iOS Today 782 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.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on iOS today, the app Store Awards are here and Rosemary, Orson and I talk about the apps that you should be checking out. Stay tuned.

Rosemary Orchard [00:00:13]:
Podcasts you love from people you trust.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:17]:
This is twit. This is iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard and me, Micah Sargent. Episode 782 recorded Tuesday, December, December 9, 2025 for Thursday, December 18, 2025 App Store Awards Apps hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, iPados, WatchOS, HomePod, OS and all the other OSes that Apple has to offer. This is the show where we talk about apps and settings, gadgets, gizmos and everything in between to help you make the most of your devices. I am one of your hosts, but one of your hosts. My name is Micah Sargent.

Rosemary Orchard [00:01:04]:
My name is Rosemary Orchard and I am but one of your hosts as well. But hey, I think we're going to have an awarding time today, I guess. Sorry, I meant amazing.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:15]:
I like it. Yes, we every year I think, do our best to make sure that we talk about the end of the year App Store Awards. Now, as we've talked about before, these are different from the awards that Apple hands out at its Worldwide Developers Conference. At that conference, Apple hands out awards to to developers who create using the tools that Apple provides in clever ways, creative ways, et cetera. These apps and games are kind of the standout creations in 2025 that have taken the App Store by storm. And I'm really pleased with this year's. There aren't many sort of gigantic corporations being mentioned as much. And I kind of like that because it puts the focus on a lot of these really cool apps that are there.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:10]:
So when it comes to this, Apple is kind of looking at a list of apps that are chosen by App Store editors. And so these get selected from a list of 45 finalists as the kind of final pick. Tim Cook said, every year we're inspired by the ways developers turn their their best ideas into innovative experiences that enrich people's lives. This year's winners represent the creativity and excellence that define the App Store and they demonstrate the meaningful impact that world class apps and games have on people everywhere. So without further ado, we're going to start by talking about the apps that were selected by editors and that starts with an app called Timo, or it could be Taimo, I honestly don't know. But it's not Temu, which of course is a different thing. In this case, it is an app that is all about helping you keep track of your tasks and it does so with AI a little bit involved, but it's mostly about kind of trying to help kind of keep your day planned and doing so with neurodivergence in mind. And I think that's why it is so.

Mikah Sargent [00:03:37]:
So it's getting a lot of praise is because of that. It is, I would say, arguably a bit of a trend this year to create apps that do have neurodivergence in mind. But, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. That simply means that it is an app that is paying attention to a category that's getting a lot of attention right now. And I quite like that. So when it comes to this app, you are able to kind of kick things off with the 30 day trial afterward. You will need to either pay, I think it's $54 a year or $12 a month and in that time you'll have access to, you know, all of those extra fe. But what's cool about this, I think Rosemary is the fact that it's a bit of a.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:32]:
It's not just a calendar, it's not just a to do list. It does both and it does them in kind of a non judgmental, almost soothing, if I might say way that I think is really kind of interesting.

Rosemary Orchard [00:04:46]:
Yes. One of the things that I really like that they have added to the app is the ability when you add a task. So I could put something in, like I'll put laundry and I've already got laundry on here. Then what you can actually do is if you pop into the task or at least when I was setting things up. There we go. I was able to actually break it down using AI, which I thought was a really nice idea because there are some things where like just dishes that's self explanatory. Right. But there are days where especially as somebody who's neurodivergent, I would like to be able to check off empty dishwasher, load dishwasher, run dishwasher as tasks because they are all individual step and I can do those separately.

Rosemary Orchard [00:05:31]:
You know, like I can empty the dishwasher while I'm making breakfast and I can load the dishwasher after breakfast and then I can run the dishwasher after my morning meeting when I've finished my glass of juice and put that all in. And you know, that makes more sense to me than just dishwasher because otherwise it's like I started it but I haven't finished it. And I like the way that you have, you know, the ability to, you know, specify that you can, you want to break it down and that you can use AI to help with that. Something like pack for trip, one of those things like it, you need to break that down. So some things, you know, maybe you don't need to break down things like dishwasher or dishes, but sometimes it's really useful to be able to do that, especially if you've got, you know, like spring clean my bedroom as a task that, you know, I'm aware that for most people on the planet it's currently winter or summer. It is not spring. But regardless of that, you know, you can pick whatever season you like to, to do a deep clean of a room. But, but being able to break that down and having AI suggest the steps for that is really good because it's easier said than done at times to break things down.

