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From iOS 803: Step Up Your Apple Watch Game - Power User Tips for Your WristMay 21, 2026

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iOS 803: Step Up Your Apple Watch Game - Power User Tips for Your WristMay 21, 2026 — starts at 0:00

And we're live on Match dayay as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing He's got it. Oh and he's gone for a can of Bsy too. What a finish! There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Bepsy So good, so good so good New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to sixty percent off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack Coming up on IOS today, Rosemary Orchard and I, Micah Sargent have our Apple Watches at the ready. Yes, it's time to talk about stepping up that Apple Watch game Stay tuned This episode is brought to you by OT Systems, a leading agentic Sstems platform built for the enterprise. 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This is tr it This is IOS Today. episode eight hundred three Recorded Sunday may seventeenth, twenty twenty six for Thursday may twenty first, twenty twenty six. Step up your Apple Watch gam. Hello and welcome to IiOS Today. This is the show where we talk all things iOS, iPadOS, watch OS, Home Pod OS and all the other OSs that Apple has on I am one of your hosts. My name is Micaah Sargent My name is Rosary Orchard and it's wonderful to be here and let's keep our watches out. Oh, I don't really know how to do that with a pun. Sorry, Micah. I'm letting the side down, but we're here to talk about Watch OS today. We are indeed here to talk about Watch OS and it is an exciting time. You know, we've I think many of the people on the show will have been part of the Apple Watch fam for a while, but this is one of those devices I think can be kind of a fun addition. If you have long been an iPhone user or maybe even an iPhone, an iPad user, maybe you're just a Mac user. Maybe you're sort of some combination therein It is really fun to add an Apple Watch to the mix. I think over time, we've seen the Apple Watch go from this satellite device, right that phoned home to your iPhone and did all that it could based on what your iPhone had. That has changed. The Apple Watch has become a far more powerful device and has become something that can exist on its own. Apple even changed the way that the Apple Watch setup process works so that you are able to activate and make use of an Apple Watch without needing to have an iPhone attached to it. or in some cases, you can use one iPhone to set up multiple Apple watches so that your child, for example, could have an Apple watch without needing to also have a phone. So these devices, I think have become more powerful over time and more independent over time. And it's so nice to see them out of the nest, li in their best life So Rosemary, I think you wanted to give a shout out to kind of kick things off here as we talk about perhaps some of the more extreme ways that Apple Watches can be used Yes, yes, I do. So I would love to give a shout out to Lights of Vegas from our wonderful Club Twit Discord who wrote in and asked does anyone use multiple Apple watches because they are looking at upgrading to a series eleven from an SE two for better health tracking. And they're wondering about how it works with having two watches connected to the same phone They also work at a job where they don't want to wear their primary watch on a daily basis, but they would be okay wearing a secondary watch, which is a very interesting point, you know, sometimes you know these little bits of hardware that Micro and I wear on our wrists, they are nice pieces of hardware but they are kind of pricey. And yeah, if you work in a manual or physical job where things might impact your Apple watch on a regular basis, then you may decide that wearing it is not a great idea. I personally am a software developer, so I sit up my laptop all day and I type that is about as dangerous as my life gets, occasionally giv the dog a bath type thing. So I don't have that concern, but I do know plenty of people who do and you know, there are options out there, as Micah, I'm sure, can attest to. if you want to go Ultra, you could go crazy Ultra or yeah, just a secondary watch. Yeah, I definitely have my setup for sure with my Ultra Apple Watch. I love my Apple Watch Ultra. I think it's a fantastic watch. It's large. I do have smaller wrists and so I've had to kind of get used to the idea that my whole entire wrist is made up of watch. But I think that the band that it came with has helped make that a little bit easier. it fastens well. Rosemary is currently showing off the sort of double situation going on here, which is fantastic well Yeah This is the smaller Apple watchatch as well, to be clear, folks. and that is pretty much the size of my wrist. If I put the ultra on, if I had the ultra here, it is the width of my wrist. I do still own an ultra because talking me out of the action button with the shortcut support, that was a hard sell. It did not work. I did buy it. We'll get to that later. We will. yeah. So I mean for me I have stuck with this over the various iterations of the Ultra. I like I like the look of it now. I like the feel of it. I I don't think that I would go Back the standard Apple Watch personally at this point, just because I think at some point it just you just get used to what you have. And there are some extra features, of course, that have come as part of the ultra, but we've talked about that in the past. The main point I think here is just for me working upgrading to the ultra in the first place and then just continuing on that ultra train as I have as Apple has come out with new versions of it and as I have, you know, become interested in some of the new features or what have you, made it has made it good. Now I'' felt like the Apple Watch is a device that is it has an interesting upgrade cycle and For me, something that I think is interesting is how long they can potentially last. I have some Apple Watches that didn't end up getting traded in that I occasionally will charge just to make sure they're still alive and well and have passed some of those off over time to friends and family. And I really kind of like that about the Apple Watch. It does feel like something that you can You can share with other people, you can when you upgrade, you know, pass along one that you're no longer using. but Apple has had over time an interesting color story when it comes to the Apple Watch, such that we've seen a