MacRumors

Although HomePod is available in Apple's Home app, the company's smart home speaker as of yet can't be integrated into HomeKit scenes and automations. With such a feature, users would be able to activate their favorite ‌HomeKit‌ scenes, alongside a specific Apple Music playlist, album, or song from their ‌HomePod‌.

Reddit user Running_In_Space on r/HomeKit explained recently that this is actually possible today, thanks to a helpful (and super simple to create) Siri Shortcut. With the Shortcut, you can tie any Home scene together with any ‌Apple Music‌ playlist. While the Shortcut is limited to playlists, you can choose from your own playlists or those created by ‌Apple Music‌.

In the example below, we created a holiday themed ‌Siri‌ Shortcut that turns on Christmas tree lights (connected to an iDevices Switch) and shuffles a holiday playlist any time we say, "Hey ‌Siri‌, Merry Christmas." Also remember that you'll need an ‌Apple Music‌ subscription, HomeKit-enabled lights or other devices of some kind, and the updated ‌Siri‌ Shortcuts iOS app.

How to Create the Siri Shortcut

1. Open the iOS "Shortcuts" app
2. Tap "Create Shortcut"



3. In the search bar, type "Get Playlist" and add it into your Shortcut
4. Next to Playlist, tap "Choose" and pick your desired playlist
5. Search for "Play Music" and add it (here you can also edit settings for shuffling and/or repeating the playlist)
6. Search for "Run Home Scene" and add it
7. Next to Home, tap "Choose" and select your home
8. Next to Scene, tap "Choose" and select your desired scene
9. Before you tap "Done," select the toggle icon under the Done button at the top right corner of the screen



10. Name the Shortcut, and tap "Add to ‌Siri‌" to record your preferred trigger phrase
11. Tap "Done" until you're back on the Library screen of the app

Now you will be able to say, "Hey ‌Siri‌, [Trigger Phrase]" to your ‌HomePod‌ and have the selected Home scene activate along with the chosen ‌Apple Music‌ playlist, connected via AirPlay on your iPhone. ‌Siri‌ typically responds with, "Okay, running your shortcut," and it can take a bit longer than a normal scene activation in ‌HomeKit‌ due to the multiple actions.

There are numerous versions of this ‌Siri‌ Shortcut that could be created, like having a nighttime scene in ‌HomeKit‌ tied to a mellow ‌Apple Music‌ playlist that's triggered when you say, "Hey ‌Siri‌, goodnight." We tried testing out Home scenes that are activated via geofences, but in the few times we tried we could not get ‌HomePod‌ to turn on and play the specified ‌Apple Music‌ playlist when the arriving home scene in ‌HomeKit‌ was activated.

It's also worth noting that the desired ‌Apple Music‌ playlist will play on whatever device you are talking to ‌Siri‌ with, so in our example if we said, "Hey ‌Siri‌, Merry Christmas" and ‌HomePod‌ picked it up, then the holiday playlist played on ‌HomePod‌. If we said the same phrase to our ‌iPhone‌, the playlist would play there instead. In both scenarios, the Christmas tree lights were still activated regardless of the Apple device used.

Apple introduced ‌Siri‌ Shortcuts as an update to its Workflow iOS app back in September, and although creating Shortcuts can be an arduous task in some cases, there are a few super useful actions that have been shared over the past few months. Do you use ‌Siri‌ Shortcuts and have a favorite one to share? Give us the details in the comments below or Tweet us @MacRumors to let us know your most-used Shortcuts.

Instagram today announced the launch of a new Stories feature called "Close Friends" that allows you to share stories with a select group of people rather than all your followers.

Starting today, you can make a close friends list on Stories and share with just the people you've added. Instagram Stories has become the place to express yourself and share everyday moments, but our community has grown and sometimes what you want to share isn't for everyone. With Close Friends, you have the flexibility to share more personal moments with a smaller group that you choose.

The feature works through follower suggestions based on who you interact with most, or via a contact search, from which you can then build the list for sharing Stories with fewer people.

You can find the list by going to your Instagram profile and tapping Close Friends in the side menu. When you go to share a Story, a new option appears to share it with only the people on your close friends list.

It's worth noting that Close Friends is a private list, so other users can't see it in your profile or request to be added to it, so you can switch up your selection at any time without the risk of retaliatory unfriending.

The only indication that your part of someone's Close Friends list is that you'll see a green badge when viewing stories shared to the list. There's also a green ring around the user's profile in the Stories tray.

