Tot Pocket Reviews – Page 3
4/5 rating based on 43 reviews. Read all reviews for Tot Pocket for iPhone.
Tot Pocket is paid iOS app published by The Iconfactory
I like, but can't keep losing data
Naturefriend
This looked like a simple, even fun app for stashing thoughts and info I need week by week. But when I noticed something I typed went missing (replaced by what had been there previously) I realized it wasn't worth taking a chance (happened twice). Really a shame....so rarely do I spend $20! Am daring to hope this will be fixed at some point. Also disappointed that I can't write even a small phrase to accompany saved links. Kinda takes the 'simple' out of it.
Amazed
swilcox
I almost never write reviews. I read about this app several months ago, when it first came out. I thought it sounded interesting but not worth $20, although I did download and use the free version on my MacBook Pro. I now have purchased the iOS/iPadOS version, and I must say I amazed. I expected this to be simply a place to keep scraps of writing. Well, it is, but it is so much more. It’s a simple app by design, but it’s true — that simplicity masks some amazing power. The level of attention to detail of these simple functions (one example: keyboard shortcuts on Magic Keyboard), the nearly instantaneous iCloud syncing across devices, the meticulous design, and more make Tot a joy to use. I do use it for those occasional times when I have to jot down some information, such as when I’m on a phone call and need to write down sometime. I also use it as a minimal bookmark keeper. I use it to quickly, without friction, write down an idea. Just a lovely app. I was wrong — it absolutely is worth $20.
Notes don’t save. What’s the point?
GmJaruna
Tried for several minutes to get a simple pasted note to save. Switch tabs and come back? Gone. Background and foreground app? Gone. Visit settings and come back? Gone. Unacceptable for one of the most expensive apps on the store to be unable to save. I can load content pasted from the computer but nothing from the phone is ever saved. 0 stars for 20 dollars.
if you’re who this is for, you’ll be happy
npydyuan
It’s one of those weird little hyper-specific apps that surely isn’t for everyone. I am obviously but a minuscule anecdotal example, but here’s what i think is relevant about my demographic: - I use Finder and BBEdit to write. All fancier attempts to improve on that environment end up disappointing - occasionally i’ll branch out into Omnioutliner, Stickies, or even Pages when specific parts of my brain need to scribble on a different kind of napkin - Drafts used to be the bomb, but when it got modernized and more complex it lost its appeal for me, plus subscriptions make me gag Enter Tot. It’s reliable and adorable. Gets out of the way until i need it and then there it is, with no recriminations about where i’ve been all week. Here’s when i use it: - need to type something NOW; pausing to think about what it’s for or where it goes would shatter the thought - need to copy and paste between devices and apple’s magic isn’t working - keeping track of temporarily persistent categories of information (like covid resources for example) - want to type something non-urgent but don’t know yet where it’s going to be filed - quick note when out and about, easy and mindless as a pocket notebook - i use the seven-color spectrum to impressionistically organize the ephemeral contents: more personal stuff goes towards the green end; more work-related stuff goes towards the red end You get the idea. It’s things like BBEdit, Tot, Keyboard Maestro, etc that keep me on the Mac. I’m sure I could replicate most of what these things do for me with Linux, but only if I had time and limitless patience. The verdict: if you want it and can afford it, buy it. It does exactly what it says it will do, and that should be rewarded.
Missing one feature
MillsMachine0
Love the concept and prevents mindless pages of notes depending on your workflow. I wish there was a shortcut to add current date in some non-country specific format in the customizable “shortcut bar” (e.g. January 1, 2020). I have weekly recurring meetings that have a few takeaways and it’d be great to simply add to a stream of dates quickly.
Great
MatthiasIam
Just missing a couple text navigation features. For instance when you’re indebted, pressing enter should make another bullet at that same indentation, but it doesn’t do that. Also, when tapping a bullet then tapping indent, it just tabs forward instead of indenting the existing line you already started typing on. Indent is different than tab, tab is fine just label it the tab key if that’s what it’s going to be.
Needs more
Hjgiiii
I’ll echo what a few others have said: needs more, smarter, text navigation features. definitely missing when adding to a list, “return” key creating a new line with a bullet also, share extension please! I’d like to copy text and notes from Drafts to this. also, a home screen widget for quick adding
Love it!
calebhailey
Just what I've been looking for! A simple scratchpad for quick thoughts without the distraction of "organizing" the notes. One little nit: the app is crashing quite a bit on my iPhone 11 Pro. Once that's fixed this probably lands on my home screen. ?
