This week I’m featuring the Home Screen of my friend, Kourosh Dini. Kourosh has written several excellent books and, in addition to being a doctor, is one of the most mindful people I know. And now Kourosh has a podcast, Rhythms of Focus – for Wandering Minds, ADHD, and Beyond. This was an instant subscribe for me.

So Kourosh, show us your home screen.

What feature are you using most now?

Seeing someone dictate a message to themselves with an old-school handheld tape recorder tickles me.

To this end, I’ve set my phone’s action button to trigger the shortcut “Dictate to Drafts”. An idea appears, I press the button, and talk. When done, Drafts acts as a way station to send the text to either OmniFocus as tasks or to DEVONthink To Go as ideas for future development.

What’s on your Lock screen?

The lock screen has a few noteworthy items. Buttons include:

• my OmniFocus Inbox (currently holding 2 unprocessed items)
• my OmniFocus “Currents” perspective, showing me the main things I’d like to visit today.
• BusyCal showing me the time of my next appointment
• the temperature

The bottom right has a quick entry button for OmniFocus.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Most of what’s important to me is jammed onto the front screen and in folders:

Main

• 1Password is still my goto app for handling all my passwords
• BusyCal has an excellent two week view on MacOS. The iOS version syncs nicely.
• DEVONthink To Go lines the bottom and has two short cuts to create new documents in specific folders. One is “+Note” which goes to my Inbox for general notes and ideas. The other is “+Journal” which automagically creates a note with its title being today’s date and time. The note is created in a dedicated Journal group in DEVONthink. The shortcut opens the file where I can start writing.
• OmniFocus (see below) has the privileged position of the bottom right corner. A long press gives me access to the Inbox, Quick Open, and Quick Entry. But I don’t use the long press feature. Odd.

Time and Health

• Due is just a solid app for managing time-based alerts. I absolutely love the auto-snooze feature. It makes a gentle ding, waits 5 minutes, and dings again, continuing until I tell it to stop. This totally removes the problem where an alert goes off, and I have to debate, “Do I drop this thing I’m doing and leave it a mess? Or do I wrap things up, hoping I’ll remember to do the other thing? Or do I leave the alarm blaring at me?” With this system, I can take my time making the decision, and either wrap up or continue what I’m doing without forgetting either.
• Simple Timer (for meditation) – Meditation has always been simple for me. Give me a nice meditation bench and a no-fuss timer, and I’m happy.
• Yoga is a subscription app with a great teacher and a continually shifting set of poses every day. Between meditation and yoga in the mornings, I feel quite solid and refreshed for the day.

Work

• Square and Square Invoices – I like making money. This makes me money.
• epocrates – Great app for knowing the dosing and conflicts involved with medications I prescribe or take.

Listen

• Audible – I’m very late to the game here. Usually I read the old fashioned way with paper and eyeballs. I’ve only recently tried listening to an audiobook. I’ve just wrapped up the first book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series as recommended to me by a neighbor. It was fun, like a radio play!
• Music – Apple presents nice recommendations based on what I listen to. It’s easy to get to my tracks and I like reviewing my history of what I’ve added over the years.
• Podcasts – I don’t listen to too many. But I’m now making one: Rhythms of Focus. You should totally listen. It’ll blow your mind.
• myNoise – very nice for making a whole series of noises. I like mixing rain and white noise

Communications

• Spark – solid email client
• Sanebox – it took me forever to give this one a try, but I find it super useful to cut down the email noise.
• Reddit (see below)
• Instagram
• Circle – my app and hosting site for my Waves of Focus course for Wandering Minds, ADHD, and Beyond.

Study

• Duolingo – I can sort-of-kind-of speak with my Cuban mother-in-law now.
• Translate – for when I want to cheat at Duolingo
• Flashcard Hero

Music & Video

• Spire – connects to my Spire Studio which is great for recording guitar noodling in the living room
• Sidus Link – controls the lights in my recording studio as I perform at the piano.

Create

• Drafts (Dictate to Drafts set to side button)
• Perplexity (see below)

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Still Reddit. Though more recently Instagram.

I’ve always had an aversion to social media, starting with MySpace, then Facebook, and beyond. But in order to market, I’ve needed to learn about this whole internet thing, which seems to have taken the shape of funny videos interspersed with doom. So, I add to the cacophony.

But Reddit seems to have deeper conversations, whether its about r/ADHD or r/Ravenswatch. While there is certainly a fair share of nonsense, there are also a lot of thoughtful, helpful, and fun discussions to browse through.

What app makes you most productive?

OmniFocus continues to be my productivity app of choice. It has consistently housed my projects and tasks since its inception in 2008. I’ll periodically explore other options, but OmniFocus remains the stalwart choice. Every time I try something else, as pretty or interesting as they might be, I inevitably run into, “it doesn’t do what?!” and I’m happily back in the arms of my beloved.

The only other compliment, not even competitor, is pen and paper. I’ll use it to “anchor” myself when feeling scattered or looking to stabilize myself against a tendency to run off on rabbit trails.

I’d love to write a next edition of Creating Flow with OmniFocus, but there’s only so much time in the day. The project sits there, a dormant seed awaiting the light of attention.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Perplexity. The more I practice using AI, the more I realize how useful it can be.

I understand how afraid people can be of it. Will we lose our jobs? Will it become our bosses? Will it consume us?

Frankly, I don’t know. I’m more afraid that, as a group, humanity has an unwarranted faith in technology. “Hey, let’s put the AI in charge of [whatever]!” Yeah, maybe.

