iOS Today 784 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, we're back with the second part of the App Store Awards. This time, it's all about the games. Yes, the games that won the App Store Awards this year. Stay tuned.

Rosemary Orchard [00:00:14]:
Podcasts you love from people you trust.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:18]:
This is twit. This is iOS today, episode 784 with Rosemary Orchard and. And me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Tuesday, December 9, 2025, for Thursday, January 8, 2026. App Store Awards games. Hello, and welcome to iOS today. This is the show where we Talk all things iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, HomePod, OS, send all the OSes that Apple has to offer. These are.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:50]:
This is the time where we give you some advice on games to check out, apps to download, gadgets to buy, settings to change between so that you are making the most of those Apple devices you own. I am one of your hosts. My name is Micah Sargent.

Rosemary Orchard [00:01:08]:
And my name is Rosemary Orchard. And I'm here, Micah, and I'm ready to play.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:12]:
Let's play. Yes. So I will remind you all about the App Store Awards. Now, as I mentioned before, if this is, you know, if it's. It's been a while since at least a week since I reminded you last time, the App Store Awards are different from the awards that Apple hands out to at the Worldwide Developers Conference. At that conference, Apple is handing out awards to really kind of acknowledge the developers who are making use of Apple's technologies. And so those apps often are kind of clever uses of the technology that Apple provides, whereas the App Store Awards are a little bit more edit. Well, they are editorially chosen.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:52]:
They're chosen by the App Store team, and they are all about kind of standout apps and games that are, you know, that maybe they use custom technologies. That's not the important part. The important part is that they're good. And so when it comes to this, Apple always does the apps and the games as two separate picks. And so that is why I first and foremost, or why we first and foremost covered the apps and now we're covering the games. So Apple breaks it down by device. And the first pick that Apple has chosen is for the iPhone. The iPhone game of the year is Pokemon TCG Pocket.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:39]:
It's Pokemon, the trading card game Pocket. It is essentially a digital version of the Pokemon trading card game. So each day you're able to open two booster packs and kind of create a collection. And in this, you can play against other people. So you actually are able to play with players in 150 countries, countries and regions around the world. You use your mobile device you battle people with Pokemon cards anywhere around the world. And because of this, they, because it's digital, there's also this kind of new immersive look to the cards. The illustrations have a sort of 3D design to them and so it's a little bit more kind of detailed in that way.

Mikah Sargent [00:03:29]:
It also lets you share some cards, which is a new thing. It's. It lets you give one kind of rare card to an in game friend and then in doing so you can receive one in return. You can also trade cards just like you could in real per. In real. In real life. So certain cards can be traded with friends and you are able to kind of swap them around. And as always, you have these kind of display boards where you can show your collections.

Mikah Sargent [00:03:59]:
So this isn't just for ranked matches either. If you've never played this before, then there are some kind of casual games that you can play to kind of get used to it and understand it as you build it up from there. I think this is something that is ripe for people grumbling about. I'm sure given that it is, you know, it's not like the real thing. But I do like the idea that people can play with others around the world where they may not have been able to with the real cards that they have. Right. It's. It would have been a game that you play.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:37]:
Now I'm curious, Rosemary. I've never played a card based game ever like Yu Gi oh, Magic the Gathering, Pokemon. I've never. I don't know how Digimon. I don't know how any of it works. Have you ever played any of them? I'm just curious.

Rosemary Orchard [00:04:53]:
I've played some of these. I've played some Magic the Gathering primarily because other people have decks and I've been able to borrow them and those I played in person. And the thing that strikes me about Pokemon, which is it's one of these things, it goes through phases of. It's suddenly the popular thing for kids to play in school. And then there is that inevitable moment where somebody gets upset because somebody else stole somebody else's card. And then school found it again. And this, this happens every couple of years because they stole my shiny and shiny car, a special type of card in Pokemon. What I really like about this is that solves that problem.

