iOS Today 714 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on iOS Today, rosemary Orchard and I, micah Sargent, talk about some of the hardware we have that we think you should check out. Stay tuned Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. This is iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard and Micah Sargent, episode 714, recorded Tuesday July 23rd 2024, for Thursday August 8th 2024. Hardware picks and tips. Hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, ipados, tvos. Ios today the show where we talk all things iOS, ipados, tvos, watchos, homepodos, visionos and all the other OSs Apple has on offer. This is the show where we help you make the most of your various Apple devices by talking about the software, the hardware, the features, the settings basically, everything you need to know to make sure all you've got is running in tip top shape. I am one of the hosts of the show. My name is Micah Sargent.

01:13 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
And I am Rosemary Orchard and I very nearly tried to juggle a couple of different pieces of hardware, but they're a little heavier than my juggling balls and I didn't want to accidentally drop them on my keyboard. Disconnect from the podcast.

01:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Fair enough. I'm glad that you made that choice. I do not underestimate your juggling, but I also do not underestimate any sort of universal law that suggests that what can go wrong does go wrong.

01:43 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, I mean it's also three things of very different sizes. That that's going to throw me for sure. Like my juggling is fine, but it's not that good.

01:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So in today's episode we're talking about some hardware picks that we have and maybe some tips to go along with them. These are some of the cool devices and gadgets we've gathered or spotted that we think are worth your time. As always, this is an episode where I really happily encourage folks to send us email iostoday at twittv with the gadgets and gizmos you have collected that you think are great, that you think we should be checking out and possibly talking about on the show. But without further interruption, sure, let's kick things off with your first pick, rosemary.

02:38 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
All right. Well, my first pick is it's a choice for home or a choice to travel it is anchor's mag go three in one wireless charging station. Now, anchor and a whole bunch of folks have done a whole bunch of different charging stations, but this one is special because you can barely see it it's. It's written right in the middle there. This is chi 2, which is, uh, the next uh iteration of wireless charging, which incorporates that magnet that we have all grown to love from MagSafe. So Qi2 is wireless charging with a magnet, otherwise known as MagSafe, kind of 2-ish.

03:15
But this is Anker's 3-in-1 charger, so it has a MagSafe charger on the front, which this is not currently plugged in, so it won't actually MagSafe my phone, charge my phone, but you can put your phone on there horizontally or vertically. And this is a Pro Max and, yep, it's still like not touching the floor at the front. And then it has a watch charger that folds out from underneath, so for travel purposes it really tucks away really nicely. And then it also has an AirPods or other wireless charger here on the back for AirPods or AirPods Pro. And it comes with a USB-C cable with a right angle and a plug, and I love the USB-C cable, but I have to say I just plug this into whatever spare port. I have on a multi-port charger that I take with me and this has been working great.

04:05
Have on a multi-port charger that I take with me and this has been working great because it's Qi 2 and that means that it fully adheres to the MagSafe standard.

04:09
That means it will do wireless charging on your phone at 15 watts, which is fast, and it will also do its best to fast charge your watch and your AirPods as well. It does have a little indicator light on the side, but it's on the side and I really like that because that way I can like push my phone up against something or push the charger up against something and I won't see the light while I'm traveling. But if I want to just check that it's on, then it's very easy to just quickly double check that it's there. So, yes, so this officially retails for $110 or $109.99. However, anker, as often happens, are currently having a sale on their website where I believe they're offering $24 off for their three-in-one wireless charging setup. So it is a nice option and, yeah, I highly recommend having a look at that or some of their other ChiTu offerings, one of which I will have to talk about in a minute.

05:10 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Nice. I really like the little flip up Apple Watch charger. I think that's a very clever design and I am impressed by that Kind of it's there when you need it, it's not there when you don't, and in that way it can kind of store, I think, a little bit easier. I think the first gadget that I will mention is actually one from Apple itself, and the reason that I want to talk about this one is because, frankly, I think everybody should have this device. It is I don't know if calling it a device necessarily makes sense Accessory, yeah, accessory. It is simply a very long, very nice USB-C cable. This USB-C charging cable is two meters long, it's braided in Apple's style and what's great about it is it supports charging up to 240 watts. It retails for $29. But what I love about it is I don't have to worry about whether it's going to provide the best charging for anything that I use it with. I can plug it in to a Mac, I can plug it into an iPhone, I can plug it into an iPad, I can plug it into a third-party accessory or third-party device, and I know that it's going to give the charger that's on one end, the adapter that's on one end and the device that's on the other all of the juice that it needs and that there won't be an issue at all. It is well-made. It's much thicker than Apple's other braided. Knowing that you've got two meters worth of extension is quite nice, and so I can pull this out at any time, charge what I need to charge and again, just not worry about it, not think that, oh well, it's only going to charge it at 60 watts or something. It's not going to give me all that I need.

