A Computer for Everything: One Year of iPad Pro

I wasn't sure I needed a 12.9-inch iPad when Apple announced the iPad Pro in September 2015. And yet, over a year later, the iPad Pro is, by far, the best computer I've ever owned. I've never felt so satisfied with any other Apple device before – but the transition wasn't easy.
After years spent adapting what I learned from the Mac to bring it to iOS, what I found on the other side was a more focused, efficient way of working and communicating with people. The iPad Pro accelerated my move to an iOS-only setup; today, I genuinely don’t know how to perform certain tasks on a Mac anymore.

I use my iPad Pro for everything. It’s my writing machine and favorite research tool, but I also rely on it to organize my finances, play games, read books and watch movies, program in Python and Workflow, and manage two successful businesses. While I’ve been advocating for such multi-purpose use of the iPad platform for a while, the iPad Pro elevated the threshold of possibilities, reaching an inflection point that has pushed others to switch to an iPad as their primary computer as well.

Much of the iPad’s strength lies in iOS and its app ecosystem. If Apple were to stop making iPads, I’d still prefer to work on a device that runs iOS rather than macOS. iOS is where app innovation happens on a regular basis with developers one-upping each other in terms of what software can achieve; I also prefer the structure and interactions of iOS itself. The iPad Pro is the purest representation of iOS: it’s a computer that can transform into anything you need it to be.

Even if this discussion was settled a long time ago, it bears repeating: millions of people today like working on iOS more than they do on macOS, and the iPad Pro is the best machine to run iOS. There is no sarcastic subtext about the Mac here, which is still a fantastic environment that many Apple users love and need for their line of work. The Mac and the iPad can coexist in a market where customers believe one is superior to the other. I prefer working on the iPad; others like their Macs more. And that’s fine because, ultimately, the Apple ecosystem as a whole grows stronger and we all reap the benefits.

The iPad Pro is the purest representation of iOS.

Over the past year of daily iPad Pro usage, I’ve made it my personal goal to optimize my iPad workflows as much as possible. This is one of the best aspects of the iOS platform: competition between developers is fierce and you can always choose between different apps to get work done – apps that are improved on a regular basis and are constantly updated for the latest iOS technologies. With enough curiosity and patience, iOS rewards you with the discovery of new ways to work and save time.

Since my last iPad story in February, I’ve taken a hard look at my entire iPad setup and rethought the parts that weren’t working. I tried new apps, created new automations, and optimized every weak spot I could find. I improved how I collaborate with my teammates and produce weekly content for Club MacStories members. Thanks to the time I invested in understanding and fine-tuning my iPad Pro, I was able to embark on more projects, double MacStories’ growth, and manage a larger team.

As a result, my iPad Pro today is noticeably more capable than it was a year ago – all without the need for a hardware refresh.

Here’s what I’ve done.

eBook Version

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Table of Contents

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

The Downsides of iOS File Management

Hardware

Twelve South ParcSlope

Razer Keyboard Case

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

Entertainment

Music

Video

Console Gaming

Calendars

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Automation

Time Tracking

Publish to WordPress

Combine Images

Copy App Store Links

Launcher Shortcuts

RSS and Fiery Feeds

Markdown and Editorial

Miscellaneous

Clipboard Management

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

Video Editing

DEVONthink and PDF Search

Mind Mapping

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

Podcasting

External USB Drive

Image Editing

Extensions

Everything Else

iPad Pro: Year One

Credits

Apps

Amazon Hardware

Workflows

File Management

Due to the lack of a traditional, Finder-like way to browse the local iOS filesystem, file management is one of the toughest challenges of switching to an iPad-first lifestyle. After years of experiments and workarounds, I’ve come to terms with the fact that file management on iOS requires a new mindset altogether.

The best way to manage files on iOS is to go all-in with cloud storage and rely on native apps and integrations to access your files everywhere and minimize duplicates.

Over the past year, I’ve consolidated all my file storage needs in Dropbox and iCloud. I use iOS apps to open and manage files that live in a cloud service, and I leverage iOS’ document providers to open and import files in apps that don’t integrate with Dropbox. While the document picker and document providers get a bad rap, they have improved since the days of iOS 8. I use document providers every day for collaboration with the MacStories team.

Accepting this new reality – that an iPad can’t manage local files and folders like a Mac – took time and dedication. If you don’t adapt – if you think you can force iOS to be more like the Mac’s Finder – you’re going to have a bad experience in your transition to iOS. Alas, this also means that people who want to, but can’t adapt – either because they can’t use cloud services at work or prefer not to store personal files anywhere online – will have to work harder to make an iPad their primary computer. It is possible to create your own centralized, Finder-like setup on an iPad, but it comes with substantial trade-offs.

Dropbox is my primary cloud filesystem and backup service. All my work-related text files and documents are stored in Dropbox, which continues to offer specific advantages over Apple’s iCloud Drive: Dropbox integrates with hundreds of iOS apps, it supports public sharing on a file and folder-based level (fantastic for collaboration), and it even works with external web automation services such as IFTTT and Zapier. I don’t subscribe to the theory that Dropbox is a feature, not a product, when Apple’s implementation of file management in iCloud Drive doesn’t even come close to Dropbox’s feature set. As an extensible file management platform, Dropbox rocks.

However, iCloud isn’t as bad or limited as some are painting it. iCloud is an umbrella term that covers multiple parts of the modern iOS experience – it’s more in line with Apple’s original goals today than it was when it launched five years ago.

I use two iCloud features for my files and documents:

iCloud Photo Library, for photos, videos, and, more importantly for MacStories screenshots;

iCloud Drive, for secondary file backups and quick access to documents in some apps.

Thanks to the multiple layers of Dropbox and iCloud, I can set up a new iPad every year with relative ease – all I have to do is log into my iCloud and Dropbox accounts and point apps to their associated storage space. In addition to being an easier way to work with files than shuffling local documents around, this cloud-first approach is an utmost necessity as you can’t backup an iOS device like you would with a Mac, using external drives and apps like Time Machine or SuperDuper. When everything is already stored in Dropbox and iCloud, managing iOS apps becomes easier, and I feel safer because my files are also backed up and I have virtually infinite copies of them.

Google Photos

I’m terrified of losing my photos and videos, so I also pay for Google Photos storage to keep original copies on Google’s servers. Google Photos isn’t my primary app to browse photos, but I like keeping tabs on the company’s machine learning efforts, feeding its engine the contents of my photos so it can grow smarter over time. I find Google Photos to be superior to Apple’s Photos app to delete multiple photos at once and to create shared albums for other people. Photo content search is also slightly more intelligent than Apple’s take on iOS 10.

All my most important files and folders (work PDFs, podcast audio files, invoices, etc.) and app-specific libraries are either stored in iCloud (with iCloud Drive and CloudKit) or Dropbox. This isn’t new – I’ve been storing app documents in Dropbox since they launched an iOS SDK in 2010 – but being religious about cloud storage entails a deeper optimization of iOS to go beyond Apple’s tools as well as the limitations of the official Dropbox app.

I find Readdle’s Documents app to be the best file manager for iOS. Documents is available on both the iPhone and iPad and it’s the closest alternative to a Finder you can have on iOS. The app supports Split View on the iPad and you can throw anything at it with a share extension; Documents will store files and organize them with an interface that mirrors what we’re used to having on desktop computers.

I like Documents for two reasons: it’s built with serious file management in mind (unlike the iCloud Drive app, which is severely limited on iOS) and it’s meant to be used as a bridge between the local filesystem and the cloud. Because of these design decisions, Documents is my main app to manage files in Dropbox and iCloud Drive instead of the official apps from Dropbox and Apple.

Documents unifies local and cloud-based file management with tools to quickly move files between locations. This may sound trivial, but Apple doesn’t provide such an integrated solution for iOS. In the Documents sidebar, you have three types of locations:

Local documents (stored on-device);

iCloud Drive (Documents’ own iCloud Drive folder);

Synced folders.

The latter is what ties everything together and allows you to seamlessly integrate iCloud Drive and Dropbox. Documents supports a variety of third-party cloud accounts, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or your own WebDAV and FTP servers. Each service can be added as a remote location, which lets you browse cloud storage directly in Documents and take advantage of the app’s features. Among these, you can enable two-way sync for individual folders: a synced folder will be available in the app’s sidebar for faster access, and its contents will be automatically synced with the cloud.

Documents lets you sync Dropbox folders for offline access on the iPad.

This is a terrific idea to bring multiple services together in a single file manager. From one screen, I can quickly access Dropbox files that are nested into sub-folders on my account; any folder is only two taps away because Documents can sync it as a bookmark. The best part, though, is the interoperability for files between different services: files can be moved across iCloud, local storage, and third-party cloud services – something that isn’t possible (or as intuitive) on iOS by default.

Moving a file from Documents’ iCloud Drive storage to another location.

There are other details and features worth noting in Documents that make it the missing Finder for iOS. You can save specific files (from any storage location) as favorites, and there is a Recents view that lists files you’ve recently viewed; files from multiple services are consolidated on this page, which helps you jump between documents stored across separate services and folders. Thanks to Documents’ solid preview capabilities, most file types can be opened and previewed in the app. I do this regularly for audio clips, images, and text files.

Documents can also unzip compressed archives in the current directory (like the Finder on macOS), and it has proper download management features with an interface that displays progress for file downloads. To download files with Documents, you can browse the web with an in-app browser, or you can send a download URL to the app by prefixing it with rhttp. I use this workflow from a widget to open a download URL from the system clipboard into Documents and queue the download there.1

Using the Documents browser to download a file from the web.

Documents’ in-app browser isn’t great for browsing sessions that involve multiple tabs and logins2, and, unfortunately, it doesn’t integrate with the 1Password extension either. Documents’ browser gets one aspect right, though: when you tap on a link that redirects to a downloadable file (such as a .zip archive), Documents prompts you to download the file and save it in a folder. After 9 years of iOS, Apple’s Safari still doesn’t offer this basic functionality.

