Things v3.15 is out today with a whole lot of goodies for macOS Monterey. The biggest of the lot is support for Apple Shortcuts. Things now offers full support for Shortcuts on the Mac, making your daily task handling much easier. The blog post linked above has a bunch of example shortcuts created by the Cultured Code team to help you get started.

This release also comes with major performance improvements, making the app considerably faster & snappier in practice. The company says that the app launches upto 43% faster, while new windows open up to 45% faster. These performance improvements aren’t limited to the Mac, with things getting faster up to 32% in the iOS versions as well.

Lastly, this release brings support for keyboard shortcuts when using International Keyboards.

On non-US layouts, shortcuts involving letters will mostly stay the same, but shortcuts with special characters will now be easier to type – and some that were previously impossible to use can now be typed for the first time!

Check out our updated keyboard page for your layout. You can also look in the menus on Mac, or hold down Cmd on iPad.

Things for Mac is available for $50 on the Mac App Store, and this is a free update to all existing users.

The post Cultured Code Releases Things 3.15 with Support for Shortcuts on macOS Monterey appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

Just like last year, Apple has released four new iPhones in September this year — the iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max. All four phones feature the same screen resolution as the four phones released last year — iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. These join the other iPhones viz. iPhone 11, iPhone XS and iPhone X series. Download this stunning collection of iPhone wallpapers available below and deck up your device with these cool new iPhone wallpapers for free.

Here are some handpicked wallpapers for your new iPhones. These have been cropped correctly to match the new iPhone screen sizes and resolutions and look absolutely stunning.

Free iPhone Wallpapers

1. Tokyo Infinity by Pawel Nolbert

2. Tokyo City Fog by @louisredon

3. Buildings, Cars, Signs and Neon HD by Paulo Silva

4. Person Walking on Street Near Buildings by O-seop Sim

5. Afterwork by Thana Gu

iPhone 13 Wallpapers

6. City, Urban, Tower and Skyscraper by Van Mendoza

7. Skyscraper with a Spire by Ian Simmonds

8. New York by David Alacaraz

9. Skyscraper, Architecture, Street, and City by Rob Bye

10. Lost in the Sauce by Andre Benz

11. Commuters in Terminal Station by Luca Bravo

iPhone 13 Pro Max Wallpapers

12. And& Festival by Jonas Denil

13. White Yosemite by Kevin Bosc

14. Suspension Bridge by Rye Jessen

15. Abstract White Facade Edge by Julien Moreau

16. Road Less Traveled by Steven Pahel

17. Killing All Movement by Niklas Hamann

iPhone 13 Pro Wallpapers

18. Blur, Long Exposure, Motion, and Water by Damon Lam

19. Adult Blur Bokeh by Pexels

20. Urban Skyline by Greg Becker

We hope you enjoy these beautifully free wallpapers for your new iPhone 13 miniiPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max. Of course, if you haven’t upgraded your iPhone yet, you can also download these wallpapers for iPhone 11, iPhone 12, iPhone XS series, iPhone 7/8, or any other older iPhone too. These are all high-resolution images, so they look stunning across the board.

We will also have a roundup of the best apps for your new phones in the next few days so stay tuned. And if you’d like to see more posts like this one, let us know.

Featured Photo by Andrew Ridley.

The post Stunning Wallpapers for iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 12, iPhone 11 and iPhone XS appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

Paul Kafasis, writing on the Rogue Amoeba blog:

For almost twenty years, we’ve sold our software directly to our customers via our online store. Our fast and secure purchase process has served our customers very well. Since the Mac App Store opened in 2011, we’ve also experimented there. However, despite a decade of feedback from countless developers and users, Apple has made scant few changes and the store remains beset with issues. When you couple the many shortcomings and issues with Apple’s restrictive polices that preclude most of our software from appearing there, the Mac App Store is clearly a poor fit for us. With the removal of Fission, we no longer have any products in the Mac App Store.

