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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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469 — June 6, 2025

Automating Theater Mode on watchOS at Night

TIPS

Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.

Automating Theater Mode on watchOS at Night

My girlfriend recently mentioned that she was bothered by my Apple Watch Ultra’s display turning on at night whenever I was tossing and turning in bed. I’ve had the Sleep focus enabled on all my devices for a while, but the red night face on my Apple Watch was still being displayed whenever movement was detected. I knew I could enable Theater Mode on the Watch to ensure that would no longer happen, but I couldn’t trust myself to activate it manually each night. As always, automation came to the rescue thanks to Apple’s Watch actions in the Shortcuts app.

Creating this automation was very simple. In Shortcuts on my iPhone, I created a personal automation that is triggered whenever Bedtime mode and my Sleep focus become active, which already happens on a schedule. The only action I had to use was ‘Set Theater Mode’, which can be configured to ‘Set Theater Mode On’ when I want the display to turn off unless I press the Digital Crown. That’s all there is to it.

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469 — June 6, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

GamingBuddy

GamingBuddy added an iPad version this week. It’s a great addition to an already excellent app for managing your collection of videogames, keeping up with new releases, finding reviews, and more. On the iPad, there’s more room for artwork and all the app’s other content. Everything syncs with the iPhone version over iCloud, and you can now create custom tags for your games, too.

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468 — May 30, 2025

HyperContext →

MACSTORIES RECOMMENDS

Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.

HyperContext

In just the few months since its announcement last year, Model Context Protocol (or MCP) has become the de facto standard for connecting LLMs to external tools. MCP is described as “USB-C for web services”, and there’s something to that idea: its open nature means that whether you want to connect an MCP server like Zapier to Claude, Shortwave, Cursor, or, soon, ChatGPT, it’s always going to work. Effectively, MCP provides an abstraction layer for different APIs that can all come together and “talk” to LLMs with a shared communication system.

So far, you’ve probably heard of MCP in the context of web services that expose their APIs to AI apps and allow for things like connecting Claude to your Todoist account. As I demonstrated a couple of weeks ago, I use that a lot. But MCP servers can also run locally on your computer without talking to any cloud server, and a great example of this technology is HyperContext, the new Mac app by indie developer Anders Borum (maker of MacStories favorite Working Copy).

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467 — May 23, 2025

Interesting Links

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

Vivaldi’s iOS app (which has been my default browser for the past month) now supports background audio playback, letting you keep YouTube and other media playing when you switch apps or lock the screen. Vivaldi has also added support for tab stacking and pinning on mobile. (Link)

Apple has launched a new feature in Australia and New Zealand that allows users to transfer their music libraries and playlists from other streaming services directly into Apple Music, using a third-party service to match songs with Apple’s catalog. I’m so intrigued by this: what service are they using? When is this launching in other countries? (Link)

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467 — May 23, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

Subo

If you’ve ever been surprised by a subscription renewal you forgot about, Subo is a new app to help you keep track of all your recurring charges. Created by indie developer Niclas Schmidt, the app lets you monitor when your subscriptions renew and how much you’re spending monthly and yearly across various currencies. The app comes with templates for popular services to make the setup process easier, and it can send you reminders before your next renewal date. The app is free to download, with some features requiring a paid upgrade. I love how this app looks and the attention to animations in the UI; I hope to see more data visualizations in future updates.

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