Playing with AI though, it seems much better suited to enhancing what a human has put together than creating things de novo. I’ll first write my newsletter on my own. Then I’ll ask Perplexity for help with readability, headings, tags, and the like. Sometimes, it will even point out something I’d written in the past, and I’ll say, “oh yeah!”

When I’d first approached it, I was entertained by making it talk like Sponge Bob Squarepants. Then I acted cruel towards an AI Mario character for some sadistic reasons I’ve yet to figure out about myself. (Probably something to do with competitive mustache feelings.)

But then I actually started to use it for my newsletters. At first, it annoyed me as the AI was wrong in just about everything. It didn’t sound like what I’d write. It didn’t research what I wanted. Its suggestions for my audience were generic at best.

But when I started to have conversations with it, noting the problems, feeding it my own writings as examples and more, it actually became useful. I started to ask it what it needed from me to be more useful. In other words, I started to develop a relationship with it.

I haven’t figured out how we can skip along the lakeshore at sunset together yet. But that’s probably for the best.

I really liked your recent post on using it on the iPhone.

Do you have an Apple Watch?

Nope. I tried an analog watch for a bit. Then didn’t. I prefer to reject clock time whenever possible, in favor of self time.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I took a picture of a hibiscus flower that my wife has been growing. A flower shows up to bloom only for a day or two, then fades. Then another flower appears. It’s lovely.

Thanks Kourosh!

Stephen Millard is one of my favorite contributors to the Mac Automation community and his website, ThoughtAsylum, is a must-read for me. This week Stephen agreed to share his home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps? 

My favourite app on the iPhone would undoubtedly have to be Drafts. I have been a long time user and it has just given me a place to get all the noise and minutiae out of my head into a trusted place that I can then deal with when I have the time to devote to it. The ability to share on was always incredibly useful and then with version 5 the flood gates opened and you could do pretty much anything with it, which I fully embraced. In fact I’ve currently got over 1.5K actions in Drafts, and most of them I created — though not all for me.

An app I really value is FaceTime. I have travelled a lot with work over the years and I have lived away from other family members for most of my life. While text messaging and telephone calls have helped, FaceTime has really enabled me to keep a closer connection with family and has allowed us to share moments easily and conveniently that could otherwise have been missed.

The app I probably use most is Overcast. When I’m doing household chores or taking walks, my AirPods are in and Overcast is giving me podcasts. I subscribe to dozens and while most are technology-related, I do switch it up with a few comedy podcasts, some productivity ones, a few HR/Learning- tech specific ones for my day job, and a few special interest ones, too. Overcast’s audio processing features hooked me day one and I’m a high-speed listener — though not for comedy, the timing simply doesn’t work. I’m still finding my way around the new UI for the latest revision, and I hope that Marco adds Shortcuts support back soon so I can use the Overcast Note in Drafts shortcut I shared when I was on MPU Ep 656.

Which app is your guilty pleasure? 

I would say YouTube or Disney+ would be my guilty pleasure app — both probably have an equal footing. I do most of the cooking and ironing for the family, so if I get to stay put I tend to pop one of those on and pick something to fill the time.

What app makes you most productive? 

The app that makes me most productive I would have to say is Obsidian. However, it isn’t the one I use most on the iPhone. My mobile capture to Obsidian almost always will go via Drafts. But technically I manage and document so many things through a handful of vaults that it has to win on that basis alone.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

 This may sound odd to those who know me, but the answer would be Shortcuts. I’ve been a big time user since the days of Workflow and back then I used to spend hours every week helping people build workflows. When Shortcuts came along I kept up the investment, but while Shortcuts has grown in capability, I know in the last few years my interest has dwindled. The main issue has been the stability and spurious errors that have broken the experience quite a number of times for end users. In addition the enthusiasm around helper apps seems to have fallen, and I’m sure the untimely passing of Alex Hay (creator of Toolbox Pro) was a big factor there as he really opened the doors in so many ways. I think this year I’ve seen solid signs of improvement in Shortcuts, and I’m hoping the new focus on intents will help have a knock-on effect with the Shortcuts ecosystem. As a result I’m optimistic about being able to resume investing more of my time and energy into Shortcuts as I’m sure there already is and definitely will be a wealth of untapped potential for me to tap into.

What is the app you are still missing? 

I don’t think there are any apps I am missing given what the platform is capable of. A few months ago I would have said a great Mastodon client app, but I eventually settled on Mona (you can read why here.)

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

On a typical work day, I think I probably access my phone maybe 20-30 times a day. On a non-working day I would imagine it would typically be a lot more, but it would very much depend on where I am or what I’m doing.

What Today View widgets are you using and why? 

I have four today-view widgets:

1. Tailscale – this is effectively my VPN connection to my home network, so it is handy for quick access if I need to jump back on to access something. Typically I’ll be using the Prompt app to access a machine over SSH, or occasionally my Mikrotik router to add access for something.
2. Fantastical (Month) – I have a little Fantastical month widget so I can get a quick calendar view if I need a date for something.
3. PCalc – I mean who doesn’t have quick access to PCalc? 4. Google Transit Departures – This one just gives me a quick way to see when the next bus is due, and given how often the timetables seem to subtly change, quick access to this is a definite boon.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad? 

Many moons ago, before my first child was born, I used a few Android phones. They were sluggish and needed to be rebooted a few times a day, but I could do anything I needed to with them. That is until the one I had while my wife was expecting. That one was possessed. It constantly froze, had screen issues, it was a nightmare to try and use, and I was someone who was supporting users with Android phones in my day job at the time, so I had some sense of what to expect, but this was diabolically bad. It went in for repair numerous times and every time it failed again in similar ways within a few days. My contract was up and I could finally get a new phone before my firstborn was due. I logically decided not to get another Android phone. I had an iPod Touch, and so I decided to get an iPhone instead, on the grounds that Apple gear “just worked”, and I’d had no problems with my iPod Touch (or all the iPods that came before it). I couldn’t risk not being able to get “THE” phone call to tell me my wife was going into labour. My favourite feature? Easy. The iPhone’s reliability.

