Steffen Reich

I'm an Apple enthusiast by all measures, but that does not keep me from calling a spade a spade when it's needed. Living in Melbourne, Australia. Follow me on Twitter @melbsteve !

Frustrated with Reminders? Taskful could be the answer to your woes

Steffen Reich ∙ June 28, 2017

Not all tasks are created equal. No doubt you either have taken the trash out or you have not, but there is a vast number of daily challenges that are conquered in increments, tasks that can be taken on for an hour, then sidelined at their half way point and ultimately capped off in the afternoon. Users of Apple’s Reminders app might know the struggle to approximate a progression-based task to the binary reminder framework we are provided: ever tried to make the Reminders app nudge you every day until you have hit the treadmill five times per week, or let's say read ten chapters of your book? For all intends and purposes, it’s cumbersome.

Taskful sets out to remedy the pain of that. It also lets the user select only certain days of the week to remind you of due tasks (e.g. weekdays) and will smartly display the items relevant to you on a specific day and, more crucially, blank out tasks set for a future date. Needless to say this can be priceless for people quickly throwing their hands up when faced with a dauntingly long list of tasks. To bolster the sentiment, the app also automatically breaks up longer tasks into daily chunks.

How intelligent is this thing really?

Naturally, for a smart task manager to really hit its stride, it takes equally smart data input. Such being the case, you’re going to want to learn the nitty-gritty of Taskful before judging the application’s utility. So let’s briefly talk about the mechanics of it:

On the face of it, Taskful and Apple’s Reminders app share some structural traits. That is, both offer category based sorting of items, in which each category (Urgent, Finance, Work) is represented by a color of your choosing. That’s about where the similarities come to an end however, because on Taskful, filing away a task properly is swiftly accomplished by swiping left and right to change the background color of your note during creation. At the same time, the app will analyze your task as you scribble it down and immediately glean information such as dates and numbers.

Based on its reading, smart bubbles right below the draft will interpret your input and suggest measuring sticks for your task. You can tap and confirm or manually alter them. To exemplify, use a number like '4' in your task, now mark the little ‘Amount: 4’ bubble magically popping up beneath the text and as a result, the reminder needs to be tapped four times to be considered finished by Taskful. Until then, a big and rewarding progress bar will grow in 25% increments every time you come one stop closer to your goal.

Along the same lines, Taskful is also capable of acting as a quirky step tracker. On launch, the app asks permission to read and write HealthKit data, meaning the app can track your step count and remind you to get off the couch if you haven't ticked the ‘walk 600 steps’ reminder at night.

It goes without saying that these are just two hands-on examples of how to put Taskful to good use, not so much selected at random but rather intentionally to demonstrate the app's versatility. What's more is that it comes with a good deal of UI customizations such as a built-in dark mode. In other words, both in scope and depth Taskful decidedly one-ups Apple’s Reminders. And above all else, it feels good to look at one unifying 'All Tasks' tab, something Reminders’ stacked business cards look sort of makes impossible.

Competing in the world of task managers and to-do lists is a tough gig on the App Store, yet it appears as though Taskful has found the sweet spot to prevail. It is also earning the right accolades along the way, with Apple just recently featuring the app in the ‘Apps We Love’ category in various countries including the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Taskful is available on iPhone and iPad, the latter of which just added split screen support to round the package off nicely. If you want to give the app a whirl, it is currently priced at a reasonable $1.99.

Link to App Store: Taskful ($1.99)

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Take notes on the fly with Apple Watch and SnipNotes

Steffen Reich ∙ June 25, 2017

Since watchOS 4 is not poised to deliver all answers to some of our lofty demands, it is time to get serious about alternative solutions to replicating a Notes-esque experience on your wrist. And as though the people behind SnipNotes had known of Apple’s continuing blind spot all along, in late 2015 the app originally designed for iOS went out on a limb and added an Apple Watch extension to its core competencies. Since then, the note taking app has gone from strength to strength and, even if only philosophical at this point, provides a standard of note sharing between iPhone and Watch that Apple themselves could hardly topple.

