Software – MikeRisner.com

Digitally Scan Documents in iOS

March 2, 2022 by Mike

Your iPhone has an impressive camera for taking pictures, but it can also scan documents and save them as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. There are many solutions. Let’s look at one that is included in iOS. And then let’s look at some advanced features available in an app with a compelling subscription option.

The Files App

Files is part of iOS and is already installed on your iPhone. Nestled away in a corner of this app is the ability to create electronic documents using your camera to scan physical (aka, paper) documents.

The resulting PDF will be essentially an image within the PDF file. You will not be able to select or search the document’s text.

Let’s go.

Open the Files app and navigate to the folder to which you’ll want to save you scanned document.
Find and tap the ellipse icon in the upper right corner.
Tap Scan Documents.
When the camera screen opens, I recommend immediately tapping Auto in the upper right to change the image capture mode to Manual. I found that Auto is kinda trigger happy, several captures of the same page before I could stop it. Also, Auto mode won’t allow you to adjust the document edges following your page captures while the Manual mode will.
Hover the camera over your document. You’ll see a blue overlay as the iPhone interprets the document edges.
Tap the shutter button to capture the image. If you kept the Auto setting on, the document page will be captured once the software recognizes the page.
If you used the Manual setting in the previous step, you can use your finger to adjust the edges of your scan to get the results you wish.
Tap Keep Scan.
Repeat for all pages of your document.
Once you’re satisfied, tap Save.
Find the PDF named Scanned Document in the file listing. If you wish to rename it, simply long-press the name and tap Rename. Edit the name and tap Done.

Scanner Pro (with Plus Subscription)

If you frequently scan documents and save them as PDFs, then you’re likely interested in advanced features. I recommend Scanner Pro by Readdle. While its advanced features require a Plus subscription (currently US$19.95), those features are compelling.

Side note: You might recognize Readdle as the maker of the excellent Spark email app.

Here’s the feature comparison.

Feature	Free	Plus
Document Scanning	Y	Y
Share files (with watermarks)	Y	Y
Sync with iCloud	Y	Y
Smart Categories	Y	Y
Watermark-free documents		Y
Auto upload to cloud		Y
Optical character recognition (Text Vision)		Y
Password protection for app and PDFs		Y

To be brutally honest, I would not recommend the free version just because of the watermarks.

If the subscription isn’t a dealbreaker for you, then you will likely enjoy the smart categories, optical character recognition, and password protection.

Visit Scanner Pro by Readdle

Where’s the Black Unity Face? [Updated]

March 15, 2022February 20, 2022 by Mike

UPDATE Mar 15, 2022: With watchOS 8.5 release, my Unity watchface is back to normal!

Recently, the Black Unity watch face on my Apple Watch 5 went mostly blank on me. This is what I see on my 44mm Apple Watch 5 (standard). Only the seconds hand spinning around.

I’ve rebooted. I’ve also deleted it from my Faces in the Watch utility app and re-added it. No luck. Suffering through the un-pairing and re-pairing process is too much effort for any watch face, especially without assurance that it would resolve the issue.

I suspect 1) the bug is associated with the face being the first to use raytracing, and 2) the bug was introduced with the recent watchOS update (8.4.2). Note the coding-style labels showing the the Edit interfaces.

If you’re experiencing this issue, as well, consider submitting feedback to Apple at https://www.apple.com/feedback/.

Here’s to hoping an upcoming update will fix this issue. That watch face looks awesome and celebrates a topic about which I feel strongly.

Lossless Apple Music Prevents Rewind and Fast Forward

August 1, 2021 by Mike

Apple Lossless icon with standard play control buttons of which Rewind and Fast Forward are crossed out.

Well, that’s disappointing.

I use Apple CarPlay and frequently play music while driving. Every now and then, I like to fast forward in some music tracks by long pressing the Fast Forward button. Recently, I noticed that I could no longer do this in most music tracks.

Some yes, most no.

