About four months ago my wife and I finally won a bid on a house in this horrendous market, and one of the first things to do in a new house is change the locks. It just so happens that the first deadbolt to support iOS 15's home key feature hit the market right around when we were set to close — the Schlage Encode Plus Smart Wifi Deadbolt. So, being the intrepid early adopter that I am, I ordered a few Encodes Plus to install in our new house and see if unlocking doors with just the tap of an iPhone or Apple Watch is as convenient as it sounds.

The Nuts and (Dead) Bolts

Like any high-end consumer deadbolt, the Schlage Encode Plus arrived well-packaged and complete with all the necessary finish hardware for a variety of door situations (though since it’s just a deadbolt, you’ll have to purchase a matching door knob/handle separately). We went with “Century” trim in the satin nickel finish, which looks pretty much like stainless steel. The exterior face of the lock is an aesthetically pleasing rectangle with the capacitive backlit keypad on the top half and a standard Schlage cylinder lock on the bottom half. The motor mechanism and all of the “smarts” of this smart lock (as well as the requisite 3x AA batteries) are situated within the inside-facing portion of the lock in a somewhat-attractive (if somewhat large) housing which also features a manual locking lever. Given that this is a high-end lock from a respected lock-making company, the stainless steel backplates, extra-long strike plate screws, internal storage of the tamper-vulnerable components, and a standard (read: “swappable”) 5-pin Schlage core all indicate that the lock will actually secure an entryway, regardless of your means of unlocking it...but I’ll leave it to the LockPickingLawyer to give a more thorough review of the lock’s physical security.

Installing the Encode Plus was a breeze — though I’ve replaced a few door handles and locks before.

The installation instructions were clear, and essentially follow the same steps as any run-of-the-mill deadbolt — just with an extra wire to route from the exterior-facing keypad through the steel backplate to the brains of the device ensconced in the internal housing. Interestingly, one of the wrinkles of installing a typical deadbolt is actually removed by the Encode Plus: depending on which side of the door your existing lock is on, most deadbolts require an “inversion” step so you don’t have to mount the housing upside down on left-opening or right-opening doors. I was flummoxed when I couldn’t figure out how to “flip” the lock for my opposite-facing door…until I discovered that this is all handled in the locks start-up procedure, which simply ‌detects what direction it’s facing and adjusts the internal mechanism accordingly. This may be a common feature in all smart locks, but since this is the first one I’ve ever installed I was nonetheless delighted by the cleverness. As for setting the lock up via HomeKit, Schlage made it easy by placing the typical HomeKit QR code/NFC scanner inside of the internal housing for easy (authorized) access.

The internal housing of the Schlage Encode Plus…

…and the external capacitive keypad (which illuminates on first-touch).

A Lock Picked for HomeKit

The Schlage Encode Plus can be unlocked by entering user-designated access codes into the 10-digit keypad (up to 100 access codes can be active at a time), via a tap of a button in the Home app or through any number of HomeKit automations, by tapping the NFC chip in your iPhone or Apple Watch against the face of the lock, or by using an actual physical key. I'm of the opinion that the variety of access options is the biggest selling feature of the Encode Plus — the last thing I want is an entirely-electronic deadbolt's mechanism or batteries to fail on me when I'm trying to get into my house. Other brands have solutions for this of course, like Yale's 9V battery contact pads to provide temporary emergency power to its Assure series of locks...but honestly, having an actual key on my keychain seems far more reassuring to me. And of course, the inclusion of a numeric keypad allows the homeowner to set up temporary or permanent access codes to non-keyholders like extended family members, children, or anyone else you want to provide access to your home. All of the Encode Plus’s features, from access codes to automations, can be managed either in the Schlage Home app or entirely via HomeKit. I opted for the latter, as running this Thread-enabled deadbolt exclusively via HomeKit extends the device's battery life to a full year, according to Schlage. As I write this, even after over three months of extensive use of multiple Encodes Plus they are all sitting at 94% battery life — if that trajectory keeps up they might last four years instead of the one year advertised by Schlage.

I was initially worried about the use of standard AA batteries, but sitting at 94% after four months of use is quite impressive.

Beyond the battery life boost, I feel like this lock is specifically designed to work best when used exclusively with HomeKit — after all, its defining feature is support for Apple’s new Home Key functionality, which requires HomeKit integration to use. The Schlage Encode Plus is essentially a premium deadbolt designed specifically for people deeply-entrenched in The Apple Ecosystem™️, and the more entrenched you are the better your experience with this lock will be. Do you just have an iPhone and want to be able to lock your door from afar with the press of a button? Easily accomplished, though certainly not unique to the Encode Plus. Want to configure automations in HomeKit to lock your doors when everyone leaves the house? Piece of cake, and a pretty nice quality of life improvement. But the real magic of the Encode Plus is using an iPhone — and especially an Apple Watch — to unlock your doors via NFC. Once you’ve configured your phone or watch in HomeKit with a home key in your Apple Wallet — and enabled “Express Mode” to allow your phone to automatically authenticate, no FaceID required — you simply tap the top of your phone (or the face of an NFC-enabled Apple Watch) to the NFC reader on the Encode Plus…and it unlocks. Fast — like really fast. Honestly, the NFC unlock process finishes significantly faster than even unlocking the door via a button in Home Kit or asking Siri — let alone the true baseline comparison of rummaging in my pockets for keys, finding the right key, inserting and turning the core. I'm shocked at how effectively the Encode Plus (combined with lots of work-from-home) has essentially eliminated the very concept of keys from my life — a weight on my mind I did not notice until I was relieved of it.

Unlocking the Encode Plus with an NFC-enabled Apple Watch is simple and snappy — though some collision with door jams is inevitable.

Locked-In and Loving It

The Schlage Encode Plus has quickly become my absolute-favorite smart home accessory — thanks in large part to how little I have to think about it. Honestly, my belated review of a product I’ve had and used for four months is just indicative to me of its excellence — it has never failed me or annoyed me or bothered me in any way that would bring it to the forefront of my attention (or my writing priorities). It has seamlessly integrated into our lives, entirely eliminated a daily source of annoyance (the very concept of keys), and did so in a subtle and understated way so as to cause no friction whatsoever. My collection of Wemo outlets need a reboot from time to time, my HomePods mini and Siri itself still regularly fumble requests, but these locks have not had so much as a single blip. No annoying on-boarding process, no teaching the less tech-savvy member of my household complicated Siri incantations, and not a single hiccup or drop-out — just “Wrist-bend and Enter”.

