Categories
Apps Links

Elsewhen: Time zones, translated »

Zach Knox, replying to my post about Discord timestamps:

I would also highly recommend Elsewhen, which has a shortcuts action to do exactly that apps.apple.com/us/app/elsewhen… (though of course learning how those timestamps work is still quite valuable!)

Zach is totally right, I’d forgotten about Elsewhen for Mac, iPad, and iPhone – a handy utility from developer Benjamin Cardy that shows a visual representation of the Discord timestamp formats.

Plus, Elsewhen includes another great feature for actually laying out alternate timezones for specific countries, for making announcement posts like I do with my streams:

Categories
Apps Links Shortcuts

Zenitizer, a clean and simple meditation timer »

@Zenitizer on Mastodon:

Dear Fediverse 👋 Zenitizer launched on the App Store today 🚀🥳

🧘 Clean & Simple Meditation Timer
🎵 Soothing Sounds
❤️ Apple Health Support
🪄 Siri & Shortcuts Support
⭐️ Goals and Streaks
👀 Glanceable Widgets and Apple Watch Complications

1️⃣ Download: zenitizer.app/install

Congrats to developer Manuel Kehl on his launch last Thursday. 👏

Get Zenitizer on the App Store.

Categories
How To

How to coordinate across timezones in Discord with timestamps

If you’re trying to coordinate with other folks over Discord, you might run into timezone issues – often people in disparate communities live all across the world, and trying to specify exactly when everyone should arrive in their relative time can actually prove to be quite hard.

Thankfully, the folks at Discord ran into this enough themselves that a solution is actually built into the application: a special <t:{timestamp}> message (plus an optional :{format} you can append).

Once you send this timestamp, each person will see the correct time in their timezone. Great!

Now you just need a timestamp… which you can get… how??

Oddly, Discord has no way of actually creating this message itself – it requires a Unix timestamp, which seems to be intended for developers who might be programming a chatbot, for example, rather than everyday users.

Thankfully, you can create that timestamp—and take advantage of Discord’s formatting options—using Apple’s Shortcuts app. Here’s how (plus, what a Unix timestamp really is in the first place):

Categories
How To Shortcuts

How to quickly link all your YouTube chapter markers using Shortcuts

Earlier this week, I was putting together my “offsite” blog post for the YouTube stream I recorded while editing in Final Cut Pro for iPad and wanted to make a linked list of all the chapter markers that I added to the livestream.

Each chapter on YouTube must be formatted as a timecode, but making YouTube links to specific timestamps requires a “total seconds” value at the end of the URL, like &amp;t=3600 – something I wasn’t about to do manually for all 90 chapters.

In order to convert everything to the right format quickly and generate URLs to each chapter, I built two shortcuts:

Categories
Links Offsite

90 Moments Testing Final Cut Pro for iPad Live

Last Thursday, I streamed a live test of Apple’s new release of Final Cut Pro for iPad for about 2 hours, covering:

  • learning the interface
  • marking Ins/Outs while importing
  • fine edits with the jog wheel
  • workflow considerations,
  • and much more

Overall, I added 90 chapter markers at each significant moment in the stream, so jump into the video and skip around to the bits that you’re interested in watching – I had some genuine moments of joy while discovering new features, like this one:

Here’s the full list of chapters:

Categories
News

What’s New in Shortcuts in iOS and iPadOS 16.5, macOS 13.4, and watchOS 9.5 »

From the Apple Support website:

This update includes enhancements to existing actions and reliability improvements to editing and running shortcuts.

Updated Actions

  • Send Message now supports images and attachments when “Show When Run” is off
  • Make Rich Text From Markdown now displays a preview instead of an HTML file on macOS
  • Ask For Input now correctly uses the “Default Date” when asking for dates
  • Calculate now correctly computes Modulus operations for decimal numbers
  • Choose From List now supports “Select All Initially” when a dictionary is passed in as input, and works from Siri on watchOS when “Select Multiple” is on
  • Open URL correctly handles URLs that contain variables, and now works from the Action Button on watchOS
  • Take Photo runs more reliably when “Show Camera Preview” is off

View the release notes on Apple.com.

Categories
Membership

Notes on “Design great actions for Shortcuts, Siri, and Suggestions” 🔒

Hey members,

I wanted to share this mind map of notes I created while watching Apple’s Developer session from WWDC ’21 on how to Design great actions for Shortcuts, Siri, and Suggestions.

Hey members,

I wanted to share this mind map of notes I created while watching Apple’s Developer session from WWDC ’21 on how to Design great actions for Shortcuts, Siri, and Suggestions.

