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With the release of iOS 17.2, Apple joins the journaling space with their own app, Journal. It does a lot of things well, including making it easy to reflect on significant events that have happened recently, and the ability to add entries in a variety of ways. It also offers a Journaling Suggestions API, that other apps can use to enhance their own journaling experiences.In this video, Mike walks through the basic types of info and media that you can use for journal entries, and explains how to send things to the Journal app using the Share Sheet. He also shows you how the Journaling Suggestions API works in the popular app Day One.

Creativity can be the most enjoyable aspect of a physical planner. This can be restricted with other apps that focus on the more logical elements of a journal such as calendar events, reminders and notes. Zinnia brings these two worlds together, giving users an infinite amount of creativity in a journal that serves an organisational purpose.

In this short video, Darcy shares his findings as he takes you on a tour of Zinnia on iPad to show you how it approaches planning and journaling, complete with decorative elements to make your journal personal.

Focus Modes have been a part of our Apple devices since 2021, yet find a little resistance among the more casual user. They can look a little complex to set up and as a result many people simply don't use them. In this video, Lee explains what Focus Modes are and how to set them up on both iOS and the Mac. You learn how to configure notifications for both people and applications, set up automatic schedules as well as Focus filters. Lee also offers some inspiration by sharing a few of his custom Focus Modes, that you use as a starting point for your own.

The Photos app on iPad can easily be overlooked. Many people think of their phone for easily viewing their camera roll, and turn to the Mac when editing the sharing their images. Photos on iPad offers a nice middle ground on the larger display this mobile device offers. In this episode, Darcy takes you on a full tour of the app and showcases its many features, including For You, Photos' full editing capabilities and organization features, and much more.

We can sometimes feel overwhelmed by the shopping experience. There’s always a sale, another thing we feel we must have. bless helps to put a step between you and your purchases, asking questions and giving you time to consider making a purchase before doing so.

In this video, Darcy takes you through the flow of adding products in bless, revisiting them later, tracking your purchases and learning more about the psychology of sales.

Pages, Apple’s long standing word processor is more robust than you might realise. Starting with file management and templates, Darcy walks you through two word processing scenarios. Modifying placeholders in existing templates and creating your own for continued use. You discover how to make your projects come to life using multimedia, reader mode for examining projects, and how to collaborate with each other.

As this dot release of iOS comes with some great new features, we thought we’d dedicate a tip video to it to get you up to speed as soon as possible! With the 17.2 release the long-awaited Journal application makes its debut on iPhone, allowing users to record activities, thoughts and feelings in a secure, portable manner.

Lee does an "unboxing" of the app before your eyes, and he also touches on other nice 17.2 features: updates to the Action Button, recording Spatial Video (iPhone 15 Pro only), Messages, and a favourites playlist in Music.

We've been spoiled with the quality of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) applications recently. One such app that has been around for a while is NotePlan.

NotePlan has some great features found in similar products, such as backlinking, Daily Notes and utilising Markdown syntax to create your notes. It does, however, bring some new ideas to the table, such as integrating with your calendar to allow you to timeblock directly from the interface, using ChatGPT to answer queries in-line and also introduces the concept of weekly, monthly, even annual notes to keep you on track with your goals. Join Lee for a thorough look at this modern PKM solution.

Lee is back with more hints and tips on using Siri on your Apple devices, this time focusing on everyday, quick and easy ways to use Siri for a variety of tasks. He is pretty certain that you'll learn a new tip or two in this video!

Siri has been around for a long time yet not many people try to leverage it due to inconsistent results. In preparing for this video however, Lee found that Siri can do a lot for you.

In this first of a two-part tip series focusing on Siri, you learn how to assign nicknames to your family, schedule appointments and reminders, open apps, get to key settings on iPhone, and more.

A partner to Timepage, the app Darcy covered in last week's tip, Actions by Moleskine takes the same simplified approach and applies it to tasks. Join Darcy as he showcases creating and editing actions, saving them for later with lists or scheduling them within your calendar. Actions integrates directly with Timepage, giving you direct access to your events and actions.

In the first of two tip shows on apps designed by Moleskine Studio, Darcy walks you through Timepage, their calendar app. It brings a simplified approach to creating calendar events and their clever UI helps untangle multiple calendars into single views quickly and easily. With a wealth of alert and scheduling features, Timepage may very well take the place of your current calendar management application.

With the rise of Neo banks, users have become acutely aware of how a well-designed app can change their financial organisation and knowledge. But for those who don’t have access to modern-day banking features, MoneyCoach provides a convenient way to track your Apple Pay expenses, recurring payments, as well as income. Join Darcy as he guides you through the app, both on iPad and iPhone, and show you how to set up a budget and use widgets to facilitate entering transactions.

Using Tailscale, you can connect any device securely and easily by creating your own private virtual network. Unlike traditional VPN services, Tailscale is designed to allow you to seamlessly connect your own devices and freely exchange data and remotely access. Using the free plan you can have up to three users and 100 devices connected. In this tip video, Don shows you how to set up your Tailscale account on a Mac and iPhone and share images and files. He also demonstrates sharing remote access to one of your devices.

MacFamilyTree from Synium Software is a robust, feature-rich Mac app for building out extensive family trees. Darcy takes you through creating individual people and all the different types of information that can be recorded such as live events, physical details and stories.

Using the built-in demo family tree, you see how you can build one using multiple people and generations, all with their own details. MacFamilyTree has multiple ways of viewing your tree that can be exported with different tree types, reports, lists and even publishing your work as a complete book. It is a comprehensive apps filled with useful features that Darcy invites you to discover with him.

As is traditional this time of year, Apple have released iOS 17 with so many features we couldn’t fit it all into one screencast. Follow along with Darcy as he demos new features for users of dual SIM, such as filtering messages and customising ringtones based on your number. Protect your eyes using Screen Distance, and explore new ways to sign in with your Apple ID using Passkey.

With the free Google Forms, you can create surveys, polls or organize events that you can customize, including adding photos and choosing a theme. In this episode Allison walks you through the settings for Google Forms, and then shows you how the answer format you choose affects how people interact with your form. Multiple-choice vs. checkboxes, and grids vs. linear scales can provide a different type of answer and give you the right results. Join Allison and start creating forms easily.

The Apple TV has had a huge update with the arrival of tvOS 17. In this tutorial, Don takes you through some of the major improvements and new features of Apple's set-top box. Most notably, FaceTime and Continuity Camera comes to the Apple TV, allowing you to hand off and initiate FaceTime calls from your big screen. You also get familiar with Fitness+ improvements in managing your workouts.

When watching movies or TV Programmes, if you are like Lee, you will often find yourselves asking questions about the actors.

"What have I seen them in before?''

"I wonder what else they have coming up?"

Or perhaps you want to know how many series of a particular show there are, or when it was released? iMDB is a common go-to location to get this info, however the interface can be clunky and us full of adverts, or information you don't need. Casey Liss has released Callsheet, a great application that deals with this issue. In this video, you learn how to search for shows, films and actors as well as look at features like Where To Watch, that shows you on which networks or streaming platforms it can be viewed.

In show 1285, Lee took the plunge and covered Marvis Pro, arguably the most detailed and configurable Apple Music player you can get. In this tip video, he shows you how to configure widgets that point to the different sections of your Marvis Pro library, as well as sync all of your settings between iPad and iPhone.