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iOS Today 736: Managing Notifications on Your iPhone
00:44:31
Tips and Tricks to Minimize Distractions
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- [00:00]
Micah Sargent
Coming up on iOS today, Rosemary Orchard and I, Micah Sargent, talk about how to manage your notifications.
- [00:08]
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- [02:16]
Micah Sargent
This is TWIT. This is iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard and me, Micah Sargent. Episode 736 recorded Tuesday, January 21st, 2025 for Thursday, January 23rd, 2025 managing notifications on your iPhone hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show. We talk all things iOS, TVOs, iPados, WatchOS, HomePod, OS and all of the other OSs we have on offer. This is is the show where we help you make the most of your devices by giving you tips and tricks and recommendations and everything in between so that you can use them to the best of your ability and the best of ours. I am one of your hosts. My name is Maika Sargent and I.
- [03:10]
Rosemary Orchard
Am Rosemary Orchard and as always, very excited to help everybody hear the announcements from their devices as is required.
- [03:19]
Micah Sargent
Yes. So this is something that I wanted to talk about because I have heard from people who have had some complaints about the notifications on iOS and iPadOS in terms of its kind of overwhelm. And it was an opportunity to remind people that they are able to manage their notifications, that they can change the way that they appear and how they show up. And so I thought it'd be a good time to kind of take a look at things. What's great about this tool is that, well, this set of tools is that you are able to control and manage your notifications from different places. And the first place that I want to talk about is the lock screen, because you don't need to actually hop into the Settings app or into an app itself to do a lot of notification management. And honestly, this is the way that I recommend that people kind of originally or first and foremost audit their notifications, because this is the way that I use kind of my notification rules that I have applied, which say that if an app that I don't want notifications from, or don't expect notifications from sends me a notification because I forgot to hit don't allow or something like that. Or more importantly, if an app sends me an annoying notification, I've given it permission for notifications for a different purpose and then suddenly it's marketing to me or something like that. It doesn't make it past my lock screen. So let's take a look at what that looks like on an iPhone. So here I've got my iPhone lock screen and you can see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 notifications. And let's say that the notification I want to work with is this LinkedIn notification at the bottom of the screen. So there are a couple of options that I have here. If I tap and swipe, so sort of place my finger on the notification and swipe to the left, then I have the option, of course, to clear the notification, which you can Also do just by continuing to swipe your finger. But the option to go into the options is the one we're going to talk about. So if I tap on Options, you'll see a bunch of different settings that are available to you without needing to go all the way into the notification settings in the settings. I can say that, hey, I'm okay with getting LinkedIn notifications, but I just don't want to see them for the next hour or maybe for the rest of the day. Or maybe I want to completely turn off notifications from this app, which you can also do from the lock screen. That's the one that I use when an app gets on my nerves. If an app is sending me notifications, I don't want. This is where I go to turn that off. But from here I also have the option to view the settings for this app and the notifications for this app. So configure in LinkedIn is one option which lets you. If an app has its own notifications settings that are separate from the sort of default notification settings, that's what that button will do. But if I choose View Settings, you'll see here that we jump into notifications specifically for this app. Now here, the slider at the top, the toggle at the top is that main toggle that says, yes, I want to allow notifications or no, I do not. If I toggle this off, you won't get any notifications at all from this app. If I have it on, then you can. And now we start to kind of edit and change things from there. Some apps have added a special little flag in the apps file that gives the app the ability to deliver time sensitive notifications. Here's a little hint. I sometimes use this as a means of telling if an app is going to be a spammy app. And here's what I mean. If you have an app like let's say the Red Cross app, and that app is, you know, going to provide emergency information or the NOAA weather radio, that app has a reason to have time sensitive notifications. And I'm going to explain what those are in just a moment. If an app is just a messaging app or is just a shop app or something like that, and it has turned on that flag for time sensitive notifications, I find that nine times out of 10, it's far more likely to be an app that is trying to send you notifications to get you to use the app. And so I like to use this just kind of as an initial. Oh, I'm keeping my Eyes on you. What happens with time sensitive notifications is they say that regardless of kind of what your settings are, if you allow time sensitive notifications, meaning notifications that the app has flagged as time sensitive, they will be delivered immediately to you regardless of your focus mode, and they will be displayed on the lock screen and stay there for up to an hour. And again, this is regardless of any of the other settings that you have. So with something like LinkedIn, do I really need to have time sensitive notifications? I suppose if you're constantly messaging on that platform, if that's your way of getting in touch with people, that makes sense for you, but for a lot of people, maybe not. You'll notice I have time sensitive notifications turned off for this. The next section is Alerts, and we have some different options for alerts. We can display them on the lock screen, we can display them in Notification center, and we can display them as banners. Lock screen, of course, means that the notification will show up when your phone is locked, or even if it's not locked, but you're still on the lock screen, which is the case with many modern phones that have and always on display. That lock screen will appear whenever you tap on the screen, though that's where the notification will appear. Notification center is of course, swiping down from the top whenever you are. You. You're doing. You're in the app. You're in an app and you swipe down from the top to view notifications there. And then banners are the notifications that appear without needing to access Notification center and will show up while you're actively doing something on the phone. So while the phone is unlocked and you have gone from the home screen to an app, or even while you're on the home screen, that is when a banner will appear. There are a few banner styles. Well, I shouldn't say a few. There are two banner styles. Temporary means that it'll pop up for a moment and then it'll go away. Persistent means that it will stay until you dismiss it. The phone app is one example of an app that has a persistent banner style by default, so that you know when you're getting a call and while the call continues on. Sounds is the option that you can toggle on or off to let that app make sounds when a notification is delivered. Badges are those, in my opinion, annoying red circles that appear on app tiles with a number that show you how many notifications you're getting. And if you have a Mac where you have used the iPhone mirroring app to Display your iPhone on the screen of your Mac. Then show on Mac is the toggle that says I'm okay for a notification from my iPhone to appear on my Mac so that I can see it there as well. And it will show up in the Mac notification center as opposed to being something that displays on the iPhone screen. And then last but not least are the lock screen appearance options. And then there's a little setting that I'll talk about at the bottom with lock screen appearance. This says how do these notifications show up on my lock screen? Show previews is the option to say while my phone is locked, how do these notifications appear? How do the notification details appear? So you can get the basics of it. But to see the text, let's say you get a message from someone, the name might appear with the phone being locked, but the actual message of the text does not, unless the phone is unlocked, as long as you have when unlocked set in show previews. If you change that to always, it means that regardless of whether the phone is locked, then a preview of that notification, some of the text of the notification will show never, of course, means that regardless of whether the phone is locked or unlocked, I don't need you to show me the preview of the message. Notification grouping is either off, meaning that the notification will kind of appear in a chronological order by app means that any LinkedIn notification that comes through in the day will appear in its own little stack of notifications related to LinkedIn. And then of course off means that that it is going to. That is where it'll appear chronologically. Basically Automattic says depending on what other notifications are there, make the choice of Whether a new LinkedIn notification appears chronologically or appears as part of the app stack. And then importantly in this section, summarize notifications. This is a new feature that you will not find if you don't have Apple intelligence abilities on your device. And what this does is it will. Let's say LinkedIn sends you six notifications and some of them are messages about, you know, the next summit that's gathering or something like that. And and then you get a notification that someone is sending you an invite to connect. Then this will actually kind of combine all of those into one and give you a little summary of hey, you got invited to three summits. And also someone sent you an invite in theory. In practice, we've seen a lot of weirdness with these notification summaries and so you may or may not have a good experience with that. And I think Rosemary is Going to show us something here.