07:44
This came out when Apple kind of finished this switch, if I remember correctly, to USB-C across its devices, and upon doing so, this was one of the first things I purchased because I thought, oh, just $29? That's fantastic. And of course, it supports data as well. It's not just a charge cable. That's just how Apple markets it. Because of the fact that it could do 240 watts, it will do transfer data at USB 2.0 rates, and so if you are hoping for Thunderbolt speeds, obviously you're not going to get that with this. That's going to cost more money. But the fact that it can charge, sync and transfer data between USB-C devices at up to 240 watts with speeds at up to USB 2.0 rates, is great and I am very happy with this charging cable. Okay, continuing in the charging realm. Rosemary, you have two other items that you wanted to mention.

08:57 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I do so. First of all, I'm going to stick with Anker and Anker's Qi 2 options and I'm going to talk about this. So this is a pink folding battery pack because it's got a stand in it, and this is Anker's MagGo power bank, and they have a number of different power banks in their MagGo range, but this one I like because it has the stand on it and so the recommended retail price is $69.99, but they do actually already have a $24 off coupon on their website. So either check that or check Amazon to see if there's Amazon deals. And this is a 6,600 milliamp hour battery, so it's not the largest of batteries, but because it's got the stand, I like it for when I'm going to be, you know, to be going into the office for the day or something where there aren't necessarily thousands of charging ports available, but I'm possibly going to want to charge my phone or have it in standby mode. So it works again in portrait and landscape, and Angus website right now only seems to have black and white, but they definitely have it in this sort of pastel, lilac-y pink. It comes in a blue and I believe it may also come in a green to make Micah happy, and it's worth noting, it has a button on the side which then powers a little set of indicator lights across the bottom so that you can see how charged it is, because, yes, there is nothing worse than a power bank and then not knowing how much battery it has. Unlike some of their other very fancy ones, it does not have a display on it that tells you how much power it has, but I have to say, the hinge quality on this is really nice, um and uh, yeah, this this is definitely a recommendation from me.

10:44
Also worth noting the USB-C port on the side. First of all, it's on the side, so you don't have to worry about having, you know, like, it being pulled out from the back or something. You'll see it on the side, but this is an in and out port. That means that you can either plug a USB-C in to charge this and either plug a USB-C in to charge this, or if you have another device, like, say, an iPad that is also running out of battery, or just the iPad's running out of battery and not the iPhone, you can plug USB-C into this and then plug it into the iPad and it will charge your iPad. So it's worth keeping that in mind when you're considering power banks.

11:22
Anker has some great options. They also have ones little sort of barrel ones with USB-C or lightning pop-ups that you just fold up and can plug directly into the bottom of your phone. I have USB-C ones of those and really like them. But wireless charging with a stand, that always gets me because a lot of the time with my phones charging I don't need to be picking it know, picking it up to use it. It can just be sitting on a table or a desk.

11:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And if it's not, this folds flat to just stick on my phone in my bag, Nice.

11:58 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
And then what about if I'm in the car? Yeah, so if you're in the car and you need to charge something, then there's loads of car chargers. Some cars even have USB-C, but my car doesn't have USB-C. It's got two USB-A ports which, from experience when running developer beta zero of iOS 18 beta, don't necessarily charge my phone as well as they could be. So I picked up this.

12:18
This is a little Ugreen charger, and I say little. It's kind of large, but this is a 130 watt USB-C car charger. Okay, so it's got three ports on it. The bottom port is 100 watts USB-C, and then there's another USB-C at the top and a lovely purple USB-A in the middle. So you've got three options for charging your devices. But that 100 watt USB-C at the bottom that is going to be for your iPads and your Mac things like that, which can take the full power, and so that is worth having as far as I'm concerned. This retails for $39.99, I think it is, but again, it often goes on sale, and I picked this up on Prime Day for about $25. So it's worth keeping an eye out for deals on Ugreen chargers.

13:07
I recommend those as well. They've got some really good stuff out there, and this one in particular. It also has some vents in the body, which is great for cooling the device down as it's using it, because obviously if you're running 130 watts of power through something, it could get pretty warm, but that's okay because it's got a solution for it and also it's USB-C, full USB-C specifications. So if you plug something that only needs 60 watts of power into the 100 watt port, it's actually going to provide 60 watts of power, because that's how USB-C works. The port talks to the cable, which talks to the device, which talks to the cable, which talks to the port, and they go hey, this is the maximum I can accept, this is the maximum I can give and distribute it appropriately.

