iPhone

What if you could only use ONE APP on your iPhone?

So this is a completely random but fun experiment… but what app would you pick if you could only pick ONE?

I know, I know. It’s an impossible choice. I’d be so torn between several: camera, notes, music, messages, tasks…

And, as nerdy as it sounds, I think I’d pick the app Things. (The to-do list manager.)

Things is not my most used app at all. But… it’s super fast, very easy to use and navigate, and very versatile. I think it’d work as the single spot to keep all my ideas, reminders, projects, tasks, notes, etc.

I think I’d prefer the simplicity and speed over the missing features.

If it was a different device — say iPad or Mac, I’d pick a different app. I’d probably pick Ulysses as the only app I could use on my iPad. And Notion as the only app I could use on my Mac. (Or I would totally cheat and say Safari on Mac.)

What if you could only use ONE APP on your iPhone?

DND until Lunch

Between 6am and noon is arguably my most precious / important / valuable time of the day for getting things done.

That’s why I keep all of my devices in Do Not Disturb until noon.

This way I am free from any and all notifications, pings, buzzes, until the morning is over and it’s time for a lunch break.

DND until Lunch

Everything You Need to Know from Apple’s WWDC 2020 Keynote Presentation  →

Mike Schmitz put together a fantastic summary for The Sweet Setup, covering all the highlights from Apple’s keynote yesterday.

I thought this was one of the most polished and entertaining Apple keynote events of the past decade. Obviously there are some advantages to having a pre-recorded broadcast rather than doing a live event. But Apple’s production team did an excellent job with making it feel authentic, whimsical, and intentional. And that’s just the production…

The announcements around iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and more were all huge.

As a long-time Apple nerd, it is encouraging to see Apple’s software continue to mature and expand in both useful and whimsical ways. And, as someone who uses an iPad for the vast majority of just about everything I do, these next iterations of refinements and features to iPadOS just keep moving things forward for power users.

Everything You Need to Know from Apple’s WWDC 2020 Keynote Presentation

iOS Shortcuts: The Ultimate Guide  →

This morning, over on The Sweet Setup, I published a pretty hefty guide to iOS Shortcuts.

Basically, there is so much you can do with the Shortcuts app on your iPhone and iPad — especially so with iOS 13 and iPadOS. And so I wanted to create a central spot for folks to grasp the the why behind why Shortcuts is so awesome, and then also have some clear next steps for how to start building shortcuts and automations of their own.

There are links to all sorts of incredible Shortcuts resources, including examples, Shortcuts libraries, and even stuff around home automation.

I’ve found that as people start to get familiar with how Shortcuts can help them, then they start having all sorts of light-bulb moments. (And no, that’s not a HomeKit joke, but it should have been.)

For example: The gym I go to makes its members keep and scan one of those small, plastic barcode keychain things whenever you check in at the front desk. And if you forget to bring yours then they charge you $1.

But… if you have a photo of the barcode card on your phone, then that works, too.

So I snapped a photo of the barcode card, dropped that photo into its own photo album on my iPhone, and then created a location-based automation Shortcut that gets the most recent photo from that album whenever I arrive at the gym.

Which means that now, when I am walking in the door of my gym, Shortcuts has automatically pulled up the photo I need for me. So simple, but also so handy.

Anyway, you should check out the iOS Shortcuts Guide here.

iOS Shortcuts: The Ultimate Guide

Marius Masalar Reviews the Moment Camera Lenses for iPhone  →

Over on The Sweet Setup, Marius Masalar reviewed the wide-angle, macro, and telephoto iPhone lenses by Moment.

Here are a couple of awesome photos Marius took using the wide-angle, 18mm lens:

I used to have an Olloclip and I loved it. But that was back on my iPhone 4.

Since then, my photography usage has gone the opposite of the rest of the planet. As fancy, dedicated cameras are dropping in popularity as the iPhone takes over, I’ve gone the opposite direction.

Aside from snaps and videos, I rarely ever shoot with my iPhone. Instead I take my Leica Q with me just about everywhere, and use it for pretty much all my the photos I make.

Marius Masalar Reviews the Moment Camera Lenses for iPhone

The Ultimate Guide to Quick Capture in Ulysses  →

Matthew Cassinelli put together this fantastic guide for quick capture in Ulysses on iOS. He goes over the built-in share sheet (which is what I use about 5 times a day). And he also gives several examples of custom Shortcuts (with download links) for automating the capture of ideas, notes, and more.

Side note: On this Tuesday 26 March, we are shipping a huge update our Learn Ulysses course over on The Sweet Setup. This article on Quick Capture is taken from one of the lessons in the new course.

The Ultimate Guide to Quick Capture in Ulysses

What it Was Like to Go a Month with No Social Media on My iPhone

It has now been one month since I deleted Twitter and Instagram from my iPhone. I also made a commitment to put my iPhone into Do No Disturb and leave it in another room of the house during our family evening time.

A mere 28 days was no heroic feat at all. Nevertheless, it was enlightening.

And so, after a full month, here are some initial thoughts on the experience as well as what I’m doing next.

Regarding No Social Media on my iPhone…

Let’s get to the point:

I have loved not having social media on my iPhone.

Over this past month I have felt more creative, more focused, and at times, more bored. All good things!