On my iPhone and iPad, I was still able to use the Progress Bar to scrub through any track, but long pressing the Fast Forward button on those devices still did not work on most tracks. The Progress Bar is not part of the CarPlay interface, so I can only use the Rewind and Fast Forward buttons there.

I started troubleshooting, and I eventually noticed that Rewind and Fast Forward did not function in any lossless tracks. In non-lossless tracks, the buttons worked just fine.

In Settings/Music, I turned off Lossless and Dolby Atmos, and Rewind and Fast Forward came back to life in all tracks.

Sigh.

Did Apple really release Lossless, Dolby Atmos, and Spatial Audio in Apple Music in a way that kills the Rewind and Fast Forward feature?

For my own solution, I have disabled Lossless and Dolby Atmos on my iPhone. This is the device I connect to CarPlay, so this solves my CarPlay problem. On my iPad, I kept Lossless and Dolby Atmos enabled.

Hopefully Apple will address this in a future update.

Use AppCleaner to Really Uninstall an App

December 10, 2019December 1, 2019 by Mike

Price: FREE
Developer Website

Removing apps from a Mac is very simple. You just move it to the Trash.

But what about all the supporting data and settings your computer uses with that app? Surprisingly, these little tidbits are usually left behind. And after a while, these little tidbits add up and can create performance or storage issues. And manually removing these small files requires rooting around in a set of very unintuitive folder structures that are actually hidden by default.

AppCleaner makes all this drudgery unnecessary.

Open AppCleaner. Open the Application folder in Finder. Then just drag and drop the app you want to remove onto the AppCleaner window.

AppCleaner will generate a report that includes the app and its supporting elements. Oftentimes, AppCleaner will not include the supporting elements that hold your custom personal settings. These elements would be beneficial if you were to install the app again later. If you don’t plan to install again, you can just check those remaining items to be included in the removal process.

Click Remove. Provide your Mac password if prompted. And you’re done, and it’s gone.

I’m getting rid of an outdated installation of Reeder

Keyboard and Mouse Utilities For macOS That Windows Users Will Love

July 9, 2021December 26, 2017 by Mike

A year ago, I decided to move from Windows to Mac. As an iPhone user, this made sense. My mobile and desktop computing resources integrated very well and solved a lot of workarounds and incompatibilities that plagued me as a Windows user. And to be brutally honest, I got tired of fixing my Windows machine. Macs are not perfect (by a LONG shot), but they’re predictable which makes them more dependable.

Problem

Being a long-time Windows user, I brought a lot of muscle memory problems and habits with me as I started the Mac. Since I must use Windows for work, I have a KVM to share keyboard, mouse, and monitors. So I use a Windows keyboard and PC mouse with my Mac.

Here were my biggest problems:

I like using the Forward and Back buttons on my mouse, especially for navigating websites. (On Macs, these mouse buttons are dead.)
I prefer natural scrolling on the MacBook trackpad and directional scrolling on the mouse wheel. (On Macs, you are prevented from configuring these differently. It’s bewildering.)
I like to press the Home and End keys to go to the beginning and end of a text line, respectively. (On Macs, these actions take the cursor to the top or bottom of the message body.)
Closely related to the above, I like to press Shift+Home and Shift+End to select (aka, highlight) text to the beginning and end of a text string respectively. (On Macs, these actions take the text selection to the top or bottom of the message body.)

As any Windows user will tell you, Macs don’t work that way.

Solutions

I tried to get used to it. I really did. But in the end muscle memory won, and Mac lost. But not without some help.

Scroll Reverser

This utility is simple, and it’s free.

Scroll Reverser breaks the connection between the mouse scroll setting and the trackpad scroll setting. It allows me to have directional scrolling when I use mouse, and natural scrolling when I use the trackpad. Perfect!

Learn more about Scroll Reverser.

BetterTouchTool

This utility is a fairly simple power user’s tool, and it costs $4.99 (or more if you wish) with a 45-day trial period.

BetterTouchTool (BTT) allows you to override default actions on your keyboard, mouse (including Magic Mouse), trackpad, MacBook Pro TouchBar, and even the Siri Remote. I leverage the keyboard and mouse functionality. My mouse navigation buttons work in any application with a navigation history (web browsers, Finder, etc.). My keyboard brings familiar behavior to the Home and End keys. What a relief!

Quick Tip: Like any power user tool, the interface could be confusing to some. When adding a new shortcut or key sequence, click into the text fields and then press the keys. BTT will record the key or key combination. As you click into the text fields, you are also offered commands in a pop-up list. At first, I thought those listed commands were the only ones available.

Learn more about BetterTouchTool.

Degraded Sound Quality on CarPlay When Using Waze

December 15, 2017December 14, 2017 by Mike

Waze recently updated its app with several new features including a nice new feature where you can get the app’s attention by saying “Okay, Waze.” But it might have a downside.

I have a car stereo with Apple CarPlay, but I still prefer to use Waze rather than Apple Maps. Unfortunately, Apple does not allow third-party apps to draw graphics on the stereo’s screen via CarPlay. So I have a setup that allows me to see Waze on my phone while playing music or podcasts over CarPlay.

One day, I noticed that when I switched the phone to Waze, the music sound quality tanked. If I switched back to any CarPlay-enabled app, the sound became noticeably better. Finally, it occurred to me that I had updated Waze and enabled it to listen for “Okay, Waze.”

I turned off that feature, and the sound degradation issue ceased. I could switch to and from Waze without the sound quality suffering.

Granted, this is a fairly unique circumstance, but it might save someone somewhere a frustrating headache.

Allow Certain Contacts to Reach You During Do Not Disturb

November 5, 2017 by Mike

You probably want a some people to reach you even when your iPhone’s Do Not Disturb is on. You can easily set your Phone app’s Favorites to have this privilege, but it might not be the most efficient method. Each entry in your Favorites can hold only one phone number. So if one person has two numbers (for example, a mobile and land line), then you need two entries in your Favorites. This can quickly clutter your Favorites list.

There is a better way: Create a Contact Group and then allow calls from the group.

Doing this allows any phone number from that contact to call through. No more separate entries from cell and land line numbers. And adding a new contact to the group at any time means that contact can reach you even when Do Not Disturb is on.

The only catch here is that you cannot create Contact Groups on your iPhone. Sigh!

The setup process is not too difficult. You can use the Contacts app on your Mac or you can use the web-based iCloud.

Using Your Mac

Open the Contacts app.
Click the File pull-down menu from the Task Bar.
Click New Group.
Type the name of your new group. I chose to use “DND Allow”.
Drag and drop individual contacts from All Contacts to your new group.

Using iCloud

Log into your iCloud.com account using your web browser.
Click or tap into the Contacts app.
Click the plus (+) symbol at the bottom of the left pane.
Click New Group.
Type the name of your new Contact Group. I chose to use “DND Allow”.
Drag and drop individual contacts from All Contacts to your new group.

Remember: You will need to maintain the Contacts in this group using iCloud.com or your Mac.

Configure Do Not Disturb on Your iPhone

Open the Settings app.
Swipe down and tap on Do Not Disturb.
Swipe down to Phone and tap Allow Calls From.
Under Groups find your new Contact Group and tap it. A checkmark should appear to the right.

That should do it. Best of luck!

Freeware: Scroll Reverser

October 29, 2017 by Mike

There’s a difference when you want to use your mouse scroll wheel and your MacBook’s trackpad. I use my MacBook Pro as my main computer, connected to dual monitors and external keyboard and mouse. When I disconnect from all that, I use its keyboard and trackpad. And I want to use the trackpad different(ly).

When I spin the mouse’s scroll wheel down, I prefer the window contents to go downward. When I use two fingertips and swipe upward, I prefer the window contents to also go downward. It’s just natural to me, and it keeps my muscle memory in line with my required usage of Windows.

