Transit Is Still the Best-Designed Transit App on the iPhone in 2024

By Niléane

I like trains. I like them so much that, despite being 27 years old now, I still don’t have a driving license. I travel by train and use public transit exclusively to get around in my daily life. The island where I grew up had none of that, and it has made the car a fundamental necessity for most inhabitants there. But I’m fortunate enough to live in continental France now, in a city where I can get anywhere pretty quickly by hopping on a bus, tram, train, or even a high-speed train.

The result is that I spend a lot of time on my phone on a daily basis looking up transit itineraries and glancing at waiting times. Like in most places in the world where public transit is a thing, you can use the transit authority’s first-party application or website to do this. There is a universal truth about those apps and sites, though: they are almost always really bad. They’re slow, confusing, and often bloated with useless information. This is why, for so many years now – since I first arrived in France in 2014 – I’ve been a huge fan of Transit.

Transit is an amazing app that lets you look up transit itineraries and will even guide you along as you travel to your destination. The app has been around for a long time, but my mission today is simple: I want to tell you why I believe Transit is still the best-designed transit app available on the iPhone right now.

Let’s get into it.

RoamPod: Exploring the Untapped Potential of a Portable HomePod mini

By Niléane

A couple of months ago, my partner and I were contemplating purchasing a Bluetooth speaker for the bathroom. We both like to listen to podcasts and music while in the shower, and using our iPhones at maximum volume outside of the shower booth was getting old.

Here’s the thing, though: Bluetooth speakers aren’t great. I tried a bunch of small portable Bluetooth speakers. The JBL Go 3, in particular, was pretty good. It has a decent sound, it’s small and easy to move if we want to use it in other rooms, and it’s waterproof. Unfortunately, when it comes to connectivity, the JBL Go 3 was no exception in the sea of similarly-priced portable speakers: you often have to re-pair your iPhone, and that becomes especially painful if you’re sharing the speaker with your partner like I am. I really didn’t want to go back to this life of spending two full minutes to pair my iPhone every time I’m headed for the shower. We would only end up giving up on it and going back to blasting our iPhones at maximum volume.

In the end, I had a suggestion for my partner: what if we used a HomePod mini instead?

Vivaldi for iOS Updated with Colorful Themes and Ability to Force Dark Mode

By Niléane

When I first reviewed Vivaldi for iOS back in October, I was disappointed by the small number of customization features that were available in the app at launch. This was especially remarkable since Vivaldi Browser is mostly known on the desktop for its emphasis on UI customization and advanced features. In the iOS version of the app, you couldn’t change the color of the tab bar, nor could you customize the new tab page with a background image.

Today, however, Vivaldi on iOS was updated to version 6.6, which brings the ability to customize the app’s user interface with colorful themes. You can now choose from a handful of pre-selected colors, use the native iOS color picker, and even opt to have the accent color of the UI dynamically change based on the site you’re currently viewing. Additionally, you can now also set a custom background image for the new tab page. Combined with the ability to move the tab bar to the bottom of the screen, these new features bring the iOS version much closer to what we’ve come to expect from Vivaldi, at least in terms of appearance settings.

Vivaldi 6.6 also comes with a new setting to force dark mode on web pages that do not natively support it. As a big fan of Noir, a Safari extension that does just that, I am super glad to see this feature being implemented in more third-party web browsers.

Vivaldi on iOS is still in its early days, and it’s missing many of the capabilities of its desktop counterpart when it comes to tab management, including tab grouping. But I still believe the app can establish its niche on the iPhone if it keeps steadliy gaining more of these quality-of-life and customization features.

If you feel like giving the updated Vivaldi a try, the app is available for free on the App Store today.

Three Tips to Combine BetterTouchTool and Raycast for Simpler Keyboard Shortcuts

By Niléane

Raycast is one of my favorite Mac utilities of all time. When I recommend Raycast to someone, I usually like to say that it’s a Swiss Army knife for your Mac. It is an app launcher, a shortcut launcher, a clipboard manager, an emoji picker, and more, all in one single app.

I am also a huge fan of BetterTouchTool on my Mac to fill those interaction gaps that I feel are missing in macOS. I previously wrote on MacStories about how I use BetterTouchTool to manage my windows with the Magic Trackpad and keyboard shortcuts.

Lately, I’ve been exploring the idea of using Raycast and BetterTouchTool together. I found that I can combine the two to create some really simple keyboard shortcuts that would otherwise be impossible to make because they leverage Apple’s special keys on the Magic Keyboard.

I have selected three of these simple keyboard shortcuts to share with you today. Let’s check them out.