As TechCrunch notes, the feature plays on the idea of "Finstagrams," or fake Instagram accounts that teens sometimes create to share posts to select friends without having to worry about about being judged by their wider peer group.

This latest addition to the Facebook-owned photo-based social network comes at a time when more and more people are moving from Facebook, which has come in for sustained criticism for its poor user privacy safeguards as well as a perceived lack of effort to protect user data, combat social media addiction, and prevent the spread of fake news.

Close Friends is rolling out globally today on the latest version of the Instagram app for iOS. [Direct Link]

Apple today shared its latest Apple Pay promo, which will provide Apple Pay customers who make a purchase through the Panera Bread app or the Panera Bread website with a $2 credit for a future order.

According to Apple, to get the deal, customers will need to use Apple Pay for an online Panera Bread order through the app or website. The Panera Bread app and the website can be used to order Panera Bread food for either delivery or pick-up.

To get the $2 credit for a future order, customers will need to spend $10 or more, exclusive of taxes and delivery fees. The offer is available from November 29 through December 5, and customers must be members of the MyPanera rewards program to receive the credit.

Apple's latest promo email also highlights Peet's Coffee, Jamba Juice, and Whole Foods, all of which accept Apple Pay.

Apple in October released completely redesigned 11 and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models with edge-to-edge displays, no Home button, Face ID for authentication purposes, super fast processors, and slimmer, smaller bodies.

For people who are new to iPad or who are upgrading from an older model, we've compiled a list of some of the best iPad-related tips and tricks that are well worth checking out if you want to get the most out of your tablet. While some of these tips are specific to the iPad Pro, many are relevant to customers who own other iPad models as well.

• Keyboard Flicking - As of iOS 11, Apple has offered a special keyboard feature on the iPad that's designed to let you use a flick gesture to quickly type letters and numbers without having to lift your fingers from the keys. A "flick" is a downward swiping gesture that brings up an alternate keyboard view.
• Text Selection - To quickly select text on an iPad, tap the screen with two fingers and then swipe upwards or downwards to select several paragraphs of text at one time. You can also hold your two fingers on the screen to be more selective with the amount of text that you're highlighting.
• Cursor Adjustment - If you want to change the location of your cursor, you can hold two fingers on the display of the iPad and move them around to adjust where your cursor is located, useful for making quick edits in a document. You can achieve the same effect by holding a finger down on the spacebar.
• External Keyboard Shortcuts - When you're using an external keyboard with the iPad, such as the new Smart Keyboard Folio, there are a number of keyboard shortcuts that are worth knowing. You can use Command + Tab, for example, to switch between open applications, Command + Space to bring up Spotlight search, and you can use the spacebar to scroll through long webpages in Safari. You can see all of the available keyboard commands by holding down the Command key on an external keyboard.
• Spacebar Wake Up - On the 2018 iPad Pro models, if you have an external keyboard attached, you can double tap on the spacebar to wake the iPad up and activate Face ID. This gives you a way to get into the iPad without having to touch the screen.
• Animoji and Memoji - New 11 and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models have Face ID, which means you can use Animoji and Memoji in the Messages and FaceTime apps.
• Apple Pencil 2 Customization - If you want to customize the double tap gesture on your Apple Pencil 2, you can go into the Settings app under Apple Pencil to adjust it.
• Instant Notes - With either the Apple Pencil or the Apple Pencil 2, you can tap the device on the screen of an iPad to wake it up and launch right into the Notes app, which is handy for starting a note right away. You don't even need to unlock the iPad first. Instant Notes can be customized in the Settings app under "Notes."
• USB-C - Apple's new iPad Pro models are the first to use USB-C, which means you can do new things that you couldn't do before. The iPad Pro models can be plugged into a 4K monitor and connected directly to some cameras, drones, and other devices. You can't connect external storage, though, and you can't use the USB-C cable that ships with the iPad to connect to a 4K monitor. You'll need Apple's Thunderbolt 3 cable for that or USB-C to USB-C cable like this one from Belkin.
• Charging Your iPhone - With a USB-C to Lightning cable, which Apple sells for $19, you can plug your iPhone into your iPad Pro, which will allow the tablet to charge the iPhone.

Do you know some other super useful iPad tips and tricks? Share them in the comments below.

Ikea's much-anticipated Trådfri smart outlets are now available for purchase in both the UK and the United States, providing a super affordable soon-to-be HomeKit-compatible smart plug solution for those who want to take advantage of HomeKit without spending a lot of money.

The Trådfri smart plug can be purchased for just $9.99 (or GBP9.99 in the UK), which is much cheaper than other HomeKit-enabled smart plug options on the market.

