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iOS Today 797: Apps That Think Like You Do
00:31:14
iOS Tools for Every Brain & Workflow
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A
Coming up on iOS today, it's about time we talk about it. The Neurodiverse apps for your neurodiverse life. Stay tuned.
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Podcasts you love from people you trust.
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This is twit. This is iOS Today, episode 797 with Rosemary Orchard and me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Tuesday, March 31, 2026 for Thursday, April Nint, 2026. Apps that think like you do. Hello and welcome to iOS today, the show where we talk all things iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, HomePod, OS plus all the other operating systems that Apple has to offer. We love to talk about them here on the show and help you make the most of your devices. And that is what we aim to do today. I am but one of the hosts of this show. My name is Micah Sargent.
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B
And my name is Rosemary Orchard. And I'm very excited to be here today because my brain works differently to some people's br. I think everybody's brain actually works differently. And so it's just finding the things that work for you and it doesn't matter how your brain works, as long as your brain works and you can help it work even better.
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A
Yes, these. I think this is a really cool idea and one that as we kind of talked about ahead of time, we had not. We haven't done precisely or exactly. And so being able to talk about this and also see that Apple and its editorial team have worked on covering this is really nice. And so yeah, this week it's about apps for, you know, the Neurodiverse apps for whatever might be the reason that you need to make changes to your, to your experience on your phone or your iPad, this is what is possible. And I think that when I am looking at my like the apps that have made all the difference for me, there's one app that I always talk about. And so I'm just going to briefly mention it because does not need me to keep talking about it all the time. And that is the DO app D U E. It is my reminders app of choice because it is an app that will not let you forget a thing. It will keep reminding you over and over and over again until you do the task. Now, other apps to do apps have added this over time, but because DO was doing it so long ago, I have forever used this app and it is the reason that I am able to get things done or, you know, part of the reason I'm able to get things done. It does make all the difference. So for me, the DO app is the Neurodiverse app of choice as far as I'm concerned for again, for me, and I would not be a as functioning as I am without it. But this I think is an opportunity to talk about some of the other apps that are out there. And so that's why I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time on do. One of those apps helps you listen to articles and other content, and it is one that has in the past been suggested by and recommended by friend of the show and oft guest on MacBreak Weekly, Shelley Brisbane. Can you tell us a little bit about the first pick on the list?
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Rosemary Yes, I can. So the first pick on the list is inspired by the, the article which inspired all of this and it's called Voice Dream and it's a natural reader. Now there are a bunch of ways in iOS where you can just say, hey, read this text. You know, you can select text and say speak it out loud in Safari under articles, you can get that to speak it out loud. But the problem with selecting text is especially on say, like a PDF, you select it to the end of the page and then it just kind of freezes and stops part the way through a sentence. And yeah, it's one of those things where it, it, it's got a lot better over time. But Voice Dream is designed to, you know, really make these things sound natural. So you just send it the whole thing and it figures it out. And you can listen to any document. You can even take pictures of books and, and you know, scan them and that you can set reading speed, all sorts of things. And it works in 36 languages for, oh, sorry, 27 languages for 36 voices. And then there's also additional premium voices that you can get as well. And something I really like is you can send it like a Google Doc or a Word document and you can also even put like an ebook in there. It's going to have to be ebook that doesn't have digital rights management on there. So there's lots of legitimate free digital rights management, free ebooks out there. But yeah, and it can also, which is what I find quite nice. You can also put audiobooks in there. So if you've got audiobooks you've got off of CD or something, then you can put those in there as well. And yeah, it's, it can just be the place to listen to things. Yeah, I just, I, I played with it in the past. I, I thought I had it installed. I must have uninstalled it in the time being. But it, it syncs to things like Dropbox and Google Drive and Icloud Drive, Pocket Instapaper, even Evernote if you're still using that and all those things. And I just find it really a nice way to have a library essentially of things that you can listen to. So yeah, I've really enjoyed it in the past. There is a free trial and the app itself is free, but you do need to use have a subscription to it. And the price of that obviously varies depending on your location and what exactly it is you want. Do you want the fancy voices? Do you want just a regular subscription? I believe the Regular subscription is $80 a year, but yeah, it obviously varies depending on what exactly you want. Do you want a premium voice or just regular voice? But I've heard the premium voices are worth it.
