iOS Today 743 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on iOS Today, rosemary Orchard and I, micah Sargent, talk about how to dial in your data with some great apps for iOS. Stay tuned Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. This is iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard and me, micah Sargent, episode 743, recorded Tuesday March 4th 2025 for Thursday March 13th 2025. Dialing in your data. Hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, ipados, watchos, homepodos, visionos and all the OSs that Apple has on offer. We love to help you make the most of your Apple devices by talking about them here on this show and helping you understand how to use them. It's a great time and we're happy to have you here. Whether it's your first time or you've been here for a while, welcome back, get nice and cozy, settle in as we discuss some great information, and by we, I mean me. My name is Micah Sargent.

01:17 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
And me. My name is Rosemary Orchard.

01:19 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Hello Rosemary. So today we're taking a look at some apps and their apps and their services in some cases that help you to kind of store and reference data, depending on where you want to keep it and how you want to organize it. And here's the thing there are lots of different places where you can store data and I think it's important to understand this is like the basics of this. Sometimes you say the word data and people get a little weird about it. They're like, oh no, that's not a thing I do. I'm not a developer, I don't code, I don't need to worry about data.

02:00
Understand that data can be anything. Really, it can be anything. It can be the little bits of information you keep in notes. It can be your contacts that you store. That's data. It can be your photos, it can be video that you record. I mean, it can be anything are kind of keeping track of this stuff.

02:25
There may be a better way to do it. There may be a better place to put it. Perhaps you have a database, if you will, of your family birthdays, or you're keeping track of things that your family mentions throughout the year that they could really use. Perhaps you are keeping track of your food intake.

02:45
All of that is data, and there are different ways to store that information and you know, many of us have jobs and many of those jobs involve needing to store, reference, edit data in different ways. And I think that that's kind of what we want to talk about today in terms of what you can use to do the things that you need to do. If it's you know again, keeping track of something personal, or if it is making sure that you're getting a project completed by making sure that everything that you need to reference in the next report that you're bringing to your boss is there and is where you need it. And there are lots of ways to store data in spreadsheets and in a notes app, but these apps specifically are designed to kind of help you not just store but also action on your data right To do something with it. So Rosemary was wondering if you want to kick things off with the first app on your list.

03:59 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I do, micah, because I picked up a bread maker this weekend, a Facebook marketplace, which, by the way, great place to pick up appliances like that, because so many people buy them and then don't use them and so resell them. So if you can pick one up secondhand, why not? And I picked up one, and it was basically new. However, it did come with a paper manual, but the paper manual clearly been like, sat somewhere damp and all the corners were curled up. So I emailed the company and said, hey, can I have a pdf of the manual? And they said, sure, here it is. And I went okay, cool, what do I do with this? Because, let's face it, I could print a paper manual and stick it in my kitchen and have a less curled up edge right now, but guess what? In like six months it's going to come into contact with something damp, like I don't know water or milk or something, and, yeah, then it's going to be all curled up. So instead I turn to my trusty friend, devon think. So this is the manual that I was sent, and so I'll just use the share sheet in this particular case and go straight over to devon think and share it. Now, those of you who are eagle eyed may have spotted that I have two devon things there. That's because there is a beta of the new version, which I'm also on, but I'm showing you the regular version right now. So I'm just going to call this Ambiano Breadmaker, because that is the brand, and then I also have the type of appliance it is.

05:18
I'm going to save this into my main database and I can add some comments here if I want to. So, for example, I could add bread maker as all one word. So if I typo I'll still find it, though, that said, devin thinks search pretty darn good. So if you do a typo like no space between bread and maker, it's probably going to find it. I could add other notes like the model number and so on. Here I can add tags if I want to. I can give it a status like to do done important, unimportant, private work or other labels. I can flag it or not flag it, I could mark it as read or unread and I can give it stars. So I could give this manual five stars. I'm not going to give it five stars because I haven't read it yet, but that is my manual now saved into Devonthink, and so I just need to open Devonthink here and then I can see this is now in my main database in the inbox. And where is it gone? It's hiding from me, which is always the way there we go.

