I have been seeing this tip gain popularity with teachers online, so I feel obligated to share it here:
You can program your iPhone to do a nearly endless list of things by double or triple tapping the back of it. Go to Settings-->Accessibility-->Touch and then scroll down to the option called "Back Tap."
Alternatively, you can swipe down in settings to reveal a search bar and then type in "back tap."
You can program a tap of the Apple Logo on the back of your iPhone to do tons of system actions like going home, muting your phone, taking a screenshot, or launching Control Center.
The Touch options in the accessibility settings.
Setting a double and triple-tap.
There are lots of options!
You can also choose a Shortcut to launch. And Shortcuts can do anything from launching an app to running JavaScript. So you can imagine the possibility...
Personally, I have a double-tap set to reveal Control Center and a triple tap set to initiate open a new note in my note-taking app, Drafts.
To open a specific app, you will first need to make a Shortcut that performs the “Open App” action and then select that Shortcut from the available options in the Back Tap settings. To do that, open the Shortcuts app (pre-installed on every iPhone or available from the App Store on older versions of iOS).
Once in Shortcuts, create a new one with the plus icon in the upper right. Name your shortcut if you want (by pressing the three-dots “More” button), and then press “Add Action.” There is an overwhelming number of options if you are unfamiliar with Shortcuts, so just use the search and look for the action called “Open App.” Select this action from the search results and then a block will appear with a blue “Choose” option where you can choose the app you want it to open. Choose your tuner of choice.
Once saved, this Shortcut will be available as an option in the Back Tap settings.
***Note: The Tonal Energy app actually allows you to set up Shortcuts that jump to specific places within the app like the Analysis or Metronome section. You can find this in the TE settings. It will save you a bunch of extra taps.
Creating a new Shortcut.
Search for the Open App action.
Tonal Energy allows you to make Shortcuts that launch to specific parts of their app in the settings.
iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and tvOS 14 came out a few weeks ago. I have a lot to say about these updates, but today I wanted to write about widgets for a moment.
Widgets are catching on as a significant feature amongst the masses. As someone who plays around with the way apps are organized on the home screen at least twice a week, I can tell that widgets are going to add a lot of excitement (and anxiety) into my life. I have been toying with them since July when this software entered the public beta, and I am far from resolved.
Here is where I have landed for now…
Page one (middle image) contains my most tapped app icons. This will be a hard habit to break, but I find lots of value in having upcoming calendar tasks and weather permanently on my most visited screen. Weather Line and Fantastical have the best small-sized widgets, in my opinion. Even this smallest widget size takes up four app icons, so they need to be beautiful and information-dense for it to be worth me sacrificing four apps.
I didn’t think I would want weather on this first screen, but now that it is always visible to me, I don’t see how I could live without it. The Weather Line widget is awesome because its user interface depicts the weather on a line, almost like a chart. It even manages to fit an hourly rain graph into its small space when it is raining out. Not even my second favorite weather widget, Carrot Weather, does that.
The Today View (left image) is where I keep Siri Shortcuts and the older, legacy style widgets from iOS 13. As much as I like the newer widgets’ look, the older style widgets are interactive. I keep OmniFocus, Timery (for time tracking), Streaks (for tracking daily habits), and Waterminder (for quickly logging water) all on this screen because I can tap right on the buttons to act on these apps without the widget needing to launch into the app.
I am continually playing with page 2 (right picture). I like it to be mostly another grid of tappable apps, but I am experimenting with various widgets here. I think what I have settled on is to have the Maps and Notes app widgets stacked on top of each other at the top, and then to use the Siri Suggestion widget, which shows me two rows of apps that swap in and out throughout the day based on my phone’s predictions of which apps I want to use in which contexts. The image above shows some other widgets I am experimenting with, but I think I prefer having more app icons there.
On the iPad, I keep: calendar, weather, notes, Apollo (a Reddit app I use to keep up on the latest news about my interests), Siri Shortcuts, and the Files app for launching into recently modified files.