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

I think there are two things I would like to address, and these of course are my own armchair opinions based on what little information we hear and knowing nothing of the internal workings. But, if the genie’s got my back…

The first change is around financial views. Apple has still not done anything with iCloud storage volumes for customers even though device capacities have increased. Apple is also putting too many financial barriers in place for developers. I’d like to see Apple give more back here. Provide storage that is more commensurate with the number of Apple devices a person owns, and provide better financial levels to encourage more Indie development by allowing developers to earn enough to go Indie in the first place.

The second is Shortcuts. For anyone who has followed the development of Workflow and Shortcuts, we all know about the potential in ways to improve the usability, the discoverability and the stability. As I mentioned earlier I’m hoping the new app intent focus will help give a natural boost, but I’d like them to pick up the pace on their whiteboard list of planned features. I wouldn’t’ want to take away from Apple Intelligence or anything else, but maybe you know recruit some people and triple the resources the team currently has.

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

I do have an Apple Watch, but the face usually has the time, battery and weather on it … nothing exciting.

What’s your wallpaper and why? 

I don’t like my wallpaper to be too distracting, so on my phone itself it is plain black — goes with everything. On my lock screen I have a stencilled Millennium Falcon. I had a faded version of this or a similar version on every iPhone I’ve owned. If anyone ever had to ask me “why?”, then they wouldn’t understand the answer.

Anything else you’d like to share? 

In my day job I work for a company that is very safety conscious. We have a lot of colleagues who work in dangerous conditions so it’s in the company DNA. We’re always doing safety shares and I would like to recommend something to everyone, and that’s to have What3Words (W3W) on your iPhone. It is an app that overlays the planet with a grid system and assigns three words to each 3×3 square that makes up the grid. This makes it easy to share with people and is used by many emergency services.

I once had real trouble directing emergency services to a school that was less than a mile from the local hospital. The emergency operator just couldn’t find the school on her system so couldn’t dispatch the ambulance. If W3W had been around then it would have been so easy to pass those details on.

I even have a contact shortcut on my home screen (Contact Fam) that as well as allowing me to call, text, and FaceTime people I have on my “Family” list in contacts, it will also let me text them my W3W location to them, thanks to an integration with Toolbox Pro (though you can also do it directly via the API, which is what I used to do). You never know when you’ll need to pass on your location and this is a really novel and easy way to do it.

If anyone is interested in making their hardware and software do more for them, then you can check out my website, thoughtasylum.com. Here you can find hundreds of posts and a cornucopia of scripts, plugins, shortcuts, macros, extensions, etc.

Should you enjoy that and want even more content, you can keep an eye out on my monthly round up posts and get some sense of all the projects I’m working on, on Apple platforms, home automation, and any other geeky computer stuff that happens to spark my interest.

Stephen Millard • Social: Mastodon | LinkedIn • Web: thoughtasylum.com | stephenmillard.com

Bern Shanfield is a MacSparky Labs member who, over the years, has become a friend. What I love about Bern is how intentional he is about his Mac and how he thinks of it. When he showed me an interesting take he had on his iPhone Home Screen, I couldn’t help asking to share it. So Bern, show us your Home Screen…

What are some of your favorite apps?

[Ed. Bern tells us about his favorite Mac apps.]

My favorite, suggests something used for a longish time. For me, favorite is more of the moment or week or maybe month.

Keyboard Maestro IS a favorite and has been for years. With palettes, it’s my UI builder (I’m more visually/tactually/cursor/get it on the screen in front of me than keyboard-oriented) to get apps to look and work the way I want them to.

BetterTouchTool (BTT) isn’t used much, but what it does do is important to me to round out the touch aspect of my hand-crafted-to-my-taste  UI. Same for PopClip.

Look and feel, make the deal! Gotta have both. Half-assed doesn’t work no matter which cheek you have left.

Grammarly hides my 3rd-grade spelling and grammar skills, for which I’m grateful.

I’ve been playing with Beam as a UI for ChatGPT. Still getting in the saddle with that and ChatGPT.

Default Folder X, now that it’s working again, is a pleasure.

TextSniper helps me nurture my dislike of typing. I’ll take a lot of steps to avoid typing. You’d think I’d like Voice Control, but using voice rather than looking and touching hasn’t really caught on for me. I keep trying it and go back to the display and cursor movements.

Hookmark is good, and the implementation needs to be more direct.

HoudahSpot beats Spotlight, though losing email search was a major hit. More about that later.

I’m anxious to see if I can get all my Voice Memos memos transcribed, which would be simpler than the MacWhisper route. Having that data searchable will be useful.

I got really excited for a minute when I found Ilama FS, flew like a hypnotized moth into the flame , and fought my way through the terminal install, only to find out later when it didn’t work and that it was a buggy hackathon project. The upside was a dive into the deep end of the pool learning about Terminal, which prior to this was only a lightly dip my toes in place.

After some coughing and sputtering, I looked around for some actually working projects and found Sorted, which will put a mix of unfiled apps into folders based on the file name and extension only, which is a start and seemingly state-of-the-art and I added Riffo to Keep it Shot for some auto file renaming.