Rosemary Orchard [00:05:31]:
You know, the digital version of this solves the fact that somebody else has taken this person's card and the teacher's just looking at it going, I don't know, Pokemon. What's the difference between this one I guess it's got some like glittery stuff on it and they say that's theirs. But how do you know which kids are lying and which kids are telling the truth? Well, if it's digital, then they've only got the actual trading options in the game, which hopefully means that both of them consent and know what they're doing. It is age nine plus, but, you know, it's, it's not the simplest of games to play necessarily. So, yeah, I think that that's reasonable. But yeah, I, I think it's, this is, this is a good way to get into the game without having to have the physical decks of cards, which, you know, there's, there's been quite a bit of controversy, rightly so, around loot boxes and how they should be rated. Are they gambling? Are they not gambling? The answer is they, legally speaking, they are gambling at least over here in the UK and in the eu. And so, yeah, I think that, you know, the fact that you get two free booster packs every day, that's a good way to get people into the game.

Rosemary Orchard [00:06:31]:
And yeah, but I, I, I've been playing Pokemon Go again recently because you can collect all these things while you're walking a dog. So it's, it's a good bonus there. But I think, I think it's going to be fun. I think a lot more people will enjoy this. It's a good way to get started with something that could be very expensive for, entirely for free.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:50]:
Yeah. I watched someone stand in front of a Pokemon card vending machine before the store. Or they stood, sorry, they stood outside of the store waiting for the store to open because I was waiting to pick somebody up. And so I'm just sitting there in the car and they're sitting outside. As soon as the store opens, they run to the thing and just over and over and over again, just buying every single card pack. And I thought that's a lot of money. Yeah, that's wild to me. But I think it's very cool.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:24]:
People that are very good at it and there's a lot of math and logic and problem solving that's built into this. And so in that way I think that it's a cool thing for people to get into. Moving along. The iPad pick this year is a game called Dredge. And Dredge is kind of this dark fishing game. And so it has, it's sort of an RPG style game, but in it you are kind of working to unlock better, better boats over time, better fishing implements over time. And so you can see I am currently controlling. Slide on the left side to control the boat, slide on the right to control the camera.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:16]:
And. Oh, I got to keep doing that. This part of the tutorial. And then I'm moving around and move to a fishing spot. So the way that you move to a fishing spot. Oh, no, I've damaged my hole. I didn't know I could do that. Oh, no, I've damaged.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:29]:
Oh, no. So I want to get to this fishing spot and we'll see. Okay, good. We can do some fishing. Now. If I tap on this, I choose start fishing and I want to hit it on the green and then I can place this or pick it up and kind of move it around. And it's almost like battleship a little bit here. This is of course, like.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:58]:
What is the word I'm looking for? It's your inventory. So I'm placing that in there and then I'm going to start fishing again and hopefully we'll be able to catch another fish. What did I get? Okay, I guess. No, no, I do want that. Why wouldn't I want that? Okay, good. I could put it in there as well. This is just obviously a very small part of what's going on. You are able to start to kind of learn the story of this and as you go, it gets a little bit more spooky, a little bit more scary.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:30]:
It is again like a dark fishing game. It's made by dark or excuse me, from Black Salt Games. And it's two is available for free and you can play the first area for free to see if you like it. Once you do, it unlocks the base game and then, or rather you know, paying for it, unlocks the base game for $25. And then they have in app purchases for downloadable content essentially after you unlock the base game. It is really, really well designed and quite a popular game in terms the kind of interest that you get. So, yeah, you are exploring and collecting remote exploring and collecting fish on remote aisles. And then you get to kind of sell these fish to learn more about the area and what's going on.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:27]:
You get better. You can then dive or not dive deeper, but you can, you know, fish deeper and get even more. So it's, I think, a really neat. Oh, that's. I kept calling it a dark fishing game. They call it a sinister fishing adventure. Sinister, That's a word. Pretty creepy.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:48]:
So that is Dredge available in the App Store as well. Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about this Week's sponsor. It's NetSuite bringing you this episode of iOS today. Every business asking the same question. How in the world do we make AI work for us? And the possibilities are endless. But guessing is far too risky. Sitting on the sidelines, however, it's not an option. Because one thing is almost certain, your competitors out there are already making their move.

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Mikah Sargent [00:12:38]:
It could be different where you are, but yeah, that's the Mac game of the year. I'm not going to go into detail about Cyberpunk 2077. It's well known. If you don't know about it, you can look it up to learn more.

