New in the fourth developer beta and second public beta of iOS 17, Apple has added an “Open Camera” action for the Camera app that allows users to pick between camera modes and immediately open to any preset using Shortcuts.
The new “Open Camera” action can be set to switch between the following modes:
Photo
Selfie
Video
Portrait
Portrait Selfie
Cinematic
Slo-Mo
Time-Lapse
Pano
I’ve built a folder of shortcuts for each action, available now as part of my membership program in pre-release ahead of iOS 17.
These actions are highly welcome to the set of Media actions available by default in Shortcuts, as well as my collection of photography shortcuts built off of them.
In the betas for iOS and iPadOS 17, Apple has updated the Automations feature in Shortcuts so that triggers can “Run Immediately” rather than the default “Run After Confirmation.”
In effect, Automations are, well, actually automatic now, rather than triggers that require manual confirmation – here’s the breakdown:
Updated Automations
In Shortcuts, all Automation types—except Arrive, Leave, and Before I Commute in the current betas—now have a new “Run Immediately” option.
Update: As of iOS developer beta 5, Location automations also run immediately!
That means automations from Messages, Email, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth now join the rest of the Automation triggers as true automations, alongside the new Transaction automation for Apple Wallet and the Display automation & Stage Manager automations on iPadOS.
For the Wi-Fi automation trigger, there’s also an additional dialog that lets you toggle whether to Run After Connection Interruption, with the following explainer text beneath:
If you reconnect to a Wi-Fi network within 3 minutes of being disconnected, this automation will not run again.
Subtle changes to Automations
To ensure user safety, Apple also requires that these automation types always notify you—the “Notify When Run” toggle does not appear if you switch to “Run Immediately”—so that you know for sure when something has happened on your device. Personally, I think this is a worthy trade-off – otherwise, how would you ever know that the Automation triggered successfully?
Further, the confusingly-named “Don’t Ask Before Running?” prompt has been renamed across all Automations to “Run After Confirmation,” making it much clearer what’s actually happening with each option.
Finally, you might also notice that Apple removed a step when initially creating an automation. Previously, you’d always have to pick between Personal Automations and Home Automations.
Now, the Add button starts you off in a Personal Automation by default—with a new Search field at the top as well.
Home Automations are simply found at the bottom of the list as an alternate option (you can still create Automations in the Home app as always).
Location automations
It’s not clear currently if the Location automations for Arrive, Leave, and Before I Commute will be exempt from true automation capabilities in the the final release of iOS and iPadOS 17.
That’s because, in the first developer beta, the Location automations were truly automatic – but, crucially, that option was removed and has not been available in any subsequent betas.
Hopefully we see the return of this capability in future betas, and Shortcuts can fully shed the misnomer status this feature has earned from being named “Automations” without having all of the triggers be truly automatic – otherwise, I’ll have to rename this piece.
True automation starts now
Automations actually being automatic will be a big deal for Shortcuts users in iOS 17 – in many ways, the feature has been hamstrung for its entire existence, because many users try it out, then get disappointed when it’s not truly automation.
Going forward, Automations will be a pillar for new users and pro users alike to get a lot of value from building in Shortcuts – all without even doing anything themselves, since everything happens automatically.
In the iOS and iPadOS 17 betas, Apple has introduced three new Automation triggers you can use in the Shortcuts app – Transaction, Display, and Stage Manager.
Here’s how Apple’s tip text describes each:
Transaction (Ex. When I tap a Wallet Card or Pass)
Display (Ex. When My Display Connects)
Stage Manager (Ex. When Stage Manager Is Turned On)
Transaction automations
Transactions work with Payment, Transit, Access, or Identity passes, plus you can select which card, which category of payment, or even specific Merchants.
The automation starts with an optional “Receive Transaction As Input”, allowing you to extract details about the transaction, including the card or pass, merchant, and amount – this is an incredibly powerful trigger when combined with things like expense tracking, budgeting, or travel apps.
Display automations
The Display automation works with the iPad Pro’s external display support, allowing actions to be kicked off when you plug in or disconnect a monitor cable.
The automation starts with an optional “Receive Display As Input” that allows you to extract the manufacturing Name of the device and adjust your flow accordingly — I have both Dell and LG monitors in separate rooms in my house, so I could use an If action to change my shortcut behavior depending on which room I’m in.
