2026-07-19 04:00:00
Quick Notes 3.0 is rolling out now as a free upgrade for all users. This update includes three major changes: a new way to access your notes anywhere, improvements to brainstorm mode, and a top to bottom design overhaul.
I think this first feature may be a sleeper hit.
In the app settings, you can now configure Quick Notes to automatically save all of your notes as text documents to any folder on your device. By default, it creates a Quick Notes folder in your iCloud Drive, but you can choose something else. For example, you could select a folder inside your Obsidian vault, allowing your notes to automatically appear in Obsidian on your other devices.
I use brainstorm mode quite a bit, and I often create outlines that I want to reference when I start writing a blog post on my Mac. Before this update, that meant getting my phone out, copying the note I wanted, and hoping the Continuity features were working correctly so I could paste it onto my Mac.
That process was never the end of the world, but it added a bit of friction that I would rather not have. With this feature enabled, I have a folder in Obsidian where all of these notes are automatically added. When I sit down at my Mac to start writing, my outline is already there.
The second major update is to brainstorm mode, which has become an increasingly popular way to use the app, including for me. It is what I use in the app 90% of the time.
For those who are unfamiliar, brainstorm mode lets you choose from several different types of brainstorms. You might choose to brainstorm an outline, a product spec, a task list, or something else. You can then talk for as long as you want, and the app will consolidate your thoughts into something clear and coherent.
What I have learned is that both I and many other users tend to rely on one brainstorm mode all the time. With this update, you can pin your favorite mode so it is available with a single tap of the brainstorm button. If you ever need to access the full list, just press and hold the button.
The technology behind brainstorm mode has also been upgraded. It originally launched using Gemini Flash 2.0, and was later upgraded to Flash 3.0. With this update, it is powered by GPT 5.6 Luna. I did extensive testing across the different models available now, and 5.6 Luna produced the best results at a reasonable price.
You may wonder why I don't use Apple's on-device foundation model for this feature. The answer is twofold, and it remains the same problem I have encountered from the beginning. First, the model simply is not good enough for this kind of text manipulation. I was not happy with the results when I tested it. Second, Apple's on-device model has an incredibly small context window, which means you cannot pass it very much text. If you talk into brainstorm mode for five minutes, it can handle the request. If you talk for 15 minutes or more, however, it will not be able to process everything. I am sure many brainstorms fit within that window, but plenty do not. I have personally created 45-minute brainstorm sessions. With iOS 27, developers will be able to use Apple's cloud model. It will have a larger context window, although it will still be fairly small in the grand scheme of things. I will be testing it this summer to see how well it works and where its limits are. For now, I expect GPT Luna to remain the go-to solution for a while.
The final major change is the first thing you will notice when you open the app. Quick Notes 3.0 includes a complete top-to-bottom redesign.
I have been referring to the new design as “digital paper” while using it over the last few months. There is texture throughout the interface, which gives it a slightly tactile quality while still feeling distinctly digital.
I have also worked to improve motion and haptic feedback throughout the app. The haptics should now feel more intentional, including a heartbeat-like feedback pattern while brainstorms are processing. I find this useful because I tend not to stare at my screen while a brainstorm is running. Being able to feel that it is still working, followed by a celebratory flourish when it finishes, is genuinely satisfying.
Animations between views have also been refined. When you start a new note, for example, the view grows out of the button as it expands to fill the screen.
I also took this opportunity to rethink the organization of the Settings page. When the app launched, there were only a couple of settings. Now there are quite a few more, and I had added them over time without reconsidering the structure of the page as a whole. With this update, it should be easier to find the settings you are looking for.
Finally, although it is not something you will necessarily notice as a user, I put extra work into eliminating dead code and optimizing some of the app's data management. This improves performance and makes the codebase easier for me to maintain going forward.
That is everything in Quick Notes 3.0. The update is rolling out now, and I hope you like it.
2026-07-18 01:35:16
Quick Subtitles is a great app for transcribing files on your Mac (and iPhone and iPad), and I use it at least 3x per week for my various projects. It works great, but it's a little limited from an automation perspective.
That's where the brand new Quick Subtitles CLI comes in, and you can install it with brew install mattbirchler/tap/quicksubs
Once it's installed, you can easily get .txt/.srt/.vtt transcripts wherever you want them, and even perform the AI cleanup.
quicksubs episode.mp3 # transcript next to input as .txt
quicksubs episode.mp3 -f srt # subtitle files instead
quicksubs video.mp4 -o ~/Subs/ # write into a directory
quicksubs episode.mp3 --clean-up # fixes transcription errors
quicksubs episode.mp3 --json -q # silent run, JSON result on stdout
If you're looking to automate your podcasting or YouTubing workflows for subtitles, this is going to be awesome for you.
This CLI is 100% free and does not require the Quick Subtitles app to be installed on your Mac. If you do have the app installed, it will pull your settings for things like AI clean up and contextual terms.
If you're thinking, "hey, it would be cool to have a CLI for Chapterize so that you could automate moving into adding metadata to these files," then you've got a pretty good idea what micro app 21 in this series will be…
2026-07-16 21:00:00
I was at the theater this week seeing Minions and Monsters, and I had this feeling over and over, which was I would hear a voice and not quite be able to place the actor. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't quite figure it out. If I was watching this at home, I'd pick up my phone, pull up the movie, and figure it out in a few seconds. But I will never take out my phone in a movie theater, so I was stuck.