Rosemary Orchard [00:12:48]:
It's got Keanu Reeves in it, which is probably a feature as far as most people are concerned. One thing, one thing worth noting, this does have minimum requirements. You need an M1 Mac or later. You must have 16 gigabytes of RAM and to have the space to install this you need 159 gigabytes of storage. That is just something you should know for this game because obviously you can buy things in the App Store and then discover that you only have 128 gigabyte hard drive and you are not going to be able to download and install that game, which would be really sad. So just make sure you check your computer meets the minimum requirements.

Mikah Sargent [00:13:26]:
Oh that's good to know. Nightscape says that it played amazingly on their M1 Max studio. That's what I have. And so I'm glad to hear that it plays well on that because I thought about getting it and then I thought, oh, I don't know, I've got that an M1, but if it plays well on there, then that's good to hear. So that's Cyberpunk 2077. The next one is for the Apple Vision Pro. Of course there are games for the Apple Vision Pro Porta Newbie, which is a puzzle game for the Apple Vision Pro that lets you solve puzzles in virtual space. Believe it or not, it was developed for the Apple Vision Pro and it will actually work to transform.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:13]:
You know, you can use it kind of in that middle space of AR VR, but logic, timing are part of it as well. And you're just guiding a beam from its source to its destination. You'll just have different obstacles and interactive elements along the way that will kind of interrupt that beam. Right. So you've got to use portals and blockers and mirrors and other things that are in the environment to get the beam to go from one place to the other. It looks like it'd be a lot of fun. I kind of wish that I had I knew someone nearby who had an Apple Vision Pro just because I'd like to play this game. It seems like it would be a good time.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:52]:
But it is also available for free, believe it or not, in the App Store with in app purchases for basically the kind of downloadable content to to add more to it. So that's I think well worth checking out. It appears to be created by an individual developer which always think is awesome whenever those get attention. And as I said before, it's also nice to see stuff being made for the Apple Vision Pro as well. Last but not least, in the game picks, it's Apple Arcade. The Apple Arcade pick which Apple separates it out so that I think it doesn't seem so sort of unfair that there are games that exist outside of Apple Arcade. But for the games that are within Apple Arcade, which is a subscription service that you can get as part part of your Apple one subscription or individually if you'd like as well. I have an Apple Arcade subscription and it ends up that most of the games that I actually do download and play come from Apple Arcade personally.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:57]:
Now with Apple Arcade's pick what the Clash made from the folks who make the great what the series what the Golf. And there's another one that escapes me at the moment. This is a game where you and your friends play against each other. It's 1v1 PvP battles of all sorts. So sometimes you might be doing cards, sometimes you might be racing each other, sometimes you might be playing tennis. It just depends. So yeah, tennis and archery and racing and tag and cards and all sorts of milk. The Fish is one of the games.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:36]:
All very silly, all very fun and again it lets you play with just another person, which I think is is great. So I actually very much like this game and think that if you have an Apple Arcade subscription, this is when you should download and just try. And if you don't have an Apple Arcade subscription and you have yet to use your free trial, get your free trial. And this is one of the games that I recommend downloading. It's just, it's you'll be chuckling with your friends and that's what makes it awesome. Oh, and I love too that they always do events. So there's like an upcoming Jingle Brawls season. They've got the winter Wonderland season going Wonderhand, excuse me, Winter Wonder Hand season going on right now.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:19]:
And so there are special games that are part of that. So it's nice to see the them like regularly creating car or regularly creating new content that you can play as part of it. So what the clash is the Apple Arcade pick now as is the case with the with last week's picks where we had not just those games but also the or not just those apps but also the cultural impact winners that it's coming again. I'll remind you you what Apple says about cultural impact winners. In addition to recognizing apps and games across Apple devices, Apps Redditors selected six cultural impact winners for their ability to drive meaningful change. These apps and games were recognized for their positive impact, providing users with helpful tools promoting understanding and shaping a more inclusive world. One of my favorite games, it has been an app cap pick of mine twice and I believe I've brought it up at other times too has won an App Store award. I'm very happy for Clemens Strasser who received an award for Art of Fauna.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:24]:
This is the sort of slide puzzle esque game that I just adore. It is receiving this award because it genuinely is one of the most accessible games on the App Store. On top of being visual so that you can sort of solve the puzzle that way you can flip the puzzle over and there's text on the back that you can solve instead as you kind of organize things. But there are so many settings for changing how difficult the game is. There's so much accessibility Built in in terms of voiceover. It is beautifully sound designed, beautifully illustrated, and Clements is adding new artwork all the time as much as possible. I have adored this game and continue to adore this game. It's just the perfect amount of challenge without being in a place where I'm having to put so much focus on it so that I can just go, you know, I'm having a little bit of idle time right now and I'd love to just solve a little puzzle.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:33]:
It's delightful. Art of Fauna in the App Store and congratulations, the next pick is, and I apologize if I pronounce this incorrectly, Chants of Senar which is a game that talks about the power of language and by that it means, you know, understanding what it means to communicate and what it means to be able to kind of solve puzzles with language in mind. So this is about the Tower of Babel and the ability to communicate with other people. This is decode enigmatic languages through conversations and observations sketched in your trusty notebook and rediscover the myth of Babel with a striking art direction inspired by Moebius and classic French Belgian comics driven by a soul stirring soundtrack. It is beautifully designed, it has won lots of awards, it is an incredibly award winning game. The Tribeca Film Festival, BAFTA awards, all sorts of stuff. And it says that if you have an iPhone XR, an iPhone SE, an older iPad, it may not work on this because it does require a lot of RAM to play, but anything newer is going to work well. And it also does work with made for iPhone controllers as well.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:04]:
So if you want to play it with your controller instead of using, you know, the on screen controller, you can do that. When I look at the, the visuals for it, it is beautifully designed and I love the idea of over time learning what, what, what people are saying based on the clues that you get along the way. Super, super cool. Last one in this category is Despalote from Panic. I think any game from Panicus is probably going to be a hit and in this case it is kind of about a country that is going through some hardships, but due to the country's love of soccer or football, they are kind of able to gather together and collect around this shared interest. It'll get you in the feels for sure. So check that out as well. Those are the cultural impact winners for this year and those are the App Store awards games winners for this year.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:15]:
Many of them are free with in app purchases, so check them out. The ones that do cost like Cyberpunk 2077. I mean that's always going to cost, but you can at least check out what the Clash via Apple Arcade if you'd like to. All right, with that, it is time to move on to the news segment. The news segment is nearly upon us here this week in the news. IFixit, what has announced a new iFixit app that you can get from the App Store, also from the Google Play Store. This app includes iFixit. You know what, actually, Rosemary, you want to tell us a little bit about this? I've been talking so much about the games.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:00]:
I would love to hear what you know about this new iFixit app.

