Since macOS lacks a system-wide share sheet as powerful as the one in iOS and iPadOS, Shortcuts users have had to get creative to get data in and out of their favorite shortcuts. The ‘If’ action getting new smarts about device details combined with AppleScript has helped fill in some blanks, but those solutions involve more in-depth knowledge than I’d expect a general use to have. Today’s quick tip requires something that every Mac user should already be familiar with: drag-and-drop.
‘If Device Type is Mac’ makes cross-platform shortcuts more possible, but it’s not the only way. ⌘
Because shortcuts can be made into “applets” (basically mini-apps), they gain special functionality. The key is simply adding a shortcut to your Mac’s dock using the ‘File’ menu. As John Voorhees thoroughly documented on MacStories, once a shortcut is exported outside the Shortcuts app, it can live in the file system and act like other fully-fledged applications. This enables it to run with items dropped on its icon as input.
This, weirdly, is the primary way to export a shortcut to the dock. ⌘
Particularly for file or image-based shortcuts, drag-and-drop makes running them accessible and intuitive. And for shortcuts set up with a ‘Repeat with Each’ action, scores of files can be acted upon just by dropping the group on top of the shortcut’s icon.
I use this feature most to upload photos to my CDN for this blog. Since screenshots taken with Cleanshot X don’t offer services in their context menu, this is the most surefire way to get an image from anywhere on my Mac uploaded using my shortcut.
Though this is my most common usage, drag-and-drop can be helpful for all kinds of shortcuts. You could rename a batch of files. Or select text and drop it to save to an app like Drafts or Bear. Or batch crop, convert, and/or resize images to a specific format. The possibilities are as endless as Shortcuts itself.
I’m sure more advanced functionality for Shortcuts will come to the Mac. Hopefully, it starts with revamping the macOS share sheet, but I’d also suggest to the Shortcuts team to include more visual clues when a shortcut is running. As it stands, you don’t get much feedback when one is activated via drag-and-drop. But for now, the fact that these workarounds actually work is good enough for me.
My family grew up with scrapbooks playing a significant role in our lives. A few times per year, my mom would pack up a couple of suitcases full of printed photos and supplies and head to a girlfriend’s house to hang out and document the latest happenings. Usually, one of my sisters or I would tag along and be invited to make a scrapbook of our own. To this day, my parents’ house is filled with scrapbooks lovingly created with pictures, stickers, and captions that highlight family milestones.
But as someone who never really enjoyed the process of cutting out photos, laying them out just right, and thinking up the perfect caption, I was more suited for a digital solution to share pictures with others. So when Apple introduced Shared Albums that didn’t count against iCloud storage limits, I went all in.
However, that meant every year I made a new family Christmas album, a Thanksgiving album, a birthday album, and more — each of which needed to be shared with and accepted by recipients. I treated them as events, and that decision led to the number getting out of hand. It became too tedious to keep up, and I wanted to consolidate them to just a few ongoing albums. Since it’s recently become my primary way of sharing what’s happening in my life with family, Shared Albums had to get easier for everyone.
Making It Happen
I learned the best way would be to reshare all the photos from those individual events to a ‘Blundy Family’ shared album that everyone could contribute to. That way, there would be just one feed to check and no need to invite the same group to ever-more albums. It wasn’t an easy process.
Small albums could be shared just fine, especially from a Mac, where they were more likely to be downloaded locally. I simply selected all the photos and transferred them to the new main album. However, sometimes photos inexplicably wouldn’t share. Not even by tracking down and isolating the offending photo would it share from its old album. I had to go into the actual photo library, relocate the original images, and share from there. If I didn’t have the original, I was out of luck.
There was some other weirdness even with photos that would share easily. For example, screenshots and other random images (perhaps those imported from other cameras?) lose their created date when shared from other shared albums. And adjusting the data via the Photos app’s image menu does not stick around when they’re sent to a shared album. I had to export the photo to s separate file, then adjust the EXIF data with a third-party app. To make sure it didn’t lose the EXIF data again, I had to send the file directly into the shared album using the iOS share sheet because macOS won’t allow you to add files straight to a shared album without importing it into your photo library first. What?!