On both my phone and iPad, I am waiting for an OmniFocus widget to track my tasks. Even though I like the one in the Today view where you can mark the tasks as done right from the widget, I think I might want to have my next few upcoming tasks permanently visible on page one.
9to5Mac.com and MacStories.net have been two great websites to follow if you want to stay up on which apps offer widgets.
Most iPad video apps feature Picture in Picture mode (PiP), a feature that allows you to minimize the video in a corner of the screen while continuing to do work in other apps while watching or listening.
YouTube has been a holdout on this feature, even for YouTube Premium subscribers who get the background audio features (minus the background video). You can get PiP to work if you delete YouTube and watch on Safari instead (which is what I do).
Or, if you have the Scriptable app, you can also run this Siri Shortcut which will force a video you are watching in the YouTube app to open in Safari via PiP.
Someone on Reddit made an awesome Siri Shortcut that forces a YouTube video to open in Safari so you can run it in the background using the Picture in Picture feature. https://t.co/tr6e5psCEKpic.twitter.com/Lwv7Xmu7Fo
Or you could wait. It looks like YouTube might finally be testing their official support of PiP. Read MacRumors for more (and to learn how to force PiP by watching YouTube in Safari)...
YouTube appears to be testing Picture in Picture (PiP) mode for its iOS app, reports 9to5Mac. The feature allows users to watch YouTube videos while using other apps, and was discovered by developer Daniel Yount, who stumbled across it while viewing a YouTube live stream on his iPad.
Edit: This is only possible on iPhone if you are on iOS 14, which launches publicly this fall.
We watching some Paak while managing my tasks on iPhone.
This isn’t exactly new news anymore, but I wanted to acknowledge that Claris has launched FileMaker 19.
I spend a lot of time in FileMaker. My colleague, Ben Denne, actually designed a FileMaker app that our music team has collaborated on. The app manages a database of our student's names, a sequential list of all the songs we teach in our classes, concert repertoire, and performance records.
My music team uses FileMaker to track records of student performances. The database calculates total points earned over the course of each student’s middle school career.
The app is able to log instances of student performances and generate points for them that track their progress over the course of their entire three years of middle school. Ben is coming on my podcast, Music Ed Tech Talk later this week to talk about that with me if you want to learn more.
With FileMaker 19, Claris offers their own syncing service, which could significantly cut down costs and increase sync speed for us (two of our major grievances with our current system, which is provided by a third party company.) It also introduces tons of new features that allow users to extend the app. Two that caught my eye are are a deeper support for JavaScript and, finally, Siri Shortcuts actions!
JavaScript is a widely used language. I can imagine huge potential for integrating FileMaker with other apps and web-services. The Siri Shortcuts support, based on five minutes of tinkering, appears to allow users to donate any script from within any one of their FileMaker apps as a Siri Shortcut action. This could be a huge time saver for me, as scripts require a lot of tapping around in menus to run on the current iPad version of FileMaker.
If Shortcuts were to ever allows users to automate actions without requiring a confirmation tap, I can see myself eliminating some tasks that I do at the end of every school day. For example, every day before I pack up my things, I run a script that emails the parents a performance record for every song their child played for me that day, including which points they received on every song.
The move to FileMaker 19 and a new host server would be a lot of work for our music team, but I look forward to investigating the potential.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 20, 2020 — Claris International Inc., an Apple subsidiary, today announced the launch of FileMaker 19: the company’s first open platform for developers to rapidly build sophisticated custom apps leveraging direct JavaScript integrations, drag-and-drop add-ons, AI via Apple’s Core ML, and more. Through FileMaker 19, developers can be more productive and businesses can now leverage Claris’ global community of developers, marketplace of add-ons, and existing developer resources to collaboratively solve complex digital problems.
”As cost pressure grows in our rapidly-changing world, companies need to innovate quickly to boost productivity and deliver for their customers,” said Claris CEO Brad Freitag. “That critical agility is at the core of FileMaker 19 as we open the Claris Platform to the most popular programming language on the planet. We’re excited to see what our 50,000 customers will do with a growing set of add-ons and the ability to integrate any of the millions of JavaScript packages."