Rosemary Orchard [00:23:04]:
Well, I don't know a huge amount about this because they only announced it today, like an hour or so ago while we were recording a previous episode. But they have announced a new iFixit app. So they already have one iFixit app. But the new iFixit app is called Fixbot and it includes the repair guide in a format that's basically ideal for all mobile devices. I've just retouched the layout essentially on those. And a workbench that keeps track of the repairs, battery lifespan indicator. And yeah, There's a little AI buddy to help you repair things called FixBot. So it can keep track of the iPhone, an iPhone battery in real time, and show you a graph of how your battery is deteriorating.

Rosemary Orchard [00:23:49]:
Which I'm going to be installing this on my mum's phone. She recently had had an issue where her phone started saying like, hey, you probably need a battery replacement on your phone. And you know, it wasn't that much money. We got it replaced to Apple. She does always get the three, you know, the, the phone after I've had it for a year and my dad's had it for a year. So that's not a surprise. But it would be good to keep an eye on these things. So I will be getting her to install this and probably my dad as well.

Rosemary Orchard [00:24:14]:
But what I think is really smart here is Fixbot is going to help you figure out what's wrong with your device. And you can describe this by text or by voice, but then as you are actually doing the repair, it can respond to questions for you. So it's kind of like talking to an Amazon assistant or the hey, Apple lady person or the whatchamacallit from the multicolored company. Okay, Google, that's the one. But yes. And you could, you can also share images with. With it, which would be really great if you're like, hey, what is this thing? And it goes, that's Screw. You shouldn't have taken that one out.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:54]:
Put that back. I want you to be my. I want you to be my fixed spot.

Rosemary Orchard [00:24:59]:
Cuz I mean, to be clear, I haven't used it, so I don't know if it's going to do that. But, you know, I feel like it. It'll be really useful for, you know, you take the screen or the back off of an iPhone to try and fix it. And it's like, yeah, cool. So this is. Is what this bit is. And they say that they've trained this on millions of successful iFixit community repairs, not just generic information. So one thing I realized a little while ago is Kobo has added their own guides to iFixit on how to fix their E readers.

Rosemary Orchard [00:25:32]:
So if you need to replace the screen in your Kobo E reader, there's a guide on iFixit that Kobo helped create because they want their devices to be repairable. And I could imagine a bunch of people going like, oh, cool. You know, like, especially as we record this episode, you know, we're sort of in the middle of December, holidays are coming up again, and this is the time of year where grandma pulls out her favorite ebook reader and goes, but. But Grandpa sat on it and now it doesn't work no more. And it's. It's a busted screen. So you could get a new screen and follow a guide and be able to talk to the guide and then win grandchild of the year award. Because obviously you're the grandchild of the year.

Rosemary Orchard [00:26:12]:
You're watching iOS today and you're, you know, going to go visit your family in this scenario. But yeah, if you help somebody fix their device or you fix your own device, then that's a win, isn't it? And being able to talk to a essentially AI chat bot to help you work through it, that's pretty great. I do like the fact that iFixit have trained this all on iFixitate NASA. That's pretty cool. And I'm. I'm. And I kind of now want something to break in a way that's not problematic. That's going to allow me to follow a guide to help get it fixed.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:46]:
Well, yeah, I am very. I think this is great. I have long used iFixit repair guides online. Having them there on my local devices, I think is great to just to be able to kind of bring it along a little bit more. And the idea that, yeah, I could go, okay, I think I've got this figured out, but it's not quite working. How I was expecting can you help me? And then it uses what it knows to kind of provide some more information. I'm also eager, eager to hear people's experiences when they go sporley because we know that will be the case in some cases where you earlier said that's a screw, you shouldn't have taken that one out. If it's like take out these six screws and then afterwards it's like oh, actually I was supposed to leave most of those in.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:36]:
We hope that won't happen, but with AI you never know. So that is something to be mindful of if you decide to use Fixed Spot. So very interested to see how this continues. I have downloaded it and am playing around with the battery data information and we'll see how this goes going forward with that. I believe I can hear the music it's time for Shortcuts Corner. This is Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts requests, and Rosemary Orchard, our shortcuts expert, provides a response. This week's Shortcuts Corner request comes in from Heath, who writes hi Micah and Rosemary, I recently encountered a shortcuts bug and immediately thought of emailing you both. I had around 20 shortcuts that I had built over numerous years that were shared to my Apple Watch.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:37]:
Many just used for automations. When I erased my watch and set it up as a new device due to a different bug and imessage on the Apple Watch, I discovered that all the shortcuts that were shared to my watch simply vanished from shortcuts on all my devices on my iPad, my iPhone and my Mac Mini. I know it's a bug because all the automations that use these shortcuts still work. My iPhone action button that references one shortcut still works and they even still show in Spotlight index on iPhone and Mac Mini. However, when you try and open the shortcuts in the Shortcuts app, they just aren't there. While this is bad enough, while trying to figure out what happened, I learned that as best I can tell, shortcuts are not backed up anywhere and the Shortcuts app doesn't have a recently deleted function. They aren't backed up in Time Machine or in my third party offline backup solution which is Backblaze. Since the shortcuts were synced to icloud once they were removed from one device, they were removed from all with no way to restore them.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:36]:
I haven't been able to verify this since I tried to restore the Apple Watch from an old Backup. But the missing shortcuts didn't come back. Do you have any suggestions on how to backup shortcuts so this can't happen again? This would be devastating to someone with hundreds of shortcuts looking at you. Rosemary, Love the show. Never miss one. Now back to trying to rebuild all these missing shortcuts, Heath. Wow, Heath, I'm sorry to hear that this happened. Rosemary, how do you back up your shortcuts?

Rosemary Orchard [00:30:07]:
So, yeah, there isn't a backup olution built into iOS and that is, or Mac OS in fact, either, because it is just an icloud sync, which means that when something gets stuck, then it gets stuck stuck and you are well stuffed, for want of a better way to put it. And you're also stuck. You're stuffed and you're stuck. Possibly you're stuck because you're stuffed. Either way, it doesn't matter how much you've eaten over the holidays, I will still help you turn. So this. So the trick is there are a couple of different ways to back up your shortcuts. Do you want to back them up using icloud or do you want to back them up using files? And I'm going to show folks how to create the shortcut for this on the iPhone, but you can run this on the Mac as well.

