Hello folks,
I wanted to fully wrap up the iCloud links issue from a few weeks ago, as I received another statement after requesting clarification on the process, saying:
“Apple has confirmed the shortcuts have been restored.”
I haven’t had any issues and have been connecting with folks in the Shortcuts community since then, so we all seem glad to be moving on and looking forward to what’s coming next.
We’ve got iOS 14.5 coming with some new actions soon, and after that we’re in the endgame ahead of WWDC this June – until then, here’s what’s new this week:
? LINKS SINCE LAST TIME
Snell wants Shortcuts on the Mac, Rose shared her time tracking tips, and I streamed with Scotty Jackson about his latest adventures:
- **Jason Snell calls for Shortcuts on the Mac | Six Colors**
In the processing of restoring his shortcuts, Jason Snell has shared his own set for public consumption – it’s a great list and gives insight into one of the top Apple writers’ particular workflows built on top of Shortcuts. - **How Rose uses Shortcuts and App Launchers to Track Time | The Sweet Setup**
John Vorhees has come up with another great Club MacStories shortcut – I wanted to link it here because it uses a clever combination of online services and local files to create a personal read-it-later system outside of normal article-saving apps. - **Shortcuts Office Hours (with Scotty Jackson) | Matthew Cassinelli on YouTube**
I had to stream with Scotty Jackson and soak up all the techniques he’s been sharing on his blog – check out our 2-hour stream where we also answer questions from the chat. (Note: I accidentally muted myself with my StreamDeck 6 minutes in for about a minute, sorry about that).
? NEW FROM ME THIS WEEK
This week I was inspired by my stream with Scotty and put together three example shortcuts for the “Set” actions that were added in Shortcuts earlier this year, plus I’ve published one extra members-only shortcut around Photography:
- **Open links from Reminders*******
Looks for any URLs inside your incomplete reminders and presents them in a menu, then opens the corresponding links in Safari. This takes advantage of the “URL” capability added to Reminders actions this year. - **Send event invite*******
Based on Scotty Jackson’s article from last week, this makes it easy to create or find an existing event and select contacts to add as attendees – includes confirmation steps before Calendar will send out the invites. - **Add contact note*******
Lets you type out any notes for a selected contact before adding it to their contact card – includes any existing notes as default text in the prompt since this Edit functionality overwrites the existing information. - **Photog** ?
I put together some of my photography shortcuts into this larger “Photog” shortcut, making it easy to check and add Golden Hour to your calendar for best times to shoot, helping you process images into Lightroom, and cleaning up the Photos app for a better browsing experience.
*Note: I’m not publishing these in my catalog as standalone shortcuts and they’ll later be integrated into a larger shortcut, so these are direct iCloud links so you can use them as single shortcuts for now.
? SHORTCUTS SPOTLIGHT
Did you know you can save Shortcuts to Reminders?
You can ask Siri to “Remind me about this” while looking at a shortcut and it’ll get added to the Reminders app – these will have a special Shortcuts icon on the right side that you can tap to run the shortcut.
Image source: Apple
Overall this can be handy for specifying shortcuts to be shown at a particular time or location – Apple’s examples include scheduling a reminder to run the Log Weight shortcut each morning, or displaying the Home ETA shortcut when you depart from work.
