iOS TEXT REPLACEMENT

I regularly offer to my Buy Nothing group free items or stuff to borrow. I would end the post with the phrase “Pickup near the 25th Avenue station of the D train.” By now, the iPhone is smart enough to start offering the word “near” as soon as I typed “Pickup” and so on. But I can take that further with the Text Replacement function. As illustrated below, through the Settings app, I define the “word” BNpu as “Pickup near the 25th Avenue station of the D train”.

As long as your brain can remember a few “words” that you define, there are great possibilities with Text Replacement in helping you save time and be more accurate with your typing.

I already created the shorthand BNpu so it appears in the list, you would touch the plus sign in the upper right of the screen to create a new shorthand.

Note that the shorthand is not case-sensitive, I had the n in lowercase but iOS still offers me the replacement text.

LEARN WITH MAC GEEK GAB

I regularly listen to the Mac Geek Gab podcast.  Cool intro music but what I like the most are the quick tips etc.  Mind you, most of the time I cannot apply the tips but it's still good to know.  My Mac is not at the latest and greatest version of Mac OS X so those tips simply don't apply.  Other tips like WiFi meshing or RAID setup also don't help because I don't have the hardware.  At least not yet.  They do talk about iDevice's iOS and I finally found an applicable tip, namely the Shortcuts app for iPhone and such.  It's sort of like programming for the masses.  I haven't done much with it but quickly cobbled together two Shortcuts "scripts".  One is to turn off Bluetooth then turn on Low Power Mode.  I name it Save Energy.  Supposedly I should use that script each night before going to bed.  In the morning, I would run the Normal Energy script, which undoes those settings.  Just something to explore the Shortcuts app.  There is an Automation portion of Shortcuts that I haven't explored.  Logically, these scripts should run automatically at certain time of the day, as long as the iPhone is on.  Something else I will explore is what to play or act when the iPhone sees my car's Bluetooth system.  Happy Exploring!