Rosemary Orchard [00:06:37]:
I like the fact that it's got a focus mode, so you can see here it's pulled in my calendar. So I can see that I've got a ballet that starts in two and a half hours or so. And I'm actually just using the free version of this. I'm not using Taimo T MO Pro. And yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's pretty great. I, I'm, I've been enjoying, I've been playing with it for a couple of weeks again because I always like to try out different planner apps in advance of the new year. And yeah, I, I'm feeling like this is a fun app to, you know, use to combine your task and calendar because some people do really like having all things in one view with a little bit of extra help from other places.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:18]:
Yeah, I'm with you when it comes to the sort of. There's a level of fun that comes with this and so it's very visual, it's very sort of energetic and you do get some little pops of joy when you are completing the different tasks. And I think that that part makes it interesting and engaging. And so I'm not surprised to see this on the list. It's one that, I'll be honest, I had not heard about it until. Or no, I'm sorry, I take that back. It's the NEC app that we'll be talking about that I guess I had not checked out, but this one, Yes, I went to go get it again or to go get it so that I could make sure I knew kind of what was involved and everything else. And I saw the little cloud icon which told me that, oh, I have actually downloaded this app in the past and that I would continue or that I would be getting it again.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:15]:
So I have used it before. I think when it comes to these kinds of apps, one thing that's important for me is an app that doesn't require too much initial setup. And I think I felt that the app had. It felt a bit involved at first and like I couldn't just kind of get into it. But if you can get past that, if you can get into it, I think that you'll be impressed with what's possible, especially because of the fact that you are able to as, as the app puts it, brain dump all of your plans. So you can kind of chat with a little built in assistant and say, these are all the things that I need to get done and have those all get popped into those tasks as separate tasks that make a lot of sense. And for me, that is kind of how I think about the day at the start of the day. And when I find myself starting to get anxious about the day, it is often because I need to get my tasks out of my head and onto a piece of paper, in this case a piece of digital paper so that I can go, oh, I actually don't have all that much to do today.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:25]:
I thought I had a lot more to do today. So I think that that's one of the really special parts of it for sure. So that is Taimo Timo, the AI Planner and to do list. It is available in the app store free with those in app purchases. That is the first one on the list. The next one on the list is. So that was the iPhone app of the year. The iPad app of the year is Detail.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:55]:
And Detail is an app for editing video, as Detail puts it. It's the vlog shorts and reels maker. And it starts out with the ability to edit a reaction video, record a script. You can import video, you can set up a talking head which is basically you facing the camera. But you can also edit a podcast or create a podcast video where you have two different people invol and it is an iPad video editing app and it is really about creating video kind of in the moment. So here we are in detail and you can see that I have the video window open and I can go ahead and hit the record button and start speaking and create some little video here and then we'll stop. Now with this, we are able to import video over the top. We can auto edit it, which will kind of do zoom cuts, it will add a title, it'll add captions, it'll even add Background music automatically.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:03]:
You can have the language change based on what you're doing. I'm curious because I didn't do. You know what, let me do one more take. So we've got that take now let me do another take here. And now we're switching to this and I'm saying this and I'm moving over here and look how my hands move like this just to see what happens. Whenever. Now we do the auto edit of it all. We'll tap, continue.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:29]:
It's going to analyze the audio and of course it's going to make use of the, you know, the processing power of whatever iPad you're using. So, you know, if you've got kind of a faster, well, powered iPad, then it's possible that this could happen rather quickly. Now this is remaining at 0%, so it might take a minute. But think about the time that it takes if you were going through and kind of. Because right now it's basically just transcribing the audio that I just spoke out loud. But this, the idea for this is that if you kind of aren't. There you go, 33%. If you're not a big video editor, if you don't really know everything that's involved with video editing, this kind of helps to make that happen a little bit easier.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:14]:
So you can use it to have a little teleprompter on screen. You can set up different edits. So here we go. So we've got the, we've got different options here. The minimal edit, the hand movement demo, the video creation demo, and then it also creates some shorts out of it as well. So if we tap on the hand movement demo, let's just see what this looks like. And now we're switching to this. And I'm saying this.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:40]:
And so over here it's speaking like this. And it just used that second cut of, of what I did. So again, if I were to pop in some video that actually was real video that I was trying to create, I could see how detail could be very good for that. It is a pricey if you, you know, don't do this regularly, but if you are regularly creating video and you take a lot of time, this could end up saving you some time. Especially with the fact that as I showed you, it has those exports for you. So yearly it's $70 and then monthly it's $12. So for $70 a year you can end up having this automatic video editor that will save you some time on editing. Not surprised to see this as the iPad app of the year, given the fact that so many people are creating podcasts these days, video podcasts especially, and are creating, you know, little clips and things to share as well.