green one, we've seen a blue one, we've seen all sorts of different colors of aluminum Um, and I think that It's an odd thing where you have this personal decision that goes into this accessory on your wrist, right And that can result in it maybe not being as resellable or swappable if someone's personal preferences were to get in the way of what you would have. But yeah, I don't know. do you when you get an Apple Watch, Rsemary, do you getet it for you in the sense I want a special color or I want this specific finish or is it more about the functionality that you can get out of it? Yeah, I guess I'm curious how much of a fashion item is the Apple Watch to you So personally when I'm picking a piece of hardware like an Apple Watch, I look for neutral As as far as the colors go, don't get me wrong, the blues, the reds, they're gorgeous colors. They don't blend in with my day to day life. You know, as I mentioned, I'm a software developer. That means nobody takes me particularly seriously. If I turn up to the office wearing jeans and a t shirt and I'm wearing you know, a giant Apple watch ultra with this ridiculous scrunchy wristband on it at the office, Nody is going to bat an eyelet. But there are some situations where I still want to wear my Apple watch because I need to stay communicable. other people need to be able to contact me But I need to dress things up a little bit. So this is why I tend to go for the smaller Apple watches. And then I just buy a variety of third party wristband bands that fit with it. You know, Apple W bands, you can get them from Apple. I've got one right here actually behind me in my office for my dad for his birthday. Don't worry he's not watching live. He's on holiday at the moment But you know he was really enamored with the Anchor bllue that's in the latest collection of colors. So I bought him one of those because he loves it. he'll look after his watch bands and keep them. I have a huge collection of just knock off ones because 've been wearing the Apple W since the first version The Apple watch straps are still compatible. I had one strap break on me at some point where the pins got a little wonky or something and I think that was actually an Apple one and they replaced it for me. They were really good about it. I went in store and went Look, this is completely jammed. It's not coming out. somethingomething's wrong. and the guy took it out and went, oh, wow, that's broken and went and got one off the shelf and gave it to me and then went through and was like, I just take a couple of details, please. But you know, they were really good about that But yeah for me, there's a bit of fashion to it, but the other thing I have to keep in mind or I don't have to keep in mind, but I do keep in mind is these are our Modern family heirlooms. This is my watch. When I'm done with this, it will become my dad's watch and then when my dad's done with it, it willll become my momum's watch and then it willll become my grandmother's watch. We pass these down through the family because as you mentioned, M, they last a long time. You know, it's not a piece of technology where Apple makes it completely obsolete the following year Um, you know, the driving principle with upgrading my grandmother's Apple Watch last time was the active fall detection, which we have and we've got turned on for her. But other than that, she didn't really need to upgrade. We actually ended up getting her a second Apple Watch also with full detection so that she can wear one all the time. So when she takes one off of charging, it's a hardot swap situation and we'll have to get to talkking about two Apple watchatchers in a moment because this is It is a thing that can be very useful, especially if you're somebody who just If you're not wearing it, then you'll never wear it again. I have been there, done that, got the t shirt. but it is a very useful device, but I tend to go for something neutral that blends in. So at the moment I'm wearing silver. prereviously I've had Starlight, but I've just had Starlight and silver and that's it because that works with my jewelry collection. I like him. Yeah. Well, this is an episode about leveling up right our your Apple Watch game about maybe doing more than you would otherwise. And so yeah, let's talk about why someone might want to live the two Apple Watch lifestyle. What would be the purpose of this Obviously one of the ways is what the listener mentioned Ls of Vegas mentioned of, you know, saying I have What is it to have two watches connected to the phone? I work a job where I don't want to wear, as you read earlier, the primary watch on a daily basis, but would be okay wearing an extra one What What are some other reasons for oututside of being a developer That you might want to have the multi watch situation I will just mention for folks who aren't familiar. If you're a developer, you'll be installing the developer betas on your Apple Watch and from personal experience, By I wish I knew her. So it is a thing and it's worth doing downowngrading the Apple Watch if you've upgraded it for the beta programs is tricky. So that's why developers tend to have two. I used to have to. To be clear when I went to the two watch lifestyle to start with, it was because I bought a new watch and I kept the previous one much like Lezigs was talking about. And I did this because I found that I was struggling to put my watch on charge that that meant that it was charged enough to do sleep tracking for me In the morning it wasn't so bad. I have Mgae chargers with an Apple watch dock littered around the home because that's just how I live my life. It is the best way to do it for me, I've determined. If I've got a charger everywhere, I can always put things on charge. So taking my watch off in the morning when I would sit down down on my computer and popping it on charge, that wasn't an issue. But then I'd be away from my desk in the evenings, I'd be playing a game with some friends or watching a film or something And I just wouldn't put my watch on charge. And then it would die sometime during the night and I wouldn't have sleep tracking and that would take forever to turn on in the morning. So that's why I originally did it. Battery life has got significantly better as has charging speed. So that is perhaps less of an issue now. But also you know, if, for example, you're somebody who needs an Apple watchatch for your day to day life But you also like to go diving. Ultra could be a really good shout If it doesn't fit in your day to day life, then maybe like this is a save up and we for