The Killer App
portalkeeper
There’s a photo techies love of the table full of technologies — cameras, fax machines, Game Boys, printed books, on and on — that were rendered obsolete by a single computer you can fit in your pocket. I can’t find that photo right now, and I don’t remember if a pad of sticky notes is on that table, but maybe that’s because people don’t think they’re obsolete. I still see sticky notes stuck to the bezels of people’s computer monitors all the time. That’s insane, though. Apps should be way better at that job, but thus far, none have been — not even Apple’s Stickies app on the Mac. But Tot by The Iconfactory has done that and much more. Tot is a notes app with an intentional, almost physical constraint: It contains exactly seven notes. They can all be infinitely long, of course, but there are seven of them, in fixed positions, each with its own fixed color. They instantly sync to all your devices. The primary mode for viewing notes is in rich text, supporting a pleasing array of fonts. (I’ve customized mine to use Apple’s New York Small, which takes some finagling on iOS but is quite possible.) Tot also allows you to dip into plain text, which translates your rich text formatting into a basic subset of Markdown, also allowing you to add links to text. In other words, while it’s ostensibly an app for dashed-off notes — “your mess,” as Tot’s help docs call it — it also makes for a quite pleasing writing environment. To wit, this text your reading began life in response to Tot developer Ged Maheux’s request that I write a review of Tot on the App Store. I realized that I would want to publish the review twice, on the Mac and on iOS, so I figured I’d write it in one place where I could easily retrieve it twice — where else but Tot? So I just opened Tot to the first note and began writing, and what effortlessly emerged was something I quickly realized I should publish on my blog. Now I’m watching the status bar at the bottom, pleasingly matched to the note’s background and highlight colors, as the word count ticks upward towards 500. That’s how natural a writing tool Tot is. If someone — let’s say my kid’s pediatrician — were to call me on the phone while I’m writing this, I may need to rapidly switch contexts and write something down. I’m used to fumbling a little bit in that situation. In Tot, the solution is absolutely natural: just jump one note over and write it down there. Tot’s design makes it seem perfectly natural to have completely disparate kinds of things in each note, and seven seems like a magic number for the most things you’d ever want to keep track of in a given day. The constraint of having exactly seven notes does something I don’t think Apple Notes will ever do, and that’s why I will continue to use both apps: Tot liberates you from ever having to remember where you put some piece of information. That’s where physical sticky notes fall down, especially if you need more than a couple. Apple Notes tries to help out with folders and search, but that still takes way too much cognitive overhead when you really need to find something. With Tot, you absolutely know where it is. Often the things you put into Tot don’t need to go anywhere when you’re done with them, but sometimes they will. In my life, Apple’s Notes is going to be the obvious destination. I treat Notes as long-term storage, so I’m going to have some folder in there where I put information from Tot that I need to keep around. I do keep random bits of info in the top-level Notes folder sometimes, so I guess that’s been my Tot until Tot came along. That demands a question, though: Why not just use Notes? Tot’s designers made some decisions that make it better for the kind of usage I’ve described above than Notes is. As far as writing notes goes, it’s a close call, but Tot built in just the right features in just the right places, whereas Notes took a more kitchen-sink approach that makes it less appealing to me, particularly in the toolbar on iPhone. Sure, sometimes I might want to add a photo in the middle of writing a note, but I’ll almost never want to doodle a picture with my meaty index finger, and Notes treats those as primary note-writing actions. Tot only has controls I will always want to use. The word and character count is also a big plus for me, as is the ability to quickly convert between rich text and Markdown. You can do that in Notes via Shortcuts, but that’s janky. On the Mac, where you can tweak the system to respond to custom keyboard shortcuts in whatever app you want, you can also get Notes to be comparable to Tot, but Tot’s already set up to appear and disappear on the Mac at your command, so there’s no need to fiddle. There’s also the undeniable loveliness of Tot, which Notes does not have. But the real reason to use Tot is the seven-note constraint. Even using the top-level folder in Notes the way I do, it’s still very hard to keep sane in there. I don’t know why it is — I’m not enough of a designer to explain it — but my hunch is that Tot’s seven dots provide two cognitive advantages. One is the color-coding, which must ingrain itself at some subconscious level while writing, because I really do find that it helps me remember what’s where, even though I’m just choosing the next open dot, not choosing a note based on color. The other is that you can always see how full you are, and once I get above three, I already start to feel like things are getting too complicated, and I need to do something. Every folder in Notes is an infinitely deep junk drawer, and yet somehow even having just two notes in there feels like too much. Consequently, these two apps fall very naturally into two different roles: Tot is for managing what’s top of mind, and Notes is for freezing information in carbonite for later retrieval.