Tapbots Releases Ivory 1.9 with Quote Posts

By Niléane

Today, Tapbots released version 1.9 of their award-winning Mastodon client Ivory for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The update brings the long-awaited ability to quote posts, and to view quoted posts inline in the timeline.

Quote posts have been on the team’s roadmap ever since the app was first released early last year, while the feature was already supported by other Mastodon clients, including Mona for Mastodon. As expected, quoting a post in Ivory simply works by pasting a post link in the compose view, or by tapping the ‘Boost’ button on any public post, which now features an additional ‘Quote’ option.

Although quote posts currently aren’t supported directly by Mastodon, Tapbots says Ivory isn’t changing anything fundamental to the way Mastodon posts work:

“All we are doing is showing the post you are linking to visually vs just having a link to a Mastodon post which anyone has been able to do since the beginning of the service. That and making the process of copying a link to a post and pasting it in the compose view more automated.”

Following Tapbots’ announcement, Mastodon CTO and core team member Renaud Chaput reiterated in a thread that the Mastodon team is currently working on bringing quote posts to all Mastodon users:

“We are working on implementing Quote Posts. This is a much more complex feature than showing a preview for a link to a post, which is done at the moment by multiple clients.”

Renaud Chaput most notably detailed the team’s desire to build the feature with user safety in mind, to be able to prevent harassment behaviors, and to allow Mastodon users to control who can quote their posts.

Quote posts are currently listed as “planned” on the official Mastodon roadmap, but if you want to start quoting posts on Mastodon today, Ivory 1.9 is now available on the App Store for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

Apple Releases iOS and iPadOS 17.4 with Major Safari and App Store Changes in the EU, Transcripts for Podcasts, New Emoji, and More

By Niléane

Today, Apple released iOS and iPadOS 17.4, the fourth major updates to the operating systems that launched in September and Federico reviewed on MacStories.

iOS 17.4 is a significant release, bringing major platform changes to iOS in Europe as part of Apple’s response to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), as well as a handful of new features, including transcripts in Apple’s Podcasts app, new emoji, multilingual updates to Siri, and more.

Let’s dive in, starting with the main changes for iPhone owners in the EU.

Looks Like Rain: Visualizing the Weather on a Color-Coded Timeline

By Niléane

I’m always excited when a new weather app is released, especially when it’s a weather app that looks different from most of its counterparts. Looks Like Rain by Thinkbits is beautifully designed, and it certainly looks different, to say the least. The layout of the app is clean, the elements are well-spaced, and the color palette has clearly been composed with care. Most importantly, though, I’m absolutely loving its unique approach to visualizing the weather forecast on a color-coded timeline.

I’ve been using this brand-new weather app for the past few weeks on the iPhone, the iPad, and the Mac, and it has already earned a permanent place in the rotation of my favorite weather apps.

Let’s check it out.

Wallpaper Frenzy: A Roundup of My Favorite Wallpaper Apps, Tools, and Artists in 2024

By Niléane

Wallpapers have always been a reflection of my often chaotic energy. I can sometimes spend months, or even years, without ever changing my wallpaper, and I can spend that same amount of time just frenetically changing it every day until I’m completely satisfied. A lot of that decision process is completely irrational, but I do know what I’m looking for when choosing a new wallpaper. It must be high-resolution, vibrant, colorful, and it mustn’t look too busy.

Early this year, I once again started going through a frenetic wallpaper-hunting phase. It turns out, high-quality wallpaper apps in the App Store are not that easy to find. I have frequently come across wallpaper apps that are filled with scammy ads, and sometimes even seem to contain stolen artwork. So I am seizing this opportunity to round up and highlight some of my favorite high-quality wallpaper apps, tools, and artists on Apple’s platforms in 2024.

Let’s check them out.

feeeed: Embracing Feed Diversity and Personal News Curation

By Niléane

With The Iconfactory launching Project Tapestry this week, I was reminded of an indie app that I first started testing a few months ago. feeeed – that’s with four ‘e’s – by Nate Parrott is a feed reader app unlike any other I’ve seen on iOS.

Today, with our favorite content scattered across social media platforms, apps, blogs, and newsletters, it’s honestly really hard to keep up, and there is clearly a demand for an app that could juggle with all of them. feeeed is an attempt at embracing that diversity, and letting you build your own feed, merging all those sources into one continuous and beautifully designed stream.

I was excited about this app when it originally came out, and for the past week, I have once again given it a prime spot on my iPhone Home Screen to properly try it out as my main reading app.

Let’s jump in.

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