06:19
Ambieno bread maker. And so now I can actually search inside of this manual and all of these words because this is a PDF that has selectable text can be found. So it's searching for AMB. So it's found baking chamber, because AMB is inside chamber, and so on. So that is quite useful. If I wanted to say, look for sweet, because I know that there is an option on the bread maker for sweet recipes, then I can find that and I can see okay. So for breads with additives such as fruit juices, grated coconut, etc. And this is just very nice to be able to use like that. I can also, if I want, to select text inside of this, and then obviously I can copy it, I can share it, I can set a name, I can copy a link to that specific selection to come back this later, and all sorts. I also have the option of editing the manual. So I don't know about you, micah, but every so often I'll get a manual, download the pdf and go great, and then it's 700 pages yeah because it's in a hundred languages.

07:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Exactly Three quarters of them I don't need.

07:27 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
So what you can do in that case is you can use the edit option to actually get rid of particular pages. So I can actually get rid of some of these pages if I want to, and hide those. If there is an outline for it, then I can do that. I can annotate things so I can see here it's approximately five kilograms, that's a little annotation that has been added, and I can get rid of that later as well if I want to. And I just find that this is, you know, a really useful application for storing all sorts of things. You can save web pages here and more. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just move this manual and I'm going to stick it into manuals. I could have filed it under cooking, but no manual seems like the right place for it. So now if I pop into manuals and scroll down, then I see ta-da Ambiano Breadmaker right there. It's got a little sort of thumbnail view so I can see all the pages, which could be quite useful if I'm there going.

08:21
Okay, yeah, so what is this bit again? Oh, right, number seven. Yeah, that is the. It's on the next page, because that's not very helpful display. Well, I should probably have been able to figure that out. Two plus two does usually equal four, but you know this is a great place for it, and what I really like about Devonthink is I can also save websites in here and have them update, or I could save them as PDFs is I can also save websites in here and have them update, or I could save them as PDFs.

08:46
I can add my own notes and other metadata as I want to. I can have a continuous view, which is like this, instead of a sort of paginated view, so it, you know, swipes you between whole pages. Continuous view is quite useful if there's sort of two things that kind of spill over the same area. Okay. So, for example, like this diagram here and the contents, that's kind of all the same thing, and I quite like that.

09:13
So I love the number of options Devonthink has and the powerful sync. You can choose where you put the data. You can put it in Dropbox, you can put it in iCloud Drive, you can put it in OneDrive, all sorts. You're not paying Devonthink for the storage of your data. You're paying for the application that you use to access it. It also has a very cool option on macOS where it can index folders, which works a little bit differently. So, instead of throwing everything in Devonthink and allowing Devonthink to manage everything and put it in all the places, you can actually say, hey, I have organized my files perfectly, I am happy with this. I would like you to index this folder for me please. And that's very cool.

09:53
So, yeah, devonthink, it's one of my favorite applications, that I don't even realize I'm using it, and I think that that is the best thing about an app where you're just like this is what I use, because it works. It always works. I can save whole folders or groups offline. I can save tags offline documents, et cetera, so that I've always got them and I don't have to worry about them being offloaded, because even with iClouds, hey, keep this offline. I find every so often it's not offline, and that's usually when I'm on a plane and I don't have the ability to re-download something. So, yeah, I love Devon Think for actually keeping things where I want them link to a specific portion of a document.

10:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That is very, very nice, because the fact is maybe I don't want to do the work. Like you typed in the three letters and there were many pages that had those three letters in it right, so maybe I don't want to do the work. Even though the search is great and the search functionality is all encompassing, I may not want to go and search for it again. Having the access there and kind of short cutting to it is really very handy. I think that's a delightful feature that's part of Devon Think that makes me definitely want to make use of that app for sure.

11:20 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yes, one thing I use this for all the time Micah is my washing machine every 25 cycles wants me to clean the drum and I know what I'm doing with this and I know approximately how often that is. So I actually have it as a reminder to clean the drum in, like in my case in OmniFocus. But you could throw some reminders. I have a link in the note for that reminder to the specific page in my washing machine manual that tells me how to clean, like how to use the drum clean cycle, so that if I forget then I can just jump straight to it and I don't have to go oh wait, what app was this in?

11:51
What file was this in? Like, what was it called? Where is the drum, clean cycle and all of that stuff? No, I just like open the reminder it's already on my phone and click the link and I'm straight there.

12:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's a really good tip, because there are lots of appliances that have different kind of maintenance cycles or maintenance modes or maintenance requirements. I have a little espresso pod thing that every once in a while needs to be descaled, and every time I have to go and look up the manual that I have and find the little descaling steps, because I don't do it enough, that it's just second nature, and so having this where the reminder comes up and then I can just immediately link to it, oh, that's, that's very good. So that's a really cool way to kind of gain access to your data. A really cool way to kind of gain access to your data.

12:46
Um, and, as you pointed out, also edit those pdfs that have other languages that you don't need. With the physical versions of those, I always take the, the physical version, and sort of very carefully tear away the rest of it and throw it in recycling and just keep the part that's my language because that's all that I need. But sometimes you have it where it's kind's interspersed throughout, and so that doesn't work as well. Yes, all right, let's move on to the next app which I am interested to hear about, because it has the name database in the title.

13:19
Is that what you're talking about next.

13:24 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, tap Forms is the successor to bento. I don't know if you remember bento, uh micah yes uh, that was a great database application.

13:33
It wasn't made by apple but like they used to sell boxes in the apple store with cds in or with the codes for you to buy, um, and then it became, you know, available through the app store and so on and so forth and it was a great application but it's sort of just gone away over time and Tapforms is the spiritual successor to it essentially, which is lovely. So Tapforms. So Tap Forms gives you the option of having multiple documents. So I've just got one here called iOS today at the moment. Then you can add a form to this so you can say, okay, new form, so I'll change this to actually be new episode. There we go. Then I can add fields. So I'm going to start with a number field and my field title is going to be episode number. You can tell I'm not doing a great job typing, but autocor title is going to be episode number and you can tell I'm not doing a great job typing, but autocorrect is coming to the rescue for me today. And so I can say there are field options. So input control is default or a stepper. Do I want to mask the field value or to increment? Yes, please. Or to increment by one decimal places zero, because we don't have point episodes here on iOS today.

14:47
So now I've added that field, I can add another one which could be that's not the title. There we go the title of the episode and you can have descriptions to this. You've got all of your field options, which change depending on what kind of field it is. There's also, by the way, options for emailing, exporting, printing and hiding those fields. So if you want something and then when you hit print, you don't want to show up, then you can toggle off the print field option. I will actually leave that on.

15:17
So we now have our episode number, our title, and I'll just throw in a date and there we go. That's perfect. And so now we have our new form and I can say, hey, do I want this form to be available on my Apple Watch, for example? Do I want to give this a category, sorting it, etc. All of those things. There are scripts. I'm not going to dive into the scripts because we don't have six hours to spend talking about scripts in tap forms today, as much as I would love to, and there's also some calculation options. So if you were doing something like a budget in tap forms, then you could do that. So now I have a new episode form and I can pop in the information that we want. So our title was I have forgotten our title today.

16:09
I was very careful, clever with it dialing in our data in your data. Oops, dialing in your dads. That could be fun. You get double dad jokes if you have two dads, I think. So the date for today's episode is going to be the 13th that this is coming out on, and our episode number. I have done something silly so I can't actually change that. So now if I go back and perhaps if I edit our forms oops, that was adding a form.

16:44
But either way, you get the idea of you can have all sorts of forms and then you add data through those forms and those build records in your database and this can be really nice for doing more complex things. But Tap Forms is a one-time purchase of $16.99, and then all the data is just on your devices, and that is $16.99 for the iPhone and the iPad and the Apple Watch version. I should note that the Mac version is a separate application, so if you want it on the Mac, then you have to pay separately for that, but that is $50 for Tapforms 5 or $35 for the alternative version, which is the legacy version. But I personally feel like if you are looking to manipulate a whole bunch of data and you just kind of want to throw it in something that's more powerful than a spreadsheet, but you don't want to spend weeks building you know building and learning how to use databases, Tap forums is ideal for letting you, you know, play with all these things and figure them out.

17:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Very good, very good. Now I think we should probably kind of combine talking about the next two, as these are two different services that have apps that you can use across your phone, your Mac, your iPad, wherever you happen to be premier data storage services used by quite a few people, including we use it for our show. I have used one of these tools I know I'm kind of teasing it out here for different show planning stuff in the past, and they're both incredibly good at database storage management and note-taking and everything in between, depending on how you want to access it. And I know, in particular, airtable is a great place for being able to kind of drill down and reference little bits of data. Of drill down and reference little bits of data, whereas Notion is kind of a great and I mean this in the best way dumping spot. It is a place to store all sorts of stuff and then be able to find it later.

