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Federico Viticci

Editor-in-chief

Mastodon: @viticci@macstories.netEmail: viticci@macstories.net

Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, and Dialog, a show where creativity meets technology.

He can also be found on his two other podcasts on Relay FM – Connected and Remaster.

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How I Quickly Save Text, Links, and Images to My Daily Notes in Notion

SHORTCUTS CORNER

Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.

Shortcuts Essentials

How I Quickly Save Text, Links, and Images to My Daily Notes in Notion

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: I created a shortcut to quickly append content to my daily note so I don’t forget to save stuff I come across during the day, thoughts that pop into my head, or random things that John or Silvia send me. Right, we’ve been over this. What’s different now is that I stopped using Obsidian six months ago, fully embraced Notion, and never looked back. And since Notion lets me save rich links and images in addition to plain text, and lets me do that with a web API that doesn’t require me to launch an app for syncing to trigger…well, that meant I had to come up with a new shortcut for my beloved daily notes.

Before I talk about the shortcut, let me tell you about the apps I used for this automation and how you’ll need to configure them. First, as always, I’m using the free Actions app to get titles of webpages because I find it more reliable than Apple’s own ‘Get Name’ action. Second, if you want to automate Notion on your Apple devices, I can’t recommend installing Nautomate enough. Originally created by the late Alex Hay and eventually picked up by the folks at Snailed It, Nautomate abstracts interactions with the Notion API by giving you native, visual Shortcuts actions that you can configure with parameters and variables. The only “downside” is that you’ll need to make sure Nautomate is an authorized connection in your Notion workspace for the databases you want to work with. In my case, that meant granting Nautomate access to my Daily Notes database. If you want to use Nautomate, I recommend doing this upfront before you start scratching your head, wondering what’s wrong with a shortcut that is seemingly correct.

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App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Willow

Willow is another AI-powered voice dictation app that launched on the Mac a while back and, earlier this week, came out on iOS. (The developers have been kind enough to offer Club MacStories members 200 codes for a one-month free trial; you can find the details in this issue of the newsletter). I’ve been monitoring this new category of apps very closely over the past year, and I’ve tried a bunch of apps in this space: Willow, Superwhisper, Wispr Flow, Raycast, and Aqua come to mind. Something that has become clear to me is that if a dictation app for Mac doesn’t offer an iOS counterpart, I’m not going to use it much. And for those apps that do offer an iOS version, it seems that the general consensus is to build a custom keyboard that kicks you off to the main app temporarily to start dictation, then keeps the session active as a Live Activity so you can dictate in any other app on your iPhone using a custom keyboard.

The new Willow app for iOS checks all these boxes and then some. The iOS app syncs with Willow for Mac, including your custom dictionaries of specific terms that you often dictate and want the app to remember. Something that I appreciate about Willow on both platforms is that the app uses a Live Activity on iOS and a custom “Dynamic Island” UI in the MacBook’s notch to show you that it’s listening and transcribing. I find that to be a nice touch.

In my tests, Willow’s engine (unfortunately, the developers don’t advertise which AI model they’re using) is up there with Wispr Flow in terms of speed and accuracy, although Wispr Flow performed better with commas and overall punctuation for me. Regardless, the iOS version is very polished, and its transcription engine is leagues beyond Apple’s default dictation feature. I highly recommend taking advantage of the promo codes to test the app for a month while they’re available.

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Moving from Spotify to Apple Music

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

More stories for Club members.

Moving from Spotify to Apple Music

This was a long time in the making – and I hinted as much in my iOS 26 review back in September – but after a lot of back and forth and a year of daily usage, I’ve decided to switch back from Spotify to Apple Music. Put simply: despite the CEO’s replacement, I continue to get a bad taste in my mouth from Spotify’s corporate policies and seeming embrace of so-called “AI music”. Yes, Spotify’s algorithm can be amazing for discovery, and I know I’m going to miss it. But every time I’ve used Spotify lately, it felt a little gross.

And no, Apple’s political moves – at least from my perspective – aren’t great, either. However, all things being terrible these days for one reason or another, at least with Apple Music, I get a superior app experience on iPhone and iPad, better sound quality for hi-res lossless playback, and a vibrant ecosystem of third-party clients built with MusicKit that do not exist for Spotify. I picked my poison, I suppose.

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App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

SuperWidget

SuperWidget is a utility that lets you build custom widgets using data from Apple’s Shortcuts app or third-party APIs. What makes SuperWidget particularly interesting is how it bridges the gap between Shortcuts automation and data sources from external APIs; you could, for instance, create a widget that displays your website’s visitor count, your smart home’s current temperature, or any other data accessible through a REST API. I’ve always wished that Apple would allow me to design custom widgets powered by Shortcuts data, and this is an interesting third-party take on the idea that reminds me of designing a custom dashboard for the TRMNL as well as Panic’s old Status Board app.

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Interesting Links

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Interesting Links