That said, the convenience comes at a cost: The Encode Plus retails for $299 (again, without a door knob/handle — just the deadbolt), which is pretty steep compared to a standard deadbolt, but fairly in-line with what other smart locks from reputable retailers are going for. Given the many added niceties of the Encode Plus vs say the Yale Assure Deadbolt ($289, and no Home Key!), I think folks already shopping for a high-end home lock shouldn't balk at the price — after all, I bought three and they've been worth every penny.

The Encode Plus has been out-of-stock since it soft-launched in March, but rumor has it that a restock is on the horizon for the next week or so — your best bet to snag one is to sign up for alerts at the various retailers that sell it via Schlage's product page. At time of writing, this is the only Home Key-compatible lock on the market in the United States (Aquara has the only other Home Key lock for sale, but only for international buyers), so if you're like me and want the best smart lock experience available in the Apple ecosystem, jump on the next restock as quickly as you can.

Back in January, Chipolo announced their CARD Spot wallet tracker with native Find My integration and I pretty much instantly pre-ordered it. As I wrote at the time, the Chipolo CARD Spot seemed to promise everything that I wanted (and didn't get) from Apple's MagSafe Wallet with Find My. From my post in January:

When I got the MagSafe Leather Wallet with Find My, I was hoping for a solution that would A. Hold my credit cards and B. Help me find my wallet if I lost it. While it succeeds at A, it fails spectacularly at B. Chipolo has created a product that would actually help me find my wallet if it were lost or stolen.

Now, exactly three months later, my pre-ordered Chipolo CARD Spot has arrived and I've had about a day to test it out and see if it lives up to my high expectations.

Let's Spot Paul Allen's CARD

The Chipolo CARD Spot came nicely-packaged in a small cardboard box, complete with setup instructions and a prominently-displayed, bright-green registration card to facilitate Chipolo’s promise to recycle your CARD Spot and knock 50% off a replacement when the battery dies. The CARD is made of lightweight, matte-finish plastic and is 2.4mm thick — almost exactly the thickness of three credit cards. One corner of the CARD as an almost-imperceptible cutout along the narrow edge of the plastic, which I presume is to allow the small speaker inside access to the outside world.

Setup was mostly a breeze. Third-party Find My devices simply aren’t able to have as magical a setup process as AirTags or AirPods — I waved the CARD near my phone for 30 seconds before realizing I was missing a step. As it turns out, the CARD Spot has a tiny recessed button you need to press (triggering a brief jingle) to initiate pairing. After that, setup is as smooth as any other Find My device and your CARD spot is ready to locate using the Find My app.

Adding the Chipolo CARD Spot was almost as easy as adding an AirTag…though I probably should have read the instructions first!

And of course, the primary selling-point of the CARD Spot is it's full integration with Find My — including real-time tracking enabled by the Find My network, Left-Behind notifications, the same anti-stalking features as AirTags, and the ability to play a chime to help find your misplaced wallet. As I criticized at length, Apple's MagSafe Wallet "with Find My" (arguably a misnomer) doesn’t integrate with the Find My network at all — it just pesters you with notifications when it’s no longer suckered like a barnacle to the back of your phone. The CARD Spot, however, is essentially an AirTag in the shape of a credit card…which means you may actually find it if it’s ever lost or stolen. The Left Behind notifications for a wallet in particular are super useful, since most folks go almost nowhere without theirs. I deliberately left the CARD behind to test out the feature, and got the notification before I had made it out of my apartment's parking lot. Although Find My allows you to set specific locations to "ignore" for Left Behind notifications, I actually think I want Left Behind notifications for the CARD Spot on everywhere, since I never want to leave my wallet behind.

The Left Behind notifications are infinitely more useful than the "Wallet Detached" annoyances triggered by the MagSafe Wallet.

Oh My God, It Even Has a Watermark

It didn’t take much time with the Chipolo CARD Spot to know it hits all the marks that I wished the MagSafe Wallet with Find My would have — it’s a rare occurrence (hardware-wise) where Apple’s offering misses the mark so badly while a third-party entirely nails it. I realize I’ve spent much of this review comparing a credit card tracker dingus to a magnetic leather wallet — ostensibly two different products. That said, the entire reason I bought the MagSafe Wallet with Find My was for the “Find My” features in a compact form factor. The MagSafe Wallet may be a decent wallet, but it’s a terrible wallet tracker, and I’m happy to report that the Chipolo CARD Spot is anything but “terrible.” For the low price of $35 (just a bit more than an AirTag), I have peace of mind that if I ever forget or mislay my knock-off Ridge wallet clone, I can readily find it (and its contents) thanks to the Chipolo CARD Spot tucked inside.

The CARD Spot retails for $35, and still seems to be in "Pre-Order" status — orders placed today apparently will ship in April.

Reams of paper and terabytes worth of server space have been spent writing about how our phones are bad for us in one way or another. The immensely harmful effect that social media has on our mood, our beliefs, and our self-image; the many examples of apps designed to addict you or trick you to empty your wallet; and the countless hours spent scrolling aimlessly through a shallow sea of equally-shallow content. As unfortunate as it is, we’ve largely accepted these negative influences on our lives as table-stakes of the social internet and the smart phones we love and get in line to buy every year — yet we do painfully little to make room for positivity in our digital lives. That’s where Affirmations from developer Justin Hamilton comes in — an app entirely dedicated to building users up and sparking joy in a digital world so determined to wear us down.

A Self-Care Salve in Our Digital Desert

On the face of it, Affirmations is an incredibly simple app: it’s a large repository of encouraging, loving, and wholesome phrases displayed in a rotating home screen widget, as scheduled or random push notifications, or just sifted through manually in the app. But, naturally, the way that this simple concept is executed on makes all the difference in how well it jostles you out of a negative headspace. Affirmations’ aesthetic is rich with calming color tones in smooth gradients, and subtle haptic feedback throughout the app (especially when tapping through affirmations) helps to gently nudge you to pay attention to the message being shown. These small details were so clearly made with care, and are entirely vital for what the app aims to do for its users — every aspect of the app evokes the positivity and reassurance it wants to share, in both what the app says and how it looks and feels while saying it.