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Yes, that's actually one of the things that I've heard as well from Shelley Brisbane in particular is that those premium voices really do make it feel less like you are being read to by a robot and can, I think add to that experience. One of the places I spend lots of time also a very common choice and so another one that you know, I'm not going to give a lot of time to, but I wasn't surprised to see it make this list from Apple, which is the Audible app. Audible of course has been, I don't think currently, but has long been a sponsor on the network. In any case, Audible is one of the places where I listen to all sorts of stuff, including audiobooks about ADHD and other Neurodiverse self help titles. So it's one of many options available to you when it comes to looking for a library of content that you might like. And it's also a great way for me to zone out without feeling like I'm zoning out completely depending on what I'm listening to. And then I can also achieve other things when I when it gets really boring, loading, unloading the dishwasher, I can pop in a little audiobook while I'm doing it and it makes things all the easier. Of course prices vary based on, you know, the titles that you purchase and the subscriptions, but the app itself is free to download. Now this is again another opportunity for us to look at what I would almost call productivity alt alt productivity apps. Apps that give you the ability to track or encourage your productivity without feeling like you are being shamed for not pulling off the productivity, getting the things done that you need to get done. Some people, they work well under that kind of pressure, some do not. And I think this next app on the list, Rosemary is a great way to sort of calmly remind yourself that there are things that you're wanting to. To achieve.
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Yes. Yeah. In particular, if you're one of those people that really struggles when it comes to. Okay, I need to focus on the. Yeah, what was it that I got distracted by my phone. Three seconds later. We've all been there, We've had those moments. It's the same as, where are my glasses? Where are my glasses? They're on top of my head. You know, everybody has had these moments over time, but some people are better at just putting their phone down and ignoring it than others. And some people just need something to help them hack into that. And that is, you know, the word that I'm choosing to use here, because forest. When you want to focus on something, you plant a seed. And then once you've planted a seed, it's going to start growing into a tree. But if you use your phone, it shames you a bit and the tree starts to die off. So if you then go back and you refocus and you keep focusing, you build a whole little forest. And the whole point is that, you know, change builds over time. And so you've got a way to do this now. One of the things I do really like that they've been working on is the ability to pause timers. Because sometimes it's like, oh, no, no, no. I was focusing on the thing and I know I said I was going to do it for two hours, but I've just got an email about this thing that's critical. And I like, the easiest thing to do is to pick up my phone and do it. Especially banking apps and things like that. Nowadays, trying to do things on the website can be quite tricky. So if you need to stop what you're doing, there's a pause feature and there's also live activities, which is a really nice way to utilize the lock screen of your phone. So you don't have to be using your phone to see what's happening, but your phone can be locked. It can be on the lock screen with live activity and then you can see, Aha. Okay, cool. This thing is happening. I'm doing the thing. And it can provide that little bit of additional motivation to keep going. Um, so yeah, you can also have it paying you on a regular basis to continue to do things. I'm just gonna say maybe later on on that and then you just try it for free. Um, and then there is a free version of the app. I'm just gonna leave that for now. I did have this set up, but unfortunately I did a little clean out of my phone a little too close to the show, so I need to go back and reset that up. But yeah, is 3.99 for the app or it was 3.99 originally. I believe it's now free to download. And then, yeah, you grow a whole little forest and it's quite nice. It's, it's a nice way to rem that what you're doing is for a good reason and to see a bonus benefit as well as getting the thing done that you're trying to accomplish.
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Absolutely. I think there's something about those gamified apps, particularly when again, it feels a little bit lower stakes that they really work for me, at least for a while and make me kind of lock in and go, okay, this is something that's going to make a difference for me. It's going to make me be able to, you know, achieve whatever it is that I'm trying to achieve. And I, I appreciate something like forest to, to do that again without making me go, okay, well you're, you've, you've failed at setting this habit today, so everything's over. No, it's like, yeah, you didn't make the tree grow, but let's keep working on it. Let's make it happen. The next app that I want to mention, in fact, they've since changed the sort of subhead for this app to be ADHD Productivity Timer. It originally was not that. And that's okay. The app is called Endel E N D E L And Endel is this app that has sort of auto generated sound, but it's not soundscapes. There are soundscapes within, but it's not soundscapes by default. It is music or sort of background soundtrack that I find to be very, very helpful in getting and staying focused. In fact, when I wake up in the morning on a day when I have shows, I will pop in my AirPods and open up the Endel app and start playing music from the Endel app. Because it has at this point sort of become a reinforced behavior for me that when that music plays, particularly for me, I use the Focus playlist. Then my brain does kind of lock in and get rolling. There are loads of different options. There's 852 hertz, which is supposed to be, according to some studies, a specific sound frequency that is helpful to people with ADHD to stay focused. But there are all sorts of different sound options, including Binaural Beats. There's a Focus Timer that's built in so you can say, you know, for the next 30 minutes I want to be able to focus. There are sleep options as well. The Apple TV app actually has. It's just the sleep version. And what's kind of cool is that Endel will use your specific location and therefore your time and the weather outside and the current location of the sun to throughout the day, make adjustments to the soundscape to match the environment. And so there will be sort of these. This is when your energy should be rising. So we're playing this kind of music to help encourage your, you know, your, your energy use or this is where you would want to be kind of chilling out. So now we're playing this music. I really, really like Endel for providing that. I will say it is a rather expensive app. It's free to download, but it does have in app purchases that depending on your sort of what trial or what option you choose, could be as low as 299 to try it out for a month, but could go up to $125 if you just buy the lifetime pass and never have to pay for it again. So hop in, check out the different options that are available to you. Obvious. Give it a go on its own first before you go in and know that it is a really nice app. In fact, if you check the health and fitness charts, it is the number two top free app. So quite popular among folks who, you know, might need an app to help them focus. I really, really like Endel and use it, like I said, every, every workday of the week. All right, Rosemary, what's next from you?
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Well, speaking of listening to things and putting nice, relaxing things, one hopes, in your ears, there's a great app called Calm. Now, if you've encountered them on social media and particularly threads, you might know that they sometimes refer to themselves as Clam because they're very clam about all the things they do. You know, they keep things secret until the right moment. But Calm is a great app app for providing things to listen to that's not just, you know, beats of some kind or a white noise type thing. You know, those things are excellent and I do really love them. I particularly have, I have a great app that I use if I want to just listen to like Rain Falling or something called Dark Noise by Charlie Chapman, which I'll include a link to in the show Notes as well later. But Calm gives you more than that. So for example, there's sleep stories. There's one here read by Matthew McConaughey. There's also, there's other ones as well. There's soundscapes like Rain on Leaves, there's meditation options and they have dailies in the app as well. So there is a free version of the app where a lot of the things are available. You can see on some of these things that there is a little padlock next to the number of people that have used it. And that is what tells you, you know, if you would need a subscription. So Rain on Leaves is free. Some of these, most of these dailies are paid for. Which, you know, makes sense. They're putting a lot of effort into making all this content for you every day. But there's, there's a lot of things that you can listen to and enjoy for free in the Calm app. And you can specify that, hey, you're looking to sleep. So you can go and look for things for sleep there in the profile. You can see how often you've been using it. I've signed in with a dummy account, so you've not got any of my actual data here. But you can also give somebody a free 30 day trial if you want to. And, you know, there's plenty that you can go through to discover. So there's specific things for mindfulness. There's even things targeted for kids as well. So, you know, if you know any kids that have got, you know, issues with, or just feel a little overwhelmed and want things to chill them out, there's even Paw Patrol and Disney Princess themed ones. You know, there's really something in here for everyone. And these are a lot of, these are audiobooks or mini audiobooks as well. And I just find it a really nice app. And also the way that they interact with people on social media. I know it's a marketing stunt and it's a strategy, but they seem very personable and they have a little thing going on with Beyond Meat as well. And it's adorable. It works. So I'm hoping that as a company, they are as nice as they proclaim to be on social media. But I have also really been enjoying the app as well.
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Nice there. I think we've actually had calm on the network before and I've used a lot of the calm stuff in the past and it really works like this is these, this is not some silly thing. There are real meditations, real options to help you out whenever it comes to sort of remaining calm, getting calm and checking in with yourself. Do you want to tell us about the last one on your list? Which is a little pricey, but I think you'll tell us why it may just be worth that cost.
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Yes. So there's more than one way to solve this problem. But I know personally, I hate typing the same thing again and again, especially when you're doing the same step repeatedly. Right? So for example, if you are listing things to resell, having to type the same thing again and again to say like, for example, this is never worn or it's only been worn a few times or it's a brand new book and things like that, you know, I have, yeah, I've got a standard item footer here, you know, from a smart pet free home. I need to update that because I now live with the dog and things like that. So these are snippets that I use all the time. And this is from an app called Snippity. Now snippity is $20. Um, and I believe that includes all of the platforms at that price. Um, the. That is the Mac app version for $20. I believe the iOS app version may be a little cheaper. Um, but it's just, I find this to be a really useful app. So you can create collections and then you can have snippets and it can do things like calculating dates. Um, and. Or it can give you a multi select. So you can say, hey, let me choose between Micah and Kevin and Burke and you know, a bunch of other people on the Twit network. And I can be like, cool, so I'm gonna check, check, check, check, check. And then it will just input all of those into it. And this is just for me, an incredibly useful little way of writing the same text. Sometimes it's exactly the same text. Sometimes it's a little bit modified. As in, you know, there's placeholders here. So, you know, it will ask me for a piece of text and then I will pop that. Or it will actually, you know, if you're using this on Mac, then it can, you know, do things with what you. With other stuff. But I can also say, hey, with my selected text, I want you to change that to title case. So capitalize the first letter of each word unless it's of or something, or make it into sentence case and things like that. And I find this is a genuinely super useful keyboard tool that stops me having to jump out of the thing that I am currently trying to do into another application. And then as inevitably happens, if I have to leave an app to do a task, I get distracted and I don't go back and finish what I was doing. Especially if you're trying to get a bunch of things done like listing things on ebay and things like that. This can be really useful or it can just be that you've got to write a lot of emails and a lot of the text is the same instead of copying and pasting it all the time. A smart keyboard for this is a really nice way of going about it it and that's one of the reasons why I do really enjoy Snippity. It makes my life so much easier. So yeah, I highly recommend it. And that is $20 for all the platforms by the way. So that includes the Mac version. So yeah, 10 out of 10 to snippity.
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Nice. We love to hear it. All right, well we of course are going to move along, but I do want to remind you all that you can email us Iostodayut TV is how you get in touch before we into the end of the show. Let me tell you a little bit about Club Twit at Twit TV Club Twit. When you head to Twitter TV Club Twit or use that QR code in the top corner there you will become a member. $10 a month, $120 a year gets you access to every single one of our shows ad free, just the content. You also get access to our special feeds, including our behind the scenes feed. It has sort of before the show, after the show stuff that gets popped in there that you wouldn't get to see otherwise. We also have a feed that has our live coverage of tech news events, really cool stuff including, you know, coverage of the upcoming WWDC and our cover or rather our special club Twitch shows, including my crafting corner, Stacy's Book Club, plus so much more. If that is not quite enough for you, hey, I get it. That's good because I've got something else to offer you and that is an invite to our club. Yes, you can become you can join our Discord at Twitter TV Club Twit to sign up. When you do join the Discord, you'll be able to chat with fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at Twit. So be sure to head there, check it out and we look forward to having you. All righty. It is time for our app caps. These are the apps and gadgets that we're using now or have been using for some time that we think are great and want to share with all of you. I do want to remind you all that if you have questions about any of Apple's platforms or have special shortcuts Questions for Rosemary. Be sure to email us iostodaywit tv. All right, my app cap this week, Very excited. I have been waiting for this app for some time. Recently it was released, and I have been playing it nonstop. I've told you before about Art of Fauna. That is the relaxing puzzle game that I have played that has different animals in it, and you sort of slide tiles around on the screen to get those, to get the pieces into place to make an animal. Well, the developer of Art of Fauna released Art of Flora, which, of course is an app that is a puzzle game about plants and mostly flowers. And so you get about these plants and also gets to build out these beautiful illustrations of plants. I love this game, this concept, and I am so thrilled to have so many more options because there is something about the simplicity but just enough difficulty of this game that you rarely get where it falls into a place that it doesn't require too much of my focus. And that means it's a perfect little idol experience that I get to have that I don't get from many other games. And so when I find these, I covet them. And so to have Art of Fauna and love that game so much to then have the same experience, but with really cool plants, goodness gracious. It's my favorite thing. So thank you so much to the developer of the wonderful Art of Fauna for making Art of Flora. Flora, you can download it for free, try it out to unlock all the puzzles, is $9.99, you can bet. And know that I absolutely did immediately buy this app because it's just fantastic. So Art of Flora is my app cap this week. Rosemary, I'm excited to hear about yours because I think we've got some hardware to check out.
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Yes, we do, Micah. And this is one of those things where I had a niche requirement. I wanted a speaker that I could use around the house, but also. And, you know, just have it, you know, without worrying about it running out of battery, but then also pick it up and take it into the shower. Not in the shower, in the shower to be clear, but like in the bathroom in the shower. If you know, this is waterproof to an extent, but I wouldn't personally actually put a speaker in my shower. And here in the UK in particular, we tend not to have have sockets in our bathroom to just plug in a speaker and leave it there. So getting a home pod into my bathroom would require a whole weird system with batteries that have got regular power plugs on. And it just seemed like a lot of effort. So I Wanted something that I could use airplay on, but also if I take it with me, I wanted to be able to use Bluetooth. And this is the Sonos Roam 2. So fun fact about it, it can be used in landscape or portrait, and it creates lovely sound both ways. It's got physical buttons on the top, so it's got a play pause, volume up, volume down down, and also a microphone button so you can turn off the voice features of this. And on the back, unlike the Sonos Roam one, as well as the power button, it also has a dedicated Bluetooth button, which makes it much easier for people to pair their devices with this, you know, without going through and accidentally resetting it, like my friend did on my original Sonos Roam when I was trying to use it as a Bluetooth speaker. So you don't have to use this on your home WI fi, but if you choose to, then you get features like airplay, which is really nice to have. And yeah, I just, I find this, you know, it's. It wasn't the cheapest speaker. It was £179. It's probably about the same in dollars. It comes in a bunch of different colors. It's in red and green and black, white, and the white is actually white this time, unlike the original Roam. And also I think it's like a grayish green. I. I don't remember the exact colors, but yeah, it's just a nice speaker. I have a little case for it that I've thrown an airtag into so that I can take it places, like on holiday and enjoy the fact that I have nice music. It's probably not the best speaker around, but it filled the exact niche that I wanted, which is to have a regular airplane speaker. Because you can put it on a wireless charger. There are magnetic wireless chargers that you can get for these. Or you can just put it on a standard wireless charger. Charger and just leave it there and it works. And then you can just pick it up and take it with you. Already playing music or not already playing music, it doesn't matter. And yeah. And listen to music wherever.
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And.
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Yeah, I just really enjoy the fact that I can have a speaker in my shower and not worry about it. Like, as I said, I don't take it in the shower. In the shower. I also wouldn't recommend swimming with it, like, strapped to your neck. That sounds like a really bad idea. Please don't do that. But it's designed to have enough waterproof rating, so if you. It gets splashed or similar, it should be fine. So yeah, I really like my sonos room 2. Highly recommend it and if you see it on sale, definitely worth picking up if you are looking for a Bluetooth and AirPlay compatible speaker that you can take outside and to various places that you want.
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Awesome. Awesome. Well there you go folks. That is that that is the episode that is iOS today. Please be sure to head to Twitch TV iOS to learn more about the show. We appreciate you joining joining us here today and of course we'll be back next week with even more of your show. All about making the most of your devices. Rosemary Orchard if people would like to follow along with the great work that you're doing, where in the world should they go to do so?
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I think the best place to go is rosereacher.com which has got links to apps, books, podcasts and all the social media sites where you can find me except for that club to a discord where people are hanging out and having a little chat about calm and how some people even get it as a free perk from their employer. So well worth checking out if there's something like that available for you to check to utilize.
- [30:28]
A
Awesome. Awesome. If you're looking to follow me online, I'm ikasargent on many a social media network where you can head to Chihuahua Coffee, that's C H I H U A H u a Coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. If you're having trouble accessing the site, let me know. I would like to know. But until then, it is time to say goodbye to all of you. Thank you for being here. If you're looking for more Apple coverage, can I invite you to check out MacBreak weekly every Tuesday? They dig into everything happening with the iPhone, with iPad, with Mac, and so much more.