Apple disagrees. If you set the trackpad for natural scrolling, it also sets it for your mouse. You know, for convenience… In other words, macOS prevents you from mixing these settings even though they are separate settings. Grrr.

Scroll Reverser is the solution. The settings are simple. Then use your mouse the way you want, and then use your trackpad the way you want.

And Scroll Reverser is free.

App Pick: AnyList

August 13, 2016 by Mike

I heard about the AnyList app on the Daily Tech News Show podcast during the Today’s Pick section. I’d been looking for an updated app for syncing shopping lists for a while. I was skeptical, but AnyList’s features and its freemium model won me over. We’ve been using it for a while, and it’s working well.

Note: Currently, there are no Android or Windows Phone versions of AnyList.

Free Features

The basic features of AnyList should work for most. You can create and edit lists and synchronize them among your own devices. You can also share individual lists among other user accounts. This allows you to share with your partner without having to also share your account. Meanwhile, your partner can maintain her or his own separate lists.

The built-in database contains most grocery items, and you can add items if you prefer specific brands or product types (like Vanilla Oreos). As you type, autocomplete offers quick, tappable suggestions.

AnyList manages categories in groups. So Dairy, Meat, and Product are in the Grocery Category Group. And you can add categories and sort them as you see fit. For example, I added Coffee and then sorted it so it would appear after Breakfast & Cereal. And this edit is available to anyone with whom I share the list.

Thoughtful convenience features are also available. You can keep your device from powering off while AnyList is open. You can set to double-tap to cross off a list item which can prevent accidental cross-offs when your finger mindlessly touches the edge of your screen. And you can tweak the colors of individual lists to help visually differentiate them.

AnyList Complete: The Premium Features

The premium features are not overpriced. Individual accounts are $7.99 per year and Family accounts are just $11.99 per year for everyone. And the renewal is not automatic, so you stay in full control.

The cost entitles you AnyList for the Web (a nice web-based app) and a Mac app. You can use the iOS mobile app and desktop browser extensions to import recipes from popular websites. This allows you to manage the ingredients in your lists including recipe photos. There’s also recipe scaling and meal planning.

In case you just gotta have the exact item, you can add item photos to remove potential confusion.

Your lists, recipes, and associated photos are all backed up to the cloud. This helps get the premium elements onto new devices by just logging into your AnyList account.

You can configure badge counts and protect lists with passcodes. And if you’re wild about themes, you have more options with the premium services.

More Than Groceries

While I’ve gone on and on about the features for groceries and recipes, AnyList can manage, well, any list that you can think of.

Find out more at www.anylistapp.com.

Airtable for Lists and Reference

January 30, 2016 by Mike

App: Airtable – Cost: Free

Sometimes you want to track a certain type of thing (perhaps ratings of your favorite coffees or brews). There are probably apps for that, but maybe they’re too socially connected or just downright confusing. Personally, I’ve been wanting to track favorite beers, but the apps I’ve found stink for one or more reasons. And using the iOS Reminders or Microsoft OneNote never really worked well. Then I heard of Airtable.

Airtable provides a fairly intuitive interface for creating simple or complex lists called Bases. It’s like creating a spreadsheet but Airtable makes it work like a charm in a tappable interface like your phone. For those who understand database concepts like tables and views, Airtable can become that much more powerful.

If you’re interested in this kind of app but databases sound intimidating, the folks at Airtable have you covered. The support section is thorough and surprisingly easy to grasp. The sample Bases have a refreshingly short learning curve, and once you take a close look, the concepts will just click for you.

Hey, I’m dense, and I figured it out.

Airtable Bases can be created and edited in app or online, and they’re always in sync. There’s collaboration tools and connectivity to online services like Dropbox, Evernote, and many more. If you keep your Bases under 1,200 rows (aka, records), then the service remains free. If you need more, then there are reasonable levels of service.

Airtable.com

Airtable App [iTunes] – Android coming soon