Digital Bytes: iOS Dock Hack, 4K Webcam Hands-On, and Braille Display Support on Android - podcast episode cover

Digital Bytes: iOS Dock Hack, 4K Webcam Hands-On, and Braille Display Support on Android

May 12, 202514 min
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Episode description

In this episode of Digital Bytes:

  • Dock More Apps on iOS (with Marty): Marty demonstrates a clever VoiceOver trick that lets you fit more apps in your iPhone or iPad dock by creating folders.
  • Hands-On with the Insta360 Link 2 Webcam (with Michael): Michael shares his first impressions of a $150 AI-powered 4K webcam that auto-tracks your face, mounts securely, and sounds great—despite some software accessibility hiccups.
  • HID Braille Displays on Android (with Chris): Chris brings great news for Braille users—HID-compatible displays like those from HumanWare now work with Android 15 and One UI 7.0 on Samsung phones. She shares a few quirks and tips for getting your input method back under control.

Tip Jar members: Watch for an upcoming audio comparison in your exclusive feed—Michael puts the Insta360 mic head-to-head with the MacBook Pro M3 and the Shure Beta 87A.

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Read transcript

Transcript

Need tips for using your Amazon Alexa? Join Lucy on All About Lady A on the second Thursday of the month for simple tricks to get the most out of your A Lady device. Listen on the Unmute Presents podcast feed. See you there. Oh yeah, did I mention you can also check out Unmute show for all past episodes and to get more information about what we've got going on. Foreign.

Have you ever wanted to add more items to your dock on your iPhone or iPad? You can't because there is a limited amount of space to add apps down there. So I'm going to show you how to get around that and add more apps to your dock. The way you get around this is you create a folder with whatever apps you want in there. Say for example, you want to have Safari and Messages on your dock. What you would do is you would, and this is with voiceover, by the way, you would go to your rotor and you would go to Edit. Then you'd go to Drag. And then you take say for example, Safari and you drag that onto Messages. When you flick up, you're going to get a couple of options. You're going to get an option that says drop before or after messages. There's a third option that allows you to create a folder with Safari and Messages. That would be the one you want. Then what will happen is it will automatically create a folder with both Safari and Messages in that folder. Once you have that folder created, you can just leave it with those two apps in there or you can go and put other apps in there. Once you have the folder created, then you do the same process again using the Rotor. You would go to Edit and then Drag. Then you would go down to your dock and you would put your finger on, say, for example, the phone app you have down in your dock. You would put your finger on that and you would get the same options. You would be able to drop the folder either before or after the phone app on the dock and you will just then add it right there. And that's how you do that. Now I want to make caveat here is this tends to be a little bit buggy, so you might have to try and do it a couple times in order for it to work. And in some severe cases it might not work at all. But you just have to be patient with it and you should be able to get through it all right. So hopefully this all works well for you. And this is getting more apps onto the dock. And we'll see you next time.

Hey there, it's Michael here with your digital Byte. And this is take two. Because the last time I recorded this I didn't have monitoring on in Reaper and turns out I recorded it from the MacBook Pro microphone. So bear with me if I kind of rushed through this. Hopefully what I explained to you in today's Digital Bite you'll find to be valuable. Today we're going to talk visuals. And by visuals I mean 4K cameras. And this is a webcam that I'm going to talk about full transparency. I did not purchase this. I believe it's going for about 150 on Amazon right now. Damasi, my co host on Technically Working and friend of course sent this to me because he knew I'd get more value out of it than he would. So today I'm going to tell you a little about the Insta360 Link 2 camera that I received in the mail a couple of weeks ago and finally put together. This is a pretty cool camera. What sets it aside from other cameras? Because if anyone who's listened to me in the past knows, you know that I have no problem with using my phone and a popsocket to hang my phone from the back of my laptop screen to capture me and get me in focus. And I also have a couple of different webcams as well. This camera is using AI. I believe there are some tools to be able to set up some virtual backgrounds. That's going to be something I'll explore in the near future, but not right now. But what's even cooler is it will allow me to set it up on my computer or wherever I want to set it and then tell it, hey, follow me or keep me in center. And it will silently move up and down and left and right to be able to keep me in focus as much as possible. This camera uses USB type C on it, and it has a couple of ways you can mount it to different devices. So when you get the camera in the package, you'll receive two items. You'll receive the mount and you'll receive the camera. Now let me explain the mount to you and then I'll explain the camera and we'll go from there. The mount is a, I would say that's maybe an inch thick square that has a flat edge on the top with a very slight. I thought it was a sticker at first. You'll understand what it is here in a moment, but it's a little square on top and then on the very bottom of it, and it's the only place there's a hole is a mounting hole. So you can mount this to a tripod or other item as well. So we're going to flip it over where the square is face where the hole is facing the desk, and the little square on the top is closest to you and facing the ceiling. If you feel along the left and right edge, you'll feel that they are fairly flat. You can feel a little crack. And this is where the stand comes apart. I'll explain that to you in a moment. Along the front edge, you'll feel what feels like a hinge. At first, I'm like, oh, that's weird. That kind of feels like a hinge, but I don't know why it's a hinge. Well, I'll explain that to you. That's on the top. So if you feel that hinge on the top and it's closest to you, that's orientated the correct way on the very bottom at the back. So the part on the same side with the hole is a hinge as well. Okay. So when you have this in the proper orientation with the top hinge facing you, and you put your fingers on the left and right sides below the crack. If you put your. I have my right thumb on the right side and my middle and index finger on the left side. And then I have my index finger of my left hand on the back and the thumb of my left hand on the front. I'm going to pull down with my two index fingers. I'm going to pull down with my right hand, and you'll feel the bottom of the base comes open. And you can actually make this flat. I just discovered this. So you can continue to pull all the way, and then it's flat. So then you have a longer rectangle instead of just a square with that hole on the back. That's too far for what we're going to demonstrate. But I wanted to show you that, because what I discovered, you'll feel a little L on the front edge of it, where the bottom was kind of tucked into place. But if you trail your finger back from the front edge, you'll feel the bottom of that square. And you can actually push that square up. And you can see that you can make this into multiple different configurations. Both of those hinges go all the way flat. So you can have kind of a, I don't know, a rectangle with a square on the front with a hole in the middle. So we're going to push this top part, going to push this front part all the way back so it's flush with the top face and then I'm going to fold the bottom back up for probably most of the way so it forms a triangle. Now, this lip on the front hangs over the top of your laptop. And then the bottom part braces itself against the back of your monitor or your laptop. So when you have it in place, the lip is sitting right up at the top of your screen. The back part is pressed up lower against your laptop. Top face is flat. Because we're going to take the camera now. And the camera has a round base. This round base has a USB C port on it. And in order to orientate the camera correctly, you want the USB C port on the left side. So turn the bottom until the USB C port is on the left side. And then I'm going to actually hold this up to the microphone so you can hear it, because I want you to hear how aggressively this will sit on here. So if I set the camera above round piece of the camera above the top part, you'll hear. So as you heard, it goes. And one more time. And that sits right here so I can. And it holds it very. And it holds it in place very well. So now that the camera is sitting on its mount, which is sitting on my laptop screen, if you trail your fingers up, you'll feel the round base of the camera again. The USB C port should be on the left. And then you'll feel a separate round thing that pivots. It turns to the left and right. And when you have the USB C port on the left, you'll feel on the right side a little arm that comes up. And then if you continue trailing your finger along the top edge, you'll feel the camera itself, which pivots up and down. So the arm sits on the base that turns left and right. And the camera will rotate up and down to keep you in focus. This is a pretty cool camera. Honestly, the software is not the most accessible. However, I will tell you that it does a great job at keeping me in focus. It is a 4K camera, so people say it looks great. And I really like the fact that if I wanted to, I could mount it to a tripod, which gives me a couple of other recording possibilities as well. Now, if you are interested, what I'm going to do for club members is record in probably the next couple of days and publish it to the club members only podcast feed an audio demo of my sure Beta 87A versus the MacBook Pro M3 microphones versus the microphone in the Insta360 Link 2 camera, which I hear and it sounds like it on YouTube, like it sounds pretty darn good. That is a brief demonstration explanation of the Insta360 Link 2 camera which will work on iPhone, Android, Mac and Windows. Hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. It's about $150 on Amazon and you have a beautiful rest of your day.

Hi everyone. This digital bite is a good news piece about Braille displays and Android phones. For about a couple years I think. Now I've been really frustrated that I have not been able to use my humanware HID Braille displays with my Android phone. I live on all the platforms so you know, I've been surviving, but it was really disappointing to know that things were stalled out. And furthermore, Samsung is always behind when it comes to Talkback its version, which is very similar to Google Talkback, but it does run behind. So not only do our Samsung phones get a little bit behind in the Android version, but they then also are a little behind in the version of Talkback. So whether I was under a rock temporarily and I didn't realize that now I have access to using my humanware Braille display, I don't know. But this week I discovered that lo and behold, it does connect to my phone. Now I've had a few little bumps and little bits of frustration along the way, but I'm super glad that things are moving in the right direction. What I have discovered is that somehow after I get done using my Braille display, it completely reverts to the Braille screen input which I have repeatedly turned off because I don't prefer that, I'm just not used to it and I would rather use physical keys on a keyboard than hope that my fingers are in the right place on the screen. But that's just me. So it kind of reverts to the on screen Braille keyboard and then I go and turn that off and I finally discovered that I can tap the switch input method on the bottom left of the keyboard and I can then navigate to my preferred on screen keyboard which is the G board made by Google. And so I've been playing with these settings and trying to make sure things are set with their correct defaults, but I'm still working on it. But I will say if you have a Samsung phone, I think the S25s are running Talkback and Android 15. Now my Z Flip 5 is running Android 15 and also what is needed is the One UI version 7.0. So if you have those things and you're not aware that you could potentially use your HID Braille display with your Samsung, then you have good news. Enjoy using that Braille device along with your Samsung Sam.

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