iOS Today 814 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on iOS Today, Rosemary Orchard and I are well within the summer, so it's time to talk about some apps to make your summer even better. Stay tuned for this episode of iOS Today. Podcasts you love.
Rosemary Orchard [00:00:16]:
From people you trust.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:19]:
This is TWiT. This is iOS Today, episode 814, with Rosemary Orchard and me, Micah Sargent, recorded Tuesday, August 4th, 2026. For Thursday, August 6th, 2026. Summer Apps Roundup. Hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, HomePodOS, and all the other OSes that Apple has to offer. Uh, I am one of your hosts. My name is Micah Sergeant.
Rosemary Orchard [00:00:50]:
And my name is Rosemary Richard. And, uh, yeah, let's get some sunshine, folks. But of course, inappropriate amounts with appropriate skincare, please.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:00]:
Yes, indeed. So this is exciting. We're talking today about apps for the summer. And, you know, when Rosemary and I were talking about this, I had just come back from a hike. And so I'm very much well within my summertime. In fact, today it's a little bit rough here because I look outside and everything's orange due to the fires that are going on nearby. So, you know, maybe today's the day to stay inside. In any case, let's talk about apps.
Rosemary Orchard [00:01:28]:
Yes.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:30]:
We're going to talk about, you know, the apps that you might use during the summer. And one could be a little obvious to some of you, and for others you might be going, oh right, yeah, I guess I do use that in the summer. Rosemary, what's first on the list?
Rosemary Orchard [00:01:44]:
Uh, the first app on my list, Micah, it's got to be the Photos app because, yeah, people have a tendency to take lots of photos and videos in the summer. As you can see, I've got some very cute pictures of my dog here peeking out from underneath the tent because, believe it or not, he is an escape artist in his spare time. And summer is a really great time to be taking and doing things like creating shared photo albums with people as well. So if I wanted to, I could add this to a brand new photo album, share that photo album with Micah. He could also add his photos into it and share them back with me, which would be lovely if we were going on like a shared trip of some kind. I think it would be quite weird if I actually shared an album with Micah because we'd end up just sharing dog pictures with each other, which is, to be honest, actually a great thing to do for your, your mental health. Um, but yeah, there's a lot that you can do in the Photos app. So I'm just gonna give folks a brief reminder, um, that of course, um, so I took this photo as a regular photo.
Rosemary Orchard [00:02:42]:
One of the relatively recent changes is I can turn this into a portrait photo where in this case it just sort of blurs out part of the ground, uh, to the left of Tank's nose. Uh, but, uh, you know, then if you, you turn that off, then everything comes back into focus. I can add a style to this, so I make it cool rose or neutral or amber. These colors, you know, show up better for some effects like the black and white just because of the combination of colors, uh, taken here. And I'm just gonna turn that off and send that back to standard. I can change this from a live photo, so where you can actually see, you know, like the wind ruffling his ear floofs, and I can just turn that off entirely, or I can actually change that, uh, to be a loop or something like that. I can do manual adjustments, uh, things like exposure and brilliance and highlights and lowlights and all those things. I can crop the photo.
Rosemary Orchard [00:03:41]:
One feature that is coming with iOS 27 I do wanna mention is you're gonna be able to reframe your pictures, so change your point of view. So for example, I could then use that feature to get down on his level. And that's something you should be able to retroactively do with photos you've already taken. So that'll be quite nice. And that is in this magic little tools button over here. But I won't go too much into that because we've already covered that on the show. And of course, make sure to cover these things when iOS 27 comes out. But that's what you can do with photos.
Rosemary Orchard [00:04:11]:
Now, if you've got videos, so for example, uh, we're upgrading our tent, so I took a video of our existing tent so that I could sell it, then there are editing tools for that as well. So you can obviously make the same sort of adjustments to things like your contrast and so on as well. There are various filters that you can apply, so I could do Vivid Cool to really make that sky pop. That not a good choice. Don't do that if you're trying to sell something. Just leave everything as the default for, for things like that. And I can crop it as well. So if I wanted to, then I could really tightly zoom in on just the, uh, just the tent itself.
