be my only computer for almost anything I need to do. No, I can't record or edit podcasts on it very easily, but I can run my business, prep for shows, manage finances and do more from the computer in my pocket.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

Free iCloud storage space still being capped at just 5 GB is nearly criminal. 

What's your wallpaper and why?

My wallpaper is from the iOS 7 days, and you can download it here. I change this up quite a bit; it just happens to be what I'm using as I write this post.

Thanks, Stephen!

My Shortcuts Home Screen, Evolved

Last year, I turned my entire home screen into a Shortcuts-based home screen just as an experiment. That was 4 months ago! I really like using contexts, instead of apps, as the basis for getting work done on my phone. Here’s a video explaining how I made it and how it works. Also, if you are interested, there is a time-limited discount code for the Shortcuts Field Guide. Use “HOMESCREENSC” to get $5 off through the end of March.

Home Screens — Michael McGuinness

This week’s home screen features Michael McGuinness, a podcaster and geek who loves his iPhone. Michael's show, the Mikez N Brodz Podcast, ranges from technology to productivity. So, Mike, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favourite apps?

I really like the Headspace meditation app. I heard about this on the Focused podcast (#65) and have been doing it 90 days straight (just got a badge!). I also use the AutoSleep and AutoWake apps by Tantsissa. AutoWake allows me to set a wake alarm and be gently woken based on my sleep cycle. AutoSleep has a great sleep tracker, even if I forget to wear my watch (monitors iPhone movement). I would have to say that, overall, Fantastical would be my most used app as it works on all of my Apple devices. I can easily add new events (adding reminders is so easy), and I print off the daily view to allow me to plan my day really easily.

Since macOS Mojave introduced Dark Mode, I have been using Apple Notes as my default app for any text. Sure, it’s not the most feature rich, but for me, it is just so easy to start writing. And as I have to capture lots of conversations in my job, I need something that I can quickly launch and sync everywhere with limited fuss. I do have to say that in writing this Q & A, I have started using Ulysses for more focused writing. It really is a step up.

What app is your guilty pleasure?

This would have to be my sports app: NRL (National Rugby League). On a recent Focused podcast, I heard how Shahid Kamal Ahmad removed all of his “infinity pools”. For me, this was email. I kept my NRL app but don't use it as an infinity pool. I remember saying to myself, “I am going to do more than just listen this time. I am going to take action.” So I removed all traces of email from my phone and have not looked back. If I really need to, I can get to them easily enough.

I use Overcast for all of my podcasts, I had set up different playlists, but I mostly use the "All Episodes" playlist to just view and look for the ones I want to listen to. I used to be a big fan of Mac Power Users, though I have reduced this a bit now as I did find it was making me feel that sometimes I needed the latest Apple gear to take advantage of the advice given.

I listen to personal development podcasts like Focused, The Life Coach School Podcast and BookWorm. I always have a place for the Automators podcast, though. I got the referral via the newsletter from Career Tools when the podcast launched late last year.

What app makes you most productive?

For macOS, my number one app has to be Alfred. I really can’t live without this, and it's the first thing I install on a new Mac. (Yes, I still do a clean install for every new major release of macOS. Call me crazy, but I just love a clean install and the feeling nothing has been carried across from the past). I have scripts that I can fire with keywords, and I use it to launch the Fantastical parser to add reminders as I mentioned above. The snippets feature suits my needs really well. I have been tempted to go to something like TextExpander, but for the cost, I just can’t justify it.

The Headspace meditation app is something I use each morning in the car before I walk into the office. It helps me clear my mind and get ready for the day. I also use Focus@Will on my Mac at work (using a 30-minute timer mimicking the Pomodoro Technique), and then just counting the amount of these I get done in a day. My most productive app is to actually not use an app at all—that's right, close them. Quit email (only view three times per day: morning, lunch, and before leaving for the day). Close any social media. Put my phone on Do Not Disturb. (There are some great Siri shortcuts for this). And remove anything that might distract me. This is all in my 30 minutes focused time. If I do get distracted, perhaps a thought, I write it down to action later.

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Firstly, in regards to hardware, due to the fact I've only got an iPad mini 1, there are many apps that I can no longer run or access. I have heard a lot about the latest iPad Pros and how good they can be. In my current job, I drive to and from work, but if I needed to use public transportation, I think this would be a purchase I would make very quickly.

I was using the Togge app for a while. I really liked how it allowed me to track my actual time spent on tasks, instead of just planning what I would do. I found keeping it up to date was harder than I expected, and I haven’t used for a while.

I also really enjoy working on automation. I have some things set up in IFTTT and Zapier, but I really could use this a lot more to do things that would bring more value, like posting the episodes for the Mikez N Brodz Podcast.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Mostly for podcasts when in my car and general texting. I really don’t use social media on it. After listening to a few other podcasts around the danger of phones getting in between families, I am actively trying really hard to reduce my phone usage, especially when at home with my family. If I am in a place where I just want to use my phone to pass the time while waiting, I use the Kindle app to read or undertake some writing in something like Drafts (just loving the speech-to-text feature).

I have been into Siri Shortcuts. I have a few solid ones now that I use everyday, like when I leave work, it sends a message to my wife, based on GPS, the estimated time to get home. Though other than these core ones I use, I don’t do much more. However, iOS13 will dramatically change this.

I must be getting better. I notice that each week, screen time alerts are showing that my phone usage is going down. I’m really proud of myself for reducing this and spending that time on things that matter, such as connecting to my family and getting other important stuff done.

Overall, for anything that is shiny and new, this can become a time sucker. I have found writing down what I want to achieve and then just focusing on those tasks works much better than just blindly going through the app and looking for things to do.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I really just use Siri Shortcuts. It's the most efficient place to run them from. While I do have a lot of other apps on my Today View, I have just never connected with any of the apps this way. It could also be because my iPhone 6 Plus can be quite slow to load these.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I think the best feature is that for really anything you can think of, there is an app for that. Having music on the go makes a big difference, and I have to say being able to listen to podcasts in my car on the way to work is a life changer, so much that it was one of the inspirations to start the co-hosting of the Mikez N Brodz Podcast. The one thing that makes me recommend an iPhone/iPad to others is they are really just so easy to pick up and start using. Sure, they are more expensive than other phones, but you do get what you pay for.

In my experience, they also hold their value really well. When it comes time to sell, I always get a fair price. Another good thing is that while Apple continues to roll out updates for old devices, there is not much of a need to replace them until they stop or get really slow (aka why I still have my iPhone 6 Plus). This means the total life span out of a device is really about four to five years. I think is a wonderful return on investment.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

For me, while I like Apple a lot, I think that their competitors are doing a better job moving products at the local electronics store. When I see their catalogues, they are full of everyone else's stuff with maybe one page of Apple products, if at all. I have also heard of issues with stock not being available and then buyers getting frustrated and just getting another company's product.

While I know Apple produces quality products and they hold their resale value, the cost to entry for the average person is just too high. I have a lot of Apple devices that I need to replace, but when I look at the prices for a like-for-like replacement, I just can’t justify it (that’s why second hand can be so attractive). I am aware they are trying to do this with entry level iPads and iPhones, but for me to replace my MacBook is over four thousand dollars (AUD), which is a lot of coin. My employer has also now stopped allowing us to buy Macs due to this, so I am not the only one questioning the price (which means I know I have to hold onto my 13″MacBook Retina until it dies).

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

Yes, I have a Series 1, and I love it. My main uses are Apple Pay, Activity Tracking and Sleep Tracking. I use the Modular watch face as with AutoWake app in the bottom left, which does require the complication to be on the active watch face. CARROT Weather in the middle and extra alarms along with the activity rings.

