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My Favourite iPhone Apps

2021-03-28 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali · recording, 16:22 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, Sponsor segment present

In his annual what's-on-my-iPhone video Ali sorts his favourite apps by the room he uses them in: Audible and Clubhouse in the bedroom, Instapaper with Readwise in the bathroom, Fantastical in the kitchen, Slack, Drafts and Shortform in the armchair, Hinge, Kindle and Airr on the sofa, and Roam Research, Notion, Day One, Spotify and Superhuman at his desk.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: the annual iPhone apps video, sorted by room of the house

  • ★★ The only app Ali allows himself in the bedroom is Audible: getting ready for bed, he often listens to a book on Audible with his AirPods in. — 00:00:00 · Audible, AirPods
  • ★★ Ali has just finished The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, apparently one of Bill Gates's favourite books, about a genetics professor with autism trying to find a wife, which he found relatable in some ways. (hedged) — 00:00:00

00:00:20 — Bedroom: Audible, Clubhouse, Instagram and Twitter, AutoSleep

  • ★ Ali is listening to Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth series, which he finds very good. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Ali has been spending a fair bit of time on Clubhouse, which he describes as Discord-like audio rooms for different topics. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ When friends in America, such as YouTubers in his agency, hold a Clubhouse event at midnight UK time, Ali opens it to listen for a few minutes, gets sucked in and is still there at three in the morning. — 00:00:58 · United States
  • ★★ Ali calls Twitter and Instagram the banes of his life, which is why he tries his very best not to bring his phone into bed. — 00:01:28 · Twitter, Instagram
  • ★★ AutoSleep passively analyses the sleep data from Ali's Apple Watch, but he has not found its trends particularly helpful. — 00:01:28 · Apple Watch
  • ★ Ali is not wearing his Apple Watch at the moment because, he says, wearing it for so long has caused something like dermatitis on his skin. — 00:01:28 · Apple Watch
  • ★★ The bathroom is where Ali answers most of his YouTube comments, in the YouTube Studio app. — 00:01:57

00:02:03 — Bathroom: YouTube Studio, Instapaper and Readwise

  • ★★ In the bathroom Ali tries to use Instapaper instead of Twitter, Instagram and YouTube: he saves articles he stumbles across to read later, then reads them in free moments. — 00:02:26 · Instapaper, Twitter, Instagram
  • ★★ Ali highlights articles in Instapaper, and Readwise syncs the highlights automatically to Roam Research and Notion, his two main note-taking apps. — 00:02:55 · Instapaper, Readwise, Roam Research, Notion
  • ★ In the kitchen, while his coffee brews, Ali asks Alexa for a two-minute timer and checks his calendar for the day. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Ali's calendar app is Fantastical, which he has used for four or five years: a little expensive, but pretty good. (hedged) — 00:03:24

00:03:32 — Kitchen: Fantastical, TikTok, MyFitnessPal

  • ★★ Fantastical does what any other calendar app does, Ali says, but having used it so long he has basically no reason to switch. — 00:03:54
  • ★★ Ali has recently become more active on TikTok, where he posts mostly short life-advice videos with captions and emojis. — 00:03:54
  • ★★ Ali also posts experimental content on TikTok, such as a Harry Potter impression. — 00:04:23 · Harry Potter (book series)
  • ★★ Ali tracks calories and macros in MyFitnessPal when pursuing six-pack abs; he weighed 73 kilograms a year ago and is now about 79, so getting shredded is not going great. — 00:04:23

00:05:02 — Armchair: Slack, Drafts, Roam Research, Shortform

  • ★★ Ali and his team communicate in Slack about the YouTube channel and the podcast, brainstorming video titles and thumbnail ideas there. — 00:05:13 · Slack
  • ★★ The Inner Circle, the membership community for alumni of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, is hosted on Slack, with channels for gear questions, video feedback, titles and thumbnails, and support. — 00:05:13 · Slack, Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali's general note-taking app is Roam Research, but because Roam is still a little temperamental he often switches to Drafts to write something down. — 00:05:42 · Roam Research, Drafts
  • ★★ When Ali has a random video idea over his morning coffee he writes a quick script in Drafts on his phone; his intro to Bitcoin video started that way. — 00:05:42 · Drafts
  • ★★ Ali recommends Shortform for really good summaries of popular nonfiction books: a detailed one-page summary plus a chapter-by-chapter full summary. — 00:06:11
  • ★★ Ali's team used Shortform's summary of The War of Art to make a video about the book, which he thinks comes out next week (the week of 29 March 2021). (hedged) — 00:06:11
  • ★★ Ali uses Shortform in addition to reading books, not instead: when unsure whether to read a book he reads its Shortform summary, and if he likes it he reads the book. — 00:06:11
  • ★★ On the couch Ali sometimes checks his matches on the dating app Hinge, and he shows his profile, which opens with his million-subscriber plaque. — 00:06:40