Affirmations is helping to make my home screen a more pleasant place to be.

I find the best way to use Affirmations is via its home screen widgets. Carving out some space on my home screen for a small widget that cycles through compliments and encouragements throughout my day is such a simple antidote to the other stressors found there — like my calendar, emails, and reminders. I’ve recently been reassessing the “balance” of my home screen — especially how much of that precious real estate I set aside for “goodness” — and Affirmations is a crucial component to shifting that balance away from “stress, work, notifications, tasks” and towards “happiness, calm, pause, breath, joy” whenever I unlock my phone. The widget serves as my ever-present reminder to center wholesome thoughts instead of negative ones, and to reassess my attitude when something has gotten me down — it seems like such a small thing, but it's really made a noticeable difference in my mood because of how quickly it redirects my mind from the negative to the positive.

Tailoring Affirmations to best fit your needs is dead-simple, as is setting up notifications to randomly brighten your day.

In addition to simply displaying words of encouragement, Affirmations also has an excellent offering of features to fine-tune when and how the app tries to lift your spirits. You can set custom notification times for an affirmation to be delivered via push notification, as well as enabling "Random Notifications" to add a bit more spontaneity to when you're affirmed. You can control how many random notifications you receive in a day, and can also set a "do not disturb" window — because not everyone wants random encouragement at 3AM. Affirmations also allows you to toggle off specific categories of its pre-loaded affirmations that may be less applicable (or affirming) to you in your specific situation. Justin is always adding new affirmations and new categories, even with time-specific affirmation categories like Pride Month affirmations and seasonal affirmations like "Pumpkin Spice Season is here!" (for those who observe it), all of which can be toggled off if you'd prefer. Users are also able to populate the app with their own affirmations (up to 200 characters), perhaps to add a personal goal or a specific call to action to the rotation of messages — allowing a more targeted tenderness that the developer could never have introduced on their own. The appearance of the widgets (and the app itself) is entirely customizable, with settings to modify the color scheme of the gradients, gradient opacity, font size, as well as the drop shadow — meaning Affirmations can fit into any home screen aesthetic. Oh, and of course, Justin has created a wonderful selection of custom app icons as well!

Making Affirmations your own is easy with the straightforward appearance customization and colorful app icon selection.

Also hidden within Affirmations' Settings is a built-in breathing exercise bubble akin to the Apple Watch's Breathe app, a truly delightful Fidget window full of haptic feedback on buttons, sliders, and dials familiar to any iOS user, and an extensive repository of mental health resources from organizations and governments from around the world.

The Fidget page of Affirmations is such an unnecessary but excellent addition to an app focused on mental health.

Ambient Mindfulness, No Credit Card Required

So many other apps in this category — I’m thinking “mindfulness” apps or other apps designed to motivate and encourage — have too much of a “work” component to them. Demands to set aside X minutes a day for a meditation, or apps designed to be pushy in their efforts to improve your life. Worse yet: so many of these apps are locked behind prohibitive pay-walls or scummy weekly subscription fees. Affirmations is entirely free, and is very much an ambient attitude adjustment app — an IV drip of delight, slowly but steadily shifting me toward more positive thoughts whenever I unlock my phone. This is in stark contrast to how our phones usually make us feel — unpleasant feelings like anger, sadness, fear, loneliness, or dread. Affirmations is the only app that I can unequivocally say has only ever made me feel good, charitable, and wholesome feelings. And with the volume of doom and gloom we've all be main-lining for, well, years at this point, we could certainly use more apps like Affirmations in our lives. You can download Affirmations on the App Store today for free, and try out the so-called “self-care sidekick” for yourself.

Everyone is always looking for a faster way to get something done — whether that be adding Siri Shortcuts to your workflow, third-party automation applications like Keyboard Maestro, or fancy macro pads with complex actions and keyboard shortcuts assigned to each key. Perhaps the most popular entrant in the world of customizable, quick-action macro pads is the Stream Deck from El Gato. As you might guess from its name, the Stream Deck is particularly ubiquitous among Twitch streamers for quickly switching between camera inputs or playing radio-show style soundboard clips; however, its 15 (or six or 32) LCD-backed buttons contain plentiful potential for everyday users as enablers of enhanced efficiency.

My Stream Deck lives just above my mouse for easy access to all of my configured actions.

Colorful Shortcuts, Dead-Simple Setup

On the most basic level, the Stream Deck is grid of buttons that can be configured to trigger actions using El Gato's accompanying software; pre-installed actions range from common Twitch streaming tasks (starting a recording, soundboard actions, changing video sources) to actions that talk with your system (multimedia controls, Open-a-File, or just a simple hotkey). For instance, I have my Stream Deck set up to always show me a few multimedia controls: a Play/Pause toggle, Volume Down, Volume Up, and Next Track. Since my keyboard doesn't have built-in multimedia keys, I've added them to my Stream Deck so I can still quickly control Spotify while I'm working. Setting up one of the buttons as any generic keyboard shortcut is super easy: Just drag the Hotkey action to one of the squares in the Stream Deck software, record your desired hotkey, and give it a name. Just like that, you have a dedicated button that can instantly invoke Alt+F4 (Or ⌘Q for you Mac folks) to close the current program. Have a more advanced process that uses two hotkeys to switch between two "modes"? Use the built-in Hotkey Toggle action to record two hotkeys — one for each mode — and the Stream Deck will switch between them each time you press the button, displaying a different icon/image depending on the state of that button.

Speaking of images: The Stream Deck software makes setting a custom image for each of your physical buttons (or one button's toggle states) as easy as, well, finding the right image! El Gato has created a dedicated web tool that allows you to quickly create Stream Deck icons with a wide assortment of available glyphs and colors. Make yourself an aesthetic palette of hotkeys, launcher buttons for frequently-used applications with their logos, or a page of friends' faces where each button starts a Skype or Zoom call. What might seem like a pretty basic feature is actually the most distinguishing aspect of the Stream Deck; customizable images add a crucial layer of information to your hotkeys, and the ability to dynamically change those images based on a toggle state (or even self-updating background processes) turns a simple array of buttons into an interactive information dashboard. For example, I have a key that toggles the system-wide Mute state of my microphone; when the mic is "hot" the background is green, and when the mic is muted the background switches to black and the microphone icon gets crossed out. Though an incredibly simple button, always having a visual cue when my mic is live is an invaluable quality-of-life improvement.

