This is not a full breakdown of iOS 12. If you want that go read MacStories, I’ll see you in a few hours.

Screen Time

With the addition of Screen Time we’re going to see how many times we really touch our phones in the day. One day while I was trying to move some stuff to our new house I averaged 3 phone pickups an hour.

This was in the midst of getting text messages from a friend who was coming to help and from my wife as we coordinated where each of us was during the day. So, I guess I don’t touch my phone much.

I’ve opted to not share my data across devices because, I’m working right now on my iPad because it’s my main work device. If I included my iPad stats with my phone I’d heavily skew the results.

If both of your devices are “pleasure” devices then maybe you should share data so you have an overall accurate picture of what you do.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts is pretty cool. Just this morning a friend asked about quickly appending some text to a specific Bear note. Took me 5 minutes to whip up a Shortcut for him to add to his lock screen that takes the text and then appends it to a specific note.

In fact the only thing I find frustrating about Shortcuts is actually not quite Shortcuts fault. I’m learning some Python to increase my automation and there just isn’t great documentation for Pythonista and Shortcuts.

Like, how do I pass an image into Pythonista? How do I pass it back out to Shortcuts so it can get saved? Is it better to save it directly in Pythonista? I’ve combed the community around Pythonista and…nothing seems clear.

Maybe it’s that I’m learning a new language, but I think it’s just not documented well at this point. Maybe I’m trying to save face.

Passwords in iOS 12

The new password auto fill is awesome. Saves me so much time with 1Password as I just touch the Password button above the keyboard and my password is entered.

Everything else?

I don’t care about the Animoji stuff. I run an iPad Pro 9.7 and an iPhone 6S Plus. Neither support them and I can’t see me ever using them unless I was trying it quickly to see how silly it is.

I can say that I’m getting better battery life out of my iPhone 6S Plus and it feels faster. I didn’t notice anything on my iPad Pro.