Pinning

In the November edition of the Club MacStories Monthly Log, I got a chance to write about an app that’s been on my list to cover for many months: Pinning. On the surface, it’s a straightforward countdown app, but Pinning has so many integrations and features built in that it’s hard to summarize everything it’s capable of. Rather than try (and fail) to do so, I instead shared some tips I’ve picked up from my personal use of the app to help others get the most out of it.

I hope you’ll check out the story if that sounds like something you’d be into, and even if not, I highly recommend giving Pinning a try. It’s an app that I’ve come to rely on more and more over time, and it’s constantly surprising me with the way it continues to grow and improve.

Ticci Tabs

A couple of months ago, Jonathan Ruiz released a new app called Ticci Tabs that I’ve really been enjoying. Why did it take me so long to write about it? Great question. Let’s just say I was waiting to publish this in honor of the first birthday of Jonathan’s other app Bridges, shall we?

My tardiness aside, Ticci Tabs is a great tool for saving websites that you visit frequently. Instead of bookmarking a link in a browser where it might get lost or you might get distracted, you can save it in Ticci Tabs to quickly access it anytime. I’m using it as a quick way to get to a bunch of pages I open often, like Wordle, my Walmart orders page, and Netflix’s network speed test.

I’ve been following the app’s development from its origin as a rapid response to Federico’s request on the Connected podcast to its maturation into a full-fledged product and beyond. It includes some really nice touches like support for sign-in links sent via email, an optional retro UI, Shortcuts actions, and alternative app icons. And it’s gotten some major new additions in its short life, including the ability to organize links with tags and support for iOS 18’s system-wide controls.

From its laser-focused purpose to its development story to its continued growth, I love everything about Ticci Tabs, and I use it every day. It’s a free app with very straightforward functionality that can fit a lot of different use cases, so I recommend trying it out if you haven’t yet.

The New Reeder

Ever since I started using RSS to read articles from my favorites sites, Reeder has been my go-to app for catching up on my feeds. A brand new version is out today, and it takes the app in a whole new direction. From my review on MacStories:

The best word to describe the new Reeder is "ambitious." Its purpose is not just to be your RSS reader, but your inbox for keeping up with feeds of many different kinds from various sources across the Internet – text from websites, sure, but also videos on YouTube, audio from podcasts, posts on social media, and more. It's a one-stop shop for the feeds you follow online, collecting them together into a single timeline that you can seamlessly browse across all of your devices.

For more details on the update and my thoughts after using it daily for some time, check out the full review. It was a privilege to get to cover the app for the site, and I had a lot of fun putting the story together.

Collections

In today’s issue of MacStories Weekly, I kicked off a two-part series on Collections, a database app I’ve been trying and found to be extremely useful. I’ve used it to build four databases so far, two of which – a collection of MacStories articles that I’ve edited and a log of my cars’ maintenance appointments – are documented in the story.

It’s less a review of the app and more an introduction to how it works using practical examples from my day-to-day life. My hope is that it will inspire some readers to try Collections themselves and use it to build something cool of their own.

Check out the story on Club MacStories, and be on the lookout for part two coming next week in the Monthly Log!

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Update: The second story in this series is now available as part of the June 2024 Club MacStories Monthly Log. It covers how I’m using Collections as a budgeting tool and a creativity log recording everything I’ve published online since 2008, plus some more techniques for getting the most out of the app.

Bridges

Today sees the release of Bridges, a new app from Jonathan Ruiz for saving, organizing, and formatting links. I’ve had the opportunity to test the app throughout its development over the past year, and it’s become an integral part of my creative workflow. Now that it’s available to everyone, I’d like to share how I’m using Bridges and why I’m sticking with it.

The concept of a link-saving tool isn’t a new one. I’ve tried plenty of them myself. But what sets Bridges apart from the rest of the pack is its focus on making it really easy to get links back out once you’ve saved them. It isn’t a vault for locking links away forever; it’s a funnel for storing links and then putting them to good use.

After all, the purpose of collecting links is to do something with them. Whether you’re building a list of interesting articles to read later, gathering research for a project, or putting together show notes for your podcast, you eventually want to act on the links you save. That’s where Bridges shines.

But let’s back up a bit. Before you start using your links, you’ll need to save them. Bridges offers a couple of different ways to do that. You can copy a link to your clipboard, open Bridges, and use the Add Link button to save it manually. (Hint: You’ll want to go into the Settings app and give Bridges permission to access your clipboard without asking each time.) Or you can use the share sheet extension, which works best for my use case.

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I mainly use Bridges to assemble show notes for my podcast, Magic Rays of Light. Those links come from various different sources: the TV app, social media, my RSS client, text messages, and more. But whenever I find a link I want to save, the process is always the same: I open the share menu and choose the Bridges icon, which has made its way to the top of my share sheet.

One nice touch when adding links to Bridges is the ability to rename them. The app will automatically pull in the title of the webpage you’re saving, but you can easily change it before hitting Save. For example, I have a specific way I label trailers in my show notes, but the video titles from YouTube don’t always match that format. Thanks to Bridges, that’s no problem; I simply change the name as I’m importing the link, and the title I choose is permanently saved with the link.

