Years ago, I bought a BenQ ScreenBar with Dial. It sat perched on top of my display, bathing my desk in light. I loved it, except for the cables that snaked down the back of my monitor: one to power it via USB-A and the other leading to a knob for turning it on and off and adjusting brightness and light temperature.

I stopped using the BenQ ScreenBar when I moved my desk to an area of my old house where the back of my screen was exposed. The wires hanging off of the ScreenBar were just too messy looking, no matter what I did.

Not long ago, I pulled the ScreenBar out of storage and began using it again. I still wasn’t a fan of the wires, but with my Studio Display facing a wall, it was usable again. That’s why I was interested in trying the ScreenBar Halo when BenQ offered to send me one to test. It’s similar to the older model I was using but with a couple of crucial differences.

The ScreenBar Halo’s wireless dial.

The biggest difference from the older ScreenBar I was using is that the ScreenBar Halo’s controller knob is wireless, communicating with the light over Bluetooth. That alone cuts down on clutter significantly. Instead of two wires, there’s just one USB-A cable that needs to be plugged into a power source. If you’ve got a spare port on your display that works well because it allows the cable to be tucked away out of sight.

However, one downside is that the ScreenBar Halo is still using USB-A, so I needed an adapter to plug it into my Studio Display. I get that using USB-A helps keep manufacturing costs down, but it’s time for accessories like the ScreenBar Halo to make the move to USB-C. Even better would be to make the power cable detachable, so I could swap it out for one of my own that’s the perfect length for my setup. It’s a small thing, but it would go a long way toward making the ScreenBar Halo fit more seamlessly into different desk configurations.

Ultimately, I expect I’ll switch from powering the ScreenBar Halo with the Studio Display to plugging it into my Meross Smart Power Strip that includes USB-A ports. Tucked out of sight, that will allow me to integrate the ScreenBar Halo into my lighting automation, turning it off automatically when I leave the room.

The ScreenBar Halo’s backlight.

Another big difference from earlier models is that the ScreenBar Halo has a light on the rear of the device that’s built into the counterweight and allows the device to sit securely on the top of your display. It’s not an especially bright light, but I’ve found that the soft backlighting that the ScreenBar Halo provides looks nice.

The ScreenBar Halo’s dial lights up briefly when you interact with it.

Both the backlight and desk light, which is notably a little wider than the older version I was using, are controlled via the dial that communicates wirelessly over Bluetooth with the ScreenBar Halo. The surface of the dial is touch-sensitive, with an on/off button in the center that’s surrounded by buttons to control the temperature of the light and its brightness, a heart button that allows you to save a favorite configuration, a mode button for turning on different combinations of the front and back lights, and a button that automatically adjusts the brightness of the ScreenBar Halo based on your room’s ambient lighting. The dial also rotates, so you can adjust the light’s temperature or brightness.

The ScreenBar Halo can be tuned to a nice range of temperatures. Source: BenQ.

I’ve been using the ScreenBar Halo for nearly a week, and already, it’s a big improvement over the prior model. The wider light bar provides better desktop illumination, and the subtle backlighting looks good, but the real key to the device is the wireless controller. The elimination of that single cable cuts down on clutter and gives you more options when placing the controller on your desk.

Aside from my complaints about the device’s undetachable USB-A cable above, the biggest downside of the ScreenBar Halo, which I’d like to see BenQ solve in a future design, is that the front of the light’s mount blocks my Studio Display’s camera. That isn’t a deal breaker for me because I don’t do a lot of video calling on my Mac, but if you do, there aren’t a lot of great choices other than sliding the light to the side for calls, which could get old fast. A notch in the center of the mount would probably solve the problem for most displays with built-in cameras, but for whatever reason, that hasn’t been done.

Source: BenQ.

Still, the BenQ ScreenBar Halo has been a nice addition to my desk setup. It allows me to dial in exactly the amount of light I want and where I want it, with fewer wires than before and the bonus of a little backlighting behind my display.

The ScreenBar Halo is available directly from BenQ for $179 and can also be purchased from Amazon.

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In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

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ScreenFloat 2.0.

ScreenFloat 2.0 is a Mac-only screenshot utility from Matthias Gansrigler of Eternal Storms Software. As Gansrigler explains, the app is like Picture-in-Picture for screenshots, allowing you to float screenshots or screen recordings above other windows to use as reference material on your Mac. That’s a great explanation of one of the core use cases for ScreenFloat 2.0, but the update opens up exciting new possibilities that go even further, which I think anyone who works with screenshots will like a lot.

Activating ScreenFloat from the Mac menu bar.

At its heart, ScreenFloat is a menu bar utility that patiently sits in your menu bar, waiting to be called into service with a keyboard shortcut. If you’ve used screenshot utilities before, that’s how many of them work, and, like other screenshot apps, ScreenFloat can take screenshots of a user-defined part of the screen, a window, or the entire screen. The app can also take screen recordings and timed shots.

A subtle toolbar sits at the top of your floating screenshot windows.

Once a screenshot or recording has been made, by default, it opens in a separate floating window that’s a 1:1 mirror of the shot you took. When you hover your pointer over the screenshot, a translucent toolbar appears at the top of its window. From here, you can close the screenshot. Alternatively, you can add a title, star rating, tags, and notes, all of which are powerful tools for organizing and revisiting your images later.

You can use ScreenFloat’s toolbar to add a title, tags, notes, and a rating to each image.

On the right side of the toolbar is a document icon with export options and a gear icon packed with other actions. The export icon allows you to save your screenshot in five formats to a default location, drag it elsewhere, copy the file, and open or share it with other apps. Those file options come along with additional settings for preserving the alpha channel, saving metadata along with the image, including annotations with your export, resizing the image, and more. That’s a lot, and it’s exactly the sort of flexibility I love in a utility like this because it means ScreenFloat can adapt to a wide variety of workflows.

The export menu.

For its part, the gear icon in the toolbar collects a long list of actions that are divided into four categories:

• Share
• Edit
• Organize
• Visibility

Share includes some of the same options as the export tool, allowing screenshots to be copied, exported, printed, and shared with other apps. There’s also an option to detect data, including text, faces, and barcodes, which allows text to be copied or redacted and faces and barcodes to be blurred out, a fantastic use of macOS’s built-in data detection technology.

ScreenFloat’s extensive collection of actions.

The Edit section provides tools for editing metadata and annotating images in a wide variety of ways by adding text, bulleted lists, shapes, arrows, lines, and more. All of these edits are non-destructive, meaning you can add them for reference purposes but still retrieve an unedited version of the screenshot later. This is an excellent addition for anyone who wants to mark up an image to highlight some aspect of it but preserve the ability to use a clean version in the future.

The Organize section has options for marking screenshots as favorites, rating them, moving them to folders, opening the Shots Browser, and accessing the app’s Settings. Of these options, the Shots Browser is easily my favorite because it extends ScreenFloat from a simple floating screenshot reference tool to a dedicated screenshot organization app.

The Shots Browser is my favorite ScreenFloat feature.

The Shots Browser opens in a separate window from any floating screenshots and is divided into three sections. On the left is a library navigation panel. On the right is an info panel with details about the selected screenshot. In the center are resizable thumbnails of each screenshot, with some basic data about each. Tools for sharing, editing, and organizing your screenshots are available from the Shots Browser’s toolbar or by right-clicking on any screenshot.

ScreenFloat includes an excellent collection of Shortcuts actions.

Returning to the screenshot window’s toolbar to complete our ScreenFloat tour, there’s also a Visibility section that has tools that control whether a screenshot floats, which of your Mac’s Spaces it appears in, and whether mouse clicks on the screenshot should be ignored. Finally, it’s worth noting that ScreenFloat incorporates keyboard shortcuts throughout the app, includes detailed settings to finely tune the app to your personal tastes, and supports Shortcuts actions for capturing screenshots, importing images, and hiding, unhiding and closing floating screenshots, and offers widgets.

Tip: Scroll vertically on a floating screenshot to reveal what’s underneath.

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A good example of how you can tune ScreenFloat to your personal needs is the way I’ve been using it. I don’t often need to float screenshots above my other windows for reference purposes. However, I do take and annotate a lot of screenshots, and organizing them can be cumbersome in the Finder. The first thing I did with ScreenFloat was to turn off the default behavior that floats screenshots on top of other windows. It’s a small change, but it allows me to take a bunch of screenshots for a story like this one and then pop open the Shots Browser when I’m ready to organize and annotate them. That’s not something I need for every project, but a big one like my annual macOS review, where I take hundreds of screenshots over many weeks, is perfect for the sort of non-destructive annotation, tagging, and other organizational tools that ScreenFloat provides.

Annotating a screenshot.

The only thing about ScreenFloat that I’d change is that it doesn’t appear in the Dock or when Command-Tabbing. I use Command-Tab constantly to move between apps, and without it, the Shots Browser can get lost among my windows. This isn’t the end of the world because I can always summon it with a keyboard shortcut, but it breaks a longstanding personal habit that’s been hard to adjust to.

That said, ScreenFloat 2.0 is an excellent update that’s packed with loads of useful, flexible features. You can tell that a lot of thought has gone into the app’s feature set in the year and a half that it’s been in development.

ScreenFloat 2.0 is available on the Mac App Store for free to existing users and at an introductory price of $6.99 for new users. There is also a 28-day free trial available directly from Eternal Storms Software.

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Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Every time I open the Memories tab in Apple’s Photos app, I feel disappointed. The memories it surfaces always seem to rehash the same events in my life, and they never really achieve to put my photos back in context. This is a big reason why, for so many years, I’ve been keeping a personal journal in Day One, which lets me revisit my journal entries by looking at a map of everywhere I’ve recorded a memory. Likewise, the ‘Places’ section in Apple Photos is my favorite way to browse through my older photos.

Globetrotter is a delightful new app created by indie developer Shihab Mehboob that embraces this idea of revisiting your photo memories by looking at them on top of a world map. The app does so in a beautifully-designed interface, with a focus on your travel memories. Let’s take a look.

I should start with my favorite feature in Globetrotter, which is the ability to visualize the itineraries I took on a particular day. The app tries to link together your photos based on their time and location, and overlays the resulting route on the map. It was truly lovely to see the paths we took on a hike in the Alps a few years ago, or the beautiful road trips we took along the coast of La Réunion Island back in 2019.

Visualizing our road trips on La Réunion island thanks to Globetrotter’s Event Route feature.

There are playful animations all throughout Globetrotter’s UI

Because Globetrotter uses Apple Maps, not a third-party map provider, navigating the map feels smooth and fast. Shihab Mehboob also took advantage of Apple Maps’ detailed 3D landmarks, and automatically collects those you visited in the app’s ‘Highlights’ tab, along with the flags of all the countries you’ve traveled to. I have to admit, this aspect of the app has made me want to travel again just to collect more landmarks and expand my collection.

The ‘Highlights’ tab is also where you can find a recap of the year, à la Spotify Wrapped or Apple Music Replay, in the form of a slideshow that looks a bit like Instagram’s Stories. Globetrotter’s ‘2023 Wrapped’, like almost anything in the app, can be shared to friends and family members via the share sheet, as well as to your Instagram stories.

The social aspect in Globetrotter goes a little further. Similarly to Apple’s Fitness app, and provided that they also use the app, you can invite your friends to share your travel highlights and see a ranking of who’s the biggest globetrotter in your circle.

Globetrotter is like a traveler’s pinboard where you can collect landmarks and flags of the countries you have visited.

Globetrotter can be used on all of Apple’s platforms. The app looks great on iPadOS and macOS, and it is also available for the Apple Watch, where you can quickly view your travel highlights stats. Globetrotter provides a few Home Screen widgets on iOS and iPadOS, as well as desktop widgets on macOS. Unfortunately, the widgets are quite basic, and they currently cannot be customized to exclude or include specific memories.

Globetrotter lets you glance at your traveling stats on the Apple Watch

Globetrotter makes great use of horizontal space on the Mac and the iPad.

Despite Globetrotter being a brand-new app, it already includes a decent number of settings to tweak the experience. The app provides a handful of basic appearance settings, and the possibility to exclude locations from appearing in your travel highlights. I particularly appreciate the option to disable the autoplaying music in memories slideshows — a setting that I really wish we could have in Apple Photos.

Globetrotter lets you exclude certain locations from your travel highlights and disable the slideshow music.

Unfortunately, I think the app’s settings are also where there is a big margin for improvements. Most urgently: unlike in Apple Photos, I can’t exclude people from appearing as memories in Globetrotter.

I also wish I could decide what the total percentage of visited locations, at the top of the app’s ‘Highlights’ tab, corresponds to. Right now, since I’ve only traveled as far as Germany, the UK, and a few other places in Western Europe, it shows that I’ve only seen three percent of the world, accompanied by a mostly empty world map. While I’m sure this could be a fun stat for people who travel a lot, I don’t think it is a meaningful number for most. In 2023, traveling is expensive. With inflation affecting many parts of the world, long-distance travel has probably rarely been so inaccessible to the average person — including to the average iPhone owner. What if, instead of measuring how much of the world you’ve seen, the app could let you see the percentage of your hometown that you’ve covered in photos? Or of your home country? Or of a selection of your favorite destinations? Globetrotter could then scale down to motivate you to explore your surroundings, and appreciate the memories you’ve captured closer to home.

I’ve only seen 3% of the world according to Globetrotter.

I believe that with a few additional settings like these to complement its beautiful design, Globetrotter could have the potential to be a fun and delightful app for everyone to revisit their memories, including for the average person who rarely crosses oceans.

If you would like to give Globetrotter a try, the app is available on the App Store. Its features can be unlocked for $3.99 per month, $19.99 per year, or through a one-time purchase of $49.99.

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Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

The new Shortcuts actions for GoodLinks.

A few weeks ago on AppStories, I mentioned to John that I was looking for the “Things of read-later apps”. What I meant is that I wanted to find an app to save articles for later that felt native to Apple platforms, had a reliable text parser, but, more importantly, featured deep Shortcuts integration to let me create automations for saved items. As I followed up after a few episodes, I realized the app I’d been looking for was the excellent GoodLinks, which we’ve covered on MacStories several times before.

Today, GoodLinks developer Ngoc Luu released a small update to the app that, however, cements it as the premier solution for people who want a read-later utility for iOS and iPadOS that also features outstanding Shortcuts support.

With version 1.8.5, GoodLinks joins Cultured Code’s Things app in offering a Shortcuts action that returns the current “state” of the app. Specifically, GoodLinks now comes with a ‘Get Current Link’ action that can be used to get the article that you’re currently reading inside the GoodLinks app. The item that will be returned in Shortcuts is a variable that contains properties for the article such as its title, URL, author, and more.

Additionally, the updated GoodLinks also offers a separate ‘Get Current Selection’ action that can return the currently-selected text in the article view as plain text, Markdown, or HTML.

The new actions to get the current link and selection.

These actions are interesting for a variety of reasons. At a high level, I’ve long been advocating for third-party Shortcuts actions that support the concept of “state” or “selection” in apps, so I’m happy to see GoodLinks follow in the footsteps of Cultured Code’s pioneering work in this area; more apps should do this. Furthermore, these kinds of Shortcuts actions are ideal candidates for Action button integration on iPhone 15 Pro or placement in the iPadOS dock. If you’re inside the GoodLinks app, you can run a shortcut tied to the Action button or saved to the iPad’s dock and perform something contextually to the article you’re reading. This “contextual automation” is an idea I’ve been developing and refining for a while, and I’ll have more to share soon.

In any case, to demonstrate the power of GoodLinks’ Shortcuts actions, I put together a custom shortcut that I’ve been using to turn articles saved for later into linked posts on MacStories. I call it GoodLinked.

As you can see from the images below, this shortcut gets the current article you’re reading in GoodLinks and extracts different properties from it, such as the title of the story, its author, and URL. Using another action, GoodLinked can see if you’ve selected any text in the article and, if so, save it as your selection. By retrieving the article’s selection as Markdown, I don’t have to do anything else to prepare a blockquote for MacStories.

With this shortcut and the new actions available in the latest GoodLinks update, I can go from reading an article, like this:

Reading an article in GoodLinks.

…to a draft post in Obsidian, already formatted with placeholders I can tweak before publishing on the site:

And a draft in Obsidian, created by my GoodLinked shortcut.

This is just an example of what you can build with Shortcuts actions that retrieve the article you’re reading in GoodLinks. You don’t have to be a blogger to take advantage of these actions: perhaps you want to put together a shortcut for the Action button that quickly shares on Threads what you’re reading; maybe you want to clip selected text to a note in Obsidian or Apple Notes. No matter your use case, there is value in being able to process the current state or selection of an app with Shortcuts and create more advanced workflows for all kinds of tasks.

I also wanted to point out some other useful additions in this GoodLinks update. On iPad, you can now open the app’s settings screen with ⌘+, (just like on a Mac); the app now properly supports Dynamic Type and respects the system’s text size (great for Accessibility); if you’ve selected some text in an article, you can also copy the formatted selection from a refreshed context menu:

The new context menu for selected text in GoodLinks.

I’ve long been a fan of GoodLinks, but the app’s newfound Shortcuts integration convinced me that, at this point in my life, it’s the read-later experience I need in my iPad and iPhone workflow. If you, like me, have been looking for a clean, native read-later app that feels right at home on Apple platforms and can be easily automated, look no further than GoodLinks.

You can download the latest version of GoodLinks on the App Store; my GoodLinked shortcut is available below and in the MacStories Shortcuts Archive.

GoodLinked

Create a draft for a linked post in Obsidian based on the article you’re currently reading in GoodLinks.

Get the shortcut here.

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Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Source: Philips Hue.

A couple of weekends ago, after we put up our Christmas tree, I broke out Hue’s Festavia lights, which the company recently sent me to test. Ever since we moved in late 2022, we’ve had a generic string of big-bulb white lights hanging around the perimeter of the second-floor balcony that I controlled with the help of an outdoor smart plug. The setup provided a little extra light and atmosphere whenever we sat outside in the evening, which I enjoyed. However, I was also curious to see how I could take the setup further and add some holiday cheer with a set of the Festavia lights. So, instead of putting the lights on our tree, I replaced our existing balcony lights with the Hue lights.

Philips Hue offers two sets of Festavia lights: one with 250 lights and the other with 500. At first glance, the lights look a lot like traditional Christmas tree lights, with each tiny LED light spaced about three inches from the next one on a long cord.

Philips Hue sent me its 500-light string of lights, which stretch to over 130 feet (nearly 40 meters) in length. To put that in context, my balcony is roughly 19 feet (5.8m) x 8 feet (2.4m), so I was able to circle the perimeter twice. The 250-light model is half that length and would have worked, too, but I prefer the look of the second loop and the extra light it provides.

Unlike the lights I’ve put on Christmas trees in the past, the power adapter of the 500-light model of Festavia lights is in the middle of the string with lights, extending to the left and right of the cord in a ‘T’ shape. The lights can be used for decorating a Christmas tree, in which case Hue recommends wrapping each strand from just below the middle of the tree and moving up with one strand and down with the other for the best lighting effects. Our tree is artificial and pre-lit, which is why I hung the lights on my balcony instead, draping them from the hooks I already had in place for our old set of lights.

