- This video is sponsored by Skillshare.
Today, we are going through 10
of my favorite productivity apps
for the iPhone here in 2021.
Though, I'm actually gonna start this list out
with a productivity feature of the iPhone
that isn't actually an app, but is useful nonetheless.
It's this little magnetic wallet thing
that you can get from Apple
that just snaps onto the back of your phone.
But the cool thing is it's got
this little thumb slidey thing
where if you have a credit card you frequently use,
or in my case, an office access key,
it's very easy to slide it up,
scan it wherever you need to scan it
and put it right back on your phone, just like that.
So, I figured I'd mentioned that
because I've been enjoying this
and it's definitely a purchase that I don't regret.
Let's get into the list of apps.
And the first app we're gonna talk about is called Otter,
which is an amazingly good AI voice transcription app.
So, as a YouTuber, I get a lot of ideas for content
often at times when I can't easily
either write something down
or pull my phone out to take notes,
and in those cases, I take a lot of voice memos.
But a lot of times I would love
to have those voice notes translated into text
so I can then port them over to Notion or use them
and actually go through the text and edit it,
and things like that.
Otter is freaking amazing at doing that.
I've tried a ton of other apps,
some that have Apple Watch integrations,
which I really would like for Otter,
but they use this built-in Siri dictation,
which is just not that great
at translating your voice into readable text.
Meanwhile, Otter does not, as far as I can tell,
have a real human shoved into your phone
who's literally acting as a court stenographer
and typing out your texts, but it might as well.
The transcription is nearly as good
as the human transcription that I actually pay for
for these YouTube videos,
which means that when I speak something
while I'm driving or I'm out on the bike,
I can basically guarantee that when I come
and read the texts later on,
it's going to look pretty much like I said it.
It also keeps the audio file.
It's not quite as high quality of an audio file
as you get with regular voice memos,
so I don't use it for song ideas,
but it does keep the audio file, which is nice
because it allows me to export both the audio file
and the text into, drum roll please,
the very next app on our list,
which is, and you saw this coming, Notion.
So, Notion is an app that I talk about a lot.
In fact, I have a entire second channel
called Thomas Frank Explains full of Notion tutorials,
link in the description down below if you're curious.
And if you haven't heard of Notion,
it is basically an all-in-one workspace app,
which allows you to take notes,
it allows you to manage tasks,
it allows you to do pretty much anything you want.
And at this point, I'm using it fully
for running my channel, for managing my tasks,
for running projects
and for taking all the notes that I want to take,
and for writing all the scripts for my videos.
Now, the last time I talked about Notion to my channel,
there was no actual official widget, but now there is.
And in fact, there are a couple that are very useful,
which I want to show you right now.
The one that I keep right on my home screen here
is the Favorites Bar.
And a trick that I use is I keep a dashboard page
with links to a lot of the things I'm working on
because I often have more links than will fit
on this widget's area.
I think it only keeps about nine links at one time.
So, using this dashboard,
I can actually create like a central place
for all of the important things in my life,
including my tasks, my notes, content with my channel,
with Thomas Frank Explains, my other channel,
and ongoing projects.
And I have like this hub page that allows me to easily get
to anything I want to get
when I want to add something or reference something.
The other nice thing, though, is there's another widget,
which I keep over here on this quick access area,
which shows you your recent pages.
So, instead of relying
just on your manually-created Favorites Bar,
you have all of your recent pages right here.
And I can get to, say, the research and notes
for this very video.
And look, there's Otter, there's Notion,
and there is our third app,
which I'm going to now smoothly transition into.
So, Authy is a manager for two-factor authentication codes
that functions a lot like Google Authenticator.
Hopefully, you're using two-factor authentication
on any account that offers it in addition to your passwords
if you care about your online security.
Now, one thing you might not know
about two-factor authentication
is there's two different types,
SMS-based or text-message-based and app-based,
like Google Authenticator or in this case, Authy.
SMS-based authentication is actually a lot less secure
because identity thieves and hackers and people like that
have been known to spoof your SIM card.
Essentially calling up your phone company,
convincing them that they are you
and convincing them to set up a new device
with the exact same SIM information
so that they get the text messages
that you're supposed to get,
including two-factor auth messages,
which is why whenever I have the choice,
I use app-based authentication
instead of text message authentication.
But there's a problem.
With app-based two-factor auth,
especially with Google Authenticator,
at least last time I used it,
it didn't sync between different devices,
which means if you accidentally drop your phone
down an elevator shaft, you're out of luck.
And you have to spend a ton of time doing password resets
or hopefully pulling backup codes that you had
for your two-factor authentication.
It's a whole big mess.
So, that's why I like Authy
because you can log into your account
and get your two-factor auth codes back.
And as long as you're using a secure password
for that account, I think it's still pretty secure.
