Use Your iPhone Keyboard Like a Boss

For all iPhone users, the keyboard is the piece of functionality that gets the most use - I don’t think that can be disputed. No matter the application, there is a good chance you are going to use the keyboard so it makes sense for you to make this as easy as possible. There are lots of tips and tricks to maximise your efficiency with it - some are well known, others not so. 

Here are a few of my favourites. Certainly not a comprehensive list of everything you can do but I play with these bits the most. 

Settings

If you go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard there are lots of options here to play with. 

You can enable/disable Auto-Capitalisation for words, Auto-Correct and the checking of spelling as you type.

Enable Caps Lock is a solid option. If you tap twice on the shift key then this enables Caps Lock - until such time as you tap it again. 

Other notable settings here include turning off Predictive Text, turning off the Character Preview which is the enlarged image of the key that shows when you tap it. Also, the ”.” Shortcut allows you to double-tap the space bar to insert a full stop/period, followed directly by a space. 

Text Replacement

If you are familiar with tools like TextExpander then you know all about Text Replacement. You can use short snippets of text and expand them to form longer sentences/characters. Very useful if you have strings of emoji characters that you use often. Simply type in the shortcut and the longer phrase will be offered as an option in the Quick Type window.

Shake to Undo, Swipe to Undo (three fingers)

The faster you type, the easier it is to make a mistake. No problem, simply shake your iPhone to bring up the Undo popup or swipe across on the screen with three fingers to the left to Undo - or the right for a nifty little redo option

Double or Triple Tap to Select

Need to select some text for formatting or copying? Double-tap to select a single word, or triple-tap to select the entire paragraph

Added bonus - did you know that once you have highlighted your text, you can pinch with three fingers to copy the text and then pinch once more to cut? I think I found this by accident using an iPad. Useful. 

Turn into Trackpad

If you keep your finger on the spacebar, you can convert your keyboard into a trackpad, allowing precision placement of the cursor. 

If you use a second finger to tap whilst moving the cursor in this fashion, you can select text easily as well. 

Tap and Hold a Letter for more options

Most keys on the keyboard have more than one option. Long press on a character key to look at various accented characters or different punctuation marks.

Lookup Dictionary Definitions

Did you know that you can look up the definitions of words you have typed without the need to shift to another application? Simply select the text - then choose Look Up from the pop-up menu and you’ll be presented with the definition.

Left/Right Handed Keyboard

Finally, if you struggle to use the keyboard with one hand, you can actually move the keyboard to either the left, or the right hand side of the screen. 

Long press on the emoji icon in the bottom left hand corner and position the keyboard on either the left or right of the screen as needed. Or put it back in the centre if you find the resulting keyboard too small.

Why I Now Use Todoist

It really doesn’t seem that long ago that I was a workflow guest at Tim Stringer’s awesome Learn OmniFocus. I remember the planning beforehand, the worry, wanting to ensure that I was able to convey exactly how I used OmniFocus. 

Turns out, that was in late 2017 - and here I am, in October 2021, using a different task manager. And to such an extent, that I’ve released a video course on how to use it. That’s quite a change. 

Do I have a problem with OmniFocus? Let me go on record by saying absolutely not. It’s a great task manager and if you are 100% solidly in the Mac eco-system, I would never turn around and say you should use Todoist instead of it. That’s not because one is any better than the other, it’s just because I find these task managers have to be suited to the way you work as an individual. There are also elements of OmniFocus that I wish were present in Todoist - defer dates being one. You cannot defer a task into the future to make it disappear from view in the same way you can with OmniFocus. It is of course, possible with Filters to a degree but there is a lot of messing around you have to carry out to get to that point. 

Also, the Focus and Review modes in OmniFocus are worth their weight in gold. I love being able to key in a shortcut and just see one project in a new tab and hide everything else - and being able to Review projects at individual intervals with a simple keystroke really fits in with the Getting Things Done methodology. 

That said, there are elements of Todoist that fit in better with my own personal workflow and way of working. 

