For the second year running, here’s a complete list of the apps I wrote with during one day — plus half a dozen I particularly recommend.

LINKS:
Support 58keys on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=86274276
Join the Writer’s Mailing list too: http://eepurl.com/gQTqTT

MAIN APPS:
CleanShot X: from $29 https://cleanshot.com
Hookmark: from $30 https://hookproductivity.com
MarsEdit: $60 https://redsweater.com/marsedit/
Logic Pro for Mac: $199 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/logic-pro/id634148309?mt=12
Final Cut Pro for iPad: $49/year https://apps.apple.com/us/app/final-cut-pro-for-ipad/id1631624924

CleanShot X and Hookmark are also on Setapp: https://cleanshot.com

RELATED PREVIOUS 58KEYS EPISODES:
One Day, X Apps, Y Mugs of Tea 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3xdbaW_g1M&t=168s
CleanShot X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XAnUUxuEfI
Hookmark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaYbJhYg8qQ&t=185s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4IVK7wBGEA
MarsEdit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RwFhdRHxas

ALL APPS:
Apple Watch alarm https://www.apple.com/watch/
EuFy camera https://amzn.to/3Nn8Yq3 (US), https://amzn.to/3qFHV0j (UK)
Drafts https://getdrafts.com/
MarsEdit https://redsweater.com//marsedit/
Apple TV app https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/
Widgets on macOS Sonoma https://www.apple.com/macos/sonoma-preview/
Safari https://www.apple.com/macos/sonoma-preview/
1Password https://1password.com/
Airtable https://airtable.com/
Apple Notes https://apps.apple.com/us/app/notes/id1110145109
Numbers https://apps.apple.com/us/app/numbers/id409203825?mt=12
Facebook https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/facebook/id284882215
Twitter https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/twitter/id333903271
LinkedIn https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/linkedin-job-search-news/id288429040
FaceTime Audio https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204380
Google Chrome https://www.google.com/chrome/
Reeder https://reederapp.com/
OmniFocus https://www.omnigroup.com/omniFocus
Mail https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mail/id1108187098
Apple News+ https://www.apple.com/apple-news/
Keyboard Maestro https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/
OmniOutliner https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner
Pixelmator Pro https://www.pixelmator.com/
TextSoap https://textsoap.com/
Stream Deck https://amzn.to/42QLqhX (US), https://amzn.to/42Ccdy4 (UK)
Final Cut Pro for iPad https://apps.apple.com/us/app/final-cut-pro-for-ipad/id1631624924
Photos https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/photos/welcome/mac
Logic Pro https://apps.apple.com/us/app/logic-pro/id634148309?mt=12
Where to? https://www.futuretap.com/apps/whereto
Fantastical https://fantastical.app/
Amazon https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/amazon/id335187483
Kindle https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amazon-kindle/id302584613
Hookmark https://hookproductivity.com/
Shortcuts https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shortcuts/id915249334
Siri https://www.apple.com/siri/
TextExpander https://textexpander.com/
Hazel https://www.noodlesoft.com/
HBClock https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hbclock/id417586530?mt=12
Apple Music https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-music/
Slack https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slack/id618783545