- [14:04]
Rosemary Orchard
Yeah, I was just going to show folks my notification center right now. So, to be clear, I'm currently in a focus mode, which we're going to come back to in a little moment, which is why I've got while in podcasting Focus. But here on my lock screen, I can see both my next summary that's coming up because I use notification summaries, which are not the same as the intelligence summaries. But down here from ring, I can see on the ring notification, there's a little badge on the top right corner of the app icon. This is five. And then I am running the iOS 18.3 beta. Um, so this is now in italics where it says multiple status changes for front entrance and front door with someone at front door. And if I tap on this, then I can see that actually, you know, my front entrance was used to unlock the entrance at, you know, 20 to 2 this afternoon. There was motion at the front door, motion at the front door, motion at the front door. And somebody was at my front door, which was very convenient. I actually, I didn't plan for the repair guy to come and replace the outdoor light today, but when they asked if he could come on a Tuesday, I was like, yes, brilliant. I'm going to have a bunch of notifications that I can bundle up to show folks on iOS today.
- [15:16]
Micah Sargent
Nice. Exactly. And then the last setting here that I'll mention is this will depend on if the app has its own notification settings, and if the developer has made that apparent to Apple that it has its own notification settings, there will be a link provided. Essentially, it's a button you press and it will pop in deep link to the notification settings for that specific app. So for some, you may not see this, but for the apps that have set this up, then it is available to you. Now, that is the look of things in a specific app, going in through the notifications via notification center. And again, that's kind of my base recommendation for apps that you already have. In particular, it's much easier to manage this when it's a new app that you're downloading. But if it's an app that you already have, that can get complicated to remember to go in and make those changes. But let's take a look at the top of the notifications menu. Here we have three options at the top for how notifications display. There's count, which is not, unfortunately, count of Sesame street, telling you how many notifications you have. Although that would be amazing, it is instead just a number that refers to how many notifications you have. Stack, which is the thing you'll see on most people's devices where it will show you kind of a basic stack of the notifications with the front most notification appearing at the top and then of course scrolling up while you're on the lock screen will show you more. And then list, which is the old school style of displaying them kind of one after the other after the other. So it's like stack but as if you had already swiped up to see what notifications are there. I have stack turned on. That way I can see my beautiful lock screen that I've customized exactly how I like it. And that's kind of the difference. If you don't really care about the wallpaper as much on your lock screen and you like the old way of things, maybe list is better for you. If you don't want to see any of that on the lock screen until you swipe up count might be better for you. Stack gives you just that kind of initial preview with a swipe up to see more. I'm going to let Rosemary talk about scheduled summary in a moment, but I'll go through the rest of these here really quick. Show previews by default you can choose Do I want to show previews? We talked about this before. So showing more of the app notification when it's unlocked, never meaning whether it's locked or not, or always meaning that regardless of whether it's locked, I want you to always show that preview Screen sharing this is an option that says when my phone is in screen sharing mode or an iPad, then do not show notifications during that share play or that screen mirroring session. So that's just kind of a privacy thing. If you were showing a presentation from your phone or showing you know, somebody a video from your phone on their Apple tv, then having that turned on and means that those notifications won't be kind of popping up at the top. And then summarize notifications, which you can also change by default. This again is the ability, if you have a device that supports Apple Intelligence, to go in and say, yes, I'm allowing you to summarize notifications or no, I'm not. But if you tap into this, you have the ability to toggle on or off app by app by app by app. So this can be a little bit faster than having to go into the apps themselves and make those changes that way. And so this will give you the option to make those changes. And then Siri, whether Siri announces notifications and at what time Siri announces notifications? So when I'm connected to headphones then Siri go ahead and announce notifications while I'm in a CarPlay session. Announce message notifications or do not announce message notifications. Whether you start by announcing new messages or silence new messages and on from there. And in this case I know a lot of people that like to use announced notifications, especially whenever they're using their AirPods. I'm not a fan of it, so I actually have that setting turned off most of the time. And then Siri suggestions which are basically little pop ups that say, you know, give me, give me suggestions via Siri, which is Apple's sort of intelligent, you know, watchtower for the device for these different apps. Now the last thing I'll mention before we talk about scheduled summary is all the way at the bottom because people have this question a lot too. Here you'll see the government alerts. So whether or not your phone receives amber alerts, whether or not your phone receives emergency alerts, public safety alerts and test alerts, you'll notice that I have test alerts turned off. I don't really need it to. If they're doing testing, they could do testing with their devices. I don't need to see those public safety alerts. I have toggled on Amber alerts. I have toggled on and then with emergency alerts you can tap into it and say you can turn on or off local awareness where it uses not just your location but a bunch of stuff to kind of make sure that if you are in a different place you'll get emergency alerts for that location and then whether or not those alerts will play a sound even if the iPhone is in silent mode. So those are some settings that you can make changes to there listeners.