19:16 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yes, and I personally use both of these services on a very frequent basis, and that is just because each one works differently for different kinds of brains and also just for different kinds of data. So here I have the iOS Today table for the episodes that we're recording. So if I tap onto this one, I can see it's episode 743. We're recording it today. It's going out a week on Thursday. I've got the theme, which is text, and I've got the apps and these are references to other tables in my database, and so I can see here that I've got tab forms, which I just talked about. I've got Airtable, which is right there, and this is, you know, is just a nice way of being able to look at the data and I could also for some things where I have talked about them before I believe Notion was one of them I can also see hey, I also talked about this on episode 612 and 738. So we last talked about this five episodes ago, if you haven't heard of Notion, which we'll come back to in a moment. But what I really love about Airtable is its integration with online automation services. So I use it with makecom and Zapier and it also integrates with IFTTT. If this and that, and this is really nice for adding or manipulating data in different ways. It also has online forums. So that forum that I showed in tab forums, that's the sort of thing where I say you're at a conference and you want people to come over and fill in the data on a device there so they could I don't know enter a competition to win a plushie. That is something that that tab forums is great for. Airtable is great for a scan, a QR code and fill out this form and put your data in here and then we've got it. And then when this record gets added, zapier watches it and goes and automatically adds to you to our mailing list in Mailchimp and things like that. So you know there's. There can be a whole chain of things happening with an Airtable record or a database, and I think that that's very cool.

21:29
It does also have, I should say, different views. So I'm currently in the Today view in my Airtable list, but I could also go to Future where I can see, you know, the episodes which we'll be releasing in the future. As of now, I've got a grid view and on desktop you have more as well. On iPhone, because your screen is so small. You know your screen is palm size.

21:57
They limit what you can see so you don't get things like the Kanban view. But you do get those on the iPad and so on and it's quite nice to be able to have records in a Kanban view and drag them around or turn your records into a calendar view based on dates in certain columns and so on and so forth. And also, I should note, one of the things I do love about this is those calendar views. You can get a calendar link and add that to your actual calendar. So if you use this for like project planning and so on and you've got dates going into there, you can have all of that as part of your actual calendar that you see in the calendar app day to day.

22:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That is very, very nice. There are loads of apps, as I think we always say, that kind of fall into the different categories that we talk about, and these are some of the tools that Rosemary and I both use regularly, and, especially with Devon, I think, will become a tool that I regularly use. They are available on the App store and across devices for your use. If you have an app and it's fun, because I just saw recently that we did have someone write in to say, hey, here's an app that I use for this that you didn't mention I want to talk about it a little bit, so I again put out that invite If there's an app that you use for dialing in your data that you love and you want to advocate for, you can email us. Iostoday at twittv is how you get in touch. Let us know what apps are sticking out for you. Let's go ahead, though, and move along to talk about the news that has come out this week as we record this episode. Apple just announced this morning, as we record the episode on Tuesday, March 4th, its new iPad Air and Magic Keyboard. Now there were a couple of updates that have kind of hit with this. The iPad Air now features the M3 chip, so it supports Apple intelligence at this kind of high level. It means, of course, GPU improvements and all that that you can expect and will mean that it's two times faster in processing than the iPad Air with the M1 chip and, of course, much faster than some of the others. It does have the same price that you can expect, but now, along with, of course, that support for Apple intelligence, you can use the new Magic Keyboard that Apple has introduced and that is coming in at five. The price starts at $549 for the 11-inch iPad Air or, excuse me sorry, $599 for the 11-inch iPad Air, $799 for the 13-inch iPad Air and, of course, Apple provides education pricing as well, and those pre-orders start today. I should say availability technically begins on Wednesday, March 12th. It's the pre-orders, yes, that start today for that. Now, of course, Apple talks about the neural engine and the M3 and all of the kind of improvements there, what Apple intelligence can do with image playgrounds and being able to integrate with ChatGPT and that kind of thing. The quote all new magic keyboard for iPad Air, which is a very long name, has a 14 key function row, the trackpad, and the trackpad is larger, so you get you know your brightness, up and down, access to your apps, search functionality, quickly triggering Siri being able to access your focus modes, play, pause controls, as well as back and forward controls, mute, volume down, volume up and lock all make it to the function row, along with the escape key. It's 269 for the 11-inch model, 319 for the 13-inch model, and they both have on the side a USB-C connector for charging where, of course, it connects with the smart connector to provide that power and data via the back of the iPad Air.

