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  • Screen Time

    While I run beta software on my computer, I do not yet run Beta software on my iOS devices. Screen Time was one of the features I was looking forward to (for the kids) when iOS 12 officially released last month. Regretfully, my kid’s devices are too old to run iOS 12, so that meant the test runs were up to me. I’d like to share how much I love Screen Time, but I can not. Why you ask? My reasons are obvious, it totally sells the user out on how much they do or do not use their phone!

    Joking aside, the information it collects is revealing and useful for how we use our phones. I can clearly see how much time I spend checking on the news or listening to a favorite podcast. I’ve learned I check the weather a lot and my kids sneak my phone more often than I realized to play games. Texting is clumped into social media, so if you are someone who uses messages a lot you might feel it’s not fairly accounting for your time. None the less, I do find this to be a valuable feature. Just like the fitness features of Apple Watch, what you get out of it is up to you. You can choose to look at the statistics and make changes or you can choose to just ignore them. I am someone who does both. Some weeks I’ve made conscious efforts to adjust my phone use and other weeks I pretend my phone isn’t tracking me! I do suggest that everyone gives it a try, you can easily turn it off.

    Get Started with Screen Time

    To enable Screen Time, go to Settings > Screen Time and tap Turn on Screen Time. After you see an introductory splash screen, tap This Is My iPhone to go to the main Screen Time screen.

    Two options on the lower portion of this screen help you customize Screen Time overall. Tap Use Screen Time Passcode to create another passcode that controls access to Screen Time settings and lets you extend time limits. It’s designed for parents who let their children use their devices, you could use it as a speed bump when overriding your self-defined limits. If you use both an iPhone and an iPad, enable Share Across Devices to aggregate your usage. This syncs settings between your devices. This is useful if you are trying to keep yourself honest. However, you do not need to enable this setting.

    Downtime

    To limit your usage according to a schedule, perhaps so you don’t get caught up in your favorite Netflix show before bed, tap Downtime, turn on the Downtime switch, and set start and stop times. Unfortunately, you can’t create multiple schedules for different portions of the day.

    App Limit

    When you tap App Limits and then Add Limit, Screen Time presents you with a list of categories and examples of your apps in each one. Select one or more, say Social Networking and Games, then tap Add. You can then set the amount of time you want to allow yourself overall for apps in that category. You can create multiple category limits with different amounts of allotted time. App limits can also help with Downtime because you can specify by category. This is another means of ensuring you perhaps don’t stay up later than you wish to.

    If an app category is too broad, you can limit a particular app. Tap the Screen Time graph at the top of the screen, scroll down to the Most Used section, and tap an app in the list. At the bottom of that screen, tap Add Limit and specify a time limit.

    There are a few exceptions to the apps limited by both Downtime and App Limits, regardless of your settings. The Phone app is always available, and Clock, Find my iPhone and Sarari. For other apps you never want limited, tap Allowed Apps on the main Screen Time screen, and then tap the green plus button next to any app you want to allow. Apple adds FaceTime, Maps, and Messages to the Allowed Apps list by default, but you can remove them if desired.

    Living with Screen Time

    Screen Time alerts you 5 minutes before a time limit expires and displays a Time Limit screen when time runs out. Although the point of Downtime and App Limits is to help you stop playing a game or reflexively checking Facebook, you can tap Ignore Limit to keep using the app. You can choose to ignore it for 15 minutes or just tell it to ignore it for the rest of the day. With many features, it’s all about deciding what you want to get out of it. If you find you are just always hitting ignore for the rest of the day, perhaps Screen Time isn’t right for you.

    I have only been using Screen Time for a few weeks, there are days I do choose to just ignore it and there are days I consciously adjust how I am using my phone. One of the unexpected benefits, I am finding myself using my phone more. I know, that sounds strange. However, knowing my phone is tracking my usage is subconsciously forcing me to explore forgotten apps and to remind me my phone does more than just keeping me connected.

    Give it a try, even if it’s just for a week!

  • Dear Friends,

    I think I may have waited just a bit too long to head south as I woke up this morning to a nice blanket of snow and temperatures in the teens. As I let Jezebel out for her morning relief she took a couple of tentative steps onto the snow and then jumped back. I realized it was her first experience with snow and so I had to go out with her to show her it was safe. She was still walking like she had twinkle toes.

    I installed a Honeywell Lyric smart thermostat at my house this past weekend. My old thermostat wire was very built-in to my house some 45 years ago so pulling a wire that way was not gonna happen. It was long drills, cutting sheetrock and running a new wire just to ensure that we had the required “C” wire to allow the thermostat to be HomeKit compatible. I will give the log-in to my winter tenants and when they come up to ski they can make sure the home is warm for them. And, if they forget to turn it down I can set it to “away” while I am on the beach in Key West.

    Did you vote yet? Most states allow early voting so why stand in line? Or, take a few friends to your polling place and vote all together! It really matters! Here’s a link to President Obama putting to rest the seven most common excuses for not voting

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive is on the Boom Swimmer Duo Bluetooth Waterproof speaker. It can hang out in your shower or on the beach. I have two in Orange/Green and two in Orange. Normally, these are $59.99 each but while current supply lasts, strictly first come, first served, you can have one of these versatile waterproof speakers for only $39.99!

  • We are pretty much ready for our annual migration, like the snowbirds we are. I winterized the camper, put gas stabilizer in all the gas engines, put my little Austin Healey Sprite away and just have to button up the motorcycle.

    It seems every year that our schedules get compacted just before we leave. We have goodbye dinners with friends and family, we have last-minute medical appointments and lots of moving of personal gear to make room for our winter tenants.