Hanging the lights, which are weatherproof, dimmable, and can change color, was easy. So was adding them to the Hue app, which works the same as adding any other Hue product to its app.

The same app allows you to control your Festavia lights alongside any other Hue lights you own, turning them on and off, creating scenes, adjusting colors, and setting up automations. Many of the same features can be controlled in Apple’s Home app, but it pays off to spend some time in the Hue app browsing through its gallery of colorful scenes, which include several holiday-themed color schemes.

Also, the Festavia lights offer effects, which can be accessed in the Hue app to animate your lights. There are six effects in total:

• Candle
• Fireplace
• Sparkle
• Glisten
• Opal
• Prism

Each effect has a different color scheme and automatically dims and brightens the lights in animated sequences. This is where the Festavia lights really set themselves apart from using a standard string of lights with a smart plug. With the wide array of colors that Hue’s lights can simultaneously display and animate, the range of possible effects is vast.

Setting up scenes and effects in the Philips Hue app.

Overall, the build quality of the Festavia lights is excellent, too, which makes them great for outdoor use where they’re exposed to the elements. That said, I’ve only used the lights for a couple of weeks so far, so longevity is an open question. Fortunately, though, the lights come with a two-year warranty, and it’s worth noting that I’ve used other Hue products for years and never had one break.

So, if you’re looking for maximum flexibility to decorate a Christmas tree this year or just want to add some colorful, animated flare to your home, the Festavia lights are an excellent, although expensive, choice. Hue Festavia lights can be purchased directly from Hue, Amazon, and other retailers for $219.99 (250-light set) or $359.99 (500-light set).

Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

I’ve been keeping a journal in Day One since at least 2015, and I’ve got to say, the practice has become very engrained in my otherwise chaotic daily routine. Whenever I get asked about journaling, I always say that it’s a habit that can take any form you like. It can take place in a paper journal, in an app as written entries, as voice notes, or even as captioned photos in a photo diary. The reason I stuck with Day One over the years is because the app is incredibly flexible. It kept up with me during periods of my life when it was harder to write down my daily thoughts, and easier to type a couple of bullet points every day instead. I believe the best journaling tools are those that can adapt to you, not the other way around. But still, when Apple announced they were building their own Journal app, built right into iOS 17, I was excited by the prospect of switching things up in this little habit of mine.

This week, Apple released the Journal app as part of iOS 17.2. As expected, the app is unfortunately only available on the iPhone. Nevertheless, Apple’s first entry in this category is very interesting, to say the least, as it revolves almost entirely around a system of smart journaling suggestions and prompts. I’ve been using it alongside Day One for a couple of weeks now, to both get an idea of what Apple’s approach to journaling is like, and to see how it intends to bring journaling to a wider audience.

Let’s jump in.

Design-wise, the Journal app is simply beautiful. It doesn’t look like any other built-in iOS apps, but it doesn’t feel too alien either. Each entry is a card that sits on top of a softly colored background. As you scroll, the cards flow behind a prominent ‘+’ button at the bottom of the screen. When I first started playing with the app, I kept scrolling the cards up and down just because I wanted to stare at the blur effect that’s applied when they disappear offscreen. It’s satisfying.

A satisfying blur is applied to the entries as they flow offscreen.

Let’s also take a moment to appreciate the app’s gorgeous icon.

Tapping the ‘+’ button brings up the app’s main highlight: a full-screen dialog with journaling suggestions, reflection prompts in the form of open questions, and a button to start with an empty entry. The suggestions intelligently try to group together your photos, workouts, places you visited, contacts you’ve interacted with, or even music you’ve listened to. This genuinely makes for great starting points to start writing. As I traveled to Lyon this week, I came back home to find the app suggesting that I make an entry about the trip. The suggestion had already combined a selection of photos I took during the day, the music I listened to on the train, a location pin in Lyon, and even a mention of my unusually high steps count. In Day One, I would typically have spent a few minutes selecting which photos to include in the entry, before struggling for a while to decide on what to write about the day. Here, the photos — and more! — were ready to be commented on.

I think this is where Journal succeeds the most at making journaling more accessible: the app lets you spend more time writing entries, and getting started on them quickly, rather than having you spend time collecting the bits and pieces of your life, and formatting them manually.

After tapping a suggestion, the app lets you select which suggested items to keep in the new entry. You can also tap ‘Save Without Writing’ to directly save the suggestion as a new entry.

Sadly, the ‘New Entry’ field itself is bare bones, to say the least. Apart from the expected ability to set the date and time of the entry, there are no immediately-apparent text formatting options. The toolbar above the keyboard lets you insert suggested items, photos, voice recordings, or a location.

While it is possible to highlight text to format it to bold, italic, or underlined, it is impossible to manually insert a link. If you paste a URL, it cannot be tapped to open in Safari. The only way to open a link is to select it, swipe horizontally on the actions tooltip, and then tap ‘Open link.’ You can, however, add a link to a Journal entry from Safari via the share sheet, but doing so will create an entirely new standalone entry with a rich link, with no way of appending it to an existing one. If this issue sounds familiar to you, it is because, until recently, the Mail app on iOS had a similar limitation where it didn’t let you create hyperlinks. Unlike the Journal app, though, at least pasting full URLs in Mail would make them tappable.

Another odd limitation, which I think is worth mentioning if you like to include a lot of photos in your journal entries, is that the Journal app will only allow you to add up to 13 photos per entry.

Text formatting in the Journal app is limited to ‘Bold’, ‘Italic’, ‘Underline’, and ‘Strikethrough’. Pasted URLs can’t be opened, unless you select them, then tap ‘Open Link.’

Links can be added to Journal via the share sheet, in which case they are inserted as rich links in a new entry.

Despite the limited formatting options, entries in Journal always look great. Items you include are arranged in a compact grid that’s complimented with subtle gradients.

Weirdly enough, though, there is no way to view an entry in a standalone view. Nothing happens if you tap an entry. Instead, you tap items that are contained within an entry — which will expand them to a full-screen view. This means the only way to read your journal is to scroll through the main view of the app. Browsing through your entries in the Journal app feels a lot like scrolling through your own private social media timeline as a result. This is very different from other journaling apps, like Day One — where journal entries can be viewed on their own, and where your list of entries is designed to resemble a summary rather than being the main way of reading through your journal.

I actually really like Apple’s direction with this browsing experience. I found myself spontaneously reading through my recent entries more often than I ever did in Day One.

Day One’s timeline of entries (Left) is meant to resemble a summary, whereas Apple intends the Journal app’s timeline (Right) to be the only way to read through your entries.

Unfortunately, in its current state, I don’t think this UI will scale well as you keep using it over months and years. You can filter entries by content type — or only display bookmarked entries, but that’s it. There are no tags, no folders, no compact view, and no way to browse by date.

What I’m missing, most of all, is a search field. Journal doesn’t offer any Home Screen widgets, isn’t integrated with Spotlight, and doesn’t provide any Shortcuts actions to retrieve entries by keywords. So, unless Apple addresses this in the coming months, I’m worried my journal entries will just keep piling up in the app’s main view, and the oldest ones will become more and more difficult to scroll down to. This is especially critical considering how Apple’s approach to proactive prompts and suggestions encourages writing multiple short entries per day instead of what would have been single, long-form entries in apps like Day One.

Entries in Journal can only be filtered by content type, or by bookmarked entries.

Currently, the app’s settings are limited to letting you set a journaling schedule, locking Journal behind Face ID, and skipping the suggestions dialog when tapping the ‘+’ button. However, if you head into Settings → Privacy & Security → Journaling Suggestions, you can actually tweak what kind of data you want to be surfaced in your journaling suggestions. This section in Settings also has a toggle to ‘Prefer Suggestions with Others’, which is supposed to prioritize moments spent with your contacts, as well as a toggle to allow your journaling suggestions to be discoverable by other people that spend time with you. I haven’t noticed a big difference yet when I toggled these features during the beta, but I’m very keen to see how it does in the long run to suggest moments I spend with my partner.

The Journal app’s settings are limited to letting you set a schedule, locking Journal behind Face ID, saving new photos to the Photos app, and skipping the suggestions dialog when creating a new entry.

Journaling suggestions can be turned off by data type in the iOS privacy settings. This is also where you can manage access to journaling suggestions by third-party apps.

Remarkably, Apple’s new journaling suggestions can also be used in third-party apps. Although developers cannot contribute to suggestions populated by the appropriately named Journaling Suggestions API, they can still incorporate Apple’s journaling suggestions in their own apps. As a result, shortly after iOS 17.2 was released, the indie journaling app Everlog and Automattic’s Day One both released updates to offer the new journaling suggestions directly from their compose fields. Day One was already able to suggest entries if you gave the app the right permissions — such as allowing the app to access your location at all times to suggest entries based on the places you visited. But the new API means third-party apps can now benefit from Apple’s on-device intelligence, instead of having to rely on invasive permission requests. Through the API, apps can only access the suggested data after you’ve inserted it.

This is very neat, so much so that it immediately made Apple’s Journal app’s main appeal fade away for me. Its best feature was suddenly available in the journaling app that I was already using.

It is not too surprising, then, to read Day One founder Paul Mayne — in a statement as part of Apple’s press release — welcoming the new app and its API, rather than deploring Apple’s competing entry in the category:

“The Journal app is an exciting development for us because it introduces the benefits of digital journaling to a wider audience and ushers in a new chapter for the practice. (…) We have integrated the Journaling Suggestions API into the Day One app to give our users an even richer experience that puts privacy at the forefront, and we can’t wait for them to try it.”

In iOS 17.2, the same journaling suggestions found in the Journal app can be accessed from Day One.

I believe Apple is on the right path to open journaling to a wider audience. The design and the interface of the Journal app are welcoming, easy to understand, and the proactive suggestions truly make a difference in overcoming the usual obstacles people can face when getting started. This is where Apple’s Journal app is already excelling, despite its shortcomings.

I’m aware that Apple’s home field advantage is playing a part here, too. I don’t think I would feel as lenient with a new third-party journaling app if it launched without tags, a search field, or any proper way to browse my entries. After using an advanced journaling app like Day One for years, my expectations are understandably pretty high. But I think Apple should keep in mind that flexibility is as good a synonym for accessibility as simplicity is. If Apple can bring the Journal app to the iPad and the Mac, and if they keep updating it to make it more flexible in terms of formatting and browsing entries, perhaps they will truly have built a journaling app for all.

In the meantime, I can’t wait to see how developers take advantage of the new Journaling Suggestions API. I have a feeling it could play a part in powering a variety of interesting new features, even beyond third-party journaling apps.

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In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Screens 5.

Screens, the remote screen-sharing app for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac by Luc Vandal of Edovia is one of those apps that I feel like I’ve always used. It’s installed on all of my devices, letting me lazily check on the Mac in my office from my couch or grab a file that I forgot to put on my laptop when I’m working remotely. It’s also the app that makes working with my headless Mac mini server that’s humming away in a closet feel like it was sitting right on my desk.

The last time I reviewed Screens was in 2017 when version 4 was released. In the years since, the app has received regular updates, refining the workflow of connecting to remote computers and keeping up with the latest changes to Apple’s OSes. However, as an app that’s designed to be a window to another system, the UI hasn’t seen a lot of change until today’s update to version 5, which adds a bunch of refinements to how connections are organized and makes significant improvements to the app’s toolbar.

Screens 4 (left) and Screens 5 (right).

Screens 5 has been rewritten using SwiftUI, which gives the app a cohesive, modern look across devices. Each connection, which is called a Screen, is a thumbnail tile with a preview of the screen from the last time you connected to the remote computer, which syncs across any instances of the app you have installed elsewhere. It’s a nice touch that makes it easier to tell Screens apart.

By default, Screens includes lists of recent and nearby connections followed by Groups. There’s a dedicated Group for Screens Connect connections and a Custom Group of All Screens. Screens Connect is Edovia’s helper app that simplifies connecting to your computer remotely. Once the app is installed and you’re signed in on your remote computer, it just shows up in Screens, as do any computers on your local network, ready for you to log in without requiring any special setup.

Using Screens to navigate a handheld Windows gaming console is easier than poking at the OS with your fingers.

Lately, though, I’ve been experimenting with Tailscale. One reason for my experiments is that AT&T’s fiber-based Internet service comes with a router that makes connecting to my home network remotely a more involved process than I’d like. Tailscale simplifies the process by creating a peer-to-peer network between your devices, coordinating the traffic between them, and bypassing a lot of the complexity. All I had to do was set up a custom connection to my Macs with the IP address assigned by Tailscale, and I was up and running. Screens works equally well with Tailscale as it does on your local network or using Screens Connect, and it has become my preferred way of connecting remotely, so I created a Group for just those connections.

The other major change made to Screens is the changes to its toolbar, which are most pronounced on the iPad. The toolbar includes access to modifier keys, the clipboard, function keys, window, system, and navigation controls, app settings, and more. It’s the toolbox that you need for all those little things you do on your Mac but don’t have direct access to when you’re on a remote device.

Screens’ toolbar collapsed in the bottom left corner of the iPad’s screen…

…and expanded across the bottom of the screen.

On the iPad, the updated toolbar can be collapsed into a small pill that can be swiped into any corner of the iPad’s screen and expanded to fill the strip across the top or bottom. Once expanded, the toolbar can be moved between the top and bottom of the screen. It’s perfect for keeping the Screens’ many tools close at hand but simultaneously out of the way.

On the iPhone, the toolbar occupies the left side of the iPhone’s screen out of the way of the remote screen you’re viewing. Switch to portrait, and the toolbar is along the bottom. On the Mac, the toolbar has changed the least, in that it’s still positioned at the top of the window, but the design is thoroughly modern, fitting in well with Apple’s current design language.

Screens’ vertical toolbar on the left side of the iPhone.

Another change to Screens is a renaming of Screens Express to Screens Assist, which better describes the remote help-desk type connections for which the tool is often used. Your latest Screens Assist sessions can be found in the Recents section of the app, making follow-up help sessions easy to re-establish. There are a host of other miscellaneous changes listed in Edovia’s blog post announcing the update that is worth checking out, too.

Finally, Screens 5 no longer requires separate purchases on the Mac App Store and iOS and iPadOS App Store. Instead, it’s a Universal app with Mac, iPhone, and iPad versions with a new subscription business model that costs $2.99/month or $24.99/year. There’s also a lifetime one-time purchase option that costs $74.

Every time I write about an app that switches to a subscription model, I hear from upset users, which I’m sure is a fraction of the people from whom developers hear. I understand why people get upset, and while I’m sure that the Screens 5 subscription won’t be worth it to every Screens 4 user, it’s worth it to me, and I expect anyone else who manages multiple computers from a variety of devices.

Screens 5 is available starting today on the App Store.

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Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

I have recently been working on a personal web project that involves a lot of testing on my iPhone. While I would usually just have my iPhone to the side on my desk to test my changes in real-time and take screenshots, I was looking for a solution to mirror my iPhone’s screen directly on my Mac’s desktop. This is where I stumbled upon Bezel.

Bezel is a fantastic utility from Nonstrict that allows you to start capturing your iPhone immediately after connecting it to your Mac. The app is both simple and extremely convenient.

To start using Bezel, all you need to do is allow the app to start at login. Then, plug in your iPhone when you want to start mirroring your screen. That’s it. Bezel will automatically display your iPhone on your desktop. Similar to Federico’s Apple Frames shortcut, the app will frame your iPhone’s display with a bezel that matches your iPhone model.

Bezel automatically starts capturing your iPhone as soon as your plug it into your Mac.

I initially remembered that it is already possible to natively mirror an iPhone’s display on a Mac using QuickTime Player:

• Connect an iPhone to your Mac
• Launch QuickTime Player
• In the menu bar, select ‘File’ → ‘New Movie Recording’
• Select the iPhone as the camera source

Unfortunately, QuickTime Player’s video capture often produces artifacts and has a latency of up to one second. This is far from ideal for screen recording or showcasing the iPhone’s display during a presentation. In contrast, I found Bezel’s video to be smoother and nearly instant.

Bezel (right) is both faster and more fluid than QuickTime (left) when capturing your iPhone’s screen.

Bezel will automatically rotate, too.

Bezel also lets you capture the sound output of your iPhone. This led to some silly situations where I could connect my iPhone to my Mac, open YouTube, and listen to a video through the iPhone using the headphones that were connected to my Mac.

Fortunately, it is possible to control Bezel’s behavior on a per-device basis. You can choose whether a device will automatically appear on-screen, and you can set the app to immediately mute your Mac’s audio to avoid any confusion.

Bezel can automatically mute your Mac’s audio when you connect a device. You can also tell it to ignore a device.

QuickTime’s video artifacts meant that I couldn’t trust its color reproduction when testing my design project on the iPhone. Bezel’s color reproduction, on the other hand, is more accurate than any other iPhone mirroring tool I’ve ever tested.

As a result, the app has fit perfectly into my workflow when working on my custom theme for Mastodon. The ability to have my iPhone displayed on the screen right next to Visual Studio Code to test my changes in real-time is a game-changing convenience.

Working on my custom theme for Mastodon and testing my changes on the iPhone in real time using Bezel.

Since macOS can capture Bezel’s window like any other, it also makes it easy to take a framed screenshot of your iPhone on a transparent background using a screenshot utility like CleanShot X. This is an excellent combination for anyone working from a Mac who needs to take a large number of ready-to-share iPhone screenshots.

Getting a framed screenshot of my Home Screen on a transparent background using the Window tool in CleanShot X.

Bezel is one of those utilities that are simple enough to stay practical but are designed with enough care for their power users to fit into a variety of workflows. I can see it being useful for developers who need to test and demo their projects, as well as regular users who may just want to keep an iPhone app displayed on their Mac right next to other windows.

If Bezel evolves to include additional features like the ability to start a screen recording directly from the app and interact with the iPhone using the Mac’s pointer, it could very well become an essential tool for macOS.

Bezel is $29 as a one-time purchase and includes a year of free updates. The app can also be tried for free with a watermark.

Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Marcos Tanaka’s Play has become the way I watch YouTube, which isn’t something I expected would happen as much as I’ve enjoyed the app since its launch early last year. The app, available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, started as a way to save YouTube links to watch later. That made Play indispensable for keeping track of videos in a way that is similar to how I save articles I want to read later in Matter.

With version 2.0, Marcos has transformed Play from a utility where I save links for later to how I find videos and watch them in the first place. The big difference is that Play now allows users to manage YouTube channels inside the app. I still come across YouTube links on social media, iMessage conversations, on the Club MacStories Discord server, and elsewhere that I add to Play using its excellent share sheet integration. However, with support for YouTube channels, I now have a chronological list of everything published by my favorite channels delivered to an inbox where I can quickly pick the ones I want to watch, which is wonderful.

If that sounds a lot like RSS, that’s because it is. That’s how I prefer to scan my favorite websites for articles to read, and now, it’s how I’m watching my favorite YouTube channels.

The new Channels features of Play are available on the Mac…

…and iPad, too.

The update adds a new ‘Channels’ button to Play’s UI that opens a view for adding and deleting channels as well as managing their videos. There are also buttons to refresh your channels, delete all new videos, and filter them. Adding a new channel can be done using the share sheet from a channel’s YouTube page or by tapping the ‘Manage’ button in Play’s Channels view and pasting the channel’s URL into the field at the top of the screen. From here, you can also delete individual channels and sort them by date added or by name. Channels can also be found and added using Shortcuts actions, and all of a channel’s videos can be added at once by long-pressing on it in the Manage view.

After you’ve added a few channels, you’ll see their most recent videos listed chronologically in your Channels inbox. From here, you can swipe left to add a video to your saved list or right to delete the video from your list. Alternatively, you can double-tap videos to add them to your queue even faster, a gesture I love that was suggested by a Club MacStories member in the Beta Beat channel of Discord, where members have been testing Play since early this month.

Adding videos to watch later or deleting them from your inbox is accomplished with a swipe or, for adding, a double-tap.

The filter button is accessed from the three-dot menu button in the Channels screen, where you can filter by keywords in the title or the description of a video or the frequency with which new videos are added to a channel. The frequency filter, which is called ‘Slow Feeds Only,’ works a lot like the Slow Feeds feature in the RSS reader lire. By limiting your Channels inbox to videos from channels that publish less than the average of all those you follow over the past 30 days, you can quickly pick out videos from channels that might otherwise have gotten drowned out by busier ones.

What I love about Channels is how flexible and lightweight the feature is. I can scan through a long list of videos quickly, adding to my queue as I go, knowing that I haven’t missed anything. The result has been a ‘watch later’ list that has grown even faster than ever, which may not be something I needed, but that’s balanced out by the feeling that I’m getting more out of YouTube than before because I’m not missing videos from my favorite channels. I also appreciate that I can watch the videos I’ve saved from inside Play itself without the distraction of YouTube’s suggested videos.

Smart Searches like this one I made for Steam Deck videos can be added to folders now.

To keep everything organized, Play has added the ability to create folders for tags and saved Smart Searches, a feature that allows you to save filtered results from your queue of videos. I haven’t used tags and Smart Searches a lot in the past, but it’s good to see folders added because I know there are a lot of users with many more videos saved in Play than me.

Also worth mentioning is a new button in the Action section of Play’s main view that plays a random video for those times when picking something is more trouble than it’s worth. The app’s share action has an Open Play button to jump right into the app to watch or manage what you’ve saved. Plus, Play’s large Home Screen widget can show a dozen videos when the ‘Minimal UI’ option is enabled.

Play 2.0 also adds a button to play a random video, the ability to jump into the app from the share sheet, and more videos in the large Home Screen widget.

Play 2.0’s big update comes with a new subscription business model, too. The core app remains $2.99, but Channels and folders for tags and Smart Searches are part of a Play Premium subscription that costs $2.99/month, $19.99/year, or $99.99 as a one-time purchase.

I’m glad to see Marcos moving to a subscription-based business model for advanced features. Play offers a lot of great features for just $2.99, which I’ve always felt was underpriced. What’s different about Play 2.0 and justifies the recurring subscription pricing or one-time price is that Channels transforms the app from something akin to a bookmarking app to a full-blown alternative way to enjoy YouTube. And for that, I’m more than willing to subscribe to Play.

Play 2.0 is available now on the App Store.

Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

As part of my ongoing experiment with third-party web browsers for the iPhone, I recently stumbled upon a new indie browser for iOS, which I was instantly drawn to thanks to its adorable name. Quiche Browser is a beautiful browser developed by Greg de J that focuses on UI modularity and small quality-of-life enhancements. The app has surprised me with its great design, and one unexpected use case.

In Quiche Browser, every button can be moved and customized. If you are not the kind of person who likes to tweak the placement of every interface element, this may sound overwhelming. Fortunately, Quiche Browser lets you pick from the ‘Toolbar Gallery’, a collection of toolbar presets that you can customize and adjust. This is an excellent way to quickly get started with your preferred preset, and also to learn how you can customize Quiche’s look, whether you want a fully-featured toolbar or a minimalistic look.

Quiche Browser’s Toolbar Gallery lets you pick a UI preset, which you can then customize to your liking.

The address bar can be customized to include the site icon, an estimated read time, the page title, and more.

Just like the bottom toolbar, every item in Quiche Browser’s main menu can be reordered and customized. You can choose the size of every button and even add separators to organize the menu into sections.

Combined, the modular menu and toolbar have given me a lot of flexibility in customizing the browser’s UI layout. Buttons that are typically hidden in others browsers, like the option to request the desktop version of a website, can easily be placed at the top level. Conversely, buttons that are usually always visible, such as ‘Back’ and ‘Forward’, can be removed if you always swipe from the edge of the display to navigate back.

Every item in Quiche Browser’s main menu can also be reordered and customized.

Buttons can be set to appear in the bottom toolbar, in the main menu, in both, or in neither.

My favorite part of Quiche Browser’s UI is the tab switcher, where tabs can be displayed either as a grid or as a list. Although you can’t adjust the number of columns in the tab grid, you can still pick a smaller size for the thumbnails if you want to see more tabs at once.

Quiche Browser can also automatically estimate the time it takes to read a webpage and display the estimate below a tab’s title. As a result, not only can tabs be dynamically sorted by date, but they can also be sorted by read time.

Combined with the ability to group tabs by domain, I have almost considered using Quiche Browser as a read-later app. Even if I kept using Safari as my main web browser, I could easily send articles to Quiche via the share sheet, then switch to Quiche when I was ready to read. I am convinced that the app would be a great candidate for this use case if it also had a distraction-free ‘Reader view’ to get rid of pop-ups and ads.

In Quiche Browser, tabs can be grouped by domain and sorted by read time.

Apart from its modularity, the appearance of Quiche Browser can further be customized if you pick a custom background color from its wide palette of available options. Quiche Browser even ships with Vivaldi Browser’s landmark appearance feature on the desktop that is still missing from its iOS version: the color of the UI can automatically adapt to the website currently onscreen.

You can choose from almost any colors of the rainbow for Quiche Browser’s UI…

… and for its Home Screen icon.

Quiche Browser offers a handful of advanced settings, too. The app lets you set a custom search engine, disable JavaScript, and switch to a different user agent. However, it does not include a content blocker.

Quiche Browser lets you set a custom search engine, disable JavaScript entirely, and switch to a different user agent.

Quiche Browser has clearly been designed with care. Despite its commitment to modularity and customization, Quiche Browser’s UI still feels intentional. Every color and font choice is deliberate and complemented by a great use of haptics.

There is a lot of potential for Quiche Browser if it steadily keeps gaining features alongside its simple, modular design. For those of us who have a hard time leaving Safari, it could even earn a spot on our Home Screens if it pursues its potential as a secondary “read-later browser”.

Quiche Browser is available for free on the App Store, with an optional monthly subscription of $0.99 per month if you wish to support the developer and unlock all the custom icons.

Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Ever since Apple updated its OSes, I’ve been trying a long list of widgets. We’ve written about a lot of them, but there are always more, so I gathered up some additional favorites that are worth trying if you haven’t yet. Let’s have a look.

Music Widgets

Doppler, Longplay, and WidgetPod widgets.

It should come as no surprise that music widgets are one of my favorite categories, and I’ve got three to share today:

Doppler

Doppler.

Doppler by Ed Wellbrook is an iPhone and Mac app for people who own their music. The app can handle MP3, AAC, M4A, FLAC, ALAC, and WAV file formats natively and includes extensive features for enjoying and managing your music collection.

With iOS 17, Doppler has added two interactive playback widgets that feature album art, a background that pulls the dominant color from the album’s artwork, and play/pause and skip forward and back buttons. The iOS app also includes a StandBy widget. Doppler’s Mac app doesn’t include widgets of its own, but you can also control the iOS app from your Mac’s desktop by using its widget there as long as your iPhone is nearby.

Longplay

Longplay.

Longplay is an album-oriented take on music for the iPhone and iPad by Adrian Schoenig that I reviewed in August. One of the app’s recent features is the ability to divide your albums into collections. I’ve got over 1,000 albums in my Apple Music library, so collections have become my favorite way to add a little organization to my library, allowing me to create groups of albums by genre, mood, or current favorites.

With the app’s extensive set of interactive widgets, you can display albums in a grid that’s similar to the app’s main interface, using small, medium, or large widgets. Then, you can customize the widget by picking your entire library or a collection, whether you want the order of albums to change from day to day, and whether you want the widget to display the name of the collection they come from. Tapping on one of the albums toggles playback. With space for 25 albums on the large version of the album grid widget, I’ve found it to be perfect for maintaining a ‘heavy rotation’ collection of albums that I revisit often. The app also includes a ‘now playing’ widget that has a button with a die on it for starting a random album.

WidgetPod

WidgetPod.

The greatest strength of WidgetPod by Aditya Rajveer is the customizability of its widgets. The app includes small, medium, and large interactive widgets on the iPhone and adds an extra-large version on the iPad. In the main app, you can design multiple versions of each widget size, sticking with the app’s good-looking defaults or tweaking things like accent colors, artwork, what happens when you tap the widget, and the information listed about an album. I’m partial to the default widget style, but there are also versions that hide artwork altogether, zoom in on it, and superimpose the album art on a slowly spinning vinyl record. With playback basics and the option to show and toggle a song’s liked status, WidgetPod has quickly become my favorite way to track and control my music listening from my Home Screen.

Soundboards

Thwip and Klang.

Soundboards are fun whether you’re idly tapping out of boredom or need a way to occupy a small child for a while. The satisfaction is immediate and entertaining. The two soundboards I’ve found that I like the best are Thwip and Klang, both of which offer a variety of interactive Home Screen and StandBy widgets for playing short sounds.

Thwip, by Rafael Conde, is an iPhone and Apple Watch app that comes with nine built-in sounds. There’s an air horn, sad trombone, bell, crickets, and even a web shooter. You can add new sounds from the Files app, adding a name, color, and icon so it fits in nicely with the other choices. The widgets come in small, medium, large, and extra-large sizes, but you’ll need to add some of your own sounds to fill out the large and extra-large widgets, which hold 16 and 32 sound buttons, respectively. Also worth noting is that Thwip is the only app I’ve come across that doesn’t offer an iPad version of its app but does offer an extra-large iPad-only widget, which you’ll see when the app is running in compatibility mode on an iPad.

Klang is an iPhone and iPad app that takes a slightly different approach, using emoji to offer soundboards of animals, instruments, vehicles, and fun sounds. Like Thwip, you can add your own sounds, but you can also create your own boards, adding your sounds or any of the built-in ones to them. In all, there are 65 built-in sounds with large categories like animals and vehicles that should keep kids busy and entertained for quite a while.

Even More Widgets

Tally.

Greg Pierce’s Tally, the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch app for counting things, is a natural fit for interactive widgets. The app is for counting anything, from keeping score during a game to tracking your reps at the gym. With interactive widgets, the app now offers small, medium, large, and extra-large widgets that can increment one or a set of two counts. The counts on the widget update immediately, and tapping anywhere else on the widget opens the full app to adjust the settings of your tally or to set up a new one.

LookUp.

LookUp, the dictionary app from Vidit Bhargava, is another MacStories favorite that’s made great use of widgets for a while. With interactivity, users can add a ‘Word of the Day Shuffle’ widget to their Home Screen to cycle through multiple words at a time, learning as they go. The same widget also has a button to have the word spoken aloud, a heart button to mark it as a favorite, and a shuffle button for advancing to the next word, which also happens if you mark a word as a favorite or have it spoken to you. The ‘Word of the Day’ widget includes buttons to speak a word and favorite it, but it only changes once per day. In addition to StandBy widgets, Bhargava also updated the Watch version of the app to match watchOS 10’s design changes.

WaterMinder.

One of WaterMinder’s hallmarks is how easy the app makes it to log what you drink. That’s important because even a slight amount of friction, and you’ll probably stop tracking. With interactive widgets, that tracking is even simpler than before.

There are enough WaterMinder widgets that it’s impossible to fit every one of them on even a 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s screen, but there are some common interactivity themes. Several of the widgets include a circular button with four smaller circles inside of it. Tapping that button acts as a toggle, changing a view that tracks your water intake to a set of buttons for logging your saved favorite drinks. On some large and extra-large widgets, there’s room in the widget to include those saved drinks without toggling views, but I’m a big fan of the space-saving option available on the smaller widgets.

Widgetive.

This fall, Funn Media, the makers of WaterMinder and several other apps, also added a brand-new app to their catalog called Widgetive. The app, which works with the iPhone and iPad, is free with ads, or you can subscribe to eliminate the ads, personalize your widgets, and unlock some more advanced widgets.

In a similar vein to Widgetsmith, Widgetive offers a long list of what are effectively mini apps divided into the following categories:

• Health and Fitness
• Countdowns
• Games
• Time Zones
• Tools
• Quotes and Jokes

The design of the widgets is excellent. Most have a clean, black-and-white look by default but can be customized with a variety of colors and typefaces for their various elements. So, while many of the widgets found in Widgetive can be found in other apps, I’m glad there’s an option that offers a wide variety of choices in a single app with deep customization.

That’s it for our initial coverage of iOS 17 widgets – for now. Of course, we’re always on the lookout for new and interesting widget implementations and will be back with even more as part of our usual coverage of new and updated apps.

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It’s been years since I took a serious run at handwritten notes on the iPad. However, that changed with my recent experiments with the Boox Tab Ultra, which led me back to the benefits of jotting down handwritten notes as a quick capture system while I work. That’s why Aspropad’s new Rock Paper Pencil bundle of a nano-textured iPad screen protector and replacement Apple Pencil tips that mimic the feel of paper caught my eye. I’ve had bad luck with screen covers that feel like paper in the past, but as I’ll explain below, Astropad has created a unique package that offers the closest experience to writing or drawing on paper that I’ve ever tried while also being easy to use.

The out-of-the-box writing and drawing on an iPad is a mixed bag. The Pencil hardware’s sensors, combined with the iPad’s excellent screen, make it feel like you’re actually inking the surface of the iPad. However, one detail gets in the way of the experience for a lot of people; it’s not like writing on paper.

The trouble is with the iPad’s slick glass surface and the Apple Pencil’s smooth, plastic tip. They work in perfect harmony with iPadOS, but for many people, whether they’re taking notes or sketching, the plastic on glass feels unnatural compared to paper.

I’ve always been a more aspirational Apple Pencil user than an actual user of the device. I’ve dabbled with taking handwritten notes in apps like Goodnotes and doodled in Procreate and other apps ever since the iPad debuted, but that’s a tiny sliver of what I do on an iPad.

Exploring Rock Paper Pencil with Apple’s Freeform app.

Recently, however, I’ve been drawn back to the Apple Pencil by the Boox Tab Ultra, of all things. My experiments with the Tab Ultra, which I explained on AppStories, have been driven in no small part by the fact that the iPad Pro has remained largely untouched for five years.

My Boox experiment is ongoing and started as an alternative research and writing device. Lately, though, I’ve taken the experiment a step further by setting the tablet up on a DraftTable V2 by Elevation Lab for taking handwritten notes as I work. It’s not something I do every day, but it’s a nice way to quickly capture thoughts without switching to another app that might distract me from whatever I’m in the middle of doing.

The Boox has the advantage of great battery life, but the iPad has system-wide support for Scribble and apps like Notes and Freeform that work with the Apple Pencil. So when I saw Astropad had developed a special Apple Pencil tip that mimics a ballpoint pen that works with its screen cover that’s designed to feel like paper, I knew I had to try it.

The Rock Paper Pencil folio for storing the screen protector when it’s not in use is built to last.

Rock Paper Pencil’s design is excellent right down to its packaging that opens like a book to reveal the screen cover, a sturdy folio for storing it, and two Pencil tips. The experience of setting Astropad’s system up couldn’t be easier either. Its screen cover attaches to the iPad with magnetic strips that attach along the long side of the iPad. Just line things up, place the screen on your iPad, and you’re finished. There aren’t any bubbles under the cover to smooth out or anxiety about ruining the cover if you get it lined up wrong and have to try again because the cover is as easy to take off as it is to apply. That’s a big deal because it’s not true of many other iPad screen covers that imitate paper.

The screen protector connects to the iPad with magnetic strips.

Astropad’s cover is so easy to remove that if you have times when you don’t want to use it, it’s easy to take off and store in the folio pocket that comes with it. Having taken the cover off and reapplied it several times over the past week, that’s exactly how I plan to use it.

Comparing the Rock Paper Pencil tip (left) to the Apple Pencil’s (right).

The other component is the replacement Apple Pencil tip. Installation is a simple matter of unscrewing Apple’s Pencil tip and screwing Astropad’s on in its place. The bundle comes with two, which are made of metal and look a lot like the tip of a standard ballpoint pen. Astropad says its tip is more durable than Apple’s, which I expect is true since it’s made of metal, but I have only used it for a week, which isn’t long enough to comment on its longevity.

The experience of using the new Pencil tips along with the cover is the closest thing to paper that I’ve ever tried on the iPad. I’ve spent time taking notes in a variety of apps. I also tested how Astropad’s tip works with a variety of brushes. In every case, the experience was by far the best I’ve had with an iPad screen cover. The texture of the cover combined with the Pencil tip feels a lot like paper, providing a pleasant degree of friction.

I don’t draw, but Rock Paper Pencil is great for planning projects in Freeform or an app like MindNode.

The surface of the iPad remains firm, too. I’ve tried screen covers that had a mushy feel before, but despite Rock Paper Pencil’s narrow metal tip, it doesn’t feel like I’m pressing the Apple Pencil into a mini plastic pillow, which is great. The tip’s metal color sets it off from the rest of the Pencil, which allows for more precise placement on the screen, too. Of course, all of the Apple Pencil 2’s features, like tilt and pressure sensitivity, also work with Astropad’s replacement tip.

I haven’t found the effect of Rock Paper Pencil on my iPad Pro’s screen image to be meaningful.

Other screen covers that I’ve tried also had the disadvantage of creating a prism-like spray of colors on the screen or significantly dimmed or softened images on the iPad. Astropad’s cover is superior in this respect, too. Sharp edges like text are slightly softened by the textured cover, but colors remain true, there’s no odd color distortion effect, and the screen remains bright. As a result, I’d take the cover off to watch a movie or do precise editing of photos, but its matte finish is perfectly fine for tasks, like text editing and reading, for example.

The bottom line is that Rock Paper Pencil is the first iPad screen cover I expect that I’ll continue to use regularly. I love the texture for note-taking or reading and highlighting text in apps like Matter. Just as important, though, is that using Rock Paper Pencil doesn’t mean fully committing to a paper-cover lifestyle. I can just as easily remove the cover, tuck it in the included sleeve, and put it on a shelf until I need it again. That flexibility is at least as important to me as the actual feel of the cover/tip combination, making Rock Paper Pencil as fantastic an alternative for occasional note-taking and art dabbling as it is for more serious handwritten note-takers and artists.

