In this issue: John shares his collection of PopClip extensions, Federico tests Todoist’s LLM integration with email, and Jonathan asks whether Apple should change its approach to introducing new software features, plus the usual Links, App Debuts, the latest happenings in the Club MacStories+ Discord community, and a recap of MacStories articles and this week’s episodes of MacStories podcasts.
In this issue: John rounds up a collection of hardware doodads, Federico shares a shortcut to turn Readwise Reader articles into Todoist tasks, and Jonathan highlights his favorite app icons, plus the usual Links, App Debuts, the latest happenings in the Club MacStories+ Discord community, and a recap of MacStories articles and this week’s episodes of MacStories podcasts.
In this issue: Federico recommends PDF It All, John shares a few iOS tips and a new speech-to-text tool, Jonathan rounds up a collection of ambient and lofi music services, plus the usual Links, App Debuts, the latest happenings in the Club MacStories+ Discord community, and a recap of MacStories articles and this week’s episodes of MacStories podcasts.
In this issue: John wants Apple Intelligence to build proper apps, Jonathan sets up a new Mac from scratch with Supercharge, Federico shares a shortcut that uses Parcel’s API to track deliveries, plus the usual Links, App Debuts, the latest happenings in the Club MacStories+ Discord community, and a recap of MacStories articles and this week’s episodes of MacStories podcasts.
This month, Devon ponders when when to keep an aging app and when to move on and John makes the case for digital hoarding in the age of AI.
In this issue: Federico recommends Contacts Sync, John shares his Apple Watch setup, and Jonathan proposes a way Apple could introduce watch face customization, plus the usual Links, App Debuts, the latest happenings in the Club MacStories+ Discord community, and a recap of MacStories articles and this week’s episodes of MacStories podcasts.
I’m a research nerd. I love chasing down details about whatever interests me, diving into the minutiae of a topic. However, the trouble with research is that it’s also easy to get lost in unproductive rabbit holes and waste a lot of time. That’s especially true when the topic is something I know little or nothing about. For example, a recent research session that started with the goal of finding technical specifications for Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) models turned into a meandering tour of subreddits and PSP modding websites.
That got me thinking about how I could optimize the way I handle this sort of early-stage research. Wandering the Internet is fun, but I don’t always have the time for it. So I started exploring ways I could avoid distractions, which led to a quest for greater flexibility in my research workflow. What I ended up with was a collection of web services and apps across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, with Google Gemini at the center.
Here’s how it works.
In this issue: Jonathan recommends BusyCal, John shares his favorite video production apps, and Federico explains how he’s using FileBrowser to sync Dropbox folders offline on his iPad, plus the usual Links, App Debuts, the latest happenings in the Club MacStories+ Discord community, and a recap of MacStories articles and this week’s episodes of MacStories podcasts.
A few months ago, I realized that Reminders wouldn’t be able to scale to my new professional life in 2025.
You see, this year we’re planning to expand and diversify MacStories even further, launching projects that have been years in the making as well as trying some new things that we recently thought of. New projects mean new responsibilities, which in turn lead to more tasks and an increased need to coordinate with different people. I love Reminders, and I think Apple has done a commendable job growing the app over the past few years, but let’s face it: it’s not built for this type of serious, advanced task management. In light of that, I started looking for a new tool to help me in my daily life.
I looked far and wide (and even considered John’s recent favorite, Godspeed), but I realized that all signs were pointing me to return to a product I’d used for years before switching to Things, and eventually Reminders: good old Todoist.
There were several reasons behind my decision to return to Todoist, but the most important one was its web API. I’m convinced that our modern AI era is marking a resurgence of web services, and I wanted to find something that could theoretically support some kind of connection to an AI assistant (such as ChatGPT or Gemini) down the road. At the same time, I also wanted something that could be easily and consistently automated. With more responsibilities coming into my life, it’s essential for me to automate all the boring parts of my job that can happen without my manual, time-consuming input. With the combination of a REST API and native Shortcuts actions, Todoist simply felt like the perfect candidate.
For the past couple months, I’ve been building custom shortcuts on my iPad and iPhone to interact with Todoist. I’ve created shortcuts to save tasks, retrieve details about specific projects and sections, export tasks, and more. In this Academy lesson, I’ll explain the key techniques behind the shortcuts, share the shortcuts themselves, and teach you how you can get started with the Todoist API and build your own shortcuts to automate your task management.
I’m also experimentIng with a new structure for each shortcut highlighted in these lessons that should (hopefully) make everything more digestible and easier to follow along with. (Let me know if that’s not the case!)
Let’s dive in.
In this issue: Jonathan has a new best friend in the Hyper key, Federico offers a tip for saving time with Safari’s ‘Listen to Page’ feature, and John shares his thoughts on the rise of web apps, plus the usual Links, App Debuts, the latest happenings in the Club MacStories+ Discord community, and a recap of MacStories articles and this week’s episodes of MacStories podcasts.