If you follow me on Twitter, then you may have noticed that I did not completely disappear. I still have Tweetbot my iPad, and I’ve been checking in about once a day during weekdays to reply to any DMs and other conversations that were going on. This intentional, “small batch” processing of my Twitter streawm for a few minutes per day has been great.

Even though I use my iPad for just about all my work and writing, Twitter access on the iPad has (so far) not been a distraction.

Regarding DND every evening…

Having DND enabled in the evenings proved to be a bit more difficult than I thought.

There were many times during an evening where I’d be having a conversation with my wife or with one of my kids and we’d want to pull the phone in for some reason — such as to search for something online, message someone, look at a video one of us took earlier, etc.

In those moments — with my phone in another area of the house — I grew more aware of just how prevalent my smartphone is within my family’s day to day life. And, honestly, its a prevalence that I’m not comfortable with.

As our boys grow up, there are certain mindsets and behaviors that my wife and I do and do not want to “normalize” for them. And “staring at our phones all the time” is most certainly a behavior we do not want to seem normal.

Now, what’s next?

For one, I currently have no plans to reinstall Twitter or Instagram on my iPhone. My experience in February has been too good and I’m not ready to go back.

And I will also continue to leave my iPhone on Do Not Disturb in the evenings during our family time.

Additionally, there are two more things I’m doing as a result of February’s experiment:

  • I’ve subscribed to several magazines, including HBR, The Atlantic, Monocle, and Fast Company. I’ll share more about this in a future article, but I realized that I wanted some literal boundaries to my news and media consumption. The internet is boundless; a physical, printed magazine has a front and back cover — it is finite.

  • Secondly, I’m signing out of email from my iPhone. During February, I noticed that email was the thing I checked instead of social media. But yet, I don’t actually send or reply to emails from my iPhone — I just check my inbox. It’s not a productive use of my time. So, I’m going to remove it during March and see how things go.

I’ll check back in at the end of March to see how things go without email either. But I have a hunch I already know.

What it Was Like to Go a Month with No Social Media on My iPhone

I’m Turning on Do Not Disturb for Every Evening in February

In yesterday’s post I mentioned how, starting today, I have deleted Twitter and Instagram off my iPhone for the month of February.

There is something else I’m doing this month as well.

But first, if you don’t mind, I’d like to share a story…

I remember one evening when I was young and my family was having dinner. And for some reason that night we got several phone calls during dinner. I remember my dad stomping into the kitchen where the phone was and finally just taking the receiver off the hook so that we wouldn’t get any more interruptions. (Raise your hand if you remember when phones were plugged in to the wall.)

Growing up, we had dinner as a family several nights a week. Even though I totally rolled my eyes at it, I now look back and can see just how special of a time that was where the four of us were able to connect. My dad silenced the phone that night because he didn’t want other people having the priority of attention during that time.

Now that I’m married with kids of my own, I am jealous for consistent and quality time. But instead of telemarketers calling us, it’s friends text messaging. Or my own compulsions to check my email and social media inboxes.

Right now our kids are at the age where dinner is more like a circus. It’s crazy. More food is on the floor than on the table. But because we do dinner together almost every night of the week, the consistency of it adds up over time.

And I don’t want to invite my cell phone to the most important family hours of my day.

That’s why, for the month of February (at least) during the evening hours between 5:00 until 7:30 pm, both my wife and I are putting our phones in Do Not Disturb and leaving them in another room.

These are the hours every day when my family is all together. After we all have dinner together, my wife and I wrangle our three boys toward bed, hoping they’re down by 7pm.

It’s already a very busy and crazy time just due to the nature of our kids: 3 boys, ages 2, 5, and 7. And I don’t want it to be normal for my boys to always see me using my iPhone. I also just want to be more intentionally present with them — not having a baseline level of noise in the back of my mind that is distracting me and pulling me to just check my iPhone.

We have been dancing around this Do Not Disturb time a little bit here and there over the past month, and but so, now we are going to go all in for the month of February.

And I’m inviting you to join us. Is there an hour or two during your day that you’re willing to shut down your phone and put it away?

This is also something I will be tracking in my Baron Fig for February as one of my daily habits: how many days do I leave my phone alone between the hours of 5:00 – 7:30pm while I’m with my family?

I’m Turning on Do Not Disturb for Every Evening in February

My Travel Packing List Shortcut

Having a pre-populated packing list is one of the greatest “travel hacks” I’ve ever done.

It takes all the guesswork out of packing. And it saves me quite a bit of time as well. I just follow the list and when I’m done I don’t have to worry if I forgot about anything.

I used to keep my packing list in the Apple Notes app. It was easy to use because you could toggle the to-do state of the whole list by selecting all items and then tapping the “checkbox icon” in order to uncheck them in one fell swoop so you can start over with the list.

But with iOS 12, I thought it’d be nice to set up a Shortcut for this instead.

So I built a very simple Shortcut that will create a new note for me with my packing list ready to go.

The way the Shortcut works is very simple: It takes a block of pre-written text (my packing list that I wrote) and then passes it into Bear as a new note filled with check-box items.

The reason I prefer to have the list created in Bear is because then, once I’m done packing, I can just delete the note.

One important thing to note when building this shortcut is that you want to write your list text in Bear’s flavor of Markdown so that it will create your packing list as to-do items so you can check them off as you pack them.

That syntax looks like this:

- [ ] ITEM A

- [ ] ITEM B

- [ ] ITEM C

Download the Shortcut Here.

My Travel Packing List Shortcut