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

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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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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, Batterie
s, 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.

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 conti
nue 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!