Not only can Documents download files in a local directory, it can even put downloaded files into iCloud Drive (so they’re immediately available across all your devices) and save them into synced folders. This means you can go from a download link to a copy of the file instantly pushed to your Dropbox account or FTP server, which is great. This is my favorite way to download files on the iPad.

I should also point out that Documents supports viewing revisions of a Dropbox file – a feature that Dropbox itself hasn’t enabled in their iOS app. I don’t always have to revert to an older version of a file, but having the option in an iOS app makes me feel better than not having it.

Generally speaking, Documents, unlike Apple’s iCloud Drive app, provides common features you’d expect from a file manager in 2016. You can switch between grid and list views, sort files by name and date, search across their filenames and contents (the latter only if indexed beforehand), perform operations such as moving, renaming, copying, and tagging files and folders, and, of course, upload files to cloud services or share them locally with iOS apps and extensions. We’ve covered Documents on numerous occasions at MacStories in the past; time hasn’t made the app obsolete at all. If anything, after iCloud Drive’s regression in iOS 10, Documents is more relevant than ever.

There is, however, some merit to iCloud Drive and its integration with the rest of iOS. In fact, I like using iCloud Drive for some apps and workflows where iCloud is faster than Dropbox.

As I wrote in my review of iOS 10, the design of the ‘Save to iCloud’ extension is the kingpin of inefficiency in how it defaults to expanding every folder and sub-folder upon saving a file. But, the extension works everywhere and it doesn’t make you wait for a progress bar to finish uploading thanks to iCloud Drive’s background privileges.

Good design (left) vs. Design by someone who doesn’t use iCloud Drive.

Conversely, while the ‘Save to Dropbox’ extension is better designed and more functional, it requires you to stare at an ‘Uploading…’ animation without being able to do anything else because the upload has to finish in the foreground, otherwise the system may suspend it. I’m not fond of it, but I use the ‘Save to iCloud’ extension to put files in the Documents app folder, and it works.

Speaking of which, I initially thought iCloud’s premise of app folders wouldn’t gel with me, but, in practice, the metaphor has been surprisingly apt. After years of iOS, my brain has been rewired to think of documents in terms of which app contains them and where I was working with them. iCloud Drive makes this logical association a centerpiece of the experience by overlaying app icons on folders.

I find it more intuitive to think of my iCloud files as an archipelago of items rather a lot of files all stuffed on one big island. I know that my text documents are in the iA Writer folder in iCloud while images are in the Pixelmator folder. I can use their respective apps to access them, or I can open the iCloud Drive app and take a tour of every island and check where each item lives.

In addition to iCloud Drive’s system integrations, Workflow is the other connective tissue between my files and cloud accounts. Workflow has excellent support for both iCloud Drive and Dropbox, letting you create file management automations that can save a lot of time.

For iCloud Drive, Workflow is limited to accessing files from the app’s own container – Workflow can’t poke around and get files from Documents’ iCloud Drive sandbox, for instance. Still, because it can read and save files programmatically, Workflow enables you to create reusable templates to speed up file management.

Creating a better iCloud Drive extension takes one action with Workflow.

You can create a workflow that returns a specific file stored in a sub-folder inside /Workflow/ and that tells you its size or last modification date. Alternatively, you can create workflows that save new files into iCloud Drive, taking advantage of the app’s hundreds of actions for data manipulation. Want to save multiple images passed to the Workflow extension into iCloud Drive at once? No problem. How about renaming a file before saving it to iCloud Drive (something Apple’s iCloud Drive extension can’t do)? Workflow has you covered there as well. And because iCloud Drive files are cached by iOS for offline retrieval, it’s usually faster to work with documents and other assets in Workflow using iCloud Drive as you won’t have to wait for a download from the cloud.

Dropbox actions in Workflow grant you more freedom than iCloud Drive.

Dropbox support in Workflow is a lot more powerful than iCloud Drive, though. Thanks to the Dropbox web API, Workflow can automate advanced functionalities such as getting files from any directory, deleting them, creating shared links, adding folders, and saving new files into any folder on your Dropbox. Because it’s an API, you don’t even have to keep the Dropbox app installed to use these actions.

Workflow Downloads

Workflow can also automate file downloads from the web using the ‘Get Contents of URL’ action. For those times when I don’t want to use Safari or Documents to download a file, I can fire up this workflow, get a file from the Internet, and share it with any iOS extension I want.

Workflow has been a strong incentive to use Dropbox as my primary filesystem as it allows me to fully control my files with automation, which I find essential to speed up common and boring tasks on the iPad. With Workflow, I can copy shared links for files I frequently access with two taps, I can fetch assets from any directory (including folders other people have shared with me), and I can append text to an existing plain text document.

A good example of the versatility granted by Workflow and Dropbox actions is the automation I’ve been using to create a copy of an iA Writer document every time I want to publish it. By default, iA Writer text files are stored in iCloud Drive; for longform stories, I also create manual backups in GitHub using Working Copy. Because I want the shorter posts I publish on MacStories to be permanently archived on Dropbox, I added a Dropbox step to my Publish to WordPress workflow that, right after publishing, puts a .txt copy of the post in a Dropbox folder. This way, I don’t have to think about saving files to Dropbox – it happens automatically when I run the publishing workflow.

There’s an incredible freedom to using Dropbox in Workflow, and I wish the Workflow team would add more actions based on the Dropbox API.

I want to mention iA Writer, too. iA Writer is one of the few iCloud-based apps to support viewing and restoring versions of a file natively on iOS.3

File versions in iA Writer.

A lot of iPad users don’t know that iCloud has support for file revisions like Dropbox, and I like how the feature has been implemented in iA Writer with the ability to revert the current file to an older copy or create a duplicate of it.

The Downsides of iOS File Management

There are still downsides to managing files on an iPad-only setup. Some of them have been around for a long time; others are a by-product of recent additions to the iOS platform.

iCloud Drive app folders are isolated from each other. iOS apps like Documents and Workflow can’t access or display the contents of other apps’ folders. This prevents the existence of a full-featured iCloud Drive file manager that offers functionalities Apple doesn’t want to build in their iCloud Drive app. There should be an API to allow third-party apps to gain access to the entire contents of your iCloud Drive filesystem, just like there are APIs for photo and music access.

You can’t pass around multiple files at once. Something I miss from macOS is the ability to move multiple files around from one location to another. If you want to copy multiple files to another app on iOS, your best chance is to compress them as a single .zip archive or upload them to the cloud and download them again afterwards.

This shouldn’t be the case. Apple needs to rework the entire ‘Copy to/Import with’ extension system (the former ‘Open In’ menu) and the document picker with support for multiple items.

iCloud Drive is missing features available on the web app. Did you know you can view recently deleted files and restore them in iCloud Drive? I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t, because this option is only available on the iCloud web app, which isn’t even supported on Safari for iOS. The iCloud Drive file management UI needs to be completely revamped, and Apple has to include these hidden features in the redesign.

No drag & drop for files on the iPad. This applies to Split View in general, but there should be an easier way to move files between two apps that doesn’t require tapping multiple times through menus and share sheets. Drag & drop is an obvious solution: it would be nice if I could drop an image from iCloud Drive into an image editor, or if I could drag a file from Dropbox into my email client to quickly attach it to a message. This is basic stuff for the Mac; the iPad should have this feature, too.

File management on iOS has a long way to go. Compared to macOS, the iPad is still in its infancy when it comes to managing files across multiple apps.

Unlike a couple of years ago, however, managing files on iOS has improved and developers have been clever in supporting new technologies such as document providers and Split View, which cut the time required to move files between locations. Adopting cloud storage with Dropbox and iCloud for everything has made managing files on my iPad easier, but Apple has to reconsider some iOS limitations and redesign the iCloud Drive experience from the ground up.

With Dropbox, iCloud Drive, and third-party apps that integrate with them, I don’t need a Mac to manage my files, but I wish iOS could be a little more flexible.

Hardware

If I had to, I could get by with an iPad Pro and the Apple Smart Cover as a basic iPad setup. To complement my writing workflow and get the most out of the iPad’s hardware, though, I’ve tested several accessories over the past year from stands and covers to keyboards and Bluetooth headphones. These are the ones I like and use the most.

Twelve South ParcSlope

When I want or need to use the iPad Pro primarily with multitouch, I think Twelve South’s ParcSlope provides the best angle and grip for any kind of flat surface.

Originally conceived as a MacBook stand, the ParcSlope tilts the iPad Pro at a higher angle (18 degrees) than a folded Smart Cover, which helps me hunch over the screen less. The ParcSlope is made of sturdy aluminum with a soft rubber pad to hold the iPad in place. Similarly to other Twelve South products, it almost looks like an accessory Apple would make.

If I know I’m going to use the iPad Pro via touch for several hours, I grab the ParcSlope and put it on my desk.

Razer Keyboard Case

As I wrote last month, I typed my entire iOS 10 review on an Apple Magic Keyboard (held in place by the Studio Neat Canopy stand) and used it every day until I discovered the Razer Keyboard Case for iPad Pro in mid-September. This keyboard is flawed in many ways and it’s not for everyone, but it’s also the kind of accessory I needed to comfortably type from anywhere during my average writing day.

What sets the Razer keyboard apart is the case that holds the iPad. Unlike other keyboard-case combos, Razer added an adjustable metal kickstand that allows you to change the viewing angle of the iPad’s screen while retaining a firm position that prevents the device from wiggling too much when typing.

This has been a revelation for me as I spend a lot of time waiting in my car and I want to get work done in those hours; with the Razer keyboard, I can type on a full-size laptop keyboard with the ability to adjust the iPad’s angle.

Furthermore, Razer built a mechanical keyboard that is backlit (with multiple illumination levels) and features iOS-specific media keys. This is great to type at night and to access functions like screenshots and playing music without having to touch the screen. When I’m not typing on it, I usually detach the keyboard and put the iPad Pro inside the case on my lap to watch TV shows or play videogames.

For more details and impressions, you can read my original review here.

Anker PowerCore 20000 Battery

I bought this external battery earlier this year and I’ve been carrying it around with me everywhere I go.