13:49 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Now this next device is something that Rosemary and I both, I think jumped on as soon as it was made available a very thin and very rechargeable device that would allow me to use the Find my network with a wallet and up to this point, there was not an option that was rechargeable as well as being very thin. Leave it to Nomad to come out with something that finally works. Now, both of us unfortunately do not have the device with us as it is being used in places, but we can go to the website. So this is the Nomad tracking card I will.

14:45 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I'm not gonna lie to you, it's a little expensive at $40, but but it recharges by MagSafe, because I do have the Pebblebee, which also recharges, but it uses a little magnetic cable and you need the specific magnetic cable that came with the Pebblebee. I've also tried the ESR Wallet Stand which recharges and has MagSafe built into it, because it's a MagSafe wallet and it's got a charger on it to recharge it. But again it's a special USB like a special magnetic cable. This is just MagSafe. You put it on a MagSafe charger and it charges.

15:19 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And it'll last for about a year on a charge. It is really fantastic. The about a year on a charge, it is really fantastic. The card is a credit card size. It's about the thickness, I would say, of like one and a half cards probably.

15:32 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, it's surprisingly thin.

15:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's surprisingly thin in comparison to some that I've seen in the past that are about two cards thick, if not more. And yeah, you just walk it onto any MagSafe charger to recharge it and it has a little button on it that you use to kind of start the pairing process. So where $40 may seem a bit expensive, the fact that it is able to wirelessly charge and that the charging lasts for so long and that it's as thin as it is, I mean it's really, I think, a feat of engineering. What's great about this is that you know if this device existed on its own and was just simply a Bluetooth beacon tracker that you used to kind of make a sound and try to find it. That's one thing, not super, super helpful.

16:27
The fact that it is part of Apple's Find my network means that you suddenly have access to a huge network of devices Basically anybody who has Apple devices, who has opted into Find my, which is almost certainly most people. That means that if this gets lost somewhere, the chances of you being able to find it are much higher than would otherwise be the case. So I have been very impressed with this tracking card and it gives me some peace of mind where before I have AirPods not AirPods AirTags on lots of things but it's not on my day-to-day stuff and I didn't have something to go with my wallet and so having something that is part of my day-to-day and having that little bit of peace of mind and knowing that it'll be easy to find if I were ever to, you know, drop it somewhere, has been fantastic. So I'm very pleased with the Nomad Tracking Card and it is one of those things that I heartily and happily recommend to others to check out.

17:41 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Definitely, yeah, yeah, to check out, definitely, yeah, yeah, I, I remember you and I both, uh, had kind of messaged each other and you were like I got this, I gotta do. I'm so excited. Yeah, yeah, I think I sent you a picture when mine arrived and you were like mine is on its way today. Um, yeah, one of those those moments.

18:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Let's talk now. This is to call this an accessory is probably not an accurate description given the size of this device, so I'm going to call it a home gadget. It is a home gadget I am very happy with. They are out of stock at the moment, but I think that you know, eventually they'll be back in stock and that is For folks who are listening. I am holding up a giant white plastic box that is much larger than my head. That looks pretty kind of futuristic, and this is the Philips Hue UV light sanitizer box. This device is $130. It's pretty expensive, but what it is is a box that has two UVC lights in it and a huge stainless steel kind of open space inside, with a little metal shelf as well that hangs out on the side of it. And what you do is you well, I'm going to get this shelf back in.

19:30
There is, you pop items into the box and then you blast them with UVC for 10 minutes and, as you might imagine, that helps to sanitize them. So 10 minutes of UVC radiation will blast away. They call it. It's not even deactivate. It is, it's, it's. Maybe it is deactivate. There's a, there's a special word for it, but um, it basically makes viruses no longer work anymore. Um, they they can't do anything kind of like beheads them, and what it has as well and what I really like about it is a little built-in um. So what you can do is this is a little air filter, is you can put things in it that you've washed, because, think about this, this is not just made for tech, it's also made for things like baby bottles or something similar. You wash them, you put them in here, you do the dry cycle or the dry and sanitized cycle, and it will run some hot air in there and then UV blast them afterward, uvc blast them afterward, and then it's dry and it is clean.