00:06:48 — Couch: Hinge, Kindle, Airr, Lightroom

  • ★★ Ali's Hinge profile says the hallmark of a good relationship is spending 90% of the time doing your own thing and 10% doing things together. — 00:07:09
  • ★★ Ali has 69 likes on Hinge so far; Hinge Premium lets him see who likes him before they see that he liked them, which he says saves him a lot of time. — 00:07:09
  • ★★ Ali still subscribes to Tinder Gold and has a lifetime Bumble Premium membership bought on sale, but says Hinge is where it's at these days and he hardly uses the others. — 00:07:09
  • ★★ Ali finds the Kindle app on his phone surprisingly good and reads on it when he cannot be bothered to fetch his Kindle from the bedroom. — 00:07:09 · Kindle
  • ★★ Ali has just finished Open, Andre Agassi's autobiography, which he calls absolutely fantastic. — 00:07:55
  • ★★ Ali is reading How to Find Fulfilling Work, published by The School of Life, which he finds very interesting: it covers the ways we find meaning in our jobs and why jobs can feel meaningless. — 00:07:55
  • ★★ Ali's podcast app is Airr, which he thinks is still available only on iOS. (hedged) — 00:07:55
  • ★★ Airr's air quote button saves the last 30 seconds of a podcast as a quote, with transcripts for the most popular podcasts, including Ali and his brother's. — 00:08:24 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali's Airr quotes sync through Readwise into Notion and Roam Research, where he sees the transcripts of what he saved, such as many quotes from a Seth Godin episode. — 00:08:24 · Readwise, Notion, Roam Research
  • ★★★ Ali admits his podcast quote system is theoretical: he has never once gone through his air quotes and done something with them, but it makes him feel better that they are there. — 00:08:57
  • ★★ Ali edits selfies and thumbnails in Lightroom on his phone before uploading them to Instagram. — 00:08:57 · Adobe Lightroom, Instagram
  • ★★ At the piano Ali uses Ultimate Guitar Tabs, which lets you search for any song and find its chords so you can play it. — 00:09:26

00:09:30 — Piano: Ultimate Guitar Tabs; pre-warming the car with the Tesla app

  • ★★ Before a late McDonald's drive-thru with his housemate Sheen, Ali uses the Tesla app to pre-warm the car and heat the front seats remotely. — 00:09:56 · Tesla, Sheen
  • ★★ Alone in the car Ali listens to audiobooks on Audible at double speed or podcasts on Airr at triple speed. — 00:10:37 · Audible

00:10:50 — In the car and a McDonald's drive-thru with his housemate Sheen

00:11:50 — Desk: Roam Research, Notion, Day One, Spotify, Superhuman, Discord

  • ★★ Ali does very little on his phone at his desk, because using apps on his Mac is far more efficient, and basically every productivity app he uses is cross-platform. — 00:11:50
  • ★★ Ali uses Roam Research for personal note-taking, mostly on desktop, and Notion for team note-taking. — 00:12:17 · Roam Research, Notion
  • ★★ Ali and his team organise everything in Notion: video schedule, book reviews, courses, website, podcast and research for his book. — 00:12:17 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali's app for private journaling is Day One, which he usually types into on his Mac before sleep or during his morning journaling. — 00:12:17 · Day One
  • ★★ Ali has used Day One since about 2014 or 2015 and has five years' worth of journal entries in it, with periods of heavy use and periods of none. (hedged) — 00:12:59 · Day One
  • ★★ Ali finds it quite nice that Day One lets him look back on his life with its "on this day" entries from years before. — 00:13:28 · Day One
  • ★★ Ali uses Spotify for all his music; he would love to be an Apple Music person, but finds it so bad compared with Spotify. — 00:13:28 · Spotify
  • ★★ Ali plays an instrumental playlist for Homework Club of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, where he and about 12 others film videos for their channels together. — 00:13:28 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali checks his email in Superhuman across all his devices: he has used it since June 2019, finds it a bit expensive, essentially paying to check Gmail, but really likes it and has found no reason to switch. — 00:13:57
  • ★★ Ali once dabbled with a fan Discord server, but it became way too much to manage. — 00:13:57
  • ★★ Ali is maybe thinking about restarting a fan Discord server and asks anyone interested in moderating it or helping him start one to email him. (hedged) — 00:14:26
  • ★★ For the last few days Ali has been playing Call of Duty on PlayStation with friends, talking with them in a Discord voice channel. — 00:14:26

00:14:54 — Brilliant sponsor read and sign-off

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Replying to a viewer who wants more Harry Potter lip-sync TikToks, the channel says Ali's Harry Potter TikTok was not a lip sync. — creator comment · Harry Potter (book series)
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): To a viewer who calls the 90%-alone, 10%-together line on Ali's Hinge profile a terrible dating intro, the channel answers that it is true. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Notion · Roam Research

Also: People: Andre Agassi · Bill Gates · Ed Sheeran · Graeme Simsion · Ken Follett · Seth Godin · Sheen · Taimur Abdaal

Projects: Homework Club · Inner Circle · Not Overthinking · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Harry Potter (book series) · How to Find Fulfilling Work · Open · The Pillars of the Earth · The Rosie Project · The War of Art

Organizations: Instagram · McDonald's · Tesla · The School of Life · TikTok · Twitter

Products: Adobe Lightroom · AirPods · Airr · Amazon Alexa · Apple Music · Apple Watch · Audible · AutoSleep · Bitcoin · Bumble · Call of Duty · Clubhouse · Day One · Discord · Drafts · Fantastical · Gmail · Hinge · iCloud · Instapaper · iPhone · Kindle · MyFitnessPal · Oura Ring · Readwise · Shortform · Slack · Spotify · Superhuman · Tinder · Ultimate Guitar · YouTube Studio

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