The PowerCore 20000 gives the best results when used with devices with smaller-capacity batteries (like iPhones), but I’ve found it to provide enough power to keep an iPad Pro alive until I get home and can use a real charger. Effectively, I use this to keep the iPad Pro around the critical 10% of battery left so I can finish what I’m doing. When I don’t use it with the iPad Pro, my girlfriend and I fully recharge our iPhones with it.

Apple 29W USB-C Charger

Speaking of chargers: if you have an iPad Pro 12.9-inch, you need to upgrade to the 29W model and get a USB-C to Lightning cable. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is the only iPad to support USB Power Delivery with fast charging, which enables the device to recharge considerably faster than when using the default 12W charger.

Earlier this year, I ran a series of tests and discovered that the 29W adapter took 90 minutes to charge an iPad Pro from 0 to 80%; the 12W model needed 3.5 hours to perform the same charge.

Anyone who works on a 12.9-inch iPad Pro every day needs to buy one of these.

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

I’ve bought several headphones this year.4 After months of testing, I realized that I liked the B&O H6 (2nd generation, over-ear) wired headphones best, but I wanted to have a wireless version with the same benefits. Reviews for the wireless H7 variation weren’t positive, so I set out to find something comparable that would be just as light and elegant, with good Bluetooth performance, decent battery life, and large over-ear cups, and that I could wear for many consecutive hours with noise cancellation.

After weeks of research and reading other people’s reviews, I went with the Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless and I’m extremely happy with my purchase. These are my ideal wireless headphones for prolonged listening sessions and I love the sound they produce as well as their design.

The Momentum 2.0 are comfortable thanks to an over-ear design that I barely feel around my ears (unlike the Beats Solo3, which are on-ear and I mostly use when working out in shorter bursts of time as they press against my head too much). The memory foam material of the ear cups is soft and has a premium feel to it. The headphones’ overall build quality is top notch – I particularly like the adjustable steel arms and texture of the headband.

Connection with the Momentum 2.0 happens over Bluetooth, which isn’t as fast or reliable (or as impressive, range-wise) as the W1 chip found in the Solo3, but because I use them when I’m listening to a nearby device (usually my iPad), Bluetooth hasn’t been an issue. One of the Momentum’s best features is that they can pair with multiple devices at once: when I turn them on, they connect to both my iPhone and iPad and I can switch between audio sources seamlessly. If I only want to hear sounds from my iPad, I disconnect the headphones from the iPhone’s Control Center – a constant reminder that Apple made a good choice in simplifying wireless headphone management with iOS 10.

The Momentum 2.0 Wireless sound great: they don’t have the heavy bass of the Beats Solo and Studio, and they’re fantastic for alt-rock, pop, and post-rock (my three top genres). Active noise cancellation is good as it muffles a lot of what goes around me (though it doesn’t completely mute loud sounds); I’ve been leaving the headphones on even when not listening to music because I like the increased isolation when I’m writing.

The Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless are one of my favorite purchases of the year – they are the culmination of months of testing different headphones, and I’m carrying them everywhere I go.

SteelSeries Nimbus Controller

The iPad Pro’s large screen makes it a fantastic device to play videogames. And while iOS is best experienced with multitouch, an increasing amount of quality iPad games have added support for MFi controllers over the past two years; despite some limitations, I find playing with a controller and the iPad Pro in front of me surprisingly engaging.

The SteelSeries Nimbus is one of the best console-like controllers you can find for iOS and tvOS. There are two analog sticks at the bottom, a d-pad in the top left, and four buttons on the right side. There are four shoulder buttons and a central menu button to access multiple functions in games, too. The Nimbus feels like a mix of the Wii U and Xbox One controllers – I think it looks nice and, more importantly, it feels good. Buttons are clicky enough, the d-pad is okay, and even the analog sticks – while not as good as the DualShock 4’s ones, in my opinion – are superior to other MFi controllers I’ve tested, including the Gamevice for iPhone (which I own and regularly use).

Everyone has different preferences for analog sticks and buttons, but the Nimbus strikes a good balance of premium quality and comfort across the board. I’ve enjoyed playing Oceanhorn and Crashlands with the iPad Pro propped up on my lap or a desk. I look forward to playing more games this way next year.

Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

After almost five years of using a Tom Bihn Ristretto bag every day, earlier this year I decided to upgrade to a bigger bag to accomodate the iPad Pro and wireless headphones. I had no doubt I was going to get another Tom Bihn product (I’m a huge fan of the company); after some de rigueur research, the Daylight Briefcase seemed like the best option for me. I ordered one before WWDC and I went to San Francisco with it.

The Daylight Briefcase is a laptop bag that can fit the 12.9-inch iPad Pro perfectly. Like other Tom Bihn bags, there are plenty of compartments and semi-hidden pockets in and out, which I use to hold accessories and cables. The Daylight Briefcase is made of a high-quality nylon material that is durable and can resist a variety of scenarios such as rain, relaxing at the beach, and being walked over by people and dogs (all personally tested). The Absolute shoulder strap (a $20 upgrade) is comfortable and adjustable, and I like the sober-but-not-boring look of the whole product.

In more extreme situations, the Daylight Briefcase has acted as a carry-on bag for flights with tons of hardware and even t-shirts inside. I wouldn’t use any other bag for my iPad Pro and related accessories. I can’t recommend this bag enough.

Entertainment

Besides work, I use my iPad Pro for entertainment. I’d say that, over the past 12 months, I’ve optimized the way I work from my iPad just as much as I’ve changed how I consume media on it. I don’t want to be tied to a television set for TV shows and video games anymore; once again, I prefer the freedom an iPad gives me.

With a four-speaker system and a large Retina display I can hold and put anywhere, the iPad Pro has become my favorite computer to listen to music, watch movies, and play games, too.

Music

I’m one of those people who can’t choose between Apple Music and Spotify. I like that Apple Music has lyrics and I want to follow Apple’s progress on streaming and iOS integrations; on the other hand, Spotify has superior discovery features and algorithmic enhancements that let me find new music every week. I pay for both and I listen to a lot of music, both old and new.

I’ve written about Spotify and Apple Music on separate occasions before, and this is not the time for a proper review of the two services. From an app standpoint, though, Apple is ahead of Spotify: Apple Music for iPad supports Split View, it has built-in lyrics, and it features an easier activation of the share sheet, which is buried into a sub-menu on Spotify.

Apple Music supports multitasking; Spotify for iPad doesn’t.

Spotify has a different advantage over Apple Music: thanks to Spotify Connect, it can pair directly with audio devices in my house without using Bluetooth and thus redirecting all system audio to a speaker.

Spotify Connect makes it easy to connect to external speakers directly.

Spotify Connect can beam music to my two Echo devices and it has recently gained integration for streaming to Sonos speakers. It’s nice to be able to browse music and control playback on my Echo from Spotify on the iPad without interfering with system sounds or YouTube videos. I wish Apple Music could stream to the Amazon Echo over Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth, but I know such partnership is likely never going to happen.

Video

For a long time, downloading torrents was one of the reasons that prevented me from using the iPad Pro as my only computer. I kept an ailing MacBook Air around for two reasons: recording podcasts and downloading torrents with Transmission. I’m still working on a native iOS solution for the former; due to Apple’s App Store rules, I had to offload the latter to a device that is neither an iPad nor a Mac.

At the beginning of the year, I bought a Synology NAS (a DS214Play) and have been using it as a home server and media center. The Synology handles torrent downloads now, keeping video files organized in its local storage (4 TB in RAID1) and ready for streaming through iOS clients. I don’t use my MacBook for torrents anymore, and, as an added benefit, I can also start downloads from outside my home network on the iPad Pro.

Synology has a collection of dedicated iOS apps to manage various server-related activities. Among these apps, there are DS Get and DS File: the first app can send torrent files to the Download Station app on the Synology to start downloading them; the second one is a file manager to log into the NAS and manage files and folders other apps can access. You can use these apps on a local Wi-Fi network; if you’re not at home, a free dynamic hostname service called QuickConnect lets you log into the Synology remotely to manage everything from iOS. You can leave a Synology running at home while plugged into Ethernet, and log in and access files from iOS over cellular or another Wi-Fi network.

The DS Get app registers on iOS as a handler of .torrent files. When I open a torrent in Safari on my iPad, I use the ‘Copy to’ extension to send the file to the DS Get app, which logs into my Synology and starts the download. There are workflows and APIs to download torrents without sending a file from the browser, but I’ve found the manual process in Safari to be faster and more intuitive.

DS File isn’t spectacular but it gets the job done.

Once a download is completed, I open DS File and move the video file into the appropriate directory. There are applications for Synology servers that can take care of renaming, transcoding, and organizing files into folders automatically, but they require a bit of initial setup I haven’t had the time to go through yet. Apps on my iPad can stream most types of video formats anyway, and I like the fact that I choose where to move files so I know where to find them at all times. For those few occasions when my iPad can’t stream an .mkv file, I use my girlfriend’s 2015 MacBook Pro to download it and re-encode it to MP4 with HandBrake. I should probably research automated transcoding options for the Synology itself.

Infuse 5.

My favorite app to stream videos on the iPad is Infuse Pro. I covered the app before (most recently, with the launch of version 5) and I think it’s the richest, easiest-to-use video player for iOS. Infuse 5 features automatic subtitle downloads from Open Subtitles; it can output Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA audio; and it plays just about any video format you throw at it. Plus, Infuse looks great, it syncs with trakt.tv, and it adds contextual information to movies and TV shows such as posters, descriptions, and cast details.

I start watching videos with Infuse in two ways. Both DS File and DS Video (Synology’s take on a Plex-like media center) can send streamable video URLs to Infuse with the tap of a button.

Sending a file to Infuse from DS Video.

After moving files with DS File, I can navigate to a folder, tap a file, and choose Infuse as a compatible player. Doing this sends a URL (either a local one for your home network or an authenticated QuickConnect one) to Infuse, which will start streaming right away.