Let’s get the major pitfall out there first: just like Apple’s (still fictitious) Notes app on watchOS would only correspond with the original Notes app on iPhone, SnipNotes too only works and syncs inside its very own cosmos.

Accordingly, if you want to create, share or store notes (including locations, images, links) on your wrist, you are going to have to embrace SnipNotes as your default gateway for note taking. If you weren’t expecting anything else great, nothing to see here. If you thought of SnipNotes as a third-party app to read and feed into your proprietary Apple Notes, unfortunately that is still off limits.

That’s about as far as (subjective) caveats go, and with that it is time to turn our focus to the glorious meat of the app.

Take notes, Apple!

SnipNotes earns its first brownie point right on launch. When activated, the app is going to ask for Touch ID authentication before breaking the seal to your data. This is not only a much appreciated safety net for when your nosy friend handles your iPhone, but generally gives most users peace of mind and a sense of privacy protection that Apple Notes is slowly getting whiff of as well.

The second brownie point is scored by an intuitive file system inside, consisting of multiple categories (such as Travel notes, Snapshots, etc.) which can all be edited, deleted or supplemented with the addition of new rubrics.

Brownie point number three - yes we’re keeping score - is conferred due to the fact that SnipNotes allows you to individually determine which categories sync their contents with your Apple Watch. It all starts with the ‘Inbox’, the overarching folder on both your devices, which functions as the initial collecting tank for new notes. From there, you can assign any file or note to a category, filter them or favorite notes to permanently pin them atop of your lists.

As for Apple Watch devotees, here's your lowdown: Notes can be created by way of voice input and Scribble. Neither might ever truly rival bigger screen note taking, however the ability to swiftly capture fleeting thoughts might be priceless to some. So talk to your wrist or jot down a few letters and before you know it, the note will be seamlessly relayed to your iPhone.

Conversely, SnipNotes on iPhone can be a great agent to storing pictures or screenshots on Apple Watch, since the app's category structure enables a folder like organization of your images. This little detail can't be stressed enough, because frankly, to this day, Photos on Apple Watch is egregiously half baked. That’s four out of five brownie points.

Suffice it to say that there is a whole lot more to discover, especially for advanced users, such as clipboard-to-note shortcuts and smart widgets. SnipNotes has clearly not spared any expenses to ultimately please every type of user, which is admirable in its intent but can sometimes produce an air of clutter to the untrained eye.

If you’re curious or in need of a notes app for your wrist, iPhone or iPad, grab SnipNotes for $0.99 on the App Store today.

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The best iPhone apps for tracking steps

Steffen Reich ∙ Updated April 3, 2020

No matter the extend, or amount of joy we derive from it, until anti-gravity boots have been invented and immobilized humanity once and for all, we all have to walk. To work, from work, to run errands, to take the dog to the park, to pick up the kids, to the pub on weekends. Sometimes home on all fours after that. But it is also a loved activity for those seeking a healthy lifestyle or regular exercise. In any event, with your iPhone in the pocket, it is easier than ever to record, visualize, or even gamify your endeavors.

To do justice to the wide array of step trackers available, we have parsed the App Store with the aim to only pick apps standing out for at least one unique quality. The result is - hopefully - a small but diverse sample of the best step tracker apps that is representative of the larger flock of step counters, some of which you might argue should or should not have been included based on merit, features or simply personal allegiance.

If that’s the case, as always do let us and your fellow readers know in the comments. And now, without further ado, let’s get into our list of the best pedometer apps!

The best pedometer apps Activity Tracker

We’re starting at the proverbial shallow end with Activity Tracker, meaning an app not too complex with respect to stats and analytics. Instead of drowning the user in numbers and tabs, Activity Tracker is a great candidate for those appreciating aesthetics and simplicity. A the same time, it manages to smartly condense the most important information about your activity and hide it in plain sight.