Each Stream Deck action is customizable to an extent, from its icon to its functionality — and Multi-Action setup is very similar to creating a Siri Shortcut.

You can also designate individual keys on your Stream Deck as Folders or Multi-Actions — the former to help organize actions into separate "pages" on your Stream Deck, and the latter to chain multiple separate actions together behind the click of a single button. Both of these features can be super useful if they fit with your mental model for hotkey organization, or if you want single-click triggers for many individual tasks; that said, I don't personally use either in my Stream Deck setup — I much prefer taking advantage of a more automatic organization strategy.

Contextual Quick-Actions

The real magic of the Stream Deck is a bit buried in its settings pane in the form of Profiles. Profiles are basically saved Stream Deck configurations that you can switch between depending on your context. For instance, when you are transitioning from a day of work into a night of Twitch streaming, just swap to your “Streaming” profile and all of the buttons on your Stream Deck will change configurations. But, here’s the real gem: Each profile can be “matched” to a specific application on your computer, and will be automatically switched to when that application is in focus. What this means in practice is that you can configure app-specific Stream Deck configurations that surface your most-used shortcuts in different individual applications right when you need them.

Creating Profiles for your most-used applications allows your Stream Deck to intelligently present actions as you bounce between projects.

I have separate profiles configured for Outlook, Discord, iA Writer, Apex Legends, and Chrome, all presenting a number of useful quick actions I might need when using those application. My strategy is to duplicate the bottom row of Stream Deck keys across all of my profiles for actions I want accessible no matter what I am doing (like my Multimedia controls), and the top row of my Stream Deck is constantly changing depending on what app I am working in. In Outlook, I can quickly Archive messages or open a specific recurring calendar event I revisit often; in iA Writer I have a few esoteric text snippets (α, β, ⌘, and ) mapped to Stream Deck keys so I can stop copy/pasting them off of Google, and in Apex Legends I have a button that saves the last 10 minutes of game play to folder for particularly good clips I might want to share. Every time I change my computing context, my Stream Deck quickly flashes a set of readily-retrievable actions that will always be relevant to that specific context.

App-specific Profiles on the Stream Deck allow you to create contextual dashboards that automatically appear right when they are needed.

I consider Profiles to be one of the best ways to use the Stream Deck because they allow you to pre-define what actions you find useful in a given application, and those actions will be automatically surfaced — complete with helpful visual icons and text. Many people swear by memorizing complex, claw-handed keyboard shortcuts to streamline tasks in various contexts, but I've never been able to fully wrap my head around any but the most basic of keyboard shortcuts (like copy & paste). The Stream Deck allows me to find out what shortcuts I am missing out on in a specific program and deliberately create a hotkey to activate that shortcut...without having to memorize each and every modifier key incantation. And when my workflow changes or if I discover a new useful shortcut, incorporating it into my everyday use is as easy as mapping it to an available key for that specific app's Stream Deck Profile. No memorization, no complex finger stretching — just the click of a clearly-labeled LCD button to trigger a simple (or complex) action with no fuss.

Plugins, Integrations, and Endless Possibilities

So far things are fairly straightforward: You can make a button do a thing, toggle between two things, or do many things, and you can have the buttons appear when specific applications are open. Easy enough, right? Well...it is if you stick to the pre-installed plugins that El Gato provides — but if you start to explore the library of third-party plugins in the built-in “store”, things can quickly get out of hand (in the best possible way). The complexity of these third-party plugins ranges from an unassuming stock ticker tracker that updates every minute with the new share price, to plugins written specifically to control certain smart home accessories via the Stream Deck, all the way to plugins like API Ninja that allow you to send HTTP requests to arbitrary web APIs even with complex JSON or XML payloads — you can even point the request to a local file as the source of the payload, and authenticate if need be. If you have the patience, you can create a handful of Stream Deck keys to fully control a service like Toggl using its web API in conjunction with API Ninja — the plugin even allows you to change the appearance of the Stream Deck key based on the API’s response to your request.

If the available third-party plugins don’t cover your needs, another option for more powerful Stream Deck integrations is the “Domino Strategy”: triggering a second piece of automation software with the push of a Stream Deck button. Keyboard Maestro is a good example; it natively supports individual Stream Deck keys as triggers for any of its actions, and it has many actions capable of automating a wide array of tasks on the Mac. Another (extremely advanced) option is Companion from BitFocus — a locally-hosted server that can translate your Stream Deck button-presses into complex interactions with a wide range of hardware and software platforms, other local server-based systems like Home Assistant, as well as generic HTTP requests, all while fostering an open-source development community for tackling other wacky and unique use cases.

Ultimately, a single Stream Deck button's potential is functionally limitless. Even if the most advanced plugins and integrations listed above somehow remain insufficient, you can always write your own plugin using the Stream Deck SDK or simply point a Stream Deck button at an executable Python script on your local machine that could do just about anything you want it to.

Bonus Round: Pro Tips

1. Stabilize your Stream Deck: Order a sheet of adhesive micro-suction padding, and affix some small squares to the bottom of your Stream Deck. I've found that pushing the buttons can scooch the device further and further back on my desk even with its existing rubber feet. Now, with just a bit of micro-suction padding, my Stream Deck isn't going anywhere.
2. Find an Icon Pack: Re-purpose any number of icon packs for iPhone home screens or artist sticker packs from Etsy as your Stream Deck key images. All of my Stream Deck images are from the Macstories Shortcuts Icon Pack, a set designed for Siri Shortcut Home Screen icons — making them a perfect fit for the similar-in-shape-and-purpose Stream Deck keys!
3. Go Mobile: The El Gato Stream Deck iOS app has feature-parity with the hardware Stream Deck — in other words, you can control any and all Stream Deck actions wirelessly from your iPhone. The drawback is the $2.99/month subscription cost of the app, but is a good entry-point for folks unwilling to shell out the $150 for an actual Stream Deck (Personally: the satisfying click-clack of a physical button is what justifies the high price). And, as a bonus: It supports Siri Shortcuts, allowing you to trigger any individual Stream Deck key by summoning the voice assistant with a supported device!