The session is focused on how developers can build out a set of actions for their app, but it actually provides a lot of insight into how “Shortcuts authors” (as we are called in the session) can build their shortcuts thoughtfully – here’s the last slide:

I noticed at least 10 individual topics I’d like to cover for members in future posts, but I wanted to share my full mind map ahead of time in case you wanted to watch the session and read along yourself:

Categories
Offsite

Guest spot — iOS Today #652: Pro Tips & Tricks For Your iPhone, iPad, and More!

On Tuesday, May 2, I had the pleasure of joining TWiT as a guest on iOS Today to talk about our latest tips, tricks, and, of course, Shortcuts:

iOS is deep, super deep. So what are some extra special ways to tap into its power with expert precision? Rosemary Orchard and Matthew Cassinelli take you there with a few extra key tips and shortcuts that’ll give you total control.

Check out iOS Today in Apple Podcasts or listen to the episode below:

Categories
Links

Shortcut to set Alarms for today’s Calendar events »

Twitter user @LoriTira shared this shortcut for set Clock alarms for today’s Calendar events:

The shortcut looks at all the upcoming events for the next day and repeats through the list, subtracting 5 minutes from the start time and setting your alarm so you have time to get ready before the meeting starts.

As someone who doesn’t often have meetings and doesn’t need to check their calendar every day, I could see this being useful as a daily Automation to alert me to the occasional call I might’ve missed on my schedule.

Get the shortcut from LoriTira’s tweet.

P.S. Add additional Filters to add more criteria, like specifying only a certain set of Calendars or “Is Not All Day” events.

Categories
Links

Shortcut to search replies and quotes for a tweet »

Twitter user @colleidoscope shared this shortcut for quickly searching replies and quotes to a specific tweet:

The shortcut scrapes the current tweet’s ID from the URL, then takes advantage of Twitter’s search operators to build an advanced query:

(min_faves:1 OR min_replies:1)
(-filter:safe OR filter:safe) include:nativeretweets (conversation_id:ID OR quoted_tweet_id:ID)

Twitter’s quality control issues notwithstanding, this is useful for finding that one quote tweet you swore you saw, or digging through a massive list of replies from popular accounts – what a clever use of Twitter Search.

Get the shortcut from @colleidoscope’s tweet.

Categories
Apps Links Shortcuts

Shortcut to redirect YouTube links into the iOS app »

Stephen Robles of AppleInsider shared a shortcut for redirecting YouTube links into the app:

The shortcut works by replacing the https with youtube – using Stephen’s own YouTube channel URL as an example, it’d appear like youtube://www.youtube.com/@beardfm.

Time to add this to my YouTube collection 🙂

Get the Watch In YouTube shortcut from Stephen’s tweet.

Categories
Links

Bike: Automate with Shortcuts »

Jesse Grosjean of Hog Bay Software wrote about the 14 new Shortcuts actions he’s added to his app Bike Outliner:

Bike provides a complete suite of shortcut actions. You can create, edit, move, and delete rows. You can also search for rows and expand or collapse the outline.

In the post, he shares the example Save Link shortcut, plus this tutorial below – and he’s left a comment on the post with more shortcuts to try out:

Read the full post, plus check out Bike Outliner on the Mac App Store or on the web. (via MacStories, plus their original review).

Categories
News

What’s New in Shortcuts in iOS and iPadOS 16.4, macOS 13.3, and watchOS 9.4 »

From the Apple Support:

This update includes new actions, enhancements to existing actions, and reliability improvements to the Shortcuts editor. A new option in the Shortcut editor allows selecting an app icon as an alternative to selecting a color and glyph for the shortcut.

New Actions

  • Find Books searches your library for books or PDFs matching a given title, author, genre, purchase date, or content type on iOS and macOS
  • Intercom broadcasts announcements to your home on iOS and watchOS
  • Set VPN connects, disconnects, or sets the On Demand setting for any VPN on iOS and macOS
  • Set AirDrop Receiving sets the AirDrop Receiving preference to Everyone, Contacts Only, or Nobody on iOS and macOS
  • Set Stage Manager enables or disables and changes the settings for Stage Manager on iPadOS and macOS
  • Set Announce Notifications toggles the Announce Notifications setting on iOS and watchOS
  • Set Silence Unknown Callers toggles the Silence Unknown Callers setting on iOS
  • Set Night Shift and Set True Tone toggle the display settings on iOS and macOS
  • Set Always-On Display toggles the Always-On Display on supported iOS devices
  • Find Apps finds and filters apps installed on macOS
  • Find Displays finds and filters displays on macOS
  • Shut Down, Restart, and Lock Display are now available on iOS and macOS
  • Log Out, Sleep and Put Display to Sleep are now available on macOS

Updated Actions

For those building custom shortcuts, some actions have been updated:

  • Move Window now allows moving a window to a display on macOS
  • Ask for Input has a new “Allow Multiple Lines” option, which can be disabled for single-line text input
  • Find Photos can now find screen recordings
  • Find Contacts now filters by birthday more accurately
  • Get Device Details can now get the OS build number
  • Get Device Details now rounds numbers, including the current battery level, volume, and brightness, to remove unnecessary decimal digits
  • Set Playback Destination now works when run from Siri
  • Play Music once again resumes currently playing music if no music is passed as input
  • Run AppleScript can now produce dictionaries as output from AppleScript records
  • Nothing now produces a variable with zero items, instead of producing no variable at all
  • Repeat can now be set to run 0 times

View the full release notes on Apple.com.