I have tried the Siri watch face, but it doesn’t really give me the info I need. See what happens in watchOS6. It looks like my watch will get the update—feeling very fortunate.

I wear my watch all day, put it on charge when I have my shower in the early evening, and then back on just before bed. Works well and gets me through the day easily.

I am still surprised how excited some people get at the bar when I use my watch to pay. “Did you see that he used his watch to pay," says random person waiting at the bar.

What's your wallpaper and why?

I have a nice black background that looks like a leather couch (direct link to image). I use it because it has a nice clean dark look that I really find great on the eyes, and it's just simple. I find this much better than a picture. Can’t wait for iOS13 dark mode though.

Anything else you'd like to share?

I just wanted to give a shoutout to David for the opportunity to write my Q & A. I actually had to go through a bit of a journey in writing it. It was one of those things I wanted to get to, but it always fell down the list of my priorities. Today I set a new intent to just work on personal tasks first thing, and I was able to finish this. Even using my stand up desk, which is one of those things I have but don’t use enough.

At the start of 2019, I created the Mikez N Brodz Podcast, which covers technology, personal development, and career advice. This is all with my good friend and co-host, Brodie Greig. It’s been a great journey so far, and we are coming up on our 10th episode, which is a big milestone for us. Overall, this is just two friends catching up, talking about areas that interest them, and it happens to have some structure to it while being recorded.

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Thanks, Mike!

Home Screens — Hugo Castellanos

This week’s home screen features my friend Hugo Castellanos (Twitter). Hugo is an electrical engineer who has been using computers since he was five years old. Hugo currently works with Intel, but he does so much more, including producing the podcasts conexiones.io and latinoswhotech.com, which encourages younger latino students to explore science and technology. Hugo also loves his iPhone. So, Hugo, show us your home screen.

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What are some of your favorite apps?

Definitely OmniFocus (OF). I've been a very happy user for close to 3 years, and I've been able to adapt it to different jobs, life circumstances and goals. I've played with energy contexts (now tags), tools and even moods. It's definitely the heart of my workflow. 

I am also a huge fan of the Kindle and Pocket apps. One of the new habits that I am building this year is reading at least 30 minutes a day, everyday. The fact that I can read any of my e-books and articles across my Mac, iPad and iPhone makes this so much easier. 

Mindfulness meditation is a newfound interest of mine. Calm is an app that lets me meditate while walking, driving or just sitting down on my favorite chair at home. It can do guided meditation in 2 — 20 minute intervals. I find that it’s difficult for me to meditate as soon as I wake up so the way that I incorporated Calm into my daily routine is that I practice mindful meditation during the 5 minutes that it takes to walk from my car to my desk at work. When the weather is nice (most days, yay California!), I will park a bit farther out on purpose just so I can walk some more. 

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I tend to geek out when I start talking about productivity and setups, but the one that sparks the most joy for me is Overcast. I am an avid podcast listener and actually share podcast time stamps from Overcast to DEVONthink to remember and revisit some of my favorite episodes. I spend the first hour of my day, my commute time and at least 1 — 2 hours at home listening to podcasts. This love for all things audio evolved into launching my very own called Conexiones (conexiones.io) where I interview immigrants from Latin America who work in tech companies in Silicon Valley. 

What app makes you most productive? 

Surprisingly, it’s not a task manager or timer. I feel that it's Calm. I find that spending those 5 minutes doing mindfulness meditation in the morning make me feel happier and at ease with my day. I may have a day with 5 meetings before lunch, but I trust that I will be fully present and in a great mood after using Calm. 

A close second is OmniFocus. Teammates at work often compliment me at how I never forget a task or a followup. It's all OmniFocus. Even things like planning the weekend with friends or my girlfriend is easier since I keep lists of restaurants to try, movies to watch and gifts to get for others. One of my favorite new uses for it is a perspective called “Amorcito” (literally, “little love”) that looks at all the available tasks tagged with my significant other’s name. This way, I can quickly check on the things that we need to talk about, movies to watch together, articles she has sent my way that I want to read, and even funny/cute memes that I want to see with her. This has been a game changer. It’s helped me spend time with her in a more intentional way. 

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Definitely Drafts. I struggled (still am) with using ONE single app for notes. I've played with Evernote, Bear, GoodNotes and Ulysses looking for the perfect one. Now that Drafts 5 is available for the Mac as well as for iOS, I feel comfortable migrating all of my notes to one single application. I still use Ulysses for long-form writing like podcast scripts, show notes and blog posts. My workplace is Windows heavy, so the fact that I can export documents from Ulysses into .Docx works amazingly well. 

What is the app you are still missing?

A roadmap app for projects that can connect to both my task manager (OF) and my project support folders (on MacOS). The forecast view in OF is really good for seeing tasks and projects, but it can be difficult to visualize dependencies in projects when you have so many moving pieces at the same time. I am experimenting using the Compact Calendar by David Sheah. It’s a pretty neat tool. Whenever I have a new big project that will last several days or weeks, I print a copy of the calendar and fill out the milestone dates + time estimates and see what holidays/vacations collide with it so I can plan accordingly. There is a Google sheets version of the calendar that works really well, so I currently use it for my podcast calendar and work deliverables. We use the enterprise version of Google Docs for work so it is straightforward to enable within my Mac. This kind of calendar gives me a quick birds-eye view of what’s on my plate every week. The only hassle is that I have to update it manually, hence why I’d like to have a roadmap-like tool that connects to OF tasks. 

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

According to Screen Time, I average 70 pick ups a day for my iPhone. A lot of these are me checking out my calendar or my Today widget to refocus on what task I should be doing with it. 

My iPad is strictly for consumption, so I don't have Screen Time set up for it. I mainly use it to watch YouTube or read on the Kindle app or Pocket. 

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What Today View widgets are you using and why?

OmniFocus and Calendar are the main ones. I am often switching spaces from my desk to meeting rooms and my lab. Having a quick way that I can check my @Today list in OF is a lifesaver. 

Being able to see the white open space between calendar meetings is also a great visual cue for me to assess what is my bandwidth for the day. I played with Fantastical for a while, but not being able to see those open spaces unless I put the phone in landscape mode bugged me a little bit. 

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

For iPad, it’s the ultra portability of it. For iPhone, it’s the new Screen Time app. I sat down at the beginning of the year and audited all of the apps I was using and probably deleted 50+ apps that I felt were not serving me. I also uninstalled Twitter and Facebook. I believe I was wasting 3 — 4 hours a day on social media. It feels slightly embarrassing to write it down, but it's so liberating knowing that I have gained that time back to use on other things that I value more. 

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

Podcast bookmarking for Apple Podcasts! Also, not sure if the new iBooks app has it, but a driving mode would be extremely helpful to bookmark chapters or specific phrases as well. I listen to a lot of long-form content and sometimes I want to grab a snip of it for reference. I believe Audible is the only app that offers this feature so far. 

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What's your wallpaper and why?

Lock screen is a picture I took of downtown San Jose, California, while landing. I like how it reminds me of the wonderful place I get to call home. Not only California, but Silicon Valley. Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, I never thought I would call this place home. 

Anything else you'd like to share?

There are no perfect apps. There are tools, systems and mindsets that work for each one of us. Part of the reason why I love Home Screen and all of the productivity geeks and their content is because it helps me understand which one of these tools work for me. It’s important to keep in perspective what all of these things are for: to free up focus, energy and ultimately help us spend our time more intentionally. 

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Thanks Hugo!

Home Screens - Developer Elia Freedman

This week’s home screen features Elia Freedman (website)(Twitter), the developer of the PowerOne calculators, one of my favorite calculators, particularly for business and special purpose functions. Elia’s been paying for his shoes with mobile apps much longer than the iPhone has been around and has some definite opinions on how he uses his iPhone. So Elia, show us your home screen.

