Daily inspiration for iOS users

8 years ago, I wrote about my setup for sending myself daily reminders—usually short quotes and principles that I wanted to influence my thinking and decision-making. It looked like this:

My Android phone, using the Custom Quote app to input an inspirational reminder — I used the Custom Quote Android app and displayed the reminders on my lock screen.

My Android phone lock screen displaying the reminder: 'Consume less. Create more.' — I used the Custom Quote Android app and displayed the reminders on my lock screen.

For 8 years that system has held strong, serving me well through many transitions in life (changing jobs, having kids, buying a house, and more).

This year, when it was time to retire my Android phone, I decided to try out iOS. The story behind that experiment is a post in itself, but one outcome was that I needed a new way to get my daily reminders.

I found several iOS apps that could do it but the prices were baffling. I’m happy to pay for apps I value, but a $19.99/yr subscription for standalone software to rotate quotes? Yeesh.

It took some digging but I finally found an app that was perfect for my use-case. It’s called Yapp Reminders, and it looks like this:

My iPhone, showing the interface of the Yapp Reminders app and the Yapp widget placed on my home screen — Just click + to add reminders to your list, then add the widget to your home screen.

A new quote is randomly chosen as often as you want (daily, in my case). The default settings and styles are good and everything is stored on the phone. *chefs-kiss*

I noticed that it would send me alerts when the quote changed, which felt a bit noisy to me. Eventually, I learned that I could turn those off by disabling alerts in Settings > Yapp > Notifications:

The Yapp notifications settings screen, with notifications enabled and alerts disabled — Note: it's important to leave "Allow Notifications" enabled, otherwise the widget quote will stop rotating.

I’ve been using this setup for the past 2 weeks and I love it. I even set it up on the family iPad so I could send similar reminders to the kids.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear highlights the power of taking one-time actions that pay off again and again. That’s what this is: a little daily nudge, helping me become the person I want to be.

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