26:28
The iPad that is the standard iPad has been updated. Now its base model has double the storage that it used to and features the A16 chip. That does mean no Apple intelligence there. That does mean no Apple intelligence there. But for that base model iPad, having a lot more storage means that that kid pad that you buy can have even more apps. Because if there's one thing I've seen from children with iPads, it's that they love to download new apps all the time because they get tired of the apps that they've been using and want something else and something new and fresh. So I would not be surprised to hear uh parents everywhere rejoicing that they're not having to go through and delete apps off of the kid pad to make room for the new apps that the child wants to, because you just know, as soon as you've deleted one of those apps, uh, like that's the one they're going to want back.

27:25 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
It's going to be one of the big ones. It's going to take forever to download and install, or it's going to download really fast and then it's going to reload their content back and all of that stuff. So yeah, 100%.

27:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So, yeah, you can check out more about that. We'll link in the show notes to Apple's newsroom document all about the new iPad Air with the M3 chip. All righty folks, that means it's time to move on to feedback. We've got feedback coming next. All right, our first bit of feedback comes in from Steve. This is a question we've heard before, so it's good to get to chat about it again and I'm looking forward also to our next episode. Steve writes in to say hi.

28:09
Simple question for the show when in settings do I stop my iPhone from prompting me with directions home or to work? Every single time I plug in CarPlay, I know where I'm going most of the time. So, steve, this is a question that we used to get on Ask the Tech Guys a lot. We've actually gotten it here on iOS today before. It is a common question that I totally understand people kind of wanting to not have. I think I want to say this before we talk about how to get rid of it that it's something you don't have to use or interact with or do anything with. It can sort of sit there and just exist.

28:55
And, importantly, I think one of the features that people might not realize is. There could be a time where a road close to your home is shut down for whatever reason, and the Department of Transportation in your city, in your county, in your state puts into the map system hey, this road is closed. And then suddenly that little kind of glanceable bit of information is giving you what you need to know, to know, to reroute yourself of. Information is giving you what you need to know, to know, to reroute yourself. You don't have to. When it's coming up with that suggestion of how do I get home, how do I get to work, it's not necessarily that there will be information there. Instead, if this wasn't there, that will be more helpful. I think.

29:41
For us it's, and I may may be wrong, but I know the way that I have felt about it before, where I thought this thing is kind of insulting me and this thing doesn't you know, and I would rather see something else there. And then the thing that appears instead is a blank space, like a blank tile or uh, it's providing information that I have elsewhere. So so I guess what I'm saying is I kind of find this feature harmless and in some cases, in rare cases, could be helpful, because it's saying, hey, look, the traffic is really bad because there was an accident, so let's try going a different way, or, as we just mentioned, kind of getting around to your road being closed for whatever reason. So you may know where you're going most of the time, but there could come a time when you need it. But it is a Siri suggestion feature that makes this possible, as the kind of smart intelligence behind the scenes of iOS and CarPlay are working to provide you with that, and so you can simply toggle off that feature for CarPlay.

30:50
We, in episode 744, steve are going to be talking about CarPlay, so I really encourage you to tune into that episode to see even more about this. But, rosemary, is there anything else you want to say about that? As I'm always, I always end up being the one kind of doing the sermons and caveats, don't I?

31:10 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yes, but that is appreciated Personally. Yeah, like Micah said, I just always hit the button yeah, I know where I'm going, but I don't know everything and a number of times I have started driving somewhere and I've not hit that button to say, yeah, I know where I'm going and also, pro tip in maps on CarPlay. What you can do is you can actually hit the little speaker button and my CarPlay screen is not loading maps right now. It's being really unhelpful because I was gonna show you on a CarPlay screen. But what you can do when you're getting directions somewhere is you can actually tap on the little speaker icon and then say, hey, turn off the audible directions please. So there's sound off alerts only and then the full voice directions. So yes, now I have a little CarPlay screen so I can just flip this around.