Interface on Mobile - I’m finding myself grabbing for my phone or iPad more often to check off tasks that need to be done around the house and the Todoist interface on these platforms is, in my opinion at any rate, easier to navigate. The syncing is instantaneous which I put down to Todoist being a web service at heart. Quite often with OmniFocus I’d pick up my phone, wait for thirty seconds for the syncing to complete before I see the actual list of actions that I can crack on with. 

Todoist also has great swipe actions on mobile, making it easy to postpone actions for a later date - not quite the same as deferring, but when you get into how Todoist works with Due dates, it works well. 

Cross-platform support - In my Project Management world, I can find myself having to use a client device to ensure I can connect to their shared services. One benefit of the pandemic means this doesn’t have to happen as often with remote teams and collaboration being ubiquitous. However it does happen and whilst I could add information to OmniFocus on my iPad or through the web browser, that’s not how I like to work. If I’m on a Windows machine, I need to access a fully functional task manager because if I’m going to use something, I want to use it to its full potential. With Todoist having a solid Windows application as well as an awesome web service, this was a no-brainer. I started using it for a particular client and eventually threw everything into it. 

With hooks into Amazon Alexa, Fantastical, Zapier, Momentum and more, there is a clear advantage to having a web service fulfil this function. Yes, I know there are disadvantages to that as well - but they are outweighed by the good stuff for me. 

My Output - I hate myself for saying this because when I deliver Productivity Coaching, I always use the mantra ‘It’s about the Approach, not the App’

And I stand by that. An application is not going to make you more productive. The approach to using it will. Put the right information in, touch it regularly, ensure you review what’s in there, break tasks down, yada yada yada. If you’re reading this, you know all this. So why is it when I use Todoist, I find myself ticking off lots more tasks? It’s not the Karma functionality that’s built-in to it which rewards you for checking off tasks and using Todoist. I’d rather check off two really important, lengthy pieces of work than ten smaller ones. Fact is, I don’t know and I’m still reviewing this. 

I think it’s because there is more of a reliance on assigning due dates for repeating tasks. In OmniFocus, they would have defer dates that would repeat every day, week, whatever is needed. Todoist doesn’t understand defer dates - instead, I have to provide them with due dates and they scream at me in my Today view, even if they are not ACTUALLY due on that date. I don’t HAVE to carry out my Clean My Mac maintenance on my Mac mini today for example - but if I don’t have it set up with a due date, it cannot repeat. This is a big shift for me because I always used to put in due dates for tasks when they absolutely, positively, had to be done on that date. Now, I’m a little freer with them. The downside is it can dilute other more important tasks. The upside is that with four priority levels in Todoist, you can mitigate this by assigning varying levels of priority to these - and I do ensure they get done. With just a defer date in OmniFocus, I didn’t have the onus to do it. Again, that’s all about the approach. I could have used due dates in OmniFocus - I just didn’t because I thought it was wrong. 

Perhaps I was

So there we are. In a nutshell, that’s why I’ve moved across. It started as an experiment and has now stuck. 

If you would like to try Todoist to see how it is, then check it here. 

To purchase the Todoist Course, click here

MyProductiveMac-ademy is Live!

It’s been a long time coming, however finally taken the plunge and decided that it would be a good idea to launch my own online course. I’m hoping this is the first of many as the MyProductiveMac-ademy finally goes live

The first course I’ve developed is the MyProductiveMac Guide to Todoist and is 60+ videos covering everything from Getting Started with the application, all the way through to configuring integrations and looking at examples of different workflows.

There is going to be new content posted to the site monthly which is why I’m confident that the introductory price of £29.99 + VAT represents good value.

If you are looking at either getting to grips with Todoist, or developing your existing skills, then check the course out - it may be just what you are looking for

Custom Searches in Alfred

Whenever I need to search for anything, whether it’s on my Mac or online - I use Alfred. It’s so ingrained in my muscle memory I’d have to work incredibly hard to STOP my fingers from travelling directly to my Alfred hotkey and kicking off a search. 