- [21:11]
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- [22:08]
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- [23:39]
Micah Sargent
Tell us about scheduled notifications, which of course is different from summary notification summaries.
- [23:47]
Rosemary Orchard
Yeah, so a scheduled summary is essentially where you have a few apps or most of your apps, let's be honest, send you notifications throughout the day and you want to be able to kind of like skim through these. But regardless of what you're doing, regardless of whether you are working or driving or just just doing whatever at home, you don't necessarily need these to actively go dinning. I exist and I am important and I should take over your world. And this is what the scheduled summary is for on iOS. So in these settings you can go into scheduled summary and the notifications. So settings, notifications, scheduled summary. And then if you haven't got this turned on, you can turn this on. And if you haven't got this turned on, I would encourage you to go in, have a little play with it, turn it on and see what's there. So to start with, it just has one summary time. And I personally have found four summary times in a day is about right for me. So I've got one 8 o'clock in the morning, 1 o'clock in the afternoon, quarter to six in the evening and 10pm at night. Then there is an option for showing your next summary, which means that when you look at your notifications, I can see what's coming up in the next notification summary already. So I'm not gonna miss out on notifications if something actually important appears there. But realistically it's not gonna be important. So I could probably turn that off. Um, and then as well as being able to add a summary. So you can just add one and then you can change the time and it's just got your standard time picker. Um, then you can see which apps you would like to include. Um, now it defaults to apps sorted by your weekly notification average. So you can see on average I get 270 notifications from Fast mail a week. Now sometimes email is important, I will grant you that. But you know what? Everybody that has my email address who actually genuinely might need to contact me urgently has my phone number. They can send me a text message, they can call me. So if something's genuinely urgent, nobody is going to email me. They'll get in touch with me another way. So email for me was a perfect candidate of yes, I still want to see these notifications. I do not want to be interrupted by email, thank you very much. So I popped that in there. Now if you prefer to sort these by A to Z, then you can just tap to switch over and sort by A to Z and you can put as many applications in here or as few as you like. And once you have the notification summary turned on, then you also have the option of being able to swap type on an existing notification on your lock screen and tap options and then you can say add to summary, which means that it's then going to go into that however many times a day collation of notifications that appear. It's unfortunate that Apple have chosen to use the word summary in a few different ways because to me this is more a scheduled collation or scheduled delivery of certain kinds of messages. Um, so yeah, this is what that does. And honestly, I find this to be incredibly helpful because I don't need notifications from the vast majority of these apps on my phone on a day to day basis. Um, and I certainly don't need them. Well, it's not that I don't want them at all. It's that I don't need them interfering with everything else that's going on. I pretty much prefer them to be a nice big group stack. Now, as a little bonus, what you can also do is I can look at this and go, okay, that's cool. I can just clear that whole lot and be like, yep, I've skimmed it and I'm done. So long. Thanks for all the fish. Bye bye. However many notifications that is. And this can be quite a compromise between turning notifications off entirely for apps that maybe. So for example, I don't know about over in the US Maika, but over here there's an app called Nextdoor. It's super popular with people and a lot of people like to gossip and say like, oh, I saw number 27's dog pooping outside number 18's garden again, and things like that. And you know, they're talking about their neighbors, somebody's posting a bicycle for free and so on. Is that critical? Do you need that interrupting your life? No, but do you kind of want an overview of what's going on in the neighborhood? Maybe. In which case Nextdoor would be another great sort of candidate for this kind of app. So I wouldn't personally put things like health notifications, if you've got any connected health devices and so on into a scheduled summary that things like mail and, you know, what's going on in the world type things, if you like news notifications. Do you need news notifications interrupting? Maybe, maybe not.