Stage Manager automations
Finally, the Stage Manager automation works with the system feature being toggled on or off, either from Settings, the Control Center widget, or the Shortcuts actions themselves that can Toggle Stage Manager in any shortcut.
I haven’t personally implemented this automation for my own setup yet, but I’m consider simply using Open App multiple times to “set the stage” each time I activate it with my most common apps – but I’ll have to test more during the beta season.
Automate away
Overall, these three new automations are highly welcome. The Transaction automation will surely get the most use and can apply to almost every iPhone user, and the iPad automations for Displays and Stage Manager are great additions for iPad productivity – there’s much value to be captured with all three of these.
Plus, each automation can Run Immediately (instead of requiring you to Run After Confirmation), meaning they’re true background automations – very nice.
I also think the presence of Display and Stage Manager are either a hint or justification for Automations in Shortcuts for Mac – I hope Mac users get the opportunity to automate their devices with these triggers in the future.
From Kurt Knutsson of the CyberGuy Report over on Yahoo:
With the power of technology at our fingertips, it’s becoming easier to manage daily life, even for those grappling with issues such as short-term memory loss. Apple’s “Remember This” shortcut is one such tool that acts as an invaluable assistant for memory support and mindfulness.
This shortcut lets you quickly build a visual and textual log of your daily activities and serves as a handy digital journal.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on setting it up and using it effectively.
I missed sharing about this shortcut when it was originally released by Apple back in May – worth checking out for sure.
Since the last issue in mid-July, news has been a bit quiet on the Shortcuts front thanks to a delayed second public beta – developer beta 3 was a bit rough, and now beta 4 is out today along with the public beta late in the he day.
As such, I held off on a few stories related to beta features that I have yet to cover, so my Automations and Widget coverage are coming tomorrow morning instead.
However, I did discover a new action in the betas, plus uploaded my new Threads scraping tool to the Library too – shortcuts are live now, and stories on those are coming later this week as well.
Otherwise, I published a couple of holdover posts on Threads, a few interesting tips related to power user features you might use if you’re a Shortcuts fan, and a series of linked posts to check out.
Are you worried about leaving your iPhone to charge for extended periods and what it can do to your battery life? While your device notifies you when the battery percentage drops below 20% and 10%, there’s no other way to know when it’s fully charged without manually checking.
But having to constantly check if your iPhone is fully charged can be an inconvenience. The good news is, with the built-in Shortcuts app, you can set up a custom alert that triggers when your iPhone reaches full charge. We’ll show you how to do it:
A lot of shortcuts come in pairs. I have one shortcut that sets my phone to light mode and bumps up the text size for taking screenshots; a corresponding one sets my phone back to dark mode and lowers the text size again. On my Mac, I have a shortcut that turns on my Podcasting focus, launches Logic, Chrome and Skype, and hides everything else; a matching one turns off the focus and opens all my other apps back up.
It’s natural that you might want to put two matching shortcuts in one small widget. Now, in iOS 17, that’s possible:
According to the code found in iOS 17 beta 4, the Action button could have nine different options that users can customize and assign to different actions. While the code only lists feature names related to the Action button, we can infer what most of them will be able to do:
[…]
Shortcuts: As on the Apple Watch Ultra, this option would let users run any shortcut they have created or downloaded from the Shortcuts app, such as sending a message, playing a playlist, or controlling smart home devices.
If the Action button is coming from Apple Watch Ultra, it will surely support Shortcuts – the question is, do we only get one shortcut for the button at all times? Apple definitely needs a more advanced interface for picking which shortcut works on the Action button – I suggest Focus modes.
As our Twitter apps are updating to now be called “X,” you might long for the old blue bird logo. It harkens back to a similar time, when Twitter certainly had its issues, but at least it was not owned by Elon Musk. Thanks to the shortcuts app on iOS, we can kid ourselves into believing that Twitter is still being run by a different short-sighted billionaire, rather than this even shorter-sighted one. Lucky us!
Here’s how you can change your X icon back to Twitter again:
As I joked on Twi…er, X… “Who’d have thought the world’s primary use case for Shortcuts would be app icon replacement”?