There’s an additional method for saving links that I’d like to see added to the app: Shortcuts. Bridges doesn’t currently include any Shortcuts actions, though I’ve been told by the developer that they are on the roadmap. When they come, I think the most obvious way they’d be helpful is for adding links to the app. This would give users the ability to save links without going through the manual process of the share sheet and maybe even sort them into folders automatically. This is a feature that I’d love to have.

Saving links is just part of the equation, though. You also need to organize them, something the app helps with handily. Every link in Bridges is saved into a folder to keep things nice and tidy.

The app comes with two folders out of the box: Junk Drawer and Read Later. Junk Drawer is the default folder that links will be saved to from the share sheet unless you choose a different one. Think of it as an inbox where you can keep links that haven’t been organized yet. Read Later is, as the name implies, as place to save things you’d like to read at some point in the future. It’s really just a suggested use case for the app to help you get started.

You can create as many folders within Bridges as you want. When you choose the New Folder button, you’ll be prompted to choose a name, icon, and color for the folder you’re creating. SF Symbols serve as folder icons with a variety of categories to peruse and a search bar to help you find just the right one. Apple’s system color picker is built-in, too, which makes it easy to find the right shade.

Links can be moved between folders at any time, so you don’t have to overthink your file structure too much. My suggestion would be to start with a few broad categories and add more over time if you find a need for them. Creating new folders is an enjoyable process, especially when you track down the perfect icon, like when I found the Apple TV icon for saving recommended TV shows and films.

While links are organized into folders, folders themselves are further organized into collections. Collections give you the ability to group folders into sections, which can be used to break things down by project, link type, or different areas of your life.

In my Bridges setup, I have a collection called MROL (short, of course, for the name of my podcast). Within the collection, I have a folder for each segment of the show: upcoming releases, recommendations, news stories, and so on. This two-tier structure keeps my podcast links separate from any others that I save while also allowing me to more finely sort those links into different sections for my show notes. I really appreciate this organizational approach.

Browsing your folders in Bridges is a treat thanks to the unique way it displays links. Folders are shown in a vertically-scrolling list that show each folder’s name and icon, as well as the number of links it contains. But within each folder’s listing is also a horizontally-scrolling view of preview images for each the links contained in the folder.

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This method of displaying information is similar to the way Apple shows album art within collections in the Music app, but it’s not something I’ve come across in a productivity app. It gives Bridges a whimsical flair, and it’s genuinely useful. It allows you to quickly scan the links in a folder without having to actually open it. This UI is outstanding.

From the list of folders, you can choose a folder to open its full list of links. Or you can choose one of the link preview images and go directly to that link’s detail view. These two views are where the app’s final—and most important—bit of functionality comes into play.

As I stated above, the whole purpose of Bridges is to not only to enable you to save and organize links, but to help you format them for use and sharing as well. While the saving and organizing tools are top-notch, this last set of features is what makes the app indispensable for me.

There is no one way to share a link, despite the fact that most apps only allow you to share the raw URL. Sometimes, you do want the URL to paste into a web browser. Other times, though, you might want a nicely-formatted hyperlink for an email, an HTML tag for use on a website, or a Markdown-style link for the blog post you’re working on.

Or if you’re feeling particularly spicy, maybe you want to share a link in JSON. Why would you do that? I don’t particularly know. But I there are people a lost smarter than me who use JSON for all kinds of stuff, so I’m sure the use cases are quite cool.

Thankfully, Bridges offers the ability to share links in all of these formats quickly and easily. From a link’s detail view, you can copy it in hyperlink, Markdown, HTML, JSON, and URL formats by choosing the Copy button next to the format you need. This screen also includes options for editing the link’s title, opening it in your browser, and deleting it. Whatever you want to do with your link, you can do it here.

The array of sharing options that Bridges offers is impressive, and it covers a huge number of uses cases. But the app doesn’t stop there. In addition to copying individual links in your preferred format, you can share all of the links in a folder at once.

At the top of each folder screen is a Copy button that brings up the same formatting options as a link’s detail view. Once you choose an option, Bridges will copy all of the links in that folder to your clipboard in the selected format. Then you can take those links and do whatever you like with them.

In my case, that’s putting together show notes each week. For you, it might be sending a gift wish list to your family or something completely different. Whatever you want to do with your links, there’s no faster or easier way to share them in the perfect format than with Bridges.

I do wish it were easier to clear links out of folders once I’m done with them. Since most of the links I save only stay in Bridges for a week, I’m constantly deleting them one-by-one using the swipe options in the folder view. This is another case where Shortcuts actions would come in handy, and I hope to see them added in a future update.

This app has done wonders for my podcast show notes workflow. No longer am I keeping a jumbled list of links in Notes or trying to remember to paste them into a Markdown document and type the format manually. And as proud as I am of my previous Shortcuts-based approach to building show notes,sometimes it’s easier just to use a tool that’s built for the task.

Bridges is built perfectly for a need I have: saving links for show notes. But I’ve been enjoying it for general link-saving as well, and I believe its use cases go far beyond my own. I think a lot of people can benefit from the app’s tools for saving and organizing links, and it’s a must-try for anyone who regularly needs to share links in a particular format. It’s simply the best app I’ve found for dealing with links, and I highly recommend giving it a try.

Bridges is available on iPhone and iPad for $3.99 and as a separate purchase on the Mac for $3.99. (The Mac version features a different UI from the iOS version but includes all of the same features.) Links, folders, and collections are synced across devices with iCloud.