Activity Tracker records and presents your daily steps in a very familiar activity ring fashion, in addition logs flights, time, distance and also calories burnt, a giveaway other apps will already demand you go premium for. Moreover, the app icon badge can display your daily number of steps and a reasonable widget is being offered as well, certainly not the best among the pack but a nice to have all the same.

Finally, Apple Watch users are likely to appreciate the wrist implementation of Activity Tracker, as it bundles all the important information (steps, kcal, miles) in one quick glance. For more stats (hourly, monthly) and complete HealthKit integration you’ll have to upgrade to premium for $4.99. Either way, the basic app is a solid place to start your step counting journey.

• Device support: iPhone, Apple Watch • Widget: Yes (Steps, Miles) • Notable features: app icon badge, weekly goals, calories • Cost: free ($4.99 premium)

Pacer

Pacer’s full name - Pacer: Pedometer plus weight loss and BMI tracker - more aptly encompasses the allrounder that this app really is. To its credit, it somehow manages to not stretch itself too thinly taking on step counting, weight monitoring, personal coaching, but also social challenges and group forums. Yet on the flip side, it can for sure be a little overwhelming to those seeking out a straightforward pedometer.

To flesh it out briefly, the free app boasts a regular step counter comprising steps, flights, distance and plenty of graphs (for both portrait and landscape orientation). More exclusively to Pacer, it also features stats for weight, BMI & blood pressure. Refreshingly, Pacer houses a free community of user groups, which can be joined for discussions and the hunt for shared goals. Public events can be attended as well, boosting morale as you sure don’t want to sit at the bottom of the participant's list.

Pacer offers a subscription based Pro service (at $3.99 per month) that covers a plethora of goodies such as a personal coach for exercise plans and weight loss, guided challenges, plus more personal stats. And as you would expect from a jack-of-all-trades app like Pacer, it packages a potent Apple Watch companion as well.

• Device support: iPhone, Apple Watch • Widget: Yes (Steps, Cals, Time, Distance) • Notable features: calories, public events, groups  • Cost: free ($3.99 a month)

Pedometer++

Pedometer++ dates back all the way to 2013 and the release of Apple’s M7 motion coprocessor. Back then, it spearheaded the new movement and was among the first apps to embrace the freshly-fitted piece of hardware. Because of that pedigree alone, we’d be remiss to ignore the application. Besides, it’s the only app (next to StepsApp) to equip you with a nifty iMessage chat extension for friendly banter between you and your friends.

Outside of that, Pedometer++ is a straight shooter, only asking for a daily step goal and taking over from there. Perhaps its biggest strength is the UI, managing to boil down all the information (steps, floors, distance, a color chart) of the tracker in one single page, all the while retaining a clean look. As a result, there is no learning curve with this tracker, no hidden gestures or buttons, no fear of missing out. Via settings, Pedometer++ can also make use of the app icon badge to display the current step count. In addition, the app earns its stripes through accessibility features such as a wheelchair mode and a switch for rest days.

In closing, Pedometer++ can be stripped off its ads for a small tip of $0.99, plus comes in conjunction with an Apple Watch app capable of timing and recording your walks.

• Device support: iPhone, Apple Watch • Widget: Yes (Steps, Miles, Floors) • Notable features: app icon badge, daily goals, wheelchair mode, rest days • Cost: free

Stepz

Stepz most distinguishing feature is not its atrociously spelled name, but an emphasis on social and trophy hunting. The app has dedicated tabs for Achievements and Friends, each making clear where priorities lay during the development of Stepz. Fortunately, that gamble has paid dividends, as scoring and sharing achievements like ‘You have walked the length of the London Underground’ is actually a playful source of motivation.