32:07
Bear in mind I am in the UK and I will have this set up slightly better for the next episode. But over on the edge of the screen, if you tap the screen to just sort of wake it up, then there is a little speaker up here and when you tap on that, that gives you a choice of three options, so you don't actually have to have it so that they know when you're going to get there. But if you really don't want it, try opening a different map app, Like open Google Maps or Waze or something, because it's not going to automatically give you directions. Home, inside of those apps Like Waze pops up a little home icon on the screen or a work icon on the screen, depending on where you are and times of day and things like that, but those disappear once you have been driving for a minute or two. So you could try using a different map app as the solution to that.

32:54 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There you go. So, yes, I think that kind of gives you what you need to know there, steve. The next feedback comes in from Gerard, who writes Hi, rosemary and Micah, by the way. Nevermind, we'll continue. This is good. This is very good is what I was going to say. I'm finishing up.

33:12
Your latest episode of iOS today on YouTube Video was unavailable on Pocket Cast for some reason and I was surprised to see Procreate not get a mention. I've used it in Pixelmator for iPad for years and I find it to be the more powerful editor of the two. Anyway, love the show, as always, and keep up the great work. Thanks, gerard. So this was the one I was kind of hinting to earlier. Love being able to talk about some apps that people use that bear mentioning. And yes, procreate absolutely bears mentioning. Procreate is an incredibly powerful application for all sorts of graphics work and Procreate involves, I think, some of the best kind of brush tools in the entirety of what's available on the iPad app store and, I think, creative work, in particular for digital painters. But it is well worth anyone's attention and it is certainly an app that is on my iPad that I kind of evangelize about when I'm given the opportunity. Anything you want to say about it, rosemary?

34:23 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
No other than I'm really annoyed we forgot to mention it, but it is a fabulous application and I use it fairly frequently as well. It's one of those Apple Pencil apps that I love for practicing you know, drawing and all of those things.

34:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So much fun, absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly it. That it's. It is the premier Apple, I think. Pencil app for sure. All righty Up next I can hear the music. It's time for Shortcuts Corner. Welcome to Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts requests and Rosemary Orchard, our shortcuts expert, provides a response. Our first short or our shortcuts corner request comes in this month from Bill, who writes I replaced some Meros bulbs with some light lighting inside bulbs, so not lightning. Let me be clear. Lighting inside bulbs because a family member needed the bulbs to change color when she has a migraine. But now when I set my living room lights to automatically turn off when I leave and turn on when I return, upon return, the lights come back on really dim. The home app shows they are still at the level I set them. Is this a problem strictly related to the bulbs or have I dinged some settings in HomeKit? Bill? Interesting.

36:03 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, this is an interesting, you know a problem, because it could be any number of things, let's be honest, that are the problem. What I suspect is the issue is that the bulbs have probably got some kind of internal smartness and they're going oh, but this person may not want me to turn on at 100%, and I suspect that all Apple is doing is saying, hey, turn on, and instead of the bulbs remembering that they were at 70% brightness or 100% brightness or whatever it is, they're just going on. I don't know what to do with that, so I'm just going to turn on at whatever my default lowest is. Now you may be able to use lighting inside app to modify some of these settings, but I'm going to show folks how to do all of this with HomeKit. So, to start with, turning the lights off when you leave, okay, so I've got here an automation that I created. I'll just show folks how to create it. So in the home app, you can add an automation and then you can say people leave and you can change this.

37:11
Okay, so mine says anyone leaves and that's because there's only one person in my home. However, when I previously have more than one person in my home, I was able to change it to say hey, when the last person left home. So yeah, if you have more than one person, and then I've added my light. So this is an up lighter in my living room. It points light at the ceiling, it's very nice, provides lovely ambient light, um, and I just said, hey, turn that off and that's it. Um, and then when anyone arrives home, turn it on. Very simple. However, if you tap on the turn on, you may find okay, and all I did. Okay for the turn on is.