Now, the next app that we're gonna talk about
is the only one on my list
that doesn't have an Android equivalent.
This is an app called Command,
which is actually a web browser and it has a killer feature
that you probably know about
if you saw my iPad video earlier this year.
That feature's that you can highlight text
within any webpage,
and then once you highlight it,
not only is it going to stay highlighted or highlit,
I'm not sure how you're supposed to say that,
when you refresh the page,
but you can also tap your highlights
and you can add journal entries,
which allow you to essentially take a notes
on the highlights you make.
I have written entire articles
inside Command's journal feature
because I'll take a highlight
from something I'm reading on the web, get inspired,
and then I think I'm gonna take a little bit of a note
and then it balloons into a huge article.
The other thing that I love about Command
is it actually can send the highlights that you take
to your Readwise account.
And I guess I should just talk about Readwise now
because it is the next app on our list.
So, Readwise is basically a highlight manager
for the knowledge that you intake from various sources,
books, Kindle Books, podcasts, using an app called Air,
which I'll talk about a little bit later,
even tweets and content from your web browser.
Now, there is a way to sync highlights
from Mobile Safari to Readwise,
but it's kind of a friction-full process
and Command makes it much, much easier.
So, I love doing research, and doing highlight
and using the Command browser
when I'm reading blog posts and articles.
But coming back to Readwise,
Readwise is essentially a highlight manager
that can resurface and help you recall
the knowledge that you've gathered over time.
It's got this data review area, which will actually give you
a collection of different highlights
so you can remember them more usefully.
I don't use that too much.
What I actually do is I kind of use this as a database
for a lot of the highlights that I take in books
and other pieces of media.
But the thing that I really love about Readwise
is that not only does it store all of my highlights here,
like these highlights from the book, "Ask Iwata",
that had been reading really recently,
but there is a native integration with both Notion
and with Roam Research, and also with RemNote, I believe.
So, whenever you take a highlight from Kindle
or from the Command browser
or from even the Safari extension or tweeting Readwise
to roll up a tweet thread,
it'll send it to Readwise and then Readwise
will do to fully kick that highlight over
to your integration platform, in my case, it's Notion.
So, I have a beautiful Readwise database on Notion
where I've got all of my highlights from books and articles
and all kinds of media sources.
And then, when I'm doing research for an article,
I can pull in my highlights into my research areas.
And actually, now with Notion's synced blocks feature,
I don't even have to copy and paste,
I can just create a synced block
and port content over from a highlights area
into whatever article that I'm writing,
which is pretty sweet.
Next app on our list is one called Tide,
which is my favorite Pomodoro timer for the iPhone.
Now, it's got a ton of different features,
it can track your stats,
it's got all these nature sounds
so you can create these soundscapes and help you focus,
personally, I just like the way that it looks,
I like the fact that it's free
and I liked the fact that I can open up,
I can hit the focus button, I can choose twenty-five minutes
and I can start a Pomodoro session.
And, like I've said before,
the Pomodoro technique is one of the most powerful
short-term productivity techniques there is
because it externalizes the self-discipline
that you need to keep working,
but it also re-frames your task
from output-based to input-based.
As in, I have to write a paper,
which is really daunting and scary to,
I just need to work on this paper for 25 minutes
and then I'm allowed to take a break.
The next step on my list
is actually a built-in app in the phone.
So, if you have an iPhone, you already have this,
and it's the Fitness app,
or I don't know if it's called Fitness or Activity,
but this is absolutely a productivity app for me
because when I'm active, when I'm moving,
when I am exercising every day,
I also feel more energetic and I get more done
and I work with more focus.
Exercise is absolutely associated
with cognitive performance,
and if you want to learn more about that,
there's a great book by Dr. John Ratey called "Spark",
highly recommend that,
especially if you like books full of scientific studies.
But having this app and specifically
its integration with the Apple Watch
and the face here that shows me where my rings
every time I look at the Apple Watch
encourages me to get my exercise done.
I've actually got the trends thing activated here
so I can see that pretty much all my trends are on the up.
I've been moving more, I've been exercising more,
I've been standing more, walking more, all kinds of stuff.
One of my favorite things about the Fitness app
is the sharing aspect of it.
So, if we go over to the sharing tab,
you're gonna see that I actually have shared my fitness data
and vice versa with some of my friends,
Brian from Real Engineering
who probably forgot to put on his Apple Watch today,
my friend, Chris
who wrote the productivity project in Hyperfocus,
my agent, Dave, and also Rene Richie
from the channel Rene Richie who talks a lot about Apple.
So, using the sharing feature,
we all get notified when we work out,
we send each other fun emojis to encourage each other,
we'll sometimes check in and be like,
"Hey, how come you haven't gotten your workout done today?"