Unfortunately, while HomeKit support is in the works for the Trådfri smart plug, it isn't available just yet. An Ikea employee on the Trådfri team said yesterday on Reddit that HomeKit integration wasn't able to be implemented ahead of when the smart plug was released.

HomeKit support is in the works, however, and in the meantime, the smart plug can be controlled via the Trådfri app.

Using the Trådfri smart plug requires the $30 Trådfri Gateway. The Gateway is needed for all of Ikea's affordable smart home solutions, including light bulbs, dimmers, motion sensors, and more.

There's no word on when HomeKit support will be available for the Trådfri smart plug, but HomeKit was added for Trådfri smart lights connected to the gateway late last year. When HomeKit is available for the smart plug, the Trådfri system will be one of the cheapest ways to get a complete set of HomeKit products even with the expense and inconvenience of a hub.

The Trådfri smart plug was spotted on the Ikea website back in early October, but as Pocket-lint points out, it did not become available for purchase until recently.

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of an upcoming tvOS 12.1.1 update to developers for testing purposes, two weeks after releasing the third tvOS 12.1.1 beta and a month after releasing tvOS 12.1.

The new tvOS 12.1.1 developer beta can be downloaded onto the Apple TV via a profile that's installed using Xcode. Subsequent betas can be downloaded over-the-air.

We're not yet sure what fixes and changes the tvOS 12.1.1 update might bring, but it's likely to focus on bugs that were not able to be addressed in the tvOS 12.1 update.

Apple provides little information on its tvOS software and tvOS updates have historically been minor in scale, so we may not know what's included in this update. Despite the lack of info Apple offers, we continue to share updates on tvOS beta releases so that developers and public beta testers are aware when new content is available to download.

Nothing new was discovered in the first three tvOS 12.1.1 betas, but we'll update this post if any new features are found in the fourth beta.

Update: Apple has also made a new beta of tvOS 12.1.1 available to public beta testers.

Apple today announced that it will be attending the 2018 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, aka NeurIPS, in Montréal, Canada from December 2 through December 8. Apple will have a booth staffed with machine learning experts and invites any conference attendees to drop by and chat.

NeurIPS is in its 32nd year and is said to be the world's largest and most influential machine learning and artificial intelligence conference. Apple is likely there to showcase its machine learning technologies and recruit new employees.

Machine learning algorithms play a role in virtually every Apple product and service, ranging from Apple Maps and Apple News to Siri and the QuickType keyboard on iPhone and iPad. Apple has machine learning jobs available in areas such as artificial intelligence, computer vision, data science, and deep learning.

Apple highlights its machine learning efforts in its Machine Learning Journal.

Despite the lack of a big design refresh in iOS 12 this year, Apple recently updated Apple Music with new features like revamped artist pages, coming soon albums, and UI fixes to the way albums and singles are displayed. One of the features that remains unavailable to Apple Music subscribers, however, is a way to view a history of your listening statistics on the streaming music service.

Following Apple's recently launched Data and Privacy portal, which lets customers download a copy of their Apple-related data, developer Pat Murray has built a browser-based app aimed at visualizing your Apple Music activity. With the download of one file on Apple's Data and Privacy portal, Murray's app organizes your complete Apple Music listening history since you first started using the service.

The developer promises that none of your data ever leaves your computer in the process, and explained to me that once it's loaded, the web app will even work offline and still be able to run all computations and present users with their data. The full source of the app is available to read on GitHub, and it's worth pointing out that Murray's app is only asking for access to a single CSV file related to your Apple Music activity, and nothing else.

Follow the steps below to get your Apple Music-related data from Apple:

1. Visit Apple's Data and Privacy web portal
2. Click "Request a copy of your data"
3. Check the box next to "Apple Media Services information"
4. Scroll down, click continue
5. Select 1GB (which should be big enough), and click "Complete Request"
6. A few days later, click "Get your data" in the email Apple sends to you once the retrieval is complete
7. Click the small downwards facing arrow to download the data and open the ZIP file on your Mac
8. Click the Apple Media Services Information folder within the ZIP file
9. In this folder, open the ZIP file titled "App_Store_iTunes_Store_iBooks_Store_Apple_Music"

Then follow these steps to use Murray's tool and visualize the data:

1. Visit Murray's Apple Music Analyzer website
2. Click "Choose File"
3. Navigate to Downloads and in the search field, search for "Apple Media Services Information" and double click on it
4. Find the "App_Store_iTunes_Store_iBooks_Store_Apple_Music" folder, and underneath that find "Apple Music Activity"
5. Find "Apple Music Play Activity.csv" and open it

With your Apple Music data open in Murray's web app, you'll be presented first with your most played song overall on Apple Music, including the number of times you've listened to it, hours spent listening to it, and hours spent skipping it. Below that, you'll be able to find your most played songs of each year that you've been subscribed to the service, the total amount of time you've spent listening to music, the day you've listened to the most music, and total library song/artist count.