Rock Paper Pencil is available now from Astropad for the 11-inch iPad Pro and iPad Air for $39.99. You can also pre-order Rock Paper Pencil for the same price for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation and later), iPad mini (6th generation), and iPad 10.2-inch 7th-9th generations).

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Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

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Third-party web browsers on iOS and iPadOS have been in a peculiar state for some time. While it has been possible since iOS 14 to set a third-party browser as the default for opening web links, Apple still doesn’t permit the use of third-party browser engines — at least for now. This means third-party web browsers on iOS are essentially limited to serving as custom user interfaces built on top of the Safari engine.

However, some web browsers thrive in this space. Vivaldi, like many other web browsers on the desktop, is built on top of the Chromium engine and has become a staple of highly-customizable desktop web browsers. With its recent expansion to iOS, I thought I would try using it for a week to see how much of its desktop promise survived the port to Apple’s platform.

I should preface the following with the expectations I had when I went to install Vivaldi on my iPhone. Five years ago, I was using Vivaldi on my main Mac, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending entire afternoons customizing the settings to my liking. I could group tabs, install extensions, and apply custom themes. So I naturally went in expecting a fully-featured and customizable browser for iOS.

When I first launched Vivaldi on iOS, the interface looked promising. It features a unique design for a mobile browser, with ‘Desktop tabs’ positioned at the top of the screen.

The desktop-style tabs look great and allow for fast switching between two or three tabs. However, their placement at the top of the display discouraged me from reaching all the way up there with my thumb. Instead, I found myself tapping the tab view button in the bottom toolbar, even if it meant having to tap the screen twice instead of once to switch to an adjacent tab. I was actually expecting a setting to place them in the bottom toolbar, just like I could in the desktop version of Vivaldi. Such a setting would certainly make a lot more sense in a mobile browser. But the only available tab setting is to disable the desktop-style appearance altogether.

Vivaldi for iOS with ‘Desktop tabs’ disabled (Left) vs. enabled (Right).

Tabs can be placed at the bottom of the window in the desktop version of Vivaldi. Why not on iOS?

Despite the ‘Desktop’ appearance, tab management falls short of Safari on iOS. Vivaldi does provide extensive tab management tools on the desktop, but both profiles and tab groups are missing from the iOS version.

Vivaldi’s top toolbar also stands out because of its bright red color. However, there is currently no way to personalize this color or have it change based on the site you’re viewing. It is possible that this could be a feature in the future, considering it has been a prominent visual aspect of Vivaldi on the desktop. But in the meantime, the only way to get rid of the red is to disable ‘Desktop tabs’ or to switch to dark mode.

Interestingly, Vivaldi’s interface felt oddly familiar. The arrangement of the bottom toolbar, the ability to pull down on a page and swipe side to side for actions, and the arrangement of tabs in the tab view all resemble Chrome for iOS. It appears that the Vivaldi team has been developing their iOS browser using Google’s work on Chrome as inspiration. This is not a bad thing per se: I’m actually glad that Vivaldi is keeping to their winning strategy of picking a strong, well-known foundation and adding their own perks on top of it. However, for now, this only makes Vivaldi for iOS feel like a fancy version of Chrome.

Vivaldi and Chrome share a lot of UI similarities on iOS. Left is Chrome’s tab view. Right is Vivaldi’s tab view.

Chrome’s pull-to-action gestures (Left) are also present in Vivaldi (Right).

Chrome’s main menu (Left) and Vivaldi’s main menu (Right).

Vivaldi’s settings may not be packed with numerous toggles and intricate options to customize, but the browser does offer some convenient features. These include a built-in blocker for trackers and ads, as well as the option to sign in with your Vivaldi account. By doing so, you can synchronize your bookmarks, reading list, history, passwords, and tabs with the desktop version of the browser. This makes Vivaldi for iOS a valuable addition for anyone who has already been using Vivaldi on the desktop for a while.

The Sync settings panel is where I noticed that Vivaldi for iOS ships with a note-taking feature. Notes can be taken on the fly as you browse the web, they can be sorted into folders, and they sync with the desktop browser. The feature is fairly basic, but I can absolutely see it being useful for anyone who wishes to take notes directly from the browser without having to switch to a dedicated app every time.

Vivaldi’s settings panel.

That is an impressive amount of custom app icons.

You can directly take notes from Vivaldi on iOS, and they will sync to Vivaldi on your Mac.

After giving Sync a try, I’m sad to report that the performance is not stellar. The above note took about an hour to appear on my Mac. Synced tabs also took a while to show up on both devices. The only workaround I was able to find was to force quit the app on iOS and launch it again. If there is no way for Vivaldi to improve Sync for now, there should at least be a way to trigger synchronization manually instead of having to wait for it to happen on its own.

Speed Dial is the landing page in Vivaldi. Incredibly, Speed Dial falls short of Safari when it comes to customization. You can add shortcuts to your favorite and most used websites, and you can change the size of the grid to make it more compact. But, it is currently impossible to set an image as the background, and you can’t add anything other than pinned websites to this landing page. As a result, Speed Dial can not surface your frequently visited websites or items recently added to your reading list.

Vivaldi’s Speed Dial cannot be customized except for pinning your own websites and adjusting the grid size.

Vivaldi for iOS is a promising foundation awaiting a building. While it is a fast and functional browser for the iPhone, it lacks several of the core features that have helped it define itself in a crowded marketplace on desktop. I anticipated a fun and customizable browser, but instead, I found myself with a more basic browsing experience compared to Safari. Still, I’m curious too see if Vivaldi innovates on this rather basic foundation, and whether it can evolve into more than just a companion app for its long-time desktop users. I also think Vivaldi could become a great alternative if it added support for Chrome extensions and more advanced tab management options.

If you feel like giving it a try, Vivaldi for iOS is available for free on the App Store.

Trying to use a different web browser on my iPhone has made me question whether there are actually some powerful third-party browsers worth switching to on iOS. If you’re a Club MacStories member, you can read about my experiment with Orion Browser, a lesser-known name in the space of alternative web browsers for iOS, in the upcoming issue of MacStories Weekly.

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Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Matthias Hochgatterer’s Home+ 6 for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch is one of the most powerful HomeKit apps around, offering automation based on functionality exposed by Apple’s HomeKit framework that its own Home app doesn’t even use. The app also does a terrific job of surfacing sensor data that is buried deep in the Home app, like details about the air quality in your home if you have a sensor that monitors that.

Home+ 6.2 includes a new Smart Group dedicated to battery health.

With version 6.2 of Home+, Hochgatterer has added a new section to the app that reports the remaining charge for any battery-operated HomeKit accessories, such as window and door sensors. The new section, which color codes its battery icons according to the remaining charge, is accompanied by a new set of small, medium, and large-sized widgets that can be customized to show all of your battery-operated devices or a subset picked by you. Like the smart section in the main app, the rings around each device icon are color-coded, making it easy to pick out any with low batteries.

The accessories and scenes widget has added room identifiers.

Home+ also offers device widgets that have added the name of the room to which they’re assigned, making it simple to tell accessories apart in the widget. However, the accessory and scene widgets are not compatible with iOS and iPadOS 17’s new interactivity. Tapping an accessory or scene will trigger it, but the Home+ app opens in the process. Having gotten used to iOS and iPadOS 17’s interactivity, I hope Home+ adds support for it in the future.

Version 6.2 is a small update for Home+, but one I appreciate all the same. Battery data is too buried in the Home app, and with Home+’s new widget and smart section, I now know I have a Hue dimmer switch that needs my attention. Plus, if you haven’t checked out Home+ in a while, it’s worth exploring its automation tools, which are some of the best available in any HomeKit-based app.

Home+ 6.2 is available on the App Store for $9.99, which is a 30% discount from its usual price.

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Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Calendar apps are ones that most people check more than they use. More often than not, all I need from my calendar app is to know what’s happening today. Many people go a step further, combining their tasks with their schedules to plan their days, making quick checks of their calendars even more crucial to their work day. Fantastical has both kinds of users covered with its latest update.

We’ve covered Fantastical many times over the years. The app is well-known for its excellent design, which matters when you have a packed schedule to navigate. Choice also matters because the way people view their calendars and tasks varies a lot. Fantastical 3.8 builds on the app’s rich history and succeeds with the latest advances in widgets and watchOS design by offering a deep set of 17 Home Screen widgets, eight Lock Screen widgets on the iPad, and five StandBy widgets, all of which are impeccably designed.

Some of Fantastical’s iOS Home Screen widgets.

My favorite is Fantastical’s medium-sized Home Screen widget, which includes a monthly calendar on the left and the weather, events, and tasks on the right. The monthly calendar has arrows, so you can tap from one month to the next, and each day is color-coded with a heat map or dots to show how much you have scheduled for that day. The widget strikes the perfect balance between a monthly overview and what I currently have going on.

In addition to being able to page through monthly calendar views in several widgets, Fantastical lets you mark tasks as completed and customize a quick action to start a search or add an event or task from any of the widgets that display your schedule or by using a dedicated small widget with a single add button. Widgets with schedules can also be themed, customized to only show a certain calendar set, or limited to certain types of events or tasks.

A selection of Fantastical’s iPad Lock Screen widgets.

The monochrome colors of Lock Screen widgets limit their utility, given the density of information Fantastical is handling. However, the Lock Screen is a handy place for a monthly calendar for a quick look at your next event or task. My favorite is the monthly calendar view, which I’ve found useful when looking up a date. On the iPhone, you’re limited to a condensed version that shows the current week along with the week before and after. However, on the iPad, you can include a full month that’s interactive, allowing you to move from month to month. Another good option is the Up Next medium-sized Lock Screen widget that shows your next meeting or task.

Fantastical offers more StandBy widgets than most third-party apps.

Having a full monthly calendar in StandBy is incredibly useful.

Fantastical has several StandBy widget options, too. ‘Event List’ manages to fit a few events plus the weather for each day displayed in a single widget that is a little cramped for my tastes but a great choice if you’re goal is maximizing limited space. I prefer Up Next, so I can focus on one upcoming event or task at a time, which also includes a weather forecast. A monthly calendar widget and two versions of today’s date are also available.

On the Apple Watch, Flexibits has updated its app for watchOS 10’s design changes. The app offers Up Next, List, and Task views that take advantage of my Apple Watch Ultra’s large screen, which I love. I’m also fond of the app’s large complication, which includes your next event as well as its duration and an accompanying timeline. I don’t have a packed calendar, so I don’t use Fantastical’s complications often, but the large one is perfect for keeping track of your busiest days.

Fantastical has an incredibly rich and deep feature set that makes it the perfect choice for people who live in their calendars, moving between meetings all day and managing tasks. What its widgets do is a little different, though. They free users from having to dip into the complexity of Fantastical’s main app as often, which I love. Fantastical isn’t hard to use, but if your day has already been scheduled, opening the app to check when your next meeting starts or to check off a task is more than is necessary. For those times, the app’s widgets and Watch app are perfect, allowing for quick interactions but with the full feature set of the app just a tap away when you need it.

Fantastical is available on the App Store as a free download with many features requiring a monthly subscription of $6.99/month or $56.99/year for individuals and $10.49/month or $89.99/year for families. The Mac version of Fantastical is a separate download.

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In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Apple first introduced the Translate app in iOS 14. Although it was a welcomed addition to the language translation space, I stopped using it a couple of months after its release. Many languages were still missing, its interface was lackluster at best, and I found that its French translations were not great. I would also still often rely on Google Translate to translate text in the real world using the iPhone camera — a feature that was initially missing from Apple’s app. This year, however, the Translate app received a substantial makeover and a handful of new features in iOS 17.

Let’s see how Translate fares in 2023.

The Translate app consists of four tabs: Translation, Camera, Conversation, and Favorites. Translation is the main tab where you can perform basic translations. Up until iOS 16, the input field occupied the entire screen and resized when the virtual keyboard appeared, which could feel disorienting. The interface is much clearer today: each performed translation is constricted to a card. Cards can be scrolled vertically, and it’s very easy to go back to a previous translation card. This design is both simple and well thought out.

The new Translation tab allows for fast input of multiple translations in a row.

Each translation card contains the same set of actions: ‘Show Full Screen,’ ‘Add to Favorites,’ ‘Define,’ and ‘Copy.’ Adding to Favorites is not something I expected to use, but it’s actually very useful, considering that the Translate app will not keep a full history of your translations after you close it. It makes sense to be able to save a translated snippet of text and come back to it later in the Favorites tab. However, I wish there was an option to automatically keep a full history for people like me who will often forget to tap the ‘Add to Favorites’ button.

In iOS 17, the Translation tab got a new feature that I’ve rarely seen in other translation tools: the possibility to manually select a grammatical gender for nouns and other gendered words.

As you may know, my main language is French, which is, unfortunately, a very gendered language. Most nouns have a different form depending on whether they designate a woman or a man — and most adjectives that accompany these nouns need to be gendered accordingly. Google Translate and most other apps will try to guess the correct grammatical gender for nouns by solely relying on context, but this falls apart if the sentence you provide doesn’t have any. I am glad Apple added this feature to easily be able to tap a word and use the context menu that appears to switch to the appropriate grammatical gender. This is certainly a nice workaround for all the times when the translation algorithm is simply not capable of guessing on its own which grammatical gender to use.

In languages like French, gendered words are highlighted and can be tapped to select the appropriate grammatical gender.

The Conversation tab is probably the most clever part of the Translate app. Thanks to the way the translations are laid out — as speech bubbles on each side of the screen — I think it is also the best-designed part of the app. With voice input, the app is able to automatically tell which of the two languages is being spoken and translate accordingly. But unlike in most other translation apps, Apple’s Conversation mode is for more than just voice input between two speakers. In iOS 17, each speaker can also type and edit their sentences with the virtual keyboard instead of having to speak into the microphone. And, similarly to how the Translation tab works, any previous message in the Conversation tab can be acted upon: each can be selected, copied, added to favorites, shown in full screen, or played out loud again.

The Conversation tab has an option to automatically play translations out loud as soon as they’re typed. (Pardon my German.)

The Camera tab is interesting since it doesn’t contain any new features that you could not already perform elsewhere in iOS. But I’m glad Apple decided to give them room to breathe in one dedicated place. The Camera tab lets you point the iPhone camera at any string of text in the real world and immediately see a translation onscreen. The translation is overlaid on top of the original text and can be tapped to perform system actions like Select, Copy, and Look Up. It is also easy to select any image from your photo library and translate text contained within any picture you may have previously taken. This is all powered by Live Text, the system-wide feature first introduced in iOS 15, that makes it possible to select text directly from the Camera app as well as in any image in Photos, Safari, and any third-party apps that support it.

Translating text with the iPhone camera isn’t a new feature, but I wish Apple had improved the way the translation overlays look. They pale in comparison to Google Translate, which excels at integrating translated text into the image as well as at handling text that is partly off-screen. Apple’s translation overlays, on the other hand, can obstruct parts of the image and often feel visually distracting.

Translating a column from a French magazine. Left is the original text viewed from the iPhone Camera. Center is the translated text in Apple’s Translate app. Right is the translated text in Google Translate.

Taking some time to explore these changes brought by the Translate app in iOS 17 made me realize something: I already use Apple’s translation tool every single day – I just never open the dedicated Translate app. But this is where I found it to be at its best: Apple has infused translation in all parts of the OS. As a multilingual user of the Internet, tapping the ‘Translate’ button when selecting text is something that I expect to work reliably, whether that’s when I’m reading an article, browsing social media, or looking at a restaurant menu in Berlin that I’m not quite able to understand. The fact is: Translate does work reliably, and while I did not previously realize it, Apple’s translations to French are now really good. So much so that it has become quite common for me to rely on it on a regular basis.

Translation is accessible anywhere you can select text in iOS and directly from the Camera app using Live Text.

Although many languages have been added since iOS 14, Apple’s Translate app still doesn’t support as many languages as its competitors. However, I can safely say that there have been substantial improvements for the languages it already supports. The app also stands out with some of its features. The Conversation tab is unique in its well-thought-out design. Manually selecting the grammatical gender for gendered words sets it apart from a simple translation app you may use during your vacation abroad, perhaps transforming it into a daily work tool. But, like many of Apple’s built-in apps and services that are well integrated into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, Translate truly shines when you realize that you’ve actually been using it this whole time without noticing.

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In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

The last time Bartender received a major update was back in 2021. Bartender 4 brought many new powerful features to help declutter the menu bar, particularly on the new MacBook models with a notch, which made menu bar real estate become even more valuable. Bartender 5 was officially released last month, and not only is it a fantastic maintenance update that brings support for macOS Sonoma – it’s also a release full of fun additions for all Mac users.

Perhaps the fanciest new feature in Bartender 5 is the ability to entirely customize the way your menu bar looks. Bartender 5 now lets you change the color of the menu bar, add a border or drop shadow, or even change the way it fills the top part of your screen. It’s easy to customize on the fly, too: the style panel is accessible with just a right-click on the menu bar.

Bartender’s new Menu Bar Style panel includes a ‘Reset menu bar’ button to easily revert back to the default look if you regret any of your stylistic choices.

Bartender’s style options may seem limited at first, but they can be combined in a number of ways to create a unique look.

With the release of macOS Sonoma, Surtees Studio had to face a technical challenge. macOS now displays a purple badge in the menu bar whenever an app is capturing part of the screen. This is, of course, a welcome privacy feature, but it meant Bartender would have to work around its reliance on screen capture to rearrange icons in the menu bar. I’m happy to report that this challenge was successfully tackled and the purple badge only shows up when navigating Bartender’s settings and when you’re actually recording your screen.

Instead of displaying your hidden icons in a floating bar by default, Bartender 5 will now let you click the menu bar to temporarily replace your permanent menu bar icons.

Triggers are a smart and powerful Bartender feature that allows you to only show a menu bar icon when specific conditions are met. Even better: it is now possible to use AppleScript to tell Bartender 5 which conditions need to be met to display a menu bar icon. As soon as I thought about it, I had lots of ideas for how to use it.

For example, I use Neptunes to display the title of what’s currently playing in Apple Music in the menu bar. This, however, takes up a lot of valuable space, especially because the track title stays there even when playback is paused. Even though I had no idea how to write an AppleScript condition, I was actually able to ask ChatGPT to do it for me. I told it to write an AppleScript that would return true only when music is playing. Although there is a bit of a delay, it works perfectly: the current track goes away when I press Pause and it returns to the menu bar as soon as I press Play.

I love having the currently playing track in the menu bar, but it can take up a lot of space on a small MacBook Air display.

I asked ChatGPT to write an AppleScript condition to tell Bartender 5 to only display Neptunes in the menu bar when music is playing.

Bartender’s Presets are a new way to maintain different layouts for your menu bar icons and switch between them dynamically using Triggers. I could easily imagine setting up a menu bar preset only containing my audio-managing tools when I start a podcast recording or an ‘Empty Bar’ preset to hide all my menu bar icons when Do Not Disturb is active. The sky isn’t exactly the limit here, but AppleScript is.