Mikah Sargent [00:13:46]:
So that's detail for the iPad. Quick mention this is a. Oh, go ahead.

Rosemary Orchard [00:13:52]:
I just wanted to mention this is a really cool app because I was talking to a friend the other day and he was saying he's got hours of family video because the dad would just leave the camcorder recording and, you know, there might be good stuff in there, there might not be. And so when this actually came up in the App Store review, I recommended that he give this a go and just pay the $70 because it's cheaper than paying somebody else to go through hundreds of hours of footage to try and find, you know, the good bits. And he's actually had some really good results with it. So I'm really pleased about that because it's, you know, this is really awesome for, you know, editing videos. If you're not that creative necessarily, or even if you are creative, it just gives you a starting point of a perspective you might not have seen before.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:34]:
Absolutely. Today I'm actually going to do a thing that we don't normally do, which is I'm going to mention the Mac OS picks. So the Mac pick this year is an app called Essayist. And Essayist is just an app that wants to help people who are writing essays. And by that I mean it will sort of create text that is made to be used in academic settings. So you know that you are kind of following a proper style and format. But it does a lot of the citation work for you, I think any person. So most people I'm talking to who have gone through for us high school level classes have had to write essays.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:21]:
And then of course you do it again in college or university. And it is always matter of making sure that you get your citations correct, otherwise you're in trouble. And then it leads to an issue where you are getting marked down on your grade because you didn't have the proper information in there. So given that, I think that this is a really cool app for being able to keep keep track of what you're writing, what references you're making, and kind of make sure that you've got it all in there. So it automatically creates a bibliography, it has citations and footnotes, it can pop in equations so that those properly show up as they're supposed to. And it also ties in with Google Scholar so that if you use Google Scholar as part of your citation method, then it's a lot easier. Even easier than the other way to do those citations. Really cool app.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:24]:
And also free with in app purchases as well. Again, it's one of these where I go, man, I really wish I had this when I was in school. I think I used ezbib.com was was my method if I remember. It's it's easy bib something.

Rosemary Orchard [00:16:42]:
But Zotero, which some people might remember because that was a free citation management software, you could import all of your text texts and put your quotes and everything in there and then export a bibliography which was really handy except you know, like it was clunky because this was early 2010s.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:00]:
So my neighbor Zotero. All right, so that's essayist for the Mac. There's also a very important category for Apple at least, which is the Apple Vision Pro. And this year's Apple Vision Pro app of the year is called Explore pov. This is an app that has immersive video built into it and takes you to different locations. It's got a bunch of content that's been added over time. It does 180°3D videos using now the Blackmagic Ursa immersive camera. There's French Polynesia.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:44]:
There's jungles and volcanoes, alpine meadows, golden sand beaches, cascading waterfalls. I mean so many different options here of places that you can Visit with these 180 degree videos that have been shot with the, you know, most recent technology. I think it's always cool to see content apps popping up on the Apple Vision Pro that are not just Apple's own because it means that content creators can make stuff for the Apple Vision Pro, which was kind of an issue early on. Right. And so it's nice that that that's out there. So that is again Explore pov, the app that is available for free with in app purchases in the App Store. Have you heard the Good news? The 2026 TWIT Audience Survey is live. Yes, it's that time again.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:44]:
We use the survey to help us understand a little bit more about what you like, what you want, what you don't want, what you think of our shows. It's super quick, super easy and it's open now at Twit T. So please take a moment to fill it out before mid January. That's when it closes. Thank you so much for helping us grow. Next on the list, Rosemary, if you want to tell us a little bit about Strava.

