How to change your home screen app icons in iOS 14

With the introduction of iOS 14 and the ShortCuts app, it is now possible to save shortcuts to your home screen that open apps. This means you can customize the app icons of your favorite and most-used apps.

Step 1: Get Icons

Using the myAppIcon app you can create your icons in the color you want.

Just use the app to select the apps you use, pick out the colors you want to use, and download the set of new app icons.

Step 2: Add shortcuts

For each app, you need to create a shortcut that opens the app. …

I’ve been busy getting some posters designed on Teachers Pay Teachers while stuck at home. What started with some lego robotics posters quickly evolved to COVID-19 safety, launching the Maker Space Posters storefront on TpT.

I wanted to aim for posters that could easily fit into a Middle or High School setting. I have more experience working with these age ranges and figured TpT could use a bit more content for older kids.

This started a while back ago when I designed some Lego Robotics posters. I had participated in Lego Robotics competitions as a kid and soon became a coach upon graduation from High School, so designing these posters came with a bit of nostalgia.

I hope you enjoy these posters and if you have any recommendations or requests just fill out my contact form.

A simple way to create a loading bar in SwiftUI

I recently ran into this issue on the latest app I’m building. The app creates images, which take long enough to hold up the main thread and causes the app to freeze. Googling and figuring out how to add this to the background thread was not hard. This is the simple code snippet I found on Medium:

let dispatchQueue = DispatchQueue(label: "QueueIdentification", qos: .background)
dispatchQueue.async{
//Time consuming task here
}

Now that the long job is on a background thread, I wanted to figure out how to display a loading bar to the user.

From the background thread, a call to the main thread can periodically update the count (in this case every loop) to a state variable. The state variable is then used to display the current amount to the user in the form of a ProgressView. …

When I wrote the Canvas Quix Printer extension over a year ago I never expected that it would get 8k weekly users!

I’m very excited that so many people have found this extension useful which is why I’m putting more work into it. Originally I published it because some teachers at my school wanted an easier way to print quizzes and to my surprise so did a few more online.

Over the last year, I’ve gotten some feedback about what to improve. I know there are some issues with quiz question banks and it doesn’t support New Quizzes but before I spend all my time fixing an old system I would love your feedback on what’s most important to you. Please take a second and fill out the survey below:

How the right lists can change your approach to work.

Let's be honest, we have all put off some project for one reason or another. Side hustles are extremely easy to put on the back burning as other more time-sensitive priorities take the lead, thus making it especially important to work on them when we have the time and not put them off to some future fictional tomorrow.

1. Find the Why

I find that I procrastinate three types of tasks: something new, something boring, or lots of somethings. New things can lead to the wilderness of not knowing what to do next, which is daunting. Long repetitive tasks are just plain boring and why work on some boring project when there's a new Netflix original. Finally, having a ton of work to do (lots of somethings) can be stressful, paralyzing, and easier to just ignore than face head-on. …

We’ve all been told that cheaters never win and shortcuts always bite ya in the back. But that's not really true, is it?

I think we all know deep down that someone who cheats on a test still passes the test, and although they lost in the long term of learning, a passing score is a passing score. Now I don’t mean that breaking the rules or laws are good shortcuts to take, (or cheating on a test) but what about the rules we tell ourselves?

What if it is okay to making studying fun by playing a game with a group, or get an extra hour of sleep before the exam, or a million other things that might help you, but that we told ourselves are ‘cheating’ or ‘shortcuts’. …

We’ve all seen the graveyard of abandoned projects folders. Desperately competing for attention but failing in the glow of a new adventure or app that will change the world. I use to do that all the time, now I finished 4 apps, and 2 other projects within the last year by applying the following steps.

1. Cut it in half

The best book to read if you want to finish side projects is "Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done" by Jon Acuff. …

Last week we got some interesting news about the Starlink beta testers and some supposedly leaked speeds. This rekindled my Starlink hope, mainly for my visits to my Grandma.

My Grandma lives in a town (and I kid you not) of 300 people. Including the children… It is tiny, and in the middle on nowhere Alberta Canada, a colder alternative to Montana/Wyoming. …