We’ve launched a number of “intents” that improve Instapaper’s integration with Siri, Search, and Shortcuts.
For instance, you can open your most recent article by saying “Hey Siri, Open Last Article in Instapaper”. You can open a folder by saying “Her Siri, Open Folder in Instapaper”, and then saying the folder name when prompted.
For a full list of actions available, open the Shortcuts app, go to the App Shortcuts section, and tap Instapaper.
Instapaper is one of the first apps I’ve seen to implement their App Intents setup the way I figured Apple intended – make both App Shortcuts and corresponding actions, not one or the other.
Some improvements though – generate the options for “Open Folder” based on what’s in the user’s library, including a Folder option in Add Link, add more clarity around the use case for Open Article, and update the older Get Bookmarks action to work with App Intents & use the predicate filtering capabilities.
If you’re one of the 100 million people who got on Threads since launch, you might want to customize your Threads experience on your iPhone and iPad using Shortcuts’ “Add to Home Screen” feature.
I’ve found eight alternate icons you might want to use (so far), plus I’ll share how to set up the icons using Shortcuts and Add to Home Screen:
I’ve updated my scraping tool, figured out how to make post embeds, and built out a set of shortcuts to send Threads to various apps based on feedback from the community:
Scrape Threads post: Accepts a Thread link as input, extracts the username and excerpt, and formats it with multiple link types into a JSON dictionary shared as output.
Quote Thread: Accepts a Thread link, scrapes the data, then formats it as a quote from the author and links back to the post/profile. Works well as a function for saving Thread posts quickly.
OCR Thread: Accepts a Thread link, scrapes the data, then opens the link, waits for it to load, takes a screenshot, extracts text from the screenshot, then prompts you to delete the extra text before replacing the excerpt in the Thread JSON dictionary.
Copy Threads post embed: Scrapes a Threads post, gets the embed code using the URL and username, and copies it to the clipboard.
Capture Thread as link post: Accepts a Thread link, scrapes it, then OCRs the text, asks for a title, and created a linked post in Ulysses.
Capture Thread to Reminders: Scrapes a Threads post, then formats the excerpt and links in the notes as well as the URL in a new reminder.
Capture Thread to Things: Scrapes a Threads post, then adds it to Things with links in the notes and a “Research” tag.
Capture Thread to Craft: Scrapes a Threads post and formats it for a Craft document, using the rich embed as the URL reference.
Capture Thread to Bear: Scrapes a Threads post, formats the title, except, and link, and opens Bear to add it as a note.w
Capture Thread as note: Accepts a Thread link, scrapes the data, and formats it quickly for Notes.
Post Thread to Mastodon: Scrapes a Threads post, fulls out the excerpt and URL, asks you to add commentary, then posts it using the Mastodon app.
Capture Thread as Markdown file: Asks you to OCR a post, add a title, forms the excerpt as a Markdown file, then asks you where to save it.
Show Threads link: Opens a Threads URL in the app on iOS, on the web on Mac, and in a preview on iPad.
In Federico Viticci’s post on Threader, a shortcut to open Threads profiles from Mastodon and Twitter directly in the Threads app, he mentioned in a footnote that Threads’ URL scheme uses the unique pattern barcelona:// – which immediately got my attention.
In the post, his excellent shortcut uses OCR to look at the device’s screen and extract the username, before passing that into barcelona://user?username={Username}.
In my attempts to recreate my Twitter follow graph on Threads, I used Viticci’s shortcut to capture as many links to Threads profiles that I come across – many, many people were posting theirs on launch day, so I ran his shortcut a lot initially.
However, lots of people were (and still are) simply mentioning their profile or posting screenshots of the handle, like my friend Crim – so, I wanted to make another Shortcuts solution that let me type out any username and redirect into their profile.
My “Open username in Threads” shortcut will prompt you to enter in a username, then fills out a URL like barcelona://user?username=MatthewCassinelli – then, the Open URLs action activates the deep link and redirects you into the profile inside the Threads app, so you can follow the person.
Going further with the URL scheme, Viticci also followed up on Threads with yet another discovery – using barcelona://user redirects the app to account tab, making it easy to check your profile from Shortcuts – so I made that into a shortcut too.
I’ve just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of Camera app shortcuts – built off the Open Camera action new in iOS 17 developer beta 4 which lets users select a specific camera mode to open each time.