Alfred has a large number of default search locations available online and they are listed below. You may, however, need to create your own custom search. And this is very easy

Let’s take an example. As the majority of you know, I create lots of videos for Screencasts Online and regularly need to research different apps. The first step I usually take involves searching the ScreenCasts Online website to confirm that the app hasn’t already been covered - and if it has, when was it done? Does it need an update/refresher video?

Opening Alfred and searching ScreenCasts Online for that app is the way to go and this is how to do it. 

1 - Carry out a search on the site you wish to add

Open up the website and search for something. In this case, I’ve opened ScreenCasts Online and searched for Alfred. The URL is displayed in the screenshot below

2 - Copy the URL

Press Command + L to go to the address bar and then Command + C to copy the URL to your clipboard. This will need to go into Alfred. 

3 - Invoke Alfred -> Features -> Web Search

From here, click on Add Custom Search in the bottom right hand corner

4 - Paste the URL

In the first field, named Search URL, paste in the URL you just copied with Command + V. Be sure to replace the search term with the query in curly brackets, as below. Instructions are there underneath the field. You could, alternatively, just type in the name of the domain and press the Lookup button and if the site supports OpenSearch or SearchAction, Alfred can find the correct URL automatically. 

5 - Assign a Title and Keyword

Give the Custom Action a title - this is what is going to be shown in the search results. Then assign the keyword, or the abbreviation, that will be used to instigate the search. 

6 - Test

Some text is already filled in the validation field - Alfredapp - and if you click the Test button to the right, then Alfred will carry out a test search on that site. 

If it works, click Save.

Now, when you invoke Alfred and type in the keyword you specified, followed by the search criteria, Alfred will do the work for you. 

It’s a great feature and another reason I love Alfred.

Multitasking on iPadOS 15 - A Winner

Ever since the concept of multitasking was introduced on the iPad, I’ve never been a big fan. It just seemed so - I don’t know - fiddly. Lots of swipes and gestures to remember, being someone that comes almost exclusively from a laptop/desktop background, the effort of learning all of these new ways of working seemed a little much - especially with the restrictions (at least then) that working on the iPad provided. 

I think iPadOS 15 though takes multitasking to a different level. It doesn’t, necessarily, change what you can do (although there is a killer new feature that I’ll touch on shortly), moreover it makes the existing features more accessible, minimizing the need to think about how to work on multiple apps at once. 

Multitasking Menu

Split View and Slide Over were introduced six years ago now - something that really surprised me when I checked this out. That’s a long time for a feature that I rarely if ever use. And that’s on me, it’s in no way a criticism - as mentioned earlier, I’m desktop-centric as opposed to looking to use my iPad for much more than fun and larks. 

The multitasking menu, accessible from any iPad application via the three dots into the top centre of the window, makes it easier to access those features. When you tap/click it, there are three options presented to you. From left to right we have:

Full Screen - move the application into Full-Screen mode. 

Split View - this places the application into Split View - or at least starts t. It will move itself to the far side of the screen, just enough for you to see it poking out from the bezel where it will ask you to select another app to split the screen with. Once you have selected one, both apps will be side by side in Split View

Slide Over - Slide Over is my favourite of these views and the one I have started to use most often as I try to kick-start my iPadOS lifestyle. You’re not restricted to having just one app in Slide Over accessible at any one time. Just slide up from the bottom of the slide over window and choose from the list of slide over apps you’ve selected. It’s great

The Shelf

Whilst other third-party applications have provided shelf functionality to iPadOS for the last couple of years, we now have it baked into the main operating system itself and it works very well. Whenever you tap on the multitasking menu, if there are multiple windows available within the app, they will be shown at the bottom of the screen and you can tap to select the one you want - or even create a new window by tapping on the plus button to the far right.

I was surprised at how natural using these features felt when I first used them. It didn’t feel like I needed to commit anything to memory that I would consciously, have to try and find later - the muscle memory was instinctive and now I see those three multitasking menu dots in the same vein as I see the traffic lights in the top left-hand corner of a macOS window. It’s just - easy.

And that works as a summary for both iOS and iPadOS 15. They do not share any ground-breaking features, nothing that is going to make you want to rush and get them downloaded. However, what they offer, is good consolidation and in my eyes, that makes it a very strong release.