I keep promising myself that a larger dive into my home automation workflow is coming to this blog. And it is. But I thought that I would first take a moment to outline the top seven apps and devices that I am using in combination with the Apple Home app. These get special attention given that their HomeKit integration allows me to conveniently manipulate them all from within the Apple Home app and command them with Siri.
All of the devices in this post are also compatible with the Amazon Echo. I only buy home devices that are equally compatible because I use Alexa in my house as well. Furthermore, the home automation space is still very young and fragmented. The more open a platform is, the more flexible it will be now and in the future.
Philips Hue Lights
Be careful. These WiFi connected light bulbs are the gateway drug of home automation. With them, I can now turn on every light in my house with my phone or voice. For my small house, the bulbs work just fine, but I would recommend the light switches for larger homes for convenience and to save money. Check out the image below to see how these lights appear in the Home app. I can control them individually or group them together. I can automate them by time or location in the Apple Home app. It's really nice to have the lights gently dim around bed time, and gradually wake me up with a gentle red hue an hour before work in the morning. Because my iCloud account also knows who and where my wife is, I can set up an automation that turns off all the lights once both of us have left the house, and another that turns them back on when one of us returns.
The Home app aggregates all of my various different home automation devices.
The Good Morning scene is automatically set to run at 6:30 am on weekdays and at 9:30 am on weekends.
This is the set up screen for my Good Morning scene.
Ecobee Thermostat
The Nest thermostat was the first home automation device I ever bought. It doesn't work with Apple HomeKit though. So when it unexpectedly died last year, I jumped at the opportunity to try something new. Ecobee thermostats are the best around. Speaking into the thin air "Hey Siri, I'm cold" to turn up the heat is a modern day dream. Of course, I can automate temperature in all of the same ways I can do lights. And I can even group these devices into "scenes" in the Apple home app to streamline frequent actions. For example, the "Arriving Home" scene turns on the air and the lights. This scene is not only triggered by button or voice, but automatically runs when my phone is within close proximity to my house.
This is what you see when you open the ecobee app.
Once you tap on a thermostat, you get more detailed controls.
This is my Arrive Home scene. The door unlocks for me, the thermostat turns on a good temperature, and the lights on the main level of the house turn on.
Schlage Sense Door Lock
My Schlage Sense allows me to unlock my door with the tap of a button. My teaching studio is in the basement of my house and the door is upstairs. It is disruptive to a lesson to constantly be answering my door, so now I just tell my Apple Watch "Hey Siri, unlock the door." It authenticates through contact with my wrist and completes the task. Of course my Arriving Home and Leave Home scenes also unlock and lock the door, in addition to all of the other actions I mentioned above. Having my front door unlock for me when I arrive home makes me feel like I am living in the future. Having it automatically lock when I leave gives me peace of mind that my house is safe.
Logitech Circle Camera
Of all the HomeKit devices out there, cameras are the hardest to shop for. I have found the Logitech Circle to be the best out there. Nest makes some great cameras but their lack of HomeKit support has driven me away. I have the Logitech set up in our dining room, facing down the primary hallway in my home. It is plugged into an iHome smart plug which is also HomeKit enabled so that I can turn it off and on remotely. This plug is automated in the Home app to turn on when neither my wife and I are home and turn off when one of us arrives home, therefore working like a security camera. When it detects motion it turns on our dining room and kitchen lights. It has a two way microphone so you can chat with someone in your home if you need to. And what I love about it most is that the camera feed shows up right in line with my other smart home controls in the Apple Home app.
The interface for the Logi Circle 2 app.
Eve Sensors
Sensors need no introduction. These things can trigger any other home device to act when they detect motion. Most of mine are set to turn on the lights in a given room when I walk into them. But they can also trigger thermostats and smart plugs. My favorite sensors on the market are made by eve. They are easy to set up and work reliably. Eve also makes a number of other interesting HomeKit products.
Sensors appear as ‘Triggered’ in the Apple Home app when they have detected motion.
In Apple Home, I can make an automation that turns on the upstairs light whenever my eve sensor is triggered upstairs.
