The PooPal Widget

The PooPal Widget is two widgets arranged side-by-side: a Reminders widget displaying a specific list, and a Shortcuts widget displaying the PooPal Shortcut.

The box on the right is one big button. It runs the PooPal Shortcut, which creates a PooPal Reminder. The white box on the left is the Reminders Widget. It is set up to show the PooPal Reminders list. Tapping the Reminders Widget opens the reminders app showing all the PooPal Reminders.

Reminders App

The Reminders app is made by Apple and has tons of interesting features. The one we are using is Alert When I Arrive. You can set the "Where" for this kind alert to any location.

For example, you could create an alert every time you arrive somewhere stressful. You could customize it to say something soothing like, "Take a deep breathe."

You can also organize Reminders into Lists. In the set up process, we'll create a new List of Reminders just for PooPal. Our Shortcut will create a Reminder and put it in this new List.

<aside> 📿 iOS knows not to alert us until after we walk away and then return to where we stashed our poop bag. If this were not the case, the Reminder would send its notification immediately after we created it, because consciousness is continuously arriving at the present moment, is it not?

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iOS Shortcuts

Shortcuts is an app made by Apple that allows you to piece together individual actions from other apps made by Apple to accomplish a specific task. To make PooPal, I pieced together the following actions:

1. Get My Current Location. I like to think of this action as belonging to the Apple Maps app.
2. Create a New Reminder. This action belongs to the Apple Reminders app.
3. Send My Current Location to the New Reminder. This action is the magic of the Shortcuts app. It allows me to communicate between the Maps app and the Reminders app.
4. Create an Alert on Arrival. This action also belongs to the Reminders app. I have it set to alert me when I return to within 1000 feet of the poop bag.

Shortcuts can also live on the home screen, just like other apps. Can you spot PooPal on my home screen?

When I tap on the PooPal app icon, it does the same thing as tapping on the PooPal Widget - it runs the Shortcut, which creates a new Reminder in the PooPal Reminders List.