Lock Launcher Introduces “No Redirect” Launchers, XL Widgets for iOS 27

By Federico Viticci

My Home Screen setup with Liquid Glass widgets powered by Lock Launcher.

I don’t think I ever mentioned it on MacStories (although I probably did at some point on AppStories or Unwind), but my favorite “launcher” app for iOS is a utility called Lock Launcher, which I’ve been using on and off for the last couple of years. Lock Launcher started as an app for adding URL schemes to the Lock Screen a few years back, and it gradually evolved into a comprehensive “widget studio” app to design launcher widgets of all kinds for the Home Screen, Lock Screen, Dynamic Island, Live Activities, and more.

Anyway, I’m covering the app on the site today because it was updated with two features that I didn’t think were possible or allowed on the App Store, and I want to highlight them for our readers. I’m not really sure how the developers were able to add these features to the app; you may want to download it from the App Store quickly, just in case.

For starters, Lock Launcher now lets you create launcher shortcuts that open apps directly and immediately, rather than redirecting you to the Lock Launcher app first.

For years now, launcher apps on the iPhone have had to employ this workaround: you’d tap on a shortcut that opened, say, Ivory, but you would see the launcher app flash onscreen briefly before redirecting you to the actual destination app you selected. Somehow, Lock Launcher is now circumventing this limitation with a ‘Direct Open’ mode that I haven’t seen in other launcher apps for iOS. That sequence of widget, host app, and destination app was, ultimately, the reason why I always stopped using third-party launcher apps, and I love that it’s been removed by Lock Launcher.

Launching apps without redirects via Lock Launcher.Replay

At long last, I’ve been able to create a dense Home Screen with 40 icons (36 in the widget plus 4 in the dock), and they all launch directly when tapped.

My new Home Screen powered by Lock Launcher.

The screenshot above brings me to the second feature added in the version of Lock Launcher currently available on the App Store: XL widgets on iPhone in iOS 27.

Now, as far as I know, if an app wants to adopt an API exclusive to a future version of iOS, it typically needs to be built against that version’s SDK using the corresponding Xcode beta. However, the App Store isn’t currently accepting apps built with the iOS 27 SDK. And yet, the Lock Launcher developers must have figured out a way to support the new systemExtraLargePortrait widget size and make it work on devices running iOS 27 even though the app was built with the iOS 26 SDK. My best guess: they’re using a workaround that involves visionOS 26 APIs, since the Vision Pro received support for that family of widgets last year. (I’d love to know more about this.)

These two features, combined with the ability to apply the Liquid Glass material to widgets for beautiful refractions of the system wallpaper, make Lock Launcher the most powerful and customizable launcher utility on iOS to date. I hope writing about it doesn’t get the developers in trouble.

Lock Launcher is available for free on the App Store, with advanced features available through an optional Pro in-app purchase.

AppStories - Ep. 495 - 55 minutes

Open Minis Turns iOS into an Agent Playground

Federico

John

This week on AppStories, John and Federico discuss the changing face of the AI-fueled App Store and questionable changes made to TestFlight before going into the nerdiest details of Open Minis, an iOS app that brings desktop-class agents onto the iPhone and iPad.

Then on AppStories+, Federico and John explore Cmux, a Mac terminal app with an iPhone and iPad beta that makes it easier than ever to sync coding projects across devices.

Also available on YouTube here.

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AppStories Episode 495 - Open Minis Turns iOS into an Agent Playground

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Open Minis Is the iOS Agent I Wish Siri AI Could Be

By Federico Viticci

Open Minis for iOS.

Every once in a while, I come across a third-party app that either resets my expectations for a particular niche of software on iOS or creates an entirely new category altogether. I’ve had quite a few of these moments in the 17 years I’ve been writing app reviews at MacStories: Editorial, Workflow, Obsidian, Sky, and, most recently, OpenClaw come to mind. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had another such moment with Open Minis, a new chatbot app for iPhone and iPad that I can best describe as getting a preview of Siri AI’s agentic future, today.