Hoping for a Better Shared Experience
Users of Family Sharing have long called on Apple to improve the experience of sharing an entire library, or a subset of it, with family members. I’d certainly like to see that kind of overarching solution, in line with what Google Photos offers, but my steam has run out on wishing for that every year.
Instead, I’d settle for minor improvements to the shared album workflow. Anything to show that someone at Apple is still actively working on that cornerstone of the Photos app would be a blessing. Here are a few ideas:
Give us the option to have more metadata stick with shared photos and the ability to edit it just like other photos in the library. I’m usually only sharing these photos with trusted individuals, so metadata, like location and creation date, would be fine for them to see.
Include more (and more obvious) controls over changing the view. Did you know that you can set a shared album to sort by creation date? I used to think I had to share the photos in the order I wanted them to appear, which meant lots of trips through the share sheet. A bonus would be changing them to be sorted by date as the default and making it possible to adjust the album members’ views on all devices.
When sharing a group of photos with a comment, the text is only attached to the first photo. It’s not very useful when sharing a large group of pictures and tagging them with a comment for when or why they were taken. I’d like to see it made more evident that this is what’s happening, or let us attach comments to more than one photo at a time.
Let us export a shared album to PDF. We can’t order books directly from Apple anymore, but it would be nice to format a simple PDF with comments. In fact, give us all of the same “Create” options that non-shared albums have.
Are you aware that there are limits for both the total number of photos that can be in a shared album and how many can be shared in a given amount of time? Me neither, which made sharing all the scanned photos from my parents’ basement to my sisters a drawn-out chore. 1,000 per hour, and no more than 10,000 per day. Only 5,000 photos or videos can be in any given album. I don’t know if these limits have ever been adjusted, but with a library full of 10+ years of iPhone photos alone, the limits need to be revisited.
Make sure that Photos Shortcuts actions are supported on all devices. I tried to get around the lack of a native way to directly share to an album using Shortcuts, only to find that the action doesn’t work on Mac.
Quick Tips
Sort your shared albums using the ‘View’ menu on Mac and the ‘…’ button menu on iOS. You have to do this for every album and device since the sorting does not sync.
Use the upper right button to change the view on iPad and iPhone. ⌘
Don’t skip out on looking through the Mac’s ‘View’ menu either. ⌘
Dragging photos to a shared album on iOS and iPadOS, rather than using the share sheet, has proven the most reliable for getting all the images to download correctly if they’re not already stored locally on the device.
You can skip the library altogether, though, by sharing an image with the share sheet from Files or elsewhere in the OS.
This kind of functionality isn’t possible from the Mac. ⌘
After finally getting my shared albums consolidated, I’ve been much more on top of sharing my latest snapshots with family. And though the process of getting them transferred was laborious, keeping them going is much more pleasant. With some attention paid to a few of these suggestions, I think Shared Albums could be more usable, stable, and enjoyable.
2️⃣ If you’re having a bad day, think about the owner of this cargo ship, and it might make you feel a little better about your situation. 😳 [Link - theverge.com]
3️⃣ I guess I’d always imagined that eventually we’d discovered all the species of dinosaurs. This video from Kurzgesagt explains why that’s unlikely; however, we know more about past species than ever before, and the pace is accelerating. [Link - youtube.com]
4️⃣ I continue to be fascinated by the science behind the James Webb Space Telescope. You’d typically think of objects orbiting around larger objects, but that’s not the case with the JWST. This video does an excellent job showing how the telescope stays in orbit around an empty but crucial point in space. [Link - youtube.com]
And finally, I’m getting pumped for the climbing season by watching the Great Wide Open series by Jared Leto. I have some climbing crags within walking distance of my house, so it can’t come soon enough! The first three in this series are awe-inspiring.