At the same time, Stepz has been mindful with the implementation and ensured it doesn’t bleed into the core step tracking functions. The latter performs slightly above average amongst all apps featured, with rich and informative data, detailed graphs and an outstanding history tab for everything ever archived on your iPhone. To make sure they leave no stone unturned, an app badge switch and Lock screen widget (Steps & Distance) have been thrown into the bargain as well.

Suffice it to say that the dev team has done their homework on watchOS too, which for all intents and purposes wraps up the package nicely. For $0.99, you get to wipe the interface clean and remove all ads.

• Device support: iPhone, Apple Watch • Widget: Yes (Steps, Miles, Progress) • Notable features: app icon badge, daily goals, calories, achievements badges, friends • Cost: free ($0.99 premium)

Steps

Steps not only beats Stepz to its grammatically sound name, but also broaches the concept of a step counter from an entirely different angle. Essentially, Steps is the cleanest, least pompous pedometer in our line up, so much so that the entire display can be reduced to a single number (your step count).

Under its surface, one tap will reveal distance and time travelled, a swipe up invokes a brief history of the previous three days, while a swipe to the left is utilized to set a daily steps goal. Believe me that we are not trying to shortchange the app, but with the exception of a daily update notification, this is practically it. And that’s precisely the sales pitch.

If you grow fond of the slim step counter, for $1.99 Steps complements its service with a calories tracker.

• Device support: iPhone • Widget: Yes (Steps, Progress) • Notable features: daily goals • Cost: free ($1.99 premium)

StepsApp

StepsApp will tickle your fancy for various reasons, most likely though because of its breadth of customization abilities, especially with regard to your daily goals and notifications along the way. To give you an idea, you can flick on or off notifications for steps, calories, distance, time, weekly reports and an app icon badge. It additionally boasts the option to alter colors inside the app (limited until you go premium), which even redesigns the app's look on your iPhone's Home screen. Nice little touch there, StepsApp.

That is just the tip of the iceberg though, and the foundation is equally solid: the app sports a beautiful interface including a monthly calendar view akin to Apple’s own activity app calendar, interesting diagrams and submits one of the best widgets on iPhone any app in this roundup has to offer.

What’s more is that on Apple Watch, StepsApp's prowess (i.e. amount of data and breakdowns) comes close to rivalling Apple’s proprietary activity and exercise app, so much so that it can serve as a fully fledged outdoor GPS tracking device for walking and running. For $2.99, even more customization, Apple Health integration, and Apple Watch complications await.

• Device support: iPhone, Apple Watch • Widget: Yes (Steps, Miles, kcal, Time, Graph) • Notable features: app icon badge, various daily & weekly goals, app customization, calories, GPS tracking • Cost: free ($2.99 premium)

Step Counter

Step Counter arguably tries to accomplish a little less at once, albeit rocking a design quirky enough to have earned a spot in our list. Unlike the majority of step trackers, Step Counter asks you to select a character and matching attire first, presuming that a personalized avatar is going to funnel extra inspiration and ultimately motivation.

Once completed, the app emulates a fairly plain step counter sans notable bells and whistles. Such being the case, you will get steps and distance measurements, plus gratis hourly breakdowns. Furthermore, step, calories and distance goals can be adjusted and notifications hooked up to help you meet them as you go. Contrary to what some freemium apps at first skimp on, Step Counter is fully integrated into HealthKit from the get-go.

Conversely, they too are guilty of holding back some items to sway you in the direction of the $1.99 in-app upgrade, most pertinently calories analytics and personalized goals. Irrespective of redeeming the entry ticket or not, Step counter does not come with an Apple Watch application or a tailor-made widget for your iPhone.