Rosemary Orchard [00:19:12]:
Yes, I would love to. However, I'm not really a walker or A runner or a cyclist. So I delegated this to some people at work because one of them was crazy enough to run 18km a couple of weeks ago. And first of all, we have sent him for evaluations just to make sure he's okay. He's seeing a physiotherapist on a regular basis, so he's fine. But he would like to say he loves Strava and it's great, which is fabulous because it, you know, it's, it's, it's one, you know, app of the year on Apple Watch. And so if you are a cyclist, you're a walker, a runner, hiker, you can do other things in here as well, like yoga and so on. I found that for my personal kind of ballet barre class.

Rosemary Orchard [00:19:55]:
It doesn't work perfectly just because my class is weird, but I have used this previously where I've been doing yoga and Pilates classes. And it's just really great for tracking sport movement. And also that sort of the bonus effect you get, especially if you are the sort of person who likes sharing these things with friends, of having other people go, woo, you did the thing. Because you can see each other's information and see the wins that people are, are getting. And that is very motivational for a lot of people. So especially, you know, as this episode, it's, I believe, our last episode of the year. This year, if you're looking going, you know, I feel like maybe I should start doing a bit more exercise next year. Strava is going to be one to check out because it has challenges built in so that you can, you know, participate in monthly global challenges.

Rosemary Orchard [00:20:42]:
And also it has things like location sharing tied into your exercise size as well. Which I know if you're an iOS family, you've got check in and things like that built into messages. But if there's somebody in your life who's an Android user, then Strava is, fortunately for you, cross platform. So you can actually share that information with all sorts of friends and families. And there's quite a few workplaces out there that do exercise based challenges as well. And a lot of them do hook into Strava to export the data from there, which is really great. And so it's nice to be able to go back and look at the routes that you've done and all those things. If you're, if you're a runner or something, you know, where exactly was I running? It was kind of dark and I don't really know.

Rosemary Orchard [00:21:22]:
But I'm home now and I've had my shower and oh, that's where I went. Cool. It's nice to be able to find all that information out and see, you know, exactly how well you did because, you know, exercise in general is good for you. So it's always nice to be able to get some extra data out of it if that's going to help motivate you.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:39]:
Absolutely. I also think I'm not surprised to see a fitness app as the Apple Watch app of the year. Apple continues to really make the Apple watch this primarily health device. And I think that that is communicated with the company's, you know, statement by choosing a fitness app as the pick for the year, that of course all of these apps are free iap, meaning they're free with in app purchases. The last one on the for the picks is for the Apple tv and that is the HBO Max app. Now, when it comes to Apple TV apps, honestly, it's a little bit difficult, I think, to sort of decide what ends up getting it because these are supposed to be just kind of apps that fall into the background, right? They're just there so you can click on something to watch what you want to watch. And so I don't have much to say about the HBO Max app, except I'm happy with the most recent redesign because before that, scrolling through the content would actually make me physically ill. It used to be the way that there was like just enough of a delay as you swiped that it was causing me motion sickness.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:09]:
So I was really happy that they redesigned the HBO Max app because now I can scroll through the, you know, pics and not get sick looking at them. So that's what I have to say about the Apple TV app of the year. There are some great shows that are available on HBO Max, some great content that's available on HBO Max. So it's well worth checking out for that. Now you'd think we'd be done because we named each of the categories iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch, and Apple TV TV. But as is the case every year, Apple also chose some cultural impact winners. This is what Apple says. In addition to recognizing apps and games across Apple devices, App Store editors selected six cultural impact winners for their ability to drive meaningful change.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:57]:
These apps and games are recognized for their positive impact, providing users with helpful tools promoting, understanding and shaping a more inclusive world. The cultural impact apps this year we won't go into great depth about them are first, Be My Eyes. We've talked a lot about Be My Eyes on the show Love Be My Eyes. It is an app that helps people with low or no vision get in touch with human beings who will help them with different activities. So for example, I got a call on Be My Eyes from someone who just needed to figure out what I think it was like a vitamin supplement, what was written on the bottle. And so I was able to read the bottle out to them. And then there was another time where someone needed to ask about the color of a shirt. And so I was able to give them that information to let them know what color the shirt was that they had picked up.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:51]:
And so people who need the help are able to call and people who want to volunteer are able to do so too. The numbers are always climbing. The screenshot from Apple shows 920,675. So just under people with low or no vision who are on the app. Meanwhile, There are nearly 10 million volunteers available at the ready. I love it. The next one is Focus Friend. This is made by Hank green, the popular YouTube guy, brother of the the author.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:28]:
And this is an app that is about gamifying focus so that you can kind of stay focused with a little friend that you have, a little bean friend. And then last but not least is storygraph. And storygraph is kind of like, oh goodness, the popular book. I can't think of what it's called now. Goodreads. It's like Goodreads, but it is stepping away from the kind of book community that's very corporate and not so inclusive and tries to be more inclusive. So you can check out Storyground graph as well. Those are our App Store awards winners for apps.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:11]:
And now it's time to move along to the news. All right, here we are in the news section and Rosemary, is it true there's been some corporate shakeup? What's going on with Apple's leadership?