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What are some of your favorite apps?

I love productivity software! (Surprise given that if I'm known for anything I'm known for writing a calculator for the past 22 years!) In particular, I love GoodNotes. I prefer handwriting lots of stuff, to be honest, and GoodNotes lets me take notes, draw screen designs for my software, and all kinds of other stuff all in one app. I spend a lot of time in my own app, PowerOne calculator, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Reeder for RSS feeds as well.

For work I spend a lot of time in Slack and Asana. Asana, for tasks, is as close to my own mental model for how to do task lists. We use it for tracking bugs, feature requests, and what we are currently working on.

I'm also learning to play guitar and have a number of apps for that as well. I use GoodNotes to transpose tab notation on various songs, my teacher actually draws on a whiteboard and I take pictures of all the lessons, and I use apps for tuning my guitar (GuitarTuna), apps for slowing down songs (Capo), and an app that has tons of tabs for songs (GuitarTabs).

Finally, during baseball season, you'd find me in MLB app quite a bit. I read baseball and Cleveland Indians news, and love watching and listening to games.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I love to read and spent a lot of time in Reeder and Safari. I love Safari's reading mode. When I will be without an internet connection I use Instapaper to read offline. I read the Washington Post on my iPad, the sports section of my hometown Cleveland Plain Dealer, my local newspaper, The Oregonian, and Twitter as well. I also really enjoy the National Geographic app on my iPad. The experience of the app impacts whether I will continue reading the source. While the Plain Dealer and Oregonian have horrible apps or no app at all, the website is passable. I'm thankful for how good Safari is!

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Not an app per say but the iPad in general. Because I write code I spend a lot of time on a big screen. (27" first gen iMac 5k) I really wish I could spend more time on my iPad however. For apps I'd really like to spend more time in Photos. Its ability to edit pictures, organize them, and share them is so powerful and yet all I use it for is as a massive dumping ground for family photos.

What is the app you are still missing?

Programming stuff, although I don't know how reasonable it is to write code on the small screen. For that, I'd need Xcode for iOS, Terminal, Github, and database clients, plus some way to run Ruby on Rails. Then it would still be writing code on a small screen. It'd be pretty cool to "dock" my iPad, though, to a 27" screen and get the benefits of both. This dream dates back to the late-90s/early-2000s when I got my first Windows 2000 tablet.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use it off and on all day on my iPad, especially when traveling or away from my desk. I generally don't write code away from desk so only carry the iPad when traveling. While there are some inconveniences, for the most part I can do everything I want on it. I use it to read during breakfast and lunch, if I'm home, and read a lot in the evenings especially after the kids go to bed. It sits on my desk next to me during the day and use it as a second screen for all kinds of work stuff. And my Pencil is never far away.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I'd have to say the Pencil, although I utilize split screen a lot as well to work on two things simultaneously.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

From a product perspective I'd focus more attention on making iPad a functional machine for all day work. I'd love to work on that problem myself!

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

Yes! I use a minimalist Utility watch face. I like my watches fairly sparse but wish there was one more slot for a complement. I use my technology for four things: work (productivity), reading, communication, and exercise. My iMac and iPad is my primary tool for work and reading, my iPhone for communication, and my watch for exercise.

The weather and exercise app are immediately available, the time and schedule ensure I have the time to get out and about. If I had one more complement I'd use it for my exercise rings. As of this writing I've completed my circles for over two months straight.

What's your wallpaper and why?

My iPad's wallpaper is a picture I took facing southwest from the rim of Crater Lake here in Oregon at sunset. My lock screen is a picture of my daughters.

Anything else you'd like to share?

My general philosophy is to have all my apps about one folder away and never use a second screen. Ideally, the items on my dock act as an entry point into other data and/or apps I use in a smaller split screen regularly. And I hate seeing a full home page so always leave a few "app slots" open. Often times I use these for slots for apps I want to try.

Oh... and if I had to pick either an iPhone or iPad, I'd pick iPad. I love this thing!

Home Screens - Marina Epelman

Marina Epelman is a professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, specializing in theory and applications of mathematical optimization (professional twitter), homepage. In her copious spare time, she eagerly follows Apple and the Boston Red Sox (personal twitter). I’ve got to know Marina over the years as we’ve spent time together at many Mac-related conferences. She always blushes when I introduce her as my brilliant math professor friend … but it’s true. So Marina, show us your home screen.

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Marina's "Home" Screen. (Click to enlarge.)

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Marina's "Away" Screen. (Click to enlarge.)

What are some of your favorite apps?

The contents of my home screen change a little depending on the circumstances. I took two screenshots for this writeup a couple of days before a trip (to WWDC 2018 “unconference,” as it happens) in quick succession: before and after I rearranged my home screen to help me pack and otherwise prepare for travel. In between, some apps moved to the second page (controller for the Sonos speakers in my house, and ATracker time tracker and Productive — since I would be putting my regular routines on hold). To replace them, I brought in Wallet (for boarding passes and tickets to WWDC-related events), Yelp, and AnyList (which contains my very detailed and elaborate pre-travel checklist, including a packing list for items to bring to the dog sitter — yes, “dog” is one of the items, as I am the dictionary definition of “absent-minded professor”).

I have many favorites that will likely be familiar to most readers — Overcast, OmniFocus, Carrot Weather (on Overkill), Drafts, PCalc (as a college professor, I am required to use the chalkboard icon). I want to highlight a few that might be slightly less common. 

I am very particular about my calendars, and Week Calendar has been in my dock for as long as I can remember. As you can guess, it has a superb week view, but also an excellent month one, which manages to pack information for a month worth of events on an iPhone screen. In addition, its settings options are very rich and flexible.

Scanner Pro from Readdle is a great scanner app, and my favorite in most circumstances. However, I highly recommend adding Office Lens if you ever need to capture and share notes written on whiteboards. It has a whiteboard mode that gracefully removes the unavoidable glare that office fluorescent lights cast on the boards, and does a very nice job framing the contents.

ATracker is an iOS app, backed by a web portal, that I hope will work out for me as I am trying to jump on the time-tracking bandwagon. It has a widget and a Watch counterpart, and some nice display options and calendar intergrations that set it apart from other time-tracking apps I’ve tried so far.

I have also been experimenting with using Notion as my app for note-taking and information tracking. The Notion system is very flexible and somewhat complex. Many articles and tutorials have been published about it lately, and I am not going to do it justice in one paragraph (see this recent review by the Verge, for example. At this point, I’ve only spent a couple of weeks with it, and it looks promising for bringing different types of notes and other bits of information together in one place, and linking easily between them. It is not as flexible and full-featured as some tools designed with a single purpose in mind, but I think it has enough power in most cases, and allows for easy export of individual items or entire databases if it becomes necessary. (Also, this math nerd appreciates the opportunity to throw in an occasional LaTeX equation into her notes.)

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Probably the same as for most people: social media, in my case, Tweetbot and Instagram (all those dog pictures and videos are not going to view and like themselves!). I don't have them on my home screen — they are hidden away in the "Communicate" folder on the next page — but Siri suggestions don’t lie...

What app makes you most productive? 

I don’t use iOS very much for full-on productivity. I use my iPad occasionally to read and mark up research papers in pdf format, but most of my productive computer time is spent on a Mac (although, of course, I can get quite a lot done on an iOS device in a pinch). On the other hand, the iPhone is invaluable in quickly accomplishing so many small, useful tasks that I honestly don’t remember how I was getting through the day at work, or taking time off without falling too far behind, 10–15 years ago!