5️⃣ Featuring the unstoppable and all-around good guy, Tommy Caldwell. Plus, some serious trust when going over the edge of El Capitan with minimal experience. [Link - youtube.com]
6️⃣ Featuring the artist and comeback kid, Renan Ozturk. I first started following Renan’s work after seeing him in Meru. [Link - youtube.com]
7️⃣ Featuring the badass and understated Alex Honnold. If anyone is at home on rock, it’s Alex, and his very presence seems to help others be at home there, too. Look at them gallop over the top of those ridges! [Link - youtube.com]
TL;DR: Don’t buy this keyboard. It’s a squishy, inaccurate mess.
I doubt you’ll find a thinner or lighter keyboard anywhere, but that still doesn’t mean you should buy the Logitech Keys-To-Go. I added one to the cart when I ordered my iPad mini (impressions coming soon), thinking it’d be nice to have a lightweight keyboard to keep in my bag in case I grab the Mini and want to do some prolonged typing while out.
The design appealed to me. I liked the muted color (I got a blue one) and that it came with a stand for a phone or iPad. I liked that the keys were sealed off, Smart Keyboard-style, so spills and crumbs wouldn’t be a worry. I liked that it was full-sized, without being oversized. I liked it all until I tried typing on it.
Unlike the Smart Keyboard, which had a pleasant clickiness despite the membrane cover, the Keys-To-Go (KTG) feels mushy. I’m never quite sure when a key has been fully depressed. Not only has that led to lots of inaccuracies and missed letters, but I also feel like I need to push harder on these keys than even my mechanical keyboard. After just a few paragraphs typing this very review, my fingers feel strained.
The device stand is a nice addition, but I didn’t realize that it’s made to rest underneath the keyboard. Even an iPhone 13 mini is too much weight, and it tips over if not held down by the keyboard. This means that sitting on the couch with the keyboard and your device in the stand on a coffee table is out of the question.
To add insult to injury, this keyboard ships with a charging cable that’s micro-USB on one end and USB-A on the other. For a device that’s specifically marketed for Apple products? Yuck!
I don’t want to be a complete downer, so here are a few good things about the KTG:
Build quality feels solid. It doesn’t flex much when pressing down, and I think it would be difficult to bend or break, despite being so slim. Which is a plus for something that’d often get jostled around during travel.
The lightness will be hard to beat. I don’t notice it in a bag whatsoever.
Typing is very quiet. You won’t be disturbing anyone while cranking out a long email or blog post on this thing.
Having iOS-specific function keys is pretty convenient but not a must-have now that more system functions can be accessed with Globe Key-enabled shortcuts.
While those qualities are nice, honestly, I expected a better typing experience for $70. I didn’t expect that it would be physically challenging to type on and missing features. Even pretty cheap keyboards these days let you easily switch between a few paired devices. With the KTG, it’s one and done.
Who should buy this? I guess someone who needs a whisper-quiet keyboard. Or who’s often in wet or dirty environments where having a sealed keyboard is a necessity. But that’s about it, and even then, you’d better work on your finger strength while waiting for the KTG to ship.
As for me, I’ll be boxing the KTG back up and attempting to return it. I’ll probably give this keyboard, which I heard David Sparks mention on MPU recently, a try to see if it any better. It, at least, looks like it has clicky keys, features multiple device support, a more flexible device stand, and folds up nicely. All for less than half the price of the KTG.
A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
This week was filled with folks dreaming up where Apple could go next with their software. Here’s a roundup!
