iOS Today 755 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 talk about getting you out of your house to go touch grass or, you know, go see a movie. Who knows, it's planning a day. Coming up on iOS today Podcasts you love, from people you trust. This is Twit. From people you trust. This is TWIT. This is iOS Today, episode 755, with Rosemary Orchard and me, micah Sargent, recorded Tuesday May 27th 2025, for Thursday June 5th 2025. Planning a day out. Hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, ipados, homepodos, watchos and all the OSs Apple has to offer. We love to talk about them here on iOS Today because our job is to help you make the most of your Apple devices, and we do that by talking about the tips, tricks, settings, gadgets, gizmos, apps and everything else that can help you, as I say, make the most of those devices. I am one of your hosts. My name is Micah Sargent, it's right there.

01:16 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
And my name is Rosemary Orchard and my name is also at the bottom of the screen, which is good, because just off screen to the top you can't see it, but there is an umbrella because, guess what, it's the UK. I plan to go and have a day out tomorrow and, yeah, it's raining. Is anybody surprised? Anybody? No, no, no surprised faces that it's raining in the UK, darn it.

01:38 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Well, I think the only other place on my edge of the coast, I mean well, sort of a Seattle and northern Oregon situation. It's always raining here as well, so we definitely have to make sure we have our umbrellas too. But yeah, in this episode we hope to kind of talk about apps that will help you to fully plan your day as you go out into the world and make sure that everything that you need is there with you, which often means you know preparing for a thunderstorm or knowing if you need to layer up for the day. So I think, without further ado, let's kick off with an app that is very specific to that whole water cycle situation. Mary, do you want to tell us about the first app on your list?

02:31 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, I do. So. This app was created with the idea of you're planning on going to a theme park for the day. It might be the Disney theme parks, it could be Universal, it could be one of the other mini rollercoaster-y type things. Maybe you're planning a beach day or something you just you want to be able to check. Is it going to rain like as you're getting closer? Certainly here in the uk, this is a very genuine concern for me. Uh, in certain parts of the us that may be more of a concern uh than others.

02:59
I hear california can get pretty dry, so maybe not so much there, but it's nice to be able to just open an app and go OK, on that day for that location, what's the weather going to be like? So I've opened Please Don't Rain. And I've got it set up. I'm going on a trip to Manchester here in the UK tomorrow and I can see that it says tomorrow Manchester, and it's got a picture of what looks like a truck or a tractor small tractor. And there's got a picture of what looks like a truck or a tractor small tractor, and there's a rain cloud and lots of raindrops and there's a 47% chance of rain. Darn it. But this means that, hey, I am prepared. If I was planning on spending a lot of time outside tomorrow, then I could, you know, take my umbrella and so on, because you know what do you do if it's wet outside, instead of the thing that you're planning on doing. You know what do you do if it's wet outside instead of the thing that you're planning on doing. The same thing in wet weather gear probably Depends on if it's going to be a monsoon.

03:49
But this is pretty handy. It's just opened it up. I've set it in the settings. So once you've added a place, then you know you'll have your settings appearing under the triple dot to the top right, and there is a specific area for just setting your units of measurement to the top right, and there is a specific area for just setting your units of measurement. So, for reasons because the UK doesn't like to just use one unit of measurement system, I have degrees Celsius, small lengths are in millimeters, larger lengths are in miles and then speed is in miles per hour.

04:17
Because you know why would we just use imperial or metric when we could use both's? Less confusing? Um, but you can reset everything to imperial, reset everything to metric, or you can go for chaos. Uh, personally, I wouldn't recommend chaos unless you're particularly familiar with the temperature in kelvin, um, because that could be, you know, interesting um.

04:38
But on the main screen, when I scroll down a bit, it shows me upcoming days as well, where I can see the percentage chance of rain and also the amount of rain that's expected. So I can see, on Thursday it's going to be a pretty wet day with almost a centimeter of rain. It's also going to be warm, though, um, and then it gives me like an overview for the whole day, um, so I can uh edit this and I can change uh the date and the place. You only set up one day and one place at a time. After that passes, then you set up your next one. But, yeah, this is a pretty nice little way of being able to just check the weather for a particular location on a particular day as your trip gets closer.

05:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Lovely. Sometimes a purpose-built app is the perfect thing because you can just go to it knowing exactly what to expect and make sure that it is exactly what you're looking for. And oftentimes, when you do have these utility apps that are specific to one thing, they do it better than an app that's trying to be everything. But I do want to mention another app that I like to use regularly for my kind of weather. Planning is something that I use every single day, and that is Fantastical. So Fantastical is an incredible calendar app that we've talked about for a long time, and it is certainly how I plan my day in terms of like I wouldn't get to any appointments anywhere at any time. It wasn't for my calendar.

06:10
That is the reason why I know what's going on, when it's going on, how it's going on, and one thing that Fantastical does is it will give you the forecast out about a week a little bit more than than a week, I think. It's about a 10-day forecast, and having that insight early on is very helpful, and I especially love that it will give you that information uh, sort of just quick, glanceable. So, for example, I can look at next wednesday and see that the forecast says a high of 70 and a low of 50 and that it is supposed to be a pretty sunny day. Now, this is helpful in some instances and unhelpful in others, whenever the forecast doesn't quite match up with what the weather is going to be, but I do love kind of just having that all there in one spot and being able to go OK, we're planning for this day.

07:04
Here's what the weather is looking like on that day. Let's make sure that everybody's got their umbrellas and that they're dressed appropriately for whatever the weather might be. So, yeah, that's another option for you, as you were kind of figuring out your day, particularly if it's later on down the line. Now there are multiple ways for being able to keep track of the weather, and we've talked about a lot of different apps. Of course, apple has improved its own weather over time with the acquisition of Dark Sky, but there are still third-party weather apps that soar, that are incredible and that are worth checking out.

07:53 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, there are, and one in particular that I want to recommend, which I personally am loving for travel and I am going to give a little hat tip to Jason Snell, who is a friend of the show, because he has recommended this and been talking about this for ages. This is Mercury Weather. So Mercury Weather has a couple of things that it can do, like show you the weather, it's got a nice display, it looks quite minimal and so on. But one of the things that I am loving it for is it's like please don't rain. Rain, but it's a little bit more advanced.

08:26
So in mercury weather, in the top right there is a globe. If I tap on the globe I can see my trip. So I've got my current trip planned so that is tomorrow and the day after to manchester and I can see what the weather is there. And I can add more trips, and I can add as many upcoming trips as I like, which is quite nice if I've been doing a bunch of travel planning. Or I just sit down and want to stick all of these in one place and then, as I look at the weather for the daily forecast, I can actually see Thursday and Friday are actually not for my home location. Thursday and Friday are Wednesday and Thursday sorry are actually for my travel location and I can tap on the little plane to change specifically everything to that. But this is really great for widgets as well, because in your widget when you look at the weather, it is the weather for where you are going to be.

09:15
On that day which means that you don't need to potentially have two widgets and be swiping between them and then you need to remember to update the second widget.

09:23
Or iOS has turned on the like auto rotate of the widgets in your stack so you're looking at it going, oh my god, it's gonna rain tomorrow, it's gonna absolutely chuck it down here, and then it doesn't, and you realize that was because you were looking at the weather for your trip next week to the UK versus where you currently are in.

09:43
I don't't know Texas, so you know it is quite nice just to have this and I personally think that this feature is really nice and Mercury Weather is a really just. It's a nice weather application. It's free to download and, you know, try the basics with it, or $14.99 a year for all of the features, including the travel planning. It also has a nice little share sheet option where it can share various sections so I can turn on and off, for example, the rain forecast, the current conditions, hourly forecast, daily forecast. I have to leave something turned on, which I personally feel is a nice feature, so you can't try and accidentally share an empty thing, which I can imagine would have caused a whole bunch of support issues. But yeah, this is just pretty nice as far as weather applications go and it's really great for planning your upcoming trips.

10:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Lovely, lovely. Now we, of course, are kind of thinking about the planning stages, right, of what the day out looks like and you may have a day coming up that you are sort of preparing for. And one thing for me, as someone who is very much an out of sight, out of mind kind of person, I need to have the reminder or the note or whatever it happens to be in front of me in order to keep it in my mind. And so physically I like to have things you know, like on a corkboard or a whiteboard or wherever. But there are ways to make your iPhone sort of that digital manifestation of your corkboard.

11:25
And I think the most powerful tool that exists to this day is made by a friend of ours and it is called WidgetSmith. And we have talked about WidgetSmith before on the show. You've probably heard of WidgetSmith before, even outside of the show, but it can be helpful in planning your day for sure. I think that you know we've seen its use as a sort of aesthetic tool to completely remake and redesign iOS, almost to a certain extent, but as a tool to just help you again keep track of things. I think it's very valuable for that as well.

12:12 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yes, it absolutely is. One of the things I love using it for is just a little countdown on my home screen of when is my next event going to be. So I have a little Widgetsmith widget right here, and one of the things that I really love about Widgetsmith is I can add a new widget and obviously there's a whole bunch of things so you can do photos. So if you stick everything in in an album called travel, then you could have a little uh, you know travel, uh snapshot, um, but I can do times and locations, and what I'm specifically looking for here is the countdown. Um, I can change the theme. So there's all sorts like venice sky is very pretty. That's terminal. If you are really missing the matrix style uh, black background with green text. There is a superhero, because everybody wants to be a superhero. There's a lovely one called signpost, which I personally, in my head, is signpost to Micah, because it is a lovely shade of dark green, and then you set your text and the date and time. If you don't, however, want to set the date and time and the text, you can just choose from the calendar and this will pop up your calendars. I'll let you pick an event. I've got a lot of events in my calendar so I'm not going to do that right now. And then you can also specify how you want the timer to display. So do you want it to be like a timer? Do you want it to be dynamic, so it'll say something like 17 hours, 23 minutes, or do you just want to show the number of days remaining, Because those are all great options to have.

13:42
So you create a little widget. You can even change the settings for this. So if the app has got a URL scheme I know I'm getting nerdy and Mike is going to go, oh, I was talking about URL schemes again Then you could open, say, for example, a particular app that's got all your trip planning information in there, or like Drafts Drafts is great for this, even has a little copy URL to draft option. Or you could open a website which is where all your travel planning stuff is, and like Notion or something, and yeah, this is a really great option to have uh, you know, a little countdown on your home screen. Um, or many more uh options and designs as well, depending on the size of the widget you choose, like they're small, medium, large. There's lock screen, um, and also, if you want, there is watchsmith so you can do the same thing as a watch. Complication too.

14:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Now, one area that to this day, still sticks out to me as one of the coolest features, I think, that have been introduced is a feature within the Maps app that lets you create custom guides. Now, I have actually used this feature in the past. A friend, the reason why I now live in Portland is because I was visiting Portland for the first time a few years ago and as part of it, someone had created a, because it was this sort of uh, everybody gets together, uh, across all of the um. It was a, it was a huge group of people, and so we had sort of all pooled money to get different Airbnbs, and then we had plans for the things that we were going to do while we were in Portland. So we needed to know where each of the Airbnbs where. We needed to know the main locations that people would be. To know where each of the Airbnbs were, we needed to know the main locations that people would be. But since then I have held on to that guide.

15:46
Now I'm not going to show that guide. I am instead going to show a guide that I have created that has some of the places that I have been in Portland that I really like or think that people would want to try. And what's cool is, after you create a guide, you can share that guide with other people and they're able to view that guide as well. So you can see it. You can see the different places that are listed. But you can also see it on a map. So you can. Right now I have, you know, a map of Portland pulled up and here you can see the multiple places and where they kind of exist across the different spectrum of Portland. Now, if I scroll through, I can see some of the different places here and choose one. But I can also, as I mentioned, hit that Share Sheet button down at the bottom and that will allow you to share it with a friend. Share it with you know whoever else happens to be coming.