Rosemary Orchard [00:04:47]:
That in this particular case wouldn't work because it was like a proper like walking tour video of going in the tent and looking at some things in the tent and then going outside the tent and around it. So that, that particular angle wouldn't work. But you can also do things like straighten it, uh, if things were really skew-whiff. Um, of course now things look like they're on the deck of the Titanic, but there's a lot of good edits that you can just do inside of Photos. And of course, you hopefully saw what I did there. I just said cancel and undid all my changes. Now, at any point, if you have made an edit to a photo or video, then you can tap on the 3 dots in the top right-hand corner and you can actually revert to the original and just set everything back, which can be really helpful if you're demoing these features to somebody else and you make something look horrific on purpose as a demonstration or by accident because you're messing around and you didn't quite understand what things do, you can always go back. So yeah, Photos, share some albums, create some albums, share all this with everybody else and make some edits as well.
Rosemary Orchard [00:05:47]:
Maybe at some point go through and delete the really terrible photos that you took that you don't wanna keep. But, Al, if you've got the storage for it on your phone, why not keep it?
Mikah Sargent [00:05:56]:
I agree, why not keep it? All right, the next one on the list is an app That I think could be helpful, um, especially here, uh, but also California and other places where you have wildfires. It's an app called WatchDuty Wildfire and Floods. Um, this is a nonprofit company that's in charge of it, uh, so it's free, it has no ads, you don't have to worry about that, and the developers very much note that it will always stay that way. Now, that said, There is a membership option, $24.99 a year. This gives you things like air tanker and firefighting aircraft tracking. Very cool. But this is the thing. Watch Duty is called Watch Duty because it is a system maintained by real people.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:52]:
This isn't just some, you know, pulling from a database. Active and retired firefighters, dispatchers, first responders, reporters monitor radio scanners around the clock, and then That means that you could get alerts before the official government notifications come through. When you get this app, you'll have evacuation orders and shelter information, active fire perimeters, flash flood warnings and river gauge levels, also satellite hotspots, wind speed and direction, power outage estimates, air quality readings. I don't even wanna look at what the air quality readings are like right now. And it also, again, it's not just about fire, which is something, you know, to worry about here, but it also floods. So you can make sure that, you know, both of those things are covered when it comes to what you're looking for. It did— it's been like a number one app, especially with the Los Angeles fires in 2025. This is how I came across it.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:51]:
That meant that it passed ChatGPT the week of January 2025. That said, I would definitely get this app. I would definitely use this app, but use it as a supplement to those official alerts, right? use this instead of any official system. Use this as an addition to an official system. That's WatchDuty Wildfire and Floods, available for free in the App Store. Next on the list is iMovie. Tell us about iMovie's use, Rosemary.
Rosemary Orchard [00:08:30]:
Yeah, so iMovie is great for doing all sorts of things. So here I have that same video that I mentioned earlier that I took with the tent because I didn't realize when I was doing it Now I went way over the Facebook Marketplace 1-minute limit, and so I needed to adjust the playback speed of the video. Now depending on how you've recorded a video on your phone, you may be able to just do that in Photos. But instead what I actually did was I popped it into iMovie and I changed the playback speed of the entire thing. I just sped it up until the total time at the top went down to less than a minute. So it's a little bit sped up, but also it was quite a slow-mo video in the first place because of just the way that you know, you're walking around and panning. You— I could have sprinted around the tent, but I didn't really want to trip and fall over myself. But something else that you can do in iMovie is when you start a new project, you can actually, um, create a magic movie where you just select photos and it builds a movie for you.
Rosemary Orchard [00:09:26]:
Now, these are similar to the ones that you create, uh, in Photos, or that are created in Photos for you, but this is much more explicit with your choice of photos. Now I'm going to try and do this, and hopefully it's not going to show too many things that it shouldn't be showing. Great. So I've got some pictures of me and my dog. I've got some Highland cow footage here and a picture of my dog shoving his head into a bag of crisps, uh, or potato chips for you folks, uh, in the US. Uh, and so now what this has done is it's stitched everything together, um, and it's, it's just turned this into a little magic movie with transitions and things like that, which is really cute. And this is really great if you've been on a trip with some family and friends and you just kind of want to stitch some things together and have it, you know, have a fun video that you can share, but you don't want to spend hours doing it. You know, if you've got videos, you can pop those in, photos, you name it.