Alternatively, Infuse lets you browse servers and network-attached storage devices via UPnP and DLNA. My Synology NAS shows up in Infuse’s list of available devices, so I can navigate into it with a file management UI and pick a video to play. What’s even better, though, is that Infuse lets you save individual Synology folders as favorites for quick access.

Synology folders as favorites in Infuse.

I created bookmarks for my Media and Downloads folders, and I can view their contents from the main page of Infuse without opening the network discovery screen.

Infuse Pro can stream videos to a Google Chromecast as well. I use the Chromecast to stream YouTube videos on the big screen with one tap from the official YouTube app, but I like to watch TV shows and movies on my TV, too, especially when I have some friends over.

“Casting” from Infuse.

I upgraded from a first-generation Chromecast to a second-gen model this year for faster performance, and the integration with Infuse is fantastic. There’s a button in the video playback UI to “cast” a video to a television; streaming with the Chromecast is usually faster and more reliable than AirPlay because Google’s service fetches videos from a URL instead of buffering a video file on the local network. Using Infuse as the middleman between my Synology and the Chromecast works without a hitch.

I also created an Alexa-Logitech Harmony routine that lets me say “Alexa, turn on Chromecast”. When I utter that command, my TV and Sony soundbar turn on, switch to the correct HDMI input for the Chromecast, and I can start streaming. No more fiddling with a bunch of remotes, as all it takes is a tap of the Chromecast button in Infuse. If I can’t (or don’t want to) summon Alexa verbally, I run a routine in the Yonomi iOS app, which has the same effect thanks to its Harmony support but doesn’t require voice input.5

The combination of a Synology NAS and Infuse has singlehandedly solved the problem of not being able to download torrents on my iPad Pro. Sure, I didn’t “fix” the problem per se – I circumvented it with an external device that isn’t a Mac – but I’m deeply satisfied with the results. Video files aren’t taking up storage on my iPad Pro and there’s a server always ready to download torrents on a fast fiber connection that I can interact with using iOS apps. I don’t see myself ever moving away from this system; if anything, I might upgrade to a more powerful Synology next year.6

Synology Web App and Plex

Synology servers can also be accessed from a web app that requires reloading Safari in desktop mode (or using iCab with a custom user agent for the NAS’ IP address). I prefer the native experience of the single-purpose DS apps for iOS, but the web app is necessary for certain server management features.

I’ve also been testing Plex again, which launched several new features this year and improved their iOS app. Plex looks great, but it seems to be more aimed at users who maintain large libraries of movies, photos, and music, whereas I only care about video. Plex indexing also seems to slow down my Synology quite a bit. As soon as I upgrade to a faster Synology, I’ll try to put everything in Plex and see what happens. I’m intrigued by their new updated photos experience with AI search.

Television Time, a TV show tracker developed by Maximilian Litteral, deserves a special mention. I’ve tried dozens of TV show trackers over the past 7 years of MacStories and Television Time is the first one that doesn’t make me feel like there’s something missing.

Television Time has it all: there’s Trakt sync (I’m obsessed with my Trakt stats), support for the latest iOS features such as haptic feedback on the iPhone 7 and rich notifications for iOS 10, settings to hide spoilers and add notification offsets, and, of course, an iPad app.

I use Television Time to view synopses of upcoming episodes and check off what I’ve watched. Coupled with Trakt VIP (which recently launched a useful Alexa skill and comes with nice extras), Television Time has gained a permanent spot on my iPad.

Console Gaming

I don’t only play iOS games on my iPad Pro. I’ve also been using it to play old Nintendo games and even modern PlayStation 4 titles.

A few weeks ago, I took the plunge and installed Provenance, a third-party emulator for old Nintendo consoles like the NES, SNES, and Game Boy.7 Provenance isn’t allowed on the App Store: you have to download an Xcode project, sign it with a developer certificate, and install it over USB on an iOS device. That may sound overly complicated, but the instructions are clearly laid out and I was able to follow them and get everything working in less than 30 minutes. You can do this, too.

A Link to the Past running on Provenance on my iPad Pro.

I’m not new to Nintendo emulators. I started following tech blogs because I used to run homebrew software on my PSP8 and I spent hundreds of hours playing with Snes9x. Provenance falls in line with similar apps for desktop computers and jailbroken devices. Emulation isn’t perfect but it’s acceptable, there’s auto-save, and the app automatically categorizes games with titles and artwork downloaded from the Internet.

Provenance’s main interface is not too exciting, unlike OpenEmu.

What I love about Provenance is that it takes advantage of the Game Controller framework on iOS to let you play with any MFi controller. As you can imagine, I’ve been using my Nimbus to play A Link to the Past and Super Metroid on my iPad Pro, and it’s glorious. If you told me when I was 9 that I’d be playing SNES games on a Retina display that could always be with me, I would have thought you were as crazy as Miyamoto’s team back in the Stunt Race FX days.

When I’m in the mood for a more modern gaming experience but can’t sit in front of my PS4, I use PlayMira. This app (previously called PlayCast) uses PlayStation’s Remote Play APIs to let you control your console and play games from an iOS device. You have to follow the instructions to configure your PS4 for Remote Play with the app, but once you’re set, PlayMira lets you wake up a PS4 and start playing anywhere you are.9

Playing Final Fantasy XV with PlayMira.

And it’s amazing. I’ve used PlayMira to play No Man’s Sky, Battlefield 1, and Final Fantasy XV on my iPad Pro and I almost couldn’t believe what I was doing. If you have a fast Internet connection, performance is good on both Wi-Fi and cellular access from iOS, though you should expect the occasional frame rate drop or graphical glitch.10 Like Provenance, PlayMira lets you use virtual onscreen controls that replicate a DualShock 4, but you’ll want to get an iOS game controller and use that instead. I had to remap some buttons to different combinations on my Nimbus, and it’d be better if my DualShock could directly connect to the iPad, but it works well enough.

Part of the reason I’ve always remembered portable game consoles fondly is the fact that games could always be with me. With PlayMira, I can turn my iPad into a portable screen for my PlayStation 4 games wherever I am. This app is one of my favorite surprises of the year.

Calendars

I’m not a heavy calendar user. I don’t have a lot of events going on at specific times and locations; I tend to have a series of tasks that have to be completed within a certain time frame, so I use my task manager more than my calendar app. However, I’m trying to be more disciplined about adding all kinds of personal and work-related events to multiple calendars, and I found an app that suits my taste better than others.

Timepage launched on the iPad earlier this year, and I switched to it as my main calendar app as soon as it came out. We have reviewed Timepage on MacStories multiple times, and I believe it is one of the best app launches of the past year.11 Developed by Bonobo in partnership with Moleskine, Timepage makes calendars beautiful and smart with some of the most clever interactions I’ve seen on iOS in a while. This is true for both the iPhone and iPad versions, but the app truly shines on the iPad Pro’s large display.

Timepage’s Scarlet Red theme is gorgeous.

There’s no calendar client as elegant as Timepage. The app comes with multiple themes to choose from, and there’s a unique use of pastel tints, bold typography, and colored accents throughout the interface that make your daily agenda stand out. On the iPad, days are displayed in a vertical strip on the left, with events in the middle and details for individual days and events on the right.

There are tons of delightful touches everywhere, such as integration with weather forecasts, estimated travel times, and a morning briefing that tells you what your day is going to be like. Even adding a new event eschews the paradigms of traditional calendar clients.

Timepage’s unique event creation UI.

Timepage isn’t just about the novelty effect of a unique calendar visualization, though. The app is built on new types of interactions that simplify navigation in intelligent ways. In the month sidebar, for instance, there’s a heatmap that indicates how busy each day is through different levels of shading.

Calendars displayed in the app are available as large bubbles at the bottom; if you tap and hold one, you can drag the finger around to switch calendars and update the heatmap above to only show events for the current selection. It’s a genius solution for the problem of filtering month views by calendar. But I could also mention how swiping horizontally expands the sidebar into a full month view, or how the event creation panel pairs relative times of the day with more precise hours and how you have to scrub through a progress bar to set the time quickly.

Timepage is filled with ideas, design choices, and interaction patterns I’ve never seen in any other iOS calendar client before. It’s a joy to use and look at, it’s fun, and the developers are constantly improving it with new integrations and features. Managing my schedule with Timepage on the iPad makes me want to use my calendar more.

Email Management with Airmail and Sanebox

I switched to Airmail as my primary email client in April. While I’ve kept tabs on other email apps, I always go back to Airmail because of its power-user features and integrations. I explained my reasons for switching in my previous coverage of versions 1.0 and 1.1, but there are some recent developments that have improved how I manage email on my iPad even further.

As I shared in the October 2016 Monthly Log newsletter for Club MacStories members, I started using Sanebox a couple of months ago. Sanebox is a web service that connects to your email provider (in my case, Gmail) and separates messages in categories based on importance and type. It’s the same concept as apps like Inbox and Spark, but it happens in the cloud and it uses mailboxes/labels, which means you can change email clients and Sanebox will continue to operate because it’s not a proprietary feature of an app. As long as it’s connected to your email account, Sanebox will remove unimportant messages from your inbox and file them into a folder. Even if you switch email clients, you’ll be able to take advantage of Sanebox because it’s just a brain in the cloud, independent of the app you use to read emails.

Sanebox seemed to be tailored precisely for my problems. I like modern email clients that try to guess which emails are more important than others, but I don’t want to start this training process from scratch every time I switch apps. And because of my job, I have to try different email clients quite often. After forwarding every Gmail account I previously had to a single address, I turned on Sanebox and let it organize email for me.

I’ve never had a better relationship with email than with Sanebox.

Two months in, I can say I’ve never had a better relationship with email than with Sanebox. The service’s marquee functionality is the ability to discern messages you don’t need to see right away. Those messages are automatically moved to a SaneLater folder as soon as they hit my account. Similarly, newsletters and other “announcement” emails go into a SaneNews folder. Messages that Sanebox deems important stay in the inbox. If you don’t agree with Sanebox’s intelligence, you can train it by filing messages into a different folder or by creating more advanced rules on the Sanebox website.

Thanks to Sanebox, I’ve gotten used to a new kind of email triaging workflow: the few messages in the inbox are acted upon as soon as possible, while SaneLater and SaneNews emails wait until the evening or the weekend, when I have more time to read. Sanebox has learned from my training and it knows where to file messages from important people. Thanks to the SaneBlackHole (another folder), I also have an easy way to make sure I’ll never see a message from a specific sender again. All of this works in any email client.

My Airmail setup.

With its deep customization, Airmail can handle this type of email workflow beautifully. Sanebox folders I use daily are saved as favorites in Airmail, where I can put them at the top of the sidebar for quick access. Favorites let me move between different groups of emails with a couple of taps; they can also have custom colors, which helps spotting them at a glance.

Filing messages into mailboxes is key to Sanebox, and Airmail has the most powerful Move interface of any email app on iOS.

Airmail’s move UI.

With favorite folders at the top, I can file a message into any Sane-folder without having to scroll a long list of mailboxes from my Gmail account. Fast message filing also means I’m training Sanebox more often because it’s not a chore, which results in smarter email organization every day. It’s a win-win.

I’ve described both in detail before, but Airmail’s Smart Folders and app integrations are outstanding. To my knowledge, Airmail is the only iOS email app that lets you create complex smart folders that work for any type of email account. I have smart folders that act as saved searches (built using the Gmail search syntax) and they help me find messages that are addressed to a specific person or that contain words I’m often looking for. App integrations are equally impressive: Airmail can work with task managers, cloud storage services, document providers, and even the package tracking app Deliveries to turn messages into actions. The list of services and apps supported by Airmail is the new standard for power-user email clients on iOS.

I try not to spend too much time managing email, but there is still a lot of value in it for me because of the connections I make and new products I discover with email. The combination of Sanebox in the cloud and Airmail on iOS helps me be more efficient with the important messages I need to take care of, but more relaxed with everything else. Sanebox and Airmail have saved me dozens of hours.

GitHub and Markdown Editing

Here at MacStories, we like to write in Markdown. We appreciate the portability of plain text and how it enables us to try different text editors for iOS and macOS. Markdown and plain text are also easily scriptable, which saves us time when editing stories. Unlike most tech publications, we never collaborate on articles using Word or Google Docs because I don’t want to deal with rich text or HTML code. I like plain text and John Gruber’s invention so much, we even rebuilt MacStories to accept native Markdown text for every post.

Over time, as the MacStories team expanded and multiple writers had to provide feedback on drafts, my stance on not using collaborative rich text services was becoming a hurdle for everyone. For a while, if we wanted to check out a story someone was working on, we had to exchange files, create duplicates, and then compare differences between two text files with a diff tool on the Mac before sending the annotated version back. It was less than ideal.

The system we’ve been using over the past year relies on GitHub and has native support for Markdown and iOS. This is how we’ve been collaborating on stories – including my iOS 10 review – throughout 2016 for both MacStories and Club MacStories, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

GitHub is mostly known as a code hosting platform that enables programmers to collaborate on code and keep track of changes in shared projects called repositories. At a fundamental level, however, GitHub deals with text and compares differences between versions of the same text file. The same principles that allow programmers to host their code on GitHub can be used for collaborative Markdown writing, which is what we’ve done through several GitHub repositories.

Each MacStories writer has their own private GitHub repository where they can save drafts of articles currently being worked on. Other members are invited to the repository so they can read each other’s stories and provide feedback. We have a general Club MacStories repository that John and I use to assemble issues of our newsletter every week, and I also have a personal repository where I save drafts I would like others to read in advance.

Most programmers interact with GitHub from a command line interface (CLI) on desktop computers, which isn’t exactly user-friendly; much of the GitHub terminology is already quite obscure, and using the service from a terminal only adds to that complexity. Fortunately, there are great GitHub clients for iOS with a proper GUI to manage repositories and commits, making the GitHub experience on iOS visually appealing and integrated with iOS apps.

My favorite GitHub client for iOS is Working Copy by Anders Borum. Working Copy is a power-user GitHub client with Markdown support, app integrations, automation features, and ongoing support from its developer. Working Copy is one of the apps I’ve used the most this year and it played an important role in convincing me GitHub was the right service for us.

Working Copy lets you commit (save) files from other iOS apps with a share extension. This allows us to save Markdown documents from any text editor, screenshots from an email client or the Photos app12, and so forth. As long as a file can be shared with extensions, we can commit it to our repositories with Working Copy.

Both Markdown files and images can be committed to a repository with the Working Copy extension.

This even works for overwriting an existing document with a new version: if I have an updated draft of a document I’ve already saved in Working Copy, I just need to share it to the app again, tap the existing file, and commit it to add a new version.

Overwriting a text file with a new commit from Ulysses.

The most useful features of Working Copy are revealed in the app. For every file, Working Copy keeps a list of commits (versions) from GitHub and allows you to view titles and comments for each version. Then, the best part: Working Copy supports GitHub’s diff highlights for individual words in addition to entire paragraphs, which is exactly the kind of tool we needed for collaboration. Not only can Working Copy highlight in red/green the paragraphs that changed from one version of a file to another – it can also highlight individual word changes with a darker shade.

Diff highlights in Working Copy.

Working Copy’s diff support has been a boon for how we edit Markdown and collaborate on articles. We can keep track of every edit and comment in a centralized location without creating duplicates. Working Copy makes it easy to follow the evolution of a document through multiple commits; every writer can chime in with their own suggestions and Working Copy will handle file merging and conflict resolution thanks to GitHub. Version control and diffs are integrated in the same app, and everyone is always looking at the same (and most recent) copy of a file. Thanks to Split View on the iPad, I can keep iMessage or Slack open on one side, put Working Copy on the other, and discuss edits and comments with someone else.

Multiple commits from different writers.

Working Copy supports Markdown syntax highlight and it ships with a basic text editor, but I prefer to read and edit articles in other apps. There are a few options available and they’re all made possible by Working Copy’s integration with iOS frameworks.

Working Copy can be used as a document provider to import files from repositories into external apps. Furthermore, files provided by Working Copy can be opened and edited in another app and the changes will be reflected directly in Working Copy; the app essentially gives access to its sandbox scoped to an individual file.

iA Writer is one of the few text editors I know that supports this “open and edit” mode: by tapping File > Open in iA Writer, I can select Working Copy, pick a file, and iA Writer will open it without creating a duplicate.

Opening a Working Copy document in iA Writer via the document picker.

In this case, iA Writer is accessing a file directly in Working Copy. I can read, edit, and preview the document in iA Writer and every change I make will be saved back into the file stored in Working Copy. With this system, I can replace Working Copy’s barebones text editor with iA Writer’s richer selection of editing tools and beautiful interface. This is my favorite way to read and edit longform pieces from other writers, and it’s all based on a solid GitHub workflow for iOS.

I can even manage entire repositories as bookmarked folders outside of Working Copy. This is one of the most impressive implementations of document providers I’ve seen to date. Textastic, the popular code editor for iOS, can open repositories from Working Copy and save them as bookmarked locations in its sidebar.

This file, displayed in Textastic, is stored in Working Copy.

Think of these folders as aliases of a document provider’s sub-directory that are automatically updated alongside the original storage. I can open a Working Copy repository in Textastic, create directories, move files around, and even edit text documents with Textastic’s own editor instead of Working Copy’s.

Changes made in Textastic (left) are reflected in Working Copy’s repository.

As with open mode in iA Writer, any change I make in Textastic is saved back into Working Copy thanks to the iOS document provider API. I don’t have to create duplicates or copy files around with extensions. Every week, I archive old GitHub documents from Textastic on iOS, committing changes in Working Copy with GitHub notifications that are delivered to multiple Slack channels at once – no Mac involved.

I wouldn’t be able to switch to any other collaborative Markdown environment now. Working Copy and GitHub have enabled us to be faster and more consistent at proofing each other’s stories with a fantastic set of integrations on iOS. As a side benefit, relying on GitHub for collaborative editing has resulted in a third layer of backups for my drafts and it’s making me consider GitHub as an internal wiki tool to create nicely formatted Markdown guides for the MacStories team.

It’s possible to work with the same version of a file between multiple iOS apps now.

There’s also an argument to be made about document providers and filesystem preconceptions on iOS. I bet most iPad users have no idea that document providers can be so flexible these days – in fact, I believe a lot of iOS app developers don’t even bother to add deeper support for document providers. But as Working Copy, Textastic, and iA Writer show, it’s possible to work with the same version of a file between multiple iOS apps now – with a streamlined workflow that is comparable to a Mac. I wish more app developers and Apple itself would consider this.

Automation

Much of what I do on the iPad is facilitated by automation. I’ve been writing about iOS automation for several years, and I’ve seen all the forms it’s taken so far – from the humble beginnings of URL schemes to callback URLs, Python scripts, and, finally, Workflow.

There’s an important difference between the old iOS automation kin and the modern wonders of Workflow. Four years ago, URL schemes were the only way to turn an iPad into a passable work device for advanced tasks. Automation was an escape hatch from Apple’s limitations and the immaturity of iOS. Today, iOS is a stronger, more capable platform that, for many, is superior to macOS. There’s still work to be done, but, for the most part, iOS automation today is an optional enhancement – a way to speed up tasks and make them more accessible. In four years, and largely because of iOS 8 and iOS 9, iOS automation has evolved from a workaround into a creative optimization.

It would be impossible to recall all the workflows and scripts I’ve put together over the years. You can find previous examples in the dedicated Workflow, Pythonista, Drafts, and automation pages on MacStories – I highly recommend going through the archives. And, of course, you can also receive fresh workflows and explanations every week with the MacStories Weekly newsletter.

As you can see, most of my recent automations happen in Workflow, and I rely on the app quite a bit:

Many of my workflows are specific to the MacStories team and I only use them a few times per week, so there would be little value in sharing them. Furthermore, many of them are based on web automation with Zapier, which I plan to discuss in a separate story in the future.