Categories
Newsletter Offsite

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #096

From the latest issue of my Shortcuts newsletter:

Welcome to Issue 96 of What’s New in Shortcuts – this mid-month update is full of Shortcuts news as we head into the iOS 16.4 beta cycle.

Apple published more release notes looking back at what was fixed in iOS 16.3, plus the Shortcuts community discovered a new set of helpful actions (and bugs) from the newest developer betas.

In the Shortcuts Catalog, I published a new five-part series of blog posts on Mastodon Lists and interacting with the API using Shortcuts.

In the community, creators shared great shortcuts for Micropub posting, creative Alfred workflows, and inspirational ideas that resonate with how I think about Shortcuts.

Plus, Shortcuts-powered apps are always releasing new updates – I am a big fan of Raycast’s confetti option ?

All that, and more – here’s what’s new in Shortcuts from February 11th-20th, 2023:

View the full newsletter or sign up for to receive future issues free.

Categories
News

Apple adds new App Intents APIs for Shortcuts in iOS 16.4 betas

Along with the first beta release of iOS 16.4, Apple has published a new beta protocol for the App Intents APIs that let developers foreground their process if user interaction is required.

Michael Gorbach, engineering manager on the App Intents, Shortcuts and Proactive Intelligence team at Apple, posted the following about the release on Mastodon:

In other exciting news, we've added some new App Intents APls in the 16.4 betas: developer.apple.com/documentat...
If you have an App Intent / App Shortcut that generally runs in the background, this protocol lets you "continue" the intent in the app, foregrounding it so the user can interact there. This is great for scenarios such as asking the user to log in again, or if an order needs changing due to items being out of stock. If you're an App Intents adopter, try it out and let us know what you think!

Here’s the description of the protocol from Apple’s website:

The ForegroundContinuableIntent protocol represents intents which begin their work with the app in the background but may request to continue in the foreground.

This protocol will be in beta for the iOS 16.4 developer cycle, so app developers can begin building with this now – everyday users won’t see the effects of this in their apps until iOS 16.4 releases in full after Apple’s testing cycle.

Learn more about the ForegroundContinuableIntent protocol in the Apple Developer Documentation.

Categories
Shortcuts

How to deep link into Mastodon Lists in Ivory using Shortcuts

As someone who’s a big fan of Lists for managing a larger following on Mastodon, I want as many ways as possible to quickly access my Lists and see what people are saying in each section.

As someone who’s a big fan of Lists for managing a larger following on Mastodon, I want as many ways as possible to quickly access my Lists and see what people are saying in each section.

Ivory for Mastodon has a great Lists feature, which you can access via one of the dedicated Tabs in the app (if you give it one of the slots).

Alternatively, you can also swap the main Timeline to show a specific List instead – this works great for saving a Tab slot, plus filtering the whole timeline by default and making your Home feed calmer by default.

Plus, Ivory has Shortcuts support for opening the Lists tab, meaning it’s easy to call a shortcut from any of the many methods and pick from a list to view.

Unfortunately, there isn’t currently a Shortcuts action for opening into a specific list though. That being said, they *do* have a URL scheme. And that means, with some List data from Mastodon and the URL action in Shortcuts, we can open deep links into a List in Ivory — a little Shortcuts ingenuity for the win!

Plus, since there are a few ways to approach this problem, I’ve written up four methods for working with these Ivory deep links – from simplest to most complex. Here’s how each shortcut works:

Ivory’s URL scheme for Lists

When I originally asked about List support on Mastodon, the Tapbots team mentioned they didn’t have official support yet. However, Joseph Duffy saw my message and replied mentioning the existing URL scheme from Tweetbot actually does work if you swap out the app name:

the Tweetbot URLs work in Ivory. If you create a list and get the ID from the web you can make a link like ivory://@josephduffy@mastodon.social/list/54334. Replace the list ID and my account with yours of course. https://tapbots.net/tweetbot3/support/url-schemes/ is the page I've been referencing. I assume this is intentionally supported @ivory?

The pattern—built off Tweetbot’s URL scheme—goes like this: ivory://@{handle}@{instance}/list/{list_id}.

To create your own URL, place your username as the {handle}, your Mastodon instance URL as the {instance}, and the corresponding values at the end of the URL for your List as the {list_id} (like 49309 from the link for my Favorites list: https://mastodon.social/lists/49309).