The eve app makes a great alternative to the Apple Home app for controlling all your devices.
iHome Smart Plugs
I like using smart plugs as an all purpose way of turning on and off the things in my house that are otherwise not “smart.” In addition to the camera workflow I mentioned above, I also have these plugged into other devices throughout the house. For example, my bedroom fan is plugged into one. I can now turn it on and off in the middle of the night without getting up. “Hey Siri, turn on the fan.” A lot of brands make smart plugs but the iHome is the easiest to set up and use in my experience.
Apple HomePod
I was hesitant about the HomePod at first given that it shipped with incomplete software and relies entirely on Siri for voice commands. Still, the device offered some compelling features. When iOS 11.4 brought the features that were missing from release (AirPlay 2 and multi room audio), I scooped one up while Best Buy was running a 100 dollar off deal on them, refurbished.
The HomePod fulfills a lot of the same purposes as the Amazon Echo. It is distinguished by linking into the Apple ecosystem, allowing me to command Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and all of the home automation devices mentioned above.
Control of the HomePod exists inside the Apple Home app where it appears as a speaker device. The recent addition of AirPlay 2 allows my two Sonos One speakers to show up in the Apple Home app as well.
The HomePod is first and foremost a good speaker. But it can also command your other speakers in the house and even the audio output of your Apple TVs. Simply command “Hey Siri, move this music to the living room,” and listen as your music is magically transported from one speaker to the next. You can output your Apple TV audio through to this handy speaker and speak playback commands to your tv and movies with statements like “pause,” “stop,” and “skip ahead 50 seconds.”
The HomePod is the core of the Apple Home experience. Of course, you could just as easily control every device in this post from an Echo. However, as an Apple Music subscriber, and frequent listener to podcasts in the kitchen, having a HomePod makes sense for me to own.
It looks like the investment is going to pay off. This fall, iOS 13 will be adding even more features to the HomePod and Home app. For example, the HomePod will be able to distinguish between my voice and my wife’s. This way, when she asks it what is going on today, it will read from her calendar instead of mine. iOS 13 is also introducing speaker automations for scenes. So my Good Morning scene in the Home app will now play my favorite breakfast playlist in addition to turning on select lights and changing the temperature.
And finally, HomeKit automations and Siri Shortcut automations are going to be better tied together, and will be able to be triggered automatically. For example, doing something like stopping my wake-up alarm will both run the Good Morning scene and automatically run this Siri Shortcut that tells me how I slept, delivers a weather report, and opens a meditation in the Headspace app.
In iOS 13, HomePod play controls show up right in the Home app.
In iOS 13, music playback can become part of your scenes.
The new Siri Shortcuts app on iOS 13 integrates home automations and personal automations. It also allows them to be automatically triggered by time, location, opening a particular app, and more! In this example, stopping my wake-up alarm triggers my I’m Awake Siri Shortcut, which sets the Good Morning scene, reads me the weather, tells me how I slept, and starts a meditation.
These posts will never happen if I don’t make it fuss free. So here is it! With little introduction or fanfare, the ‘stuff’ that made up my year. My favorite albums, live shows, apps, and ‘things’ of 2018.
Next up, apps!
Apps
Things and OmniFocus
Task management software makes up about 50 percent my time on computing devices so it’s natural that I include what I consider to be the best two apps in this field. After seven years of using OmniFocus, I am experimenting with Things again. I plan to write about this switch in more detail but for now I leave you with this: if you are looking for a powerful way to stay on top of your tasks and don’t mind paying for a premium design, check these apps out.
The Today view in Things displays all of my tasks for the day alongside my calendar.
The Forecast view in OmniFocus is similar to the Today view in Things. Though I have it turned off in this screenshot, it actually displays your tasks inline with your calendar events so you can see where ‘due’ tasks fit into your day.
