On the iOS Calendar app, you can pinch to zoom into events in the month or day view:

I've been tweaking Obsidian to act more as a focused, note-taking app, and I ended up creating a custom theme based on my website and newsletter. Here's how it looks in light and dark modes:

I liked this feature in Spotify and YouTube Music, and now Apple Music has this, too: You can swipe on the Now Playing bar or on the full-screen layout to change tracks like this:

This is a fun iOS app to sort some colour palettes and decompress for a few minutes. I often keep sorting palettes one after the other. The app's called Color Sort Therapy.

I've not been a fan of Obsidian's UI since the beginning. But recently, a Hulry Plus member suggested the Notebook Navigator plugin, and it makes the notes list in Obsidian much easier to browse. Try it out from Obsidian's community plugins section.

If you have a QR code photo on your phone, from a catalogue, or any other downloaded materials, you can long-press the QR code to open various options. There, you can open the embedded link, copy it, copy the embedded text, etc. Here's a demo:

If you listen to podcasts on the Apple Podcasts app, you can swipe up or down the speed indicator to quickly tune the playback speed:

While recording a voice note on your iPhone, such as dictating an idea in a new note, you can select Voice Isolation mode to reduce background noise and improve clarity. Once you've started recording: 1. Swipe down the Control Centre 2. Tap recording Controls 3. Choose Voice Isolation

Safari on iOS 26 doesn't have a button to see all opened tabs in one tap in the compact view. But you can still quickly navigate to the Tabs overview via two gestures: 1. Swipe up the floating address bar 2. Double-tap the more options button

Apple Music now allows you to pin up to 6 albums or songs for quick access. However, the default action for pinned items is to open the album and locate the pinned song. You can set your pinned songs to play on tap like this: 1. Long-press on a pinned song 2. Select Tap Action 3. Choose Play

Spotlight on macOS Tahoe now supports input parameters for Shortcuts, and I recreated Raycast's Quick Links feature with it. I had a quick link in Raycast to search for books on Goodreads. I created a Shortcuts that does the same. Here's a demo:

One of the most read and loved guides I published on Hulry was last year's Back to Basics guide on Apple Notes. After this year's new OS releases, I refreshed the 42-minute guide with updated media and additional tips and workflows. Read the entire piece here → hulry.com/back-to-basics/notes/

When using nested folders in the iOS Notes app, it can be cumbersome to navigate back to the top-level folder. Here's a tip: Tap and hold the back button to reveal the hierarchy of folders. Then, choose a folder from the list to navigate to it or "Folders" to navigate to the top, like this:

One of the lesser-known features in the Finder app is that you can save your frequent searches. For example, I had tagged some photos from my trip that I want to edit, and I always searched for the tag "Red" to find these photos. An easier way is to save this search as a Smart Folder, like this:

My wife and I have been working on this nifty feature for the @shakkei.app for a while, and I finally sent the update today morning. You can now run desktop scenes from the Shakkei macOS app in Day or Night mode. We made a teaser video showcasing the feature:

Night mode animations are working. Coming soon in the upcoming update.

If you share screenshots from your iPhone often, there's a quick way to do this. Once you've taken a screenshot, tap and hold the screenshot preview at the bottom-left for a few seconds and release to open the share sheet like this:

Shakkei brings animated wallpapers to your Mac desktop to create the perfect work or play ambience. 💻🖥️👌

Shakkei scenes are about to get more interesting. Dropping soon.

In all my years of experience creating workday schedules, I've noticed how quickly they can become overwhelming. Meetings and tasks pile up, and we don't get any room to breathe. Here are some Japanese philosophies that serve as a stencil to help me design a well-balanced schedule every day:

I'm trying a new trick to see if it reduces my social media doomscrolling: Automatically turning on greyscale mode and increasing contrast when opening social media apps, and reverting to normal on closing them. Let's see how it goes.

Probably the best explanation I’ve read about how social media warps our perception of time:

One of the things I love about @shakkei.app is that I can switch the audio mode to match my mood. For example, sometimes, I prefer the ambient audio to play as raw nature sounds accompanying the active scene without any background music. This setting does that job:

If you use Apple Notes's Quick Notes feature on your iPhone to save a link to a web page, the next time you open that web page, a note preview automatically pops up in the bottom-right corner. Tap the floating preview to open your note. Handy to remember any notes you have saved for a web page:

Great newsletter, I treated myself to the paid option.

Research suggests that just looking at photos which have natural elements in them can boost our mood, calm us down and have an overall positive impact on us. Pair it with a natural soundscape, and the effect magnifies. Make your macOS desktop a calming space for you.