Rosemary Orchard [00:30:54]:
And thanks to the fact that Mac OS Tahoe has the fancy new shortcuts automations, I'd recommend maybe creating a shortcuts automation for this on a Mac if you've got one, because then you can save all of your shortcuts out to files on a regular basis, which then means that they will get backed up with things like Backblaze, or you could save it into a Dropbox folder or whatever you like. They can be backed up with Time Machine. All of those exciting things are then possible with this solution. So personally, I recommend backing up as Files does require a little bit more storage space. Not a huge amount shortcuts files are tiny. But yeah, it's worth doing, I would say. So what we need to do is we need to start by getting our shortcuts. So the Shortcuts app has an action called get my shortcuts and you can choose just to get a folder of shortcuts or you can get all of your shortcuts.

Rosemary Orchard [00:31:49]:
I'm going to go with all shortcuts. Actually I'm not because otherwise we're going to be sitting here for several hours. So I'm going to use the iOS today demo folder. Okay. And then we want a repeat with each because we're going to need need to do this with every one of them. And then we are going to say that we want to save the file and we are just going to turn off Oscar to save. Very, very, very important because otherwise if you've got more than 10 shortcuts, in fact, I always say if you've got more than three shortcuts, you could be there for a really long time. Clicking, clicking, clicking.

Rosemary Orchard [00:32:25]:
You're going to get repressive strain injury in your finger or your hand or however you're doing this. I do not recommend. So turn that off and choose a folder. Um, so by default it recommends using the shortcuts folder. What I'm actually going to do is create a new folder here for shortcuts backup. Um, and you can see that there is a shortcuts icon file on my screen. Uh, that's because I have backed up shortcuts before to icloud. Um, so yeah, what you would do is just, just save this here.

Rosemary Orchard [00:32:58]:
Um, now what you are going to want to do is turn on overwrite if file exists. Shortcuts does not allow you to have shortcuts with the same name. Okay, So I can't have two shortcuts named Micah because one mica in my life is enough, according to Apple. Personally, I disagree. I, I think many micas would be a great thing in my life. But it does massively solve problems inside of shortcuts. Because if you say, hey Apple lady, run my banana shortcut and there are three banana shortcuts, it would have to go banana, banana ban. And you don't know which one it's talking about, understandably.

Rosemary Orchard [00:33:32]:
So Apple requires a unique name. So let's overwrite this if the file exists. And then we're just going to run this and we're going to tap on. Always allow. Very important. You're going to need to, you know, always allow this to run. And then it's just going to go now this is going to take a little while, but there we go. I have a whole bunch of shortcuts.

Rosemary Orchard [00:33:50]:
What this will not handle very nicely is things like I rename this shortcut so at the moment the shortcuts will repeat with each. So you can see the first result in my output is called repeat with each. I'm now going to rename this and say back up my shortcuts. And this is now going to create a duplicate. So you may want to delete shortcuts, you may want to actually create, create a folder every time you do this and just incrementally version things. So we could start by creating a folder inside of Shortcuts Backup and then you would pop in the current date and you just have it as the date. And I'm going to go with use the ISO format and turn off the. The time.

Rosemary Orchard [00:34:38]:
The time is turned off by default. And then we can, oops, let's remove the auto suggestion there. We can actually say, hey, I'm going to use that created folder as where to save this. So then you know, you know, oh shoot, I deleted a shortcut like a week ago and I need that back then. That's going to be in that one from a week ago. You're probably going to want some kind of other automation that goes through and deletes really old folders, but that's a separate issue. This way you can just have as many backups as you like. So this is what I would do.

Rosemary Orchard [00:35:12]:
I'm going to share a link to the shortcut in the Show Notes for folks so that you can download it yourself and give it a go. You can also, instead of this, saving the file and creating a folder, use the get link feature. However, I would caution against this for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's still dependent on icloud and the links working. And number two, if you think that running this shortcut took a little while for I think there's about 30 shortcuts in that folder. It it didn't take that long, but it took a good couple of seconds. You're looking at a couple of seconds minimum per shortcut. As soon as you go over 30 shortcuts, you're looking at this is going to take a minute to run.