specific sports and outside of work and things like that and keep your previous watch for your day job and things like that Yeah, there's there's a couple of reasons out there. Those are the only ones that have come to my mind. have any more come to yours, Micah? No, no, no. And I think that those are the main reasons that someone would want to do that. I have considered doing the dayw nightwatch thing. I ultimately for me, I just can't wear a watch to bed U I don't sleep well with it on my wrist It it's it's kind of unfortunate because I think if I hadn't thought about it too much, it probably would have been fine, but I've put too much thought into it. so it becomes sort of this bigger, heavier anchor on my wrist the longer I'm thinking about it sitting there while I'm asleep while I'm trying to sleep. And so yeah, kind of wish I would have just done it in the first place and not thought about it. But it's too late for that. And so I am where I am. One thing with the multiple multiple Apple Watch lifestyle that's, you know, interesting is Apple really kind of has made that something that people might do given that auto switch feature that is in the watch app so that you can automatically swap between those watches and be able to access the settings they're in. Now, one reason again for that is if somebody's managing multiple Apple watchatches for family members being able to quickly access the settings or the pairing process for an Apple Watch or another is all right there Um One of the things I'm always curious about when someone has an Apple Watch, I'll always ask them, how Do you have your screen set up because some people are list people and some people are I don't know what the other one is called Grid The The honeyc. I think it is the app grid, right? Yeah. But What's your method, Rosie?. Yeah, I'm a list person, my c. I've gott to have a list. tried the grid, but similarly, the home screen of my iPhone is pretty basic because I used search and the app library to get to everything. So I personally don't find a You know, I prefer to open up the list of apps and just scroll through because I know I'm looking for sleep orr settings, bothoth of those beingning with S, of course. But you know, it could be looking for watchatchmith or something like that, but it's easy to just, you know, use your digital crown as it's called the scroll wheel on the side to just scroll really quickly. If you give that a little whip, then it will, you know it will scroll quite speedily and get through the list Now, something we're doing is something that anyone who has an iPhone a modern iPhone is able to do, the phone that is paired with the watch And that is a little feature called Apple Watch mirroring, which uses airplay to display your Apple Watch on your phone And so Rosemary and I are both rockking this text. And it gives us not this is what's neat about this. Typically, because Rosemary and I as you can see right now, if you're watching, I am pointing at what is equivalent to my phone screen.ve We've shown this before. We show our phones the on the show can't do with this right now is move my mouse over what's displaying and interact with it. What's cool is This unique feature, this Apple Watch mirroring feature does allow you to interact with whoops, the device. So let me pull that back up and show you that of course, see, I've had it paired the whole time. There we go. I am able to click the digital crown, scroll through my apps. I can click the side button. to access our control center And then I can also click the action button on the other side by tapping. So all of this functionality is available to me right here in The right here on my phone. So if you're having trouble for some reason, whatever it might be, interacting with your Apple Watch on your wrist, this is a way of doing it. It's a little bit bigger as well, which is nice. And so I kind of like this. now Rosemary, you were showing, we'll switch over to you. you were showing us Some of the some of like the widget settings and things that you can do with your Apple Watch because this is this screen that you've just shown which you can access by scrolling up with control or with your digital crown has gotten a lot more powerful. It has indeed. So from the actual watch face, whatever you've got that set to, I'm currently using one of the kaidoscope faces. You can either swipe up with your finger from the bottom. If you're watching, you can just about see something coming in there, or you can scroll up with the digital crown. Of course, I tap on a widget there. And this will show you the current day and time So it says suun, shop for Sunday, seventeenth of May And then it's got an analog loock, which I personally don't find particularly useful because I've mostly got digital watch faces, but I picked the analog one for today so it' fun. And I've got some widgets here. So I've got the mindfulness, I've got weather and I've got music fitness and messages. But below this, there's an edit. And then here you can see your widgets, you can add some more and then you've also got widget suggestions where you can allow widget suggestions. and if you allow them, then you can show them in at the bottom of the smart stack. And then you can just see, okay, so for example for alarms, allow all but buffer, I don't even know what why I've got buffer installed on the Apple Watch to be honest. I should get rid of that. I don't need it U But now I've turned that off so the suggestions there won't show And there are, you know, some really great widgets here. So widgets a really big upgrade on the Apple Watch to start with They were kind of complications and they were just the complications. the little mini app interpretations that you can add to your watch face. Now these have kind of combined with live activities to an extent. And so app developers can really take an advantage of this and reuse code that they're using in other places as well So I've got two featured options here. One is from Armny Focus, showing my forecast so that's upcoming tasks. And then this one looks like it's probably from I don't recognize that app icon to be honest, so I'm just gonna move along. But then I can add something like from aligns. I can show my upcoming alarigns or I can show all of my active alars U there's it was astronomy. there we go So I can add things from my calendar, I could add my camera remote, which is a feature that I always forget exists. so I'm sure I'm not the only one. And I can add that as a widget and you can change the order of your widgets as well. So you can pin