• Device support: iPhone • Widget: No • Notable features: personal avatar, hourly breakdowns  steps and distance • Cost: free ($1.99 premium)

Honorable Mention

Wokamon 

Before we draw the curtain on this, one final app for you to consider goes by the name of Wokamon. If the success of Pokemon Go has proven anything last year, it would be that above all else, gamifying walks is going to get certain people off the couch. If you are guilty of the need for instant gratification, Wokamon could be the one app closest to a regular step tracker appealing to you. Start by walking to hatch an egg, subsequently keep logging steps to grow and foster your digital pet. Wokamon even features a weekly breakdown of your steps, so by any standards it sure is a pedometer, if slightly whacky at that.

• Cost: free (in-app purchases)

Conclusion

It is easy to get lost in the vast ocean of pedometers out there, and in the likely event that you bank on an application not featured in our roundup, as mentioned earlier, don't hesitate to fill us in!

Apart from that, the time has come to download one of the iPhone apps for tracking steps above, put on some walkable shoes and rediscover the joys of the great outdoors!

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Apple’s iPad strategy is finally stupendously watertight

Steffen Reich ∙ June 18, 2017

Rome was famously not built in a day. And we know now that at Apple, the iPad line-up was not intuitively streamlined until WWDC 2017. Factoring out the formative years of iPad shortly after its birth in 2010, too many incremental releases (e.g. iPad 3 to iPad 4 in the same year of 2012, also iPad Mini) and too much tinkering with suffixes in the name (Air, Pro, Mini, blank) had diluted and complicated the iPad brand, so much so that large numbers of customers must have struggled to stay on top of what’s the latest tablet product on Apple’s shelves.

By the same token, even if some customers were in the know about what the factual successor to their beloved iPad Air 2 is, most would understandably be hard pressed to remember which of Apple’s iPads is the most or least powerful in the mix, or how they all compare to each other in terms of pricing. That is of course besides all the other important product specifications (camera, Apple Pencil compatibility, etc.) every informed customer should be able to easily grasp for each iPad available, before ultimately pouncing for the most suitable choice. And regrettably up until mid 2017, Apple has not made any of that easy for us.

I would in fact go further and lament that it's been a sticky mess, lacking direction and - more reprehensibly - common sense.

Inconsistencies left right and center

I’m not going to bore you for long with the most questionable decisions of the past, such as the counterintuitive marketing language used between the ‘new iPad’ (iPad 3), the 'iPad with Retina Display' (iPad 4) and the subsequent iPad Air, or instances where iPad Minis eclipsed their bigger brothers in specs or numbers.

However what these examples do underscore is that the most recent case of Apple not being able to draw clear, differentiating lines between their different iPad categories is on no account unprecedented. Just consider this: not long ago, in March to be exact, Apple released their ‘new’ 9.7-inch iPad (no suffix) to a market until then sporting the 9.7-inch iPad Air 2 and the 9.7” iPad Pro. With that, prospects were asked to make sense of three (to the naked eye) identically looking iPads, all of which had a unique marketing slant and story to tell.

Add the iPad Mini 4 and the super sized 12.9” iPad Pro to the equation and it’s easy to see how Apple could have really dropped the ball at WWDC ’17 by adding insult to injury and introducing yet another brand new iPad, the smashing 10.5” iPad Pro. Thankfully, they did just about the opposite.

When all of a sudden everything stacks up

Instead of presenting a historically inflated iPad line up, the 10.5-inch reveal was preceded by some serious purging actions behind the scenes. The result is beautiful, not just because the 9.7” ambiguity has been completely eliminated.

What’s more striking is that customers are now dealing with three iPad classes (Pro, Normal, Mini) and accordingly unique size offers for all three, unique prices for all three and even uniquely capable chips for all three. All criteria is arranged in an entirely intuitive order, namely descending from bigger to smaller, from more expensive to cheaper, from more powerful to more economic, in short: from Pro to Mini. It’s like Apple themselves got tired of the fuzzy product lines and decided to do a full one-eighty.

