Support — Plain and Simple Thoughts
Share a link from any app, and it is here when you want it. Most questions are about the share button, because iOS makes you switch that on by hand the first time.
If you would rather skip all of that, you do not have to use the share button at all. There is a + at the top of your library: tap it, paste a web address, and it is saved exactly as if you had shared it. Everything below is about the share button, which is the quicker way once it is on.
Turning the share button on
The app will not appear in the share sheet until you add it. That is iOS, not a fault, and every share extension has to be added the same way.
- In Safari — or any app — tap the Share button.
- Scroll the row of app icons all the way to the right and tap More.
- Find PS Thoughts in the list and switch it on.
- While you are there, drag it up to the top so it is the first thing you see next time.
You only do this once.
Note the name
The app goes by three names and all of them are correct. The App Store calls it Plain and Simple Thoughts. Your Home Screen and the share sheet have only a little room, so iOS shows PS Thoughts. Inside, it calls itself the Thought Organizer. Look for PS Thoughts when you are switching the share button on.
Saving a link
Tap Share, then PS Thoughts. The link is saved the moment the sheet appears, before you have typed anything.
The sheet then waits for you. It used to close itself after a moment, which meant it asked why you were saving something and left before you could answer. Now it stays until you tap Done, so add a note or a tag if you want one. The note is the field worth using — three weeks later, why you kept something is harder to reconstruct than what it was.
Sharing text works too. Some apps hand over a block of text with a link inside it rather than the link itself. The app finds the address in it.
The other tabs
The app opens on your library of saved links. Three more tabs sit alongside it, and none of them needs setting up.
Recipes. Share a recipe page and the ingredients and method are pulled out as you save it. You can also paste an address, write a recipe out yourself, or share a photograph of a cookbook page and let the phone read it. Amounts double, halve and convert, and a cooking mode shows one step at a time with the screen kept on.
Purchases. Receipts and warranties — what it cost, where it came from, when the cover runs out. Photograph the receipt and your iPhone offers you the shop, the total and the serial number before you save.
Papers. A passport, a licence, an insurance card: the number, the expiry, and a picture.
Locking the Papers tab
Settings can put Face ID — or your passcode, if Face ID fails or you have none — in front of the Papers tab. It is off until you turn it on. Until you do, a licence number in there is no better protected than a note, and the app says so rather than letting you assume otherwise.
Turning the lock on also blanks the widget, if you were using one. A number readable on a Lock Screen would make the lock pointless.
Reminders
A warranty or a passport can carry a reminder, which arrives a few days before the date. Nothing reminds you unless you ask it to.
They come from your own iPhone. There is no server sending them, which is also why they only work on the device you set them on.
The widget
Pin a paper and its number can sit on your Home Screen, or on the Lock Screen where you can read it without unlocking. It shows what you pinned and nothing else, and it goes blank if you switch the Papers lock on.
Finding something again
Every tab has a search box. The library searches titles, your notes and the site something came from. Receipts and papers search the way you would actually look for one — the shop, the item, the serial number on the back of the box, the number on a document.
Saved links also turn up in your Home Screen search. Pull down on the Home Screen and type, and a link you saved is there without opening the app first. That index is built on your device out of what you already have, and it is never handed to Apple's own search — it is searchable on your phone and nowhere else. Archive something and it leaves the search too.
Sorting is remembered. The order you choose on a list — newest, oldest, or what runs out soonest — is still there the next time you open the app, and the button says which order you are in rather than leaving you to guess.
Doing several at once
Select at the top of your library lets you tick several links and archive them, or mark them read, in one go. The bar at the bottom says how many you are about to act on.
There is deliberately no way to delete a pile at once. Archiving can be undone and deleting cannot, so a permanent action is not something to put behind a multi-select. Delete one at a time, and the app asks first.
A saved link shows no picture or title
The app asks the site for those when the link arrives, so:
- If you had no signal when you saved it, it will fill in later. Open the app with a connection and it catches up.
- If the page is gone, it is marked unreachable and keeps the address, so nothing is lost.
- Some sites publish neither. Then you get the address and the site's name, which is all there is to have.
It has not appeared on my other device
Your library syncs through your own iCloud, so both devices need to be signed into the same Apple Account with iCloud Drive on. There is no push, deliberately — changes are picked up when you open the app, so give it a moment on the second device.
Clearing the preview pictures
Settings has a button for it. They are rebuilt when they are next needed, so nothing is lost by clearing them.
Reading
Tapping a link opens it inside the app, in Safari's reader. Anything Safari can do with the page, it can do there.
Getting rid of something
Archive it to take it out of the list and keep it, or delete it to remove it from this device and from your iCloud. Both are on the row itself.
What it does not do
There is no account to create, nothing to buy, no subscription, no adverts, and no analytics. The app has no server behind it, so what you save is between you, your iCloud, and the site you saved it from.
Something else
Get in touch below. It's one person answering, so it may take a day or two, but every message gets a reply.