16:40
It's very easy to add new locations. So if there's another place that you would want people to check out I'm trying to think of something off the top of my head then they are able to add that simply by looking for the place and hitting the plus sign next to it. Then that gets added to my Portland Places guide. You can change the image so you can add a special image for it that kind of makes it feel what you're looking for and it's just a quick and easy way to give people the ability to know where things are in a specific guide. So I really like to use this feature. I have a personal one that I just kind of add all of the main places. It's sort of like this, but it's, you know, thinking like pharmacy and dentist and doctor and those kinds of places all get added.

17:38
Because I am very much a pretty much always use my GPS, even when I know where I'm going, because it will alert me if there's, you know, a road closed or something like that sort of situation. And also I am horribly directionally challenged. So both of those things kind of help and so you know I know my exact way to go. But the second, some small thing changes. I'm like well, now I'm lost. I have no idea where I am. So I've always got the GPS running.

18:07 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I also love Maps directions for, like, you're going to get here and it's going to be closed and I'm like.

18:12
OK, that that's not great. Maybe let's not do that, then I'll go somewhere else instead. Because, yeah, in some places, if you're in the wrong area of Portland, everything closes at like 9 pm, which is not great if you are looking for somewhere to go for dinner, so you need to plan to go somewhere else. One of the things I have a love-hate relationship in guides for maps and I'm going to mention mention is the fact that when you share a guide, it is a snapshot at that point in time. So if I were to share this guide right now with five places to Micah, I can send it. Micah gets an invitation to the guide. Micah joins the guide, looks at it. I add another five places and Micah will still only see these original five. Looks at it, I add another five places and Micah will still only see these original five.

19:02
This is both good and bad. It's good because if you want to add more places to the same guide that are just like for you, you don't need to worry about other people seeing them. It's bad because if you don't realize this, you're going to be like, yeah, I put it in the guide and people are going to be like, no, I don't see it. What are you talking about? Are you sure you did it? And then you start hallucinating and wondering whether or not you actually did it. Um, so, yeah, just remember, if you are sharing a link to a guide, it is a snapshot at that point in time, um, because otherwise, yeah, you might start wondering if you're going crazy. And the answer is possibly, but also it's probably just guides is not sharing updates, and I really wish they had an option where you could share it dynamically and so it would follow along with the updates, but sadly that's not really an option.

19:46 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I wish that was the case too, that the guides would stay updated. Maybe that's a feature we'll see down the line. Uh, as we get closer to WDC, that's the one I'd like to have. That's what I should. Anytime someone's like what do you want them to add? Uh, yeah, let's have uh guides, that that sort of refresh over time.

20:07
Um, all right, one of the most popular apps for people who need more than what a simple map app is going to provide, and this is where we talk about apps that are purpose-built to do one thing and do one thing incredibly well CityMapper, the transit app for everything. And I shouldn't even, I guess. If we yeah, if we loosely define transit as just getting around, then this is absolutely the app for you. It does so much with public transportation, walking, cycling, scootering. For those who are scootering around, it's awesome, and I have used it in the past because I mentioned before being sort of directionally challenged. I get nervous about using when I would visit San Francisco using public transit options and then getting very confused very easily about when I'm supposed to get off of the public transit to make sure to get to the next place. This thing will be like hey, you need to get off now or, you know, get ready to get off. It's coming up. As opposed to me looking at the thing that's, you know, scrolling by the marquee and going is this where?

21:32 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I get up, I'm not sure, yeah, and then they say schedule instead of schedule and you're just totally thrown because it's a different pronunciation of the place name than you were expecting. Yeah, yeah.

21:43 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That too.

21:45 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
What I really love about CityMapper is the way that A you can just choose from all of the options so you can actually, in the settings, if you are so inclined, do things like change your map dot and your city and so on, and then you can also just have preferences for the way that you travel between places. So I am just going to put in that I'm going from. Let me swap that around, so I'm now going to and from the same place. So I'm traveling from Paddington Station in London to London St Packard's International Station, which is a journey that I have done many times and I do know how it works. But what I really like about this is, you know, it tells you which entrance to use for things like the subway and so on, because some subway stations are massive. If you have a line, it usually goes in two directions, like it could be going north and south or east and west, and you don't just want somebody to say you need the red line, you need somebody to say you need the red line going northbound or southbound. I also really like the fact that it recommends that you be at the back of the train versus the front of the train, because that's less busy and so if the platform is super crowded you may not be able to get down to that end, but you know, it gives you an idea of where is going to potentially have more space.