Murray also presents your most played artists in descending order, detailing the number of plays and total time spent listening to each. Below that are a few interesting charts and graphs. The first shows the "Playing Time by Month," allowing you to visualize the months you listened to Apple Music the most versus ones with lower activity.

With the "Playing Time by Date" tool, Murray has created a miniature calendar that shows your total Apple Music play time for every day you've had the service, and lets you know out of those days how many you didn't listen to any music. Similarly, "Playing Time by Hour of Day" shows the most frequent times on average that you listen to Apple Music based on the time of day.

The Apple Music Analyzer also provides specific sections for each year you've used Apple Music. When you click "Open" on any of these, you'll see your top 20 most played songs for the year with the usual hours listened to and play count stats.

Below this, Murray has created a "Reasons A Song Finished Playing" section, offering the amount of times a song ended normally, a song was paused, skipped, scrubbed to the end, a session timed out, and more. Lastly, the web app provides a simple and straightforward list of all the songs you've ever listened to on Apple Music. With this tool, you can reorganize the list to prioritize listening time or play count in ascending or descending order.

For anyone who has ever been a fan of sites like Last.fm or personal stat breakdowns in general, Murray's web app is a fun and intriguing dive into your Apple Music history. Apple has not indicated if even a rudimentary feature such as listening history will ever come to Apple Music, and in this area some of its rivals do offer at least some form of personalized listening history.

Spotify, for example, creates a mini website towards the end of every year with a breakdown of each user's most listened to tracks, artists, and genre for the past 12 months. Spotify began the 2018 Wrapped campaign today, and will reveal its subscribers' listening stats for the year on December 6. Apple Music users have found creative alternatives to this feature using Smart Playlists and even the new Shortcuts app, but these still only result in a single playlist that usually detail most played songs and not much else.

Earlier this year, graphic designer Álvaro Pabesio envisioned an update for Apple Music that included listening history stats, among many other tweaks to the service. In Pabesio's vision, Apple Music would be able to track your play count, music discovery, play time, and more, and you could break it down by the past week, month, year, etc. This information would also fuel the social aspects of Apple Music, giving you an approximate taste comparison with other people on the service to see if you listen to the same genres and artists.

If you're interested in reading about your own Apple Music listening history, be sure to check out Pat Murray's web tool and follow the steps above to get your music stats. Murray is the developer behind numerous other projects, including the iOS app Live Memories [Direct Link], which creates a miniature movie from Live Photos, and GitHub projects like Share Your Rings, which lets you export a GIF or video of your personal Apple Watch move rings to send to your friends.

Update 12/12: Murray updated the web app recently with a new card that displays "My Music - 2018", in a similar style to the Spotify Wrapped cards shared across social media. With the information you can see your minutes of music listened in 2018, top artists, and top songs.

To find the new section, follow the above steps and once your Apple Music play activity is loaded into Murray's Apple Music Analyzer, scroll down and below your top artists you'll find the new 2018 card.

Portrait Mode photo editor Focos received an update today that should pique the interest of iPad owners. We've highlighted the iPhone app in the past for its impressive granular aperture and bokeh adjustment tools, but the latest version builds on the existing feature set by adding more extensive support for iPads.

With this latest 1.6 update, Focos brings a new, specially designed interface to iPad that's more convenient to use on the larger screens.

In addition, Focos now includes support for taking portrait pictures on Apple's latest 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models, while for owners of earlier iPad models, it's now possible to edit portrait pictures transferred from a dual-camera iPhone.

Focos users are able to multiple-select and transfer portrait pictures from iPhone to iPad right from within the app for further editing.

Focos also includes Apple Pencil support, making it possible to patch the depth map of a portrait photo more precisely using Apple's latest input device.

Previously the Patch tool was an in-app purchase, but in this latest version it's now free to use, providing photographers with another reason to get the iPad version to edit their portrait pictures precisely.

Focos is a free download for iPads and dual-lens iPhones from the App Store, although several pro features are behind a paywall. It costs $0.99 per month or $6.99 per year to unlock them, but there's also an $11.99 lifetime access purchase option. [Direct Link]