Figured I’d share some love for some apps I don’t see mentioned often here, and also flag a few apps that are new to me that others might appreciate. Happy for queries, responses, alternative suggestions…
Timeview: I use my (Google) calendar not just as a way to schedule future appointments but also as a way to log what I’ve done— I track time using shortcuts that write directly to my calendar, rather than using apps like Toggl. Timeview has a somewhat retro design language, but it’s the easiest way I’ve found to visually analyse my time. I got into habit of tracking time like this relatively early on, but was happy to know other people did similar things when I got into the Quantified Self movement (see: Jared Chung on time tracking). Would love to see this updated for iOS14. I might also experiment with Charty for this in the future.
Speaking of self-tracking, I don’t see Nomie mentioned much around these parts. Grapefruit is also really useful in this arena.
WordBoard is a solid snippet keyboard with dynamic dates and cursor placement. Numboard is pretty useful for inline calculations. Oh, and Calca lives (updated for iOS 14).
I’ve seen it mentioned by a few others, but I’m new to Notebooks 10. It’s proving to be a really solid reference and active archive tool for images, documents and whatever else I’ve thrown at it. It supports deep-linking with easily accessible local URLs for items, so integrates well with tools I already use for tasks/projects and note-taking. Offers OCR and in-document searching, and syncs with Dropbox so I don’t have to choose between using it and Readdle Documents.
I don’t game much on iOS. There are a few standouts that have held a special place in my heart over the years (X-COM, Shadowrun, Banner Saga, Streetfighter IV…) but most recent games I’ve tried have failed to pull me in. Word Unknown is good for exercising the mind between tasks.
Widgets: I don’t feel like I’ve discovered the best use for widgets yet. Hoping that Widgy (as yet unreleased) or Widgetpack can help me make something I can actually derive value from.
Bonus hack: best thing I’ve done to improve my iOS setup recently has been to turn on assistive touch, drop it down to 20% idle opacity and map that button to Spotlight search (single tap). I didn’t realise exactly how much I’ve missed Alfred on iOS until I did this. On the iPhone, I’ve set this up through a double back-tap rather than assistive touch— I’m actually not overly fond of that floating button, but on the iPad the functionality far outweighs the inconvenience.