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Workflow. Let’s see whether its transition to Shortcuts nudges me to start utilizing it more.

What is the app you are still missing?

I have pretty serious chronic migraines, and would love to have an app that makes it easy and convenient to track pain levels and medication doses at regular intervals throughout an episode. I try to keep track manually as best as I can using a pre-configured sheet in Notion, but the last thing you want to do while in pain and medicated is to remember to create database entries. A perfect app would have an easy and gentle UI but have enough persistence to help elicit information needed to understand pain patterns and effectiveness of different medications. Ideally, it would also collect information about what I eat, where I travel, and what I do throughout the day, and provide longitudinal data for my doctors.

In terms of productivity, I’d love to have a LaTeX writing app with access to any sub-folder in Dropbox (although it might be the Dropbox sync protocol that’s preventing it more than lack of effort by iOS developers).

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

My sense is, I use my iPhone many, many times a day, but primarily for short, specific bursts of activity. 

Incidentally, David has been asking his home screen contributors to answer this question for years now — I am looking forward to a follow-up piece, comparing all those “my sense is...” answers to hard, cold numbers that iOS 12 will be providing! 

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I use widgets that provide either quick pieces of information, or access to quick actions: Up Next (next calendar event and alarms - sadly not currently available), Carrot Weather, ATracker, Productive, Batteries, and PCalc.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

Always having a map and a GPS navigation device on me. I am literally lost without one — often even in my small town.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I have a strong preference for ultra-wide external displays over, say, an iMac, and a laptop plugged into one takes up the valuable real estate on my small home office desk. So, if there is a “making Marina’s life better” department at Apple, they are working on a modern model of Mac mini.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I do indeed! I have multiple Watch faces set up. The two that I use most often are Modular and Simple. The former is great because of the density of information it presents without tapping or scrolling — perfect for running between meetings or sessions at a conference, especially when my hands are not free. The latter is the complete opposite — I switch to it when I am having a leisurely day with no events to remember and nowhere to rush. Lately, I’ve also been using the Siri watch face. Initially, I set it up when I realized that it shows a “Now playing” platter whenever I am listening to Overcast or Spotify on my phone, allowing me to change the volume easily even if the phone isn’t nearby. It has been slowly growing on me, and I am very curious to see whether it will become even more useful with third-party apps joining the party. (So far, the only non-native complication I have on any watch face is Carrot Weather.)

What's your wallpaper and why?

Last fall, I set the wallpaper to “OLED black.” I thought that I would just keep it for the first few weeks with my new iPhone X, to show those curious just how black this black was, and how the icons popped against it. Half a year later, I still can’t get over how good it looks! 

Anything else you'd like to share?

This post was written and edited on the last day of WWDC week in the cafe at the visitor center at Apple Park. It’s a perfect Northern California day, and I can see the edge of the Spaceship roof from my table. The Americano was pretty good, too.

Editors note:

And with that answer we find exactly how slow David has been about posting home screen posts. More in the pipeline gang.

Home Screens - Zac Hall

This weeks home screen features Zac Hall (Twitter)(Website). Zac is the lead editor and one of the prolific gang of writers over at 9to5 Mac. Zac and I recently met for the first time and found ourselves in a mutual admiration society. So Zac, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Streaks by Quentin Zervaas at Crunchy Bagel. I use it to remind myself to track my weight with my smart scale, close my Activity rings with my Apple Watch, and use the Breathe app on my Apple Watch daily. The app talks to HealthKit, too, so marking an item as done and continuing the streak is automatic.

Tweetbot by Tapbots. I try all the Twitter clients and nothing else feels as fast to me. Given my job, I just don’t feel “at work” without my timeline streaming. Twitter is both my primary way to track breaking news and the “water cooler” where I talk with friends.

Fantastical from Flexibits. I tend to prefer Apple’s built-in apps over learning other apps, but Fantastical has always just been light years ahead of Apple’s calendar app for me. Natural language input makes scheduling events on the right calendar super easy, and the simple list view just clicks with how I process my calendar. Fantastical also has a really great month view widget that I keep turned on.

Nike+ Run Club. I track all my runs with NRC. The built-in Workout app on the Apple Watch is great and getting better all the time, but Nike+ Run Club does a great job of showing how many data points that Apple’s Activity app doesn’t highlight. Data like how many miles I’ve ran per month, how many miles I’ve ran in total, and my fastest mile, 5K, 10K, and half marathon. I’m pretty locked in for now.

Apollo, a Reddit client. I only follow a few subreddits, each Apple related, and it helps expose me to points-of-view I may not be seeing on Twitter based on who I follow. I really like how this app takes advantage of the ability to offer a variety of app icons too.

Reeder for RSS. I've used David Smith’s Feed Wrangler subscription RSS service since it launched a few years ago, and it works great with Reeder on iOS and the Mac.

Instagram. I love the stripped down view of the world with a photo and a caption. After reading all day, an image is just so refreshing to process. Instagram recently added the ability to follow search terms and hashtags too, and I use this for one group: #CloseYourRings. This puts people using their Apple Watch to workout in my feed which motivates me to do the same. I wish it wasn’t owned by Facebook and I really wish there was an Instagram for iPad, but I like the community on iPhone.

These aren’t necessarily on my Home screen at all times, but a few are. App launching for me is a combination of widgets in the Today View, Spotlight search, notifications, and apps categorized in folders alphabetically on my second Home screen. My primary Home screen is just one part of that approach.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Pokémon GO. So much that I’ve recently uninstalled it — for now at least. For a while, it motivated me to go new places and explore, but I started to get a little too obsessed with advancing in the game.

When I noticed I was less present in the real world (and spend real world money to keep playing), I knew I needed a break.

What app makes you most productive?

Things! I’m fortunate to be able to work remotely and have a lot of agency over what I work on day to day, but that means I need to be my own manager a lot of the time.

My approach to task management with Things is thinking of myself as my own employee. When I’m populating Things with tasks ahead of time, I think about the process as what I want my one employee to do.

Then I use it as a reference point for what an ambitious version of me from the past has assigned the current, slightly less focused version of myself to do. It’s a total brain hack but it works for me, and I feel a lot more accomplished at the end of the day.

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Workflow! I’m really looking forward to Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12 and I’m really into home automation through HomeKit, but I’ve never really unlocked the potential to Workflow and other forms of automation on iOS. I can’t wait to dive in again when the new Shortcuts app debuts in iOS 12.

What is the app you are still missing?

Audiobooks from iBooks (or Apple Books starting in the fall) on Apple Watch. The redesigned Apple Books app looks terrific on iPhone and I enjoy listening to audiobooks in the app, but I would love to be able to see my audiobook library and stream it from the watch.

Apple Music and Podcasts streaming on watchOS 5 is really great on my Apple Watch Series 3 — especially over LTE when I’m away from my iPhone — and audiobook streaming is the last streaming media source I’m missing.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Moment of truth… Prior to iOS 12, I could honestly give a low ball, double digit guess and believe it, but now we have Screen Time and the data doesn’t lie.

According to Screen Time in iOS 12, I’ve picked up my iPhone 340 times today, or 15 times per hour and once every three minutes. Tweetbot and Messages are my go to apps, and I’ve logged 3 hours 31 minutes of usage.

In reality, I could try to game those numbers down a lot on typical work days like today when I’m working primarily from my Mac and anything on the iPhone is mainly checking in.

If Screen Time comes to the Mac, my numbers will really rocket.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I love widgets that are so glanceable I rarely need to open the app. I keep Weather, Activity, and Streaks at the top for this reason. I count calories when dieting or trying to maintain a weight with MyFitnessPal. The widget is both a reference point for me and an app launcher.