23:03
And what I really like is when I put in that little overview or that little thing at the top, I can immediately see okay, walking is going to take me 50 minutes, taking a bike is going to take me 20 minutes, scootering is going to take 27 minutes and a taxi is going to cost me at least 13 pounds and take 34 minutes. And then I can see the public transport options. It's like, okay, a taxi is going to cost 13 pounds and take 34 minutes, or a bus is going to take 34 minutes and be 1 pound 75. I I know which one of those two I would go for. Personally, I'd actually use the tube. Uh, just because you're not going to get stuck in a traffic jam. And if you're going to King's Cross, st Pancras International Station, then you might be getting Eurostar to another country and you don't want to be late for that. So, yeah, I just really like this. I like the fact that it warns you before you're going to be doing a change if there is a change involved.

23:54
And yeah, there's options at the bottom where you can specify hey, I need step three, which is really great for accessibility, or I need trains, or maybe I don't need step three, but I have reduced mobility and therefore I would like to walk less, please. Or, you know, I want mixed options, or I want a simple option, like I'm happy to walk a bit further at each end and then just take one train in the middle which, on this particular journey, isn't Turbo. It's going to sort it by fastest first, which would be bicycle Interesting. If you have a suitcase, good luck. I hear the Dutch are very good at that. And then it also has the option to sort by price, which obviously puts walking and your own bicycle first, because those would be free. So, yeah, I really love City Mapper. I also love the fact that my little icon in it is a bee, and I get to be a busy bee going about my day as I'm buzzing around doing whatever I'm doing with City Mapper.

24:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Love City Mapper, yeah, and I think we can round things out here in our app section by talking about, you know, making sure that while you're this happens to me a lot I plan for a day out, right, and I'm out and about and I come to the end of the day and I am exhausted, I am worn down, I am sleepy and I'm going. You know, I didn't really do all that much. What's going on? And then I realize, a I haven't fed myself all day and, b I look at my sort of statistics and I see that, oh, actually, you have done quite a bit today.

25:41
Look at how many flights of stairs you climbed, how many steps you've taken, how many calories you burned and you didn't put anything into your body. Why do you think your body is tired, dear fool? Yeah, so is there a way, rosemary, that I could maybe keep better track of? Uh, you know the activity that I'm doing, such that I could use that to kind of remind myself oh no, your body's working as designed. You just aren't doing what you need to do to let your body work as designed.

26:16 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, I recently had this mic. I was on a little trip to Glasgow and for some reason it didn't occur to me that Glasgow, a city in Scotland, would be hilly. I don't know why it did not occur to me. I really should have been able to do. A plus B equals lots of hills. So over the weekend that I was there on the first set on the first day, the Saturday, I did 28,091 steps. I climbed 24 flights of stairs and on average, like calculated, I walked 19.4 kilometers. That is a lot and if I just pop into the settings I can change that over to miles and I'll just scroll back in time and I can tell you I walked 12.1 miles that first day. Second day was a little bit more relaxed 16,599 steps, uh. 15 flights of stairs, 7.1 miles, uh. Is anybody surprised to know that? I got home and was like I am dead from this because I was tired and this is pedometer plus plus. Uh, so it.

27:20
For some reason, my steps yesterday today have really not been tracking, so I need to check into why that is. I have a feeling I just forgot to put on my Apple watch for most of the day, which would definitely do that, but this pulls in all the data from Apple health, so it doesn't matter if you are wearing an Oura ring or an Apple watch or you know any other kind of like fitness tracker like. I've got a xiaomi one here. I have the visible um polo tracker. You know, whatever you're using, as long as it syncs into the health app. You can get that data here into pedometer plus, plus um, and then, uh, you can see your trends. Um, uh, if you are premium, then you can see your trends. If you are premium, then you can see your trends over weeks and months. But for free you can see your trends over the year and apparently this year.

