I have written a few iOS shortcuts and MacOS Automator actions. You can find the posts (most contain download links) below.

  • Find and replace local versions of Apple Music files in a playlist
    I have a bunch of playlists that I’ve crafted over the years and when I moved to Apple Music I was disappointed to see my local library copies of those files replaced with Apple Music’s versions. It seemed to be totally arbitrary and, importantly, the play count, rating, etc. was different on my local library copies then it was on the Apple Music versions of those songs. In the above, I know that I have a copy of Can’t get There from Here in my local library, so not sure why the […]
  • Memory, time and quarantine.
    “I may not be as strong as I think,” the old man said. “But I know many tricks and I have resolution.”  – The Old Man and the Sea, E. Hemingway.   At baseline, my memory is only so-so. For example, I can remember chord progressions to songs and lyrics only with a lot of rehearsal. I need cheat sheets for a lot of stuff in my day to day life. My autobiographical memory —my memory of past events — is especially not so good. Vonnegut said we’re all just […]
  • Day One and iOS/Mac Shortcuts Parity
    One of the most popular Shortcuts I’ve written is my “Logging to Day One” shortcut that allows you to keep a timestamped list of items to a single day’s journal entry throughout the day. I wrote a post about it two years ago, you can read more about it here. I updated the post today and it got me thinking about how, two years ago when I first wrote that shortcut, how amazing it would be if that same shortcut would run on my Mac so that I didn’t need […]
  • Last.fm to Apple Music playlist shortcut
    This is a pretty handy Swiss Army knife-type shortcut for creating Apple Music Playlists from last.fm data. I originally wrote it so that I could create Apple Music playlists based upon the listening history of my last.fm musical neighbors. But as I started poking around on the web, I noticed that last.fm users were looking for ways to play their own playlists on Apple Music, too. There are a few key variables in the shortcut, most are defined through menus as you run the shortcut. The only two you need […]
  • Focus mode for musicians on iOS
    I’m sure there are a bunch of really excellent use cases for the new focus mode in iOS but this one that I created yesterday is a total game-changer for me. On so many occasions I’ve been playing guitar or recording something in garage band and had a phone call or text interrupt the recording session and it is really a challenge to remember to put on do not disturb each time I launch a recording session in GB. Enter focus mode! I created a focus mode that turns off […]
  • Long Form Article Reading on Kindle, Improved
    Over the past year I’ve been using a service called Readwise.io to surface highlights from books I read on my Kindle and from articles I read on my iPad using Instapaper. The service has its flaws but all in all has been useful to me in helping me to remember what I’ve read and found important. That said, I’m finding myself less inclined to wanting to read long form journalism on my iPad, especially at night in bed when I’m trying to stay away from screens or at the beach […]
  • Reminder to Charge Apple Watch
    Wrote up a handy little Keyboard Maestro macro that will remind me to charge my Apple Watch. The special sauce here is that it runs any and every time I wake up my Mac between 5AM and 10:30AM. You can download the Keyboard Maestro macro here. [update: So, Keyboard Maestro doesn’t have a trigger for “password unlocks screensaver” And that is really when this thing needs to run. Enter the amazing EventScripts. Had no idea this tool existed but it kicks off AppleScripts for various system events (unlock screensaver, song change in […]
  • Diet success with Due App, shortcuts and app launching
    Here’s one truth about how I lose weight: nothing is as effective as simply writing down what I eat. If I track everything I eat in a calorie tracking app (I use one called Track, but there are a bunch of similar apps), I eat less. Maybe seeing what I’m eating makes me more conservative in my snacking or maybe I don’t want to take the time to log that handful of M&Ms so I skip them. Either way, I’ve lost about 15 pounds during this quarantine, all by simply […]
  • Zoom volume and Music Volume control with Keyboard Maestro
    My new favorite Keyboard Maestro shortcut allows me to toggle between audio outputs (Built In Output device and my USB output). The Built in volume controls my iMac speakers, the USB output controls my Amp. So, combined with the superb Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource, I can easily bounce back and forth between controlling my music volume (Roon, Spotify, archive.org) and my Zoom volume using my keyboards volume controls. This sounds like it would be easy and it is, sort of, by using switchaudiosource-osx (available as brew install switchaudio-osx from command line).  Anyway, […]
  • Log/Append a photo to a Day One entry
    Someone posted a question about how to do this on the Day One Community site so I thought I’d build up a little iOS shortcut that: – checks to see if you have an entry for today, if not it creates a blank one and then prompts you to choose a photo, resizes that photo and then appends the photo to today’s journal entry. Here’s the shortcut, you’ll need to choose which journal to use and how large you want the inserted photo to be.
  • Logging throughout the day with Day One and iOS shortcuts
    [updated on Jan 27, 2022] Spending some time on the Day One community page on Facebook it seems like for those who journal multiple times per day–adding notes, thoughts, activities throughout the day–there are two schools of thought for capturing throughout the day: Create a new entry in Day One for each of the day’s multiple entries Append to a single daily entry throughout the day. I fall firmly into the second camp, using markdown bullets and a time stamp to log entries to a single entry throughout the day. When […]
  • AppleScript for Day One braindump to Things
    Highlighting the truly first-world problem of Mac automation being totally different from iOS automation, I wrote up a simple AppleScript that mirrors the functionality of my iOS shortcut that takes my brain dump list out of Day One and “intelligently” transfers it to Things. When I write my morning entry in my Day One journal I sometimes brainstorm a little todo list, and this allows me to copy it and load the todo list into Things. Moreover, it looks for the string “today” in the brain dump and puts those […]
  • Amazon Order History to Markdown table in Day One
    Back in the spring I wrote an automator action that incorporated some Python code to take a downloaded Amazon Order History file and massage it into a nice Markdown table and creates a Day One entry. A few months back though the Day One command line tool stopped working and that broke this action. But surprise!!! The command line tool works again (although not as well as it used to). So I modified the automator action to get it working again.  So, pop this workflow in your ~/Library/Services folder and […]
  • Adding todos to Today list in Things using AppleScript
    Really pulled my hair out for a while on this issue so hoping to help someone out here. set newToDo to make new to do ¬ with properties {name:CurrentTodo} at beginning of list “Today” This, despite the Cultured Code documentation using Today as an example list in the AppleScript guide. So, if you use that code and replace “Today” with “Someday” it works like a champ but if you pass it the list “Today” the todo item is created in the Inbox and not the Today area of Things. Weird […]