Rosemary Orchard [00:26:26]:
Yeah, everything's moving. They are playing the kids party game over here in the UK known as the Okie Coke where you know, some people go in, some people go out. There's a bit of a door situation apparently going on. And yeah, so there is going to be a new senior vice president and as of next year Jennifer Newstead, Kate Adams is retiring and Lisa Jackson, who is often known I believe as the woman on the roof by the solar panels because that's usually where she is whenever Apple do their, their announcement videos for product releases, iOS releases, etc that you know, she is also leaving Apple and retiring. So yeah, there is going to be quite a bit of a shake up. There's also been some other movement with design and Things like that. There's a lot of things going on over at Apple at the moment, but I think it's probably going to be a good thing. I mean it's.

Rosemary Orchard [00:27:28]:
Well that those things, we can't change it. We are just customers of the company. As much as we might feel like they are our friends, they are a large corporation, they have to do what's right for them. But it's. Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting seeing all the things that come out of Apple next year and especially as their calendar, their, their, their, their financial calendar runs a little bit differently to other people's. So I believe the quarter that we're currently in is their first quarter of the year. So see seeing the results of that in nine months. Well, you know, is there going to be a little Apple baby? Probably not, but there might be some differences with how things function.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:07]:
Little Apple baby is hilarious. So there you go. Also, despite the fact that there were some reports that Apple Fitness plus was not doing so hot and was kind of like a loss leader for the company, the program is expanding to 28 new markets. Apple Fitness plus is the fitness service, or streaming service I guess would be the best way to put it. That has loads of different fitness content that you can participate in. It's got hiit, it's got yoga, it's got all sorts of stuff, strength training. And it is expanding to Chile, Hong Kong, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan, much more. And it's also adding dubbing in Spanish, German and Japanese.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:01]:
So more fitness available to more people. And I think people will be very happy to hear that there's a new genre being added to Apple Fitness plus and that is K Pop. Given the popularity of K Pop, I think there will be a lot of people who'll be happy that that has made it to the.

Rosemary Orchard [00:29:23]:
My biggest question is, are we going to get K Pop Demon Hunter soundtracks for all of the different exercises? Because I kind of need that. That, that will be amazing. Thank you very much. I, I feel like golden in particular going up, up, up. You know, that could be used in different ways.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:38]:
Oh, that would be very.

Rosemary Orchard [00:29:41]:
So yeah, I'm really excited by this actually. I didn't think I was a fan of K pop and then I watched K Pop Demon Hunters and fell down a rabbit hole and whoops. But yeah, Time to Walk is expanding. Cynthia Eo from Working, Naomi Campbell, Shawn Mendes, all sorts of people, including Yuki Tsunoda, Formula one Driver, have added their own Time to Walk. I don't know what to call them episodes. It's audio experiences. But yeah, it does say latest episode. There we go.