Putting it all together, the Ivory deep link for my Favorites list would be ivory://@[email protected]/list/49309.

[…]

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Categories
Shortcuts

How to look up a Mastodon account’s ID using Shortcuts

When working with the fediverse and Mastodon links, one is regularly dealing with accounts from a variety of instances, each with its own set of URLs for every account.

That means, when using the Mastodon API, it’s especially important to identify each user by their unique ID rather than dealing with different handles and instance URLs, which would otherwise get very messy very quickly.

Screenshot of Mastodon "Lookup acccount" API endpoint documentation.

To solve this problem, Mastodon has implemented a Lookup account functionality, a public endpoint that allows anyone with a Mastodon link to send a web request and return the ID for that user.

To take advantage of this in Shortcuts, I built Look up Mastodon account ID, one of my shortcuts that accepts any fediverse link as input (or gets one that’s been copied to your clipboard) and returns the account ID value – here’s how it works:

Categories
Shortcuts

How to save Mastodon accounts to Lists using Shortcuts

As you’re building out your Lists experience on Mastodon, being diligent in adding new accounts or going through your following can make the process much easier.

The only downside is, when working with Mastodon posts and accounts across various interfaces on the web and in client apps, there is often an inconsistent experience in the ability to quickly add whoever you’re look at to a List.

As you’re building out your Lists experience on Mastodon, being diligent in adding new accounts or going through your following can make the process much easier.

The only downside is, when working with Mastodon posts and accounts across various interfaces on the web and in client apps, there is often an inconsistent experience in the ability to quickly add whoever you’re look at to a List.

On the Mastodon web interface, for example, when looking at a your timeline or even a post, you can’t add the person to a List at all…

…when looking at their profile view, however, the option shows up – the only spot this option appears on Mastodon’s main web interface.

*Also of note: you must be following someone to add them to your list. So if you’re not seeing the menu option on a profile page, it’s likely because you’re not actually following the account yet.*

In order to make the process of adding someone to Lists easier from *any* fediverse link, I turned to Mastodon’s API and Shortcuts, of course – here’s what I built:

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Categories
Shortcuts

How to use Mastodon’s API to open your Lists with Shortcuts

Lists on Mastodon are an important tool for controlling your experience, allowing you to split up your timeline as you choose and catch up on smaller feeds of posts rather than the full firehose.

Especially without an algorithm, it’s easy to feel like you need to read your whole Mastodon timeline just to keep up – Lists help a lot with that.

Lists on Mastodon are an important tool for controlling your experience, allowing you to split up your timeline as you choose and catch up on smaller feeds of posts rather than the full firehose.

Especially without an algorithm, it’s easy to feel like you need to read your whole Mastodon timeline just to keep up – Lists help a *lot* with that.

As someone who’s already spending significant time saving Mastodon accounts I’m following to Lists using Shortcuts, it’s easy enough to quickly access a few lists directly from the web browser.

I already have a shortcut that takes me to the Lists page, but after using it these last two months, I find often I’m going back-and-forth to the Lists page to find each one. And I didn’t want to bookmark every single page, or make individual shortcuts for each one just to open it.

Plus, while I’m intrigued by Mastodon’s Advanced Interface—which lets you view all your Lists in Tweetdeck-style columns—it turns out that enabling that feature actually overrides the ability to view individual lists on the web at all – when enabled, List URLs redirect to your full deck view each time.

So, instead, I was left in search of a way to quickly pick from my Lists and open one on the web – enter Shortcuts.

With a new shortcut that could let me pick from my Lists using Shortcuts’ menus, I could quickly find and access each one. On iPhone and iPad, this could live in a widget or be called up with Siri at any time, and on the Mac, I could use a keyboard shortcut or keep it in the Menu Bar and then use my arrow keys to quickly select a List to open.

I also wanted to retrieve my List data to open as deep links into Ivory, so I decided to look into the Mastodon documentation and see what I could find — here’s what I ended up making:

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Categories
Shortcuts

How to extract Mastodon instance & handle data using Shortcuts

One of the many benefits of the fediverse is the variety of instances that users can create across different domains, giving inherent independence to the network as it’s spread across many nodes instead of one centralized entity.

However, in terms of linking across the fediverse, that means every URL can potentially have a different host — not all Mastodon links are on mastodon.social, even if your account is located there.

That means, if you’re working with those URLs, you need to prepare for links coming from any specific instance, not just your own – expecting mastodon.social doesn’t cut it.

Plus, when clicking on a link separate from your own instance, the URL is formed with your own instance as the base, but the handle/other instance at the end — an odd behavior to work with at first.

Thankfully, the solution can be amid the components found Mastodon’s URL pattern – and you can use Shortcuts to extract those individual details as needed. Here’s how: