You don’t want to miss this week’s Remaster, where we cover our picks for the best games we’ve played in 2017. You can listen here.
Sponsored by:
- Crimson Mesa: Rediscover ‘The Ancient Game of the River’.
Connected, Episode 171: Leave It to Stephen→
Apple’s had a rough week, Myke’s office is full of assistants and Federico is back with a new task manager and an iPhone X review.
On this week’s episode of Connected, I cover the other half of my experience with Things, and we discuss my iPhone X story. You can listen here.
Sponsored by:
One More Step Toward 2018 Emoji List→
Unicode last night announced the beta version of next year’s emoji release.
This beta release marks one step closer to toward a softball emoji, as well as a cupcake, redheads, bagel or kangaroo. If they make the final cut, that is.
Other emoji candidates in the beta include a teddy bear, mango, party face, skateboard, and spool of thread.
Unfortunately, the proposed emoji that caused a controversy within the Unicode Consortium – the frowning pile of poo – didn’t make the cut for next year. The list isn’t finalized yet (it’ll be in early 2018), but I already see the party face emoji as a potential new favorite.
Also worth noting: there’s a proposal to add support for changing the direction of emoji. If accepted, I wonder if Apple could add a “direction picker” to the existing emoji skin tone menu.
Instagram Rolls Out Private Stories Archive→
Two important updates to Instagram’s Stories feature announced today – here’s Casey Newton, writing at The Verge:
Instagram is rolling out a private archive of the ephemeral stories you have posted in the app. Starting today, Instagram will begin to add your expired stories to the archive feature, which until now has been used only to house photos and videos you no longer want to display on your public profile. The stories archive, which you will be able to opt out of, is being introduced globally on Android and iOS.
The stories archive represents another feature copied from Snapchat, which introduced its own version of the archive, called Memories, last year. But the archive differs from Snap’s version in one key respect: Instagram will let you post old stories to your profile in a feature the company is calling Highlights. You’ll be able to package old stories together in the archive, give them a name, and share them to your profile, where they will appear above your other posts.
I don’t use Instagram Stories as frequently as my friends (all their social updates start via Stories these days), but with an automatic archive feature combined with Highlights, it may be time for me to start posting puppy videos more often.
iPhone X: A New Frontier
For a radically redesigned iPhone launching on the tenth anniversary of the first model, it seems reasonable to lead a review of the device with a retrospective on the original iPhone and how, over the course of a decade, its vision matured into the iPhone X. But today, I want to begin with the iPhone 4.
Gboard Adds Automatic Theme Switching
I’ve always liked Gboard, Google’s alternative keyboard for iOS. Gboard combines Google’s intelligence (with accurate and personalized autocorrect, emoji and GIF suggestions) with handy features such as glide typing. However, as I mentioned before, I couldn’t use Gboard as my primary keyboard on the iPhone for a variety of reasons: it lacked iOS’ native dictation mode, couldn’t automatically switch light and dark themes depending on the context of the current app, and, worst of all, it didn’t support multi-language typing without manually picking a different keyboard layout.
Siri dictation and simultaneous multi-language support are still missing (the former will likely never be added), but today’s update is an important step towards making Gboard feel more integrated with iOS. Gboard can now switch its default theme between light and dark based on the app you’re using. I’m not sure how Google pulled this off, but I tested Gboard with the dark modes in Apollo, Tweetbot, Copied, and Bear, and the keyboard always used the dark theme instead of the light version. Conversely, in Safari, App Store, and other light-themed apps, Gboard used the light mode instead.
This was one of my complaints about the old Gboard: its default light theme looked garish in dark apps; on the other hand, if you persistently enabled Gboard’s dark theme, then it would look out of place in apps like Messages or Mail. With automatic theme switch, changing Gboard’s default appearance is no longer a concern because it adapts to the app you’re using.
I’ve found a couple of apps where Gboard doesn’t correctly apply the dark theme (Overcast is one of them), but I’m impressed overall; Gboard even switches to the dark theme when you swipe down on the Home screen to open Spotlight. I’d be curious to know which iOS API Google is using to implement this option, and if third-party developers can optimize for Gboard in any way.
Pick 2: Pixelmator Pro and Things 3
John
AppStories Episode 34 - Pick 2: Pixelmator Pro and Things 3
0:00
37:37
37:37
Federico and John pick two apps they’ve been experimenting with recently and discuss how it’s going so far. In this installment of Pick 2, John covers macOS image editor Pixelmator Pro, which was released last week, and Federico explains how he’s integrated Things 3 for iOS into recent projects.
Apps with True Black Themes, Vol. 1
With the launch of the iPhone X, a few developers have realized that the custom dark modes they offer in their apps, usually designed with a mix of dark grays and blues, don’t look nearly as good as pure black on the device’s OLED display. In this collection, we’re going to round up...
Installing Custom Fonts in Ulysses
I often get asked by other users of Ulysses on iOS how I managed to install a custom font (in my case, Nitti) to use in the app. Fortunately, the process is very straightforward and doesn’t require installing a custom system profile with AnyFont. Once you have a font file (.ttf or .otf) ready...