1️⃣9to5Mac lays out hopes for the next generation of iPad software, including that it needs to expand to let more apps exist in floating, adjustable windows. This feels like a perennial wish, but we’ll see. [Link]
2️⃣ Reminders has to be one of the most popular apps on the iPhone, and yet there are still some obvious improvements to be made. Tim Nahumck lays out his wishes for the app, including some intriguing ideas for its widgets. [Link]
3️⃣ Jordan Singer imagines a redesigned and more modern-looking Phone app. [Link]
4️⃣ It’s hard to say for certain since Siri has a shaky reputation when it comes to mistakes and sending you to other devices to finish tasks, but this Reddit video sure makes it look like Apple might be bringing a more useful display to HomePod. 🙏🤞🤩 [Link]
5️⃣ On Mac Power Users, Stephen and David talk through which apps — Mail, Contacts, and System Preferences, to name a few — have gotten pushed under the rug and could use a dusting off. They’ve got suggestions galore. [Link]
6️⃣ Based on this latest acquisition of an AI music generator, the previous rumblings of a rewritten Mac app, and the announcement of a Classical-focused app coming this year, I’d say Music is going to get the spotlight at WWDC this year. Maybe I ought to hold off on paying for Endel… [Link]
7️⃣ Speaking of which, the latest Apple Music app update on Android gives us a peek at what interactive widgets on iPhone could look like and reveals the likely name of their upcoming classical music service. [Link]
And here’s something new: A bonus link, inspired by Colin Wright’s daily newsletter. I’m going to try including a “trust click” at the end of 7 Things, for which I won’t give a description but is guaranteed to be a fun diversion. You’ll just have to trust me. 😉
Here’s but one of the quotes that got my blood boiling:
I wholeheartedly believed this was my chance to prove that I could apply my skills outside of retail and potentially lay the groundwork for a corporate role. Alas, that fantasy vanished before my eyes. Upon further discussion, my managers blocked my nomination for the Career Experience because I was declared “too vital to daily store operations.” Conversely, my other two coworkers were not retracted. They decided that because staff was already strained and I was the most competent employee of the three designated, they couldn’t afford to spare me. My coworkers were regarded as expendable, whereas I was not. Somehow because I had more Genius Bar experience, it was now inhibiting me from expanding my horizons. My managers had typecast me, useful for one purpose only. To be clear, I held neither of my coworkers in contempt. In fact, I was content to watch them succeed (one of whom was just offered a permanent corporate job after their Career Experience manager recommended them), but it
was painfully arduous to come back to work after that. I resented the work I was doing because it didn’t seem like I was working towards something constructive anymore. Meanwhile, the overall store morale further decayed into an outright spiral.
At the end of the year, I finished a brief stint working as a Technical Specialist (part of the Genius Bar team) at the very Apple Store described in this article. In fact, Matt was the person who trained me in late summer. He was an excellent teacher and shared his years of experience with us newest hires.
Although I didn’t personally experience much of what Matt lays out in this well-written and documented memoir, I could definitely feel the tension he describes. It’s long, but well-worth your time to read in full.
I hope Apple will take the unrest in their retail arm seriously. If they don’t, the culture will continue to sour and they’ll keep losing incredible talents and evangelists like Matt. Retail serves as the literal face of the Apple brand, and it’s too bad that they’re getting black eyes from internal management issues.
You’re listening to your favorite podcast when inspiration strikes: the perfect question. It’s concise, considered, and, without immediate action, going to climb right out of your mind. You need to get this feedback to the podcast hosts, stat. But, oh dear, you can’t recall the right hashtag to attach to make sure that it’s seen. What to do?
Of course! You whip out your newest favorite shortcut! With just a few taps, you’ve typed out your 1st place winner of a question and posted it to Twitter (or the preferred Discord channel), complete with the correct hashtag (or Discord command) to make sure it’s captured for the next episode.
This is that shortcut. Well, if you listen to the Relay FM (and adjacent) family of podcasts, that is.
I’ve had this shortcut lined up for a long time. I’d been waiting to share it here on HeyDingus until Discord supported proper Shortcuts actions, or at least a URL scheme that would let me post directly to the right channel. But alas, no such public functionality has been introduced that I can find. So instead of waiting for something that may never happen, I decided it was time for the shortcut to be available to anyone who wanted to use it, despite existing limitations. Some 68 people have downloaded this shortcut from its soft launch on RoutineHub, so I knew there had to be more Relay FM listeners who might like it, too.
I tend to launch ‘Podcast Feedback’ from a menu of podcast-related shortcuts in my Today View. Unfortunately, its use of ‘Dictionary’ actions seems to make it run inconsistently from Siri. On the plus side, it is compatible with the Mac.
1️⃣ This shortcut uses setup steps, which ask the user if they tend to use the Relay FM Members Discord. This ‘Text’ action is where their answer is stored and can be changed later. The answer gets pulled into a dictionary action for use later in the shortcut. I figured a ‘Text’ action would be more accessible than having the user fiddle with a dictionary, which is why the ‘Text’ result is used solely for that variable.