Things and Fantastical give me an idea of what tasks are on my radar and what’s coming. Photos for recommending Memories, Music and Podcasts for starting audio, and Apple News for glancing at headlines.

Finally, I keep the Batteries widget at the bottom for seeing iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods battery status at a glance.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

iCloud Photo Library. It gets a bad wrap sometimes, but the experience has been rock solid for me since I started using it in beta.

I currently have 21,687 photos and 1,921 videos and counting that are all instantly accessible on my iPhone and iPad — regardless of how much local storage my device has. That’s every photo I’ve ever taken (and kept) from any camera viewable on all my devices.

And unlike Google Photos, iCloud Photo Library has a solid Mac app in Photos — I would pay for iCloud storage if the only thing it did was unlock iCloud Photo Library.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

My first answer is sharing the full Mac roadmap with customers. I think previewing the iMac Pro months in advance and confirming the redesigned Mac Pro years in advance has served Apple well. I would like to see a similar openness with other Macs in Apple’s lineup, like every MacBook and the Mac mini. But that response is probably motivated for my desire to upgrade to a newer MacBook Pro as soon as something new is ready.

Separately, I would love to see Apple continue to advance its focus on helping customers live a better day through health and fitness. I love capturing data in the Health app, but it’s not always clear what to make of the information. I think Apple could do more to make this information actionable through education.

The Apple Watch also does a great job of pushing you to be more active with Activity rings and the Workout app, but I think there is an opportunity for a more structured digital fitness trainer. That could be in the form of a first-party fitness coaching app or even workout videos from Apple’s fitness experts.

I always get really pumped up from the Apple Watch ads showing people being active in different ways, but my comfort zone is currently limited to the treadmill, elliptical, and outdoor running.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

Absolutely! I adore the Apple Watch, and I love seeing it get more powerful and capable every year. Workout tracking and the Activity rings motivated me to diet and exercise to improve my health a few years ago, and the Activity Digital face was my top choice.

watchOS 4.3 added Activity rings as a data source on the Siri watch face, however, and I’ve been using it since then. I’m really looking forward to third-party data sources coming to the Siri watch face in watchOS 5 this fall.

The trick to the Siri watch face for me has been turning off data sources in the Watch app on iPhone that you don’t want to see on your watch face (like Apple News and Stocks in my case).

Once you tune the Siri watch face to your liking, it can be the most dynamic interface on the watch.

I always want to see the current temperature and date so I use those as complications, then other data sources appear on the timeline: Activity rings, personalized Apple Music playlists, HomeKit scenes based on time and location, and timers but only if they’re running.

I love how contextual it can be compared to the other watch faces.

What's your wallpaper and why?

A photo of my son Rory! He was born August 2017 and he’s changing all the time — and so is my wallpaper but it’s always him.

I really like using Live Photos when I capture a good shot because it animates when I press the lock screen firmly, but the current photo is one captured on my Sony a6500. Every few weeks, I like to take out my good camera and just crawl around with him and take a ton of photos with him.

The iPhone is fantastic as a camera and captures almost all of my photos, but sometimes dedicated cameras just do a better job with indoor lighting.

Anything else you'd like to share?

Sure! For anyone with a free slot on their Home screen, check out the 9to5Mac iOS app. We don’t promote it a whole lot, but my 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast co-host Benjamin Mayo develops it and recently shipped a big update to how notifications for breaking news works. Try it out!

Home Screens - Mike Schmitz

This week’s home screen features Mike Schmitz (blog)(twitter). Mike’s a geek that writes and talks a lot about productivity. In addition to his own work, Mike also writes at Asian Efficiency and makes several good podcasts, including Bookworm and the Productivity Show. Mike was a recent guest on Mac Power Users and is a swell guy. So Mike, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I love podcasts, and I love Overcast. It's probably the app I use the most. The Smart Speed and Vocal Boost features are awesome, and Marco Arment (the developer) is always pioneering crazy new features. Another app I use every night is Sleep Cycle. It's uses the microphone to detect when you are coming up out of your deep sleep cycles. It wakes you up at the opportune time, which allows you to wake up alert instead of feeling groggy the rest of the day. I've also gotten into meditation in the past year and really like Calm. The design is beautiful and I really enjoy the new meditations that are delivered every day (the "Daily Calm"). Productive is a fun habit tracking app that helps me stay consistent and "not break the chain" when developing new habits, like journaling or getting up early. And of course Drafts. I capture everything in Drafts and I absolutely love it.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I have two: on my iPhone, it's Twitterrific. I like Twitter about 1000x more than Facebook because you can choose you want to follow without having to reciprocate "friendship" with them. IMHO, Facebook tends to be people form your past while Twitter is future-focused. Who are the people you want to surround yourself with? That's what Twitter is for me.

On my iPad, it's Civilization VI. I've been a huge Sid Meier fan for years, and I think it's amazing that I can play a full Civilization game on my iPad.

What app makes you most productive? 

This is a tough one. Probably Ulysses (where I do all of my writing), MindNode (where I keep all my book notes as mind maps), or Day One (which I use for my daily reflection). If I had to pick one, I'd say Day One because it's been key to me developing a consistent journaling habit. Journaling has really transformed my productivity by giving me a record of my personal growth. Whenever I feel stuck or discouraged, I go back through my journal entries and look at how much progress I've made.

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Workflow for sure. I have a few workflows that I use all the time, but I tend not to go into the app to make workflows unless I have a specific problem I'm trying to solve. For example, I have a workflow that records the answers to several prompts and stores the responses as variables, then puts them into a Markdown-formatted table in Day One. It took me awhile to make it, but I use it every day. I have a couple of these workflows set up, but if you just launch the Workflow app on my iPhone the number of workflows there doesn't look that impressive.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Not nearly as often as some people, and that's by design. I try to be very intentional about having a reason to reach for my phone. For example, I rely on my phone for my morning routing (daily Bible reading and prayer, meditation, etc.) but I've trained myself to use it for those things instead of checking email or looking at Twitter. After I start working, I won't look at my phone again until lunch. I've also turned off almost all notifications so that I don't get interrupted when I'm making progress on a big project by something that doesn't really matter, like a social media mention.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I absolutely love the camera on my iPhone X. I decided after my iPhone 6s that whatever phone I got next would have dual lenses so I could get better pictures of my 5 kids, and the iPhone X doesn't disappoint. Related: Live Photos are amazing and using burst mode has allowed me to finally get non-blurry pictures of my always-moving munchkins.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

The ability to change the default apps, particularly Apple Mail. I use Dispatch because it's the only email client that allows me to send messages directly to OmniFocus and include a link back to the original message in the message:// URL format. For example, Airmail uses airmail:// which means that if I click on the link in OmniFocus on my Mac it will only open in Airmail (which is a problem since I love MailMate so much). But it'd be great to click on those message:// URLs in OmniFocus for iOS and have them open in Dispatch. Unfortunately, right now that's impossible.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I really like the Utility watch face. I keep it pretty simple, and don't use the complication on the bottom because I think it makes the screen too crowded. I use the Activity complication in the upper left (gotta close those rings!) and the Drafts complication in the upper right. I love Drafts on the Apple Watch, and use it all the time to capture things on my watch. Using Siri for capturing is surprisingly accurate (even when I capture ideas while out for a run). There's even a setting available for Drafts under the Apple Watch app that allows to auto-capture straight from the complication, eliminating the need to tap again to start dictation.

What's your wallpaper and why?

When I got the iPhone X, I started with an all black screen because it looked great on the OLED screen. But it was a little too plain for me, so I found one online that is black on top to hide the notch but still has a little bit of color.