28:05
So far I am not doing as well on steps. However, I'd like to point out, it's only the beginning of June as this episode releases. It's the end of May as we record this. So I think you know I'll probably be able to catch up. I feel like I'm doing pretty well because I feel like I'm over halfway through my steps from last year already. So, yeah, I really love this.

28:27
There is the ability to export your data. You can do a little share, so I could share a little image with Mike if I was feeling competitive. And I'd like to point out that my step count is you know, it's trending upwards at the moment, this year um, which I feel like is pretty good. Uh, I'm pretty pleased with that um, but, yeah, it has all the options for things and it's a free app to download, um, and if you want to get all of those extra features, it is very affordable, as, uh, all of david and scrosssmith's options are um, it is $1.99 a month, um, and I believe it is $20 a year um.

29:02
It depends on what promotions and so on are available, but it's just a really great app. There's badges, all sorts in there. So, yeah, make sure that you keep an eye on pedometer plus plus, if you are out and about doing a lot of walking, if you are going to one of those theme parks for the day, like Disney or Universal, don't forget comfortable shoes, plenty of water and keep an eye on your steps. You can add a widget or a watch complication to something that is right in front of your face all the time just to keep you aware of how much exercise you are really doing. And also, please, don't forget your SPF.

29:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That is a very important point. That is a very important point. So, folks, that is a list of apps that we like to use for planning a day out. As always, I remind you, if you'd like to tell us about the apps that you use, ios Today at twittv is how you can get in touch. We would love to hear from you on the apps that you think are great, that we may have missed or, you know, following up to say, hey, I also love that app and here's how I use it, in a different way than maybe you thought. All of that is delicious and we love to hear about it. I am really excited for our next segment because I get to say, well, yes, I've been using something for a little while now to help test it out and uh, yeah, without further ado, let's get to the news segment. All right, rosemary orchard, you have some news to give us. Tell us, uh, tell us what's going on. I don't even want to give too much, uh, intro. I want you to kind of do you, do you?

30:40 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Okay, well, as this episode records, we are a little ahead of time, so the app is not yet out, but when this episode releases, there will be a new medication tracker available on iOS, iphone and iPad, which is called Capsule, and this is an app that I've been working on with my friends, a company called Snailed it, because we nail it slowly, and that is very true with Capsule. It has been in the works for quite some time, but the idea is it's just a little medication tracker. It's designed to be easier to use than Health and have more features than the Health app does, because, for example, you can just open the app and straight away add a medication. You don't need to go dig around for the medications area of the health app. So I could add something, and I need to see Micah every Tuesday. This is very important to me, and so I'm going to change the color of this to green, because that is Micah and I'm going to. You know, maybe I'll pick a person. Rather, there we go. Micah looks very enthusiastic there waving his arms, um, and I'll just add a schedule and I'm just gonna set this to every Tuesday, uh, because I see Micah most Tuesdays, and I'll just change that back to 5 pm, because that's the usual time that we record at and there we go. I can say that this repeats indefinitely, or until a specific date, or just for a number of doses, which is ideal. If you get prescribed something for like 10 tablets or 20 tablets, or you just get prescribed something for a week, I can say, hey, I don't want to overdo this. Like I love Micah, micah's amazing. However, I probably shouldn't see Micah like more than once an hour. That that might be a bit much. So I can set a minimum dose interval here, um, which I'm not going to do because I can see micro as often as I like um and uh.

32:32
I also have the ability to customize the medications for just the notifications for justice medication, um. So I can say, hey, do I wanna be notified when my medication is due now, when my medication becomes available. So if that's got the minimum dose interval, then that's very important. Do I want repeat notifications, for example, like due when it goes? Hey, did you do the thing, did you do the thing? You can have those in capsule as well, and all of these can be customized in capsule as well, and all of these can be customized per medication as well as globally. I can turn on whether or not I want time-sensitive notifications and also whether or not I want to show the name of the medication in my notifications, which could be a really important privacy feature for those of you who are taking medications that other people may feel sensitively about. You shouldn't feel sensitively about them, but if you want to keep yourself safe, then that is an option for you too.

