The Powerful Code Editor for iPad and iPhone — Now Free to Try
Apple has released a new app for iPhone and iPad, the previously announced video tool Clips.
Apple describes Clips as an app “for making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more.” Essentially it’s a stripped-down version of a video editor like iMovie, optimized to make edits fast and user-friendly on mobile. Its key focus is allowing you to shoot seconds-long clips and string them together into a video worth sharing.
I’ve loved Workflow since the first beta I was sent in August 2014. Workflow is my most-used iOS app of all time, and, in many ways, it is the reason my iPad Pro can be my primary computer. I’ve written thousands of words on the app and have created hundreds of workflows for myself and others over the course of two years.
I referred to Workflow as Minecraft for iOS productivity and the modern bicycle for the mind in the past. I stand by those analogies. There’s nothing else on iOS like Workflow, which deftly walked the fine line between absurd innovation and Apple rejections with a bold vision and technical prowess. Workflow embraced the limitations of iOS and turned them into strengths, resulting in a power-user app with no competition. After two years, no app gets remotely close to the automation features shipped by the Workflow team.
And now Workflow and its creators are going to be part of Apple and the company’s bigger (and more secretive) plans.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had always kept the possibility that Workflow could eventually be discontinued or acquired. In a somewhat prescient move, Stephen quizzed me on this problem a few weeks ago on Connected. My “worst-case scenario” of Workflow going away became the new reality of iOS automation last week.
Workflow as an app is an incredibly good acquisition for Apple, but there’s a deeper subtext here. Workflow represents a movement from a large number of users who enjoy working from iOS devices so much, they want to optimize the experience as much as possible. Workflow’s goal wasn’t to merely provide a capable alternative to the Mac’s AppleScript and Automator; Workflow wanted to eclipse legacy scripting environments and usher iOS users into a new era of mobile automation. There’s the Workflow app and team – technically impressive and absolutely talented – and there’s the bigger theme behind Workflow.
But what has Apple acquired, exactly? Under Apple’s control, can Workflow continue on its mission to make automation accessible for everyone? If Apple sees a future in iOS automation powered by Workflow, what else can be done with a virtually infinite budget and stronger ties to the platform? And what does this acquisition mean for Apple’s commitment to pro users on iOS?
I’ve been mulling over these questions for the past week. I don’t have any absolute answers at this point, but, after building workflows and following the app’s development for two years, I have some ideas on where Workflow can go next.
Below, you’ll find two possible scenarios for Workflow as an Apple app, as well as some considerations on how Apple could evolve Workflow into a native feature of iOS devices and a new developer platform.
iPad Diaries is a regular series about using the iPad as a primary computer. You can find more installments here and subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.
Compressing files into archives and extracting them into a specific location is one of the most common desktop tasks that is still surprisingly tricky to adapt to the iPad.
Unlike macOS, the iPad doesn’t come with a built-in Archive Utility app that takes care of decompressing archives, nor does iOS include a native ‘Compress Files’ system action to create and share archives. I’d wager that anyone who works from an iPad deals with file archives on a regular basis, whether they come from email clients, Dropbox links shared by colleagues, or uploads in a Slack channel.
Archives – and the popular .zip format – are a staple of document-based workflows and file management, but the iPad isn’t well-equipped to handle them. Working with .zip files on iOS is among the most frequent questions I receive from iPad-first users every week; effectively, Apple only offers basic integration with iOS’ Quick Look when it comes to file archives. Fortunately, just like advanced file management, we have some solid third-party options and automation to help us.
In the aftermath of Apple’s announcements earlier today, it released an update to iTunes with a new feature described as rent once, watch anywhere. The release notes for iTunes 12.6, which is available as a free upgrade on the Mac App Store, say:
Now you can enjoy your iTunes movie rentals across your devices with iOS 10.3 or tvOS 10.2.
With this new feature, you should be able to start a movie rental on an iOS device and finish it at home on an Apple TV for example, which is a welcome change to what was an overly inflexible system.
iOS 10.3 and tvOS 10.2 are currently in beta but are expected to be released soon, at which time this new feature will be available to everyone who upgrades to those versions of the OSes.
In a seemingly minor 1.7.2 update released over the weekend, the Workflow team brought a few notable file-based changes to the app.