Rosemary Orchard [00:10:25]:
Now obviously there are some various things that you could do. So if I actually go on to an individual photo, then I can see, you know, it's got the word Magic Movie there, and I can actually double tap that and then change that. So I could say Tent Time, uh, for example, and it will just, you know, it's, it's— This is really nice way of doing the work to create a video without having to do loads of work. Because I don't know about you, Micah, but the thing that puts me off of things like scrapbooking and so on like that is just the amount of work it takes to actually do that and maintain it and like all the supplies I need. So being able to just select some photos and videos and go, hey, iMovie, do this magic for me, this to me is what what AI and Siri, you know, Siri AI and so on is for. This is what you want. Um, and so yeah, this, this is one of the things that I do. My dad has been creating videos out of photos that he's taken on trips every year for years.
Rosemary Orchard [00:11:27]:
Um, and I introduced him to iMovie Magic Movie a while ago, and he's completely changed his workflow because previously he was like stitching things together in various different applications, making it really complicated. And I said, hey, why don't you just stick all the photos here and then stick it in iMovie and say magic movie? And he did it a couple of times and went, oh, okay, this is actually really, really good. I really, really like this. And it's changed his workflow and it's free to download and use. It's available on iOS and iPadOS and it's available on macOS if you're more comfortable doing this sort of thing on a desktop. So yeah, go and have fun with iMovie.
Mikah Sargent [00:12:04]:
Absolutely. All right, next on the list for me is Sky Guide. Now is a great time. It's been an Editor's Choice app for a long, you know, across the board many, many times. Free to download. I think it's a $4.99 subscription for Plus and then an $8.99 subscription for Pro. And then if you want to, you can pay $249.99, so $250 for a lifetime subscription.
Rosemary Orchard [00:12:32]:
Yeah.
Mikah Sargent [00:12:35]:
So what you do, of course, with Sky Guide, you point your phone at the sky and then you use— it uses AR to kind of overlay what's really cool stars and constellations and planets and even satellites all onto the sky. You also get some ISS flyover notifications, so you could see when the International Space Station is moving over top of you. Now, of course, given that it's summer, I believe that the Perseids meteor shower is going to peak peak pretty soon, August 12th through the 13th, 100 meteors an hour. And it— you, you can see these if the sky is dark, uh, and the moon is not showing. Um, there's also— when is that, uh, next total solar eclipse? Uh, I believe—
Rosemary Orchard [00:13:27]:
That's pretty soon, I want to say, because I know it's only, I think, 80% or so here in the UK. But, uh, yeah, I, I think it's quite soon.
Mikah Sargent [00:13:38]:
Yeah, August 12th. So, uh, if you live in Greenland, Iceland, and northern Spain, you'll see, uh, totality there. And other places, of course, uh, it will not be as much. And you can even add a little calendar notification letting you know, uh, what, what it'll look like for you and when it will, you know, when it would appear at its, at its best viewing. It's also very camper-friendly because it works without Wi-Fi, so you can go out where there's nothing and there's no service and still be able to overlay things. And I love that it's got an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Vision Pro, Mac versions. Yes, it runs across the board with, you know, different functionality in those different places. And I love to Personally, that Sky Guide considers the accessibility.
Mikah Sargent [00:14:36]:
You they point out that voiceover is available, dynamic text changes, captions, and then an option to differentiate without color alone. So that is another kind of pro in its camp. But Sky Guide super cool, super fun. I remember taking it out a couple of years ago with my with a A little cousin, and being able to hold this up to the sky and say, okay, so that's, you know, that's this constellation, that's that constellation. And we were able to kind of look between the phone and the sky and trace the stars, and then also kind of see how it overlays the image of the bear or whatever it happens to be, and kind of understand what people were seeing whenever they talked about these constellations back in the day. So well worth checking out, a fun way to connect with other people, I think, too. And really, when you're out there and it's dark and it's quiet and you're looking up, it adds even more to it. I remember getting some goosebumps looking at this.