It adds some nice accountability
into your daily exercise routine,
even if your friends are far-flung across the globe.
Next up on our list is Audible, which is an app
that I've been using for a very, very long time,
but I've actually been using a lot more heavily recently
because I am now riding an e-bike
to my downtown coworking office
on any day where I don't have to sit in this chair
and film videos in my studio.
And I absolutely love riding my bike,
getting out of the house, going somewhere else to work.
And that whole process of riding,
actually about 40 miles on the e-bike,
gives me a ton of time to listen to things
that I can use to educate myself.
So, Audible is probably my number one resource for that
since I love listening to audio books.
And one thing that I did want to point out on the iPhone
now that the home screen widgets feature is live
is that audible has a widget which allows you to scroll down
and basically resume the last book
that you were listening to, or pick one of the four
that you listened to most recently, other than that one.
So, it's a nice way to just launch into a book
that you were listening to recently
without having to open up the app and wait for it to load.
Next up on our list is an app called Adobe Scan,
which is probably the best free document scanner app
on the iPhone.
This is gonna look really weird
because you're gonna see a camera and I'm moving it around.
Hi, other camera.
Anyway, this is a great app for scanning paper documents
and then exporting them as PDFs or as a picture files
and porting them into your knowledge management system.
In my case, it's gonna be Notion,
might be Roam Research or Evernote for you,
but it's really nice
to have a document scanner app on the phone.
Next up, we have Spotify for podcasts.
Yep, I have finally switched over to just using Spotify
as my default podcast player.
I resisted it for a very long time,
I was a Pocket Casts fan,
but it's good enough now in Spotify.
They've got the speed controls,
they've got the sleep timer function and it's fast,
that's really a nice thing.
Now, I really wanted to recommend an app called Air
instead of Spotify in this slot in the video.
Air is a really cool podcast player
that has a killer feature.
My friend, Ali Abdul, actually turned me on to this app.
So, you may have heard him talking about it
if you watch his videos.
But air is not just a podcast player,
it's also an app that integrates with Readwise.
And it has this really cool feature
where if you're listening to something in a podcast episode
and you want to make a highlight of it, you want to save it,
you want it add a note to it,
you can do that by hitting this little quote button here.
And it's going to save either the last 30 seconds
or the last minute, you can change the duration if you want.
And you can add a little note
that's it's gonna send that to Readwise,
which, again, would send to Notion
or Roam Research or RemNote
if you have the integration created.
It is super cool, but the performance of this app
is just not great right now.
It's slow.
If I want to like rewind 15 seconds,
it takes like five seconds just to do it
and start playing again.
So, I'm really hoping
that they're going to improve the performance of this app.
And once they do that,
I'm gonna be probably switching over to using it
because I really do want to use that Readwise feature,
I just need it to be fast.
Now, if you're watching a video
on my channel about iPhone apps,
then I would say it's probable that you also watch
one of my favorite tech YouTubers,
Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD.
And if you do, I want to let you know
about a new course he just launched over on Skillshare,
all about how to create great YouTube videos.
I cannot think of many other people
who I would rather have teach me
how to make a great YouTube video than Marques,
especially because his quality is,
well, let's just use the term that he uses,
it's absolutely crispy.
It's amazing.
I've taken a lot of inspiration from his setup, his gear,
the way he films things
to improve the quality of the footage on my own channel.
And if you want to learn
how to upgrade your own YouTube game,
or even start a channel, if you haven't done it yet,
his course over on Skillshare is a great place to start.
And the wonderful thing about Skillshare
is that when you join,
you don't just get access to Marques' class,
you get access to thousands of classes
that can boost your skills and your creative abilities
in a ton of different areas, including productivity,
because I have three different classes
on Skillshare of my own.
One, on building a productivity system that combines apps
to make sure that nothing ever falls through the cracks.
Also on Skillshare, you're gonna find classes
in graphic design, in video animation, in music production,
in storytelling and public speaking.
There is a ton that you can learn on Skillshare,
and it's also a very affordable platform.
In fact, if you are one of the first 1000 people
to sign up for Skillshare today using the link down below,
you're gonna get you one month free trial,
which means that you can go take my classes.
You can go take MKBHD's class for free
and test out the platform for a month
before you have to pay anything.
It's a great platform.
I really think you're gonna get a lot of value out of it,
and you're gonna want to keep paying for it
after the trial period is over,
but you've got that trial to try it out.
So, once again, go to that link down the description below,
sign up, be one of the first thousand people
to get that free one month trial.
Thank you for watching this video.
Hopefully you found something helpful here.
And I would also like to hear from you.
What are your favorite apps
that I did not mention in this video?
Leave down in the comment section below
and we can all try new things out
and probably end up spending too much time on our phones
and not actually being productive, whoops!
Anyway, I'll see you in the next video, bye.