Of course, 2026 is the year of the micro app, and I decided that I would take this opportunity to try and solve this problem for myself. A couple days later and I have a new app on my Apple Watch called That Guy, which does exactly what I wanted.
When you sit down in your seat, you open That Guy on your watch, type in the movie you're watching, and it downloads the cast in a simple to navigate, minimal UI on the watch itself. For the rest of the movie, if you ever have a moment where you're wondering, "hey, who's that guy?" you can glance down at your watch, scroll through the cast with the digital crown, and satisfy your curiosity so you can get back to enjoying the movie.
I've also added the ability to tap into an actor to see their most notable credits if you need assistance figuring out where you may know them from.
And to make this easy to pull up in the theater, I've of course included a complication you can put on your watch face for easy access.
This is the 19th micro app I've talked about in this series, and obviously not all of them have gotten released publicly, and honestly, that's kind of the point. I'm exploring the concept of identifying problems and solving them with software for yourself. it's cool when one of them can be turned into something useful for more people, but it's not the expectation.
Also, this feels like the sort of feature that should be in an app like Callsheet, Letterboxd, or IMDB, so I'm not sure if I should release this, or just hope that Casey Liss notices this post and agrees this would be a nice thing to have in his app.
That said, if there's enough interest from this post, I'll of course consider it.
2026-07-15 06:00:00
Stevie Bonifield: X admits its broken algorithm made the site feel like a ‘battleground’
X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, admitted in a post on Monday that X’s algorithm was “missing” data about surfacing posts from people who you’ve followed back. Now, he says a tweak will “boost visibility of your posts to your mutuals,” hopefully enhancing the sense of community instead of highlighting and spreading random arguments, but didn’t explain how the data went missing in the first place.
I’ve used X a little bit here and there over the past few months, and one of the things that became very clear to me very quickly is that it is a platform built for combat. Sure, the nature of social media, especially ones with algorithmic timelines is that you’re going to see content you disagree with and you’re going to want to argue with people, but it truly is to a different level on X. Apparently, there was a very specific reason for that.
2026-07-15 05:00:00
Tim Hardwick: Upcoming OLED iPad Mini Allegedly Uses 60Hz 8.4-Inch Display Panel
Apple is allegedly using a 60Hz 8.4-inch display panel in the upcoming OLED iPad mini, which is expected to be released later this year.
I obviously don’t love that they’re sticking with 60Hz for this device, but more importantly, I don’t understand why they keep pushing this product up market. Especially when the highest end iPhone is expected to be close to this size, not to mention Max iPhones already being pretty close to it already (and with massively better screens), I just don’t understand why they keep pushing up the price of this product.
I’m sure Apple has their reasons, but to me it really feels like this product should be like $249 and it’s kind of like the Mac mini where almost everyone can find a use case for it because it’s so cheap. The iPad mini already starts at $599, and how much do you want to bet that this new model will push the starting price up even more? As far as I can remember, every time Apple has added OLED to a device they sell, the price has gone up at the same time.
And just to get ahead of it, you might ask why I think it’s dumb that they’re limiting the refresh rate while also complaining about the price. As we’ve seen with the MacBook Neo, a lot can be forgiven if you hit the right price. I think if they’re gonna sell the iPad mini as a premium tablet, then it should have premium specs. Like I said, I don’t understand why that product needs to be premium, and therefore I think they can skimp on some specs to make it a great impulse buy for folks.
2026-07-15 03:58:37
Quick Reads has been obsessed with being the best way to save articles you mean to read later, and I think it's done a good job of that. However, there are links I come across that I want to save for later, but they're not for reading, they're something else. For me, they're often a dev tool I want to look at later — like yes, I want to have this link handy later, but I don't need it cluttering up my reading list.
Of course, I could save these links somewhere else, like Reminders, another task manager, or another bookmarking service, but that's not ideal, because now I have multiple places where I need to remember I have links for later saved.
Now, when saving an article to Quick Reads, you can flag it as a "todo" item, which places it in its own list, separate from your reading queue. These links don't get a reading view, they're just links you can mark as complete when you're done with them. These links still appear in your archive and are searchable like anything else. And if you accidentally save something as the wrong format, you can move links back and forth (web UI only for now).
For my API integrators out there, these todo items are just "articles" and are backwards compatible with any existing integration. There is simply a new list value that will show todo for articles that are actually todos. Check it out in the docs.
As far as the saving experience goes, I've tried to make it as seamless as possible. By default, everything still saves as an article to read later. However, on the iOS app (in TestFlight now, coming in the next few days to the public release), you can enable todos on the share sheet in the app settings, which will make it so that when you save something, you'll be asked if it's something to read or a todo item.
The Chrome extension, meanwhile, saves as an article, but you can hit the "todo" button to switch it over if you'd prefer.
There's also no way to demo this here, but I've tried to make the experience of checking off tasks feel nice, so there is a subtle sound effect on the web app and a nice haptic tap on iOS.
Oh, and if you don't want to see todos, you can go to your Reading settings page on the web and hide todos entirely.
And disclaimer, this is not making a Pinboard-style archive of the web page, it is just saving the URL to check out later.
Todos are now available on the web and the Chrome extension for all Quick Reads users. iOS users on the TestFlight also see it now, and both the iOS app and Safari extension will get this as soon as app review lets those updates through.