Mikah Sargent [00:15:45]:
So Sky Guide in the App Store, free to download. Next on the list, and I think this is a great one, Rosemary, that you've chosen.
Rosemary Orchard [00:15:56]:
Thanks, Micah, because speaking of the sky, the moon has an effect on our planet, specifically tide times, and those can be very predictable in some places. very unpredictable in others. If you are going near the coast, you might get there and find that there is no beach, um, or that it's a really, really long trek out to the sea depending on where it is you are. Uh, so I have been using My Tide Times. Uh, there's a free version and a pro version. The free version is free with ads, uh, as displayed at the bottom of my screen here, or the pro version is $3.99. Uh, there are 2 separate apps, so there's no in-app subscriptions or anything like that. When you open the app, it pops open a list and you can configure, uh, this in settings to show you either your most visited locations, the last checked locations, your favorites, or nearby locations.
Rosemary Orchard [00:16:45]:
I currently have it on most visited. You can adjust a bunch of things like your map format, the distance unit, which in my case is automatic, so it's reading that from my phone, the tide unit to meters or feet, your time format 12 or 24 hours, um, and of course you can increase text contrast as well, which means it just is slightly more accessible. So here I can see that I've got some most visited ones, and if I tap on one of those, then I can actually see what the tide times are for low tide and high tide, and also the sunrise and sunset times for that same location, which is, you know, quite convenient if you're planning on, you know, sitting on the beach at the sunset and you're there going, cool, but wait, is that high tide or low tide? You don't wanna have to open a separate app for that. You can also see the moon for that area, And you can turn it into a favorite location, you can use it in a widget, you can share it, all sorts of things. Um, under More, it also shows you like the wind, so it's a gentle wind at 14 miles per hour. Um, but yeah, I just really like this app. Uh, it does currently show today, uh, on this particular location. There are little arrows to the left and the right of said location name— well, left is only there if you're on a day after today— to show you future times.
Rosemary Orchard [00:18:02]:
Um, so of course, you know, You know, depending on what happens at other places in the world, there might be changes to these, but it's unlikely that the actual tide times are going to change. It's more, you know, if there's a tsunami in Japan, then there's great surf in California. Um, so, you know, you just kind of want to watch out for things like that and keep an eye on your local weather alerts and so on. Uh, if there is a flood in the area, then check whether or not the beach is going to be safe to visit before you go, not just the tide times. But this has been really useful for the last couple of weeks for me, going to see the— going to the beach every Every couple of days. And yeah, it's meant that I've got to have some really great picnics and I didn't get unnecessarily wet. Yay!
Mikah Sargent [00:18:44]:
That especially is nice.
Rosemary Orchard [00:18:46]:
All right.
Mikah Sargent [00:18:47]:
Well, it's nice when you go for a paddle intentionally, right?
Rosemary Orchard [00:18:50]:
But not so much when you suddenly get drenched by the incoming tide.
Mikah Sargent [00:18:53]:
Yeah, that's not ideal, right? So speaking of hiking, I think that that is also a great a great summer activity. And so I wanna mention very popular, AllTrails. You know, look, it is a little, not a little, it is a rather expensive app. And I think that the free version has a lot to offer, but it does, if you want to really get into it, you do need to pay. In any case, it's an obvious pick, but over 500,000 trails worldwide. Like it has the database. It has the community because those reviews and those photos that come in and tell you, hey, let me look at the most recent things. This person realized that the, you know, the creek crossing is not going to be doable this week.
Mikah Sargent [00:19:48]:
So you get up to the moment. I think that's what sets it apart, is that it's got the people there offering the knowledge that you need. Something to be mindful of when using this app Check out the filters because it makes it very easy to find a trail that is right for you. You can set it up for dog-friendly, for kid-friendly, for stroller-friendly, for wheelchair-friendly. You can set up difficulties and lengths. Once you get there, I love this turn-by-turn navigation on the trail. Very helpful. I do argue that if you don't get lost once, you haven't really been on a hike.