What you see is what you get now, meaning even the less techy customer is going to be able to remember that the big Pro iPads rock the most powerful chips (A10X) followed by the medium sized normal iPad (A9), which in turn has the lead over the physically smallest iPad Mini (A8). Gone are the days of an awkward A9X chip in the dead on arrival 9.7” iPad Pro, or other illogical decisions such as equipping one iPad Pro with a 12MP rear camera while the big brother has a sucky eight.

Today, the meaningful specs such as the chip or camera are aligned in descending order at 12 MP for all Pro iPads and 8 MP for the mid tier choice plus lower tier iPad Mini. It’s just disarmingly straightforward. Want the most storage? You’ll have to shoot for the physically biggest Pro category to get up to 512GB of storage. Want to try the least powerful iPad to test the water first? Grab the physically smallest iPad. Which iPads are Apple Pencil compatible? Only the ones bigger than the original iPad. Find the 9.7” size to be perfect? Good, you’re done, no need to choose between a 9.7-inch iPad Pro, iPad Air and iPad whatnot.

The logic behind this is painfully commonsensical, which begs the question why it took Apple so long to get there, but I am willing to forgive and forget. Water under the bridge, Apple, what matters is that we finally have clarity.

June 2017 has not only brought us spanking new iPads and a glimpse of an iPad-focussed iOS 11, but also finally clear product differentiation that will be easily replicable for experts and more importantly understandable to the average customer. In that vein, WWDC 17 could have been a watershed moment for the one product line Tim Cook has been so bullish about time and again. So please Apple, do not muck this up come November or at any other point in 2018, it took us long enough to get here.

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Apple honors select app developers in its 2017 Design Awards

Steffen Reich ∙ June 7, 2017

Unlike the name might imply, Apple’s Design Awards are not exclusively dedicated to chasing the pinnacle of visual design, but more comprehensively appraise other app elements such as user interface innovation, sound design and also gameplay for apps offering unique gaming experiences. The latter, games, have easily stolen the show this year with 5 out of the 12 winners coming from said category.

In a slightly embellished press release, Apple announced the names and links of all twelve winning applications, each coming with a punchy story to explain and celebrate the selection in addition to screenshots and pictures of each developer team.

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You can now protect your Apple Pencil with Apple’s own Pencil case

Steffen Reich ∙ June 5, 2017

It was only a matter of time until Apple would release an in-house case for Apple Pencil. Lo and behold, just after this year's main WWDC keynote had come to a close, the item already offered by various third party companies was silently added to the Apple Store.

We'll put this addition down as rather overdue and predictable - all the while welcome - which also holds true for the colors currently on offer. With Saddle Brown, Taupe, Midnight Blue and Black, Apple draws on the four most classic tones also available for iPhone and iPad cases, playing it safe rather than betting on a new color palette. As it stands, the cases ship in 3-5 business days and can be grabbed for a hefty $29 per piece.

If this is what you were waiting for, hurry up, because shipping times might slip fast!

 

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iOS 11 on iPad comes with a raft of new features for Apple Pencil

Steffen Reich ∙ June 5, 2017

Apple Pencil is already loved by a large constituency, but new features added this fall will mean more and better use cases for the white stylus. Deeper integration for Apple Pencil has been developed for both the current and new iPad Pro range, the latter however does boast additional technological advancements such as ProMotion, developed to further boost the responsiveness and latency of the writing tool.

With the exception of ProMotion, all iPad Pros in the market are going to acquire a bunch of new skills. Naturally, the most prominent features were introduced under the buzzwords of Instant Markup, Instant Notes, Inline Drawing and Scan & Sign.

To flesh out Instant Markup, any device screenshot taken on iPad immediately creates a thumbnail in the newly-designed app dock, which in turn can be marked up or manipulated otherwise before being shared.

Besides this and a built-in scanner functionality for the enhanced Notes app, Inline Drawing (between typed paragraphs) for Pencil will be implemented, allowing for the user to easily clear as much space as needed between written words for drawings or sketches.

It is also now confirmed that touching the lock screen with Pencil will instantaneously open a clean piece of paper to work on. The instant note will be saved inside your Notes app in the event that the iPad is locked again.

