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Have you ever sat down to work on something and found yourself distracted by your smartphone? That's exactly the problem Forest aims to solve.

In this tutorial, Mike shows you how using an iOS utility called Forest can help you eliminate distractions by incentivizing you to not touch your smartphone, helping you stay focused, be present, and build productive habits.

One of the problems with Shortcuts on iOS is finding a use for them!

This week's tip video demonstrates some real-life examples that Don used on a recent holiday. If you've ever cruised, you know just how expensive Internet access can be, and what a palaver it is, switching Wi-Fi on and off, accessing the ship's webpage and messing about with Mobile Data settings.

Why not create some shortcuts and add them to your Today View as Widgets? Or even trigger them using Siri?

This tip video explains all...

Moodnotes is a simple iOS app that allows you to capture and improve your thinking habits through an innovative approach to journaling.

In this week's tip, Mike shows you how to log your emotion state using Moodnotes and the type of insights you can glean from the data that it collects. You'll learn how to track your mood using its simple swipe interface, and how to use trends and insights to detect patterns and avoid negative thinking traps.

Everything on your to-do list must be completed within the context of time, but looking at a huge list of things can be overwhelming. Sorted takes a different approach to task management by giving you powerful tools to quickly create a plan for your day, including both tasks and calendar events, into a timeline.

In this tutorial, Mike shows you how to use features like Auto schedule and Magic Select to keep your daily plan up to date within Sorted. You'll learn how to implement schedule-based task management using the Sorted interface, allowing you to allocate time for the things that you want to do instead of feeling paralyzed looking at a long, daunting to-do list.

Sometimes we all need a little help making positive changes and establishing new habits.

In this week's tip, Mike shows you how Productive for iOS can help you build a regular routine of life-changing habits. Learn how to start creating positive habits, track and analyze your progress with statistics, and set reminders to help make your positive changes stick.

Photos on iOS is great for accessing your photos on the go, but managing your library or making batch edits can be a pain.

In this week's tip, Mike shows you how to make easy edits on multiple photos using BestPhotos for iOS. You find out how to quickly delete photos or mark them as favorites, add location metadata, as well as clean up "accidental videos".

Excel is Microsoft's premier spreadsheet package, which helps you get work done and be more productive.

In Part 2 of this tutorial, Richard takes you through how to manipulate the data on Mac and iOS, as well as showing different ways to view it. He also demonstrates how Apple Pencil can be used in Excel on iOS to freely mark up your document with various writing tools.

The holidays are the perfect time to share photos with the people closest to you using the Shared Albums feature in iCloud Photos.

In this week's tip video, Mike shows you how to set one up, add your favorite photos, then invite friends and family to view it. He also goes over the Public Website option so your album is accessible from a web browser on any device.

Following on from our recent tip show on installing and managing fonts on macOS, this week we turn our attention to font management on iOS.

Although external font support is not built into iOS 12, it is possible to install external fonts using an app such as AnyFont.

AnyFont allows you to install external fonts as configuration profiles so all of your applications can use them. This is perfect for creating and editing documents across platforms, by having access to the fonts on your iPad and iPhone that are also installed on your Mac.

In this tip video Don demonstrates how to convert font files into configuration profiles using AnyFont.

Excel is Microsoft's premier spreadsheet package to help you get work done and be more productive. In Part 1 of this tutorial Richard takes you through the basics of Excel on Mac and iOS including a tour of the interface, adding and formatting text and data, creating formulas, adding charts, and much more.

Think of HashPhotos as a way to augment Apple Photos. It works on your existing iCloud Photo Library but brings unique capabilities that simply don't exist in the Photos app.

You don't have to choose between Apple Photos and HashPhotos because they work together, allowing you to have the best of both worlds. Most of the features of HashPhotos act on your iCloud Photos Library, so if you create albums and folders in HashPhotos, they show up there, too. Edits you make to your images also carry over.

HashPhotos is incredibly fast, even on a giant iCloud Photos library, making it more efficient for some things than working in Photos on the Mac. But the real power is in the extra features, like adjusting the dates on photos, adding location data, creating film strips, and much more.