33:25
So I'll just add this and I can see that this is next to you in six days and 23 hours. I'm going to log that. I have seen Micah. Now I can't take Micah. That would be very dodgy. I can't take Micah. That would be very dodgy. But yeah, I can add notes. I definitely tapped the wrong thing there because that was not supposed to happen. So inside of Micah, I can add notes, so I can just say hello and save that, and then these all get added to your log as timestamped notes.

33:58
And this could be really useful if you're taking painkillers or, for example, maybe you're not doing this for you, maybe you're adding a tag, maybe you're adding a tag for your dog or for your child and you're logging medication for them. Then you could specify hey, I gave my child, you know, painkillers because their left ear was hurting versus their right ear was hurting. Or I gave my dog this because the vet recommended it at this particular time of the year, because my dog apparently has allergies and the plants are trying to kill my dog as well as myself, because that could happen. I know Micah has aware of this, being the owner of two dogs, that you have to look after your pets, and so, yeah, this, this is capsule. It's got a history view so you can see everything there.

34:45
You can archive your medications, um and uh. Yeah, it's got the option to export all of your data, get some statistics and so on. Overall, and, yeah, it is a medication tracker. Uh, it's free for uh, two, and then, if you want more than that, if you want tags, nagging, notifications and so on, at the moment we have an introductory offer where it's $12.99 a year and then after about a month it'll be going up to $14.99 a year. So, yeah, if you would like to try the medication tracker, you can download it and give it a whirl. And, yeah, if you really like it, then please subscribe.

35:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's funny you mentioned the dog thing, because my first use of this app to test it was with some medication for one of my dogs, so they happened to sort of coincide at this. Well, they happened to coincide and so I set up M mizzy with a, you know, notification reminder for myself, and it was very handy, uh, for that. So, yes, everybody check it out, and I'm looking forward to the app making its way onto the app store officially. Again, as we are recording this, it's not there yet, but will be soon. Very exciting. All righty folks, this now is the time where we round out the show with our app caps, our app or gadget picks of the week, and I will kick things off with my app cap next, and I will kick things off with my app cap next. All right, my app cap is an app I've been using for quite a while now. That for some might be a little boring and I think, may have been a Rosemary Orchard pick in the past, but it is like I open the show notes and what?

36:35 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
you stole my app. But that's OK, because that just means that I've shared it with somebody else who loves it.

36:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, so this is an app called Secure Shellfish, and what Secure Shellfish does is it works as an SSH system on your phone or on your iPad, or even on your Mac, and gives you the ability to connect to servers SSH style. Those can be cloud servers or local servers, and so, in my case, I use it locally whenever my Homebridge instance, which is the tool, the set of tools that I have to add third party non-HomeKit devices to my HomeKit home. If it's ever giving me issues or it's not working as I expect, then I am able to use this to actually gain access to the HomeBridge Raspberry Pi, and so right now, I've just tapped on Homebridge and I connect with it over SSH and I am here and I can do whatever I want, which, from this screen, would be something like, you know, updating Homebridge. Now, what's cool about it is, if you have network attached storage or you have other sort of local devices or, again, cloud servers and you want to connect to those over ssh, you're able to do that as well. And then, on top of that, it also works with the files app. It has a files app integration that gives you the ability to access the file system and, essentially, the directory on your server. So for Homebridge, I could browse that in the files app. But more so what I use it for is I have network attached storage that I normally would have here, but I haven't opened it up in a while and so it's not here.

38:42
Secure Shellfish is awesome too, because it will sync across devices. It can hold onto SSH keys for you and make sure that that's all available, help you set up new SSH keys if you want to, and it's just it kind of gets out of the way, and I love an app that gets out of the way when I need it to get out of the way. It is available to try for free. The monthly subscription is $2.99. The annual subscription is $14.99, and you can just pay $34.99 to unlock it for the rest of your life. So one-time purchase there.