Mikah Sargent [00:20:28]:
But this app can help you do that and ignore my little, my little sort of rule. And so the, yeah, I mean, it's kind of amazing how much activity you get. And then great too that after you've finished hiking, you can export the information to Apple Health as well. It will tell you about points of interest. So the hike that I went on was the 10 Waterfall Hike here in Oregon. And essentially it's a bunch of trails that take you 10 waterfalls. But if you are worried about missing something along the way, it'll tell you about waterfalls, it'll tell you about great spots to take photos, it will tell you about historic markers, which are great. There are, again, 2 paid tiers.
Mikah Sargent [00:21:15]:
There's AllTrails Plus, which is $36 a year, and there's AllTrails Peak, which is $80 a year, and that lets you create custom routes, and it will also show you heat maps for popularity. So that way you can be mindful Mindful of when and where you are— when and where you're going hiking and, you know, how many people might be there. It's free to browse. Offline map downloads, wrong turn alerts, condition data like weather, air quality, and UV index, those are all behind the Plus subscription. And so, you know, those are things that you would want to have if you are taking a hike. That's why I do feel like this really is a download and check it out, but if you want everything, you're going to need to purchase it. Also, the free tier has ads. The app promoting what's called Backpacking Route Assistant.
Mikah Sargent [00:22:16]:
So you pick a trail, you set a start and an end point, and then it's kind of cool because it'll build out a multi-day itinerary for you. So that way, if you are a backpacker and you've been looking for, you know, some options and you don't want to do that scouting yourself, This can help you create that. It is part of the make the most of the summer story, and so I'm not surprised that so many people use it, and so many people use it during the summer. It works on iPhone, it works on Apple Watch. There's actually a Vision Pro version, which is funny to me. I guess you can hike at home. And you know what? I shouldn't laugh. There are people for which that makes sense.
Mikah Sargent [00:22:59]:
So cool that there's a Vision Pro app. No native iPad app, but that also makes sense, frankly. So yeah, that is AllTrails, once again, available for free to download in the App Store. Rosemary, do you wanna tell us about the next app on the list?
Rosemary Orchard [00:23:22]:
Yes, I do, Micah. And the reason that I'm gonna talk about Current Weather is not because of the fun snarkiness or anything like that. It's because if you tap on the caret menu in Carrot Weather and then 3 dots and you go into the settings and then notifications, you can get notifications at various points of the day or based on various conditions, which may or may not improve your summer. Uh, so for example, you can get precipitation alerts when rain or snow is expected in the next hour. Uh, storm cells is something that is not available to me. I I believe that's based on my location. I've also got these showing as a live activity, which means that they are to stay on my screen for the duration of the rain. I get government weather alerts.
Rosemary Orchard [00:24:06]:
I can also get lightning alerts, which is pretty cool. And there is a hurricane tracker, less applicable to me here in the UK, but it's not unheard of. And then there are some data points here. So I can get an umbrella and a sunscreen reminder. So the umbrella reminder tells me whether precipitation chance for the day is expected to rise above 25%. I can get a sunscreen reminder when the UV index is expected to arrive above 6. Now, when I tap on these, I can change the, uh, delivery time of these to be whatever is most appropriate for me. Because I found that I was walking a small child to school in the mornings, and then on my way home from walking said small child, I was getting a sunscreen reminder.
Rosemary Orchard [00:24:48]:
And I was like, well, a good thing I kind of just overplanned because this is a bit late. And it happened twice in a row and I was like, I need to go into Carrot and look. And lo and behold, of course I can customize what time this happens at. You can also add custom notifications based on a whole bunch of data points. So you can add something based on air quality index if you've got Premium Ultra, cloud cover, pressure, humidity, dew point, wet bulb temperature, feels like temperature, things like that. So you can get all of this information. You can say if you just want information during the day, do you want that information overnight? Do you want it at any time? Um, you know, you can customize your threshold. This is based on the data point.
