John
AppStories Episode 143 - The 2019 MacStories Selects Awards
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This week on AppStories, Federico and John reveal the 2019 MacStories Selects Awards.
Introducing MusicBot: The All-in-One Apple Music Assistant, Powered by Shortcuts
For the past several months, I’ve been working on a shortcut designed to be the ultimate assistant for Apple Music. Called MusicBot, the shortcut encompasses dozens of different features and aims to be an all-in-one assistant that helps you listen to music more quickly, generate intelligent mixes based on your tastes, rediscover music from your library, control playback on AirPlay 2 speakers, and much more. I poured hundreds of hours of work into MusicBot, which has gained a permanent spot on my Home screen. Best of all, MusicBot is available to everyone for free.
I’m a happy Apple Music subscriber, and I love the direction Apple has taken with the service: fewer exclusive deals, more human curation, artist spotlights, and playlists updated daily. However, I believe the Music app for iPhone and iPad leaves much to be desired in terms of navigation and fast access to your favorite music. While Music gets the job done as a gateway to a streaming catalog, I find its interactions somewhat slow when it comes to playing my favorite playlists on shuffle or getting to albums I frequently listen to. Some of Music’s most interesting mixes are only available by asking Siri; additionally, getting to certain sections of the app or tweaking specific settings often takes far too many taps for my taste.
I created MusicBot for two reasons: I wanted to speed up common interactions with the Music app by using custom actions in the Shortcuts app; and I also wanted to build a series of “utilities” for Apple Music that could be bundled in a single, all-in-one shortcut instead of dozens of smaller, standalone ones.
The result is, by far, the most complex shortcut I’ve ever ever created (MusicBot spans 750+ actions in the Shortcuts app), but that’s not the point. MusicBot matters to me because, as I’ve shared before, music plays an essential role in my life, and MusicBot lets me enjoy my music more. This is why I spent so much time working on MusicBot, and why I wanted to share it publicly with everyone for free: I genuinely believe MusicBot offers useful enhancements for the Apple Music experience on iOS and iPadOS, providing tools that can help you rediscover lost gems in your library or find your next music obsession.
Let’s dive in.
Q&A
Question: Hi Federico, is it possible to create a shortcut that sets the audio output destination not to one, but to all six of my HomePods at the same time? The ‘Set Playback Destination’ action only offers one at a time. (Tom, @tomschmitt)
Unfortunately, Tom, this is not possible, and it’s one of the...
Adapt, Episode 15: 2020 iPad Wishes→
On this week’s episode of Adapt:
On the brink of the new year, Federico and Ryan share their hopes for the iPad in 2020, then review Ryan’s USB drive challenge and answer some #AskAdapt questions.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.
Connected, Episode 273: Come on, Guys, Let’s Go to the Station→
On this week’s episode of Connected:
Stephen and Myke are joined by John Voorhees to talk about the new Mac Pro, then Federico reflects on the 5th anniversary of Shortcuts.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here).
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Our 2020 App Wishes
Connected, Episode 272: If the Issue Persists, Contact Apple→
On last week’s episode of Connected:
Apple is handing out awards, and Myke is dealing with the fallout of his TV purchase. Stephen is aware that musicians exist and Federico wants all the 2020 rumors to be true.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here).
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Retrieving Release Dates for Albums on Apple Music
In last week’s issue of MacStories Weekly, Finn and I explained how it’s possible to integrate Shortcuts more deeply with Apple Music by taking advantage of the Apple Music web API. In the newsletter, Finn shared a tutorial on how to generate an Apple Music authentication token – a private key that lets you...