37:49
I tapped on the left hand side where the little light is. But if you you tap on the right-hand side of that, this is set to 1%, and that might be something that has happened in HomeKit. With your automation, I can also change my brightness or my color here to a different option, but I would make sure that you are turning that to 100% brightness. 100 brightness okay. Now next step. If this is already set to 100 brightness or whatever the brightness is that you would like it to turn on to and that's not working, then I'm going to want you to actually um instead, when, where you've got select your scenes and accessories, scroll to the bottom might be a long way, I'm sorry. If it is tap convert shortcut, okay, and then what you're going to do is you're going to set the light to on to start with, and then I would like you to duplicate that action, okay, and make sure that the brightness settings are what you want. Okay, you may want to add a wait action in between, because sometimes devices are not great if they receive two commands. Like, while they're executing the first command, sometimes they kind of just drop the second one on the floor, or they drop the first one and they go. I don't know I'm in the middle of doing something. Give me a second and that can happen sometimes and try converting it to a shortcut instead. That is something you could do. So those are the options.

39:24
If this doesn't work, then I aside from checking the Lighting Inside app which I can't do because I don't have any of their devices, I'm afraid my only other suggestion is to buy better bulbs, and this is one of those things where I'm afraid you do get what you pay for. Some people have had lots of success with the nano leaf bulbs and they really like those. I personally would always recommend Philips Hue. Philips Hue are rock solid. They are the lights I have installed in my parents' house and they work and there is like no question about whether or not they're going to work. If it's going to work, et cetera, et cetera. The only thing that you can screw up with it is your own personal automations, but the Philips Hue lights are really good.

40:08
Get the ones that want the hub. I know everyone's like eh hubs. I don't want hubs. It's one thing that connects to your network, instead of like 20 things trying to latch onto your network and do all the things. But fingers crossed, bill, we can get this working.

40:22
And yeah, maybe convert to shortcut, with a little wait in between, just to make sure that it gets all of the settings that it needs over to those lights, might do the trick if you haven't tapped on the right-hand side and double-checked to make sure that all the settings are correct for those lights. If you're turning on a scene, by the way, I will actually just show folks with that. So if I add a scene and I'll just call it iOS Today, oh, is today, no, ios Today, thank you, there we go, and can you tell? The sun is just set here, so I'll pop my phone back into light mode and then I'll add that up lighter Again. Tapping on the left-hand side of the light in a scene just toggles it from on and off. Tapping on the right hand side see, that's back up 1%. So if it's in a scene, make sure that you have changed the settings in the scene that you're turning on when you come home as well.

41:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Nice. I, by the way, second everything that Rosemary was saying there about how to do that inside of the home app, that part about kind of telling the system are you just telling the light to turn on or turn off? Are you actually telling it to turn on and change to a specific color or a specific brightness? That's something that is not immediately obvious, that I think that Apple could do a better job of clarifying and is something that I've kind of had to teach people in the past. So I'm hopeful, bill, that that takes care of your issue and you're able to have those lights do what you expect them to do. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of iOS Today. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Of course, you can email us.

42:08
Iostoday at twittv is how you get in touch. If you are out there and you would like and you are not a member of the club and you'd like to see the video version of our show ad free, well, I invite you to join Club Twit at twittv. Slash club twit. It's just $7 a month with a two week free trial to kick things off, and you will gain access to every single one of our shows ad free. You also gain access to every single one of our shows ad free. You also gain access to the TwitPlus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else. Behind the scenes before the show. After the show special Club Twit events get published there. Access to the members only Discord server a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit, and a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you're helping to support the work that we do. Rosemary Orchard, if people would like to follow along with what you do.

43:02 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Where is a great place for them to do that? The best place to go is rosemaryorchardcom, which has got links to apps, books, podcasts and all the social media sites where you can find me. Or you can find me hanging out in the Club Twit Discord, where there's ios today dedicated discussion area with threads for every show plus a general discussion, and also we do hang out there during the live recordings. So if you can ever join us for one of those, we'd love to have you, but if not, we still love having you regardless. Micah, where can folks find you?

43:28 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
uh, if you're looking to find me online, uh, you can find me at Micah Sargent on many a social media network where you can head to chihuahuacoffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-Acoffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active. Be sure to check out my other shows, including Tech News Weekly, hands on Mac, hands on Tech and, of course, clockwise, the show that I record on Wednesdays as well. I will also, for those of you tuning in live, be appearing on another episode of iOS Today here in a moment, but after that on MacBreak Weekly, as Jason Snell is not with us this week, so you can check out that as well. Thank you so much, everybody, and we will catch you again next time for another episode of iOS Today. Bye-bye.