Rosemary Orchard [00:35:53]:
Now maybe on a Mac that's not such a big deal, but if it's on iPhone and you want to be running this manually every so often because it will need your phone to be unlocked and everything, you. You would be sitting there for quite some time. The advantage of the link system is that then you don't necessarily know with duplicate duplicates because the link is the same for the exact same version of the shortcut. The downside is then you have a bunch of names and links and you need to put them in a file somewhere and then you're relying on icloud being up. Now, I've never had an issue with an icloud link to a shortcut not working except when somebody explicitly unshared the shortcut or they deleted the shortcut. But yeah, that also means that if you've deleted a shortcut and you want to Restore it. You can't. So personally, personally I'd go with back it up to a file folder, shove it somewhere like Dropbox and back it up with Backblaze and then you will be a very happy automation expert.

Mikah Sargent [00:36:45]:
Out of curiosity, what is the file type that's exported when you export a shortcut? Is it just dot shortcut?

Rosemary Orchard [00:36:52]:
Yeah. So it's a dot shortcut. And you can, if you want to be super nerdy, like go spelunking in the file and find the XML and understand exactly how the shortcuts are created. That's how some apps like Jellycuts and so on work. Jellycuts is an app that allows you to write shortcuts in text rather than in like visual blocks. Um, but yeah, I, I would recommend, if you're going to do that, do that on a copy of the file, not one that you're going to want to restore. Cuz if you mess something up, it is broke, broke. You're not getting that back.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:24]:
Makes sense. I'm definitely going spelunking. I just, that's, I'm curious. That's cool. Thank you, thank you for your answer on that. Folks. This is normally where we would do app caps but, but given the hefty, hefty start of the show, we'll skip out on it this week. I hope you're having a happy, happy January as we kick things off this year and Rosemary and I will be back again next week.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:48]:
I want to remind you all you can email us iostodaywit. I said we'll be back next year. I mean we'll be back later this year. I want to remind you all that you can get in touch with us. IowaTodayToit TV is the email. And I should also mention, mention that you have an opportunity for something pretty awesome. What is it? It's Club TWiT. Twitter TV Club TWiT.

Mikah Sargent [00:38:10]:
That is where you can go to become a member of the club. When you go there. $10 a month, $120 a year to join the club. Doing so gets you access to some pretty awesome things. First and foremost, you get access to ad free content. That's right. Every single one of our shows ad free. It's just the show, none of the ads.

Mikah Sargent [00:38:30]:
That's what ad free means. Plus you gain access to our awesome feeds. That includes our kind of behind the scenes, before the show, after the show is one of them. We also have a feed for our live coverage of tech news events and we also have a feed for our special shows in the club like my crafting corner, the recent D and D adventure that I ran. Also Stacy's Book Club and so much more. Chris Marquardt's phototime. It's a great oh our AI user group. All of that is there.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:00]:
We love, we love, we love. And last but not least is access to the members only Discord Server. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow club Twitters and those of us here at TWiT. We would love to have you join us in the club. Every time I go to the the welcome channel and get to say see all the new people that are joining I can say hi to Sodsleep Welcome I can say hi to Town Nerd. Thank you for being here. Those are people who just joined today yester cycle. Steve hello Lemon Joke kid.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:34]:
That sort of sounds like lemongrab Harden acceptable for the people who know they know Fear Paws thank you for being here. Plus so many more wonderful people. The people who are here all the time including the wonderful Nightscape Wad fan, Scooter X and so many more. We thank you for your support. We thank you for being a member of Club Twit. We appreciate it. Rosemary Orchard if people would like to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

Rosemary Orchard [00:40:05]:
The best place to go is rosemary orchard.com which has got links to apps, books, podcasts and more including social media sites where you can find me. You cannot find me in the club Discord, but we're currently having a great chat about text editors in there and I'm on the PBE Edit for Life team. So we're all winning because everybody's happy. But yeah, it's great. Definitely join and hang out. Micah where can folks find you?

Mikah Sargent [00:40:28]:
Also shout out to MacFixer. Sorry I missed you there pal. You can find me online ikasargent on many social media network or 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. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of iOS today, but until then it is time for us to say goodbye.