Rosemary Orchard [00:25:29]:
You can say what the delivery time is, and you can just, you know, set your own name for it. And I personally think that this is the sort of thing that makes a lot of sense for a lot of people, especially, however, during the summer where hopefully you've got some time off to enjoy the lovely weather. Um, and yeah, you— please, folks, do remember to put your sunscreen on. It will save you from a whole world of physical hurt. Uh, so, and, uh, yeah, umbrellas can be used for or, uh, as a parasol too if you need to keep the sun off as well. Um, but yeah, I've also got your— my morning and evening reports at 7 AM and 7 PM. You can get sunrise, sunset, moon phase alerts. You can set a do not disturb window.
Rosemary Orchard [00:26:06]:
I haven't got that customized because I actually use the sleep mode on my phone to keep notifications to a minimum while I'm asleep. So we'll have to talk more about that at some point in the future. But yeah, that's Carrot. It's been really useful for me traveling because it just defaults to whatever my local location is, as all good weather apps do and should. Uh, but yeah, the use in particular have definitely been a huge time saver of just me not needing to check what the weather is gonna be for today. It just tells me put sunscreen on, which is great. I love that.
Mikah Sargent [00:26:37]:
Speaking of putting sunscreen on, the last app that I wanna mention today is called Sunseeker. Now this is a $12 app. It does sit at number 6 in the top paid navigation apps category. It's got an average 4.8 rating across 13,000 reviews. And it is for seeing kind of where the sun will be at a given time. And that way, you could be more mindful about, you know, when it's time to protect yourself from the sun or not protect yourself from the sun because the sun's gone away. Well, you know, it's not in view. Golden hour, blue hour, twilight times, shadow periods, UV index, solar irradiance, equinox, solstice paths.
Mikah Sargent [00:27:29]:
It's got so much information. Also, solar and lunar eclipse tables have been added so you can keep track of where, when that's bound to happen. And it is not just for photography because you can also— I would have been able to use this this, um, just, uh, when I, when I went on the hike. Because when, you know, you drive there and you go to park and not a lot of the parking is shaded by trees, being able to pull this out and go, okay, where, uh, will there be the most shade throughout the, the hike, you know, as long as we're out there, and then be able to park there. But you can use it, you know, if you're— which side of the campsite's going to stay shaded? Where should I plant these plants? Which Is the rental dock that, you know, we're— or sorry, is the boat rental going to get some afternoon sun? There's so much stuff that you can do. It's got a watch app. It also has lock screen widgets and home screen widgets. It does work offline as well.
Mikah Sargent [00:28:35]:
Honestly, $1,199 does seem a little bit expensive, but a lot of people have purchased it, mostly photographers.
Rosemary Orchard [00:28:41]:
Yeah.
Mikah Sargent [00:28:42]:
But still very, very cool app. So that is Sunseeker, available in the App Store for $11.99. All right, we are back to the show, and that means it's time for our App Caps. These are the apps or gadgets we are using now or have been using for some time that we think are awesome and therefore want to tell you about them. I will kick things off. I had forgotten about this app and I just happened to come across it in my, as I was looking through my phone the other day. And I said, oh, how did I forget about this app? It's called RNI Films and that stands for Really Nice Images. It is a really cool app, honestly.
Mikah Sargent [00:29:31]:
I really, really like it for photo editing and photo filtering. It's a UK studio. They've been doing film emulation since 2015. And have built desktop film profiles for Lightroom and Capture One before then bringing the app to before making this app and bringing it to the iPhone. What they've done is that they digitized an actual library of analog slides of of negatives. They profiled them, and then they took these profiles and turned them into film stock simulations and.
Rosemary Orchard [00:30:07]:
It—
Mikah Sargent [00:30:08]:
I kid you not, I mean, I struggle to find a single filter on any photo that I don't like. It all looks so good. The filters are organized by film type, so you've got negative options, slide, instant, black and white, and vintage. It's got a real grain engine that will simulate grain structure and color, and then how grain will behave at different resolutions. So it's not just like slap some white noise on there or some, you know, monochromatic or or chromatic noise. No, it's, it's, it's making choices based on resolution and everything. There are new tools. I think halation is the newest one, but there's bloom and halation.
Mikah Sargent [00:30:48]:
So halation, if you're curious, that's that warm glow that will bleed around highlights in older film. And bloom is a less warm glow, more just like a general kind of of glow on a photograph, and you can tune the intensity and everything. It's got crop, it's got rotate, exposure, contrast, HSL, all those standard things, vignette, but it does the things that I mentioned as well. It edits raw, so you can do that from, you know, photos taken from your iPhone or from a third-party camera. If it's raw, it'll work with that. And then it also does, don't you worry, video color grading. Oh, wow. It is labeled beta for now, but it is—it works.
Mikah Sargent [00:31:35]:
And this is this is something that I think is kind of neat. But it you know I'll be honest, I'm a little bit of a gatekeeper about this app specifically. There's a neat feature that some of you who perhaps are more kind and giving, it now lets you export. A QR code. And so what happens is you, you create a photo, you save the photo, and then you hit export as QR code, and it overlays a QR code on top of the photo. So you can imagine, like, if you shared this on Instagram or something, it's a, it's a carousel. The first photo is the actual photo. The person swipes over, they see a QR code.
Mikah Sargent [00:32:16]:
When they scan that QR code, what happens is it will encourage them to download RNI. They get RNI, they scan the QR code, and it will apply the edits that you made on your photo to their photo. So it's essentially exporting your preset. Pretty cool, but I like the edits that I do and I want to keep them to myself. It does have a generous starter pack of filters. Additional packs are a one-time purchase at $3.99 each, so you could buy them individually— negative, vintage, instant, black and white— at $3.99 each. I think that the subscription is a great way to do it. I think it's $9.99 a year, $10 a year, and you get this incredible library of real film simulation and very good film grain that is— it doesn't, it doesn't look goofy.
Mikah Sargent [00:33:08]:
It looks real. And I love that. It looks authentic, I should say. 4.8 stars. They, they— a lot of comparisons to VSCO. And one thing that has happened that I think makes it really really quite nice is that the developers listen. So, um, back in 2021, they added— the developers added a date stamp feature, and what that would do is pretty much watermark your photos unless you subscribed. When users pushed back on that, RNI made it free to disable, and they did so within days.
Mikah Sargent [00:33:50]:
Uh, that means that, you know, you are— you're working with real people who actually care about their users, and I think that's great. It's a universal It's a universal app, so you can, um, it, it is, it's designed for— it'll show designed for iPad if you get it for your Mac, but it will work on the Mac, uh, on an Apple Silicon Mac. And, uh, the most recent updates I think include those HSL controls. So it was nice to see that. Uh, and for folks who don't know, HSL, hue, saturation, I don't remember what the L is now.
Rosemary Orchard [00:34:22]:
Luminance?
Mikah Sargent [00:34:23]:
I think it's luminance. In any case, the HSL specifically lets you make changes across color ranges. So reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, violets. So you can subtly shift the hue saturation and I believe again luminance on each of those values. Really neat. Well worth it. Download it and try it. I have a feeling you'll be buying packs or paying for the subscription.
Rosemary Orchard [00:34:51]:
Yeah.
Mikah Sargent [00:34:51]:
I seriously love this app, and I'm kind of sad that I had forgotten about it, to be honest with you. But now I've got it back in, in, you know, in my rotation, and I'm very, very pleased about it. The company makes a few other apps as well. RNI Colibri, RNI Flashback. Those are kind of fun if you don't like to fiddle with stuff because you basically just hit the camera button and it applies filters and adjustments pseudo-randomly.
Rosemary Orchard [00:35:20]:
Right.
Mikah Sargent [00:35:21]:
And will, uh, you know, then you can kind of just decide on one that you like. And then RNI Aero, which is an app that does, um, oh, what's it called, infrared photographs. Really weird but kind of fun and, you know, uh, surreal and otherworldly. Uh, so it could be worth checking out as well. That is my app cap. Rosemary, what's yours?