This week, Allison takes you on a tour of HashPhotos and shows you all of those features, using both iPad and iPhone.

iBooks is now Books and has had a complete revamp.

The changes are more pronounced on iOS 12 with new "Reading Now" and "Want to Read" sections.

This week I take you on a tour of Books on both macOS and iOS.

Following on from our recent iOS 12 release show, I go over the revamped Stocks app, now available on iPad as well as iPhone.

Apple Notes is great but is sorely missing Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, for scanned documents. This enables you to search for words inside scanned documents. Perhaps we'll see that in a future release.

In the meanwhile, using Office Lens, you can scan documents, whiteboards, and business cards today on your iPhone or iPad and make them fully searchable. Unfortunately, you can't bring the searchable documents into Apple Notes, but if you use an application like Microsoft OneNote, you can search the entire contents of your scanned items - it can even search your handwritten notes.

In this tip, I show you the basics of using Office Lens and OneNote.

iMovie for iOS is a fully featured video editor for both the iPad and iPhone. With support for up to 4K resolution, it's possible to both shoot and edit your movies on the go, directly on your iPhone or iPad.

In this foundation tutorial, Don takes you through configuring and using iMovie v2 for iOS to create stunning videos with minimal effort. The tutorial assumes no prior knowledge of iMovie and is designed for people to learn how to master the basics of iMovie on iOS from scratch.

iMovie for iOS is available for free via the iOS App Store.

Once you get the hang of the basic principles, iMovie for iOS is super simple to use and allows you to create professional looking videos and movie trailers in minutes.

Manipulating text on iOS can be tricky. But with the powerful export actions available in Drafts version 5, it gets a whole lot easier. In the first of two tutorials Drafts v5 for iOS - Part 1 Mike explored the basics of using Drafts.

In this tutorial, Mike walks you through the export actions available in the Pro version of Drafts 5. You learn how many of them work using practical, real world examples. You can then start building your own text-based workflows using Drafts and start saving time on your iOS devices today.

It was just a year ago that we took a look at the newest version of Things, and examined all of the interface changes and new functionality that were added to an already well-designed application. Since then, the team at Cultured Code have added six new updates to further increase the functionality of Things 3.

In this screencast, Todd takes a look at updates that both improve automation and make managing your tasks easier.

He also demonstrates some new workflows using third-party applications (for both macOS and iOS) that can be leveraged to take advantage of these new automation features included in Things 3.

If you're sick and tired of the constant exchange of emails to try and schedule a meeting or book an appointment, WhenWorks might be your ideal solution.

WhenWorks is an iOS app for iPhone or iPad that integrates with most calendar services.

As a host, you set up some event types and rules, then send out invitations. The recipients (called guests) receive the email invitation and can pick a suitable date and time from a web-based service - they don't need to be WhenWorks users themselves.

Once the guest picks a time slot, your calendar is updated and an email confirmation is sent out. Either the host or the guest can reschedule or cancel the appointment with just a few clicks. Want to have single point of contact without sending out invitations every time? You can make your available time slots public and send anyone a web link.

If you need to set up one-to-one meetings on a regular basis, WhenWorks can be a tremendous boon!

OmniFocus 3 is out for iOS, and it makes managing your tasks even easier. While the biggest change is the adoption of tags, there are several new features in OmniFocus 3 that can take your task management to the next level. Whether you're new to OmniFocus or you've been using it for years, there are several compelling reasons to upgrade to version 3.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use the different perspective views to filter your tasks, how to harness the full power of tags for getting things done, and even show you how to set up a few custom perspectives of your own.

Drafts is where text starts on iOS. It's a powerful application that allows you to quickly capture what's on your mind, then process and send that text just about anywhere on iOS. Version 5 of Drafts was released recently, bringing many new features and a revamp of the user interface.

In this first tutorial, Mike shows you how to get up and running with Drafts 5 by walking you through the interface and demoing several of the built-in actions included with the free version. He also explains how to modify and edit custom Actions (Pro feature), walks you through the different Modes and Settings, and goes over using the Messages and Apple Watch apps.