The Stream Deck iOS app can act as a remote control for your desktop Stream Deck, and even supports Siri Shortcuts.

First-Order Action Retrievability

It may seem strange to plug in an array of programmable buttons to a desktop PC with the inherent ability to trigger any action in software, especially considering many of the same actions can be triggered by the keyboard I am typing on now. However, I think the allure of the Stream Deck is the combination of its aesthetic polish (pretty and pleasant buttons are more-often-used buttons) and its removal of friction between the user and an abstract action or series of actions. The Stream Deck takes otherwise-intangible keyboard shortcuts and quick actions and displays them in my face as tempting tactile triggers; always there, eager to be clicked. The Stream Deck is an embodiment of the "first-order retrievability" philosophy — the thing that I want to do or the tool I need should be no more than one step, one click, or one tap away. Whether it saves me a a minute, a second, or no real time at all to use a Stream Deck button over some alternative, it saves me the mental energy of going past that first degree of action abstraction — and that mental energy saved is incalculable in value.

In a time when so many are working from home, finding ways to stay focused on your work in an environment full of distractions is especially critical. I’ve found that my best work is so often facilitated by the active noise-cancellation of my AirPods Pro and the calming sounds of a crackling campfire provided by Dark Noise — the delightful ambient noise app from developer Charlie Chapman. I’ve written about my love of Dark Noise before, and today marks the release of Dark Noise 2 — the biggest update to the app since it launched in August of last year.

Ambient Noise Mixology

Dark Noise 2 brings with it the hotly-requested feature of mixing multiple sounds together to form unique soundscapes that suit the user’s fancy. Is Heavy Rain insufficient precipitative percussion for your nighttime white noise needs? Create a custom mix to play Heavy Rain, Drippy Rain, Rain, Thunderstorm, and Distant Thunder all at once to really flood your senses. Or if, like me, you want to create an immersive beach experience in this summer-sans-travel, combine Beach, Seagulls, and Wind Chimes to evoke an island feel.

When making a custom mix, you can adjust the volume of each individual noise separately to tune things just right.

The volume of each sound you add to the mix can be individually adjusted to quickly put one sound in the “foreground” and another in the “background” of your custom mix. Custom mixes can also be given a custom icon — choose from any of the existing animated noise icons in any color, or upload an image of your own.

The simplicity with which Charlie has implemented this ostensibly complex sound mixing interface is evidence of the great care taken to make Dark Noise the most elegant and intuitive white noise app on the market.

New Sounds, iPadOS Pointer Support, and More

Dark Noise 2 adds eight new sounds to the long list of options already included with the app — Rain on Tent, Wind Chimes, Windy Trees, Seagulls, Lake, Ship Deck, Flag, and Lullaby — bringing the total to 50 sounds in various genres. My personal favorite remains Campfire (for whatever reason, crackling logs really do it for me), but Windy Trees and Lake are both sneaking into my rotation.

Dark Noise 2 adds eight new, relaxing sounds (and custom animations) to the already-extensive list.

Additional improvements to Siri Shortcuts, including the ability to set arbitrary sleep timers directly within a shortcut action, continue to enhance the experience of users who want to integrate Dark Noise into their bedtime routines and productivity workflows. Add the cherry on top of two new custom app icons: a skeuomorphic icon in the style of MacOS Big Sur, and the quintessential “Launched” icon in the design of Charlie’s podcast of the same name. Oh, and full pointer support on iPadOS for those oddballs with the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro — because why not.

Excellent Sounds, and Sound Priorities

Whether for a calming prelude to a restful night’s sleep, relaxing ambiance during moments of mindfulness, or augmented focus during periods of productivity, Dark Noise is the ideal white noise app for iOS users who sweat the details. It’s opinionated design choices, extensive system integrations, whimsical animations, and immersive sounds all come together to form a polished experience that doesn’t just sound good, but looks good and feels good too. I praised Dark Noise extensively when it was first released, and this latest update doubles down on the app’s reputation for a fluid user experience. Dark Noise is available for $5.99 on the app store.

I am neither a knitter nor a crocheter. I would quite easily confuse knitting needles for chopsticks, and a crochet hook for a dental pick. However, I do consider myself a maker — I spend an inordinate amount of my free time in my garage/wood shop working with my hands to turn an idea into a physical good. Although my crafting medium is wood, makers of all stripes are quick to appreciate the tools of other disciplines — and YarnBuddy from developer Becky Hansmeyer deftly demonstrates how digital tools can be as invaluable to hobbyists as the physical tools of their trade.

A Tailor-Made Task Manager

YarnBuddy is what happens when you take a general-purpose task manager like Todoist or Things and tailor it to an extremely specific use-case — specialization that pays dividends for those so-specialized. At its core, YarnBuddy allows you to create a list of knitting and crocheting projects with custom fields geared specifically towards aspects of needlework like “Yarn Selection” or “Needle Size”. The ability to tag a given project with categories or project types allows even the most prolific knitters to quickly organize their many works-in-progress using YarnBuddy. In addition, the ability to upload an instruction sheet for a given project complete with a movable line highlighter is super convenient for both keeping your place and accessible use for those who have more difficulty reading small text.

The project view’s instruction sheet highlighter is one of my favorite features of YarnBuddy.

Custom project due dates, an image uploader for either examples or the finished product itself, and a notes field for helpful hints or useful links all make for an extensive project management system entirely centered around knitting and crocheting.

Built-In Tools of the Trade

Beyond the feature-rich project tracking components of YarnBuddy, a number of useful tools and quality-of-life conveniences are stitched right into the app. Customizable counters — for specific projects or one-off use — allow the user to keep track of rows as they knit a given design. These counters can be configured to automatically repeat a given increment — for instance, if there are a given number stitches in a row — and automatically display notes on a preset interval to help remind you of the pattern at the beginning of each row.

Project counters, quick counters, and advanced counter settings are super handy for tracking rows and loops as you go.