Instead, below you’ll find a collection of my most used general-purpose iOS workflows and automations. Hopefully, these will give you an idea of how automation can enhance and speed up the modern iOS experience.

Time Tracking

As I shared in the latest Monthly Log newsletter for Club MacStories members, I’ve started tracking my time with Toggl to optimize how I get work done and understand where my time is going. The experiment is going well, but time tracking is the kind of habit that needs to be ingrained in your memory until it becomes second nature. The best way to do so is to make it easy to start new timers.

I previously detailed my Toggl automations with the release of Workflow 1.6. I have two separate workflows to start new timers from pre-built templates and check for how long an existing timer has been running.

The advantage of using these workflows in lieu of the Toggl web app is that they can be triggered as widgets in a couple of seconds. With iOS 10.2, interacting with widgets is even faster than before as iOS now remembers your position when you pull down from the status bar. If you are viewing widgets before dismissing Notification Center, iOS won’t re-open notifications by default the next time you pull down. This minor change allows me to track my time on the iPad more easily as all I need to do is swipe down, run my timer workflow, and return to what I was doing.

You can learn more and download my Toggl workflows here.

Publish to WordPress

This is one of my favorite workflows I’ve ever created. Instead of having to use the clunky WordPress app, Python scripts, or, worse, paste text in Safari, I can publish posts to MacStories from any iOS text editor as long as there’s a share sheet – it’s a text editor-agnostic WordPress workflow.

Given some Markdown text as input, the workflow extracts a title and asks me to enter a category and tags before publishing a new post. It doesn’t matter which app I’m using to write; Workflow’s WordPress action publishes a post in a couple of seconds and it takes care of opening Safari to view the final result.

For years, I struggled to find a good WordPress client with Markdown support; at one point, I ended up writing my own Python code to publish articles to MacStories more quickly. With Workflow, I have the freedom to write in Ulysses, iA Writer, or even Bear and I can still publish posts to my website because there is a consistent text input passed to the iOS share sheet.

There’s a beauty to this system and the portability of plain text that puts any other proprietary publishing system and text format to shame. This workflow is saving me hours I would have spent using WordPress manually in Safari or debugging old Python code.

You can read more details about this workflow here.

Combine Images

I need to put multiple screenshots side by side for MacStories and Club MacStories every day. I could do it manually in Pixelmator, but that would be boring and require too much time to position and resize images. With this workflow, I can select images in the Photos app, hit Share, run the Workflow extension, and the app will stitch them together for me and save the result as a new image in the library.

Combining images in Photos with the Workflow extension.

I used to stitch screenshots manually years ago. It took me hours to prepare images for my app reviews. Now, iCloud Photo Library puts screenshots from all my devices on the iPad instantly, and Workflow combines images inside Photos thanks to its action extension. I love this automation because it freed up a significant chunk of time that can now go into producing more content for MacStories and the Club.

You can get the workflow here.

Copy App Store Links

This is a recent addition to my automation arsenal that has been made possible by the improvements to lists in Workflow.

Workflow has long featured the ability to search the App Store and return app results for different platforms. With support for rich lists, searching the App Store in Workflow is now a faster experience than using the App Store itself: I can type a keyword, pick a platform, and Workflow will show me app results with icons, titles, and prices in a list.

Rich App Store results in Workflow.

The workflow I made lets me look up an app and copy its link to the iOS clipboard. The link is an affiliate one, and the workflow can be triggered from a widget. I usually keep this workflow in Split View with my text editor on the other side, which lets me search for apps, copy their links, and paste them in Markdown with a keyboard shortcut.

You can get the workflow here.

Launcher Shortcuts

Now for a different kind of automation – widget launchers.

Despite my heavy use of Workflow, I believe there’s still room for URL launchers on iOS, and I think Cromulent Labs’ Launcher 2 is, at the moment, the best option available to iOS users.

I don’t have a lot of launchers, but I use a few ones constantly from the app’s widget (which sits atop the Workflow one). I have launchers to open notes in Bear13, Spotify playlists, specific projects in Todoist, and the Club board we share on Trello. There’s nothing crazy going on here – just some simple launchers for apps that save me a bit of time every day. I like that Launcher lets me define different sizes for my widgets and I’m also a fan of custom icons I can create by myself.

You can read more about Launcher in my review of version 2.0.

RSS and Fiery Feeds

As I wrote at the beginning of 2016, I switched to Inoreader as my RSS service of choice and I’ve been happily using it for the entire year.

Inoreader isn’t as popular as Feedly, but it’s packed with serious automation and filtering capabilities that have allowed me to tailor hundreds of subscriptions to my needs, which has been essential over the past couple of months. Also, Inoreader is the fastest RSS service I’ve tried and I never experienced a single downtime.

Fiery Feeds, on the other hand, is the new standard for power-user RSS readers on iOS. The app works with several RSS services and it’s deeply customizable: you can control themes, adjust typographic settings, and create custom sharing actions. Among these sharing options, you can set up your own URL launchers to send an article to another app. Anyone familiar with the old Mr. Reader should remember this concept.

Fiery Feeds’ custom sharing menu, including URL actions.

I have only one custom action in Fiery Feeds that I assigned to the Quick Share gesture – a launcher that turns an article into a task due in an hour in Todoist. Every time I find a story I want to link to, I long-press it and Todoist opens with the article’s details and due time already filled into the New Task screen. Simple, but effective.

Markdown and Editorial

Before Workflow, there was Editorial. It’s fair to say I was happy with this text editor. Now, Workflow has replaced 90% of my automation needs and there are superior Markdown text editors on the App Store (alas, Editorial hasn’t been updated in a while), but I still use the app for specific Markdown automation that I can’t have anywhere else.

Thanks to a beta version developer Ole Zorn sent me, I was able to use Editorial in Split View on the iPad Pro this summer when I was editing my iOS 10 review, and it turned out to be an essential tool in the final stages. Without it, I wouldn’t have been ready for the launch of iOS 10. I did the same for this story: I wrote it in iA Writer and edited it in Editorial.

Below, you can find a collection of my most used Editorial workflows.14

Insert a Markdown link from the clipboard: replaces selected text and turns it into an inline Markdown link;

Insert Markdown image: takes an image URL from the clipboard and inserts it in the document, placing the cursor between square brackets so I can type the alt attribute (which we use for image captions on MacStories);

Insert footnote: the workflow asks for a footnote name and text, pastes the text at the bottom of the document, and restores the cursor position back at the original line;

Reopen URL: scans the current line for URLs and opens one in Safari. I use this with Safari in Split View to quickly check links previously added to a draft;

Open In: sends the current document as a .txt file to the share sheet.

Editorial is still an amazing app that fills a unique niche. Hopefully, the beta version I’m still testing will eventually be released on the App Store.

Without automation, I probably wouldn’t have had the patience to start using my iPad 3 as a MacBook replacement four years ago. Today, automation is no longer required to get advanced tasks done on iOS, but it’s a welcome addition that makes everything faster and more flexible, like on macOS.

It’s not that I can’t use iOS without my workflows – I just don’t want to. iOS automation has a bright future, and I feel like 2017 will bring some great new possibilities.

Miscellaneous

In addition to what I covered in previous sections, I’ve also spent the past year optimizing other aspects of my iPad Pro workflow. Changes in these areas haven’t been radical, but they include utilities I use on a regular basis.

Clipboard Management

While Universal Clipboard has solved the basic problem of transferring something I’ve just copied from one device to another, sometimes I want more control over my clipboard with a permanent storage space synced between devices. For that, I use Copied.

Copied is the most powerful clipboard manager you can find on iOS. In addition to support for text and images, Safari View Controller, Markdown, and iCloud sync, Copied was updated earlier this year with JavaScript automation and text formatters through a custom keyboard. Despite the addition of power-user functionalities, though, I tend to use Copied as a simple snippet manager for iPhone and iPad that syncs with iCloud.

I set up a handful of lists that store bits of text, URLs, and images; when I have to paste those items in emails and notes, I open Copied in Split View on the iPad.

Copied came in handy when I was finishing my iOS 10 review and had to insert special HTML tags in the body text, but I also rely on the app for everyday Markdown editing. Copied’s Clipper extension lets me save multiple items in a row from Safari and Airmail, and I like how I can preview links by opening Safari View Controller inside the app.

Copied supercharges copy & paste on iOS, and even if I don’t spend hours in it, it’s a powerful utility to keep around. You can read my previous coverage of Copied here and here.

Split View and Bluetooth Keyboards

As I wrote in my review last year, Split View was built for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Split View can be used on smaller iPads, but it’s on the biggest model that the feature reveals its true effectiveness.

I use Split View a lot. At this point, I use my iPad in Split View by default and only switch to single-app mode when I’m doing something that requires concentration, such as writing longform stories or reading. Most of my daily tasks require moving bits of text and files between two apps; Split View handles that well without the complexity of a windowing system like on macOS. For me, two apps at the same time are enough.

Here are some examples of tasks that have been improved by Split View on the iPad Pro:

Moving files between two apps. If I invoke the ‘Copy to’ menu and the destination app is already in Split View, I don’t see any app launching animation – the file is copied to the other side without any context-switching.

Turning Trello cards into newsletter sections. Every section of MacStories Weekly starts as a Trello list with multiple cards inside. In each card, there’s either a block of text or a link that we need to include in the newsletter.

Turning links from Trello into Markdown with Ulysses.

With Trello and Ulysses in Split View, I can open links in Safari View Controller on the left and write the section that links to the webpage with iA Writer on the right.

Referencing notes with Bear. I’ve been using Bear as a replacement for Apple Notes, and I store different kinds of research material in the app. For instance, all my articles start as a messy collection of random thoughts and tidbits that I later turn into an outline. With Ulysses and Bear in Split View, I can simultaneously write and look at my notes. Both apps feel spacious and comfortable to use thanks to the iPad Pro’s 12.9-inch display.