    Hey, did I mention that it would be a really good idea if you voted this year?

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    Don & Emily

  • Walkie-Talkie

    This past weekend I started using the Walkie-Talkie feature on Apple Watch and WatchOS 5. And, I must say, this is a not only a cool feature but a functional one as well. The Walkie-Talkie feature on the Apple Watch may be an overlooked feature in the latest OS, perhaps because its immediate benefits aren’t recognized. We are all used to just picking up our phones and sending a quick text to someone when we need to communicate, most of us probably do this more often than actually making a call to that someone. The messages are instantly sent, why would you need to Walkie-Talkie them?

    The big difference between Walkie-Talkie and texting, in my experience, is the instant communication no matter what you might be doing. If I am out in my barn my phone isn’t always right with me, same when Luke is in the basement working on a project. Being able to just raise our wrists and send an instant voice message is more convenient than sending and waiting for a text. Walkie-Talkie works everywhere! You can be several thousand feet away and need to send a message or you can be miles and miles apart. We have used the Walkie-Talkie feature for silly things like asking each other what our lunch plans are to working fixing a broken water line and making sure we aren’t flooding the other end of the building. Best of all, setting up Walkie-Talkie is quick and simple!

    All you need to talk with some else is to make sure they are running WatchOS5. You simply tap on Walkie-Talkie within Apple Watch. Once you have the app open, it’s as simple as hitting the + sign and adding contacts you wish to join you with Walkie-Talkie. Anyone you send an invite to will get a message on their watch asking them to confirm they want to connect with you. To talk to anyone you are connected to in Walkie-Talkie, all you need to do is select their name and then press Talk. That is all there is to it, handy!

    If you are worried about a sudden message coming through your watch when you are in a meeting or maybe sitting in the dentist chair, do not worry. You can silence alerts and make yourself unavailable as needed. There are two ways to ensure messages don’t come through when it’s inconvenient, simply go into Walkie-Talkie and toggle the available switch to off. You can also simply turn on Theater Mode or Do Not Disturb, these options ensure all communications to your watch are silent. According to Apple, just putting the watch in Silent Mode will not prevent voice communication through Walkie-Talkie. Take Walkie-Talkie for a spin.

  • Do Not Disturb Me, Wait..Disturb Me

    I love the Do Not Disturb feature in iOS—it’s really handy for keeping notifications from waking me up at night or causing embarrassing light and noise in a dark movie theater. This has been a problem because when Do Not Disturb is turned on manually for a movie or doctor’s appointment, one had to remember to turn it off manually when ready, or risk missing important notifications. No more!

    In iOS 12, Apple enhanced Do Not Disturb in two ways: enabling it to disable itself automatically after a certain amount of time or when your location changes and adding a Bedtime mode that holds all notifications until you wake up.

    An Automatic End to Do Not Disturb Sessions

    In previous versions of iOS, you invoked Do Not Disturb manually by tapping its button in Control Center. However, if you forgot to turn it off after your meeting, say, it would stay on forever unless you had a Do Not Disturb schedule set, and, even then, not until the end of that schedule. So if you forgot to turn Do Not Disturb off after a 10 AM meeting, it could stay on until the next morning or until you realized you weren’t getting any calls or messages.

    If you start Do Not Disturb sessions in the same way in iOS 12, they’ll act the same way. But if you force-touch or press and hold the Do Not Disturb button in Control Center, that brings up the Do Not Disturb card with five options:

    1. For 1 hour: This first choice tells Do Not Disturb to hold all your calls for an hour, after which it will turn off automatically.
    2. Until this evening/Until tomorrow morning: If you invoke this option during the day, it will silence calls and notifications until 7 PM. Select it at night, however, and it will quiet your iPhone until 7 AM.
    3. Until I leave this location: Use this choice when you’re invoking Do Not Disturb in conjunction with being in a particular spot that you’ll leave as soon as you’re done.
    4. Until the end of the next event: When you enable Do Not Disturb during an event on your calendar, this choice appears, giving you the option of turning off Do Not Disturb at the end of the event.
    5. Schedule: Tap this button to open Settings > Do Not Disturb.

    While Do Not Disturb is on, iOS 12 puts a notification on the Lock screen telling you when it will turn itself off. At any time before then, you can tap the Lock screen notification to allow calls and notifications again.

    Do Not Disturb During Bedtime

    In Settings > Do Not Disturb, you’ll find a new Bedtime switch. When enabled during the times for which you’ve scheduled Do Not Disturb, it dims and blacks out the Lock screen, silences calls, and sends all notifications to Notification Center instead of showing them on the Lock screen.

    The idea behind the Bedtime switch is that it reduces the chances that glancing at your iPhone in the middle of the night to see what time it is it will not shock your eyes or engage your brain. Sleep is good! But if you get up early and want to allow notifications through again, tap the Do Not Disturb notification on the Lock screen to turn it off.

    That’s not all you can do with Do Not Disturb During Bedtime. You might know that there’s a bedtime screen in the Clock app that’s designed to help you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. If you use it to set your desired sleep schedule and enable the Do Not Disturb During Bedtime switch in Clock > Bedtime > Options, you get another Do Not Disturb schedule.

    That could be extremely welcome if, for instance, you want Do Not Disturb on automatically both at night when you’re sleeping and also during a regularly scheduled class or meeting.

    Give these new Do Not Disturb options a try! They go a long way toward ensuring that our iPhones fit into our lives better, rather than forcing us to pay attention to every last alert or message.