it always sayays at the top or I'm going unpin it and I'm just to scroll down and see Are there is there anything else No I should know. I'm gonna pin this little widget to the top actually because I really like this. This one, this three icon widget, I can actually customize. so I can change that So I could remove music and then I can tap and I could add carrot, for example, to it. I actually get put music back because since I finally started setting up my smart speakers in my new home, I can actually make use of this significantly more than I could before. But yeah, controlling the widgets that are in your dock is definitely something that I think everybody should do. and I think it's well worth going through. I'd actually recommend opening the watch app on your phone. So there's an app called Apple Watch. Go through there and just removing all the apps that you don't want. So for example, I don't want buuffer on my Apple Watch. I don't know how that' snuck onto my Apple Watch because I'm usually pretty good about these things But yeah, go through, remove the apps that you don't want so that then when you do open the list or the grid, whatever you choose to use, we still love you just the same. Please try the list. If you've not tried the list, please try the list. can and h Tabs versus spaces Yeah, exactly. It's fine, everything's fine. but yeah, I'd recommend going through and having removing the apps that you don't care about, rememove the apps that you don't want and then go through and have a play. Similarly, I would also recommend being a little more mindful of your notifications when I set up my Apple Watch Ultra again recently as part my preparation for the show I realized I was getting notifications center, upside down, inside out, every every couple of seconds it felt like I was getting a new notification And so I went through and I controlled those and I got rid of a bunch of them because I didn't want them or need them and they weren't making my life better And the whole purpose is about technology that is as personal as being on your wrist where I can literally come along and tap you O the wrist at any time is to make it work for you, not work within it. 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It will also make the LED flash on the back of the phone light up so you can get a visual of where the phone might be, not just the sound Over time, Apple has also added functionality if both devices support it to do nearby through findind My functionality, the ultra wide band chips to help you locate it as well. People might not know though. is that there's actually a reverse option. Now I personally have never misplaced my Apple Watch because if it's not on my wrist, it's on its charger next to my nightstand However If you ever have misplaced your Apple Watch, there is a way to do so. Rosemary. How can someone find their Apple Watch if it goes missing Okay, well, first of all, there's an option who just walked into the room. It's called getting a border Cie and training them to play fetch and then asking them to fetch your Apple box. However This is a significant commitment on top of already having an Apple Watch. I would recommend it. He's very cute, but there's an easier way. If you open Control Center on your iPhone, then you can customize it. and one of the options you can add is finding your Apple watch, which if you're watching the video is the icon down here in the bottom left, it looks like a watch with sort of radar coming out the sides, if that makes sense so if you then tap on this, it will then ping or apple watch. Now Something important to note, if you have two Apple watches, it is going to ping the active Apple Watch. It's not going to paying your secondary Apple W. So you may need to do a little futzing around on the watch app which I can show Fox how to do actually. So I will I will tell you because there we go. So in the Apple Watch app, if you tap on all watches in the top left, then you can turn off auto switch here. and they can select the Apple Watch that you're trying to find, which is very useful when somebody's tail that they don't have their license for yet might have swept the Apple Watch Ultra off my desk while I was pairing it the other day and it got buried in a pile of blankets. So thanks to this feature, I was able to find my Apple Watch Ultra again and there we go knowing that it If you are looking for a particular Apple watchatch and it's not the currently active one, then you do need to manually select it. And then bonus tip remember to turn auto switch back on because it will make your life much much easier. All right. The other thing to mention when it comes to having an Apple Watch is that you can actually use it for Pving your identity. And by that I mean that if you have a mac For example You can use your Apple Watch to not just unlock your Mac, but also confirm purchases as well. The way that it works or the thought is that when you, you as a person Wake up in the morning Let me do it from my perspective. When I Mic a sergeant wake up in the morning and I put on my Apple Watch And I type in my code on my Apple Watch and unlock it then In that moment, I am proving that I amm me. I know my code And so I have said, yes, this is me. now becausecause the watch is on my wrist And because the sensors on the back of the watch, tell that it is up against my wrist What happens is if I take off my Apple Watch, these sensors go, you're no longer connected to a wrist So you could be connected to someone else or you might just be free floating around. And so it relocks at Apple Watch. That on its own is cool. It means that I'm the one or anyone who has the code is the one who can access the Apple Watch. But what's better is that In inherently then, this is a device that has been authenticated At one point during the day and is stuck to you throughout the rest of the day and the watch can tell that that's the case And therefore, it can give you the ability to prove that you're you to your max. So If you don't have a touch ID Mac or you don't like using touch ID, then you can actually say, unlock my Mac with my Apple Watch. And what will happen is the Mac will make a little Bluetooth connection to the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch will say, yeah, I'm on his wrist, I'm on Micah's wrist and Mic in the code so it's him so let him into his mac then if you make purchases on your Mac, the basically anywhere where you would use Touch ID to authenticate you are able to then use your watch to do so It also works the same way on Apple TV. If you buy something your Apple TV will send a little ping to any nearby devices that are yours, so your phone, but also your Apple watch. And then you can just double tap the side button, double click the side button to confirm that you want to make a purchase. So it's really handy to be able to do so But There's also again a reverse, you can unlock your Apple Watch with your iPhone And so what you do is you go into the settings, the watch settings on your phone and you say, yes, I would like to have my watch be unlocked by my iPhone. And so when I wake up in the morning, what actually typically happens is I put on my watch What typically happens is I put on my watch And then I will Face ID with my phone, swipe up Do a couple of things on your phone and during that period of time up at the top, a little notification says unlocking watchatch with iPhone. At any point if you want to, you can tap on that to cancel it. You're saying no, I don't want you to unlock it, but I do. And so then from that point on, my Apple watch is unlocked because the phone has proven to the watch that I am me. And then if I want to, I can also use my watch throughout the day for Unlocking stuff that I need or proving my identity to other stuff. Really cool and another, I think added benefit of an Apple Watch for for use Anything else, Rsemary that you want to mention to help step up the Apple Watch game before we move along to the news I think that the only thing I would like to remind people of is your Apple Watch doesn't need your iPhone to work Even without a cellular plan, you can, for example, play music from your phone to AirPods or any Bluetooth headphones or speakers, including airplay ones. So it is worth remembering that you know, as much as your Apple W is to an extent an extent of what is on your iPhone and I realized I've used the word extent twice there, which is probably very confusing. But It is, you know, it can be used independently. and I would encourage people to give that a go. You don't need to have a cellular plan. on the Apple Watch For example, it's take it for a run. Now if you are going for a run, I would you know please request that you be safe and make sure that you do have a way to get help should you need it or should somebody else that you come across need it or something else, like an animal, for example. But you can just take your watch and some headphones and go if you want And yeah, it's well worth giving that a go because you might find that that enables you to pick up a new fitness habit or even just you know, something that helps you get outside and enjoy yourself without feeling quite so connected best of. Nicely put. I think that that really about covers it for ways to step up your Apple Watch game. But if there are if there are features that you've enabled or apps that you've checked out or settings that you've changed that you think we missed that we that you, you know, you want to share with other people, email us. IO us today at twwit.tv is how you get in touch Let us though, move along to the news. Now Apple recently with the latest rollout of IOS, the point point five update, announced that end to end encrypted RCS messaging would start to be available. We talked about it during our last show where we coveredo point five updates, but I wanted to mention a little bit more about this because Apple and Google, of course, have worked together to make this a reality. RCS stands for Rich commommunication serervices and it's sort of the step up from SMS those media messages and the messages that have just a little bit more involved with them. but to this point, we also talked about that this on the last show, there was not full end to end encryption. That is rolling out And so supported carriers as well as Android users who are on the latest version of Google Messages will be able to communicate with each other over RCS with end to end encryption. So what that means is that Oh, and I should mention, this encryption is on by default and it does get automatically enabled over time for new and existing RCS conversations. So the idea is that You want this to be the case and encryption is great. What it what it means is essentially instead of just U encryption one way, both sides of the conversation, when it's sent and when it's received, it will remain encrypted the whole time. So when it touches Apple servers or Googles servers or your carrier servers or wherever it is, It's a string of characters that are unable to be understood by that carrier or Google or Apple because those companies don't have the key to the message to basically translate it back into whatever the message is. So me sending something as simple as ha haa to roosemary would be just as unreadable as someone sending their social security number to their cousin who needs it for some reason. I don't know. Maybe be careful about sending your social security number to your cousin unless it's a really trustworthy cousin. I also wanted to mention and this is a link that will'll include in the show notes. Apple has a has put together a list where you can see if The carrier that you use is supporting RCS end end encryption. So in Canada, That's I've heard of Bell, for example, and it does support and encrypted messaging. In the US, let's go there next because those are carriers that we'll all be familiar with AT and T supports end end encrypted RCS messaging, Boost mobile. does as well. Let's see any other big names. Consumer cellular also does, which I'm surprised, but also happy to hear U and then we'll keep going down the list Mint mobile, that's good. Metro by T Mobile will as well and sccrolling down until we gets to Verizon and TMobile. We see that TMobile does and will does Verizon right now? Come on, we're almost there. There's Verizon Wireless. Yes, it does. So the major carriers are supporting end to end encrypted messaging, and that's what's important. I think that it's very good that this has been slowly rolling out. You are able to turn on end to end encrypted messaging in your settings So if you have not yet enabled that, you can do so. I want to show you where that is, but I just have to be careful because of course, we have the issue of our phone numbers being displayed. So let me just get to that section and see if we can find it without going in. Okay. so in your settings, If you go into the settings and you in the search bar type in messages or you can scroll down to the bottom where you can see the apps and then find messages. you will see near the bottom of the settings for messages An option that says RCS messaging. If I tap on that You'll note that I have RCS messaging turned on. And I have RCS business messages turned on as well And from there It is of course, the responsibility of your carrier to enable the end to end encrypted version. Apple says that you will see Um let me see. you'll see a lock. Now I've lost it. It says it somewhere. support endroid users, but RCS messages, there we go. When RCS messages are end to end encrypted It can't be read while they're sent between devices. Users will know that a conversation is end to end encrypted when they see a new lock icon in their RCS chats. So if you have an ongoing RCS conversation with someone U you should look for a lock icon in the chat that will show that the conversation is and encrypted. Now I've looked at my recent RCS message that I have the most recent one I have, and it doesn't currently show that lock. So we'll see when that gets updated Now I feel like I need to have more Android friends so I can test this out and make sure it's working for me as I do have AT and T Uh, but in any case, I should see that happen at some point and that is very good Alrighty folks It is time to move along to our next segment and Yeah, I can hear the music It's time for Shortcuts Corner This week's Shortcuts Gner request comes in from Jane, who writes, I'm new to writing shortcuts on my IiOS devices and have been trying to figure out how to export health data. I'm trying to export my waight data for the last months. I figured out how to display the date and wait, but I can't seem to export the data to a CSV file As time goes on, I'd like to export other data for analysis outside of Apple Health Can you help me with a simple script or shortcut? I don't mind updating it for different health data or times. Is there a good tutorial where I can learn how to write shortcuts? How do you share your shortcuts with others? Do you do it via email, via text message, or And Jane has also provided the pet tax as well and says, thank you for your help Jane from Maine, who I will also add is a club Twit member. And we thank you so much, Jane, not only for sending in your shortcuts cororner request, but also for sending us a photo of your adorable dog, a very tall dog. Is that a dle belie I believe it's a doodle of some kind. Yeahah. And I would say so cute. Yeah, very cute, very regal looking And I think a little pensive, which I kind of adore. There's something kind of nice about a dog that's just sort of lookingooking thoughtfully. In any case though, Jane, great question. I feel it's a great question. Rosemary, tell me, is it a great question? and can you help out Jane think it is an excellent question because there is a feature inside of health to export various things in various ways, but you often end up with a PDF of your ECG or something like that, whichich you know, is lovely to be able to give to a doctor who's a qualified health professional But to just use for yourself, I mean, I could print ECG graphs and stick them all over my walls. I don't think that's going to make me physically a healthier person though. Whereas for some people creating a graph that they can display on others You know, other places to show their weight trending in the right direction. That could be really useful or being able to go, hey, I've noticed that my blood oxygen seems to be dipping at these points in time. I wonder why that is. And being able to actually like get that data and print that out or share that in some way can be really useful. I am of course going to add a minor disclaimer of if you're concern about your health, please see a qualified professional U but, you know, there there is, you know, only so much we can do, but being able to give anybody else who you are working with for your health a CSE or Excel sheet, which you know we can create using a CSV because we're smart people here. If you open a CSV file in numumbers or Excel, you can save them as an Ecel sheet or numbers as a numberbers sheet as well. whichich can be very useful. So we're going to start. So we need to use health and we're going to use the find health subples. Now, it defaults to using steps. It has previously had access to my steps data, but that's fine. So what we need to do is I'm actually going to start by changing this. So to use this, you are going to have to allow access to whatever the data is in health However, it's shortcuts, it's going to do exactly what is written in the shortcut. If you downloaded a shortcut from somewhere else that's using something like get Contents of URL or something, then obviously maybe be a little wary and make sure you actually understand what it's doing. But if you're creating this shortcut with me or you download it from me, I promise that data is not going anywhere, you don't send it So we're going to change our type here and we're going to go down to I think it is nope, not body weight It should just be under W four weight Waist circumference, that is a great one to track if you are looking to, you know lose weight or work on your personal health, but I' got a lot access to weight Now There is a thing in health where because it also tracks fitness, it has start dates and end dates. So if you're looking for something like weight, Don't worry too much about that. This's a start date. that is the same as wait. And I'm just going say, hey start date is in the last seven months, because Jane mentioned they've already figured out how to get this date so they just don't know how to make it into a CSV Now your unit min defaulted to kilograms because that's what I have my device set to, but we want to make sure sort by is going to be something start date And we want oldest first, becausecause otherwise the first thing we're going to have to do when we open this CSV file somewhere else is resort the data. And that's a whole extra step that we can just solve right here right now Now, what we're going to do is we're going to use a repeat with each underneath this. So we're going to go through each of the items And we're gonna add a text into this. And then what I'm going to do is I am going to select our repeat item and I am going to get our start date And then I'm going to add a comma And then I'm going to go back in and I'm just select a repeat item again and then I'm going to add our value, okay, which is what it defaults to. So now we are creating A line, just one line which is start date, comma or the date rather, comma and then your actual weight. Now I've not included the units here. I'm hoping that's okay. If you want to include the units, you can adddd it again as another repeat item and then you can add your unit. I'm going to take that out because that will mess with some things when it comes to graphing the numbers. and then we want to combine these lines. So we're going to use a combine text. This needs to go after your repeat and then we're going combine it with new lines and then we're going to use a set Name And the set name here is we're gonna to set it to no, I wanted to type in there. You just need to tap on it in the right spot and I missed. Health data and then very important here. csV. thenen I'm going to expand this. and tap don't include file exception, which means it's not going to try to add. txtT to stand for text file automatically. And then when I run this, it's going to ot do anything because I don't actually have any health data loed in here. I've just got some new batteries for my smart scale. But what I will do is I'm going to add a little share action in here and then you're going to share this and then you'll be able to put that file anywhere you choo. You can put it in iloud, you can put it in Dugbox, you can just aerdrop it to another machine. You can open it in a particular application Now One thing to note, this shortcut will work brilliantly on iPhone. It will work wonderful on iPad. If you try to run this on an Apple Watch or a Mc, it is going to go cool because it does not have the health app and the data for it. And also Apple Watch does not do sharing of files. So you'll need to run this on an iPhone or an iPad But this is the option Now Jade also asked How do you share your shortcuts with others? Now for me, if I go to the share option here, then I can scroll down and I can go copy iCloud Lake, which is how I share it with everybody in the show notes because that's what we do here at IOS today. But to do this, under settings, apps and shortcuts, I have made sure that I've turned private sharing on And then advance, I've also made sure that I've allowed everything Now Sharing, you shouldn't need to turn private sharing on. You may find that you need to. I did have that with somebody relatively recently where they were asking me, Rose, why isn't this working? I don't understand. It turned out they didn't have private sharing on. They turned that on and then it worked and then they turned it off and it continued working. So I think it was just a glitch for that particular person Uh But yeah, that's how you share. So you just copy the Cloud link and that's it. That should be all they need. If you update that shortcut, then the next time they download it, it should be updated again That's it. Love.ope that helps you, Jan. Yeah, I hope it does too. Fantastic recommendation there alwaysways, as always one of my favorite parts of Shortcuts corner, the demonstrations of how to create these shortcuts So if you have a shortcuts corner request, you can send that to us by reaching out IOS today at twwit. Tv is how you get in touch Moving along to our final segment of the show, it is time for our app caps. These are the apps or gadgets we've been using for some time or perhaps have been using for the first time, but we think you're great and want to share with all of you. Now the product that I want to talk about this week, Moft actually sent me this so full disclosure. I did not purchase this device, but I think it's a super cool one that many people might wantant to check out because it is the moffed trackable wallet stand. Now, Moft has made lots of different cool Mag saafe stands in the past. In fact, I think we've shown one on the show before. and so you are used to the idea of being able to sort of thock it to the back of your device and then use the included little stand, which also has magnets to give you the ability to place it vertical, horizontal This also serves as a wallet. I can slide little cards in here or a little bit of money if I want to, paper money into this pocket. and then it closes up whoo like so and good to go That on its own is already nice, right? It's a it's a nice sort of material, a pretty maroony red color And overall is well designed, but what's even better The secret sauce here that Moft has included is It's got find My built into it. So this is actually a find My wallet that has a little speaker. that will sound out if you lose it and you use the findind My app to do so. So in the app findind My, I am able to find the MOFft device and hit play sound on it and we'll see if it'll play or if it'll get eaten up by the Zoom I can hear that from here, my go Possibly because it sounds like it's in I'm in your house, but it seems pretty loud in the best of ways. In the best of ways, exactly. So it is loud and it is able to be you know heard over long distances. and I think that's something that makes this so great. Now there are lots of companies that are making findind My style devices. This is just one of those options, but it's just really cool to be able to have A littleittle wallets that if you lose it You don't have to actually lose it. You can find it And o oh oh, I don't think that I mentioned, but should have mentioned that it's not just magnetic so that you can block it to the back of your phone. it's also magnetic because You can recharge it. This is not a one time use device that lasts a year. No. It's rechargeable. and that's important So that's the MOft trackable wallet stand, which you can get at mft. Us It is forty nine dollars ninety nineents. Yeah, fifty bucks is not bad for a nice. Oh, the color I'm so sorry, I called it maroon. It is called Blackberry. and I can see why.s it's a sort of deep purplish red burgundy. sort of color So that's my pick. Rosemary It looks like you've got an interesting pick as well Yeah, maybe I was inspired by you, Mica. Maybe I had a last minute scramble to find my app cap and it was is within reach in my office because I'm currently using it again. I am also currently on the Microsoave wallet bandwagon. I cycle through being on it and off it depending on my needs as the year goes, but I'm currently using the Spidgeon Tint Tap MagFit magnetic Magafe wallet. It's a bit of a mouthful, but it's pretty awesome. So it's got Magsafe on the back And on the front Let's go Max safe again Why Oh, so you can put your pop socket on it So it's You can still have your pub socket on your phone, even though you also have a wallet on it It's great. And the way that this works is it has a slider on the side. Now I should know, I've got mine in a black and it's got kind of a speckled finish to it, which is, you know, pretty nice. But then what you can do is it's got a lock