- [28:28]
Micah Sargent
You can choose Nice. And then the last thing I want to mention here is that there is now the option to make adjustments to focus modes, which can also impact how notifications appear for you. So if we're in our settings app, we go into Focus, which is in the area where notifications also is. We'll choose Focus. And there are some basic options like do not disturb, for example, which says that while you have on do not disturb, what is allowed to send you notifications. And in this we'll talk about intelligent breakthrough and silencing at the very end because a lot of people won't have that but allow notifications. These are the people in the apps that are allowed to send you notifications while this focus mode is enabled. And this applies to every single focus mode that you choose. There's an options here and a lot of people, you know, get a little worried. Okay, if I have on do not disturb, but somebody's really needing to get in touch with me, what the heck do I do? Don't worry because you will have the ability to say if there is a, you know, a repeat call, for example, please do let that through. But for notification options, if they're silenced, you have the ability to say yes, still show them on the lock screen, or no, don't even show them to me. Hide badges. So those red circles that I talked about, whether those notifications are always silenced or only while the phone is locked. And if you dim the lock screen while the focus mode is on, if you choose people, then you get to choose who can call you. And this is the section where you choose. And you can do this as the these are the people who can get in touch or these are the people who can't get in touch. So maybe you have a vacation mode where your work colleagues are not are listed as silence notifications from those work colleagues. But here under phone calls is that allow repeated calls action. It says a second call from the same person within three minutes will not be silenced. So in an emergency or something like that, they would still be able to get through. We've talked before about focus mode, so you also know about being able to customize the different screens. You can set a schedule for this. So during specific times, that's when I want the focus mode to activate. And you can also set up focus filters which are are options that developers set up within their apps to give you the ability to make control to make specific decisions for how those apps behave. An example would be a calendar app. Maybe you have a work calendar and you have a personal calendar. If you have a vacation mode, you can say, don't show me any of my work calendar when I launch this app while I'm in this focus mode. And that's one specific example. But if I tap on add filter, you'll notice that 1Password has an I should note 1Password is a sponsor on the network. Fantastical, as I mentioned before, is an option messages so you can have it so that it only displays certain conversations in your actual conversations list. And music, which will give you the ability to kind of make a change to how it is or is not recommending music to you. So if you have let's say a work focus mode and during your work. You listen to a lot of classical music, but you don't want that to really influence how Apple Music recommends new stuff to you. Then that can be a change there as well as system filters like whether or not low power is enabled, dark mode is enabled, the always on display is enabled, or silent mode is enabled. Those are all filters that are built in or added by those third party developers. And then we'll have Rosemary. Oh sorry, I forgot to mention. And then Intelligent Breakthrough and Silencing is a feature that says I being the system will look at notifications that are coming in and your past behavior. If I feel like this notification should be delivered to you, even though you have do not Disturb turned on, I will allow that notification to pop through and display to you. That puts a lot of trust in the AI of the thing, but you may try that and see if it's something that works for you. All right now Rosemary, round us out here.
- [33:01]
Rosemary Orchard
Well I did just want to mention maika that everybody, if they ever use a focus mode or they're considering using a focus mode, should pop in and look at those focus filters because depending on what apps you have installed, like for example I use devonthink to just store a whole bunch of data like all of the manuals for things like my washing machine and my fridge and my microwave, which I rarely need but when I need them I actually would like to have them. That's in Devon. Think I've got drafts here. I've got good links, I've got Everlog for journaling, omnifocus. So many apps have got focus filters where you can say hey, this subsection of the content in the app is going to be useful to me while I am doing this thing thing while I am working, etc. I want to, you know, see like my work folk, my work workspace in Drafts for example. And it's just quite nice to be able to have a look and see like oh yeah, I can do this, have a little play with this and go ahead. And I would personally like, I would personally like to make a little pitch as well. With notifications, less is more.
- [34:10]
Micah Sargent
Yes.
- [34:11]
Rosemary Orchard
How much stress does a notification add to your day? How much, how much overhead, mental overhead is it adding? And you can always change notifications from appearing as banners to just going straight to the lock screen and see if you're missing that or not and start by whittling it down from there and so on and so forth. So I would really like to recommend that everybody take a look at their notifications and also maybe check in with their parents and from personal experience, remind your parents Do Not Disturb is a feature and if perhaps at any point, for example, say your mother is going into hospital and doesn't want to be notified about a whole bunch of things, that they should not go into the settings notifications and turn off notifications for every single app individually and that do not Disturb mode exists for a reason. The one thing I would say is please do leave on Do Not Disturb mode for apps like banking applications. Sorry, leave on notifications for apps like banking apps apps and so on. Because a lot of these apps will send you a push notification to authenticate your login from another device, for example. And troubleshooting why that is not working when you've turned off your notifications for that app entirely takes a lot more work. And so yeah, make sure you're a little careful if you're turning off everything. But yeah, Do Not Disturb is a really great feature and remind all of your friends and relatives that exists and show them how to turn off individual notifications for the spammier apps that maybe they don't need popping up in front of their face 15,000 times a day.
- [35:44]
Micah Sargent
Yes, that is all good advice and that means that we are just about ready to move on. I just want to remind you that if you have topic ideas or if you have questions about different features that are on iOS IPADOS, then do reach out. IowaD WWIT TV is how you can get in touch for that. And of course also if you have notifications tips that you want to share, that's a great way to let us know about the way that you're managing notifications. With that, I do believe I can hear the music. It's time for Shortcuts Corner Listeners as.
- [36:23]
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- [37:22]
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Micah Sargent
Odoo makes a lot of sense, but.
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- [38:21]
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- [38:32]
Micah Sargent
Welcome to Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts requests. And Rosemary Orchard, our shortcuts expert, provides a response. This week Rosemary is going to tell us a little bit about what's new in shortcuts, because, as is always the case, Apple adds new fun stuff for people who know a thing or two about shortcuts and some people who are just trying out for the first time to use and to get excited about. So tell us a little bit, Rosemary.
- [38:59]
Rosemary Orchard
Yeah, so every year as Apple goes through the year of doing the release, as we've seen over the last few years, they'll announce things at WWDC in July and then in September we get some of those features. And then as the year goes on, we get more and more features coming through. Like, for example, journaling. Last year was one of those features that came a little bit later, which is lovely that they're not putting so much pressure on everybody to deliver everything immediately. But this also means we're starting to get things like new shortcuts actions and fixes to Shortcuts actions throughout the year. And this started obviously with iOS 18. And we already talked about what was new with iOS 18 with shortcuts back in September, but there is now, or there are now new shortcuts actions that we can take advantage of on iOS. So there are also some new actions on macros as well, which I'm not going to dive into quite so much. But a lot of these could be very useful when paired with say, an action button which more and more people are getting, or other automation triggers like for example, squeezing your Apple Pencil, which are is available if you have the right kind of Apple Pencil and the right kind of iPad. So I'm just going to pop open shortcut on my iPhone here. There we go. And now I can show folks some of these. So first of all, if you haven't seen the more recently revamped version of Shortcuts, then Apps and Actions are no longer separate tabs, but actually starting towards the top, there is the option of opening a particular page in the App Store, which could be quite useful if you frequently want to use it to get to, say, Apple Arcade, just to see what's new in Apple Arcade or to get to your account. That said, I will actually take this moment to remind folks that if you are looking at the App Store and you tap and hold on the App Store icon, you can jump straight to updates there, which is a little faster than going through the account screen. So that is not my preferred way to get to the update section, but that is certainly an option. Now there is also a brand new action for opening the Control center, which, considering how many new actions are available in the Control center, can be quite useful though. Every single time you look in the Control center and you're like, oh, that's a nice new action. It's available as a shortcut too. So all those fancy new things that you see in the Control center, especially as app developers have been adding them over the course of the year, they're available as Shortcuts actions, which is very nice. So yes, turning on and off your Control Center. But one of my favorite little ones, which is here because we were talking about messages recently on the show, you can now send a check in and you can start sending a check in to a particular recipient through messages, which can be really great when tying it into something else. So for example, you can say hey, whenever I start an Apple Watch workout, which is a trigger that you can use on the iPhone Then I want to send a check in to, you know, my partner, my parents, you know, my friend, whoever it is, and, and so on. And there's also some really nice actions for shortcuts themselves. And you might be thinking, wait, what Shortcuts? Shortcuts has actions. It does. So apart from actions to create and delete shortcuts and search for shortcuts, the net move shortcut and rename shortcut actions, which were added relatively recently, are now available on every platform. So iPhone, iPad and Mac, which they previously weren't. Um, so there's that. And then there is also a search option which is again, perhaps more useful if you are tying it in with something else or for example, using it through the action button, because they've added this action primarily to make it available to the action button. But basically what this does is this will open Spotlight, but you can pre fill it with certain text which could be quite useful to you. And there is another little action which came out with iOS 18.1 which is related to the Tips app. And I have a feeling, Maika, that we should maybe do a show about the Tips app. I'm wondering maybe next episode, can we squeeze it in potentially?
- [43:19]
Micah Sargent
Yeah, I think we can do that. We should be able to do that.
- [43:20]
Rosemary Orchard
Okay, excellent, excellent work because there's a new shortcut section for opening a collection in the Tips app so you can open a particular group of, you know, know, tips, which is. Yeah, so one of those things. So, yes, those are the things that came with iOS 18.1. Now there were also some health actions, but they kind of tie in with the fitness actions because the health actions were for basically opening data types, opening health, opening the sleep schedule, which is kind of part of the clock as part of the health app. Both of them, it's, it's six of one, half a dozen, another, and just searching things in health. So it kind of just pops you into health. And Fitness, which came with iOS 18.2, does much of the same. It's opening various views and so on. But Freeform, which is an app that I think people kind of forget about sometimes, it's the lovely one with interactive or multiple person handwriting and so on, now has options to rename and update boards. But stocks, stocks went away and we've had a couple of questions about stocks over time and whether or not we can get the data in shortcut shortcuts. The answer to that, I'm really sorry to say, is still no. Using the native Stocks app, we still can't get the data inside of shortcuts, but they did add some new options to create a new watch list, to open a watch list and to delete a watch list. So watch lists are lists of stocks that you're watching. Um, which sounds very obvious, but it is not super obvious, I have to