It’s a shame that Apple is letting the Mac App Store rot away like this. The whole experience, even in 2021, is unsurprisingly bad. Even though they revamped the Mac App Store app recently, the developer experience and features available to the them are still causing harm at a larger scale.

The post Rogue Amoeba’s Fission Leaves the Mac App Store appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

Customizing a smartphone is something that we all do tailored to our uses. And at the heart of it is often a nice looking wallpaper. Colorful, vibrant, clean, and fun are some of the most desired attributes of a wallpaper for your smartphone. These qualities can also be found in flat aesthetics too, that underpin the design philosophy of the latest versions of iOS. Today, we’re bringing you some exceptionally good-looking flat art wallpapers for your devices.

According to the Interactive Design Foundation, flat design is a user interface design style that uses simple, two-dimensional elements and bright colors. It is often contrasted to the skeuomorphic style that gives the illusion of three dimensions through copying real-life properties.

Here are some amazing flat art wallpapers for Apple iPhone 12, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max, 12 mini as well as iPads. These work well with older generation iPhones too.

Free iPhone & iPad Wallpapers

1. Multi-colored Wall Art by Jason Leung

2. Abstract Shapes Layered with Live Florals by Evie. S

3. Red & Black Artwork by Alex Perez

4. Planet Science Fiction by JCK5D

5. Mandalas by Viscious-Speed

6. Fishing in the Morning by Ngodung

Free Flat Art Wallpapers

7. Background Colors Abstract by miro383

8. Triangles by miro382

9. Dark Grey Clouds by starline

10. Tropical Forest Landscape by pikisuperstar

11. Evening Cloudy Sky by macrovector

12. Natural Landscape by pikisuperstar

13. Mountain & Waves by pikisuperstar

14. High Mountains With Snow by pikisuperstar

15. Green Mountains by pikisuperstar

16. Floral Flat Design by freepik

17. Vivid & Groovy Flat Art by freepik

18. Colourful Mountains by pikisuperstar

19. Camping Area by pikisuperstar

20. Beautiful Flowers by freepik

We hope you liked these wallpapers. You can still enjoy these wallpapers on older generation iPhones, be it iPhone 6, 6S, iPhone 7/8, iPhone X, XS, XS Max, XR and even the iPhone 11 series, as these are high-resolution images that will look great nevertheless.

[Featured image by JCK5D]

The post 20 Gorgeous Flat Art Design Wallpapers to Liven Up Your iPhone & iPad appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

Bobby is currently our favorite subscriptions tracking app for iPhone & iPad. It’s a great way to quickly add your recurring expenses for services and get an overview of how much you’re spending on subscriptions. It comes with a long list of predefined services, or you can add your own custom service manually as well.

Now you can submit any missing services to the app for consideration by visiting submit.bobbyapp.co. If you think your favorite service needs to be on Bobby for quick addition, let them know.

The post Bobby Now Accepts Submissions for Missing Services appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

Short, vertical content such as promos, showcases and even social cards (virtual business cards with social media information) not only helps promoters convey large and rich chunks of information in a short period but also grab a large percentage of young audiences as a bonus. 

Making these sounds easy, but it really isn’t. That’s because a marketing-focused individual wouldn’t necessarily possess the aesthetic skills or the understanding of using high-level animation and editing software for jaw-dropping transitions. Hiring a designer or animator is an option, sure, but it may not be as cost-effective. And this is exactly where Mojo comes into the picture. 

Mojo is an app available on Apple App Store and Google Play that lets you create professional-looking animated content for use in social media, especially in the form of ‘Stories’. Stories are a great way to share and promote what you’re up to, without cluttering up your feed. Their power lies in sharing throwaway and topical content, perfectly tailored for promotional posts. 

Using the app is extremely easy, thanks to an excellent UI design. It is divided into three main screens that can be accessed using the tabs at the bottom.