2️⃣ A second ‘Dictionary’ action is used to store all of the necessary syntaxes for each podcasts’ hashtag, Discord command, and show art tag. These key values were pulled directly from the #follow-up channel in Discord and will be updated as the active podcasts change over time.
I’ve been trying to incorporate ‘Dictionary’ and ‘Choose from List’ actions into more of my shortcuts as they can sometimes cut down on duplicate steps that a ‘Choose from Menu’ action would have you create. Of course, it doesn’t always work, but it’s ideal for this kind of shortcut where the chosen item needs multiple parameters.
3️⃣ Here’s the critical step, though it takes three actions. First, an ‘Ask for Input’ action has us type in the question or comment. Then, two ‘Text’ actions format it for Twitter (with a hashtag) or Discord (with the command and show art tag) by pulling in the proper syntax from the chosen dictionary key.
Although we didn’t specify it with a ‘Set Variable’ action, both ‘Text’ actions are used later on as named magic variables. I’ve annotated them in the screenshot to show which is for Twitter and Discord.
4️⃣ After formatting the text, we do a little logic evaluation using an ‘If’ action to determine how and where it should be shared. If the user is not a member of the Discord, it defaults to sending the question as a Tweet and doesn’t give any option to do otherwise. That logic is pulled directly from that first ‘Dictionary’ action, which was populated during setup. Since we don’t want any additional action to run after the tweet is sent, we stop running the shortcut following the ‘Tweet’ action.
5️⃣ Using nested ‘If’ actions, we next check to see if the chosen podcast is either of the two shows which do not have Discord commands. ATP and Analog(ue) take public feedback using Twitter only, so we don’t need to present the option of using Discord, even if the user is a member. Again, we simply post a tweet using the ‘Tweet Text’ magic variable from earlier.
Note that you need to check the ‘Name’ parameter of the chosen dictionary item. I spent an embarrassing amount of time attempting to make the ‘Key’ parameter work before trying something else. Am I the only one who finds Key vs. Name unintuitive?
6️⃣ Now, if the user is a member of the Discord they may still decide to share their feedback more publicly on Twitter. The ‘Choose from Menu’ action gives them the option to post it either way. Since Discord works equally well in the native iOS/iPadOS app as on the web, we present a second choice of which avenue to use.
7️⃣ Unfortunately, due to nonexistent Shortcuts actions and no public URL scheme to be found, the best we can do is open the #follow-up channel in Safari. Or simply open the Discord app with the ‘Discord Text’ magic variable copied to the system clipboard and ready to paste.
If the user chooses to tweet the feedback instead, another ‘Tweet’ action does the trick.
I’m the kind of person who likes to make sure that when I’m asking something of another person — in this case, the podcast hosts — that it’s as convenient as possible for them. That means following the guidelines for submitting questions or feedback to a “T”. This shortcut has helped me format everything correctly without remembering all the syntax and without losing my train of thought. And, through building it, I learned a bit about how to use dictionaries and nested ‘If’ actions. So, I hope you find it as helpful as I have!
But too much friction exists today between creators and gamers; app store policies and practices on mobile devices restrict what and how creators can offer games and what and how gamers can play them. Our large investment to acquire Activision Blizzard further strengthens our resolve to remove this friction on behalf of creators and gamers alike. We want to enable world-class content to reach every gamer more easily across every platform. We want to encourage more innovation and investment in content creation and fewer constraints on distribution. Put simply, the world needs open app markets, and this requires open app stores. The principles we’re announcing today reflect our commitment to this goal.
And yet, not all of those principles, ostensibly designed to promote fair competition, will be applied fairly across all Microsoft’s platforms. Notably, their lucrative Xbox Store will not have to follow all of the rules:
Second, some may ask why today’s principles do not apply immediately and wholesale to the current Xbox console store. It’s important to recognize that emerging legislation is being written to address app stores on those platforms that matter most to creators and consumers: PCs, mobile phones and other general purpose computing devices.
Here’s what Microsoft has effectively said about developing for Xbox.