YarnBuddy also includes features that allow users to keep track of their yarn inventory, and utilities for deciding on a yarn to use on a given project. The “Yarn Stash” serves as a repository of what yarn you have on hand, and can quickly import the specifications of that yarn into any project in YarnBuddy. The Yarn Substitution tool allows you to quickly determine what amount of a substitute yarn you need to adequately replace another yarn of perhaps different length/skein or weight/skein. As a woodworker, I am constantly checking my hardwood and scrap wood stash to figure out what exactly I have available to use on a given project — I imagine the Yarn Stash will be the favorite feature for many YarnBuddy users who also want to keep track of what raw materials they have on-hand. Adding a built-in unit conversion tool is the cherry on top of the long list of utilities that make YarnBuddy an invaluable resource for needleworkers of every description.

Creating your own repository of yarn and quickly converting units is painless in YarnBuddy.

Utility, Embroidered With Whimsy

Beyond being an incredibly feature-dense app in terms of project management, YarnBuddy still manages to have an inviting aesthetic, with the developer’s design flourishes shining through brightly. The Quick Tips page serves as both a delightful iMessage conversation between balls of yarn and as a friendly introduction to the basics of using YarnBuddy — frankly, I would suggest this page be shown to every first-time user of the app!

Delightful custom icons and a whimsical helpful hints page are both pleasant additions to this art-centered app.

Custom app icons are becoming table-stakes in the iOS development community, and YarnBuddy’s numerous app icons so clearly evoke the personality of the app itself — a smiling yarn ball symbolizing the many knitters and crocheters who find their joy in a box of yarn.

Closing the Loop

Beyond my jealousy towards a project management app specifically made for a given hobby, nothing beats the experience of using an app made by someone who actually uses it, and has lovingly injected so much of their passion into the app’s design. It’s this sewn-in consideration and care that explains how this app still connects with me, despite my lack of knitting knowledge — it subtly evokes the feeling of joy that crafting inspires in so many. From planning of a project, to carefully selecting the appropriate materials, to documenting the finished product in your Project Archive, YarnBuddy manages to capture both the important details and the powerful emotions that knitters and crocheters undoubtedly feel when working with their hands.

YarnBuddy for iPhone and iPad is available for free in the App Store, and unlimited projects, tags, project reminders, and custom icons can be unlocked with YarnBuddy Pro for $14.99/year or $49.99 as a one-time purchase.

Since the release of Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12, and even more-so since iOS 13 opened up Shortcuts parameters to third-party developers, “Shortcuts utility apps” — apps who by their nature rely entirely on Shortcuts integration to function — have exploded in both number and quality. Apps like Toolbox Pro and Pushcuts all build on what Shortcuts has to offer with otherwise-unavailable features or useful add-ons to the functionality of the Shortcuts app. Joining their ranks today is the super-handy data visualization app Charty, from developer Rodrigo Araujo

Charting, of Course

Charty is built entirely around the goal of plotting data generated via Siri Shortcuts so you can more easily visualize your habits, health data, and other graphically-oriented information. Through a pair of crucial Shortcuts actions — Create Chart and Add Series to Chart — you can create a blank canvas to plot data generated by a series of Shortcuts action as a line graph, scatter graph, bar graph, pie chart, or donut chart. The easiest example to provide is a simple Shortcut that pulls in your heart rate data for the last month and plots it on a scatter plot.

Disregard all of those days where I neglected to wear my Apple Watch.

After plotting all of the points, you can fine-tune the settings of your chart in the Charty app itself (or automate this process too with advanced actions like Style Axis and Style Line Series). Custom minimum and maximum values for both the X- and Y-axes, the option to add a secondary Y-axis for multi-series graphs, customizable X-Axis labels when needed, as well as the ability to create stacked bar charts are all available through Charty and the power of Shortcuts. Charty also allows you to plot data imported directly from a .csv file — expanding its capabilities beyond data strictly generated by or connected to Shortcuts. Simply point your Shortcut at a .csv file and tell Charty which column headers you want plotted and you’re off to the races. I’m looking forward to see how Rodrigo continues to expand Charty’s functionality — as a researcher, I’m hoping to see boxplots, trendlines with regression equations, logarithmic corrections, and other more advanced plotting methods added in future releases.

There are lots of Shortcuts actions and routines that generate data and could easily benefit from a simple bar graph or pie chart to provide useful insights more quickly and effectively. One example that comes to mind is graphing time-tracking data from Toggl once every week, let’s say, to see what tasks or projects you’ve been the most busy with — all without having to open the unpleasant Toggl app or the clunky web client from your iOS device. Charty is the perfect companion for those who accumulate lots of meta-data about their lives and want to frequently revisit and reassess the areas they are seeking to improve — whether that be calories burned, books read, or tasks completed, Charty plugs right into your existing Shortcuts routines and allows you to quickly turn those datasets into easily-digestible graphics. The option to create default chart format settings and custom “Export Profiles” of chart size, font size, and background color both help to add consistency in how your charts are formatted before saving them for yourself or sharing with the world.

The ability to create custom export profiles is a great way to standardize how your charts look when ready to share.

Charty also comes pre-equipped with a library of Shortcuts that serve as idea-fodder for what things you can graph as well as mini-tutorials on how to create complex Shortcuts that integrates even Charty’s most advanced actions. And, naturally, two dozen or so custom app icons and a wide variety of chart themes are pre-installed for the colorfully-oriented among us.

Charty’s custom icons, graph theme options, and extensive collection of example Shortcuts each add a nice touch.

Useful, Given a Usecase

The only major complaint I’ve had while beta-testing Charty is the sense that it just isn’t an app that I personally have a use for. This doesn’t make Charty a bad app — quite the opposite is true, in fact. Charty is an excellent app in its very niche sliver of the market. The nature of what I do as a PhD student might make you think that I am making charts and graphs all the time, but in reality the data analysis work I often need to do is well beyond what Charty (or any other iOS app I know of) can provide. Unfortunately, this is an area where I still rely heavily on my Windows PC to accomplish the things that my iPad can’t. In addition, once you are comfortable with different tools — whether it’s Shortcuts, Excel, Numbers, etc — you’ll feel drawn to the ones that give you the highest return for the least effort. I am extremely comfortable with spreadsheet software like Excel, so there were many instances while using Charty where I said to myself “I know exactly how to do this in Excel in 1/10th the time.” This isn’t a criticism of Charty; it’s understanding my own needs, my own proficiencies, and Charty’s unique place in the market of graphing tools. Let me explain what I mean with, well, a chart:

Finding where you land on each of these lines will give you an idea of how useful Charty might be for you.