say, because, yeah, it's stocks. Is it perhaps secretly a codeware for something else? Who knows? But there, there were some other actions which were expanded to Mac OS as well, such as show weather, show topic, show the notes folder, toggling an accessory or Seam with HomeKit. But one action which has been asked for, and I've had to say so many people who've asked with Shortcuts corner. Sorry, no, we can't do that previously, which has made me so sad. But there is now the option to get the current app, which, if I could spell the word current would be so much better. Which means that if we run this inside of shortcuts, it can tell me and it's showing on my screen right now. I ran this and I'm inside of shortcuts. However, if you are somebody who would like to say, hey, whenever I'm opening any of these apps, I would like to run this shortcut shortcut. But then at some point a little bit further down, you'd like it to do something a bit different. For if you're opening the Kindle app versus if you're opening the books app. Okay, maybe you wanted to pick different background noise to play with dark noise or something like that. You can now use get current app and the if action, which with iOS 18 got multiple statements at the same time. So you can say, if I've opened the Kindle app app and it's dark outside, then play this noise, for example. So you know, or if I've opened the Kindle app and it's not dark outside, then play the creepy background sounds. Otherwise play the nice background sounds. I don't think that the axe murderer in my book is going to come and kill me. Not that I have personal experience from accidentally reading very scary novels at 2 o'clock in the morning. Don't do that. At least not if you have an overactive imagination. But get current app is something that we've been asking for for a long time. And if you've previously had a Shortcuts corner request and I've, I've emailed you back, or I've just not answered your shortcuts corner request because I didn't have the ability to get the current app, which meant that I couldn't answer Your question. Then please send in your Shortcuts corner request again because as of iOS 18.2 we are now able to do that, which means that I can answer so many more more requests that people have had over time. So I'm really looking forward to being able to solve some of those queries for people.
- [47:12]
Micah Sargent
Yay. We love it. We love that it's finally possible. That's very exciting, especially because other apps, other system features were able to pay attention to what app you were using, like reminders. So all right folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of iOS today. I remind you, iOS today at Twitter TV is how you can get in touch with us if you have questions of your own. Thank you so much much for tuning in. A couple of reminders. First and foremost, our survey, our annual survey is underway. Twitter TV Survey 25 is where you go to fill out that survey information. I promise it's only going to take you a couple of minutes, a few minutes to do and it is incredibly, incredibly helpful. Means a lot to us whenever you do. We've continued to see people coming in to fill out the survey and love that. Been celebrating that. So please join the fun and fill out that Twitch survey. It just gives us some information about who out there is listening, what you're interested in, what shows you watch, that kind of thing. So don't Forget to mention iOS today and we appreciate you for doing that. Twitter TV Survey25. This is also the time where I remind you about Club Twit at Twit TV Club Twit you may have recently heard about hands on tech making its way. It's the video version to the club. Part of the reason that shows are able to stick around and keep keep on keeping on is because of our Club Twit members who we adore. If you would like to become a member of Club Twit and become a member of the Adored, well all you do is head to Twitter TV Club Twit to check it out for for a little while. We're still continuing to offer the two week free trial of Club Twit. So if you have yet to check it out and you want to get access to those great Benefits, then Twit TV Club Twit after that 7 doll I want to remind you of some of those awesome benefits. Ad free versions of every single Twitch show. Access to the Twit plus bonus feed. That's a bunch of content available to you immediately and of course in the future access to the members only Discord Server a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit and access to the video versions of our Club Twit exclusive shows. So be sure to check those out at Twitter TV club TWiT and if you're watching live and are a member, I want to remind you Twit TV Club Twit Referral when you refer your friends, you can earn months of Club Twit for free. So thank you to those of you who are members, and thank you to those of you who will soon become members. Rosemary Orchard if folks want to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?
- [50:01]
Rosemary Orchard
Well, the best place to go is rosemary orchard.com where you can find books, apps and of course links back to iOS today. And of course you can find me in the Club Twit Discord. There's a great iOS today section with a general discussion. Plus there are threads for every single episode where if you've got questions specific to that one you can pop in and ask us. Maika where can folks find you?
- [50:21]
Micah Sargent
If you're looking to follow me online, I'm ikasargent on many a 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 check out the rest of my shows including Tech News Weekly, the show available to the public, and Hands On Mac and Hands On Tech in the Club. Thanks so much for tuning in and we'll catch you next time for another episode of iOS today.
- [50:50]
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