Workflow’s existing support for cloud storage services has been expanded and all file actions have been unified under a single ‘Files’ category. You can now choose files from iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or Box within the same action UI, and there are also updated actions to create folders, delete files, and get links to files. Now you don’t have to switch between different actions for iCloud Drive and Dropbox – there’s only one type of File action, and you simply pick a service.
Interestingly, this means that Workflow can now generate shareable links for iCloud Drive files too; here’s an example of a workflow to choose a file from the iCloud Drive document provider and copy its public link to the clipboard. (Under the hood, Workflow appears to be using the Mail Drop APIs for uploads. These links aren’t pretty, but they work.)
There’s also a noteworthy change for Ulysses users. Workflow now allows you to easily extract details from Ulysses sheets using their ID. After giving Workflow permission to access your Ulysses library (which, unfortunately, still has to be done using a glorified x-callback-url method), you’ll be able to chain Workflow and Ulysses to, say, get the Markdown contents of a document, extract its notes, or copy its title to the clipboard. The new ‘Get Ulysses Sheet-Get Details of Ulysses Sheet’ combo makes Ulysses automation much easier and faster.
If you work with files in Workflow on a daily basis, and especially if you’re an iCloud Drive user, you’ll want to check out the new actions and rethink some of your existing workflows. You can get the latest version of Workflow here.
In the last two days, updates to the official Twitter and Dropbox apps for iOS have added an option to clear the contents of their caches.
Cache management has always been an issue on iOS: some apps can accumulate several hundred MBs of cached data and there isn’t an easy way to purge all these separate app caches, which is why companies are implementing their own custom solutions. Currently, Facebook has a cache of 534 MB on my iPhone; Twitter and Instagram have 365 MB; Super Mario Run, GIPHY, and Google Maps have 340 MB stored in cache.
These numbers add up, particularly if you don’t buy Apple’s highest-capacity iPhone models. I appreciate that developers are fixing this problem themselves, but Apple should add a native option in the iOS Settings app to clear app caches more easily.
Following the release of Workflow 1.7 earlier this month, the Workflow team is debuting a set of tweaks and additions this week that further simplify the creation and management of workflows for both beginners and advanced users.
One of the common challenges involving a switch from macOS to an iPad is the lack of desktop-like clipboard managers on iOS.
By nature of the platform1 and technical restrictions imposed by Apple, apps like Pastebot or Alfred wouldn’t be able to adapt their Mac capabilities to the iPad. Third-party iOS apps can’t constantly monitor changes to the system clipboard in the background; similarly, it isn’t possible for an iPad app to register as the handler of a keyboard shortcut at a system-wide level. An app would have to at least be currently in use via Split View to listen for clipboard changes, but, even in that case, it would have to be active to receive external keyboard commands.
With these limitations, it’s no surprise that clipboard managers aren’t a flourishing category on the iPad App Store. However, once we accept the intrinsic differences between the Mac and iPad and if we look at the problem from a different perspective, there’s plenty we can do – either with apps or automation – to go beyond Apple’s modest clipboard offerings on iOS.
After years of testing iPad clipboard managers and automation/scripting strategies, this is what I’ve come up with.
New website dedicated to The Omni Group’s upcoming automation features in their apps, created by Sal Soghoian:
By default, all of the macOS versions of the Omni applications offer robust integrated AppleScript and JavaScript (JXA) support for Apple Events scripting on the Mac. These excellent automation tools will continued to be integrated into every macOS version of Omni software.
And in addition, the Omni Group now offers integrated cross-platform JavaScript support for both the iOS and macOS versions of their popular productivity applications. Finally, the power of automation is available regardless of whether you use Omni tools on mobile devices, laptops, or desktops.
As for the technology itself:
OmniJS, the name for Omni’s new version of the JavaScript language, is based on JavaScript Core, the foundation of the JavaScript implementation in WebKit. Using OmniJS, the Omni Group suite of applications will be able to be queried and controlled on both iOS and macOS in ways similar to how they are automated today using the traditional macOS Apple Event-based scripts.
What’s most impressive is that The Omni Group is bringing all of these automation features to iOS as well – it’s not limited to the Mac. Watch the OmniGraffle videos recorded by Sal to get an idea of the functionality automation will unlock. I’m genuinely excited about all this.