20:49
I put all sorts of gadgets in here on the regular. So when I want to make sure that my iPhone is nice and clean, if I want an iPad to be nice and clean, all sorts of stuff. The 12.9 inch iPad won't fit in here, but every other iPad that I have certainly fits the iPhone, fits my AirPods. Those are the things that I like to keep clean because they go in my ears regularly. Apple Watch, apple Watch Band this is great for sanitizing lots and lots of gadgets.

21:20
It's just it plugs in standard to your you know, standard US plug and then from there you've got a 10-minute disinfect and then a I think it's a 35-minute disinfect and dry where most of the time again, it is running the little fan to help dry what's in there and then disinfect at the end. It also has a storage feature where, if you just want to keep stuff in there until you're ready to use it, it will just over time on the schedule, kind of blast it with UVC from time to time until you're ready to pull it out and get it. I really like this thing. I've been using it regularly, um, for cleaning all sorts of, as I said, gadgets and gizmos and other stuff, and it is quite nice. Now, as I mentioned, again, out of stock right now from amazon, uh, but yeah, I, from time to time it goes back in stock so you can be on the lookout.

22:19 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
If you are looking for this, folks, I'm going to say you want specifically the Philips Hue one rather than just the Philips UV light sanitizing one, because they do a smaller, cheaper one for toothbrush heads and that is not going to fit your phone.

22:32
It will probably fit an AirPod, but it would be an AirPod, no AirPod case or anything like that. So, yeah, if you're looking for it, make sure you're looking for the one that's like. I don't know. It looks like a little treasure chest, like a little kid's treasure chest of some kind perhaps. But yeah, you're looking for the larger one which is also for sterilizing, like baby bottles and things like that. And yeah, if my dishwasher didn't have a UV cycle option on it where you can just do UV, no water, so I don't have to worry about accidentally dishwashing my phone.

23:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I would totally do. I would totally be interested. Oh, that's really nice. That's really nice. I like that.

23:09
A few more gadgets I'll mention, and then we'll have Rosemary round things out. I do have the first of the two gadgets I'm going to mention. I do not have the second one, but I came across it the other day and I thought this is really neat, so I wanted to give credit where credit was due. I'm going to talk about some 12 South products. 12 South has long been in the Apple accessory game and they make great things and have for years.

23:32
The first one I want to mention these are $30 storage accessories that you can buy. It's called the Time Porter, and what the Time Porter is is it is a little tool that you can put on a wall or, you know, on a door, your closet door or wherever you want to, and it is essentially a little I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of A slide rail. Yeah, a slide rail, that's a great way to put it. It's a little slide rail that is purpose-built to hold Apple Watch lugs. So what that means is you can slide in Apple Watch bands and have them displayed on your wall and pick amongst your Apple Watch bands. It's very clever the way that this has been designed and you just kind of like slide and pop in your Apple Watch bands and they're displayed really prettily. But it also is just a great place to keep your Apple Watch band so you can see all the ones you have and you can choose between them as you're kind of getting ready in the morning.

24:42
I'll admit that I don't use or switch out a lot of my Apple Watch bands. I've found the one that I really like and I continue to use it, but I do have quite a few Apple Watch bands that I may on occasion want to pull from, and this little organizer is again. It's just so cleverly made and so easy to use, and so that's why I ended up purchasing a couple of these. The device that I don't have but that I think bears mentioning is for folks who are looking for mobile charging options, and it is the 12South Butterfly.

25:27
This is a two-in-one MagSafe charger. It does retail at $129.99, so $130. But it looks like it's a little circle that has a little piece of leather that folds between the two pieces and it unfolds to present an Apple Watch charging puck and a MagSafe charging puck you plug in USB-C via USB-C to the back of it, usb-c via USB-C to the back of it, and then you plop your Apple Watch charger, your Apple Watch on one side and your iPhone or your AirPods Pro, or whatever you want, on the other side, and it is. It's just so nice because it's very travel friendly.

26:12 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I feel like this is the spiritual successor to the MagSafe Duo in many ways, because they've made the actual charger smaller, so it should fit onto all of the devices despite the increasing camera size.

26:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yep, absolutely. It's just really cleverly made and, again, I do not have this, but I wanted to mention it because I thought I don't know. I love how that's designed. 12south just makes really pretty things and this is definitely one of them that, yes, kind of uh, bridges the gap between clever and beautiful yeah, they even sell it in the apple store. So yeah, that's right?

26:50 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
yeah, that it's. It's worth considering if you're somebody who's very paranoid about your chargers and you don't want to get anything that's not apple recommended. This is actually sold in the Apple store, so you can go into the Apple store, look at it and pick one up there if you wanted to.

27:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Then the last thing I'll mention. First and foremost, 12 South, a while back, made these great little accessories for the Apple Watch that let you use your Apple Watch while you were working out. One of them is it's a pair of kind of sweatbands that are for your wrist and it's got that terrycloth material and you slide your Apple Watch into one of them and this is called the action band, and then it just comes with a paired one that you put on your other wrist. So you get two of them. They go on your wrists and it lets you work out and kind of have uh, you know something to dab your forehead with, or what have you, and what's great about these is that they're stretchy and you can kind of pull them up your arm as you need to. However, I have an Apple watch ultra, and so when I was looking for something that let me do my workouts without because when I'm weightlifting I like to wear gloves, and the problem is the gloves they have a very short wrist, but they still have a wrist, and so they end up pressing the side buttons of my Apple Watch, and it's very annoying, and so what I've had to do is loosen the watch band, move it further up my wrist but then I'm not getting as good heart rate metrics, I'm not getting as good tracking information because it is looser and it's kind of flopping up and down my wrist. It's been so annoying.

28:32
So when I looked for the options that were out there, 12 South made both the action band and then one that goes on your arm. That one's called the Action Sleeve. Unfortunately, neither of them work with the Apple Watch Ultra. What I had to do instead was just go with a third party option. But I wanted to give again a mention to both the 12 South Action Band and the one that you wrap around your arm. The Action Band is $20. And these are just. They're better designed, they're made by 12 South, so they're prettier, kind of more robust.

29:15
I found for just $9 what amounts to an elastic Apple Watch band and because it's just kind of a standard elastic deal that has lugs on the top and the bottom, then you slide it onto the Apple Watch Ultra and then I'm able to just move it up my wrist and pull that elastic a little bit more and then it stays fastened where it is. So that comes in at just $9. I've been happy with that as a solution, not as good as the Action Band or the Arm Band. I'll be honest, I considered pulling out an old Apple Watch that I don't use anymore and popping that into the 12 South action band and having my workout Apple Watch and my everywhere else Apple Watch, but that was a little cumbersome and also a little bougie and I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So I've been happy with my little adjustable elastic armband for nine bucks from Amazon.

30:14
But if you do have a non-ultra Apple Watch, 12 South has you covered, and 12 South, if you're listening, please make me an action band or an action sleeve for the Apple Watch Ultra. I will thank you forever. All right, those are my other accessories. Rosemary, why don't you tell us about your final accessory pick?

30:37 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah. So my final accessory pick is a case. It's the Bang case. So folks who don't remember, the iPhone 15 Pro did away with the silent switch, the mute switch, and instead added an action button. This is one action that does one thing. If you use shortcuts, you can get it to do multiple things, depending on things like focus modes and various other stuff, but it's still one thing. If you use shortcuts, you can get it to do multiple things, depending on things like focus modes and various other stuff, but it's still one button and it's only available on the iPhone 15 Pro. So if you've got a 14 Pro, for example, and you're the kind of person that holds onto your devices for a while, you don't have an action button at all and you're missing out.

31:13
But the good news is the band case has three action buttons on it, folks, and it's a different position. So the action button on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max is above the volume buttons. This action button is underneath the power button. It's got a little orange indicator on it and so this case connects to your phone via Bluetooth, connects to your phone via Bluetooth and then it uses the accessibility settings on your phone to provide not one, not two, but three action buttons, folks. So there's a single press, there's a double press and there's a press and hold a long press option. And this case is available for the iPhones 14 Pro and Pro Max and 15 Pro and Pro Max. They aren't available for any other devices yet, but I suspect if they get enough requests, they may consider it for folks who are interested. But what this allows you to do is, once you set it up, so it uses the accessibility settings of your phone. So you'll need to enable assistive touch and it will pop up a little thing on your screen like, especially just after you've restarted, but then it will go away again. And so once you've set up your assistive touch and you need to make sure assistive touch is on, then you can go ahead and under devices, you can see your device and then I can change exactly what it is that it's going to do. So at the moment I have a shortcut which I've set up with button number one, which is the bank case single press I'm very creative with my shortcut naming, but you know what? I'm not going to not be able to find this later and then button two, which is, by double press, it takes a screenshot, and button three opens the notification center. So that's my long press. So if I double press, then this is going to use accessibility settings to take a screenshot, and then, obviously, I can interact with that in any way that I like. So I will just customize button number three, or I will try to. There we go, and so this gives me a whole host of options that I can choose from, because these are all the accessibility settings. So I could have it do a pinch, or I can have it restart my device, I could have it do an SOS maybe not the best of ideas, but hey, I could have it open Apple Pay. And then there's things like running your accessibility shortcut, turning on Apple Watch, mirroring your background, sounds, dimming flashing lights, hover typing, and then there's even scroll gestures. So you could set this up and have it programmed so that every time you press it it just scrolls down, for example, or scrolls you to the top, or scrolls you to the bottom, and then you've got things like a calibrating eye tracking and so on from your assistive touch. And then there's all of the shortcuts that you may or may not have. And, yeah, it's pretty exciting and I quite like this.