SCRIPT:
– INTRO
– Right then, as I record this, it’s Sunday and I’ve just finished an hour-long live 58keys writing sprint session – if you’d like to know more, follow the links to my Patreon page – but I want to talk to you about Friday, June 9, 2023.
– For this reason. I’d like to recommend a whole bunch of Mac, iPhone and iPad apps to you but rather than it just be some random collection, here’s everything I used — in sequence — last Friday.
– TITLES
– Hello, I’m William Gallagher and this is 58keys, which as ever, as always, is for writers like you and me who use and write on Macs, iPhones and iPads. Do subscribe, because there is so much to talk about.and this time, slightly less than I expected.
– It seems this One Day in the App Life has become an annual thing and for this second-ever one, I had plans. I was going to show you action shots, such as this:
– CLIP FROM SECURITY CAMERA (IN BLACK AND WHITE)
– Please don’t look too closely at that, It was early Friday morning but overnight I’d had an allergic reaction to something and my top lip ballooned out. So I could forget shooting anything in Filmic Pro Legacy and using the Filmic Pro Remote, so that was two fewer apps than I expected.
– But while I couldn’t film me using them all, I still had to use the lot. So let me tell you that for 2022’s version of this, I used 36 apps and for this one day in 2023, I used… 44.
– This is the list, but we’re not going to go through them all because it’s coin toss whether you’d nod off first or I would. Instead, look at these.
– Four apps that were entirely new to me this year, and one that has a new name. Let’s examine those. And in the case of two of them, examine them very quickly.
– STING
– First up, CleanShot X. This has to be quick because there is already a 58keys edition devoted entirely to this screen-grabbing tool. You know that you can take screenshots of whatever’s on your Mac screen, you know you can do this with any Mac right out of the box, but CleanShot X does it better — and does more.
– Specifically, scrolling capture. You have a loooong web page, it’ll grab the lot.
– Do take a look at the full video just about that, link in the show notes, and a warning that I gush over it. That was just exactly two months ago and I use it even more now, despite having been away for one of those two months.
– STING
– Next, the name-change one. This, too, has a full previous 58keys, in fact it has a couple of them. One when it was just called Hook, and another when it became Hookmark. Let me explain if you haven’t found it already, that Hookmark lets you link everything together.
– The example I use most often is a magazine that I might edit every other quarter or so. I can be in Affinity Designer, laying out the page, when I realise the client asked for something specific in an email. Two clicks and I am in that email reading it. And then back in the page layout app, or now in a folder with all the content, or now in Pages writing rejection letters for all the articles in this other folder.
– You take a moment to gather all of these places together, then you fly between them. It gets so you don’t understand why Macs wouldn’t just work this way already.
– Watch the Hookmark video because it’s actually an interview with the developer and he talks you and I through what it does.
– STING
– Another entirely new one – ish. It wasn’t on last year’s list but I have dabbled in it, I just go through stages where I dabble more. It’s Logic Pro, an audio editor.
– So last Friday, I started around 7am doing writing a Self Distract blog in MarsEdit, then making some a plan for an event in OmniOutliner, making some notes in Drafts, yeah, yeah, then from 10am to about 6pm I was booked writing for AppleInsider dot com and that came with a bunch of other apps I needed to use, then the very last thing I did in that day was write the AppleInsider Daily podcast — in OmniOutliner — then record it in Logic Pro.
– I would bet money that if you haven’t used Logic Pro or any other audio editor, that you would say it isn’t a writing tool. Because you’d be right. But hold that thought for a minute.