I’ve been waiting years for auto file filing, and with the very beginnings of it coming to light with AI, am jumping at the hints of it showing up. Given the complexity, it’s likely going to be a third party rather than an Apple app or service that gets this going in a significant way.

You know that something is seriously wrong with you or your life, or you’re just truly a geek at heart when filing stuff gets your motor running 😉.

Dem da highlights of my current app journey.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Logic Pro and iZotope RX 9 Audio Editor were unjustifiable purchases that I’ve gotten only a little use from but really wanted to see what I could do with them to clean up audio files. So they were guilty purchases. Allowing myself to indulge my app promiscuity is where my feelings of guilt lay.

What app makes you most productive?

Keyboard Maestro and, ironically, it makes me unproductive in the time I sometimes spend setting macros up. Maybe add that to my guilty pleasure chest.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Again Keyboard Maestro, even though I’ve gotten through most of your Field Guide, which has been useful. I use it more for UI scripting, and every so often, when I do learn a bit of using it more programmatically, it’s really, really great. I guess I’m more driven by immediate need than the abstract language learning that coding requires.

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

iPhone 100 /  iPad 0

I like you died down the end of the make the iPad a macOS replacement path. Filing is so *** bad without the Finder, I just don’t go there.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

Weather, sunrise/set, Motivation, though I very rarely swipe to see them. My preference is to have only one screen and have everything I want and need there. It’s also interesting to note that if you have only one Home Screen, then with a single action, you have access to all the features like the App Library, Today’s widgets, App Switcher, Control Center, and Notifications.

As you can probably tell by now, I have a pretty deep drive to have everything in one place at my fingertips. Sometimes (perhaps too often), that takes precedence over productivity. (+1 on the guilty pile.)

Interesting for an ex-lawyer to be asking about guilty whatevers.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Portability.

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

Oh boy… Building me a soapbox and giving me a hand getting on it?!!? I feel like I was hit by a phaser set on stun!

Well…

As long as we’re in fantasy land, let’s go all the way, I mean, why not?

Remember the original Star Trek episode “A Piece of the Action”? Near the end, Kirk gathers the mob bosses and assigns one of them to be the head boss for the entire planet to help them move forward out from the feudal warfare they become stuck in.

If I were the equivalent of Kirk in that position here today on earth, I’d put Tim Cook’s Apple in charge of all technology on earth. Have one operating system and ecosphere for all devices. Get everyone on the same page moving forward together rather than the unimaginable waste of resources and lives we second by second engage in.

Ok, with that a bit off my chest, I can address YOUR question.

Tim said Apps are the future, which I understand given the strategic importance of the global developers pool. I disagree as I don’t have a business to run, THANK GOD!!!

The first thing I’d do is get a Skunkworks project going to rewrite the OS (from the ground up if need be) to eliminate apps altogether.

I’d also build a new internet from the ground up that ran parallel to the existing internet that the world could switch over to and let the current old internet collapse into the mass of bandaids, patches, and duct tape that are barely holding it together. Not because it was interesting but rather because it’s needed.

So this new macOS (infiniteOS? ∞OS?) can keep the developer pool contributing by installing an extensions framework that lets developers contribute to the development of the OS by adding features (extensions). They get paid by users using the features, which is tracked and credited to the developer of the feature extension. Or something like that 😉. Come on, it’s fantasy; let’s have fun!

Anyway, out with apps and in with extensions! Developers become Jr. Apple engineers!

That’s fantasy 1.

Now, ever so slightly back to earth. To get to the app-less place, the first step is to assign the Finder and Email as the backbone of the system. This means opening the Finder’s filing system to Mail and merging those siloed databases into one.

Then, this combined database gradually absorbs the rest of the databases (Photos, Contacts, Calendar, Notes, Messages, etc.) until we arrive at one and only one database for all data.

This then opens a world of design opportunities for developers to create extensions to access. A new golden age of UI!

Glad you asked, huh?

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

Not really interesting. Alarms, temperature checks, and voice memos, mostly.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

Solid grey to be unobtrusive. I already have too much going on, as you can see above.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Only if you’re still awake and interested. 😇

This week’s Home Screen features Andrew Hall. I’ve got to know Andy in the MacSparky Labs. He’s an engineer and an app developer (Lifeorities and Starship SE Corps). Andy is also a really nice guy. Show us your home screens, Andy.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I love the FotMob app. I use it to follow all my soccer action. I also love and daily use the App Store Connect app and, recently, the Disneyland app. Overcast is also a daily favorite.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

tv app

What app makes you most productive?

Since my daily work is on a Windows PC, my productivity using my iPhone and other Apple devices is for personal and hobby productivity. I would say, for me, I use the Photos , Calendar, Reminders, Safari, Mail, Notes, and Messages apps. However, if I had to pick one, I would say Reminders because it is my daily task go-to app.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Many. For work I use OneNote a ton. I definitely underutilize that for my personal use. Instead, I use the Notes app a lot, and it is great for my personal project notes. 

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

iPhone: many times an hour.
iPad: usually once a day — at night for YouTube and tv.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I have a ton of Today View widgets, mostly news-type widgets. However, I rarely swipe over to the Today View. Instead, I’ve got a lot of what I need on Home Screen widgets, particularly using Widgetsmith. My main Home Screen features the Siri Suggestions widget at the top.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Lately, the Dynamic Island.

In general, so many apps and content available on a great platform. That is why I enjoy my hobby of app development! I love how these devices can be so personal and become a great creative and information tool.

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

I would improve/fix Siri.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I have different iPhone wallpapers by Focus mode. Most of my Focus modes use the Photos wallpaper, and I have it randomly cycle through my favorite photos. 

Thanks, Andrew!