Charty is an app that is tailor-made for advanced Shortcuts users who very frequently want to graph the same set of data quickly with minimal fuss over the details — things like graphing how many steps you’ve taken or glasses of water you drank in the last week. Charty is also capable of graphing much more advanced datasets with its .csv import actions...but often times when generating those .csv documents you’re already in an application far more capable than Shortcuts and Charty when it comes to handling tables and graphs. If you’re like me and are very comfortable in applications like Numbers and Excel, Charty might feel like a lot of extra fiddling for the same end results.

Pushing The Limits That Should Not Exist

Ultimately, I think there are a lot of people who will be extremely happy to have Charty integrated into their Shortcuts routines and available to quickly and repeatedly graph data on their iOS devices — and I’m quite happy for them. The developer has made a very well-designed app and an excellent addition to the growing array of Shortcuts utilities pushing the limits of what Shortcuts can do. Although I myself may not be someone who will use Charty every day, I’m always happy to see new apps that keep the pressure on Apple to continue expanding Shortcuts’ functionality and third-party integrations. Despite my own lack of uses for Charty, I still highly recommend giving it a try for yourself — it solves a set of problems I do not have, but you just might! Charty is available on the app store today for free with a portion of the Shortcuts actions and features, and the full app experience can be had for a one-time payment of $2.99 for a limited time.

There is no shortage of diet and nutrition apps on the app store — apps designed for specific and rigorous dieting systems, services that harvest all of your dietary data to sell to third parties, and calorie-counting cudgels that all too often brow-beat their users over the smallest deviations from Ideal Intake™. Moderation — developed by Dominic Williams — is a food diary app that removes all of the least-pleasant aspects of diet tracking apps and focuses in on one simple question: Was your meal healthy or not?

Logging meals is as easy as tapping “Healthy” or “Unhealthy” — whatever that means for your goals.

Removing the Friction from Meal Tracking

Moderation's best feature is its simplicity — no need to scan barcodes or record calorie counts after every meal; all you do is click "Healthy" or "Unhealthy" in four daily categories (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snacks). What you consider to be a "Healthy" meal vs an "Unhealthy" meal is completely up to you and your diet tracking goals. For example, I have been trying to reduce the amount of sugar I add to my coffee every morning, so lately I have been rating my Breakfasts as "Healthy" or "Unhealthy" based on that metric. Folks who are trying intermittent fasting might rate a meal as "Healthy" if they ate nothing, and folks trying a plant-based diet might rate a meal as "Unhealthy" if they sneak in a little bacon. That's the beauty of Moderation: you can self-evaluate your daily meals based on what changes you are trying to make in your eating habits, or what dietary system you are trying to follow. This relieves much of the pressure that other diet and nutrition apps put on their users to meet a certain target, or stack up against some arbitrary standard — the same pressure and sense of judgement that so often causes people to give up on making healthier diet choices.

Useful features like rich notifications and Siri Shortcuts support make logging your meals as low-effort as possible.

Moderation also makes it easy to log your meals with custom-set reminders, rich notifications to quickly record a meal, and Siri Shortcuts support that allows you to integrate meal tracking into any of your custom Shortcuts routines. I often find myself struggling to consistently use habit-tracking apps because, well, I don't get into the habit of tracking my habits. Moderation's built-in reminder system has made it easy for me to quickly log a meal right from the notification, and Siri Shortcuts support has helped me make sure I log my healthy (or unhealthy) eating habits every day.

Design Aligned with Purpose

Moderation's simple and straightfoward premise is packaged with an appealing, elegant design as well as intuitive, clear feedback mechanisms. Each day in a month-view calendar is given a gradient from green to red based on what proportion of that day's meals were rated as "Healthy" or "Unhealthy". Streaks of all-healthy days are celebrated in the month-view, and used as a goal to beat in the "Keep Motivated" section (notably, "Unhealthy" streaks are not as prominently displayed, in keeping with the apps positive and encouraging style). Even the button design for each meal reaffirms the relaxed nature of Moderation, with clever use of Emoji to visually represent both "Healthy" (🥑,🥗,🍲,🍏) and "Unhealthy" (🙈,🍕,🍔,🍩) meals.

My worst eating day tends to be Friday, because Friday night is D&D night — AKA fast food and candy night!

Basic metrics are maintained on-device to give you insight on what days of the week you often struggle to eat healthy, and which meals usually trip you up on any given day. A running percentage of healthy meals provides a quick glimpse of your eating habits over the last seven days and the current month. Importantly, Moderation has a user-first privacy stance; all of the data you log in Moderation is kept on-device, and there are no ads or other data-harvesting components in the app — making it a great choice for the privacy-conscious.

"Moderation in All Things"

I've been using Moderation for about a month to track my own diet, and I've never had more success with habit tracking in any other app. However, there are some features (some apparently on the horizon) that I wish Moderation would add to really flesh out the experience. Repeating reminders (like those offered by Due) would make it even harder to forget to log a meal. Additional data visualization options, custom goal setting, and the ability to export your data would all be welcome additions to an already excellent app.

There are many good diet tracking apps out there — Moderation is a great diet tracking app because of the uniquely positive, balanced, and affirming way in which it is designed. Scanning food barcodes is laborious, counting calories often brings feelings of shame and failure, and strict definitions of "Healthy" and "Unhealthy" often don't fit with a person's unique goals. Moderation avoids all these pitfalls while still delivering useful metrics for self-evaluation and motivational encouragement to continue improving your diet. Tracking your eating habits has never been so easy, or more importantly: so painless. Moderation is available for free on the app store.

As ambient noise machines find their way into more corporate offices, retail spaces, and infant nurseries, ambient noise apps have also grown in popularity. Joining that list today is Dark Noise for iOS — an excellent ambient noise app developed by Charlie Chapman.

Why All The Noise?

Ambient noise machines and apps like Dark Noise have numerous uses and benefits. Some people find that they or their infants sleep better when playing ambient noise. Others, myself included, find that ambient noise helps them to focus on the task at hand, or remain productive in a noisy environment (for the nerdy: here is one of the many studies highlighting the cognitive benefits of ambient noise).