Use these with Siri, the Shortcuts widget, Spotlight, or the app to quickly access the mode you need – they work particularly well in new Lock Screen widget too:
Open Photo Mode: Opens the default Photo mode in the Camera app.
Open Selfie Mode: Opens the front-facing Selfie mode in the Camera app.
Open Portrait Mode: Opens Portrait mode in the Camera app. If Preserve Settings is used, the Portrait Zoom level stays between shots instead of being reset to default.
Open Portrait Selfie Mode: Opens the Portrait camera to the Selfie mode – my preferred way to take selfies, but one I forget to use (until now)
Open Video Mode: Opens the Camera app to the Video mode. If Preserve Settings is enabled, opens to your last-specific settings.
Open Cinematic Mode: Opens Cinematic mode in the Camera app – set in 4K at 24 fps.
All-time superstar footballer Lionel Messi is making his debut for Inter Miami as part of Major League Soccer tonight, marking a historic moment for the sport in America and for fans worldwide — plus, it’s a big deal for Apple, having bought streaming rights for the next 10 years.
In the future, for matches where you won’t always have a dedicated URL ready, you can tune into MLS Season Pass using my shortcut that deep links to the in-app page. Or, for all the other leagues, you can use my Open Apple TV Sports shortcut – both of these work great on iPad in particular.
While I’m a Timbers fan myself having grown up in Portland, Oregon (🙂), it’s undoubtedly exciting to see such talent come to the United States – it’ll be huge for the sport after years of slow-but-steady growth here at home.
Apple Inc. is quietly working on artificial intelligence tools that could challenge those of OpenAI Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and others, but the company has yet to devise a clear strategy for releasing the technology to consumers.
The iPhone maker has built its own framework to create large language models — the AI-based systems at the heart of new offerings like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard — according to people with knowledge of the efforts. With that foundation, known as “Ajax,” Apple also has created a chatbot service that some engineers call “Apple GPT.”
I hope Apple takes advantage of Shortcuts and the App Intents framework to make Siri actually do things for you, not just tell you information. If Ajax doesn’t utilize Shortcuts, they’re missing out on the biggest competitive advantage they already have built out.
Great for accessibility and I think will be popular with everyone. Lots of thanks to Apple for listening, and thanks for highlighting @zollotech https://t.co/Ake2MHsNbm
After mentioning that Siri’s “You need to unlock your iPhone first” was a big problem for quadriplegics like himself, Colin Hughes is now celebrating Apple’s update to Siri that lets AirPods act as authentication – when you’re wearing them, Siri requests will work without requiring you to unlock your device.
There’s a new Siri authentication system on AirPods where if your device is unlocked while wearing your AirPods, it will be considered authenticated as long as they are in range (or until you change the output audio device on the system).
So basically when my carer puts my AirPods in my ears, then as long as my iPhone is unlocked when she does so, even if it locks afterwards I can still access my messages, calendar events and more.
With iOS17 you can now set up recurrent AppleCash payments like your kid’s allowance – no more forgetting to pay and being charged a penalty by the kid 😂
Once you select your contact to send or request money, there’s a “Recurring Payment” option that lets you pick a start date, repeating schedule, and memo for the payment.
One example where this is handy is scheduling your monthly portion of rent to a single account before sending to a landlord, as I do with my partner – or as Carolina mentioned, allowance for a kid. Very nice 👌
This mouse highlighting shortcut is a game-changer for me!!!
A friend (who’s not on twitter) just told me about it.
Had to share.
Made a video to demonstrate.
Double click, then drag, to highlight words not letters. pic.twitter.com/MPa51Ek4WT
This is one of those Mac tips that people probably haven’t heard of, or have so deeply engrained into their muscle memory that they didn’t realize it was a tip to give (I’m the latter).
Either way – make sure to try triple clicking to select entire paragraphs too.
Update: Antonio Bueno mentioned this additional tip to me on Discord:
Something related I discovered God-knows-when: You can make little adjustments to one side of the selection with shift+left arrow and shift+right arrow.
The nice detail is that the side depends on the direction of the selection: Select from right to left and the keys will modify the left side. Select from left to right, and it’s the right side that can be modified.