Creating an ‘Empty Bar’ preset where all my menu bar icons are hidden by default.

Bartender 5 also adds the possibility to group multiple menu bar icons together. Although this might be a step too far if you’re only dealing with a dozen icons in your menu bar, I can see it being useful if you wish to free up some space by collapsing a handful of related icons into one.

Setting up a menu bar item group. I decided here to group two sound-related icons into one (Neptunes and SoundSource). You can choose any SF Symbol or emoji to use as the group icon.

I feel a bit sad every time somebody asks me how to recover an icon that “disappeared behind the notch.” I still believe people should not have to download a third-party app to deal with Apple’s hardware and software decisions that lead to the notch and its tendency to swallow menu bar icons. macOS should at least have a way to handle an overflowing menu bar. For this reason alone, Bartender is an essential Mac utility that’s easy to recommend to anyone running a Mac. But, at the same time, the amount of powerful features that have been added on top of its strong foundation over the years make it a great advanced tool for all Mac power users.

Bartender 5 is $16 if you buy it directly from Surtees Studios and is priced at $8 for anyone upgrading from a previous version. To be noted, though: if you bought Bartender 4 after June 8th, 2022, Bartender 5 will work with your existing license, and you won’t have to upgrade. Bartender is also available with a Setapp subscription.

Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Developers have come up with endlessly clever uses for interactive widgets. I love testing them all, but one type is beginning to stick more than others. It’s the widgets for apps that require quick interactions when you’re in the middle of something else. Turning off the lights in my home office when I’m finished working for the day, toggling work timers as I switch from task to task, and then checking off those tasks as I complete them are all perfect interactions for widgets that require minimal switching away from whatever I’m doing. Hopefully, that means fewer distractions and, in turn, a more productive day.

But not everything is about peak efficiency and checklists. Sometimes, you just want to relax, which widgets can help with, too. One of my favorite apps to help with that, which recently added interactive widget support, is TV Remote by Adam Foot. Foot’s app is one I already used with my LG C2 TV, but it’s the app’s new widgets that have graduated it to a regular part of my TV routine.

TV Remote is an iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch app for controlling your TV. It doesn’t work with every TV out there, but it works with a lot, including smart TVs from makers like LG, Samsung, Sony, Roku, and TCL. The app, which is free to download, with some features requiring a subscription, has a full list of supported TVs in its settings.

TV Remote supports waking your TV and connecting multiple TVs (left) and comes with an extensive collection of controls.

Adding a TV is easy if it’s connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your iPhone or iPad. Pick ‘Discover Televisions’ from the drop-down menu at the top of the screen, and the app will look for supported TVs. If you want to control turning your TV on and off, which is a subscriber-only feature, you have to add the TV’s MAC address, too, which can typically be found by digging around in your Wi-Fi router’s app or web control panel.

Once you’re set up, TV Remote provides a default set of controls tailored to your TV with on-screen buttons to navigate your TV’s UI, switch channels and sources, control volume, and everything else your physical remote can do. The defaults are well done, covering the actions that people probably use most, but because it’s an app and not a hunk of plastic, it’s fully customizable. For example, most of my TV watching happens through an Apple TV, to which I have connected a pair of original HomePods. As a result, I don’t need to control much on TV itself, so I deleted everything in the TV Remote app except the essentials that work with the Apple TV’s UI and allow me to switch HDMI inputs when I use my videogame consoles.

My simple set of controls is paired with use of Live Activities and widgets.

I can (and do) use the Siri Remote and Apple Remote app to control my Apple TV, but it’s TV Remote’s widgets that add that little bit of extra functionality that makes the app indispensable. The first thing I did was set up a medium-sized widget for switching among the HDMI inputs that I use with my Apple TV and consoles. You can set up buttons for any of your TV’s functions, but I find that switching HDMI inputs is one of the few things that I have to grab my LG remote for regularly, and I don’t like navigating the TV’s UI. Now, I’m just one tap away from switching from the Apple TV to playing a game.

TV Remote isn’t ideal on an iPad, but you can see here the button at the top for turning Live Activities on and off.

One reason I haven’t set up other buttons in a Home Screen widget is that TV Remote also supports Live Activities, which can be turned on with a tap of a button at the top of the app’s main screen. The app sits on your Lock Screen as a Live Activity by default, but you can also add it to the Dynamic Island so that a long press reveals a set of four controls that you can define in the app’s settings. I’ve got mine set to back for navigating the TV’s UI, an Info button for confirming the source that I’m using, a Home button for opening the TV’s UI, and a Power button for turning everything off.

I’m currently using two Lock Screen widgets that I plan to incorporate into a TV Focus mode.

I’ve also added Lock Screen widgets that I’m going to tie to a Focus mode. One turns the TV on and off, and the other lets me switch sources. They duplicate the functionality I have elsewhere, but if I’m at the kitchen table out of reach of my remotes, tapping my Lock Screen is a handy way to start up the TV before Jennifer and I sit down to watch something.

TV Remote on the Apple Watch.

I don’t use TV Remote much on the iPad, but the Apple Watch app is very useful because it, too, is customizable. The app uses watchOS 10’s card UI metaphor for switching between sets of controls. As with the iPhone app, I didn’t need most of the available functionality, so I headed to the app’s settings and removed all but the three I use, making it faster to get at those controls from my Apple Watch Ultra.

It’s worth noting, too, that TV Remote includes a wide array of alternative app icons, themes, and customizable tint colors. The app also has a toggle in its settings for turning off haptic feedback if you don’t like it, but I love it because it makes the app feel more tactile, like a physical remote control. Plus, the app supports light and dark modes, App Shortcuts for common functions, and Shortcuts for automating your viewing.

I covered TV Remote as part of a roundup of the most clever widgets and Live Activities we saw last year, and Adam Foot has done it again with a thoughtful implementation of interactivity that makes the app far more useful than if you had to open the underlying app every time. It also demonstrates how simple widget interactions can be deployed by developers to accomplish a wide range of tasks. If you haven’t checked out TV Remote before, I highly recommend taking it for a spin.

TV Remote is available on the App Store as a free download. Many of the customization options, support for multiple TVs, widgets, Shortcuts actions, the ability to power a TV on and off, and other features require a $1.99/month or $.9.99/year subscription or a one-time payment of $24.99.

Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Apple TV may have received its most surprising update release this year, and I’d argue that tvOS 17 is also Apple’s most impactful. With the launch of Apple TV+ and the expansion of Apple’s TV app to third-party devices, Apple TV the platform had gone through a bit of a confidence crisis. It was hard enough before to get developers and the wider Apple community to talk about its software, but now it had to compete for attention with the likes of Jennifer Anniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Ted Lasso.¹

Attention then moved onto Apple’s next big platform reveal, a project so steeped in secrecy and excitement that when a tvOS engineering manager made a brief public change to their social media profile indicating they had moved on to work for the company’s AR/VR division, I began to wonder if Apple TV and tvOS would ever get their special moment to shine. That special moment would come exactly nineteen minutes before the debut of Apple Vision Pro, and while it may have been a fleeting moment quickly forgotten by the majority, it’s a moment in Apple TV’s story I’ve been thinking about ever since.

The introduction of FaceTime on Apple TV was more than just a feature announcement. It also represented a realignment in what mattered most for the platform and Apple’s customers and a shift away from a focus previously reserved for the needs of the wider entertainment industry.

FaceTime and Continuity Camera may be the headline acts in this year’s tvOS update, but they’re also supported by a cast of big changes elsewhere. They include a newly redesigned Control Center – Apple’s latest triumph in intuitive interaction – automatic profile switching, Find Siri Remote, third-party VPN support, Shared Spatial Audio, updates to Fitness and Music, enhancements to both audio and video presentations, and a small but meaningful update to the tvOS Home Screen.

After using tvOS 17 over the summer, I’m happy to impart that the new features are all positive additions, even though there remains work to be done. So, without further ado, in a MacStories return to tvOS reviews, let’s dive into tvOS 17.

[table_of_contents]

The TV App

Originally introduced as the ultimate aggregator of TV shows and movies from the world of streaming and the iTunes Store, the TV app was always an ambitious endeavor – even for a company as deep-rooted in the arts as Apple. 

The app’s success has always been reliant on factors outside of Apple’s control. Chief among those factors has been the reluctance of streaming partners to integrate with the TV app, which would benefit discoverability and overall user experience. However, streaming providers have been unwilling to forego the valuable data they can collect by steering users to their own apps. 

But, what was once a simple means of media aggregation quickly became the home to the Apple TV+ streaming service, third-party content channels, Apple Music TV, movie & TV trailers, live news and sports², recommendations, TV app collections, engaging editorial, and brilliant ideas like ‘Shared with You’ and ‘For All of You,’ which have been largely lost amongst the noise and then never fully realized. Sadly, while I still love the TV app for everything it successfully achieved – and for everything it still does well – in the years since its introduction, it’s become too busy, bogged down, and bloated. In 2019, the TV app rolled out to third-party platforms like smart TVs and game consoles in the lead-up to the launch of Apple TV+, and since then, the app has felt less like an Apple product and more like the product of some “different group.”

Watch Now’s Up Next queue before the change to Featured previews.

Last year’s abominable effort to prioritize the top of Watch Now as a space for partners to advertise their shows and movies solidified that feeling. When that fundamental piece of the Apple TV user experience was demoted to second-class status, it removed a sense of connection to the content housed within Up Next.

That change, which was the subject of numerous critical opinion pieces, was also seen as a betrayal of the company’s standards and remains unresolved to this day. All of that said, hope still lives on that one day, users of Apple TV hardware will be given the choice to revert to the old way within the TV app’s settings to return to the Up Next space many once loved.

Through the Eyes of a Digital Movie Collector

Library Loading.

A concerning piece of the TV app story and its insistence in trying to do it all is that its performance has taken a hit that has impacted the TV app’s most loyal customers especially hard. I demonstrated that fact last year, comparing the loading times of my personal purchased library of over 3,500 titles across movies and TV shows on the latest Apple TV 4K hardware to Apple’s TV app running on devices from Amazon, Google, Roku, Xbox, PlayStation, and some smart TVs. All were able to load up in under a third of the time. In fairness to Apple’s engineers, a fix followed at the beginning of this year that solved the problem for the majority of customers, but complaints continue across movie forums and social media from digital movie collectors with collections that are two or three times the size of mine even though they are also running the latest version of tvOS on the latest Apple TV 4K hardware.

The TV app’s issues for digital movie collectors carries over to iOS.

Equally concerning is that the same issues also occur with large purchased libraries on iOS, with some collectors either never seeing libraries load or otherwise heading into a state of extended panic when the app tells them that there are “No TV Shows or Movies” to show and that their extensive libraries are worryingly “empty.”

Paths to Upgrade, Or Lack Thereof

The most likely reason for the larger TV app library counts in recent years is Movies Anywhere (MA), a video aggregation service founded by The Walt Disney Company in 2014 and launched a few years later. Based on KeyChest, digital movie purchases made in the US from 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros are able to sync across storefronts from Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Vudu, as well as cable services from DirectTV, Xfinity, and Verizon Fios. 

Apple’s groundbreaking and generous free 4K upgrade path for movie purchases made within its store has led to another issue. The TV app is one of the only storefront partners not to offer a paid upgrade path for HD purchases made outside of its own marketplace, resulting in digital movie collectors like me having no other option than spending their dollars elsewhere.

Legacy titles now under different distributer no longer work with Siri or search.

For purchasers of TV shows and movies, many of the biggest issues have existed since the app’s 2016 debut, including the inability to access legacy TV and movie purchases through Siri or through the TV app’s search function. 

For example, let’s say you previously purchased a movie, but then its distribution rights changed hands, or maybe your movie purchase has since been withdrawn from sale as part of a limited exclusive streaming agreement. If you ask Siri for the movie or use the TV app’s search function, one of two things will likely happen. You’ll either be prompted to repurchase the movie from the new distributor or sign up for the streaming service that now has the rights to the movie.

Prompts to repurchase seasons of shows can also occur if purchased as part of of an incomplete boxset later replaced in the store.

The same can also be said for TV show boxsets. If you purchase a multi-season boxset for an ongoing show, and it’s later replaced to include subsequent seasons, you won’t be able to search for the version you purchased. You can still find the box set you bought in your library unless, of course, it’s too large to load. What’s particularly frustrating is that this longtime TV app issue is that it has been solved by competitors.³

The TV App in tvOS 17

With the release of tvOS, Apple has added three small details to the TV app. There are new animated pagination dots for Watch Now’s controversial featured ads. Also, there’s an option to replace episode trailers with show artwork to avoid spoilers. 

There’s a new card style reimagining of Up Next’s tile interactions, which includes an extra option for Episode information, too. This new card style, if it could be expanded to other contexts in the app, would allow for more interactions. Some that immediately come to mind are options to manually re-order tiles, hide future releases ahead of streaming debuts, and jump to a particular service’s own siloed queue, otherwise hard to find within the TV app.

The newly redesigned tile interactions in Up Next have room to offer further functionality.

The biggest disappointment with this year’s TV app offerings is how little has been done to add user customization or extend the app’s functionality. The constraints on less capable hardware may explain the lack of progress to a degree, but it’s disappointing that the app isn’t even advancing on its own hardware.

I’d like to see an Up Next queue that adapts to multiple logged-in profiles. That sort of system would better represent the unique differences between our solitary viewing experiences on personal devices and the experience of watching on a TV at home with others. 

In preparation for an evening of entertainment, I’d also like to see a similar experience to that offered by Kaleidoscape. I’d love to organize an evening of entertainment ahead of time on iOS, with prompts to download the best quality picture and audio available in advance. Currently, irrespective of platform, the streaming experience can vary in quality due to compression often experienced during high demand at peak times for your ISP. In offering the option to download instead of stream, Apple would be able to guarantee the very highest quality and could even further its environmental initiatives by ensuring downloads occurred at times of day when energy production is at its cleanest.

TV app downloads on iOS make a lot of sense, but Apple TV could also benefit.

Video Player

Apple’s own video player delivers a delightful user experience. Though it took a little bit of getting used to when it was first introduced a few years ago, it has become an invaluable asset to tvOS. Since its debut, the video playback experience across the company’s suite of apps has added flair and familiarity to a user interface that can be customized to its given scenario.

While playback and scrubbing controls remain consistent across tvOS, the rest of Apple’s video player is highly customizable. Workout controls in Fitness, favoriting a video in Apple Music, and the native Up Next queue in the TV app are all solid examples of what can be achieved when the tools available are used well. Unfortunately, most streaming apps have moved away from the concept of user interface familiarity and gone down a different route. 

There still are notable holdouts that continue to use filtered versions of the native Up Next queue to recommend content from their apps, with Showtime and Hulu being the biggest names. Furthermore, while the playback function of the video player is still used by the majority of Apple’s streaming partners inside their own apps, the interface varies from service to service, and that can prove frustrating to users.

The video player in Apple Music and Apple Fitness+ on tvOS.

I’m unsure what the resistance is from popular streaming apps to use the tools offered by Apple. After all, by going down their own paths and dismissing tools already in place, media companies are affecting customers using all manner of screens and limiting access to system features. Features such as Siri Remote scrubbing, native options for audio tracks and subtitles, Picture in Picture, Enhance Dialogue and Reduce Loud Sounds, as well as other features. Plus, in giving up these familiar functionalities, streamers are giving up the potential to tap into a customer base all but forgotten in the streaming revolution: people over 65. 

My grandparents are a typical example of how the thought of learning multiple user interfaces to be entertained is still something very few in their age bracket will entertain. Even when I’m away, they will happily watch a show on Apple TV+ due to the familiarity of the first-party video player interface, but when presented with anything else – and a lack of easy-to-find audio and caption options – they’d rather switch back to cable. 

From an OS perspective, the lack of live TV integrations within the video player (beyond sports) also represents a key missing element to the overall TV experience preferred by many.

Some Video Player Suggestions

With just one major notable addition for video this year in the form of support for Dolby Vision’s latest 8.1 expanded HDR profile, I asked myself what is missing from Apple’s first-party video player today. 

One item that immediately sprang to mind (and may even help Apple’s own content aspirations) would be the ability to choose different cuts of films directly from within the video player and, more importantly, to view different presentation formats.

Disney+ IMAX Enhanced debuted earlier this year on Apple TV.

Disney+ started offering the IMAX Enhanced format earlier this year, including a version of DTS surround sound. With theatrical IMAX releases planned for highly-anticipated Apple’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ and ’Napoleon’ over the coming months and with the imminent arrival of Apple Vision Pro, such an addition makes perfect sense. 

Apple offers American Sign Language versions of their keynotes, but what about the TV app?

Film aficionados of a certain age who remember the introduction of DVD will also remember a time of picture-in-picture presentations that let viewers see the making of particular movie scenes. Apple’s own Picture in Picture feature has been criminally underused since its debut, and a similar feature in the age of streaming is long overdue. Other picture-in-picture features currently missing that would improve viewing experiences and open up the video player to further adoption are picture-in-picture ASL for TV content and Apple Music concerts.

On Mac, Live Captions allow users to easily follow the audio in any app, such as FaceTime or Podcasts, and in live conversations around you. Should the feature ever arrive on tvOS, it could potentially change how the hard of hearing consume live broadcasts and video on demand not formatted for closed captioning. If, like me, you’ve been waiting for action from the BBC to integrate subtitles on its publicly funded iPlayer app for Apple TV (like it does on iOS) after a seven-year-old excuse, this may be our final hope.

Lastly, as much fun as I’m currently having with Multi-View, it never made much sense to me why Apple locked the feature to sports that only it distributes. In fact, it never made much sense as to why multi-view was ever locked down to sports. I want to live in a world where Apple TV enables me to watch a live rocket launch, a blink-182 concert, Friday Night Baseball, and the news all at the same time.

Control Center

The newly redesigned Control Center is packed but deceptively intuitive.

When I saw the new Control Center for the first time, I questioned if it looked too complicated…? Was it too big of a departure from what had come before? Would its new adaptive approach to connected devices and contextual awareness soften the accessibility appeal compared to what came before? 

Most importantly, would mom like it?

After a few days of use, she was gliding across the new top navigation bar to switch users and take a quick peek at the cameras dotted around the house. If such a dramatic change can feel like second nature in such a short amount of time, I think we have to declare the change a triumph.

Admittedly, as fun and energetic as the interactions do feel, I’d have maybe liked to see the default Control Center tab look a little less intimidating. However, what that default tab does do is tempt some exploration out of Apple TV users who hadn’t dared use Control Center before in fear of messing something up.

Let’s take a look at what’s new and notable in Control Center.

Do Not Disturb

Do Not Disturb’s inclusion this year initially had me very excited. Native Focus modes and the ability to run shortcuts from tvOS have been long-standing wish list items of mine. Alas, not this year. Do Not Disturb on Apple TV is a siloed experience away from your personal Apple devices that refers to the ability for users to momentarily stop system notifications from appearing on the big screen. 