Open Minis is an on-device agent that lets you use any frontier model for conversations, with a twist: unlike other AI wrappers, this app deeply integrates with all sorts of native Apple system frameworks using official APIs available to third-party developers. Open Minis can control Reminders and Music, which we have seen before, but also Calendar, Maps, HomeKit, HealthKit, and Files; it can even work with frameworks such as Vision for OCR, Apple NLP for natural language processing, the iOS clipboard, speech recognition and dictation, NFC, and Bluetooth. Furthermore, Open Minis comes with its own configurable workspace in the Files app, has an on-device memory system, and features browser-use capabilities via a (once again, native for iOS developers) built-in WebKit web view.

Effectively, Open Minis is what would happen if you rolled Claude Code and OpenClaw into one intuitive agentic experience designed for Apple users, with a powerful tool-calling harness that can improve and tweak itself, and with integrations specifically designed for the Apple ecosystem. It is the most impressive indie app I’ve seen in a while. If you were disappointed by the lack of power-user capabilities in Siri AI, this is a real, currently shipping example of what Siri AI could be if only it were powered by a frontier model with truly agentic functionalities.

AppStories - Ep. 494 - 48 minutes

All About Siri AI

Federico

John

This week, on AppStories, Federico and John look at what Siri AI is good at, where it needs improvement, and where it might be heading.

On AppStories+, the conversation expands to Federico and John’s experiences with the betas of macOS Golden Gate, iOS 27, and iPadOS 27.

Also available on YouTube here.

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AppStories Episode 494 - All About Siri AI

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Siri AI and Apple’s Trickle-Up Strategy

By Federico Viticci

The new Siri AI in iOS 27.

In the month that I’ve been using iOS 27 (launching in public beta today) and the new Siri AI, I’ve come to a few conclusions: Siri AI is a much better Siri and will (probably) be a massive success; the newfound chatbot capabilities of Siri will pose a serious threat to OpenAI and the vast majority of free ChatGPT users they have; and the new Siri is (again, probably) not for me at the moment. At the very least, it can’t be right now given its lack of support for third-party apps and technical issues I’ve encountered during beta testing.

It took me a while to accept the fact that Siri AI can’t be the kind of AI assistant I’d spend hours working with every day. But after testing iOS 27’s new Siri experience every day (and breaking it often in the process), I think that’s okay – and, arguably, what Apple is shooting for at the moment.

The new Siri AI is not designed for people who have grown accustomed to working with frontier models and agents such as Claude Code and Codex. The first version of Siri AI can’t be considered an “agent”, nor can it be compared to products from Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google that are targeting power users living at the bleeding edge of AI. If you go into Siri AI thinking that it’s Apple’s answer to ChatGPT Work or Claude Cowork for long-running tasks or deep research queries, you’re going to be disappointed – like I initially was.

Instead, Siri AI carries all the typical traits of a new Apple product: it’s a user-friendly experience designed for the masses, without any of the complexities that define a power-user tool, for better or worse. This is how Apple rolls: they don’t start from a high power-user ceiling and let products trickle down to consumers; they always start from the consumer level and refine, iterate, and extend until products trickle up to power users. This perspective isn’t meant to excuse the (many) current flaws of Siri AI. (More on them below.) It’s just the necessary lens for understanding how Apple is addressing their AI shortcomings in a way that doesn’t betray the company’s soul and design ethos.

There will be plenty more to say about iOS 27, the improved Shortcuts app, Liquid Glass tweaks, and other system enhancements later this year. After all, I have a review to write. Today’s column is merely an opportunity for me to reason through the obstacles I’ve faced with Siri AI and the way I’ve had to re-learn how to think about Siri.

AppStories - Ep. 493 - 52 minutes

Fable 5 and OpenAI’s Curious ChatGPT Update

John

Federico

This week on AppStories, Federico and John look at our experiences with Claude Fable 5 and how they differ from other models and break down the controversial changes made by OpenAI to its Mac’s ChatGPT app.