Dark Noise caters to these needs with a comprehensive list of over 30 sounds to choose from, and a simple UI that lets you pick a sound and get back to what you were doing — be it sleep or work. While beta testing Dark Noise, I have experienced first-hand the productivity benefits of ambient noise; Dark Noise has quickly become one of my most-used apps.

Integrations and Customizations

Although at its core Dark Noise is just a list of looping soundbites, it supports many useful features and integrations that satisfy the needs of power users as well. As you might expect, Dark Noise has an optional sleep timer with both countdown and fixed-time support, a Favorites feature to keep your most-used sounds easily accessible at the top of the list, and AirPlay support (with full AirPlay 2 support on the way).

Beyond the basics, Dark Noise also has a customizable widget that allows you to quickly start any noise from the Widget page (or perhaps the iPadOS home screen). In addition, each sound in Dark Noise has its own action in Siri Shortcuts, allowing you to integrate Dark Noise into any number of your Shortcuts routines. I myself have used the Shortcuts actions to incorporate Dark Noise into my simple Bedtime shortcut, kicking off ambient Campfire noises before I head to sleep.

Sleep timers, Siri Shortcuts support, and a customizable Widget each add a useful way to interact with Dark Noise.

Not Just Nice on the Ears

A good ambient noise app has a quality selection of sounds to choose from — a great ambient noise app has a beautiful design to match. This is where Dark Noise distinguishes itself from many other apps in the category — the developer has invested so much time and care into the artful details of this app that you can't help but appreciate them. Dark Noise has eight custom Themes and 22 custom app icons (many of which are creative takes on some of my favorite podcasts' artwork), and the developer doesn't seem eager to stop adding new ones any time soon.

All eight of Dark Noise’s custom themes, with no signs from the developer that the list will stop growing.

However, it's the little things that I've appreciated most about Dark Noise's design. For example, when favoriting a sound the Favorite heart is filled with a subtle but whimsical animation. Each sound has a unique minimalist icon designed by Charlie himself — but by far my favorite details are the animations on the Now Playing screen. Each of the custom-designed icons also have custom animations that move almost rhythmically as the sound plays in your ears. I only wish iOS supported animated lock screen thumbnails so I wouldn't have to leave my phone unlocked to enjoy them.

Each sound icon has its own custom animation that pleasantly loops on the Now Playing screen.

Wishlist and Outro

I can't overstate how much I've enjoyed adding Dark Noise to my workflow (and sleepflow!), and I'm looking forward to some of my wishlist items making it into future releases. For example, an upload feature for adding my own sound files to the app would be a welcome addition. Folders and/or collapsible sound categories would also be a nice touch to clean up the main table view, especially as the list of out-of-the-box sounds naturally grows with each update. Perhaps my most wished-for feature are some spooky dungeon sounds to use as ambiance during D&D sessions — the moment I gave Dark Noise a try I knew it would be a killer addition to my Dungeon Master toolkit.

Dark Noise is a simple and elegant ambient noise app that strikes just the right balance between beauty and function. The developer has also done an excellent job at communicating with his beta testers and incorporating that feedback into the app — foreshadowing similar responsiveness as the app is pushed out to a public audience, which I find incredibly valuable. Dark Noise has been an incredible addition to my home screen, and has single-handedly refocused my attention on many pressing projects over the last few weeks — perhaps it could have the same effect on your productivity. Dark Noise is available today for $3.99 on the app store.

Like most students, on any given day I have a long list of to-do items related to my coursework, research goals, and life in general. In the past, I have used the stock Reminders app on iOS for my many to-do items — but the problem I ran into was that I didn't actually complete the tasks after the reminder popped up. I found that I often read the notification and quickly went back to whatever activity I was doing at the time, completely disregarding the thing that I needed to do. That is, until I found Due.

Due's Distinguishing Feature

Due is a reminder app with a unique feature that sets it apart from its competition: persistent reminders. When you set up a reminder in Due, not only do you set the time you want to be reminded, but you also set up an Auto-Snooze time — the time interval you will be re-reminded of the task. In other words, Due reminders pester you until you acknowledge them in some way, either by actually marking the task as complete or snoozing it to a later time. This feature has significantly reduced the number of reminders I get a notification for but then immediately forget about on my lock screen.

Due’s key feature is that reminder notifications repeat until you snooze or complete them.

The nature of Due's pestering notifications means that I tend to use it for time-sensitive reminders or reminders for things I really don't want to do, and less for general tasks and events (which tend to wind up in Fantastical, my calendar app of choice). For example, I often use Due to remind me when an assignment for a class needs to be submitted online so I don't accidentally space it off — this has saved my bacon on more than one occasion! Full support for repeating reminders in Due also means that daily, weekly, or monthly reminders like taking my morning allergy pill or paying our rent don't slip through the cracks.

The Fine Details

Beyond its full support for typical functions like repeating reminders, Due also offers a wide variety of customizations and other useful features to its users. For example, Due uses natural language processing when creating reminders rather than relying entirely on date and time scroll wheels like many other apps. I have found that adding reminders with natural language processing is far faster and intuitive than scrolling through three different wheels to set a reminder for a specific time.

Due’s natural language parsing allows for quickly creating a reminder via text alone

The Notification Snooze menu seen when tapping a Due notification can be customized to your heart's content, allowing you to set up multiple custom snooze durations as well as set times of day that the current reminder can be postponed to if needed. The Auto-Snooze duration (i.e. how long until each reminder pesters you again) can also be set for all newly created reminders, or manually adjusted for each reminder as you create them.

Due’s settings menu allows easy customization, while it’s notification snooze options allow for quickly triaging new reminders.

Due natively supports syncing its reminders via iCloud, and can also pull its list of reminders from specific lists within the native Reminders app. Lastly, custom sound effects, haptic feedback controls, and a Dark Mode toggle are excellent user experience options baked right into the app.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Due is an excellent iOS reminder app that can be finely tailored to your preferences, and uniquely solves the problem of ineffective reminder notifications. Since I started using Due, I've missed fewer deadlines, more consistently journaled at night, and less-often kicked myself for forgetting my allergy medicine in the morning. Due is the perfect reminder app for procrastinators and "space cadets" like myself who need a little extra prodding to actually do the things on our to-do list — I certainly would be far less productive without it. Due is $4.99 on the App Store.