Samples of stories we created using Mojo

The first screen is ‘Templates’, which is self-explanatory — you can choose from the many pre-designed templates arranged beautifully according to genres. They have nifty little preview thumbnails too so that you can visualise exactly how your output would look like. The impressive thing here is the sheer variety and quantity of templates, all of which look extremely appealing. There’s something for everyone, and all of it without ever getting in the way of your imagination. 

Also Read: Lucid Lets You Unlock the True Potential of Your Dreams

Just in case you enter a creative block after seeing so many options, the app also inspires you in the form of creative Stories made by other users in the Discovery tab.

Mojo’s UI is incredibly intuitive to use

You can also create your own Stories from scratch if you are in for something very specific. Here, not only can you choose the dimensions of your video, but also mix and match different elements such as palettes, backgrounds, animated texts, call-to-action (CTA) graphics and of course, custom swipe up prompts. It’s a really simple process, aided by some clever design decisions taken by the developers. In fact, after hours and hours of using the app, we had to accept the fact that it was nearly impossible to make something that looked bad. 

If all of this looks too vertical-centric, fear not. There are tons of horizontal (16:9) templates at your disposal too. 

Mojo offers a reasonable chunk of content for free, but an asking price of USD49.99/year gives you access to a plethora of templates and is way better than hiring a standalone designer.

The post Mojo — An Elegant App for Creating Aesthetic Social Media Stories appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

With hundreds of millions of daily users, Twitter is undoubtedly one of the biggest social networking platforms out there. It’s great for instantly sharing and consuming small yet effective messages called Tweets. Twitter offers its official apps for every major platform out there, along with an API that can be used to build 3rd-party Twitter apps. While the official app is pretty good in itself, it does have its own shortfalls. It’s riddled with ads in the form of “Promoted” tweets that often come in the way. You also have irrelevant “trends” shoved in your face, a general lack of customizability, a confusing view of threads and the inability to edit your Tweets once you are done posting. To fix some of these problems, the company has recently announced Twitter Blue — a paid subscription starting at around US$2.99/m, but it’s currently only available in Canada & Australia.

That’s where standalone third-party Twitter apps step in to fill the gap. There are quite a few popular third-party clients out there, such as Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Fenix, etc. and there’s a new kid on the block to join this club. Kizie is a beautiful web-based Twitter client by Rishi Mohan and is a shining example of how beautifully good third-party apps can be.

Also Read: Things 3.14 Brings Bullet Lists and Markdown Formatting to Notes

Since it also has a progressive web app (PWA) version, it can also be used easily on a smartphone without having to install a bulky app.

Kizie.co’s UI is simplistic yet effective.

To quickly access Kizie directly from your Android home screen as a PWA, simply login to Chrome, then tapping on the three vertical dots on the top right corner and selecting ‘Add to Home Screen’ option. Doing this will create a shortcut for Kizie.co on your desktop, and then when you open it, it will work almost like an app. To do the same on iOS, you’ll have to log in to Kizie.co on Safari and then tap on the ‘Share’ icon on the bottom. Here, select ‘Add to Home Screen’.

Kizie.co is also available as a progressive mobile app (PWA)

One of the most striking things about Kizie.co is its simplistic, fluff-free interface. The developer has carefully chosen colors for both light and dark modes so that your eyes like them, and it all shows when you’re using Kizie.co. It has an ad-free interface, so nothing comes in your way of quickly consuming Tweets from others. Kizie.co also offers a more spacious UI compared to Twitter, where threads are displayed in a more organized, systematic manner.

Kizie.co’s lets you preview threads so that you know exactly how they’ll look once posted.

Kizie also gives more power to the user by allowing them to preview how tweets would look on Twitter before posting and surprise, surprise! Another cool thing is that there’s a ‘plus’ icon that appears when you are writing a Tweet which lets you create threads seamlessly. So you can preview, and edit everything at the same time!

