Otter is the Mac app for the note taker who hates typing. Still, Darwin, Xcode, and parts of iOS are still hosted and regularly updated on. The result has been an immediate explosion of widget options for Mac users.A Unified Theory of Managing Macs, iPads, iPhones, and AppleTVs Charles.A few of those widgets — which have been in development the longest and were highlighted in my Big Sur review — remain some of my favorites and are recapped below. Help you focus on important to-dos so that you consistently meet your goals.Over the course of the summer and fall, I tried several different widgets as I ran the Big Sur betas. Gneo, A Fresh Paper-Like Take On To-Do Apps. FluxGet Gneo ITS A GNEO DAY. Best of all, it’s free to get started Download: Otter.There are three types of widgets: Favorites, List, and Next.Favorites are user-defined quick actions that access the functionality of the main app. ThingsAs on iOS and iPadOS, GoodTask has one of the most extensive sets of highly-configurable widgets available. There are usually options to accomplish the same thing another way, but with a carefully-picked set of widgets, the collection becomes greater than the sum of its parts by allowing you to monitor and access several apps in one place. I’ve also found that widgets on the Mac are great for quickly opening a particular document like a mind map, or checking the status of something like the batteries of the devices connected to your Mac.These are themes that run throughout the best widgets: they offer quick access to specific content for functionality and/or glanceable information. If you’ve ever fallen into that trap, Control-tabbing to your task manager or time tracker throughout the day for no good reason, widgets can be a good way to break the habit.It also lets you start timers for tasks. The degree of customization is in keeping with the main GoodTask app, which offers a similar depth of flexibility and customization.GoodTask’s Next feature is a way to focus on your next available task based on the task deadlines you assign. There’s an option to display a heat map of the days where you have the most tasks scheduled too. Like the Mac app, users can customize the List widget to show different views of lists and pick multiple themes, colors, and calendar layouts. The Favorites widget also has a customizable mode (icon-only or icon and text), color, and theme.List widgets come in all three sizes and can be configured to display any of the task lists from the main app. The widget is available in small and medium sizes, with the former supporting one favorite and the latter supporting up to eight.
![]() Ios App List Goals For The Day Mac App ForWith battery life being such a strong selling point of the new M1-based laptops, a battery widget would be a great way to remind people just how long you can work on an M1-based MacBook Air or MacBook Pro on one charge.In any event, developer Guilherme Rambo has you covered with AirBuddy’s widget, which looks almost identical to the system widget on the iPhone and iPad. It’s amazing to me that Apple didn’t create a system battery widget in Big Sur. OrbitI recently covered AirBuddy 2 in-depth on MacStories, so I won’t repeat myself here, but I’m a big fan of the app’s Big Sur widget. As with the other GoodTask widgets, Next is a simple way to dip into a specific feature of the app without getting distracted by your other tasks. After you start a timer running in GoodTask, the timer appears in the widget too. Clicking the Next widget, which is available in small and medium sizes, opens the Next view in the main app. I use the Latest Releases widget every week to find something new to listen to as I work on my Mac or iPad.Although Upcoming Releases aren’t out yet by definition, there’s usually a track or two released in advance of the album, so I’ll start by browsing with the widget and use it to launch the app when I see something I might like. I covered MusicHarbor’s excellent translation of its iPad app to the Mac in my Big Sur review, but its widgets bear revisiting here too. There are a lot of other reasons to check out AirBuddy 2 if you use your Mac with Bluetooth devices, but I’m glad Rambo also took the time to create this useful widget so that I know when to top off my AirPods and other accessories.MusicHarbor offers Latest Releases, Upcoming Releases, and Stats widgets in all three sizes. The large version is a little different, using a combination of iconography and text to list the remaining battery life of your devices, including the exact percentage that’s available. Word for mac 2011 bullets wont work when hit tabI don’t have as much time as I’d like to play videogames, but I’m often in the middle of playing two or three at any one time, so it’s handy to have an app to track what I’m playing and what I’ve got my eye on for later.As I hear about upcoming releases, I drop them into my Upcoming list. It was one of the first apps I tried that was ready for macOS 11 and is one of my favorites. GameTrackI covered GameTrack in my Big Sur review too. The power and battery life of the Air have me doing far more on it than I’ve done with any other laptop, so it has been wonderful having the app and its widgets available for managing my listening. The Draft widget offers fast access to a single document in the app with its text displayed in the widget. Reeder 5Drafts has Draft, Grid, and List widgets that come in every possible size and can all be themed in multiple ways. Instead, the widgets serve as my launcher for GameTrack when I hear that a new game has been released which I want to revisit. Having those two lists tucked away in Notification Center as widgets provides a periodic reminder of what’s coming up and what I’m still playing that I like because I don’t open the app on my Mac every day. When I do that, it’s also nice to have my Now Playing list nearby too, which helps me decide whether to wait until I’ve played through more of my backlog. You can use the Grid widget to fire off complex automations or dictate a note, or the Draft widget to pin your grocery list so it’s always one click away, for example. However, no matter how you use the app, the strength of its widgets is in their flexibility and variety. I’ve set this widget to show my Inbox, which is a quick way to access any of the last several documents I’ve opened in Drafts.I primarily use Drafts as a chronological, searchable scratchpad, which makes the List widget my favorite. You can add built-in Drafts actions, shortcuts to workspaces, or your custom Drafts actions and everything can be reordered to your liking.Finally, the List widget displays a list of documents from any of your Drafts workspaces filtered by folder with a short line of text so you can distinguish each. There’s very little that can’t be pinned here. There’s always room to build your vocabulary, and I enjoy LookUp’s illustrations. Click on the widget and the app opens to the Word of the Day, where you can read its definition and other details about the word.I’m a fan of LookUp’s word of the day feature. The app’s widget is simple: it displays the Word of the Day as text, and optionally includes an image from the app’s collection of illustrations. Widgets are meant to provide glanceable information and quick access to frequently-used functionality inside an app. I’d still like to see the collection of system widgets expanded, but I’m pleased that so many of the widgets I already use and am familiar with on my iPhone and iPad are on my Mac now too.The fact that widgets are tucked away in Notification Center — requiring a click on the time to access and lacking the ability to be stacked — are limitations I’d like to see removed in the future. However, we’re only a couple of weeks out from the release of Big Sur, and already, there are a large number of third-party widgets available to fill the gap. Many widgets that are available on iOS, like the battery widget, Maps, and News that make perfect sense on the Mac, are unavailable.
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