39:16
But I have found this to be a really easy-to to use tool for accessing your servers via SSH, and I think it's just really nifty. So I that's the reason I'm bringing it back up again, despite it having been mentioned in the past by Rosemary. So be sure to check it out, because I use it relatively regularly, more so on the files side, and that's why, again, you're not seeing the one server showing up there. All right, that is my app, cap. Rosemary, tell us about yours, which, who knows, maybe a year or two down the line will be something that I'm mentioning again because it's pretty cool I mean, I have to say folks, full disclosure.

40:10 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I put this in the show notes before the show. After going, micah stole my app. I was genuinely considering talking about secure shellfish today. So thanks for that, micah, love you too, um, but, but, um, yeah, so I put another one in and then micah got distracted before the show started, setting this up to play with it.

40:26
Because if you ever had a tamagotchi uh, you know back in the 90s or anything similarly, that there's an app called hatchie for the iphone, um, then you'll be familiar with the idea of having a little digital creature that you care for, you feed and you look after it. And there is another one in town, but this one is very oriented towards self-care and it's called Finch. And so I've just opened the app, after having not opened it for probably like three hours or so, and it's giving me a little daily reminder nourish the things that matter to you. And it's asking me how I'm feeling. So am I feeling, you know, very sad, somewhat sad, neutral, happy or very happy? I'm going to go with very happy because I'm recording iOS today and then I have one goal left today. I have completed a lot of my goals today and I just need to clean the bedsheets which actually believe it or not folks so proud of myself. I did this before the show. I just didn't check it off because I wanted to have something to check off. So there is, for the eagle-eyed of you who are watching the screen, five and a lightning bolt next to the check mark, and that means that this is going to give my finch, who is called Daffy, short for daffodil five, lots of energy. So I do this and, ta tada, I have completed all of my hygiene goals.

41:44
I can have a little chat, uh, with daffy, and daffy is very excited looking at all the sites. Um, and I get to give daffy two choices keep waddling around and discover more things, or the more you waddle, the stronger you'll get, um, so you know, do I want my, my little uh finch to be curious or strong? And I'm gonna go with curious. I could also write my own response, um, but yes, daffy has gained five curiosity. I feel so proud of myself for guessing that. That's what that was. Um, but uh, yes, uh, daffy's off to find some new things. Um, and it looks like daffy has found an egg, which is very exciting.

42:21
So my Daffy is currently dressed as a koala, because there are quests where you can collect things and you get points. Points mean shopping virtually for things. You can add friends. I have not added friends. You can get micro pets, and so if I make my bed every day, then I'm going to get a little micro pet and, yeah, there's all sorts of cute little things going on. I personally think this is an adorable way to build habits. It is cute, it's fun. You can download and use the app for free. If you would like to get a little bit more out of Finch, then it has a subscription offer for $40 a year, but you can use the app for free. So I would definitely recommend giving it a try, checking it out, and you never know, you may also be able to dress your Finch as a purple koala, because that seemed like a very sensible thing for me to do with my time over the last couple of days.

43:31 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think this app is super cool and adorable and I'm looking forward to earning low points for my Finch to improve upon it and also my own self-care Fun. Fun app Well worth checking out. Delightful, even Folks. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of iOS Today, I want to remind you all out there about Club Twit twittv, slash, club twit.

43:53
When you join the club, monthly or yearly, you get access to some pretty awesome benefits. Every single one of our shows is available to you 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 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 those of us here at Twit. And access to that little special place in your heart, that warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you're helping support the stuff we do here on the network. We would love, love, love to have you in the club, so consider joining Again. Twittv slash club twit Rosemary Orchard. If people want to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing. Where should they go to do so?

44:42 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, the best place to go is rosemaryorchardcom, which has links to apps, books, podcasts and more, as well as all the social media sites. But you can also find me in the Club Twit Discord, where we have a special iOS Today area with threads for every single episode and a general chitchat one, and also sometimes people join us during the live stream as we record, which is always great fun. Micah, where can folks find you?

45:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
If you're looking to follow me online, I'm at Micah Sargent on many a social media network, or 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 online. Look forward to seeing you somewhere on the interwebs and we will catch you next time. Bye, bye.