Rosemary Orchard [00:30:15]:
So yes, but yeah, there's new meditation themes, all sorts. So if you have have not checked out Apple Fitness plus recently and you have an Apple one subscription, this should be a really good reminder to go and re poke at the videos because if you're already paying for it, you're getting it for free. Take advantage and have a look at what's there.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:34]:
I agree. Yeah, don't, don't let that just go to waste. At least give it a try. Check it out because I've found some, some stuff in there that I thought oh, I actually I'm enjoying this so it's worth at least checking out. Out. Alrighty folks, wait. Are you ready to grow in 2026? Let me tell you why advertising on Twit is the way to make that happen. I'm Micah Sargent.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:01]:
I'm the host of Tech News Weekly and several other shows on the network. And if you've ever listened to our shows, then you know what makes what we do different. It's trust. When we introduce a new partner on the show, the audience knows we believe in what they offer because we're only taking on partners that will actually benefit our audience. And they know that when I'm waxing ecstatic about your product or service, I'm doing so with authenticity. Some other reasons why you should join the network? It's all about the numbers. 88%. That's the number of listeners who've made a purchase based on a twit ad.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:34]:
90%. Those are the people who are involved in their company's tech and IT decisions. Oh, and by the way, 99% is the number of people who listen to most or all of the episode. Every host red ad we offer is authentic. It's unique, it's embedded permanently. So that means that your brand is going to get exposure even after your campaign concludes. Because yes, our nerds, our listeners, our viewers, they go back and check out the stuff we've done in the past. Every ad is simulcast across our social platforms.

Mikah Sargent [00:32:07]:
It's always available in both audio and video formats. So if you want your brand woven into conversations with tech experts and the world's most tech savvy audience, I mean, where else are you going to turn except right here at TWIT? So let's make 2026 your most substantial reach yet. Get in touch with us. Email partnerwit TV or visit Twit TV Advertise I yeah, I can hear the music. It's Time for Shortcuts Corner. This is Shortcut Scorner, the part of the show where you write in with your Shortcuts requests and Rosemary Orchard, our Shortcuts expert, provides a response. Our Shortcuts Corner request this week comes in from Michael, who writes hello Micah and Rosemary I used to have a Waymo Insight switch automation that would notify me when it was on for over an hour. My wife uses her phone to turn on her hair curlers before she gets home to allow them to warm up, but would often forget to turn them off when she is done.

Mikah Sargent [00:33:12]:
The automation would notify me when it had been on for one hour so that one of us could turn it off manually. I would like to create an automation that will notify me when One of my HomeKit compatible switches is turned on. Even better, I would like to have the switch only notify when it has been on longer than one hour. Very sad that Waymo is discontinuing their web service soon. All of my older Waymo products worked with HomeKit. Once Waymo joined the HomeKit compatibility, I suggested that they create a device that was HomeKit compatible and that would communicate and control all of the older Waymo devices. They did and it is the Waymo Bridge device and it works great. Mostly it seems like this should be a really simple task, but I can't figure it out.

Mikah Sargent [00:33:50]:
I'm running macOS, Tahoe 26.0.1 and iOS 26.0.1. All right.

Rosemary Orchard [00:33:57]:
Right. This is a challenge because yeah, there's a number of things going on. First of all, Home Kit natively does not have a way to notify you that or does not have a way to notify you full stop. With the exception of things like smart locks being unlocked, cameras turning on and off. Basically things it considers security devices, it can notify you about those. Everything else, it's not going to do it. So there are a couple of things that we can do and I'm going to start by creating a home automation and I will just share my phone screen. So when you create a home automation you can say hey, when an accessory is controlled and I am just going to pick this switch called normal, which I did add for automation purposes and I'm going to say hey, when this turns on, then what do I want to do? Now what I could do is I could apply a scene.

Rosemary Orchard [00:34:54]:
So I'm going to use beach waves that happens to be a random scene for my Nano Leaf lights. And then um, you can say turn off and then you can scroll down to after an hour. Because realistically, my personal feeling when it comes to things like hair curlers, hair straighteners, things like that is if you haven't done it inside of that hour, you probably should like just have it turn off anyway because yeah, that it's been on for a really long time. On the off chance that I don't know if cat put their tail in the wrong place or knocked something over or you know, a breeze blew through the window and blew some paper on top of your hair straighteners, you know, an hour is still long enough to start a fire, but you could just say, hey, if you use a scene for having something like for example the hair curlers, then you know, this scene could just control that smart plug and just turn it on. So when it turns on, turn it on again. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but, but I promise you it works. And then you can say, hey, just turn it off after an hour. That is the simplest 100% native HomeKit way to solve this problem.