Anything else you'd like to share?

With great power comes great responsibility. The iPhone is an amazing little pocket computer, but it's also a gateway to distraction. Do whatever you can to protect your ability to focus and eliminate distractions. If you have to completely delete email from your phone to keep from checking it first thing in the morning, do it!

Home Screens - Darren Carr

This week’s home screen features Darren Carr (Twitter). Darren blogs at The Mac Quad and podcasts at the Mac Quadcast. Darren writes, podcasts, and does Mac troubleshooting. He’s also a graduate of the London School of Economics. Darren pulls all of this off while being paralyzed from the neck down. So Darren, show us your home screen.

What are Some of Your Favorite Apps?

My homescreen changes on a regular basis but there are some apps that have established themselves as mainstays. For my personal life Spark and BusyCal are the two that stand out, for many years I just used the Mail app but several bugs (such as notifications being extremely flaky) sent me on a quest which ended in Spark which I find extremely stable and easy to use. BusyCal is my calendar of choice on the Mac therefore it seemed natural to use the iOS app. My task management app of choice at the moment is Todoist, I seem to go between Todoist and OmniFocus, however, Todoist has suck for the last few months as I found OmniFocus had features that I just didn't make use of.

My notes app is one that has caused much head scratching, I think I've been through every new/popular one on the market but have ended up back with Evernote, it has the feature set I require and on the Mac I feel the Web Clipper is unrivalled. Other apps that I access on a daily basis are Day One not so much for a journal but enables me to easily keep a medical diary (essential in my situation) and also Ulysses for blog post ideas etc.

WHICH APP IS YOUR GUILTY PLEASURE?

I wouldn't describe any of the apps I use as a Guilty Pleasure but I love audiobooks, being paralysed it is much easier to listen to audio than access a physical book or continuously be looking at a screen to use an ebook so I would say Audible and iBooks. Many people would include their Social Media apps here but I seem to have a hate/hate relationship with current social media.

WHAT APP MAKES YOU MOST PRODUCTIVE?

Probably Todoist, having a convenient list of tasks to tick off and therefore seeing that badge count come down is always a great feeling. Todoist is so simple that you don't get trapped in there once it is launched thus you spend more time being productive.

WHAT APP DO YOU KNOW YOU'RE UNDERUTILISING

I know I should be using Drafts more, it has been on my homescreen for an eternity but I always find myself going into the appropriate app for the writing that I'm going to do eg. Messages, Spark or Ulysses. I realise using Drafts will save me time but going to the individual app is a habit that is difficult to break.

HOW MANY TIMES A DAY DO YOU USE YOUR IPHONE/IPAD?

My iPad is mainly a consumption device so I don't use it everyday, as a motor impaired user I find it much easier to get things done on my Mac which I spend most of the day on. The iPhone is used about 5 or 6 times a day the main times are in the morning before I get up and then in the evening for either an audiobook or to catch up on podcasts.

WHAT TODAY VIEW WIDGETS ARE YOU USING AND WHY?

My today view widgets are Todoist Today for obvious reasons. The Apple News widget, the BBC Sport widget and the BBC Weather widget just for a quick overview of what's happening in the world and what the local weather is likely to be (it's London, obviously it's raining). Doing this homescreen exercise has made me put Drafts into the Today widget list to try to utilise it more.

IF YOU WERE IN CHARGE AT APPLE, WHAT WOULD YOU ADD OR CHANGE?

A feature that I've wanted for ages is Siri added to iBooks on iOS so that it is possible to say: 'Hey, Siri“ ”Turn Page Forward", surely this is really easy to add and would be a very useful accessibility feature.

DO YOU HAVE AN APPLE WATCH? SHOW US YOUR WATCH FACE TELL US ABOUT IT.

I have an Apple Watch series zero with the Utility watch face. My complications are Messages, Spark, Date and Calendar. I primarily have my Apple Watch for the time (who'd have thought) and for and easy way to check for notifications. Being paralysed from the neck down the activity features are not a major selling point, however, the Heart Rate app is a great feature. It would be a bonus if a blood pressure sensor could be added.

WHAT'S YOUR WALLPAPER AND WHY?

I like to keep my iPhone and iPad wallpaper set at the solid back one provided by Apple, I think it looks much more sophisticated than a photograph and makes it easier to distinguish between apps.

ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE?

I'm using an iPhone 8 +, I really enjoy the large screen as it makes the iPhone useable for most applications. I'm able to watch something comfortably, read ebooks or PDFs and typing is much easier than smaller screens. I chose the 8 + over the X mainly due to the facial recognition on the X, the facial recognition only allows for one face to be recognised at present and being paralysed from the neck down there are several people I have to trust with access to my iPhone, the Touch ID sensor enables this while facial recognition does not.

Thanks Darren.

My iPhone Home Screen, 2018 Edition

It’s been awhile since I shared my home screen and since I finally shipped my iPhone Field Guide, this seemed the right time to share my iPhone home screen, 2018 edition.

Since getting the iPhone X, I’m still in love with the OLED display. I like it so much that I’ve been keeping a pure black background on my home screen since the iPhone X first released. 

The top row is my folders of apps. I’ve been using this system for some time, and I still think it’s the best, at least for me. Each folder has a verb for its name: Make, Learn, Fix, Play. Any app that doesn’t make the home screen cut goes into one of these folders. I just ask myself what I’d do with the app and put it in the appropriate folder. I use Siri or Spotlight to find most apps, not on the home screen but having this rough sort helps. I also really like keeping my phone to just one screen.

The second row has some Apple Fundamentals: Phone, Mail, Safari, and Maps.

Occasionally I swap out the Mail app for a third party client like Spark or AirMail. The trouble is, they are never quite as stable for me as Apple Mail, so I usually end up going back.

Likewise, when I travel outside of California, I’ll often replace Apple Maps with Google Maps, but Apple Maps works for me in California.

The next row includes my essential audio apps: Overcast, Audible, Music, and Sonos.

In the past several months I’ve tried out several alternatives to Overcast just to see what’s out there. I wanted the Apple Podcast app to work because I love the idea of kicking off podcasts with my voice, but that was a bust. Moreover, Overcast keeps getting better. The latest update rewinds the podcast a few seconds any time you pause or stop, which helps me get back into the swing and I like the way Overcast works with CarPlay.

I’ve been a subscriber to Audible for years, and I used to keep the app in a folder but moved it to the home screen this year, and I think it will stay. Finally is Sonos. I’m hoping that AirPlay 2 will allow me to easily stream to Sonos from the Apple Music App. As much as I like my Sonos speakers, I’m not a big fan of the Sonos app. 

The fourth row has my social apps: Messages Twitterific, Slack, and Unread.

I switched from TweetBot to Twitterific in December, and I like it. I’m not sure it’s better than TweetBot, but I was ready for a change. This week in response to the Twitter’s threatened further moves against third-party apps, I tried to use the official Twitter app for a few days. Ugh. Twitter is definitely a better experience with third-party apps. Slack is home screen worthy and Unread remains my favorite RSS app.

The fifth row includes productivity apps: Ulysses, Notes, Dragon Anywhere, Workflow.

When I first put Ulysses on my home screen, it was just an experiment, but I find myself opening the app and writing in it often. I’ve flirted with Bear, but Apple Notes still is my place for reference notes. Dragon Anywhere and I are at a difficult point right now. Some days it works amazingly well. Other days it doesn’t. With a $15/month subscription, I feel like it should be more consistent. Nevertheless, it remains on the home screen.

And then there’s Workflow. My beloved.