That means no sports score spoilers and, more importantly, no more annoying notifications from passing AirPods just begging to be connected.

Sleep Timer

If you’ve ever fallen asleep to your favorite show only to check your Up Next queue the following morning to find out you fell asleep during the alien invasion, you’d watched the previous five long patient hours for, well, this feature is for you. Choose from four durations ranging from 15 minutes to a maximum of 2 hours (down from a previous 10), and you can watch the timer countdown or simply cancel it within Control Center before it runs out.

Accessibility

The thoughtful inclusion of a customizable button for accessibility at the  bottom of Control Center is the type of detail that continues to set Apple apart from its peers. The options you can choose from are:

• VoiceOver
• Zoom
• Hover Text
• Closed Captions
• Audio Descriptions
• Switch Control
• Color Filters
• Light Sensitivity
• Reduce White Point
• Dim Flashing Lights

Unfortunately, as with the majority of settings on tvOS, you can only set one of these Accessibility shortcuts system-wide and not per-user, so if more than one user has a particular accessibility need, for now, they’ll still have to set additional features manually.

Restrictions

Another feature that was once buried deep in Settings can now be accessed from within Control Center, with parents now able to lift restrictions with a nearby device. Also commonly referred to as Parental Controls, restrictions are still a far cry from Apple’s Screen Time and lack the granular control for child iCloud accounts that parents have become accustomed to on iOS since 2018.

Instead, restrictions offer limited protections for content streamed from third-party apps, meaning parents must restrict apps outright by age rating and, in doing so, prevent access to apps that do offer child-friendly profiles. There’s also no way to track how much time has been spent watching Apple TV and by whom, which may end up impacting Screen Time as much as its limiting restrictions.

FaceTime and Continuity Camera

When Continuity Camera’s name was repurposed last year – introduced as a new feature in macOS Ventura allowing the rear-facing camera of an iPhone to be used as a webcam – I reacted in a predictable fashion on social media:

Little did we know that Apple was already working on it. This is a feature with the potential to transform not only Apple TV as a platform but also our relationship with television screens and the spaces in which they reside.

FaceTime is now universal across the company’s suite of devices and beyond.

Of course, Apple TV has no built-in camera, so FaceTime on Apple TV begins with an intuitive pairing process fit for the big screen that borrows heavily from the experience of connecting an iPhone for a Fitness workout. In this case, the FaceTime app prompts you to choose from a list of nearby devices to act as your camera. After accepting a prompt on your iPhone (or iPad), following a three-second countdown, your iPhone is paired and acts as the webcam to your Apple TV.

Initiating a call is easy and familiar for anyone who’s used FaceTime on any of Apple’s other platforms, thanks to a list view of previous calls and a + button that acts as a shortcut to your complete contact list. Being that the TV is normally set in a communal environment, it should be noted that critical contact data isn’t on display. For those friends and family who don’t use Apple’s products, there’s currently no clear option for sending FaceTime call invitations.

The confetti reaction is still my favorite, whether in iMessage or now FaceTime.

Other controls and options are in the shape of rounded buttons that toggle Center Stage and Portrait mode, along with options for the same 3D reactions,⁴also introduced in iOS 17 this year.

Unfortunately, Portrait mode may not be suited to the majority of average-sized living rooms since it relies on the distance between your seating and the foreground to work effectively. Instead, a missing feature at the time of writing with more universal appeal is Studio Light, which brightens the lighting on a subject’s face and dims the background, which is better suited for the dimly lit ambiance of movies and late-night entertainment.

Video controls inside the FaceTime user interface on tvOS.

As for audio settings, there aren’t any, at least not within the FaceTime app itself. Instead, to find options for Wide Spectrum, Standard, and Voice Isolation, you’ll need to head over to Control Center’s own Continuity Camera settings, but only once a call has been initiated. 

Because FaceTime doesn’t yet make an appearance in Apps Settings in tvOS, there currently isn’t a way to set a default audio effect for previously paired devices ahead of time. If that option were to one day appear, I’d imagine the vast majority of users would choose Voice Isolation, which I’ll delve into momentarily.

It should be noted that you can only initiate FaceTime calls on Apple TV. Nor can you accept calls without accepting them from your connected device first, which may prove frustrating when dealing with dropped calls. Otherwise, FaceTime on Apple TV is everything you’d expect it to be, and while I don’t have enough friends to test its participant limit, one would imagine it should be the same as iOS.

When jumping out of the FaceTime app and into other parts of tvOS, video from other participants will follow in the form of Picture in Picture, which also comes with new layout options. These include Split View (which pushes the conversation to the right side, moving participants into a vertical row with the rest of the OS displayed slightly scaled down) and Full Screen.

SharePlay

John hadn’t heard of Napoleon before we began, but I think we got him hooked

As I noted at the very top, the main reason for my excitement for FaceTime and Continuity Camera is that SharePlay can now fulfill its true potential thanks to some fundamental changes in tvOS 17. Originally touted as a lockdown feature that came too late, I’ve always argued that if SharePlay’s biggest limitations were removed, we would all end up using the feature regularly.

In this latest iteration of SharePlay, Apple TV is the arbitrator of content playback, whereas before, content rights and connections were all channeled through iOS. This time around, iPhone is solely used to initiate the call and take care of audio and video; Apple TV takes care of the content, removing restrictions on what profile you decide to switch to mid-call. This, paired with native VPN support, allows users to  SharePlay media across borders for the first time.

Cross-compatible games can be played together, even when not everyone’s on the big screen.

As good as that may sound, there is a catch. Because of regional restrictions and different rating boards across the world of entertainment, as well as the issues that can arise between different display standards, both SharePlay participants must play content from the same source and from the same region. As you can imagine, this time, not having to be logged into the same Apple ID as the one tied to your iPhone presents the possibility for region restriction workarounds with those you trust, but the less attention that is given to those, the better.

Third-party apps are also supported but watch out for region restrictions when SharePlaying with friends abroad.

Tapping on the SharePlay button offers a scrollable row of apps installed on both participants’ devices enabled for the feature, including some of the biggest names in streaming, Apple Arcade, Fitness workouts, and more. Apple Music, which was part of the initial SharePlay launch, isn’t yet available. However, with some features coming later this year on other platforms, it shouldn’t be long before we can listen to music together on Apple TV.

But what about audio feedback?

Voice Isolation may have been impressive on iOS, but its Apple TV integration is just the latest example of Apple showing off its algorithmic might. When mounting your iPhone directly above your television’s speakers, you’d imagine any attempt to use the iPhone’s onboard microphones might cause unwanted feedback. However, in my testing, that wasn’t the case at all. 

Voice Isolation through Continuity Camera is magic. Audio options can be found in Control Center.

Using my Apple Watch’s Noise monitoring app while testing demo material, it wasn’t until readings rose above 85db that the person on the other end of the call had any idea that I was playing something back. Apple has also done a great job balancing the explosions and dialogue of what you’re watching with a FaceTime conversation without negatively impacting either source. 

Continuity Camera Elsewhere on Apple TV

Apple Music Sing! and Continuity Camera in action with the Aura effect.

Continuity Camera’s only other appearance across the OS comes courtesy of Apple Music’s Sing mode this year, with Apple TV 4K users now able to sing along to the lyrics while also appearing onscreen during a session, accompanied by a host of visual effects. They include Hazy, Stellar, Neon, Sparkle, and Aura, which will make you nostalgic for those early iPod commercials. The only items missing to make the experience complete are microphone inputs and a record function. 

I’d imagine the debut of FaceTime in itself will spark the imaginations of developers going forward. If those developers do just a little bit of digging, they’ll realize that ReplayKit and the ability to stream have been a possibility for a long time. How long before creators launch reaction channels or live broadcasting via their Apple TVs? I’d hazard to guess it is not long at all. I’d also like to see Apple bring the iPad and Mac’s Photo Booth app to Apple TV.

Fitness

Each time that I check in with the Fitness app on Apple TV, I’m surprised at just how meaningful each update ends up being, and this year’s updates continue that trend. With the introduction of Custom Plans and Stacks, Apple’s Fitness offerings have been taken up a gear, along with my own personal trends and goals.

Custom Plans is essentially a way to build a schedule of routines with the kind of granular customization that will suit different needs and levels of fitness and experience. You create your plan on iPhone, picking a weekly schedule based on days, total time per day, and the length of the plan (from two weeks to eight weeks), along with the activity types you want to be included, and once on the review page you can also pick your trainer and music preferences. 

Once set up on iPhone, custom plans are ready to access in Fitness on Apple TV.

Then, on Apple TV, you’re presented with a nice big reminder on the Fitness app’s home screen for what’s coming next. I’ve been on a plan of short 10-minute HIIT workouts accompanied by 20-minute Yoga and Meditation workouts and have already seen a huge increase in accountability that until now hadn’t come naturally to me when it comes to health and fitness. Furthermore, with an automation in the morning that turns the Apple TV on and opens the Fitness app ready for pairing, it’s been harder to put a workout off until later. 

Another new addition called Audio Focus will arrive later this year. Found in audio options in the Fitness app’s video interface, Audio Focus lets you prioritize the volume of the music or the trainers’ voices, which is an invaluable tool when some of the motivational speeches become a little too much.

Fitness Stacks allow you to mix and match workout styles any way you wish.

Located in the top right of the Fitness app’s home screen, Stacks lets users with far more motivation than myself add multiple workouts to a playlist. Users create Stacks by browsing available workouts, pressing and holding any workout or meditation, and selecting ‘Add to Stack’ from the card menu that appears.

Lastly, Trainer Tips are short-form videos that have helped me in my pursuit of my personal health and fitness goals. Whether I’ve needed a pep talk on intention and motivation with Jessica Skye or a friendly reminder about scheduling with Nez Dally, Trainer Tips are a valuable addition. However, more specialized tips for specific workouts would probably be more beneficial long-term when needing some pre-workout instruction.

Home, Shortcuts, and Automation

Not a lot has changed with regard to Home this year in tvOS. Control Center now hosts a tab dedicated to Apple Home that leads with a carousel of live camera previews, including a new split-view that’s perfect for quick check-ins. As with last year’s release, the Home tab only gives access to favorited scenes, but when viewing a camera in full screen mode, you’re also granted access to any accessories connected to the scene.

A small quirk related to viewing cameras in full screen during video playback is that content will pause until returned to the forefront; however, watching a video in Apple Music allows the video to continue playing back, and that’s the experience I’d prefer. Door bell notifications are near instant in tvOS 17, but there’s still a disconnect in not being able to speak to visitors, even when connected to AirPods or HomePod.

As for automation and home control, the hardware that was once the center of the company’s home strategy still has very little in the way of automation or control options for the Home app. Automation recommendations begin and end at pausing media when the last person leaves the house, and there’s still no way to control power or update an Apple TV within Home, like is possible with HomePod.

In terms of Shortcuts, this year also sees no further additions to Remote actions in spite of the new ‘Enhance Dialogue’ option, and even though TV shows and movies do occasionally appear as Siri suggestions, there’s still no consistent way of adding specific titles to Shortcuts automations. What I hope to see in the future of Shortcuts integration is the ability for an action made within tvOS – such as switching profiles or opening a particular app – to be the trigger for other automations within the home.

Siri

Siri’s enhanced knowledge base in action. “When was the photograph invented?”

On the “What’s New” splash screen that accompanies this year’s tvOS release is the inclusion of Siri Enhancements, bringing Siri closer to parity with other platforms. While you still cannot use Shortcuts on Apple TV, you can now ask a number of queries and get results from a wide variety of sources. If the result is related to a public figure featured in the TV app, selecting it will take you to a catalog of content, including their filmography, TV show, and guest appearances.

Here are just a few examples:

Siri testing for notable people. Three out of four isn’t bad.

Along with that enhancement to Siri’s knowledge base, users can automatically switch profiles thanks to Learn My Voice. Siri also continues to support classic queries like:

• “What did he/she/they say?” to rewind 30 seconds and briefly turn on subtitles;
• “What’s the current (team) score?” to check live sports scores;
• “Turn On/Off (connected device)” to control your home;
• “Who stars in this?” to check out the cast in a movie or TV show currently playing.

Deeper knowledge-based questions for content currently playing are still very hit-and-miss, and Siri’s knowledge base still doesn’t come close enough to Prime Video’s X-Ray implementation. For example, frequently, querying the director, writers, photographer, editor, or stars of a particular episode returns no answer. For shows that have revolving ensemble casts each season or shows that change directors and writers, Siri shows results for the most recent season up top and not necessarily the season you’re currently watching, which can verge on spoiler territory or misinformation.

Siri’s now playing trivia base has some way to go, but the new layout for displaying results is welcomed.

Querying sports scores is inconsistent too. For example, while the TV app will display the scoreline for a cup game in progress unless you’re explicit about the competition you want, the score for Siri will revert to the previous league game’s final score. This was also recently the case for MLS teams during the inaugural Leagues Cup competition, an exclusive to Apple TV’s own MLS Season Pass.

As explained earlier in this review, Siri’s content results largely come from knowledge pulled from the TV app, which in turn gets its knowledge base from what’s available for purchase or across streaming at that given moment. That approach made sense in the early days, but with movie soundtracks available on Apple Music and the recent inclusion of Apple Fitness workouts relating to Apple’s other original properties – helping promote Ted Lasso’s final season and Lionel Messi’s MLS debut – I believe the time has come to combine related Siri results from other media sources.

HomePod

Enhance Dialogue with HomePod 2 in action.

When the original HomePod launched in 2018, Apple’s focus was reinventing music at home, and while Apple achieved that goal with aplomb, in the years that followed, the company’s focus shifted to Apple TV integration to create the perfect alternative to a traditional home theatre system. Virtualized Dolby Atmos, 5.1 and 7.1 via “home cinema with Apple TV 4K” would be followed a year later by a new ability that essentially turned Apple TV 4K into an audio receiver that could route any TV source to HomePod through HDMI 1.4’s Audio Return Channel.

This year, thanks to the new HomePod, users can select a new option within the video player’s Audio Enhancements menu called ‘Enhance Dialogue,’ which effectively makes speech more prominent in audio mixes. Exclusive to Apple TV 4K with home theatre audio mode and HomePod (2nd Generation), the new audio feature can be enhanced further still by selecting both ‘Enhanced Dialogue’ and ‘Reduce Loud Sounds’ together for the ultimate experience – a must for fans of mumblecore.

Siri and Connected HomePods

Siri and HomePod still can’t initiate these lovely knowledge based onscreen interactions across tvOS.

Last year’s successful launch of “Hey Siri” with AirPods left me with heightened expectations that this year would be the year when HomePods and Apple TV truly became one. Unfortunately, using Siri with HomePod remains a disappointing experience, with HomePod continuing to process requests rather than relaying them to Apple TV.  

HomePod Siri hands-free was introduced two years ago as a means to easily playback requests on Apple TV by calling up a particular episode or using a generalized request and selecting an option from a returning list.

Examples from Disney+ and BBC iPlayer of the profile page that blocks playback of content using HomePod Siri hands-free.

The WWDC 2021 demo predictably used Apple’s “For All Mankind,” and examples from Apple TV+ still work flawlessly. Frustratingly, Siri’s hands-free control is broken when requesting content playback from nearly all third-party streaming apps due to the inability to move past the profile selection screen, which almost every app now employs. 

Considering Apple has made two separate attempts to get third parties to link their app’s profile systems with Apple’s own in both 2020 and 2022, now feels like a good time to add this additional item to the video partner program’s list of eligibility and requirements.

Enhancements to Connected AirPods

AirPods Noise Cancellation options now include Adaptive Audio in tvOS 17.

Beyond the update that dropped the “Hey” from “Hey Siri” and speedier switching between devices, a new Adaptive Audio mode joins Noise Cancellation and Transparency audio modes. 

All modes offer toggle options for Conversation Awareness too. The new feature, which is exclusive to second-generation AirPods Pro, automatically lowers audio and turns off noise cancellation when your AirPods sense you are speaking. While my experience out and about has been mixed, when paired with Apple TV, it’s been a fantastic addition to late-night movie watching in Shared Audio mode. Conversation Awareness adds the ability to comfortably talk to one another without having to pause or lip-read and politely nod.

Shared Spatial Audio debuts on tvOS with unified Dolby Atmos controls.

You’d be excused for thinking that there was nothing more to add this year to AirPods’ Apple TV connectivity, but you’d be wrong. This year, as part of an exciting stealth update to AirPods, Shared Audio is going Spatial. After a handful of appearances in early beta builds last year, Shared Spatial Audio makes its debut in tvOS 17. Now, when sharing audio, compatible AirPods can take advantage of 5.1, 7.1, or virtualized Dolby Atmos soundtracks as part of a 16-channel process at 768 Kbps. The updated feature is restricted to Fixed Spatial Audio in this scenario; even better still, while using Audio Sharing, Spatial Audio controls are unified. 

Native VPN Support

By now, everyone has probably heard a podcast ad-read for a VPN. It starts by telling you about the benefits of protecting your online activity when using public WiFi (something everyone should do), but the real selling point that comes next is the ability to watch geo-restricted content.

Native VPN support can also be controlled directly from within the new Control Center.

I’ve used VPNs with Apple TV for that reason for some time. Just this last year, I bought a secondary VPN-enabled router and connected it to HomeBridge (and, therefore, Siri) just to be able to automate a VPN on Apple TV.

Others have always sworn by the method of a SmartDNS proxy, but the benefits of a VPN mean that you can connect to servers at precise locations to get around certain sports broadcast blackouts or other local broadcasts. The issue until now was that by using a VPN the way I had to, I’d also lose access to my HomeKit cameras and the ability to control lights and set scenes.

Native VPN support through tvOS 17 offers the benefits of a VPN without any of the pitfalls, all while offering the same simplicity of setup as users have come to expect on iOS. Sign up or sign into one of many apps from the App Store, choose a server, hit connect, and you’re set. Further customization can be found in Settings, but for everyone else, once set, you can turn on/off VPN connections within a new VPN tab that appears in Control Center.

Everything Else

Here’s a list of other noteworthy changes to tvOS 17.

Locate Siri Remote

In the pursuit of finding my Siri Remote quickly, the simplest way was the most effective. Apple’s Siri Remote Loop solved most of my issues for years, but when the newly designed Siri Remote arrived, its port proved incompatible.

My move to AirTag with Nomad’s Horween Leather Cover has proved fruitful for ultra-precise Find My-based Siri Remote sofa hunting shenanigans, but no one should really go through the same expense as I did. For everyone else slightly saner than I am, there’s a new feature called Locate Siri Remote, which can be found via the Remote app in Control Center for iOS. 

Find Siri Remote in action through Remote in Control Center for iOS.

Users can now initiate the finding of their second- and third-generation Siri Remotes by tapping on the Find prompt in the Remote app’s TV selection screen. Simply follow the blue onscreen circle, which shifts in size in order to guide your next movement toward the remote. When the Siri Remote has been located, a white dot appears and gets larger as you get closer, with text letting you know if you’re near, far, or “here” (next to the remote). The only thing still missing is a way to automate applause when you finally find it down the deepest crevice of your sofa.