Health
The Health app by Apple is my hub for collecting all sorts of data about myself from various devices, apps and clinics. It houses data from devices like my Apple Watch, Spire respiratory monitor, Fitbit WiFi scale, and Spark Smart Water Bottle. It tracks data in third party apps like: work outs, active calories burned, steps, heart rate, sleep, water intake, nutrition, meditation minutes, caffeine intake, and blood pressure. It can now even aggregate health data from participating clinics and practices so I don’t have to log into a million web portals. My Quest and LabCorp results are a tap away. The beauty of the app is that it allows me to organize these data points and see them alongside one another so I can draw meaningful conclusions about them. Like for example, I eat better on days when I get more sleep.
Home
Apple’s Home app is the hub for controlling my smart home. I can control all of my smart things in the same user interface rather than by punching into lots of different apps. I can also use it to automate different actions. For example, my Good Morning scene automatically runs at 6:30 am every day which turns on my lights, changes the temperature, and lately, turns on the Christmas tree.
My Today view in Apple Health aggregates all of my health data regardless of which app is responsible for tracking it.
The My Home view in Apple Home shows my most used home automation devices and ‘scenes.’
Tonal Energy Tuner
Absolute must for an instrumental music teacher. Using the new Screen Time feature on iOS reveals that I spend too much time on Reddit. But also that I spend more time than any other app in Tonal Energy. It’s literally running in the foreground all day long while I’m at school, helping students to match pitch, blend, and keep steady time.
Trello
This may be my productivity discovery of the year. Trello is the team project app you have been waiting for. It’s vibrant, Kanbab board style interface will have your team, family, or Dungeons and Dragons group enjoying every minute of collaboration. Bonus points for how well this app integrates with Slack which is my preferred team communication tool.
Planning concerts in Trello allows my team to share todos, check lists, files, and more. We can give items due dates and even assign tasks to other members.
GoodNotes
GoodNotes has become my go-to handwritten note application. It acts like a bookshelf of notebooks so to speak. I take a lot of the work I create in iWork, Ulysses, and OmniGraffle, export them as PDFs, organize them into notebooks in GoodNotes, then annotate them on the go using my iPad. My favorite thing to do with it is keep a notebook of seating charts that have my rehearsal annotations on top of the names of my students. I love how you do not need to trigger an annotation mode to start scribbling on a document with the Apple Pencil. It just feels like paper.
Streaks
There are a lot of great habit building apps out there but Streaks has stuck with me because it encourages you to focus on just six habits at a time. When I am building too many habits at once, they start to feel like a todo list. The Streaks method of choosing six, along with its addictive user interface, keep me launching the app, which keeps me working towards my goals.
AutoSleep and AutoWake
Of the ten or so sleep trackers I have tried for the iPhone and Apple Watch, AutoSleep has stuck with me the most. There are numerous things I like about it, but most of all is how it figures out the most accurate number of hours I have been asleep whether I wear my watch to sleep or not. The companion app, AutoWake, wakes me up silently with haptic feedback on the watch. It does this when I am in my least deep sleep within a half hour before my alarm is set to go off. This eases me awake rather than jolting me awake. I plan to blog later this month about how I am automating some cool stuff in my house when I wake up using this app.
WaterMinder
WaterMinder is my favorite app for tracking water intake, mostly because of its well designed and space efficient widget.
Shortcuts
I did not get as much out of the Siri Shortcuts app this year as I wanted to. In fact, I had a lot of bad luck with it. But it is still an app that is working really well for me in a couple of small areas. In one tap, it generates a clean copy of my band's seating chart in GoodNotes for annotations and opens my lesson plan for the day in OmniOutliner.
The Waterminder Widget.
Some of my Shortcuts.
CARROT⁵ Weather
This is my favorite weather app due to its clean and appealing design. It gets my pick this year because of how they continue to innovate the Apple Watch app. My favorite feature of the watch is the customizable complications. Carrot makes the best weather complication for the Apple Watch, maybe the best complication, period. Carrot allows infinite customization for how it looks on the watch, depending on which watch face you like to view it, and even in which corner of the watch face you prefer to keep it installed.
The Carrot Weather app complication can be seen in the lower left corner.
Streaks. Guess I can check off that one in the lower right corner now.