here and you just slide that up and then when you push it pops open, which I'm filling to do because I'm holding it. Now I've just thrown a card in here. It doesn't have any personal information. but it's got a band on this side, which is really nice for putting you know some cash in there of some kind, you know, paper money rather than coins. You could probably put coins in here, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I feel like they might just fall out every time you open it. I've put my What is this? u Oh I forgot the name of the company. Nomad, That's it. my Nomad magax in rechargeable find my card in here. And then I've currently got four cards in the other side, but there's space for more. I could fit at least one more card in here, maybe two and I could definitely get some cash in here on this side. So this is a chunkier one But I really like the fact that it locks so that I'm not like if I drop it on the floor, it's inevitable. It will happen. then I don't have to worry about, you know losing a card or something. And yeah, I just really like this. I really love the addition of the extra Magafe on the back because this is my problem with a lot of mag safe wallets of I lose my pop socket, my beloved pop socket And I'm somewhat addicted to pop sockets. I find that iPhones are just a little too large for my hands and it's nice to have a pop socket. So the fact that they thought ahead made sure that as well as sticking this to your phone, you can stick something to the back of it as well makes me very, very happy. This is also, it feels sturdy enough that you can just like chuck air bag of some kind, which is wonderful. And it does have some kind of weird, I don't know how to describe it, but like I wave the front notches into the back. I wouldn't necessarily say it's waterproof without checking the information, but it feels definitely like if it got some splashes It would be pretty your your const are going to be pretty safe. And so should your Cashb as well Nice. Yeah, that looks very. I going fishing soon and have been sort of considering the protection that I need to do therein and something like this is seems really nice too to keep things safe. Now I of course I don't know about the water ingress of it, but just that very hefty look and also The stunning color, like that orange is really pretty as well. Oh yeah, I should have mentioned, it comes in orange, it comes in like a couple of frosted shades, comes in June, which is a cream. And it's worth having a look if you are color agnostic when it comes to these things at the prices at third party retailers such as Amazon, I noticed the June one on Amazon right now is significantly cheaper any of the other colors. I think this usually goes for around thirty five dollars. The hinge on this is just so satisfying. You know, if you press the button, it just it pops open, but it like feels like there's a spring in there pushing it open so that you just immediately get. Oh, that's actually really nice M It's a really great fidget toy which is not its intended purpose and I have to stop myself from doing that. but I like the fact that there's a lock so that I can't just be constantly pushing the button if I've locked it. Speaking of fidget toys, this is not really related to anything, but I went to a little fair in Portland and they have these rings that are interwoven. with multiple rings. and so this five and it is so fidgety, but it's quiet which is really nice because they sort of roll across the finger. And so I'm walking around after I purchased this, I'm walking around the festival and this one stall, I was kind of looking at what the person what the person was offering while I was fidgeting with this and the gal sees what I'm doing and she goes That just must be a dream for you, huh? I said, abbsolutely. So it was a purchase. So yeah, feel I feel the fidget of it. That's wonderful. Folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of IOS todayoday. We thank you so much for being here with us. I want to remind you all about cllub Twit at twwit d.tv slash cllub Twit When you head to Club Twit, which you can do by using the QR code in the corner there or by going to twwit d.tv slash Club Twit as I mentioned, ten dollars a month, one hundred twenty dollars a year. doing so, joining the club gets you access to some awesome benefits. Every single one of our shows ad free, just the content, you also gain access to special feeds, our feed that has before the show, after the show and other clips. There's also a feed that has our live coverage of tech news events like on Tuesday when we'll be covering Google IO and WWDC in June. We also have our special club shows that are published there. We just announced at Stacy's Book Club, which will be in the feed as well, if you don't have it yet. We just announced my new and upcoming media club where we will sort of be broadening the idea of book club so that you will be able to talk about media There's a poll running right now in the discord, which I'll talk about in a minute what the discord is. But for those of you who are already hip to the game, in the discord, I believe in the announcements section, you should see a poll has our info regarding The club shows and I'm having trouble finding where that Fed is Browse channels, there's announcements. Okay. I need to keep that one in my sidebar The Options are between the top animated episodes for sort of like adult animation. So Futuramas's Jurassic Bark Rick and Morty's tototal Rickall and Simpson's Marge versus the monorail So we'll watch all three of those and talk about them There's also the fifth element There's also Bgonia, which is a movie if fifth album, I feel like everybody knows. Bugonia is a newer movie and then Perfect Days, which is a movie from twenty twenty three. And so one of these, it's currently between curntly that the Animated episodes is the winner. But anyway, get in there and vote for our first Micas Media Cub conversation If that sounds good to you, o, so those were the three feeds, you also gain access to the disiscord. It's a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club Twit members and those of us here at Twit to watch those live shows that are for the club there and hang out and have lots of conversations. So thank you for being a member of the club if you are and if you're not Now's the time to check it out Rosemary Orchard if people would like to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where are the places they should go to do so

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