– I adore Logic Pro and I am a bit daunted by it. I’ve seen amazing work done in that app by musicians and I have never and doubtlessly will never get to that level. But every time I use Logic Pro, I come away giddy with how good it is.
– But let me be clear. In this case, I mean Logic Pro for the Mac. That’s what I have, that’s what I was using, and until about a month ago, there wasn’t any other version of it. Now there is, now there’s Logic Pro for the iPad, and it was launched alongside the last of my apps for the year, Final Cut Pro for iPad. And I want to talk to you about that.
– STING
– That thing I said about Logic Pro being and not being a writing tool, I think it is and I think the reason for it goes at least as much for video editor Final Cut Pro.
– Video and audio editing uses the same mental muscles you and I have to have with writing. They can all be painstaking jobs, but more than that, these tools are for communicating, you need to think about what you’re saying, how you’re saying it. You need to think about rhythm and pace. Just the way you might spend an embarrassingly long time making fine adjustments to a sentence, you spend that on a scene or a track.
– And to me, video and audio editing are both so satisfying — and so, educational. I once shot a long 58keys episode from a script I thought I’d honed down, but when I came to edit the filmed version, I was able to totally cut out twelve minutes.
– Twelve minutes of me yapping on.
– And I’ve been steadily learning from this, how to know just what must be said and what doesn’t have to be, what’s superflouous.
– But.
– I believed I learned that a little from Logic Pro on the Mac, and a very great deal from Final Cut Pro on the Mac. I adore Final Cut Pro.
– So when I was on holiday and I saw a headline about Final Cut Pro finally coming to the iPad, I was wide-eyed with excitement. I mentioned Patreon earlier, I went on my Patreon page and asked people, would it be mad to do a 58keys about a video editing app?
– Everyone was very nice.
– I suspect they also realised that they could just skip that episode.
– But, it turns, out, there won’t be a 58keys about Final Cut Pro — on the iPad.
– Because I’m cancelling my subscription. Cancelling it before the trial period ends.
– Look, it is very, very good. I love that Final Cut Pro is on the iPad and I enjoyed editing a whole 58keys on it — except it couldn’t be a whole 58keys. Without boring you with the details, there was this tiny last thing I just could not do without coming back to Final Cut Pro on the Mac.
– There are tiny things missing on the iPad version, there are some big things missing too. Those will come, I’m sure, and I expect I will end up using it a lot in the future. The ability to just pick up a pane of glass and do all of your work from writing to editing, it is now close to irresistible and it will surely be whole irresistible soon.
– Maybe, if you’d indulge me, I could do a whole 58keys about Final Cut Pro for the Mac. There are better editors than me, obviously, but I could try showing you why I think it’s – I think it might not be a writing tool, but it is a writers’ tool.
– Unless I’ve just said everything such an episode would say.
– Anyway. I did use Final Cut Pro for the iPad on Friday, I used Logic Pro on the Mac to make a podcast, and there were these forty-odd other apps.
– Just for completeness, I used them across ten devices or pieces of equipment. This lot here.
– And for very completeness, for some reason last year I did also count how many mugs of tea I drank during the day and it was a surprising — to me — four. Only four.
– Whereas for this one day in 2023, I drank… three.
– But look, my lip was swollen. I’ll do better in June 2024.
– In the meantime, that’s it for this edition of 58keys. All of the links for the apps and prices for the main ones are in the show notes. But for now, thank you for watching, take care of yourself, write more, and I’ll see you soon.