This is Daniel Schwartzberg. He is a teacher, he host of the podcast Creative Consumption, and he’s a swell guy. So, Daniel, show us your Home Screens.

Primary Home Screens Walkthrough

Right off the bat, when making this post, I realized that the way I’ve used my Home Screen has substantially changed over the past couple of years. I used to fill my Home Screens with folders and icons and utilize it as a launchpad for all my apps. Now, I search for and launch most apps with Spotlight on my iPhone and iPad, and because of that, I’ve set up my Home Screens to give glanceable information, offer quick access to essential apps, and to help nudge me into a certain mode.

Relatedly, Focus Modes have become a major part of my Home Screen philosophy this past year year, especially since Apple started allowing users to tie specific Home Screens to specific Focuses (Foci?) in iOS and iPadOS. Using that feature, I’ve been able to construct an individual Home Screen for each of the major parts of my life, and the three most common: Personal, Reading, and School.

I also like using color as a general reminder of context, and it’s part of how I set up my Calendar app and something I think about when assigning colors to tasks, lists, and backgrounds. That’s partly why I’ve dedicated the top left portion of my iPhone and iPad Home Screens to a color-coded Widgetsmith text widget with the name of whatever Focus Mode/context I’m in.

Even though that widget arguably isn’t as “functional” as an app icon or other more interactive widget type, the benefit I derive from having that textual reminder really drives home the reason that I’m using the device and how I’d like my intention directed at that time. I try to accomplish a similar effect by setting the color of my Apple Watch face to as close a match as I can get with Apple’s standard color watch faces.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

This is a tough one for me, and may sound odd, but even though I love using it, Overcast is the app that best fits this category for me. I love podcasts, especially because, like probably a lot of people, I view them as a medium that I can engage with to stay informed about topics that interest me while still being having my hands free to be productive in other ways (cooking, folding clothes, grocery shopping, those kinds of things). But within the past year or so, I’ve realized that I spend so much time listening to other people on podcasts (I’m actually afraid to look at Screen Time stats) that I’ve stopped taking as much time to reflect on my own thoughts and make my own things.

So I’m trying to cut down on podcast listening, and one of the big ways I’ve done that is by removing Overcast from my dock, where it used to have a prime position. I can still search for the app in Spotlight, and still have a rotation of podcasts I follow, but that move out of the dock has been a big help, and I’ve also been establishing other time boundaries (e.g., no listening on weekday mornings before I go teach) and building other habits to replace and complement podcasts (music, reading, audiobooks).

This one’s a toss-up. I depend on a bunch of apps that I call “infrastructure apps” (Hazel and Keyboard Maestro come to mind immediately), but in terms of iOS/iPadOS specifically, the two apps that help me the most in literally “producing” work are Just Press Record (JPR) and Ferrite. 

What app makes you most productive?

JPR started out as an occasionally helpful tool in college, when I wanted to record some thoughts and easily transcribe them later, but it’s become essential in the past two years for my work as a teacher. At the school where I teach, the faculty write reports for all the students they teach, and when it comes to drafting those reports, I find it easier to dictate a first draft rather than write it.

I tend to overcorrect if I type it first. That’s where JPR, and its Apple Watch app, comes in. I have a fairly long commute to and from my school, and so when it gets to about a month before our reports are due, I’ll use that time to spew a bunch of thoughts into a voice file on my watch in Just Press Record. Then I transcribe those files on my iPhone and transfer them to my computer, where I can clean up whatever flubs the transcription made and use those text files as the basis for each report. On top of that, I also love to use the app to dictate any kind of message that I need to send, and to draft posts of episode show notes.

Since Ferrite‘s a stalwart in the audio-editing arena, and a bunch of great tech writers like Jason Snell have put out content explaining all the cool things it can do, I won’t give a long overview here. All I’ll say is that I’ve used it as my DAW almost every day for the past four years and it’s a tool I couldn’t operate without. A few things that engender my devotion:

• The app allows keyboard shortcuts to be customized (and more apps should do this!).
• The automation control works exactly in a way that makes sense to me how I’d like.
• Strip silence! Killer to have on the go.

There’s a lot more, and the recent release of Ferrite Pro 3 provides some awesome things, too. I have found (maybe because of the recent major update) that the app’s been slightly more buggy for me than I’m used to, but hopefully those things get ironed out, because when it works, it works beautifully.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Since I’ve already talked about my must-have productivity apps, I’ve left those off here, but these are a few that I just love using, and which often fill specific but frequent needs. Also, this list could be much, much longer.

Genius Scan – This app is a must-have for me. The school where I teach doesn’t use a comprehensive learning management system (LMS) for students to submit work online, and paper is the primary medium for student materials, which can be a great thing in a lot of ways, but hard organizationally. Almost all my assignments and assessments are hard copies, or students write them in their own notebooks. Enter Genius Scan. After a couple of months of figuring out how to get all the bits and bobs set up correctly, I was able to use Genius Scan’s Auto Export feature combined with its Naming Templates to kind of cobble together my own personal LMS.

When a student hands me a paper, or I go around to collect assignments, I take out my phone, start up a new scan (which is extremely easy because of the context-menu action accessible via long press from my “School” Home Screen), and then tag the document in a way that tells Genius Scan to export it to an iCloud folder. Then, on my iMac, Hazel watches that folder and automatically sorts each assignment into a folder corresponding with the class section and date. It’s fantastic – highly recommend.

Camo – Even with Apple’s inclusion of Continuity Camera in iOS 16 and Ventura, I’ve been using Reincubate’s Camo for years to hook up an old iPhone as a webcam, especially when tutoring and having Zoom meetings. The app’s always been reliable, fast, has a bunch of in-the-weeds customization features, and I just don’t feel like changing my setup since it’s so great.