Over the course of trying out new apps, I sometimes discover free apps that can give some paid ones a run for their money. Here are 8 such free iOS apps for you to try: Yume Journal — a beautiful dream journaling app that emulates a physical journal book:

Around 2022–2023, I was having a hard time sleeping. The surface-level internet advice didn't work for me, so I tried a few lifestyle changes that did the job well. I documented everything in this blog post. No supplements or fancy sleeping pods involved.

In case you didn't know, there's an easy way to toggle the Do Not Disturb mode on macOS. Hold down the ⌥ key and click the date area in the menu bar to toggle between DND on and off. This is handy when you want to quickly turn on DND before a meeting or presentation. Here's a demo:

This passage from an old Japanese short story (published probably in 1961) feels like a weirdly accurate description of the future AI-assisted human-to-human interactions:

New scene, who's in? Version 1.0.3 is out now, introducing a new scene called Icelandic Falls. Try it out in the latest Shakkei app → shakkei.app

If you use Gmail on your iPhone, try this out: On any email, select some text and tap Google Search in the pop-up menu to search the text in an embedded Google Search view. This is fantastic for quickly looking up concepts, company names, etc., on Google without switching over to the browser:

If you listen to music or podcasts on your iPhone through headphones, you can use the Headphone Safety setting to protect your hearing. Go to Settings → Sounds & Haptics → Headphone Safety and turn on Reduce Loud Audio. Then, use the slider to set a max volume level (the lower, the better).

On any note in Apple Notes, you can tap the three-dot button and tap Recent Notes to view a list of notes you've interacted with recently. This is helpful when you're gathering bits of information from many notes into a single note, as you can easily jump back and forth between notes like this:

Did a cool thing today:

Each scene in the Shakkei app was hand-drawn and animated with care. Here's a behind-the-scenes peek into the Valley Express scene being animated and adjusted:

I've been working on a fun macOS app for a while, and it's now ready for you to try. I'm calling it Shakkei (@shakkei.app), named after the Japanese principle of “borrowed scenery”, and with it, you can transform your Mac workspace into a lively and cosy environment. Try it out → shakkei.app

One of the interactions in macOS that is useful but less used is the double-tap to zoom into a section. If you have a MacBook or a Mac with a trackpad, you can double-tap with two fingers to quickly zoom into the section where you have your cursor:

Last week, I took my 7 years of Kindle highlights, and paired with Claude Code to automatically extract, title, tag and interlink them in a beautiful @obsidian.md vault. I wrote about my process and how you can use the same technique for other knowledge bases over here → hlry.at/KuHxoA

I've been thinking of getting into analogue systems for a while, and this is the first time I've got a system that's working for me. It's a simple system that combines the best of to-do lists and retrospective journaling in a single, small notepad page. Check it out here:

Digg is returning with a clean look:

If you need to quickly switch your system audio input for a meeting or voice recording, you can use the sound options in Control Center instead of fiddling with settings. Here's how: 1. Open Control Center 2. ⌥ Click on Sound 3. Choose your audio input device

If you have signed in with the same Apple account on an iPad and Mac, you can push your mouse cursor beyond the right edge of your Mac's screen to quickly connect it to your iPad. Then, use your computer mouse to control your iPad like this:

After trying quite a few macOS apps, here are 3 lesser-known gems I've discovered recently: 1) Dory — a keyboard-first, beautiful app switcher for macOS. Press the right ⌘ key to activate Dory, and then press the first letter of an app name to switch to it:

I often use the Downloads folder on my Mac's dock to quickly access files I want to upload or use in an app. But the tiny thumbnail doesn't always make the file's contents obvious, so here's a tip: Hover over an item from the Downloads stack and press Space to look at the file without opening it:

When you have too many windows open, macOS Mission Control gets crowded and messy. You can organise the space by grouping open windows by apps. Go to System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Group windows by application, and turn it on. Here's a demo showing before and after window grouping:

If you use Safari on iOS and prefer opening links without disrupting your flow, here's a tip: Instead of tapping on a link as usual and having it open in a new tab, use the two-finger tap. Tap on any link in a webpage with two fingers to open it in a new tab without switching tabs:

After 18 years in service, Pocket is shutting down on July 8th. So, what are your options if you've been using this app to read later? Here are a few: I've been using the new Reeder app as my all-in-one place to read articles from RSS feeds and the ones I save from around the Web:

While in macOS Mission Control, holding the ⌥ key while clicking on a desktop space navigates to that desktop within the Mission Control view. This is handy when quickly rearranging open windows across your desktop spaces without continuously switching in and out of Mission Control. Here's a demo:

Mission Control on macOS is a fantastic bird's-eye view of all your open windows. You can organise this space by grouping open windows from the same app in a single unit. Go to System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Group windows by application, and turn it on. Here's a demo showing before & after: