I started using TickTick in march of this year after finding that time blocking in Things 3 + Fantastical to have a number of issues (perhaps I will do more on that in a future video).
Once I migrated over to TickTick, I found myself using it for everything. It basically became my inbox for everything: Tasks, Ideas, Funny things that people said that I didn’t want to instantly forget. I came to the realization that as long as I could get the item into TickTick I would act on it.
The issue I found was although TickTick has good quick capture and dictation built in, there was no way they could do it fast enough for what I wanted. Mostly because of limitations in iOS. At least on my iPhone XS it can only boot so fast and it only can be ready for input so fast.
So I set out to see if I could create a quick capture that was instantly ready for input and that I could easily dictate to while in the shower or driving in the car.
Here’s where I landed:
- Tap Quick Capture: to type in a quick task
- I could tap the same for Dictate
- If I’m in another app and realize there’s something I need to do late I can double tap the back of my phone to open the quick capture.
- Lastly if I’m in driving in the car or get an idea while in the shower I can say Hey Siri, Jot
Alright so let me show you how to set this up: Quick Capture
The Dictation Workflow
- New Shortcut
- Choose a New: In this case Jot this Down
- Choose Add Action
- Search for Dictate Text
- Search for TickTick
- Choose Add Single Task and Choose Dictated Text
- Spin open the Options Arrow and be sure to Enable Edit in App. An interesting issue with Shortcut workflows is they don’t open the app and the apps don’t get a chance to send your newly created item to the cloud which means your newly created item only exists on your device which is exactly what we don’t want. If you choose Edit in App then TickTick will open and your item will be available anywhere you access TickTick.
- From here you can hit the share button at the bottom and choose Add to Home Screen
- You can change the icon by tapping here on the left and you can change the App name here on the right. Choose add and you’ve got a Quick Capture App you can launch from the Home Screen
Alright on to the Quick Capture Workflow:
- Same initial steps as before
- New Shortcut
- Name it
- Choose Add Action
- Search for TickTick
- Add a Single Task
- Tap where it says task and choose Ask Each Time. Press Done on your keyboard
- Spin open the arrow and enable edit in App
- Lets give it a spin.
- If it asks would you like to Allow Your shortcut to share data with TickTick then choose Allow
- To make it launch on Double tapping the back of your phone:
- Go to settings → Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap →. Double Tap and choose your Shortcut from the bottom of the list.
- Now Double tapping the back of your iPhone will launch your quick capture shortcut.
- There you have it. That’s how I quick capture and dictate with TickTick for iOS. If this was helpful to you please leave a like and comment. Also I have a video on how I use Alfred to Quick launch anything. You can check it out right here.