You also get to edit your Tweets within 10 seconds of posting them. This can be done by using the shortcut Alt+X or Opt+X. Further, you can also undo sending out a Tweet within 10 seconds of posting them by pressing Alt+Z or Opt+Z. 

Also Read: Lucid Lets You Unlock the True Potential of Your Dreams

Another interesting feature is the reader mode, which gives you a quick look at external links. This is especially useful if you want to cut out the clutter of ads and other links and peacefully read the contents of a webpage. This, however, only seems to works with a select few links and is wholly dependent on whether the links in your feed contain the right metadata for Kizie.

Kizie.co’s reader mode gives you a quick glance at a webpage’s contents.

Further, there’s also a feature that lets you mute certain words so that they don’t appear in your feed. 

All this functionality can be enjoyed Free, without ads and with the basic features that Twitter has to offer, like browser notifications, shortcuts and the ability to save links. 

But this fantastic way to interact with Twitter does have its own imperfections. At the moment, there seems to be no way to search for hashtags, people or anything really, using Kizie.co,  which can be a bummer for many.

A monthly subscription to Kizie.co costs USD 3.99 a month, and the Pro users get benefits such as no monthly limit on Tweeting, using the Reader mode as well as getting full Tweet analytics and insights. 

Kizie.co’s subscription plan starts at USD 3.99 a month

Check out Kizie.co →

Update: A previous version of this article erroneously mentioned that Kizie does not support Retweet (RT) functionality. While Kizie does support this functionality, there seems to be a conflict with the 1Blocker app that blocks the Retweet icon from showing up. Additionally, Kizie does support Reader mode in its PWA, but only for certain links. The article has thus been updated to reflect these corrections.

The post Kizie.co is a Minimally Elegant Web-based Twitter Client appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

Cultured Code has today released Things 3.14 for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that brings some terrific improvements to task notes. If you are someone whose to-do lists are incomplete without detailed notes accompanying every task, then this release is right up your alley. Things 3.14 brings formatting options to note-taking in your tasks with Markdown formatting and Bullet Lists, along with a new Find in Text option to search through your notes and a new version to Things Cloud called Fractus that improves syncing across devices.

Markdown Formatting & Bullet Lists

Things now supports Markdown formatting in the notes, and it’s basically a full-blown mini Markdown editor in there. You can keep the formatting as simple or as detailed as you want. The app supports the usual syntax — single asterisks around a word for *emphasis*, dual asterisks for **bold**, dual colons for ::highlights::, and # to ###### for h1 to h6 headings. If you prefer using underscores instead of asterisks for emphasis, those work too. There’s strikethrough and hyperlink support as well. Here’s a video of it in action.

If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, you can double-tap a word and then tap on the ‘Aa’ option to select from the following options in the bubble popup:

Bold | Italic | Heading | List | Numbered List | Task List | Link | Code | Code Block | Strikethrough | Highlight

Things 3.14 Markdown Formatting on iOS

Next up, are bullet lists, which you can type using the -, *, + or numerical characters. Yes, you could type out lists even in the earlier versions, but now the bullets are formatted in a better way using monospace fonts. You can even do nested lists now.

The app has a new Find in Text feature that searches through the text in a note, in case the note’s gotten too big and you have to find something in there.

Things Cloud “Fractus”

Things Cloud has been one of the most rock-solid syncing experiences available on the App Store. Ever since its launch, Cultured Code has ensured that your data in Things syncs across all your devices without any issues or major conflicts. Things 3.14 improves upon this syncing experience by making it even faster. Called “Fractus”, this new version of Things Cloud only uploads and syncs the exact bits that have changed in your tasks. Here’s how Cultured Code puts it:

Until now, each time you modified a note – say to insert or remove a few words – the entire note would be synced again across all your devices. With our new method, only the fragments of text you modify are synced. This drastically improves the speed and efficiency of the sync, and allows for smarter resolution of conflicts.