We retain the right to…
require developers in our app store to use our payment system to process in-app payments.
require developers in our app store to provide more favorable terms in our app store than in other app stores.
disadvantage developers if they choose to use a payment processing system other than ours or if they offer different terms and conditions in other app stores.
prevent developers from communicating directly with their customers through their apps for legitimate business purposes, such as pricing terms and product or service offerings.
In fairness (heh), Microsoft has said they’ll work toward bringing all the principles to Xbox over time, but with little detail about what that means in practice:
Nonetheless, we recognize that we will need to adapt our business model even for the store on the Xbox console. Beginning today, we will move forward to apply Principles 1 through 7 to the store on the Xbox console. We’re committed to closing the gap on the remaining principles over time. In doing so, we will incorporate the spirit of new laws even beyond their scope, while moving forward in a way that protects the needs of game developers, gamers, and competitive and healthy game-console ecosystems.
I believe Microsoft should be commended for their developer-friendly practices; I really do. From my perspective, they’ve got a lot to be proud of when it comes to developer relations, a stark contrast to where Apple stands (just read that section of the 2021 Six Colors report card!).
But, and this is a big but, this announcement rings pretty hollow to me when it explicitly excludes their most (only?) successful app platform.
You can read up on all the principles and the rest of Microsoft’s position in their blog post.
That said, wouldn’t it just be easier to send an audio message to whoever texted you rather than sending a riddled response that Siri is sure to get wrong? Something to consider!
and
As for my friends and voice messaging, well… those are entirely different relationships than with your siblings, aren’t they? While my friends and I text all the time, I can’t begin to tell you how fun it is to see when they’ve sent me a voice message, and to be clear, I send them constantly — they’re often of me laughing at something that happened or something they’ve said that made me laugh.
I often forget that I can even send audio messages, even though I really like them. As someone who instinctively texts with punctuation and grammar, I’m exactly the person who muddles through voice-to-text with Siri, trying to get everything just right in one go. Sending an audio message would be so much faster, easier, and better.
That’s not to say that Apple’s implementation in iMessage is perfect. Laura has suggestions where they can make improvements:
If my friend sends me an audio on iMessage, all I can do is pause it. What’s worse, if while I’m listening to their audio they then text me, the memo itself stops, and I have to start the whole thing over.
and
Lastly, if you want to hear the entirety of a voice memo within iMessage and it’s longer than whatever your screen display length is set to (mine is 30 seconds before my phone goes dark), you need to keep tapping your phone to keep it awake while listening, otherwise, your phone goes dark and then you again have to start over and replay from the beginning.
I’ll leave you with a quick tip. Since I do most of my voice-to-texting initiated from Siri, I wondered if I could send an audio message completely by voice without having to tap through the recording interface in the Messages app. It’s entirely possible! “Hey Siri, send an audio message to {Recipient},” worked like a charm. It does still transcribe the message to text as you record it to Siri, even though that text doesn’t get sent. I guess that’s cool since you know it’s working and hearing you well enough.
(Bonus Tip: Use “Captain” or another title as your nickname in your contact card for some fun when Siri addresses you in responses. 😆)
On the company’s February 3rd earnings call, Ek was clear that the rules were the rules and Spotify would not “change our policies based on one creator nor do we change it based on any media cycle or calls from anyone else.”
Then the next Joe Rogan media cycle arrived.
Musician India Arie pulled her music from the platform last week over Rogan’s repeated use of the n-word and shared a viral video montage of Rogan using the racial slur on his podcast — a montage that had originally been made in January of 2020. In stark contrast to how it handled Young and Joni Mitchell protesting COVID misinformation, Spotify quickly stepped in.
and
So: after a PR crisis, Spotify reached out to Rogan and got him to agree to remove episodes of his show from the platform. Ek’s memo also says the company will now dedicate $100 million to licensing and marketing content made by creators from historically marginalized communities — a move the company has not actually announced officially but clearly wants credit for.
Spotify’s response is indicative of what we know them to be in: a crisis mode. The Verge’s reporting has been quite damning, showing them wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
