PTPL 205 · Apple Shortcuts, Handrolled Notes, and Apps Worth Your Attention

A casual roundup of productivity tools, tips, and rabbit holes

No deep dives today, just a list of worthwhile productivity related things I’ve come across lately. Some universal, most Apple flavoured.

Clever (but unnecessary?) Apple Shortcut for lost iPhones

Create an automation in Apple Shortcuts that fires when you get someone to text the word “Lost” to your number. Have it take your phone off silent, turn volume up to full, and play a specific ringtone. Or you could just use the Play Sound option in the Find My app, but that wouldn’t be as much fun! source

Roll your own notes

Catchy name for plain text files you’ve manually crafted to do just what you want them to: Handrolled notes. Thanks, Jeff Forcier

Todo.txt Mode plugin behaviour

Recently I learned that the Archive completed tasks command in the Todo.txt Mode plugin in Obsidian (shifts completed tasks to the done file), works across all files with the plugin applied to them, not just the current file.

Apps to check out

• PaperTrail - A new iOS TaskPaper client recommended by the founded of the TaskPaper format, Jesse Grosjean. I’ve played with it for a bit, and it looks pretty good. One-time cost.
• FYI Brett Terpstra likes the TaskPaper format
• On This Day - A new iOS app that shows you photos from your camera roll taken on today’s date in past years. “No algorithm, no feed, no social anything. Just your photos, once a day.” Freemium, with optional one-time cost.
• Thaw is a fork of the popular menu bar manager, Ice
• I’m not ready to connect an AI agent to my Markdown notes but if I was, the beta of Coeus looks worth checking out. Ask the dev questions here.
• Mole was suggested to me by Martin, a PTPL reader, as a possible replacement for CleanMyMac (see 2026-04-06 PTPL 202 - Replacing Setapp - 7 Down, 2 to Go)
• Beeper is perfect for keeping me focused on messages received via Instagram without being sucked into doomscrolling reels. The free version is enough so far. I’m really liking having five main social DMs in one unified list. h/t Theo Stowell

Small Setapp replacement update

And lastly, a fabulous article from Jeremiah Clark covering 23 ideas for replacing Setapp apps. It’s only on Medium from what I can see, so I don’t know if you’ll be able to read it from this link. Stay tuned if not; I’ll be evaluating his suggestions in a future post. I was glad he mentioned Clop as a replacement for PDF Squeezer and Squash: I’d heard of it in the past but had forgotten about it.

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