There’s nothing you need to do to enable this – we’ve already rolled it out.

I switched to Things last year, just after the pandemic began and I love how delightful & elegant the app is. It has consistently helped me stay productive & organized while I work from home. It’s one of the best To-do apps available on the App Store today and has delivered remarkable features with every release.

Get Things 3.14 for:

macOS | iOS | iPadOS

The post Things 3.14 Brings Bullet Lists and Markdown Formatting to Notes appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

The ability to conquer dreams is something that humans have been exploring throughout history. Dreams aren’t just an abstract series of thoughts, images and sensations that occur in a person’s mind while sleeping, they are also a portal to the subconscious. 

Larry Page invented Google thanks to a dream he had as a 22-year-old in which he somehow managed to download the entire Web and just keep the links. Page is one of the biggest advocates of lucid dreaming, a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming. Page was once quoted saying “when a really great dream shows up, grab it”. 

There are several ways to unlock the true potential of lucid dreaming, but thanks to technology, it is becoming increasingly easy to do so. Lucid is one such app available on Google Play that lets you journal your dreams with a simple yet elegant design. This is very important, as jotting a dream down requires you to do so with as little hindrance as possible, simply because it’s very easy to forget them. 

Lucid’s interface is divided into five tabs.

Right off the bat, the interface of Lucid is very easy on the eye — it uses a dark palette of grey and blue that isn’t unpleasant to look at, considering you’d be using it mostly after waking up. 

Also Read: Sleeve is a Gorgeous Now Playing Widget for your Desktop

When you first open Lucid, you’re asked to choose the purpose of using the app so that it can be tailored better to your use. The interface is divided into 5 different screens. The ‘Guide’ tab is the best way to get used to the app and make the most out of it. It prompts you to remember what you dreamt last night, set a journal reminder and even presents you with some assisted sleeping techniques in which you can listen to a story to help with lucid dreaming. 

You can set reminders for journaling your dreams with Lucid.

Lucid also lets you build a habit of checking whether you are actually asleep or awake by conditioning you to reality checks. The app says one of the most popular ways to do this is by counting your fingers, as the world doesn’t behave the same in dreams and you may have fewer or more fingers while dreaming. It helps you build this habit by reminding you to count your fingers every 2 hours a day so that you are well prepared to do the same in your dreams. 

Also Read: Camo Lets You Use Your iPhone or iPad Camera as a Webcam on Mac

It also helps you with assisted meditation techniques and the free version features renowned psychophysiologist Dr Stephen LaBerge’s method for falling asleep. 

Then you have the ‘Course’ tab where you can better understand lucid dreaming and how you can utilise it better in your life. The first few courses are free, the rest are paid. 

Jot down your dreams with minimal hindrances coming your way with Lucid.

The ‘Dreams’ tab allows you to quickly register the dream that you just had, along with a bunch of questions that help you keep a tab of when you really had a lucid dream. You can decide to type it out or simply create a voice recording which happens to be a much faster way of logging things down. 

All your data is also neatly accessible in a graphical form in the ‘Profile’ tab. Here you can track things like the total number of dreams. 

There’s also an ‘Explore’ tab that provides you with even more resources that are beyond the app, such as vibrant Discord and Reddit communities, some YouTube tutorials on Lucid dreaming as well as some articles and inspirations for dreams. 

As far as pricing goes, annual subscription starts at USD 100 which comes as an in-app purchase. You can still use a lot of features without having to spend much.

The post Lucid Lets You Unlock the True Potential of Your Dreams appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

Sleeve is a beautifully crafted app for macOS that displays your currently playing track as a tiny widget on your Desktop. Made by Hector Simpson* and Alasdair Monk from Replay, it works with Apple Music or Spotify and comfortably lives on your desktop without getting in your way. We’ve only been playing around with it for a day, but can confidently say that Sleeve is the ultimate example of a really polished and delightful app.