Text Case – Awesome utility for text transformations. I’ve set up a couple of custom flows, and it’s especially useful when copying Latin text from a picture I’ve taken of a textbook or commentary so I can include it in a tutoring document. Very specific-use case, I know, but even with general transformations, it’s great, and it’s available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It also has solid Shortcuts support!

Libby and hoopla – Libraries are awesome! Books are great! And these two apps let me browse, download, and read/listen to a huge variety of books either in the app itself or via the Kindle app. Nothing better.

Schooly – I think I first read about this app on 9to5Mac, but Schooly is a nifty, easy-to-use app for helping me with class schedules. I’ve also tried the assignments feature, and even though it hasn’t yet stuck with me, it’s a nice inclusion to have and I may try to use it more in the future. Where Schooly’s most handy for me is its Home Screen and lock screen widgets the developer has added – I can see both my upcoming class, as well as where they’re located. Also, the developer has been very responsive whenever I’ve reached out with questions, which I something I always appreciate.

What Widgets are you using and why?

Timemator – This is a timetracking app I’ve used in the past and (am trying to) use more often lately, and the developers have included a selection of widgets in one of their more recent updates. The one I use is the “Timer Widget,” which launches the app and optionally toggles a current timer for a task. It’s more of an aspirational choice than one I depend on, but I’m trying to be more diligent about tracking my time to see exactly how it’s being spent, and it’s a good reminder to have the widget there on my iPhone/iPad screens. I also have it as the top left complication on every Apple Watch face.

Widgetsmith – I don’t utilize it for anywhere near all the cool things David Smith has included, but I do love the simple text widget that I’m using (related to the “Focus Modes” section above.)

Clock – It’s weird, I know, but I just like having a clock app on my Home Screens.

BusyCal – I’ve been using BusyCal as my calendar app for a few years, and really appreciate how the developer keeps improving it across all platforms. They’ve added multiple widgets on iOS and iPadOS, and I have two different ones included in stacks on my “School” and “Personal” Home Screens – the “Events List” and “This Week” widgets. 

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Top of the list here is Shortcuts, and as an extension of that, Toolbox Pro. I’ve dabbled in making shortcuts for time tracking using Timemator, quick transaction logging, and adding new assignments to Schooly. I’ve also created a few longer “set-up” automations on the Mac that include Shortcut actions, like adding reminders and activating Do Not Disturb (DND). Overall, though, I have far more ideas of Shortcuts I want to make than actual Shortcuts themselves.

I’m intrigued by the idea of creating launcher shortcuts on my Home Screen, something I’ve heard David, Rosemary, and a host of others people speak about in podcasts and on their sites. I can imagine it would be great to have just one icon that would allow me to perform multiple actions or start multiple processes, and I can personally think of several use cases in that vein. But I have a hard time shaking the feeling that the initial time investment to set those things up would be substantial, even though I realize that a.) it wouldn’t take nearly as long as I think, and b.) I would probably get the time back in the long run.

Anyway, hope springs eternal that the day will magically become 32 hours long (or more realistically, that I’ll finally convince myself that those kinds of Shortcuts won’t take as long to make as I think they will), and I’ve started keeping a list of automations that I want to set up, so that I’ll have some starting points.

What is the app you are still missing?

I’m still figuring out which app or apps to use for project management. Reminders was my go-to task app for ages, and still is for the most part. But things have recently gotten much busier in terms of the scope and amount of things I’ve been doing, which is due to a combination of house projects that I’m trying to get sorted and an increase in my work as a podcast editor and Latin tutor outside of school. Reminders and BusyCal used to be completely sufficient for me for planning my time, but in the past year, I’ve wanted a better bird’s-eye view of each ongoing project I have, and those tools haven’t quite provided the oomph I need.

I’m currently trying the app Firetask, and there are elements of it that I like, but I’ve never worked with a Getting Things Done (GTD) system before, so that’s also been a learning curve, as well. I’ve been listening to the audiobook to see if that helps give me a better idea of how to use the app and augment my overall organization system. My gut feeling is that an app as extensive as OmniFocus would be more than I need, but I’m tempted to give it a try.

Also, if anyone has recommendations for a budgeting app (ideally with Shortcuts support), I’m all ears!

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

With the important caveat that I am in no way a software developer, and that I am positive making any sort of changes to fundamental parts of iOS must take a huge amount of effort, time, and consideration, I still have to ask: why is rearranging anything on the Home Screen still such a terrible experience?? It’s great that Craig let everyone know “jiggle mode” is apparently official Apple terminology, but if there’s one improvement I genuinely believe could make everyone cheer during WWDC23, it would be an announcement that they’re improving the UI experience of setting up and changing Home Screens.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Everything that jumps to mind all relates to the Continuity features Apple’s implemented over the years (Universal Clipboard & Control are both real timesavers).

Thanks, Daniel.

Kathy Campbell is the Internet’s very own Unicorn Sidekick, helping small businesses succeed in the confusing landscape of technology. So, Kathy, show us your home screens.

What is your wallpaper and why?

My lock screen is a photo I took of my amazing child, we did a photo shoot when I got a new camera to test out and this is one of my absolute favorites. I love the widgets on the lock screen, using the calendar and Timery (making sure the right timer is running) and also a reminder to get my steps in.

My wallpaper is the beautiful logo from my podcast Conduit over on Relay FM. It’s a show about productivity with my friend Jay Miller, but it’s productivity in real life. It also has a strong accountability community with our Conductors. I love our logo (and doing the show) so much!