Then on AppStories+, John and Federico contrast their experiences with Fable 5 and OpenAI’s new family of GPT 5.6 models.

Also available on YouTube here or download the transcript here.

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AppStories Episode 493 - Fable 5 and OpenAI’s Curious ChatGPT Update

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AppStories - Ep. 492 - 44 minutes

Email Survival Guide

John

Federico

This week on AppStories, Federico and John talk about the 10+ email apps they’ve used over the years and how their strategies for dealing with recent spikes in email volume has caused them to change their approaches.

On AppStories+, Federico and John update listeners on their summertime agentic coding projects.

Also available on YouTube here.

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AppStories Episode 492 - Email Survival Guide

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Safari’s New MCP Server Is Great for Agents →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Saron Yitbarek, writing on the WebKit blog:

In Safari Technology Preview 247, we’re introducing the Safari MCP server — a Model Context Protocol server for web developers that makes your web development and debugging workflow faster and more powerful. We know agents are increasingly integral to the coding process and the Safari MCP server gives your agent the ability to know how your code actually renders in the browser by connecting it to a Safari browser window.

Any MCP-compatible client can connect to the Safari MCP server. By connecting your agent to a Safari browser window, your agent can emulate what your users experience, giving it the information it needs to debug more autonomously, like access to the DOM, network requests, screenshots, and console output.

Importantly:

The Safari MCP server runs entirely on your local machine and makes no network calls of its own. It also does not have access to your personal information in Safari (e.g. AutoFill or other browser activity). When it captures page content, screenshots, or console logs, that data goes directly to the agent you’re running — not to Apple. What happens to that data from there depends on the agent and model you’re using. As with any agent you give access to your browser, only use ones you trust.

For the past few months, I’ve been using Google Chrome on my MacBook Pro and Mac Studio not because I like the browser (in fact, I really dislike Chrome’s text rendering and UI), but simply because it was the best option for agents. In Codex specifically, between Playwright, Chrome Dev Tools, and OpenAI’s own Chrome extension, I could kick off research tasks (such as vacation planning and booking a hotel) that involved a browser directly from my iPhone, letting Codex drive the research on my remote Mac.

Safari in Codex.

Now, thanks to Safari’s new MCP server, I no longer have to use Chrome on desktop and can return to a unified browser setup across all my devices. Even better: it actually looks like Apple shipped the most ergonomic browser MCP for agents to date. The MCP server has dedicated tools for page extraction (including getting webpages as Markdown, based on WebKit’s own conversion pipeline), evaluating JavaScript, DOM interactions (clicking, scrolling, resizing the viewport for mobile screens, etc.), taking screenshots, and more. I set this up immediately in Codex, and I also asked Codex about comparing Safari’s MCP to its own Chrome extension and the older Playwright. The verdict: although Chrome has a richer API with Chrome Dev Tools when it comes to network requests, Codex actually preferred Apple’s leaner, more direct approach for letting an agent drive and debug a browser.

I’m really happy to see folks at Apple embrace agentic tools: between the new MCP capabilities of Xcode and now this, it looks like Apple’s software (on the Mac, of course) is becoming more and more approachable by people who are working in new ways thanks to agents. Whether you’re a web developer or tinkerer, I highly recommend checking out what Apple has released in Safari Technology Preview. More of this, please.

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Headless Macs and Hamstrung iPads

By Federico Viticci

My Codex setup.

In the current era of coding agents becoming productivity assistants, iPadOS’ limitations are no longer defined by the lack of desktop-class multitasking or access to external peripherals. A new class of iPadOS shortcomings looms large on the horizon: the iPad’s app sandboxing and the absence of an open filesystem have relegated it to acting as a remote control for agents.

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AppStories Episode 495 - Open Minis Turns iOS into an Agent Playground

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AppStories Episode 494 - All About Siri AI

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AppStories Episode 493 - Fable 5 and OpenAI’s Curious ChatGPT Update

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AppStories Episode 492 - Email Survival Guide

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