34:10
I'm finding that I'm using this a lot more than the regular action button on my phone. The regular action button is in a very inconvenient position as far as I'm concerned, because I have to reach all the way to the top of my Pro Max phone, basically on the other side to where my hand usually is to press it. This button, because it's just below the power, and the Siri button is, yeah, it's great. So the case itself does have two little magnetic points on it where it can charge and recharge, but the battery goes for a pretty long time, especially if you're not really using the button all that often. But it does just give you some nice options and, in particular, being able to do things like scroll up and down is very nice if that is what you would like to have in a button.

34:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Very powerful and I didn't realize that it did three extra. That's so cool. Oh, I know. All right, we are zooming through this show Quickly. I will mention the feedback. Feedback comes in from Ken. Again, you can give us your feedback. Ios today at twittv. Ken writes I'm not sure if there's a better way to easily transfer pictures and video from my iPhone to a computer running Windows with work restrictions preventing additional software installation.

35:20
I've been using this app for a few years now and it allows me to access the pictures and videos on my iPhone via a web browser local area network only, not over the internet and then selectively download them to the computer. I use it almost every day. The app is called Simple Transfer. I bought it as a one-time purchase a while ago and it looks like the price has gone up since then. When I open the app on my phone and leave it open, I tap the button that says Use Web Browser, then type the IP address displayed into the web browser on my work desktop running Windows 11. I can then select and save pictures to the computer. Simple Transfer will combine and save the pictures into a single zip file. When you close or switch to another app, the browser access stops. As a side note, the Chrome web browser recently started asking me if I wanted to keep or delete the zip files coming from my iPhone, but the Microsoft Edge browser lets me download the zips without any extra interaction. If there's a better or faster way to do what I'm doing, I'd love to learn about it. Thanks for doing this podcast.

36:13
I am a Club Twit member and listen regularly. First of all, ken, thank you so much for being a member of Club Twit. Second of all, thank you for sharing this because, yes, if you have restrictions for installation on your work computer, that does make it more difficult. There's an app that I used to always suggest and I well, actually I shouldn't say that does make it more difficult. There's an app that I used to always suggest and I actually I shouldn't say that I used to suggest. I continue to suggest it. I just have to remember the name of it. So I'm kind of vamping here, but maybe, rosemary, you can chat for a moment while I remember the name of the app.

36:52 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
But for restrictions. This is a great option, yeah, and so this is really smart because basically you're saying, well, I can't install the software on the computer, but I can install something on the phone, and then the phone basically just pretends to be a web server for a bit and makes the photos available, which is really cool. But I think there may be an easier way, ken At least there is if you've got iCloud Photos enabled, because if you've got iCloud Photos enabled, because if you've got iCloud Photos enabled, then you can just go to iCloudcom and sign in and select your photos and download them, because they'll already have uploaded to iCloud, and then you can just log in and download them and you can download them exactly as they were originally created, so you can download the unmodified originals or you can download JPEGs or H.264 formats, including edits, and so if you've got multiples, it can download it as a zip file for you as well. And I suspect that, with your little issue with Chrome offering to keep or delete the files, what's happening is it's probably doing something that Safari is quite well known for doing, which is opening safe files, which means that it's downloading the zip and then extracting it for you, and I believe there is a preference in Chrome I'm going to just have a quick look and double check to turn that off, which I would recommend that you do. Same if you're using Safari on a Mac folks to turn that off, which I would recommend that you do Same if you're using Safari on a Mac folks.

38:15
In Safari, that preference is and I'm just double checking the name of it open safe files after downloading. So if you go to Safari preferences in the general area, it's the checkbox at the bottom. I always recommend turning that off, just because if you accidentally download something like a video and then it starts popping up in QuickTime and playing oh no, you don't want that zip files just unzipping themselves and then you don't have the zip anymore and you have to go get it back out the trash. It's, it's a whole mess. So I definitely recommend, uh, turning that off. Um, and uh, yeah, in chrome there is um, uh, something under security for downloads. But I'm gonna double check what the exact name of that preference is.

38:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, In my opinion, there's no such thing as a safe file, so I you that that that option just bugs the crud out of me, because people end up doing that and then it is opening things that should not necessarily be opened after you've downloaded them. The app that I wanted to mention is an app that I have again done an episode of Hands on Mac before, on January 11th, and it is called Landrop L-A-N-D-R-O-P, and Landrop works between macOS, Windows, Android, iOS and Linux as well Windows, Android, iOS and Linux as well. So if you want an open source tool, that if you are able to again install software locally, Landrop is my go-to, because, much like this, app does it via the web browser, Landrop does it via the app, where it'll just create kind of a local server location that stores temporarily these files and you can move them between and securely encrypted and everything, which I quite like. All right, I think we should probably move along. I can hear the music.

40:10
It's time for Shortcuts Corner. This is Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts request and Rosemary Orchard, our shortcuts expert, provides a response. This week, however, Rosemary is going to provide some inspiration with things you can do with your action button.

40:39 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so, even if you don't have an action button, it's kind of just a nice exercise every once in a while to just think about what can I do with shortcuts that might make my life easier. You know, you might want to trigger these through Siri, through a button on your home screen, or through an action button, or action buttons if you have more than one of those, as I apparently now have four, and so there are a whole bunch of options, and I'm going to start by just popping into the settings app and just showing folks there under action button. This is how you can customize your action button. So at the moment, mine is set to shortcut and it's running a shortcut creatively titled iPhone action button.

41:18
Oh yeah, and then you can also set it to no action. And then there's also accessibility options, there's controls where you could choose a particular control, and so I could set it to open the calculator, for example, I could turn on the magnifier, I can use translate, I can Shazam to recognize music, I can create voice memos, I can use a torch, I can use the camera, I can put a focus mode or I can leave it a silent mode if I want. But I have mine set up to be a action button using shortcuts, because this allows me to say, hey, if I'm in a work mode, show me these options or do this. If I'm in a fitness focus mode, then do that, and so on and so forth. And so one of the things that I have my action button do and I will show folks the bang case, single, single button, which is, um, I have it set up to give me some options to format text, because I often write uh text in markdown and sometimes I actually need to be able to, for example, share a link on discord without it popping in that whole big preview. Um, and there are ways that I could do this with iOS keyboards and so on, but instead what I've done is I have a single press of my action button set up. So I'm going to open my browser and I'm going to copy a link. And so I'm just going to go to twittv slash iOS, because I hear that is a great podcast, folks, and perfect. Now I can copy this URL because it's given me the full URL and I'm just going to open drafts because that's a nice clean place to paste some text. So now I'm going to press my in this case, fan case action button and it's going to give me my options.

43:09
So in this case, I was talking about a link. So I'm going to say, hey, this is the special kind of link that I want to paste in Discord, where it doesn't show the whole preview of the link, because you know, sometimes when you share a link with somebody, it comes up with, you know, an image from the site and some text and so on, and you don't always want that. So in Discord, if you put the lesser than and greater than signs around that hugging it, then it will get rid of those for you, um, and so this is just updated, my clipboard, which is great, um, and so I'll just copy, uh, that link back and then I'll just show folks what I've done with the other options. So I have either inline code or a code block, because I often share little snippets of code with people via discord and, yes, I write it on my phone because I'm crazy and so if I do a code block, then I can just paste that in and ta-da, it's put three back ticks at the top and three back ticks at the bottom, and my clipboard is in the middle. So that is what I have done here. And inline code does more or less the same thing. It puts a back tick at the beginning and the end, because, yes, I'm that kind of nerd, I write code and I share it with people on Discord or just using Markdown.

44:16
But some other things that you may want to do, for example, is you might want to check if you're home and I'm going to show folks how to do this, because there's a couple of different ways so you could use location, which, if you can spell location, is even easier to do, and so you can get current location, and then you could get your address from the location and details of location. That's the one. So there is a really nice section called details of location. Again, spelling is hard, and so I can then choose what kind of information I'm going to get. So I could just get the name of the place, I could get the region, I could get a phone number, if that's possible. Depending on what the lookup says, you get the town, city, county, postcode, street, longitude and latitude. Those are nice options for checking things Altitude, how high am I? You know you could do that.