Sleeve shows the album artwork, track name, artist name, and album name on the Desktop. It’s not an interactive widget, so you can’t control playback using Sleeve (not that we want to). It works natively with the Apple Music and Spotify apps and doesn’t require your account details.

Customize How Sleeve Looks on your Desktop

My favorite thing about Sleeve is really how customizable it is. You can change a lot of options to modify its appearance on the Desktop, such as the Album artwork size and the rounded corner size, light or dark themes, show/hide the track title, album name and artist, alignment options, and the text size.

You can also choose where you want Sleeve to appear on the Desktop — either at the four corners, or dead in the center. If you have multiple displays connected to your Mac, you can also choose which display Sleeve should appear pinned to.

Another aspect of Sleeve that managed to impress us was its icons. Along with a beautiful app icon, it also ships with this lovely drive icon for its DMG.

Sleeve is available for $5 from the Replay website.

*Hector has previously made appearances on Beautiful Pixels for Post-Rock Tuesdays and Stand app. He also makes these beautiful wallpaper collections called Aqueux, Candy, and Wavey.

The post Sleeve is a Gorgeous Now Playing Widget for your Desktop appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

The Pixelmator Team has just announced that Pixelmator Pro, their incredible app for macOS, is going on sale for a while and will be available at a cool 50% Off discount.

Starting today, Pixelmator Pro is going on sale and is now available with a gigantic, no – gargantuan! – discount of 50%. Not only that, we’ve also got a second sneak peek for you at the upcoming Pixelmator Pro 2.1 update, showcasing the super fun new ML Crop feature.

In exchange for your hard-earned money, we promise you a powerful, beautiful, and exceptionally easy to use image editor designed exclusively for Mac. And we also give you our word that we’ll surprise and delight you with a regular helping of lovingly crafted updates from this day forward. Like the upcoming Pixelmator Pro 2.1!

The team also teases ML Crop, an upcoming feature in Pixelmator Pro 2.1. Check it out here.

The post Pixelmator Pro Goes on Sale @ 50% Off appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.

Everyone is familiar with .com and .net, but did you know you get your own free .design domain?

As a designer, we think it’s pretty awesome that we can get a domain name that reflects what we do, .design.

And because it’s a fairly new domain, there are still plenty of short .design names available. So the good news is, you can shorten or improve your existing branding by switching to the .design domain.

ie. johnsmithdesign.com >> johnsmith.design

You can also get your own unique email address such as hola@yourname.design or you can even use it as a clever redirect to another site, like a Behance profile.

Get your FREE .Design Domain

We have teamed up with Porkbun to offer all Beautiful Pixels subscribers a FREE .design domain name. The first year is free, and yearly renewals will be just $35 instead of the $70 offered at some registrars.

You also get:

• Free email hosting – you can add an email address (or multiple!) that matches your domain name. For example, anne@goldsmith.design or info@goldsmith.design, or any other name you want.
• SSL Security – An SSL certificate will encrypt your visitors’ sensitive data, and also display your site with “HTTPS” in your address bar, which will let visitors know that you’ve made their security your top priority. You’ll also avoid the “NOT SECURE” label from Google.
• Free WHOIS Privacy – Your contact information will be private, and protected forever. Other registrars charge you for this. Porkbun won’t.
• Free website builder – If you want to build your .design website with no code, you can build it for free using their site builder, powered by Weebly. And with this option, you don’t have to pay for website hosting.
• Free domain connection – Whether you built your website (or plan to build it) with other services like WIX, SquareSpace, or Weebly, you can easily connect your .design domain to your website platform. Your website content will stay exactly the same, but you’ll have a modern .design domain name for your website to show off!

Here’s your chance to get a free website domain name that reflects what you do and helps you showcase your work.

The post Grab a FREE .design Domain to Showcase Your Designs appeared first on Beautiful Pixels.