Apparently Apple’s big announcements this week were for everyone, but really they were for writers: here’s what we will actually use – and what we might want to actually use. Including that headset.

LINKS:
Day One: https://dayoneapp.com
Support 58keys on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=86274276
Join the Writer’s Mailing list too: http://eepurl.com/gQTqTT

MY BOOKS:
The Blank Screen: Productivity for Creative Writers
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3KhF19P
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3IzZm94

The Blank Screen: Blogging
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3MhXUKv
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3nJbKLU

The Blank Screen: Interviewing for Authors and Writers
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/40FE4x7
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3Gh6o0K

If you buy through my Amazon links, they may chuck me a penny or two. Or they won’t. Either way, it will never cost you anything extra.

SCRIPT:

– Hello, I’m William Gallagher and this is 58keys, which as ever, as always, is for writers like you and me who use and write on Macs, iPhones, iPads – and headsets?
– TITLES
– Let’s get that headset, Apple Vision Pro, out of the way first. You’ve heard all about it, I think it’s been difficult to avoid hearing about it, but what you and I can do is look at this whole new category of Apple device as writers.
– So actually, part of it is how Apple wrote this announcement, how it tried to communicate a lot of detail, overcome quite a bit of disinterest, and at least try to sell us on this device.
– CAPTION: It’s $3,500
– I said try.
– CAPTION: It’s $3,500
– Yes. That £3,500 price kills it, for now, but as writers, I think we can appreciate that Apple seems to have actually pulled off something no other company has before. Apple has managed to make it so that you are at least interested to try a headset.
– CAPTION: It’s $3.500
– Okay, Apple hasn’t made everyone want to open their wallets or their purses or just hand over bank accounts. It hasn’t given us that absolutely must-have device the way it did with the iPhone. But before this week’s announcement, I was shrugging at headsets.
– And now… I want to know what it would be like writing with one.
– Because apparently, yes, you can write using this Vision Pro headset. Kind of.
– Apple went in deep more on visual stuff, on what looked great, and watching you and me type was never going to be a headline star attraction. But the company did mention two things for us.
– It said that the headset works with Apple’s keyboard and trackpad. Presumably also a mouse, though that wasn’t explicitly mentioned. Presumably also any keyboard, trackpad or mouse that works with Macs, though, again, I might be presuming too much.
– At least with Apple gear, though, you will be able to sit there with this stuff on your face and type.
– And Apple also said that you can use the Vision Pro headset with a MacBook Pro. Open the MacBook, give the screen the eye, and then “move” that screen anywhere you want. Resize it.
– So you might have a little 14-inch MacBook Pro as I do and sometimes find the screen a bit small. With this Apple Vision Pro headset on your noggin, the MacBook Pro screen is as big as you want.
– For writing, then, Apple’s headset could be useful. It has the capability to be useful for writers, and it has the possibility that you would wear it — and I’ve never thought that of any headset I’ve tried.
– Yeah. Full disclosure: I’ve tried one. I shrugged.
– But it’s remarkable that Apple has made this so that you can see yourself wearing one, for a while at least, and you can see the usefulness. At some point, maybe a very many years from now, you and I are going to get one.
– And quite possibly we will then spend our entire time immersed in watching TV and film through it.
– I’d do that. I’d do that right now.
– Anyway. I offer that Apple did startlingly well with its reveal of the headset, that it’s gone from something you couldn’t ever see yourself bothering about, to something you could see yourself bothering with some day.
– That is huge.
– But for you and me as writers, for you and me as writers right now, there was more in the rest of this week’s WWDC announcements to see and to look forward to using. Including a lot that is free instead of $3,500.
– STING
– The most obvious new feature for writers is Journal, a new Apple app coming to iPhones and iPads. This must be wrong, but it doesn’t appear to be coming to the Mac.
– Anyway, if you’ve seen Day One, you’ll know the idea. Every day you write in this app what’s been going on with you — I think you grasp the concept of diary — but then the app also pulls in details from your phone for you. So today you might write down that you bought an ice cream, but the app will also include that you had a dentist appointment at 10. And that the weather was hot. I don’t know what else.
– I also don’t know that Apple has now killed Day One, but it’s at least maimed it. There are reasons to still pay a subscription to the Day One app instead of using Apple’s free Journal, and people who do use Day One tend to utterly adore it.
– I don’t.
– Some years ago now, some many years ago, some change was made in the back end of Day One, in the bits that exist in the Day One company. I can’t remember what it was, but I cannot forget that it destroyed my wife’s journal. Destroyed.
– I spent six or seven hours doing things I can’t even figure out now, but hours upon hours forensically pulling back together her data. I managed to get, I think, about 80% of her text back — but zero percent of her photographs and other images.
– It was, I promise you even though it’s long enough ago now that I can’t recall the details, it was entirely Day One’s fault. And I was pissed at how the company reacted. Practically said “Whoops”. Certainly did not help at all, did not check to see if it had any backups from before this calamitous update.
– My wife stopped using an iPhone journal from that day on. She uses a paper one and from time to time I fret about her paper book being lost.
– Of course she won’t use Day One again and neither will I. But that loss, that totally not-remotely-her-fault loss means she won’t use any iPhone journalling app.
– Maybe I will. I don’t know. But a journal that we can write in, and which also pulls in related information for our day, it’s a good thing.
– STING
– On the iPad, the next most immediately obvious update, is about PDFs. Whether it’s a PDF you found in your research or you save your own manuscript in that form, Apple has improved how we can work with PDFs in the Notes app. PDFs now go full screen to give you room to scribble, and you can collaborate with other people.
– Then the new iPadOS also brings Live Activities to the iPad. When I was at an airport, for instance, Live Activities on the iPhone I could look at my phone screen and see the latest update on my flight. No opening an app, no searching, just wake the screen, there it was. If you have a newer iPhone than I do, the screen stays on all the time so you just glance. Apparently it’s good for sports results, which just keep updating and there is nothing we can do to stop them.
– Both the iPhone and the Apple Watch are getting a new look. Again, for us, I think the benefit is in showing us information more quickly, or maybe sharing With the iPhone, that means widgets that can show you information right there on the screen. With the Apple Watch, you can swipe up to check something, then go back to the Watch face to see the time.
– And alongside improvements to AirDrop, the ability to quickly send anything from your iPhone to your Mac, or to other people, there is now a way to swiftly send just contact details. To swap business cards, if you like, through a very similar system to AirDrop.
– Plus I love this too, or I will if it works with my mobile phone provider, my carrier, and it may not. If the carrier plays nice, then when someone calls you and you don’t answer, you let them go to voicemail, iPhones will show you a transcript of the message they’re leaving you.
– The iPhone with iOS 17 will show you that transcript live, in real-time, as they are leaving the message. So you can get the gist, or you can see that yeah, no, you’d better take this call right now.
– I love this. It’s called NameDrop.
– STING
– Just as an aside. The new version of macOS, the operating system that runs everything on a Mac, is called macOS Sonoma.
– You saw me having to think there. For some reason that name will not go in my head unless I first think of the word “carcinoma”.
– Lovely.
– MacOS Sonoma, IOS 17, iPadOS 17, WatchOS 10, they will be coming to your Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch later this year and they will be free.
– And I can tell you this about the Mac because it is always true, every year, and also I’ve been commissioned to write about macOS Sonoma so I’ve already got the developer beta.
– You will update to the new macOS and you will sit there thinking, o-kay… Apart from this wallpaper, you won’t see a difference.
– At first.
– But then as you write, as you work, you will keep finding things you like. More than that, look at these widgets. And also this icon in my dock. If I click that, it opens a writing website I use a lot but it opens like an app.
– It isn’t one tab amongst dozens in Safari, it is its own thing. You’ve been able to get third-party apps that do this for years but they’ve always seemed a bit flaky, I’ve never stuck with any of them.
– Now I’ll stick with this. And I expect I’ll stick with widgets on the screen.
– I suspect it because as I say, I’m writing about this macOS Sonoma. So I have it on my Mac but I also have macOS Ventura, the current one, and I need to switch back and forth.
– Already, fewer than 24 hours since the beta was released, I don’t like moving back from Sonoma to Ventura.
– STING
– As I say, these new features and an awful lot more are coming to the iPhone, the iPad, all that, and the Mac. But there are now three new Macs for us.
– Well, realistically, only one of them is for us as writers. That’s the new 15-inch MacBook Air. The MacBook Air has always been an excellent machine and often it’s been the sweet spot in the MacBook range.
– Actually, the sweet spot and also the cheapest spot.
– This new version costs £1,400 or $1,300, so “cheap” is relative. But for a Mac, for what you get, for a large screen and yet still a low weight, it’s a good price.
– For completeness, the other new Macs, by the way, are the Mac Studio which I secretly want, and a Mac Pro, which is just ridiculously powerful and at $7000, quite possibly should be.
– To be fair, it does replace a machine that used to cost up to $50,000.
– STING
– Apple announced a lot this week. Much of it won’t really sink in, at least for me, until we’re using it all every day.
– But, just curiously, two nights ago I set up a set of smart scales, weighing machine. Okay, writer, sedentary lifestyle, far too keen on Pepsi Max, just back from overeating on holiday, I bought scales.
– I don’t think you’ll know this unless you’ve looked for it, but iPhones come with a Health app and it connects to these scales. I weigh myself and before my tears reach the ground, that weight measurement is in my iPhone’s Health app.
– The surprise for me was that there wasn’t a Health app on the iPad. I had never noticed, never needed to notice, but now I did and now there wasn’t one.
– Except now there is.
– It’s not why everyone should write on iPads, Macs and iPhones, but it’s another reason why these things all work so well together.
– And I think that’s one last element about this year’s WWDC news, at least for me. The Mac didn’t get a lot of attention, and it is what I write on the most so that’s a shame, but the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch and the Apple TV, all got knitted together just that little bit more.
– And that’s a good thing for all Apple users, whether they’re writers or not. Whether they wear a headset or not.
– That’s it for this edition of 58keys. Thanks for watching, now take care of yourself, write more, and I’ll see you soon.