Split View, however, isn’t perfect. The feature is unchanged since the release of iOS 9 and its shortcomings often get in the way of working with two apps at once. Split View’s biggest problem is the app picker: it’s too slow to use, it doesn’t have a search feature, and it makes moving between two apps an infuriating chore. This issue has been mitigated by Command-Tab and modal Spotlight search in iOS 10 to launch apps, but those features only act on the app on the left side of Split View (the primary one). The right side with the vertical app picker is what Apple needs to throw away and redesign.

Sigh.

In addition, working with an external keyboard in Split View is primitive and slow. You can’t activate or manage Split View with a keyboard – you have to touch the screen. There are issues when Split View is already active, too: there is no shortcut to change focus between two apps and select which one is receiving input from the keyboard. You can use Command-Tab to cycle between two apps in Split View, but that won’t restore the cursor position, forcing you to touch the screen anyway.15 Add this to the lack of drag & drop and absence of keyboard shortcuts for extensions, and you see how Split View was a great idea that hasn’t received the necessary improvements we’ve been requesting for the past 18 months.

Split View has undoubtedly changed my notion of iPad productivity and how I work with apps. But it’s also time for meaningful changes to Split View, which I hope will come with iOS 10.3 next year.

Video Editing

I don’t have any professional training in video editing, but when a friend of mine asked me to record a video of her dance choreography earlier this year, I had fun shooting with my iPhone 6s Plus and editing with Pinnacle Studio on the iPad Pro.

Pinnacle rose from the ashes of Avid Studio for iPad, and it’s highly reminiscent of its parent app. Think of Pinnacle as a more professional iMovie with tons of options and none of the complexity of Final Cut Pro.

I was able to color-grade videos on my iPad using VideoGrade; then, I imported clips in Pinnacle where I used the editor’s timeline to cut and move clips around. I added text introductions, imported audio from Dropbox, added transitions and other effects, and exported everything at 60fps in 1080p, which took less than 30 seconds on the iPad Pro.

It was an interesting project – different from what I usually do on the iPad – and it showed me how there’s a world of creative video apps on the App Store that take advantage of the A9X CPU. I’d like to do it again in the future.

DEVONthink and PDF Search

DEVONthink is a professional research and database tool popular in the academic community because of its advanced search feature and artificial intelligence. Alas, the iOS app isn’t as rich as its Mac counterpart, but after version 2.0 launched in August, it became a lot more robust.

I use DEVONthink for one feature: searching for content in PDFs with boolean operators. DEVONthink doesn’t have the usual rudimentary PDF search that looks for plain text inside documents: you can use wildcards, NEAR and XOR operators, scope prefixes and parentheses, and query concatenations. The folks at DEVONtehnologies take search seriously, and the kind of control available in DEVONthink’s search panel is downright amazing.

Advanced search with a NEAR operator in DEVONthink.

Every week, a workflow turns the latest issue of our newsletter into a PDF that gets copied into DEVONthink. Whenever I feel like an app or member question has been covered before, I can open DEVONthink and find a section in an old issue like it wouldn’t be possible with email or other PDF apps. DEVONthink is a recent addition to my iPad, and I plan to keep using it more in 2017.

Mind Mapping

I only create mind maps for my longform writing projects – such as iOS reviews – and I always use iThoughts for the job. iThoughts is the mind mapping app for iOS power users with support for external keyboard shortcuts, Markdown formatting, the ability to design custom themes, image and link attachments for nodes, and lots more.

My iOS 10 review mind map in iThoughts.

iThoughts was invaluable for me this past summer as I was researching iOS 10 for my review. With Split View, I could put the mind map next to other apps and easily convert the notes I had taken at WWDC into nodes and branches. For each item, I added additional notes, screenshots, and links to webpages – all of which are supported natively by iThoughts. I used the app every day for three months: it was my guide, my research bucket, and my encouragement to keep writing. The more I wrote, the more branches I collapsed, moving on to other sections.

iThoughts helped me visualize the “weight” of each section and its relationship to other chapters in the review in a way that wouldn’t have been possible with traditional outlining or note-taking apps. I plan to do this again next year.

Longform Writing and Research with Scrivener

(Note: this section has been adapted from past issues of MacStories Weekly.)

I didn’t think I’d ever need a writing app like Scrivener. I changed my mind in July: I was in the first stages of writing my iOS 10 review and I felt like Ulysses couldn’t scale to such a big project.

Scrivener is designed for longform writing: it’s not an app where you’ll be taking quick notes, or even the text editor I’d recommend for daily blogging or anything that doesn’t go beyond 10,000 words. I’m still jumping between Ulysses and iA Writer as my daily text editors for all things MacStories and Club MacStories; I only used Scrivener for my iOS 10 review.

MY iOS 10 review project in Scrivener.

What sets Scrivener apart is its project-based structure and how a manuscript can span multiple types of content and levels of organization. Scrivener allows you to split a draft across multiple documents, sub-documents, and even folders; you can set statuses, write synopses, and label chapters and documents as your writing progresses; then, you can control what gets compiled in the master draft, and what stays behind as material that will be excluded from the final product.

Research material in Scrivener.

And that’s what convinced me Scrivener was the right app at the right time. My research material for the review included screenshots, PDFs, and notes I wanted to keep within the same environment for quick reference. Not only did Scrivener allow me to embed all those files inside the review project and organize them how I wanted – it even let me put a file side by side with a document from the draft and continue writing while I was referencing the research.

Two examples: for every beta of iOS 10 seeded by Apple, I saved new/controversial/interesting changes with screenshots. Scrivener let me organize screenshots with folders and sub-folders, and I came up with a naming scheme to indicate the beta version of each image in the file name.

Organizing beta screenshots in Scrivener.

The ability to highlight text with different colors also turned out to be handy. In the writing phase, I created my own coloring syntax to mark up bits of text for later. I used:

Blue: image/GIF placeholder;

Yellow: additional content to write;

Red: bugs of a beta seed or other problems that were probably going to be fixed;

Green: asides;

Orange: tidbits and smaller features.

While I was editing, I could glance at a document, view what colors stood out, and get an idea of which images were going to be used and which parts needed more work.

Scrivener proved to be an invaluable asset this year. The app allowed me to organize my writing, notes, and research material in a single place with a structure that wouldn’t have been possible in any other text editor. Along with iThoughts, Scrivener is another app I’m going to use again for my iOS reviews.

Podcasting

Of all the tasks I wanted to transition from macOS to iOS on my iPad Pro, podcasting is still the holdout.

I’ve yet to find a solution to the problem of simultaneously holding a Skype call with other people and recording my own audio with a Shure microphone I plug into a 2x2 Tascam USB interface. The issue lies in an intrinsic iOS limitation: the iPad can’t handle multiple audio streams at once, so I would have to choose between talking on Skype or recording my end of the conversation. No accessory or workflow is going to solve this; Apple needs to rebuild the iOS audio stack and make it like macOS’, where one audio track doesn’t take over the other.

The solution I’m considering is based on what my Canvas co-host Fraser Speirs does: he uses two devices – an iPad Pro and an iPhone – to join a Skype call (on the iPhone) and record his local audio track with Ferrite (on the iPad Pro). This forces him to wear two pair of EarPods with a bud in each ear, so he can hear both me on Skype and his voice for the local audio recording. It’s less than ideal (other people on Skype don’t hear the good microphone’s version of another person’s voice – they hear the EarPods version), but it’s good enough, and it’s been working well for Fraser for over a year. And Fraser knows what he’s doing.

My other problem is that, while my MacBook Air can power the Tascam interface over USB, not even the Lightning to USB 3 adapter on the iPad Pro is enough to charge the iPad and power the Tascam interface at the same time. I tried with different power bricks (including the 29W one), but the microphone plugged into the Tascam never appears as an input device in Ferrite. This means I would have to power the Tascam device separately, then plug it via USB into the Lightning adapter, and hope for the best.

I have bought a Tascam AC adapter from Amazon, but it hasn’t arrived yet, so I haven’t been able to test if this will work in practice. I really don’t want to use my MacBook Air anymore, and podcasting is my top priority to figure out over the next year. It would be even better if Apple fixed this entire situation at a system level with audio API changes in iOS. I’ll report back soon.

External USB Drive

Another iPad workflow I’m experimenting with is a way to move files to desktop computers using an external USB drive for iOS.

Obviously, there is no USB port on the iPad Pro16 and I can’t use traditional USB drives. There are, however, Lightning accessories that can plug into an iOS device and that have a standard USB connector on the other end. I recently bought one of these Lightning drives – a 64 GB Sandisk iXpand Drive – thanks to a discount on Amazon, and I think it could be a solution for those times when someone asks me to transfer a file locally to their computer.

The iXpand Drive comes with a file management app that lets you copy files and media to the drive, which can then be accessed from a computer via USB. You can automatically back up photos, videos, and contacts in the iXpand app while the drive is plugged in, or you can transfer files from other iOS apps using an extension that sends a file to the drive itself. The app is nothing extraordinary, but it’s functional, and it organizes files with a folder-based structure that makes it easy to retrieve them.

I still haven’t needed to give someone a file from my iPad Pro with the iXpand Drive, but I’m going to carry the drive in my bag just in case. I’m looking forward to surprising people with the ability to transfer files over USB from an iPad.17

Image Editing

I don’t do a lot of image editing on my iPad, but for those occasions when I have to, I’ve consolidated the tasks I know how to accomplish in three apps.

Pixelmator. This is my general-purpose image editor. I mostly use it to create new wallpapers made of solid colors for my devices. When I have to hide some information from an image with color, or if I have to deal with layered images and adding formatted text on top of a screenshot, Pixelmator is always ready.

Annotable. This is where I spend most of my time if I need to edit images. Annotable is my favorite image annotation app for iOS. The app can handle everything Skitch was capable of and even more thanks to recent updates. Annotable can add shapes and pixelation to images, it supports basic text annotations, and it has magnification loupes and color options. Annotable has never let me down and it continues to get better.

LongScreen. This app’s sole purpose is to put screenshots of iOS devices into physical frames of the products they belong to. I use LongScreen when I want to generate pretty hero images for my reviews where there are iPhones side-by-side. LongScreen works well and it supports iPad and Apple Watch screenshots, too.