Rosemary Orchard [00:36:03]:
The less simple way to solve this problem is through a variety of solutions, all of which are going to require another piece of software and or hardware. My personal recommendation would actually be Home Assistant. I know it sounds complicated and scary, but it offers a lot of control and more importantly it allows you to follow a trace of an automation and say, ah, I see what happened here. And if something didn't work as you expected, you can go back in time, you can see what automations ran when and so on and so forth and you can see the history of all of your devices and all of those things. If you want to stick purely with HomeKit, so you're not looking at using Home Assistant, you decide that you don't want to use Homebridge, which is another alternative. I personally don't love Homebridge, but some people find it's a great solution so I've got to recommend it. Then you're. Then what you actually need to do is convert your home automation to a shortcut and then you're going to need a third party service.

Rosemary Orchard [00:37:05]:
Now I am part of snail development which means that we work on Push Cut. So I am obviously going to recommend Push Cut as a great solution to this. But there's also other solutions like Pushover and so on where you can get URL. So what you would then do is use an action inside of your shortcut which is get contents of URL. And the reason why I would recommend Push Cut for this is because there's a guide on the Push Cut website of how to do this with all the information. You can schedule a notification for one hour into the future and you can specify what actions to take as part of of that that notification. So when the hair curler turns on, you schedule your notification. When the hair curler Smart Plug turns off, you cancel your scheduled notification.

Rosemary Orchard [00:37:56]:
And then if it turns off at, I don't know, 55 minutes, 20 minutes, you never get a notification. But then once it's been on an hour, you get a notification, you can go, ah, yeah, turn that off. As I said, my personal recommendation for this is just have the hair colors automatically turn off after an hour because I don't want you to burn your house down. I like you being a listener of iOS today, but there are some other solutions out there. I would go into the detail of exactly how to do the API calls, but that is quite complicated and I don't want everybody to fall asleep. And depending on what service and solution you decide to use, do you want to use Push Cut? Do you want to use Pushover? Do you want to use another service I've never heard of? Maybe, maybe. Do you want to use Zapier? If this and that you can get really creative and all of those are going to be slightly different as far as the process cons is concerned. Push Cuts website does have a similar actual automation based on doors opening and closing.

Rosemary Orchard [00:38:54]:
So that is the one I would recommend that you follow for that. But yeah, I, I probably just go for the scene that turns on the hair curlers and then have it turn off after. I know that's what.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:03]:
And I just want to mention as a disclosure, Zapier is a sponsor on the network, but I think Rosemary brings that up as it is just one of the options that can do so regardless of that.

Rosemary Orchard [00:39:15]:
Absolutely.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:16]:
Now those are some of the ways. Yeah, you can take care of that. Michael, you said you didn't want to go through the API stuff because it might make people fall asleep. And we definitely don't want them falling asleep, especially if their hair curlers are running. So stay awake.

Rosemary Orchard [00:39:31]:
That would be very dangerous.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:32]:
Keep up on that. This week we're going to skip the app caps, given that we had so much to talk about at the start of the show. But I do want to remind you all that you can get in touch with us. Iostodayt TV is how you do. So that is the email you can use. You can also talk to us in the Discord. How do you become part of the Discord? Well, that's by joining Club TWiT at TWiT TV Club TWiT. When you join the club there $10 a month, $120 a year, you become a member of of the club.

Mikah Sargent [00:40:00]:
Doing so gets you ad free content. All of our shows, none of the ads. You also gain access to the different feeds that we have available, including the a feed that includes behind the scenes before the show. After the show we have a feed that cover that is all about our live news coverage of different tech events and a feed that has our special shows in it like my Crafting Corner, Stacy's Book Club, our our D and D campaign we ran recently plus so much more and as well as all of that, as I mentioned, access to our Discord. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at TWiT. If all that sounds good to you, join the Club Twit TV Club Twit Rosemary Orchard if people would like to follow you and keep up to date with all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

Rosemary Orchard [00:40:49]:
Well, the best place to go is rosemaryorcher.com which has got links to apps, books, podcasts and all the social media sites where you can find me as well. The only only one that's not linked is the club to it Discord because that is for our wonderful club members where we are hanging out during the live show. There's been a little bit of chit chat about K Pop Demon Hunters because of course there is and other wonderful things often happen. Plus there's a great area to chat about the show after it's been published and actually properly edited by Kevin, our wonderful editor, Micah where can folks find you?

Mikah Sargent [00:41:21]:
If you're looking to find me online, I'm Michael Sargent on many a social media network where you can head to Chihuahua Coffee that's C H I H U A H u a Coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of iOS today. We'll be back again next week with another episode. Bye bye.