What Widgets are you using and why?

I use my widgets so often! It is mainly my media launcher, but also a quick access portal for my battery check and Adding a Task. I use both Apple Music (for specific artists/albums) and Spotify (for playlists other people have made). It has my audiobook launcher (Libby is amazing for reading and listening to books) and also lets me launch Endel, which I use mainly for my evening routine and sleeping, but sometimes will also run it when I want something to listen to but don’t want to pick anything.

Main Home Screen Walkthrough:

Dock: I love the look of 3 icons. Phone is there because when I need to call someone, I need to call NOW. Overcast is my podcast app of choice. Instagram is my dose of joy in my day, checking up on what my friends are doing and getting inspiration when I need a micro break.

1st Page: Stack with Calendar and CARROT Weather with smart rotate on.

2nd Page: 

🌮🕹️ – food/delivery apps, plus entertainment apps

💥 – Apps that aren’t for business and get enough notifications/desire to utilize that I want them on the homepage.

🦄 – mostly messaging apps but also business-related items live here.

Safari – pretty obvious …

Small Stack – Fitness, Photos, Todoist Quick Add (also using smart rotate)

Other than these, I use Spotlight to get what I need.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

My Screen Time says I spend about 3 hours a day total. That usually ends up being when I’m out of the house and getting notifications, taking a walk with one of our dogs, or sitting on the couch during my separation between work and home life.

What app makes you most productive?

So many apps help keep me on task in the easiest way possible.

Timery: Time tracking is vital to my work, especially for the clients that are hourly. If I can’t produce a report of my monthly hours in my invoices, I can’t get paid! Timery makes it SO easy and useful and beautiful!

Calendar: Every day is run by my calendar. I tried using Fantastical for almost a year but the unreliability of the widgets showing me what was coming up meant I finally went back to just the native Calendar app. 

Messaging apps: Every part of my life requires messaging. I know most productivity gurus will tell you to leave things alone and reply at set times. My brain and my days don’t let that work. I try to take action almost immediately on things that come from my messaging apps. This bounces around between Messages, Slack, Discord, and Facebook Messenger. I very rarely do any truly deep work that requires shutting everything out and, actually, my ADHD brain is always context switching anyways so I might as well be productive with it!

For someone with a productivity podcast, you’ll notice I didn’t mention my task manager. I use Todoist, but mainly as a list of things I’d like to do in the future. Anything that has a due date gets added to my calendar to dedicate time to do it. Every morning, after I journal, I will do a light brain dump and transfer tasks into my Bullet Journal. By writing it down on paper, I am able to purposefully choose what I’m concentrating on during the day, especially since my tasks and projects are so variable with the work I do. I am constantly working with my clients and contractors and communicating changing priorities. This way works for my brain and makes it so I don’t forget or lose something (or have a million tasks that are overdue and make me completely shut down).

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

It’s not an app so much as Focus modes. I only have a Sleep Focus that shuts everything down except for the ability to allow my favorites to call. I am not sure the best way to use it yet, since I don’t use my phone a ton anyways, but it’s on my mind.

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

I finally upgraded my S5 watch this past year when the battery health dropped to 70% … it was time! I love having my watch (and not only because I can find my phone if I’ve put it down somewhere), but the notifications feature is critical. It allows me to quickly check if it’s something I need to do right now or attack it in the future when I’m actively doing something different.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I try to make sure everything I use on my phone is there for a reason. Even if I’m intentionally using my phone to decompress or dink around, it’s because I’ve given myself permission to do that.

I love doing these kinds of interviews because it allows me to think about what has changed since I last did one and I can do some changes/clean up!

Thanks, Kathy!

This week I’m featuring the home screen of my friend Chris Bailey. Chris is a best-selling author with books like The Productivity Project and Hyperfocus. Just this week Chris released his latest book, How To Calm Your Mind and it is his best yet. You may not know it, but Chris is also a Mac geek of the first order. So Chris, show us your home screen.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I’ve gone all-in on Focus modes. I just have four of them: Personal, Work, Sleep, and Do Not Disturb. But I’m always in one of these modes, regardless of what I’m doing. My philosophy is that technology exists to support what we intend to accomplish, and I find Focus modes a nice expression of this idea. I hope Apple keeps investing in the feature over time. 

Another one of my favorite features with Focus modes is the ability to trigger automations by switching to them. I just have one of these: enabling grayscale mode on my iPhone when I switch to Work focus. This way the device is far less distracting—in grayscale mode I hardly want to use it at all!

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

This one’s easy: Uber Eats. It’s food! On demand! Whenever you want it! What’s better than that?

(Please send help. And Uber Eats gift cards..)

What is the app you are still missing?

TextEdit for iOS. I’ve been waiting for this text editor since it was first rumored, and have only grown to want it more over time.

Which apps makes you most productive? 

My favorite apps for productivity are simple ones that let me get in and out quickly, that also have a lot of power when I need it. 

• Fantastical: My calendar of choice. The natural language event entry feature saves me an inordinate amount of time every week entering events across multiple calendars.
• Timeular: My time-tracker of choice. I use this because of how physical it is: the product is an octahedron that you can flip to whatever activity you’re working on. The app then automatically tracks how long you spend on the activity that’s face up. I use this mostly on the Mac, but also use the iPhone app when not working out of the office. 
• Simplenote: I use digital notetaking apps primarily to capture and then build on my thoughts. Simplenote is the best app I’ve found for this—and it’s incredibly simple, lightweight, and beautiful. The cross-platform syncing has also never let me down, unlike with every single other notes app I’ve tried. 
• Things: My task manager of choice. (Though these days I’m managing my to-dos in a plain text file in Simplenote with a lot of success. If you can’t tell, I’m a plain text fanatic: it’s just me and my ideas.)
• Insight Timer: My meditation app of choice. I like to work a bunch of meditation breaks into my day to keep my focus sharp. 