Interestingly, my dock has all third-party apps in it: Fantastical, Drafts, and OmniFocus

Fantastical runs circles around the native calendar app. I wrote this week about Drafts 5. Finally, I’m running the beta of OmniFocus 3 and digging it. I’ll be posting more on that next week.

I also find apps through the Today View. The Siri recommendations are pretty good. I’ve been using Headspace lately, and I’ve even given it the right to give me limited notifications. Because I normally meditate at the same, it gives me an appropriate notification at the right time to get mindful and I don’t have to dig for the app.

What I'd Change

I often ask home screen guests about the one thing they would change about the iPhone if they were in charge. I’ve got a few.

First, I’d do whatever it takes to make Siri work better, faster, and more consistently. Siri is a great idea that needs better execution, now.

Next, I’d open the iPhone up more to allow users to change default apps, for instance substituting Chrome for Safari. I’d also put in place whatever resources are necessary to make the Workflow-as-part-of-iOS project awesome and the envy of all non-iPhone users.

My Apple Watch

For a hyper-scheduler such as myself, the Siri watch face is ideal. A lot of people don’t realize it, but you can turn on and off individual components of the Siri watch face to make it work for you. I'm using Drafts as my single complication because it’s so damn handy.

My Lock Screen

I’ve currently got a home-made inspirational quote lock screen. That’s not usually my thing but someone made this wallpaper from a Merlin Mann quote years ago and it does inspire me. The trouble with the above-linked wallpaper is that it is too hard to read with 50-year-old eyeballs so made my own version and spread on the Futura Bold extra thick.

That Blank Space

I like having empty space on my iPhone home screen. A lot of people think its nuts, but I like the way it looks and should we like the way our stuff looks?

And a Shameless Plug

I did a whole section in the iPhone Field Guide on Home Screen layout. I’ve shared several of the pages below. It’s fun reading, and maybe it’ll even tempt you to check out the whole book. Enjoy.

Home Screens - Dr. Barrett Mosbacker

Some of my favorite home screens come from MacSparky readers. Dr. Barrett Mosbacker is one of those. So Barrett, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

For managing my personal and professional life my favorite apps are Spark, Fantastical, Things 3, GoodNotes, and DEVONthink. Spark and Fantastical are powerful but easy to use applications for managing my email and events. After being a long time OmniFocus Pro user I recently made the switch to Things 3. Both are exemplary apps for managing projects but I ultimately moved to Things 3 because I found myself spending less time fiddling with the application and more time getting work done. Things 3 is also an exquisitely designed app that is a pleasure to use.

I have been looking for the Holy Grail of applications for managing and integrating project and meeting notes, documents, and research. I finally found them in GoodNotes and DEVONthink. GoodNotes gives me the ability to use my iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil to take meeting notes in an unobtrusive manner. Because GoodNotes has accurate handwriting recognition (even for my horrible penmanship) I can export my meeting notes to DEVONthink. Later when I need to find these notes I can search for them in DEVONthink. I switched to DEVONthink after being a long time Evernote Business user. Although DEVONthink takes time to learn, its powerful features and integrated mobile app make it the ideal repository for all of my personal and professional notes, documents, and research.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I’m feeling a little guilty for saying so, but I don’t have one. Virtually all of my iPhone and iPad applications are for getting things done. The closest I come to a guilty pleasure is the Kindle app for my professional and pleasure reading. I may need to get a life! :-)

What app makes you most productive?

Things 3. I manage a large number of complex projects involving my Senior Leadership Team as well as mundane personal tasks like reminding me to take the trash to the curb. For my purposes, Things 3 has the right balance of power, flexibility, and elegant GUI.

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

I am probably underutilizing MindNode. I do a lot of writing and speaking. Scrivener is my go to application for all writing—from short blog articles to essays and book projects. I also use it for drafting my speaking notes. I find myself vacillating between using MindNode and OmniOutliner when drafting my thoughts and outlines for writing or speaking projects. I would default more often to MindNode if it had true Apple Pencil support.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use my iPhone approximately once an hour through out the day beginning at 4:30am when its alarm goes off. I use the iPad all day throughout the day. I have Things 3 open on the iPad, which sits next to my MacBook Pro. This keeps my to-do list constantly in front of me so that I focus on what is most important. I grab the iPad and Apple Pencil whenever I have a meeting. I take my handwritten notes in GoodNotes and then export them to DEVONthink for future reference. Any to-do items arising from the meeting go into Things 3.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I use the Fantastical, Things 3, AccuWeather, The Calculator, and Deliveries widgets.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

It is difficult to identify favorite features but I suppose on the iPhone it would be the dictation application. I cannot type quickly and accurately using the on screen keyboard on the iPhone X so I rely heavily on dictation. Apple Pencil support is my favorite feature of the iPad Pro. I use it for taking notes, annotating PDFs, and jotting down ideas.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I would enhance iCloud to have the feature sets of both DropBox and Google Docs and I would substantially increase the total free space available to iCloud, or at least substantially increase the space available at each price tier. I would like to make iCloud my default application for storing and sharing documents and collaboration. The way things stand now, I use iCloud to sync across my devices, DropBox for sharing documents with others, and Google Docs when I need robust collaboration. I would also substantially enhance the capability of Siri. Apple lead in this space but has since fallen behind Google and Amazon.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I have a Series 2 Apple watch. I use the Siri watch face as my default but I also use the Activity Face for my morning workout and for tracking my physical activity throughout the day.

What's your wallpaper and why?

I use a solid black wallpaper on my iPhone because it makes the app icons stand out without distraction. On my iPad I use a beautiful fall picture of the Saint Louis Gateway Arch National Park.

Thanks Barrett.

Home Screens – Jeff Perry

This week’s home screen features Jeff Perry (Twitter), proprietor of TabletHabit.com where Jeff talk about how he uses his iPad as his exclusive computer. Jeff’s a busy guy, also producing his podcast, Getting Caught Up. So Jeff, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Ulysses is my primary app I use day-to-day as I write a blog and Ulysses is hands down the best writing app for bloggers in my opinion. 

I am also a big fan of Gladys as a shelf app on the iPad. It quickly turned into a utility app I use a lot when I have to save photos, links, and pretty much anything else from one app and I drag and drop them into Ulysses or into Wordpress itself. 

Calendars 5 is my main calendar and task management app of choice (it’s a long story and something I think I might write about). It has some quirks but it is a beautiful app with a high-functioning UI and works great.

Finally, I use Blink a lot to help get affiliate links for posts on my blog. I don’t have any sponsors or advertisements on my blog so the only source of revenue on there currently is affiliate links. I don’t make much but it helps keeps the lights on for the website. 

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Apollo. I joined reddit almost 10 years ago now and it has changed a lot in that time frame, mostly for the worst in my opinion. I still frequent Reddit but every time I do I feel like there could be something better with my time. Apollo as an app though is by far the best reddit app I have ever used, and the 10 years worth of apps I have used quite a few of them.

What app makes you most productive?

In terms of content creation it is Ulysses, in terms of managing my day-to-day tasks and keeping on track it would be Calendars 5.

Ulysses is a powerful text editing tool and by far the best writing app on iOS in my opinion. I write everything in Markdown and when I am writing to share something with other I use Ulysses 90% of the time. 

Calendars 5 is a new addition to my devices. I was a big user of Fantastical 2 on iOS but the agenda view wasn’t what I wanted when I looked at my calendar. I know a lot of people like it but for me I like to see my time in blocks and Calendars 5 offers the natural language addition with beautiful UI and Reminders integration. The only big difference is that it shows things in the traditional calendar format and I like that. 

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

Ulysses. I know there’s so much more I can do with this thing but for me it is just a very well performing markdown machine that integrates with WordPress for publishing articles. 

