Drafts 5
I’ve tried many different apps for copywriting and Drafts is the best tool I’ve found. Think of Drafts as the starting place for anything you write. Whether you create marketing content, blogs, video scripts, social media or even draft programming code, Drafts has both a simple interface and powerful features to make your writing more productive.
The app gives you one-click notation tools for general writing and really powerful Markdown tools (if you’re unfamiliar with Markdown, I’ll explain that in a future post). It shows you character and word counts as you type. Automated ‘Actions’ make it incredibly easy to send your writing to any other app like Evernote or directly to social media sites such as Twitter or LinkedIn.
The main purpose of Drafts is to keep you focused, enable you to quickly capture your text, then save or act on your writing. Drafts 5 is my go to app for writing on the iPad or iPhone, while Evernote is my primary tool for notes and staying organized.
Drafts 5 is a free app. Most core features are included in the free version. Advanced features, such as creating your own custom actions, are available through an in-app purchase.
Darkroom
If you take pictures and don’t have a good app for quick post processing, you’re missing out on making your pictures stand out. For those with Adobe Creative Cloud accounts, it’s hard to beat Adobe’s apps such as Lightroom, Photoshop and Photoshop Express. However, a newer app called Darkroom comes close to the power of these apps and for many needs is even better. The iPad version of Darkroom was released in December and it has something for everyone.
If you take family pictures and simply want a tool for pre-set color filters, cropping and straightening, you’ll find the interface to be quick and simple. If you want advanced controls for color correction, you’ll find that too. Best of all, you can make batch changes to any number of pictures at the same time.
I do still like Lightroom for processing portraits. And again, if you have an Adobe account, Photoshop and Photoshop Express are hard to beat for their full set of features. However, Darkroom is my go to photo app when I’m looking for quick color effects. Numerous keyboard shortcuts help save time when you edit and there’s support for RAW photos and Siri Shortcuts.
Darkroom is a free app. It offers in-app purchases for advanced tools and additional pre-defined filters.
Siri Shortcuts
I love finding ways to be more productive and efficient. To be honest, with a busy family life and work life, I have to find ways to save time. Siri Shortcuts has become a tool I use every day.
Apple released Shortcuts with iOS 12 in Fall 2018. You probably haven’t thought much about the things you do repeatedly throughout the day on your iPhone. Shortcuts gives you an easy to use tool, with over 100 pre-built shortcuts, to automate things you do on your iPhone or iPad.
Take my advice, check it out. You can learn more and see ways I use Shortcuts in my full post.
Scannable
I’ve been using Evernote since 2010 and have thousands of notes. Evernote is my way of staying organized with work notes, receipts, articles, travel plans, blog ideas, action items…just about everything. Scannable, an Evernote scanning app, makes capturing documents super easy. When I need to scan a printed document or even a business card, Scannable knows exactly what to do with what I’m scanning.
The most common way I use it is with receipts. I generally keep receipts for purchases over $25. Anything less, I throw the receipt away. So, for receipts over $25 such as restaurants or purchases, I launch the Scannable app. It immediately starts looking for a document using the phone’s camera. Once found, it scans the document, cleans up the scan and give me the choice to either save it in Evernote (e.g. receipts go straight to my Receipts notebook in Evernote) or send it somewhere else.
PC Magazine recently tested and reviewed the top 10 scanning apps and gave Scannable its highest score and named it an Editors Choice.
Scannable is a free app.
HomeRun
If you’re using HomeKit, Apple’s app for controlling lights, thermostats, garage doors, coffee makers, etc., and have an Apple Watch, HomeRun gives you a nifty way to access your commonly used HomeKit scenes from your Apple Watch.
For example, each morning, I run my ‘Good Morning’ scene which turns on certain lights in the house and sets the thermostat if I’m up earlier than normal. I could simply say “Siri, Good Morning”. However, if I’m the first one up, guess who doesn’t like me talking to Siri and waking them up?! At night, our ‘Good Night’ scene checks the garage doors and turns off all lights in the house. Again, if I’m lying in bed trying to be quiet, I can run this scene with two clicks on my Apple Watch. HomeRun lets you picked specific icons and colors for each scene. Further, you can access your scenes from a Complication on your watch.
HomeRun is $2.99.