What’s your favorite app on iOS?

My favorite app on iOS is probably Locket. Locket is a homescreen widget that just displays a picture from someone you partner up with in the app (I use the app with my wife). Every day or so, we take a new photo that shows up on the other person’s homescreen widget (I have the widget on every homescreen page so I see it regardless of which focus mode I’m in).

I’m also a big fan of less techy apps that save me time in the analog world, like Instacart, Uber, and Find My. 

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Shortcuts for Mac. I know I can use this app more, but I’m so familiar with Keyboard Maestro on the Mac that I haven’t pulled the trigger on switching over. (Plus, until recently, the Mac version of Shortcuts has been super buggy.) I should probably get reacquainted with David’s fantastic Shortcuts Field Guides for some inspiration. 

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

I love this question (edit from future Chris: and loved how therapeutic it was to answer)! Here are a few ideas that come to mind:

• I’d completely overhaul Apple Music. I find Apple Music an organizational mess, the app often still feels like a web wrapper, and my recommendations are all skewed because I listen to so much instrumental music as I work. I also find it very difficult to discover new music. The app needs a rethink. The only thing keeping me on Apple Music is my play counts, which I don’t want to lose by switching to Spotify. I know I’d discover more music I love if I switched to Spotify.
• Siri on the HomePod. Our HomePod minis now answer around 70% of our queries correctly—and I promise that this is not an under or overestimation. Things seem to have gotten worse when we went from two HomePod minis to five.
• I’d also change the company’s communication strategy on current products. I totally get why the company doesn’t want to talk about future products. But a lot of my frustrations with the company come from that when something is wrong, the company doesn’t acknowledge it. It’d be nice to hear something—anything!—even if it’s just couched legalese—about real problems that their customers have faced, like Siri frustrations, butterfly keyboard complaints, original HomePods that would randomly brick, and so on.

All that said, luckily the delights of being in Apple’s ecosystem far outweigh annoyances like these!

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

Here’s the face for my Personal focus mode on the watch! I’m a fan of the Metropolitan face (at least right now). The corner widgets, clockwise, are The Weather Network (which has the best Canadian weather data), Workouts, Activity, and Zero (an intermittent fasting app). It’s green because that’s the color of my watch band right now.

Thanks Chris, and congratulations on the new book.

Ian Byrd (Website) is a friend, an educator of educators, and a charming human overall. He’s also incredibly thoughtful in the way he handles his technology. So I asked him to share his home screen with us. So Ian, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I’ve been off-and-on studying Japanese since college but never thought I’d be able to tackle the writing system. For the past couple of years, I’ve been using the service WaniKani and it has really worked! It’s basically fancy flashcards with hilarious mnemonics. I use the third-party app Tsurukame on my phone. It adds some very nice features. Highly recommended for folks who want to learn kanji. 

The Eufy app is great for checking in on our 4-year-old when he’s in his room but suddenly goes quiet. We were using a Ring camera, but the Eufy camera feed loads much faster since everything is stored locally.

AutoSleep is a great sleep-tracking tool that works with the Apple Watch. 

Libby is wonderful for finding and playing audiobooks from the library. I also use it to send ebooks to my Kindle. 

And I have a tiny shortcut that locates my wife so I don’t have to constantly text her for updates.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Here on the Oregon coast, we don’t have any of the big food delivery services, so we use a local version called Slurpalicious! I always feel guilty having food delivered – but the app’s name makes it even worse. 😆

What app makes you most productive? 

I work with school districts, which means I get paid with paper checks. I signed and deposited them all by hand for a while, but that became untenable as my business grew. So I use a mail service called Earth Class Mail. All of the checks go there, and they scan and deposit them for me. Their app makes it easy to keep track of it all. 

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

I use Todoist for, well, to-dos. I’ve tried taking advantage of all of the features in the past, but can never keep up with all of that. So nowadays, I use it to surface must-do, time-sensitive tasks. 

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I have a shortcut to Notes so I can easily update a shared note that my wife and I use to track funny things our kid says. We are also awaiting new insulation in our attic, and things are very cold upstairs. So I’ve got a Wyze smart plug hooked up to a space heater in my office. There’s a widget that lets me quickly access that plug.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

As a parent, I’ll say that it’s the many ways that the iPhone lets us easily document and share our kid’s life. There’s no way we would have saved all of these quotes otherwise. And it’s fantastic to revisit all of the videos we’ve shot and remember what he sounded like. I also love that the photo widget surfaces old vacations or Christmas over the years. 

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

So, half of my Home Screen is that Photos widget, which I mostly love, but I’m often annoyed by the videos that appear in there. I click it, thinking it’s a photo, but then it turns into a slideshow with music and I can’t figure out how to just get to the photo. Give me a photos-only setting, Apple! I’d also like more control over which photos go in there – just my favorites or just certain people, for example. I’d also like to be able to manually advance the widget if I’m ready for something new. So, yes, as CEO my priority would be the Photos widget. 😆

Do you have an Apple Watch?

I do! I mostly use my Watch for tracking my activity and sleep. I changed my diet up recently, and it was amazing to see how that impacted my heart rate and sleep quality. It’s so nice to have that data on hand. But I probably interact with the Watch the most as a remote control for podcasts in Overcast while I’m walking around town.

Thanks Ian!