Extensions

Besides the extensions I mentioned in previous sections (namely, Workflow, Working Copy, and Copied), there are four other extensions I use regularly on my iPad Pro.

Todoist. My favorite task management service revamped their iOS extension with a new compact design. Todoist’s extension is impressive in that it packs most of the functionality available in the full app: you can type dates in natural language, pick projects, and add URLs to tasks. This extension is a universal “quick add” interface for Todoist across iOS.

Opening YouTube links in ProTube (right) is easy with the Opener extension.

Opener. This is a must-have if you like using alternative clients for popular services like YouTube and Twitter. Opener is an action extension that can open any link sent to share sheet in third-party apps instead of Safari or official clients. For instance, you can open Twitter links in Tweetbot instead of the Twitter app, YouTube links in ProTube, and Spotify links directly with the app instead of the Spotify mobile website. It’s like Universal Links for third-party apps. Opener also supports viewing AMP versions of webpages and a quick-open mode for your favorite apps.

Tweeting multiple images from Photos with Linky.

Linky. The only way I tweet from the share sheet is with Linky. While Tweetbot doesn’t offer a share extension and Twitter’s official one is too limited, Linky’s tweet sheet supports multiple accounts, multiple image attachments, suggested images from webpages, text formatting options, and lots more. All of our MacStories Deals are tweeted with Linky, which I can’t recommend enough if you manage multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Better not to miss out on Myke’s blog posts.

Fiery Feeds. This powerful RSS client has an action extension to extract feeds from webpages and add them to one of the services configured in the app. The Fiery Feeds extension can find RSS feeds on a webpage and it’s a great way to subscribe to new blogs without copying and pasting URLs.

Everything Else

Finally, a special mention for apps that didn’t go through major changes over the past year, but which I still use every day.

PCalc. I’ve been using James Thomson’s calculator for years at this point. The app is constantly updated for new iOS features and it never disappoints. PCalc lets you create personalized layouts, it comes with unit and currency conversions, and it supports Split View on the iPad.

iFinance. This is my favorite finance management app for one reason: iFinance lets me create rules that automatically tag transactions parsed from a CSV I import into the app every month. My Italian bank doesn’t support direct integration with any of the modern third-party finance apps, so I need to get a CSV statement at the end of each month and import it the old way. With iFinance, I have dozens of rules that match transactions with specific keywords and assign them to a category with a custom color and icon.

Blink. I knew John before he started writing for MacStories because I was a heavy user of his app, Blink. With Blink, I can search the iTunes Store and App Store to generate affiliate links. The app presents rich search results and I can even read descriptions for each item. You can read our original review here.

Transmit. I recently set up an FTP server to host private webpages and files I need to share with other people. Panic’s Transmit is an excellent FTP client that lets me upload screenshots from Photos with an extension. The app also works in Split View, which is convenient when having to move files from iOS apps to my server.18

Ulysses. I switched to Ulysses as my primary text editor earlier this year after reading David’s review and I’ve created a powerful automated system around the app thanks to its Workflow integration.19 Ulysses offers automation features to deal with Markdown and appending text to sheets that are only matched by Bear. I have tried other text editors over the past year (recently, I took iA Writer for a spin), but Ulysses is my home. It’s one of the apps I used the most this year.

iPad Pro: Year One

There’s no doubt in mind now: the iPad Pro is the best computer I’ve ever owned not only because it’s powerful, but because iOS apps unlock a different kind of productivity on the big screen. More than any other iPad before, the iPad Pro is the strongest argument in favor of iOS for as a primary computing platform.

A year after its launch, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro holds up well and I’m not desperately longing for a hardware refresh. However, if Apple can make this iPad lighter and faster, add the True Tone display and better camera from the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and make the speakers even louder and richer, I’d welcome such upgrade – though I feel like Apple has bigger plans for the Spring.

Where I’d like to see the company bring deeper updates is iOS and the iPad accessory department.

The iPad’s multitasking UI needs a visual overhaul and integration with external keyboards. It’s also time for a system-wide drag & drop framework that can provide a suitable alternative to the clipboard and extensions. There should be support for in-app split views (like Safari’s) in more Apple apps, too. Hopefully, Apple had the time to measure the response to iOS 9, and they’re working on a proper follow-up for 2017.

On the accessory front, the Smart Connector has yet to prove its worth with third-party companies. In over a year, I’ve only seen a couple of non-Apple accessories that take advantage of the connector on the back of the iPad Pro, and both were made by Logitech. It’s not clear why no one else was able to release Smart Connector-enabled accessories since November 2015, and I feel like there’s a lot of wasted potential for external inputs that could benefit from the easy pairing and charge provided by Smart Connector.

What I do on the iPad Pro today can’t be done on a Mac.

My first year with the iPad Pro has been a success. By embracing new ways to work and manage my time, I was able to optimize my workflow on a computer that can transform into a laptop, a book, a videogame console, and a focused writing machine. I’ve had fun working on the iPad Pro, but, more importantly, I’ve accomplished more thanks to the power of modern iOS apps. What I do on the iPad Pro today can’t be done on a Mac.

With its 12.9-inch display, the iPad Pro epitomizes the platform’s ultimate goal: to give you a canvas of possibilities and the freedom to take it anywhere.

There’s never been a better time to be an iPad user. I’m excited for what’s next.

Credits

My thanks to the following people for their feedback and for helping me find the right focus and motivation:

Silvia Gatta

John Voorhees

Stephen Hackett

Myke Hurley

CGP Grey

Apps

Apps mentioned in the story: 50

1Password

Airmail

Annotable

Bear

Blink

Coda

Copied

Crashlands

Deliveries

DEVONthink To Go

Documents 5

Drafts

DS file

DS get

DS video

Editorial

Ferrite Recording Studio

Fiery Feeds

iA Writer

iCab Mobile

iFinance 4

Inbox

Infuse Pro 5

iThoughts

Launcher

Linky

LongScreen

MindNode

Oceanhorn

Opener

PCalc

Pinnacle Studio Pro

Pixelmator

PlayMira

Plex

ProTube

Pythonista 3

Scrivener

Spark

Television Time

Textastic Code Editor 6

Timepage

Todoist

Transmit

Tweetbot 4

Ulysses

VideoGrade

Workflow

Working Copy

Yonomi

Amazon Hardware

Hardware products mentioned in the story: 17

Anker PowerCore 20000

Apple Apple 29W USB-C Power Adapter

Apple MKQ42AM/A USB-C to Lightning Cable (2M)

B&O Play Beoplay H7 Over-Ear Bluetooth

B&O PLAY by Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H6 Over-Ear Wired Headphone, 2nd Generation

Beats Solo3

Gamevice Controller for iPhone 6/6 Plus and iPhone 6s/6s Plus

Logitech Harmony Elite Remote Control, Hub

Razer Mechanical Keyboard Case for Apple iPad Pro 12.9 inch

SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive, 64GB

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless

Shure BETA 87A Supercardioid Condenser Microphone

Sony HTCT380 300W 2.1-Channel Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer

SteelSeries Nimbus Wireless Gaming Controller

Synology DiskStation 2-Bay Diskless Network Attached Storage (DS214play)

TASCAM US-2x2 USB Audio Interface

Twelve South ParcSlope for MacBook and iPad Pro

Workflows

Workflows linked in the story: 6

App Store Link

Combine Images

Download in Documents

Download

Pick, Rename, and Save Extension

Publish to WordPress

The r prefix is a vestige of ReaddleDocs, the old name of Documents. ↩︎

I've run across issues with the browser not setting cookies, which resulted in Documents not being able to download files associated with an online account. ↩︎

Another app that does this: MindNode. ↩︎

Thanks, Marco. ↩︎

Yonomi is one of the most interesting apps for home automation I've discovered recently, and it tends to fly under the radar of tech publications. Yonomi can integrate with connected home devices including Philips Hue lights and Sonos speakers, and it has a web service that powers an Alexa skill. I plan to write about Yonomi more in the future. ↩︎

Recommendations are welcome. ↩︎

Plus Sega and Atari consoles, though I never played with them when I was younger. ↩︎

Does anyone remember Fanjita? ↩︎

For the best experience with remote connections, I recommend reserving a local IP address for your PS4 and using a dynamic hostname provider to create a public address to access your home network when you're away. My ISP's modem supports various hostname providers by default, so my connection and router ports are automatically forwarded and opened for the dynamic hostname. ↩︎

Effectively, you're turning on a PlayStation 4 remotely and streaming games to iOS – some quality degradation is to be expected. ↩︎

I'm surprised it didn't win an Apple Design Award at WWDC 2016. ↩︎

GitHub, and therefore Working Copy, can store any kind of file. ↩︎

As I noted in my review, one of the best features of Bear is automation with its ability to open individual notes through a URL scheme. ↩︎

These have been adapted from issue 45 of MacStories Weekly, originally posted in September 2016 for Club MacStories members. ↩︎

The only way to properly switch focus between apps in Split View is to touch one half of the screen and make one of the two apps the current one. ↩︎

Though I would love having USB-C support in the future. ↩︎

Alas, you can't charge an iPad and simultaneously keep the iXpand Drive plugged in. I have tried with both the Belkin Rockstar adapter and the Lightning to USB 3 adapter, but iOS doesn't recognize the drive with neither of them. The Rockstar is limited to charging and audio, while the iXpand app doesn't recognize the drive if plugged in over USB instead of Lightning. This has been a problem to transfer my entire Photos library to the drive: the iPad Pro, even when fully charged, runs out of battery in the middle of the process and the transfer can't be completed. This could be remedied by the ability to backup media items in batches, a second Lightning port on the iPad Pro, or an adapter to allow for dual Lightning usage at the same time. I don't know which will come first. ↩︎

I also want to learn Coda better and use it for basic web development on my server. ↩︎

I detailed my experience in Monthly Log: March 2016 and MacStories Weekly: Issue 52 for Club MacStories members (both available in the full archive of back issues). ↩︎