45:17
Usually if I'm trying to check that I'm home, then I usually go with the postcode and I just check that it starts with the right amount of information for me. But obviously that's going to vary for people. But one way that is pretty much rock solid to check if I am at home is to get my network details. And if I get my network name then I can see it's the promised LAN, and so I can then just add a little if here, and then I can just say if is the promised LAN. Oh and promised really could do a little autocorrect there, but my iPhone is having a moment with autocorrect apparently because it is not happy with me. But there we go. So if I'm on my wifi I'm at home. That's pretty simple. And so now if I'm at home, then I'm going to use HomeKit to toggle a light, and so I will use home select the home, and then iOS 18 has updated this, so I'm going to use the control home action and I can choose which home it is, and so I am going to scroll down.

46:24
There's quite a few accessories here, but here we go. So in the office I have an iris, which is there's a light behind me, just over my shoulder, which I'm pointing at here, and I could turn that off or tell you what. No, let's turn it on, set it to 100% brightness and purple. And there we go. So now, if I had this connected to an action button, then when I press my button, then look at that, the light's gone purple because I'm at home. But if I'm not at home, maybe I just want to send somebody a message that says hey, I'm thinking of you, or something like that.

46:58
You know there's so many options that you can do with the action button. Obviously, you know there's toggling silent, there's opening the camera and things like that. And I know folks have gone with some really crazy setups and, for example, one of my action buttons is programmed to allow me to disable some app locking on my network and also open one particular person I've been following on TikTok because her goats had babies and her miniature horse just had a baby as well and she's got a miniature donkey that is like 11 months pregnant and they can give birth anywhere between 11 and 14 months, poor donkeys. So, yeah, I'm waiting for, and they can give birth anywhere between 11 and 14 months, poor donkeys. So, yeah, I'm waiting for the donkey to give birth. So I've been checking on that pretty frequently and her horse just gave birth yesterday, which was a surprise to everybody, including her, because she woke up and went to check the barn and there was a baby horse in the barn. So, yeah, you know, it's useful for all sorts of things.

47:54
So you can have a menu pop up and give you choices on what to do. You can have it, just do a thing. You could check your focus mode, all sorts, and I feel like this in particular, in combination with when you scroll down in shortcuts. Then there are these app shortcuts. Okay, so if you are a Calm user, then you could have it play the daily Calm. That's a shortcut that's available. You can just use that. You don't have to create anything. You don't have to, you know, go super nerdy and make your own stuff and write your own code, like I do sometimes. You could just use one of these app actions. You know, read your current or play your current audio book through books or with the camera. You could have it open cinematic mode. You know, cinematic mode. If I am in this state, if I'm in California, I always want to open the camera in cinematic mode, but if I'm not in California, open it in photo mode or selfie mode, for example. And yeah, there's just so many good options with the action button and I really recommend that folks dive into this app shortcut section and give it a play.

48:52
You know, are you a Notion user? There's the option to ask Notion AI. Do you use notes? What about pages? Pages will allow you to create a new document. Maybe you don't want that on an action button, but maybe that's a better thing to have on your home screen than the pages icon, which always opens the last thing you're in. Maybe you always want a new pages document instead, like my Safari button on my home screen that doesn't open Safari specifically, that opens DuckDuckGo very specifically, so that I don't get distracted by what I previously had open.

49:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of iOS Today. If you have shortcuts, corner requests, feedback questions, any of that stuff, you can send that to us at iostoday. At twittv, I also would like to invite you to join the club. At twittv, slash club twit. For $7 a month you can become a member of the club and when you do you get access to ad-free versions of all of our shows. You gain access to the TwitPlus bonus fee that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show.

49:50
After the show, special Club Twit events get published there. You gain access to the Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit, as well as video versions of all of our Club Twit shows. So to watch iOS today, you will need to join the club. Along with all of that, you get the warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you are helping to support what we do here at twit. So thank you to those of you who are members of club twit and thank you to those of you who are considering becoming members of club twit. We do appreciate it. Rosemary orchard, if folks are looking to find you online and keep up with what you're doing. Where should they go to do so?

50:28 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
uh, the best place is rosemaryorchardcom, which has got links to books, apps, podcasts and social media places around the Internet. And, of course, you can find me in the Club Twit Discord where folks hang out during live show recordings, but also in the forum threads for each iOS Today episode after it's released, and they can also post requests for topics for future shows, short back corner questions and just feedback. In general, we always love to hear from our listeners what about you, micah?

50:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Awesome. I can be found at Micah Sargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahuacoffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-Acoffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thank you all for tuning in. We will be back next week for another episode of iOS Today. Bye-bye.

51:12 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Bye, folks.