Screen Savers

Examples of the new Ariel additions this year.

While the film and TV aficionado in me is begging for some fun Apple Originals-themed aerial screen savers next time around, this year sees two new locations: Arizona’s Monument Valley and the coastal redwoods of California.

Memories in action. My trip across North America last year.

Memories also join the ever-expanding list of screen saver types this year, delivering personalized collections of your photos and videos to the big screen through a satisfying variety of animations, from mosaics to the more traditional slow pans and zooms. While the default option is to show all, users can also select by favorites, recent activity, or specific album. 

Like many others, I need to sort out my sizable photo library. That urgency is increased thanks to the ease of access to a selection of those same memories via a new top-shelf highlight for Apple TV. During playback, users can also manually glide through the selection of photos and video clips compiled and get information for the music track included.

802.1X Networking Support

Apple TV devices now support connection to 802.1X networks using EAP-TLS 1.3. In another win for privacy advocates, the new standard further improves privacy and security by always providing forward secrecy and never disclosing the peer identity while also reducing latency.

Restore Apple TV 4K with iPhone

Starting with tvOS 17 and iOS 17, it is now possible to restore any Apple TV HD or Apple TV 4K model experiencing problems with a nearby iPhone following a brand new onscreen prompt. Thankfully, while I haven’t yet run into problems with later hardware models, it’s good to know that there’s now another option, besides sending Apple TV 4K hardware to Apple directly.

Conclusion

“I believe in hope. I believe in ‘believe.’” - Ted Lasso

Apple TV continues to be the best streaming device out there, continually adopting new industry audio and video standards and delivering an experience both familiar and intuitive enough for anyone to pick up and enjoy.

In a year where most attention was concentrated on the next evolution in home entertainment and spatial computing, and as excited as I am to try Apple Vision Pro again, I can’t help but consider how that future may not be a replacement for, but instead, an addition to the TV. 

That’s not how I thought I’d feel heading into this summer. However, what started as a surprise with the announcement of FaceTime and Continuity Camera has since morphed into palpable belief in a brighter future for Apple TV and tvOS. Yes, Apple TV will continue to be a great destination for entertainment, but this year’s tvOS release offers a first glimpse of the platform harnessing the company’s other OSes and services too. 

In the short time since tvOS 17’s public release, I’ve already seen Apple TVs used in new ways for production. Once, it was just an AirPlay destination for easier top-down shots and roaming cameras. However, now, an Apple TV connected to a capture device also offers an easy way to create presentations or record conversations thanks to Continuity Camera. When developers unlock the tools that have slowly trickled out year after year, tvOS could be looked upon in a different light from how it’s regarded today.

A full production suite for small creators or extensions to current uses in meeting rooms and educational institutions could be the company’s answer to cost-effective computing in developing countries or perhaps a new way to log into its suite of productivity apps through iCloud. Maybe the TV was dropped from the top of Apple TV’s latest hardware iteration for a reason? 

We’ll find out the answer to that question soon enough. Until then, it’s time to make a cup of tea and put on a movie.

A special thanks to Jonathan Reed, Devon Dundee, and James Lees for sharing in my passion for Apple TV through their hard work over the years at screentimes.net and on our podcast Magic Rays of Light.

Finally, a huge thanks to Federico and John for the privileged opportunity to follow the great work of Ryan Christoffel, whose earlier Apple TV coverage on the site continues to be a source of personal inspiration.

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Taking a great photo requires a lot of variables to fall into place. It’s amazing when this happens by happenstance, but what if you could stack the odds in your favor? That’s the question Photo Scout by Cascable answers.

Photo Scout, available for the iPhone and iPad, combines location data with weather conditions, date and time information, sunlight, and night sky variables to recommend when you should grab your camera or drone and head out for a photo shoot. The app can account for many variables, but what’s best about Photo Scout is that it makes managing them simple.

Something tells me Photo Scout won’t be able to help find Crisp Winter Days in North Carolina.

To help get you started, Photo Scout offers templates for common scenes like:

• Dramatic Sunsets
• Crisp Winter Days
• Calm, Clear Skies
• Rainy Streets at Night
• and more

In all, there are seven preset scenes, which are accessible from the ‘+’ button in the app’s top right corner. When you pick one, you’ll be prompted to use your current location or search for another, which is perfect for planning a trip in advance. That’s all there is to setting up a template-based scene unless you want to edit it further. When you return to the app’s main view, you’ll see that your scene has been added as a card that includes its name, when it will occur next, and location.

Setting up a scene from scratch.

Scenes can be built from scratch by choosing ‘New Empty Scene,’ too. Like using a template, you’ll be prompted to pick a location. However, you’ll also be able to set each of the app’s tracking variables individually. There are multiple options for day, date, and time options, plus weather, sunlight, and night sky conditions.

Using AR to plan shots based on the position of the sun or moon.

Photo Scout also includes augmented reality modes for the sun and moon positions that use the iPhone’s camera viewfinder to let you point at a spot in the sky, tap it, and see when the sun or moon will be in that position next. That position becomes the basis for its own scene so you know when to return to that spot to get the shot you want.

Photo Scout running on the iPad mini and synced via iCloud.

After your scenes have been created, Photo Scout will send you notifications in advance of whatever event you’re tracking, so you know when to head out with your camera. You can also track events from the app’s small and medium-sized widgets, of which there are three types. ‘Up Next for Scene’ will show you when one of your scenes will happen next, ‘Up Next Near Me’ will display your next scene opportunity based on where you are, and ‘Upcoming Near Me’ does the same but as a list of multiple upcoming scenes.

Instant Inspiration offers ideas for the next few days.

Photo Scout also includes a feature called Instant Inspiration that I love. It’s entirely automatic, offering suggestions based on the conditions over the next few days for a location you pick. Looking ahead to the weekend, it looks like Saturday will be a good day for drone photography with clear skies and low wind, and there will be a full moon that night. What’s great about Instant Inspiration is that it’s entirely frictionless.

Photo Scout’s alternative icons and notification sounds.

It’s worth noting that Photo Scout also features eight alternative icons and a long list of customizable notification sounds.

I’m slowly getting back into taking more pictures now that my life has settled down, and I’ve really enjoyed using Photo Scout as part of that. There’s still plenty of room to stumble upon an interesting shot as you move through your day, but with Photo Scout, you can increase the odds of capturing a great sunset and much more, which is fantastic.

Photo Scout is available on the App Store as a free download with a one-week free trial. After that, you must subscribe to either its Hobbyist subscription for $3.99/month or $24.99/year or its Professional subscription for $4.99/month or $39.99/year, which includes more features than the Hobbyist plan.

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Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Philips Hue app. It has improved over time, and I appreciate its fine-grained control over my lights and its Shortcuts support, but the app has always felt a little clunky. That’s why I was happy when I discovered Hue Widgets over a year ago now. It’s a simple widget creation tool that lets you activate your Hue lights and scenes from your iPhone’s Home Screen, which is a much easier and nicer experience than using the Hue app. Better yet, with iOS 17, the app’s widgets are interactive, so lights and scenes can be triggered without ever opening the app.

Many Hue lights support features you can’t control from Apple’s Home app. For instance, many Hue lights can create animated and multi-color gradient lighting scenes that aren’t supported by HomeKit. These extended features can be accessed in the official Hue app, but it doesn’t have widgets, which is a faster and easier way to control your lighting and where Hue Widgets comes in.

Controlling lights and scenes from Home Widgets.

The Hue Widgets app has two main tabs: a list of the rooms in your home, and an interface for creating widgets. The Home tab allows you to turn on an entire room or zone’s lights or control them individually, turning lights and scenes on and off and adjusting brightness levels, light temperatures, and colors. The official Hue app works similarly, but Hue Widgets’ interface is simpler and faster.

Building a widget.

However, I’ve spent most of my time in the Widgets tab. Here, you can set up small, medium, or large widgets to control your Hue lights. The small version of the widget controls one light or scene, while the medium and large sizes control four and eight, respectively. After you pick the widget size you want, it appears in the Widget tab’s main interface. Then, tapping on each widget’s tiles walks you through picking a room and light or scene to control. Hue Widgets also lets you assign a color for each tile in your widget. It’s a quick and simple process but requires you to set up your lights and scenes in the Hue app first because Hue Widgets acts as a controller for the Hue app, not a replacement. When you’re satisfied with the widgets you’ve designed, return to your iPhone’s Home Screen to add one of the widgets you built, choosing the size you created in the app.

One thing I wish I could change in Hue Widgets is how it names widgets. Each is named automatically along the lines of ‘Small Widget #1’ and ‘Small Widget #2.’ If you create a lot of widgets, this isn’t ideal because it makes it hard to remember which widget is which. I’d prefer to assign more memorable names myself. I’d also love to see Hue Widgets on the iPad, where it could offer an extra-large widget.

Hue Widgets pairs nicely with Home Widget, which I recently reviewed.

I was a fan of Hue Widgets before iOS 17, but having tried the interactive versions of its widgets, I can already tell I will be using them a lot more than before. Paired with the recent addition of Matter support for Hue hubs, which seems to have improved the responsiveness of my lighting, Hue Widgets has become a core part of my growing home automation setup.

Hue Widgets is available on the App Store for $1.99.

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In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Widgle is a collection of four simple puzzle games for the iPhone and iPad that integrate with your photos. As I mentioned in connection with Widgetsmith’s Tile game, interactive widgets’ system-imposed button and toggle limitation severely constrains the kinds of games that can be built as a widget, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be fun. Widgle’s four games, a tile sliding puzzle, a maze, a lights out-style game, and a matching game each come in small and large sizes.

Tile Slide (left) and Lights On (right).

The Tile Slide game uses a photo of your choosing, scrambles the tiles, and overlays numbers, which can optionally be turned off in the widget’s settings. There’s one free space, and by tapping tiles, you can try to put them back in the correct order, reassembling your image. There are four grid options, too, a couple of which are only available in the large version of the widget.

Lights On begins with one of your photos divided into a grid with some of the squares missing. Tapping on a square inverts the others around it, and with some careful poking, you can reassemble your entire photo so it includes no blanks. Like Tile Slide, there are four grid size options, with two exclusive to the large-sized widget.

Maze Master (left) and Match Up (right).

Maze Master overlays directional arrows around the edges of the widget, so you can guide your character through a maze backed by one of your photos. There are three difficulty levels to choose from and six different emoji characters available.

Finally, Match Up starts with a grid of squares with question marks in their centers. Tap squares to reveal the hidden emoji underneath. Find a matching pair of emoji, and the squares reveal part of one of your photos.

As I mentioned at the top. Widgle’s games are very simple classics, but I’ve still enjoyed idly playing with them when I need a break. The inclusion of photos, which can be picked in the main Widgle app, makes each game feel more personal.

Widgle is available on the App Store as a free download with an In-App Purchase of $1.99 to customize the puzzle with your photos.

Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

It’s time to take a brief break from widgets to bring you scrobbles. Scrobbling is Last.fm’s name for matching and logging the music to which you listen. The payoff of scrobbling is the in-depth statistics that Last.fm delivers monthly and annually to users. It’s also a great way to relive musical moments in your life and find music that you may not have in your library but that you may have heard while you’re out and about.

One of the best ways to scrobble on the iPhone and iPad is with AirScrobble, which has grown into a terrific all-around Last.fm utility. One of the app’s previous limitations, though, was that it only worked with music playing over a speaker. If you were using AirPods or other headphones, so the music couldn’t be matched via an iPhone or iPad’s microphone, you were out of luck. However, with the app’s latest release, you can now scrobble even while listening with headphones.

Scrobbling from Broadcasts.

That alone is pretty great, but AirScrobble now works with any app that produces audio, too. Say you’re using Steve Troughton-Smith’s excellent Internet radio app Broadcasts to listen to your favorite college radio station. Now, AirScrobble can match the songs as you listen. The same goes for Reels you watch on Instagram, YouTube videos, and a lot more.

AirScrobble also includes Live Activity support. If you’ve started automatically scrobbling as you listen, the Live Activity expands when a song is recognized, offering an interactive button for manually scrobbling the song immediately.

AirScrobble’s App Shortcuts, Manual Scrobble App Shortcut, and Live Activity on my Lock Screen.

The app has added support for App Shortcuts, too. If you’re out at a restaurant and hear a song you don’t know and want to capture it, do a quick Spotlight search for ‘AirScrobble’ and pick the Match App Shortcut. There’s also a Manual Scrobble App Shortcut, which lets you search for the name of a song using the search field. Plus, there’s a Love Track App Shortcut for marking a track as one of your favorites.

I love this update to AirScrobble. It works in so many more situations now that headphones are supported, as well as other audio sources. The Live Activity makes it easy to scrobble while doing something else on your iPhone or iPad, too. If you’re a music lover and use Last.fm, check be sure to check out AirScrobble.

AirScrobble is available on the App Store as a free download. Some of the app’s features require a subscription.

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You might have wondered what would become of widget-focused apps like Home Widget when Apple announced at WWDC that a Home widget was coming to iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma. I did too. But, even though the Home widget works well, it’s limited, leaving room for developers like Clément Marty to take their widgets to an entirely different level.

If you’re a home automation nerd, you’ll quickly run into the Home widget’s limitations. For instance, it’s great for toggling lights on and off, but it can’t dim your lights or change their color. Home Widget goes beyond the binary choice of on or off across a spectrum of features, making it indispensable for home automation fans.

Let’s see what it can do.

Setting up a panel with Home Widget.

Home Widget doesn’t allow itself to be constrained by the fact that widget developers are limited to using buttons and toggles for interactivity. Like the Home widget, you can use it to toggle lights on or off, but you can also dim them or change their color.

The way this works is clever. When you set up a widget in the Home Widget app, a process that is similar to creating widgets in Widgetsmith, you can pick a ‘Type’ for each widget tile. For lights, actions can include toggling them on and off, toggling them after a five-second delay, and toggling them after user confirmation. There are also a couple of different dimmer options.

Once your widget is set up to control dimming and color, when you tap the widget, a new view appears with what appears to be a slider and a grid of color buttons. You can’t swipe on the slider because widgets only support buttons. Instead, tap along it to set the level of brightness you want, and then pick a color by tapping it. It works really well, but it takes a while to get used to tapping the slider.

A sampling of widget sizes and types.

The confirmation ‘Type’ that I mentioned above is a nice addition to the latest version of the app if you have something like a HomeKit-enabled garage door. Instead of accidentally opening your garage with a stray tap, you’ll be asked to confirm your action first. Interactivity also means that Home Widget can now adjust your blinds and refresh your widgets manually, neither of which could be done with Apple’s Home widget. Another nice addition that isn’t interactive is the ability to show sensor data on a widget, like the temperature and humidity, both of which are far too buried in the Home app’s interface.

In addition to Home Screen widgets, Home Widget has updated its Lock Screen widgets to be interactive. On the iPad, Home Widget uses the new larger size available in the sidebar when your iPad is in landscape mode. The size and actions available are comparable to the small Home Screen widget. In my testing on the 12.9” iPad Pro, though, there’s a bug that causes the image in the Lock Screen widget to be off-center.

Home Widget’s StandBy mode.

Home Widget also works in iOS 17’s StandBy mode. Like other widgets I’ve covered, the StandBy version is similar to Home Widget’s small-sized Home Screen widget, which can include one or four items. If you find yourself wanting to control lights or other devices throughout the day, having your iPhone connected to MagSafe and in landscape mode can be a nice way to quickly get to your favorite devices.

Also worth mentioning is that Home Widget is much more performant, with devices responding more quickly than in the past.

I’ve only just begun scratching the surface of what can be done with Home Widget. I plan to use it to control a core set of devices from my iPhone and a more extensive set from my iPad Pro and Mac desktop. If you have a large collection of HomeKit devices or are frustrated by the limited ways the Home app widgets let you control them, I highly recommend checking out Home Widget.

Home Widget is available for the iPhone and iPad on the App Store as a free download. Certain of the app’s features require a subscription.

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In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

It’s interesting to compare Timery 1.6, Joe Hribar’s time tracking app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, with Widgetsmith. David Smith’s app uses interactivity across a wide range of different types of widgets, allowing for a highly personalized approach to your Home Screen. Timery is a little different. It’s just as customizable, if not more so, but in a deep, focused way that makes it hands-down the most customizable and useful way to track time from a widget.

If you had asked me how I used Timery in the spring, I would have said I primarily use the Mac app. That’s changed drastically over the summer. My answer now is that I’m primarily a Timery widget user.

What I love about the app’s widgets is that they allow you to create a set of widgets that work how you use the app and nothing more. One of Timery’s strengths has always been its rich set of features that make it valuable to a broad cross-section of users. However, that means there is more to Timery than most people need. But with the app’s widgets, it’s possible to pare the app down to just the components that are essential to you, which is the ultimate in customization.

That doesn’t mean you won’t use the main app ever again. Some people may, but I certainly haven’t. Instead, it’s been more of a focus shift that allows me to continue whatever I’m working on, switching timers as needed on the fly from whichever device I have handy at the moment without opening the app most of the time. Timery’s update is a stellar release, which also comes with a new watchOS app that fans of the app are going to love.

Timery, which uses the Toggl Track web service as its back end, offers seven different types of widgets:

• Dashboard
• Projects
• Current Time Entry
• Single Saved Timer
• Saved Timers
• Recent Timers
• Time Tracked
• Summary Report

The Project and Single Saved Timer widgets are both brand-new with this release.

Timery includes multiple widget sizes for each type.

Every widget type is customizable, comes in at least two sizes, and some, like the Dashboard, have over 30 different settings that can be tweaked. Don’t worry, I won’t cover every one of them. Instead, I’ll hit the widget highlights of what’s new in the latest update. For more on the basics of Timery, which is a MacStories favorite, be sure to check out our past coverage on MacStories and Club MacStories.

With interactivity, the app’s developer, Joe Hribar, has been able to add a laundry list of interesting options to many of the app’s widgets. That starts with the ability to start and stop timers right from the widget without the app opening. On the iPhone and iPad, that also starts a Live Activity, allowing you to monitor your timers from the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island, too.

Timery’s new widgets include pagination buttons.

One thing that I’ve always found difficult to do when setting up Timery widgets is deciding which timers to include of the many I’ve saved. It’s always required a careful balancing of timers versus available space onscreen, which can be especially tough on smaller screens like the iPhone.

With today’s update, Timery has added the option to include pagination buttons to some of its widgets. For example, in place of a saved timer, forward and back buttons appear that allow you to page through multiple groups of timers. There’s still something to be said for using a large widget that allows you to access more saved or recent timers with a single tap, but if you don’t have the space, pagination buttons are a fantastic solution.

Timery’s new start controls.

Timery has also added the option to include start controls to its widgets. In place of a saved or recent timer, the app includes a start button as well as customizable buttons that can start a timer a certain amount of time in the past or based on the time you stopped your most recent timer.

