Plain and Simple Tools

A shelf of small tools, each doing one thing, with nothing attached. This is the one app here that is not about a single thing: a container that gains tools over time. Every tool says what it does, what it will ask you for, and what — if anything — it sends off your phone, before you tap it. Pin the ones you use to the tab bar. A tool you have never opened is never even started, and never asks you for anything. Three ship today. CHARGE — IS THAT CHARGER ANY GOOD? Plug the phone in and leave it a few minutes. Charge times how fast the battery is actually filling and tells you roughly how many watts are arriving, and whether that counts as fast or slow. There is a Lock Screen tile for the last one you tested. It is honest about the figure, which is the part most apps are not. iOS does not tell an app how many watts a charger is delivering — there is no way to ask, and any app showing you an instant number is making it up. Timing the fill is the only method available, it takes a few minutes, and it gets within about a fifth. The app shows that it is still measuring rather than inventing something, and explains the method on the screen. NEGATIVES — FILM, TURNED BACK INTO PHOTOGRAPHS Point the camera at a negative on a lightbox — or let a second phone be the lightbox — or pick one you have already photographed. Colour film, black and white, and slides. A single frame or a whole strip. The conversion happens on your phone, and the result saves straight into your own photo library. STEPS TO HA — YOUR STEP COUNT, ON YOUR OWN DASHBOARD If you run Home Assistant at home, this sends today's step count to it, so you can put it on a dashboard or use it in an automation. It reads your step count from Apple Health, read-only, and never writes anything back. It sends that number to the address you typed in, and nowhere else. There is no account and no server here. Nothing goes to Plain and Simple. Your Home Assistant address and webhook ID are kept in this phone's Keychain, marked device-only, so they are not in iCloud and do not travel to a new phone. If you do not run Home Assistant, this tool has nothing for you — and it stays switched off and silent. PERMISSIONS BELONG TO THE TOOLS, NOT TO THE APP The shell — the shelf, the tab bar, Settings — asks for nothing at all. Health is only requested once you open Steps to HA and choose to connect it. The camera is only ever on while Negatives is the screen you are looking at, or while you are scanning a pairing code, and it explains itself before iPhone asks. Saving a photograph uses the add-only permission, which lets the app put pictures into your library and never lets it see one that is already there. That is the least it could ask for; the cost is that it cannot file its results into an album, and that was accepted rather than asking for more. Tests read the app's own source and fail the build if permission code appears outside a tool, if the app declares a permission that no tool asked for, or if any tool other than Steps to HA gains the ability to reach the network. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO • No adverts, no purchases, no subscription • No account, no analytics, no tracking • One tool sends one number, to one address you chose. Nothing else in the app can reach the network at all, and a test fails the build if that changes • Nothing downloaded after you install it If none of the three is a job you have, this one has nothing for you yet. The shelf is honest about being short.