Recorded live from a really expensive cruise, for some reason money and our relationship to it as writers is on my mind. Here’s a quick account of quickly accounting for all my spending on board – and a Shortcut you can use to keep on top of any spending.

LINKS:
John Dorney’s fundraiser: https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/big-finishers-for-the-love-of-running
My Holiday Spending Shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/caf2495be7594adf8a0a4e8f5619cfa2

Support 58keys on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=86274276
Join the Writer’s Mailing list too: http://eepurl.com/gQTqTT

MY BOOKS:
The Blank Screen: Productivity for Creative Writers
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3KhF19P
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3IzZm94

The Blank Screen: Blogging
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3MhXUKv
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3nJbKLU

The Blank Screen: Interviewing for Authors and Writers
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/40FE4x7
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3Gh6o0K

If you buy through my Amazon links, they may chuck me a penny or two. Or they won’t. Either way, it will never cost you anything extra.

SCRIPT:

– Hello, I’m William Gallagher and this is 58keys which, as ever, is for writers like you and me who use and who write on Macs, iPhones and iPads. This time I want to touch on the business of writing, on doing this money, and specifically on how – I may be projecting here – writers and money don’t seem to go together very well. We don’t have a lot and yet we’re also bad with what we do have.
– Or I am.
– Or I have been.
– But these Macs and iPhones and iPads that we write on can help us. Possibly they could help us most by being cheaper, but the first step to fiscal responsibility is recognising there’s a problem – and writing a Shortcut to help with it.
– Follow.
– I’m on holiday as I record this, and a friend has launched a charity fundraiser that I want to support.
– Once I’ve done that, once I’ve paid over some cash, look what I get to do next.
– Swipe to the side to bring up the Today page, tap on Holiday Spending.
– Enter the amount
– Say what it’s for.
– Choose a currency. As I say, I’m on holiday, I need a few currencies.
– And I’m done.
– Nothing to see here.
– Unless I open the Numbers spreadsheet – on any of my devices – and choose my Holiday Spending spreadsheet.
– There it is, there’s the donation to writer John Dorney’s fundraiser.
– It’s recorded, it’s recorded at the moment I spend the money, just about, it’s recorded so fast that there’s never a need to put it off until later, it is recorded immediately into the spreadsheet.
– When I get home, I’ll sort that spreadsheet by currency types, look up conversions or whatever, and know how much I’m out.
– And I’m also going to change that Shortcut from Holiday Spending to General Spending – and keep on using it.
– So that’s a Shortcut that I run from a widget in the Today screen, which asks me a couple of questions, and which appends the answers to a specific spreadsheet.
– If that’s enough for you to do it too, and you think it could be useful, knock yourself out. If you want to see the steps it took, let’s get a biscuit.
– STING
– I run this exclusively on my iPhone because it’s the one device that is always with me, and that swipe to the Today view is so fast. Let me show you the Shortcut on my iPad, though, as a) it’s a bigger screen and 2) I’m filming this with that iPhone.
– First up, open Shortcuts on iPad, iPhone or Mac, click the plus to create a new Shortcur. For each step now, you’ll search the panel at the side until it shows what you want, then you can drag it over to the main part of the screen where you’re building your Shortcut. And the first thing you want is for the Shortcut to record what the date is.
– But Shortcuts by default record a lot of information when you ask for the date. Day, Month, Year, yes, but also hours minutes, seconds. Since you want a simple date, use Format Date, and choose Short. Maybe you want the time recorded too, but I don’t care about that for this, so I turned Time Format to None.
– I’m going to need this short date later, so I save it. I save the short date as a variable, which I’ve imaginatively called DateVar. Look, I have enough trouble coming up with good titles, simple works.
– Next, I want the Shortcut to ask me how much money I’ve just spent – and that figure is saved into another variable, AmountVar. Notice that I’m asking only for a number – if I tried to type letters into this bit, nothing would happen.
– Last question, which currency? At the start of the holiday I had this as a text box and just typed a currency symbol in. But on UK iPhones, the US dollar symbols is few taps away, so I added this list to choose from.
– That chosen currency gets saved in another variable, CurrencyVar
– And then the only bit that is fiddly, I think. What this last section does is take the Date from DateVar, the Amount, saved in AmountVar, then what I’ve bought in WhatVar, and lastly CurrencyVar, and sends them all off to Numbers.
– One fiddly bit is getting it to send each of those in one go. You have to choose Shortcuts’ Add to Numbers action, tap to enter the first one, then look for the plus sign that appears, and tap that to add the next.
– But then more fiddly was this “bottom of Table 1 in Holiday Spending in Holiday Spending.”
– Like Excel, Numbers has a spreadsheet document that has a name. Also like Excel, it can have tabs within that document, each of which have their own name.
– Unlike Excel, Numbers doesn’t use the whole screen for the actual spreadsheet, the thing with figures in. Instead, Numbers has what it calls Tables and you can have any number of separate tables on a spreadsheet.
– So “bottom of Table 1 in Holiday Spending in Holiday Spending” really means adding a row to the end of the table I’ve created. And that table is in a tab sheet called Holiday Spending. And that tab is in a spreadsheet document called Holiday Spending.
– Get the names of the document, the tab sheet and the table, and you’re sorted.
– Except.
– After running this a couple of times, I got irritated at always getting that Numbers spreadsheet on my screen when I’d pick up the iPhone. I’d like a way to clos the Numbers sheet, but you can’t do that on an iPhone,
– So I found this as the best equivalent. Go to Home Screen.
– When I run this, it asks me the questions, it appends everything to the spreadsheet, and then it leaves the Numbers spreadsheet and goes back to where I was.
– STING
– You do have to set up the spreadsheet before you do all this. And I’m sure you could do much fancier spreadsheets, maybe with categories for what you bought or what currency you bought it in, maybe it auto-sorts by currency and shows you running totals.
– But my little Shortcut is simple and it is fast to use, so I use it. And at any time I can open the spreadsheet to see what my latest spending is.
– That’s all I need.
– Have a look at my Shortcut, see what you can do to make it yours. I’ve added a link to download it in the description.
– But for now, that’s it for this edition of 58keys. And as I go off to my account to ask if there’s any way to make a cruise tax deductible, you take care of yourself, okay? Write more, too. And I’ll see you soon.