Timery’s graphs let you drill down into individual projects.

Timery’s graphs allow you to drill down into individual projects, too. Wherever you see a caret next to a project in a chart, tap it, and you’ll get more details on that entry. A small close button will appear in the top left corner of that section of the widget, allowing you to close the current view and return to where you began.

Also, be sure to check out Timery’s updated Lock Screen widgets that have added interactivity, allowing you to start or stop timers from the iPhone and iPad’s Lock Screen. On the iPad’s Lock Screen, Joe Hribar has taken advantage of the option to offer larger widgets than the iPhone, adding a wide variety of interactive widgets similar to the small-sized Home Screen ones.

A Timery StandBy widget on the right.

Tapping Timery’s Live Activity in StandBy expands it to show the current timer.

The app has more StandBy widgets than most, too, with seven options that are similar to the app’s small Home Screen widgets. Because the app supports Live Activities, you’ll see a small oval indicator at the top of any StandBy screen with your counter counting up, too. Tap it, and the name of the timer appears, along with an interactive stop button to end the timer.

Timery’s current timer, reports and time entries on watchOS 10.

Timery saved timers and the watchOS 10 Smart Stack widget.

Finally, Timery’s watchOS redesign looks fantastic. The main interface looks modern and includes corner controls on most screens, like the one that shows the current timer that’s running. The app works with the watchOS 10 Smart Stack, a handy place to pin Timery’s widget that makes it easy to stop timers that you may have forgotten about when you step away from your desk. The app’s complications have been updated, too.

The latest update of Timery is incredibly deep and worth setting aside some time to explore in depth. There’s a lot there, but after spending a little time experimenting, I’ve found the options that make the app work for me, affecting which Timery widgets I use as well as their size and setup. With a little upfront work, I wouldn’t be surprised if most readers tweak their Timery setups in some way, too.

Timery is available on the App Store as a free download. Some features require a subscription.

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In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

It’s clear from David Smith’s iOS 17 update to Widgetsmith that he intends for the app to hold its position among the most customizable widget creation tools available. That’s exactly what he’s done with a long list of new widgets, customization options, and features that push interactivity to the limit of the technologies Apple provides.

The new widgets focus on weather, calendar events, photos, and a game. The number of permutations available is vast because there’s so much to customize. The image at the beginning of this story is just a small sample of what is possible, but with adjustable colors, fonts, and other elements, the combinations that can be created are nearly endless. So, let’s dig into the highlights.

A couple of the new Widgetsmith weather widgets.

The new small weather widgets are a few of my favorites. One includes what is effectively a widget tab bar letting you switch between current, hourly, and daily data. Another lets you ‘scroll’ an hourly forecast using arrow buttons along the top and bottom edges of the widget. There’s a graph-style version of the same hourly weather widget that ‘scrolls’ horizontally, too. I put ‘scroll’ in quotes here for a reason. As I’ll discuss below, the interactivity of widgets is limited, which means there are constraints on what Widgetsmith can do that you won’t find in apps. Here, that means scrolling with buttons instead of swipe gestures. Still, both widgets pack far more information into a small form factor widget than was ever possible before, which is great, especially on smaller screens.

I’m also a fan of Widgetsmith’s new interactive calendar widget. It comes in medium, large, and extra-large sizes and shows your events for each of the next seven days. Tapping the date at the top of the widget switches to showing the events for that date in the space below. Tap the part of the widget where you see your events, and it opens Widgetsmith to its built-in calendar interface.

One of the more popular uses of Widgetsmith is to display photos as widgets. Here, Widgetsmith has added the ability to tap through photos using a Cover Flow-like interface. Another interactive version of the photos widget uses a tab bar-like interface similar to the one used in the app’s interactive weather widget, putting the focus on one photo that can be changed by tapping the photo thumbnails along the bottom edge of the widget. Plus, there is an interactive photo locket and carousel widget.

Widgetsmith’s unique dual-widget display.

The app does something else unique with photos, allowing a single photo to be combined with another widget. There are two types, but both are activated by tapping on the photo you pick. When tapped, the photo of the first variant slides up, revealing a ‘drawer’ containing the second widget. The other version flips over to show the second widget. It’s a very clever way to enjoy a favorite photo most of the time but see the weather, time, or other information with a single tap.

The interactive music collection widget.

Widgetsmith has always been an excellent way to quickly access favorite albums and playlists, but now there’s also an interactive version. Like one of the new photo widgets, the interactive music widget uses a Cover Flow-like interface that allows you to tap among several albums and playlists. Tapping on an album or playlist starts playback. Tapping a second time restarts playback instead of pausing it, which may be a limitation of the way the widget is built, but it was still unexpected.

The Widgetsmith Tile game.

The app adds an interactive tile game, too. It’s a little like a simplified version of Threes, where the object is to line up matching numbers and slide them together, which adds them together. This isn’t the first game we’ve seen implemented as an interactive widget, and I’m sure it won’t be the last by any stretch of the imagination. The limitations on widget interactions mean that all widget-based games will be simple, but they can still be a fun way to pass the time.

Speaking of interaction limitations, it’s worth noting how they impact interactions with Widgetsmith widgets and all other interactive widgets. Widgets can be interacted with using buttons and toggles only. For example, that means when you see a Cover Flow-style widget in Widgetsmith and try to swipe from one album or photo to another, it won’t work. It also means you can’t swipe down to close the app’s drawer-style widget either. Instead, you’ll invoke Spotlight Search. That’s a limitation of interactive widgets that can take some getting used to if an app pushes the boundaries of what’s possible the way Widgetsmith does. Instead of swiping, you have to remember to tap. It makes some widgets feel broken at first, but over time, it’s possible to get used to it.

A Widgetsmith weather widget on the iPad’s Lock Screen.

In addition to the Home Screen widgets that I’ve highlighted above, Widgetsmith’s new widgets are available as Lock Screen widgets in the new large Lock Screen size, too. Photo widgets aren’t very effective in monochrome, but others, like the weather widget above, are clear, handy to have on your iPad Lock Screen, and fully interactive.

Widgetsmith widgets in StandBy.

Finally, Widgetsmith also supports iOS 17’s new StandBy mode, allowing you to add small-sized interactive widgets for when your iPhone is charging and in landscape mode.

It’s remarkable what an app like Widgetsmith has been able to achieve, even within the relatively tight system constraints of widget interaction. Over time, I’d love to see Apple loosen the reigns on widgets, but it makes sense to start slow, see how developers use interactivity, and expand from there. If you’re into customizing your Home Screen and Lock Screen, Widgetsmith’s new interactive widgets are some of the first you should check out.

Widgetsmith is available on the App Store as a free download. However, certain features require a subscription.

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Hourly precipitation predictions for a full 10 days.

The Weather app includes hourly precipitation predictions in its 10-day forecast detail view. Is there really a 45% chance of rain in Nashville a week from Monday? Probably not, but if that sort of precision is what you’re looking for in a weather app, Weather has it.

The wind animates on the new radar map overlay.

Wind map overlays have been added to Weather, too. The overlay looks excellent and animates to show you which way the wind will blow over the next 24 hours. It’s a great addition if you’re going out to fly a kite or a drone, sail a boat, and more.

It’s warmer in Nashville than the average September 16th. I’m not sure what to do with that information, but now we both know.

Historical trends have been added to Weather, too. Tapping the ‘Averages’ tile shows you how far above or below the average temperature today’s temperature is. That data is accompanied by a graph of today compared to the historical range as well as a month-by-month chart of average high and low temperatures. When you tap on the 10-day forecast, you can also swipe back one day to compare today’s predicted weather with yesterday’s actual conditions.

Hyperlocal weather is now available in the Weather app.

Location names are more specific, too. I found an entry for Duke University. There’s a separate entry for Durham, the town where the school is located. Duke was predicted to be one degree warmer and cooler today than Durham, but as I write this, they’re the same temperature, which is good to know, I guess.

The moon gets a lot of attention in the latest update to Weather.

If you’re a moon stan, you’re in luck because it got even more attention in Weather this year. Tap on Weather’s moon tile to learn about its illumination, the time of the moonrise and moonset, the days until the next full moon, and its distance from Earth. There’s also a dial-like interface element that lets you move forward and back through the calendar, which is connected to an animated moon graphic that updates as you swipe on the dial. Plus, there’s a calendar for each month that shows the moon’s phase and includes the date of that month’s new and full moon.

Apple has enhanced its visualizations to reflect the position of the sun and conditions.

Not bad Weather, not bad at all.

Finally, Apple says that it has improved its use of the correct standard units for different geographic regions, and the visual effects you see behind the weather data have been enhanced. Looking at today’s weather and then looking out the window, I’ve got to say, they look very close.

Although I personally think a lot of the data in Weather is overkill, I also recognize that what may seem superfluous to me isn’t to everyone. So, as easy as it is to poke fun at the Weather app, I do appreciate that it’s become more than just a list of current conditions and a short-term forecast. Plus, if you just enjoy reading about weather conditions, there’s plenty to learn about from the Weather app, too.

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The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Longplay 2.0 by Adrian Schoenig is out, and it’s a massive update of the iOS and iPadOS album-oriented music app.

If you’ve tried Longplay before, the update will be familiar. The first time it launches, it quickly checks your Apple Music library (about six seconds for over 1200 albums in my case), finds all the nearly complete and complete albums, and displays them in a grid of album art. I’ve always loved this interface because it does such a great job of emphasizing album art. However, what’s different is a long list of new features, but since we’ve only covered the app for Club MacStories members and AppStories listeners, I’m going to cover everything and call out the updated features as I go.

Getting started is easy. Just tap an album to start playback. It’s worth noting, though, that Longplay is not a streaming app. Your music must be downloaded to play, which means that if you don’t have a data connection of some kind to download them, albums that aren’t on your iPhone or iPad won’t play. However, even albums that aren’t on a device start playback immediately if you’re on WiFi or a mobile connection, so that hasn’t been an issue for me in practice.

Sorry 90s era Mickey. We had some good times, but you’re getting hidden. It’s not you, it’s me.

Nor has the fact that I have over 1,000 albums and playlists been an issue because there are so many ways to manage your collection. First of all, if there are albums in your Apple Music library you don’t like anymore, kids’ music you don’t want cluttering up your collection, or something similar, you can long-press on an album and hide it, so it won’t show up in Longplay. That same long-press gesture provides playback controls and the ability to build a playback queue the way Apple Music does with Play Next and Play Later buttons, which is new in version 2.0. There’s also an option to remove an album from your queue or add it to a Collection.

There are two ways to add an album to a Collection.)

Collections are another great way to organize and navigate your albums and are new in version 2.0. If you’re on the main screen with its grid of album art, tap on the ‘My Library’ banner at the top of the screen. From there, you’ll see Collections of your already-downloaded music and any that you’ve already created and a button to create a new one. Then, you can drag and drop albums into the collections you’ve created or long-press on them and use the ‘Add to Collection’ option in the context menu. As much as I like scrolling through my full library, Collections are a great way to organize your music based on a mood or context.

Longplay’s eight sort orders and what they mean.

Another way to navigate a big music library is by swiping right on the album grid to reveal eight different ways to sort your albums. For purists, there’s an Orderliness option that’s alphabetically based on artist and then album, but there’s also a Random option, another based on star ratings, Negligence for forgotten favorites, and others. If there’s a sort option you don’t understand, head to the app’s settings, where there’s a setting called Dictionary that explains how each sort order works.

Infinite Album Shuffle.

Settings is also where you can enable Infinite Album Shuffle, another 2.0 feature. As you’d expect, Infinite Album Shuffle will play random albums as long as you want. If you’re listening to a queue you set up and have Infinite Album Shuffle turned on, shuffle will kick in after the queue finishes.

Longplay’s versitile playback screen.

In addition to the main grid of albums and the interface for its sort order, Longplay also has a playback screen that you get to by swiping left from the grid view. The playback screen includes album art, album, track, artist information, and playback controls, plus buttons to access your playback queue, show all of an album’s tracks, enable Infinite Play Shuffle, and invoke AirPlay. Right in the middle of those buttons, there’s also a dice button that’s brand new and, when held, shows a horizontal slice of album art, allowing you to quickly pick an album to play as they scroll by. The albums flick by pretty fast, but you can also move among them by sliding your finger left and right, which goes album by album. Another element of the playback screen that I like a lot is that it counts down the time remaining on an album instead of showing individual track progress, which fits perfectly with the app’s album-orient approach.

Also new with version 2.0 is that Longplay syncs between devices using iCloud sync and allows you to rate individual album tracks using a 5-star rating system. I appreciate the rating system, which harkens back to the days of iTunes and is still available in Apple Music, but I wish adding a heart to a song were an option too. If you use star ratings, Longplay also allows you to skip tracks below a certain rating, which is handy.

Longplay on the iPad.

It’s worth noting that Longplay 2.0 adds support for CarPlay, Last.fm scrobbling, Listenbrainz, Shortcuts, and alternate icons. Plus, the update adds Home Screen widgets that include a grid of albums from your library that can be tapped to play the album on which you tap. This isn’t widget interactivity. Instead, the app is deep-linking to the album and must open Longplay, but it’s a fantastic feature, and I hope true interactivity is on the horizon for the app. The small and medium-sized widgets have multiple parameters that can be set for things like the collection displayed and its sort order. I’d love to see large and extra-large versions of the same widget, along with Lock Screen widgets to play a random album from a Collection in the future.

I’ve always liked Longplay, but version 2.0 is head and shoulders better than prior iterations. I’ve said before that I’m more of a playlist person than album-oriented, but that’s shifted a little recently, and I’m going to use Longplay’s new queueing feature to tee up multiple albums to get me through the long, busy-season workdays of September. Plus, despite its album-focused approach, Longplay can include playlists that you’ve saved, which I appreciate for those times when I want more variety.

Longplay is available on the App Store for $5.99.

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The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Ben McCarthy’s career as a developer coincides almost exactly with mine as a writer. As a result, I’ve had the pleasure of watching Obscura evolve from little more than an idea to one of the best camera apps on the App Store. As with so many apps, what sets Obscura apart from others is Ben’s attention to detail, impeccable design taste, and deep knowledge of the app’s subject matter – photography.

Today, Obscura 4 is out, less than two years since I reviewed version 3 with a refreshed design and a handful of new features. The update includes a change in Obscura’s business model, too. In the past, the app was paid up front, with each major release being a new purchase. Going forward, Obscura is free to download, with certain advanced features, known as Obscura Ultra, requiring a subscription.

If you bought Obscura 3, you’ll still have access to all its features with the free version of Obscura 4, which you can upgrade to at a discount. I think the new pricing model is a good deal, and I wanted to mention it up front because it’s behind many of the design changes in Obscura 4.

With Apple offering a feature-rich Camera app of its own, I suspect that the kind of people who purchased Obscura before the latest update were very into photography. With a free version now available, that user base is likely to grow significantly to include curious new users who want to see what the app can do, which Ben has accounted for in the changes to Obscura 4.

Obscura 4’s photo library and settings.

There are design changes throughout Obscura 4, but you’ll notice that the most important controls are within reach of your thumb more than ever before. The interaction with those controls is more consistent, too. Many include radial dials that project out from buttons when they’re tapped, allowing for adjustment with a tap and a quick swipe and then reset to their default values with a long press. The photo library interface is more intuitive, too, and focuses on recent shots, although albums, favorites, and photos taken with Obscura are still easy to get to.

I like the new design a lot. Obscura has had dial-based controls that are reminiscent of using a traditional camera for a long time, and their utility goes beyond being familiar to longtime photographers. Combined with haptic feedback, the gestures make setting up a shot one-handed simple, which is exactly what you want when you’re on the go. A new touch that strikes a similar chord is that when you change many of Obscura’s settings, the change appears briefly in the viewfinder in big, bold type, so you know what you’ve done without looking at your fingers. It’s a small, incredibly handy change that lets photographers concentrate on their subject, not the app’s controls.

Peeking at recent images.

Obscura 4 also allows you to get a quick peek at recent photos by swiping left from the photo library button. As you slide your finger over each circular preview, it’s loaded behind the controls to provide a better look at the whole image. It’s a clever gesture that is much more lightweight than switching to the photo library itself. Also, focus and exposure points can be separated for the first time, and the app helps you get your focus right by highlighting areas of over and under-exposure in the viewfinder.

Obscura on the iPad.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Obscura is on the iPad now, too. I’ve never been much of an iPad photographer, but if that’s what you have with you, it’s good to know Obscura is now an option.

Obscura has come a long way since its origins as one of the first third-party camera apps on the App Store. I’m glad Ben has stuck with it for nearly a decade and has not been afraid to experiment with unique, custom interfaces throughout the app’s lifetime. That’s been fun to watch for me as an app nerd, but it’s also meant that Obscura has grown into one of the best camera apps around. Now, with its new free-to-download business model, I hope a lot more people give it a try and end up subscribing because it’s a great way to learn to be a better photographer with the camera that’s always with you.

As I mentioned, Obscura 4 is free to download from the App Store. Obscura Ultra features require a subscription.

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If you’ve ever found yourself repeatedly checking the weather of a trip destination in the days leading up to your travels, you’ll appreciate Mercury Weather 2.0, which was released today for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. The update’s marquee feature is Trip Forecast, which lets you set up a trip once and keep tabs on your destination’s weather as your travel dates approach. I reviewed Mercury Weather a couple of weeks ago, so for more on the app’s other features, be sure to check out that review.

From Mercury Weather’s Locations view, there’s now an option to add upcoming trips. Just add your destination and the dates of your trip, and it will appear in a separate, collapsable ‘Upcoming Trips’ section, along with the current conditions and dates of the trip. You can also name your trip and add a custom icon.

You can switch between home and upcoming trips in the Daily Forecast section of Mercury Weather.

As your departure date approaches, your destinations will appear along the top of the Daily Forecast graph. Tap a trip’s name to see that location’s weather forecast or the ‘Home’ button to return to your home location’s weather. Once your trip dates pass, the forecast for your destination just disappears from the app unlike destinations you might otherwise save in a weather app’s list of locations.

Trip Forecasts have been incorporated in Mercury Weather’s small and medium-sized ‘Daily Forecast (Customizable)’ widgets too. The widget includes a summary forecast for the next eight days, and if any of those days are part of your upcoming trip, it will show the forecast for that location instead of your current location.

Mercury Weather on the Mac.

Trip Forecast is an excellent addition to Mercury Weather. I love that I can set up a trip once and forget about it, letting the app show me the upcoming forecast as my travel day approaches and staying out of the way until then. One thing I still miss from other weather apps is radar data, but aside from that, I’ve loved using Mercury Weather this summer.

Mercury Weather is free to download on the App Store, with Home and Lock Screen widgets, the Apple Watch app, historical data, and more than one saved location available to subscribers for $1.99/month or $9.99/year, with a $34.99 lifetime purchase option. A Family Sharing subscription is $3.49/month, $16.99/year, or $59.99 for a lifetime purchase.

Support MacStories and Unlock Extras

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.