What's more is that iOS 11 boasts smarter machine learning algorithms capable of recognizing Apple Pencil handwritings in Notes, which means you will be able to search notes by way of Spotlight search and consequently detect files containing words scrawled by hand.

 

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With ARKit, Apple turns iOS devices into the largest AR platform in the world

Steffen Reich ∙ Updated June 21, 2017

Augmented Reality is set to make its mark on Apple's iOS 11, as the impressive technology has been showed off on stage moments ago. ARKit brings the API to all developers, allowing developers to tap into the latest computer vision technology to build compelling virtual content on top of real-life scenes. It brings along all new possibilities for existing apps like the by now infamous Pokemon Go, as well as for new creations such as camera apps allowing for virtual object manipulation.

The technology is going to be rolled out across all the latest iPhones and iPads, virtually rendering Apple's devices the largest player in the Augmented Reality field over night.

The live demo given certainly looked awe-inspiring and showed multiple objects being rendered on top of an on-stage table and subsequently affecting each other when shuffled around. That is to say, the shadows cast by all objects and light emanating from the virtual lamp adapted to corresponding movements and displayed correctly on surface of the real world table.

In a second, equally impressive, demonstration, a Lego Batmobile was projected onto the table and disassembled in real time by touching the iPad's screen, camera angle and individual bricks could be smoothly manipulated. It remains to be seen what else developers and Apple themselves have up their sleeves later this year, this short excursion alone certainly did whet our appetite for more.

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Apple unveils Apple Pay person-to-person transactions, and Apple Pay Cash card

Steffen Reich ∙ June 5, 2017

The number one contactless payment service in the mobile world, Apple Pay, will be implementing person to person payments starting with iOS 11. What the rumor mill had treated for the longest time as Apple Cash is now going to be located in your redesigned iMessage app drawer, and serve as an easy way to send money to any friend or family member on Apple's iMessage service.

Money transferred via iMessage winds up in the recipient's Wallet app in the shape of a brand new card called Apple Pay Cash card. From there, the card can be thought of as a multi purpose account, facilitating purchases on the App Store, storing the money for future transactions, but also offering the handy option to withdraw the money to your private bank account. As expected, Touch ID authentication is required to go ahead with any one transaction.

 

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Music app undergoes major redesign in watchOS 4

Steffen Reich ∙ June 5, 2017

Apple has taken the wraps off the new Music app design on Apple Watch coming this fall. It looks to do away with the sometimes cumbersome, manual iPhone to Apple Watch synchronisation process of playlists, and instead promises automatic syncing based on what you like to listen to on your iPhone.

As a result, your favorite playlists and most frequently played tunes (including My New Music Mix, My Favorites Mix, Heavy Rotation, My Chill Mix) will automatically appear on Apple Watch, furthermore multiple playlists outside of those are going to be permitted as well.

The new design seems to abandon small fonts and lettering in favor of album covers and images where possible, though we have yet to see the full extend to which the app has been overhauled. In any event, the Digital Crown was touted as the go-to button for swift and effective music selection on your wrist.

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How to track your sleep using AutoSleep

Steffen Reich ∙ Updated January 10, 2019

You don’t have to be a scientist to know that a good night’s sleep is conducive to your overall wellbeing and health. On that note, a while ago we have screened the App Store for the best sleep trackers available on iPhone and Apple Watch so as to make it easy for you to pick and choose your new sleep companion.

While varying in looks and features, all of the apps listed serve the same purpose: record how you slept and explain possible discrepancies in perceived quality of sleep and your actual rest. With the hands-off roundup in mind, we decided to select the most requested and popular app featured - AutoSleep - and throw a complementary hands-on tutorial on sleep tracking into the mix. Want to learn more about how to track your sleep using your iPhone, Apple Watch, and the AutoSleep app? Then join us for the tour!

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