Rosemary Orchard [00:35:47]:
Uh, my mic cap is an oldie but a goodie, and I thought I I would just mention it to remind people that it exists, just in case, I don't know, maybe somebody has forgotten about this really great app. Uh, not that there's precedent for that. That app is Parcel. Um, so Parcel is an app for tracking your parcels. Uh, it, it does what it says on the tin, folks. Uh, when you go to add a new parcel, it will automatically scan your clipboard, uh, if you give it permission to. Uh, for anything that looks like a tracking number or even a URL for a known courier service with a tracking number in it. And then it will extract that and pop that in.
Rosemary Orchard [00:36:30]:
It will try and fill out the carrier correctly. You can change it if it does get it wrong because there are some companies who merging or whatever, and there's potentially, you know, tracking numbers that could work with either. You can add your own description. This is optional. You can just leave things as the tracking number.
Mikah Sargent [00:36:43]:
Yeah.
Rosemary Orchard [00:36:44]:
remember, and then grab your, your parcels for you and show you the status of them all. Uh, I love this. You can actually get a calendar subscription so you can put deliveries into your calendar, which can be quite useful so that you know like, oh, on this day I'm expecting like 5 parcels. Oh gosh, that's a problem. Uh, I have a serious shopping habit. Or, uh, this is great, I need to just make sure that I'm in so I can take them in. Whatever it is that works for you. There is a search feature you can filter for.
Rosemary Orchard [00:37:10]:
I've currently got active deliveries. You can see recent deliveries as well. Uh, so you can see that I sold a And it was delivered actually earlier today, which is quite cool. I could go just to completed deliveries or say I want everything. I've cleared out my recent ones, but Parcel, honestly, it's a great app. It slightly increased the price in the last couple of years because, you know, the the world is struggling with things, and so the developer has obviously had to try to make things work. But they've been really good, and just as a testament to how great the developer of Parcel is, Royal Mail. broke the ability for Parcel to read any of the information for ages.
Rosemary Orchard [00:37:52]:
And Parcel would still allow you to put it in there, it would just say, hey, we're currently unable to do this. And then you could tap on it and open the page to view the webpage instead. But they kept working on it and working on it and working on it, and it's now back. So I'm really glad that the developer of Parcel is such a nice person. There are a bunch of settings that you can have, like you can get push notifications and things like that. There's a web— There's web access so you can view it on PC as well. Or just in the browser if you want to. There's an API.
Rosemary Orchard [00:38:21]:
This is available on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and so on. There's widgets, you name it. Basically, Parcel's pretty great. It also has direct Amazon integration where you can sign into one or more Amazon accounts, including multiple Amazon accounts for the same country, or also Amazon accounts for different countries if that is relevant to you. I know for some people that is. You can also change like the default sorting. Yeah. And things like that, and yeah, so on and so forth.
Rosemary Orchard [00:38:49]:
So I really love this.
Mikah Sargent [00:38:51]:
Highly recommend it. Awesome. All righty, folks. That brings us to the. I also use Parcel. All righty, folks. That brings us to the end of this episode of iOS Today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in.
Mikah Sargent [00:39:05]:
If you would like to email us, you can email us ios today at twit.tv to get in touch. That's where you can also send your shortcuts corner requests. We'd love to. hear from you. Rosemary Orchard, if people would like to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?
Rosemary Orchard [00:39:18]:
The best place to go is rosemaryorchard.com. It's just got links to apps, books, podcasts that I am or have been involved with, and of course, all of my social media. So you can find me most places there. But the Club Twit Discord is another great place to find me. There's live chat going on while we record the show. I don't know, should I accept for it before or after Awesome.
Mikah Sargent [00:39:39]:
If you're looking to follow me online— not on lime— you can find me @micasargent on many a social media network or head to chihuahua.coffee, that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Be sure to check out the other shows that I do here on the network, and we'll catch you again next week for another episode of IOS Today. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Rosemary Orchard [00:40:02]:
Bye. Bye.