I’m sure there’s something I’m missing when it comes to what I can do to make my writing more efficient and I hope to learn more about the app soon. I purchased Shawn Blanc’s Ulysses Course but I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but it’s on my list of things to do in the new year. 

What is the app you are still missing?

I’m currently not using any dedicated task manager. I have tried everything under the sun and haven’t found anything that works the way I want it to. In a perfect world I would take the natural language Todoist has, the features OmniFocus has, and the design of Things 3 and have them fuse together to make the perfect app for me. Because of this, I have actually moved my big picture plans and goals into a bullet journal and my daily tasks into Calendars 5 with their Reminders Integration. 

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use my iPad as my main computer so whenever I need to do work I use that, my iPhone is there mainly as a way to send Bluetooth media to my AirPods and check Twitter in my downtime. But when I’m in a pinch I will write my thoughts and outlines into my iPhone to get it out of my head and then deal with it later. 

I usually am on my iPad working on Tablet Habit or my Podcast Getting Caught Up from when I get up at 10 am (I work my day job until midnight so I don’t get to bed until 2 am or so) until I leave for work at 2:30 pm. From there I bring my iPad with me to work for downtime during lunch to continue working on stuff. 

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

Workflow – One of the biggest things I want to start doing in 2018 is to track my time more and I found some modified workflows from Federico Viticci’s post that work quite well for me. So I signed up for Toggl and set up the workflows and so far it is working quite well. Instead of having these workflows as an icon on my home screen or take up space in my dock I have it as a widget to quickly start and stop timers for the work I am doing. 

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I’m sure I’m not the first person to say this but iOS 11 adding Drag and Drop to the iPad (and iPhone to some extent) has been an absolute dream. Especially with shelf apps like Gladys and Yoink coming into the picture. Those two things have killed several workflows I had previously because it is just a delight to use this feature and these apps with synergy that wasn’t on iOS before. 

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I would have a bigger team in the Podcast department. From what I understand there is a very small team handling the entire podcast library and with Apple still having a huge stake in the game for podcasts I think a bigger team is necessary. There are a ton of companies and 3rd part hosting services trying to bridge the gap between host and platform but I think Podcasting needs to have more from Apple. It seems like this is something that is taking place currently with the beta of podcasting stats from Apple being implemented recently, so if they can keep that momentum I think we will see more from them in the coming years.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

My Apple Watch face is the modular face. I know a lot of people aren’t big fans of it but I use my watch to keep track of what I have going on and the modular watch face allows me to have my “terminal” on my wrist. 

I have the date and time on the top, because it is a watch after all. 

Reminders takes the bulk of my screen because I am using Reminders within Calendars 5 as my day-to-day task manager

The bottom three icons are messages, which is to check when family and my fiancé get a hold of me, Battery life (mainly because I have a Series 1 and it isn’t great on battery life. Finally I have a timer. I find myself setting timers for pretty much everything from work time-blocking, laundry, my lunch hour at my day job, everything and being able to quickly set a timer on my wrist is more convenient than my phone. 

What's your wallpaper and why?

iPhone - Cortex because it is my favorite background I have found that grids out each app without being intrusive. 

Anything else you'd like to share?

I have began to take on a minimalists perspective when it comes to a lot of aspects in my life, one being what I keep on my iPad and iPhone. Every single app I have on my devices is deliberate and with purpose. There are no games on it (I have a PS4 for that), and I purge unused apps regularly to keep a tight ship. 

I also just want to let anyone reading that I write about this stuff and how you can use an iPad as a main computer on my blog at TabletHabit.com and on a podcast called Getting Caught Up. I am active on Twitter and you follow me at @iamJeffPerry.

Finally I just want to thank you, David, for being an inspiration for me to start doing Tablet Habit!

Thanks, Jeff.

Home Screens - Daman Rangoola

One of the great things about living in Southern California is all the local nerds I get to hang out with. One such new friend I made this year is Daman Rangoola (Twitter). Daman is a clever guy and put a lot of time into his home screen. So Daman, let’s see it.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I find almost everything on my home screen to be invaluable on a day to day basis, but the two that stand out are Downcast and Tweetbot. I also have Overcast, which I find to be a great app in it’s own right, but after spending so much time tweaking my settings in Downcast and having the app work great for me - I haven’t felt the need to totally make the switch. 

Twitter is somewhere I find myself all day whether it’s for monitoring the news (in tech and otherwise) during the day and then diving into the glorious world known as “NBA Twitter” - following along with all the basketball games with a phenomenal community of basketball diehards. Tweetbot has consistently proven to be the best Twitter client for my usage but due to Twitter’s API limitations for third-party apps, I also use the stock Twitter client frequently, thus it also lives on my home screen.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I would say Tweetbot but I can conjure up enough professional purpose to open it to not feel as guilty about it, so I’m going to say Threes. It’s still the best game I’ve ever played on the iPhone - it’s the only game I downloaded and have never removed from my iPhone. It’s challenging, fun, and most importantly - I can play for 2 minutes or one hour and it doesn’t require constant attention. 

What app makes you most productive? 

Strictly speaking, Asana. Slack is vital to my work but I get most of my daily tasks done in Asana and having an on-the-go view of everything I’m working on has been a great addition to my workflow. If I’m away from my desk but an idea hits me or I am talking to somebody and a task presents itself, I can quickly add it into Asana and lose the burden of worrying that I will forget something. 

What app do you know you're underutilizing?

This will be of particular interest to the owner of this website: Workflow. I know I can make great use of this app, and I know how powerful of an app that it is, I just haven’t put in the proper time and effort into getting the app working for me in that way yet. 

What is the app you are still missing? 

WhatsApp for iPad, please! WhatsApp has become the go-to communication method for my family (locally and abroad) and for several groups of friends, and it has no iPad client yet.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad? 

Constantly. If I’m not reading something on my iPhone, I have my iPad open next to my Mac at all times for work with the Notes app open with my Pencil charged, jotting notes all day. There is virtually no part of my waking hours that I’m not actively or passively (listening to podcasts etc) using either of my iOS devices.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The ecosystem. There are a lot of reasons to individually love my iPhone X and the 10.5” iPad Pro, but the way they work together is my favorite single feature of iOS.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I think it’s time to allow for default apps for major app categories to be changed. I wouldn’t do it like Android, I would make it very difficult to qualify to become a default. I would create a new App Review system for becoming a default, ensuring a good experience for the user. 

Two of the biggest examples that would be great for me? Allowing Google Maps to become the default Maps option and allowing Downcast or Overcast become my default podcast player. There are more categories out there that could qualify (like Internet browser) but those two would be game changers for me.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I use my Apple Watch for the following: seeing the time, monitoring my activity, monitoring my notifications, and Apple Pay. I have never been interested in apps on the Watch, even though they are greatly improved, simply because it’s not what I’m personally looking to get out of it.

The bottom complication is what I refer to as “Mean Boss Time” - my boss is rarely in the same time-zone as me, so it’s important for me to know what time it is for him (and he’s sick of me asking lol). 

I swipe right to the Activity Analog face when I’m going to the gym or doing any other workout to track my activity in a focused way. 

What's your wallpaper and why?

I am absolutely in love with the new OLED display of the iPhone X and to get the full effect out of it, I changed my background to be pure black, which is stunning especially in comparison to non-OLED displays. Similarly, I have changed my home screen background to accentuate the stunning black:

It’s just gorgeous!

Anything else?

I have a no folder policy on the home screen of my iPhone. There was a time where I put everything in folders to only have one total page for all my apps, but I enjoy having the ability to see everything clearly and every app on my home screen being one press away. If I need to launch any other apps, I enjoy using Spotlight most of the time.

Thanks Daman