Categories
Automations Shortcuts

How To Play A Headphones-Only Alarm On iPhone

@Esther on Mastodon:

Finally figured out how to play an alarm only through headphones on an #iPhone and NOT through speakers (for example when sleeping on a train and you don’t want to miss your stop but also not annoy others):

Open #iOS #Shortcuts, create an automation with a timer and have it play a music track that’ll wake you up. Turn off “ask before running” and “notify when run”.

Connect your headphones, set a good volume, and have a nap.

(Just don’t forget to disable it or else it’ll go off the next day too)

This is a great idea – to add onto it, you could also use the Alarm automation, set it to an “Existing” alarm, then choose one of your own Alarms and set the Sound to “None.”

That way, you can still snooze, toggle the alarm on/off regularly as needed, and avoid needing to disable the Automation each time – it’ll play Music from your Personal Automation instead of any alarm tone, headphones or not.

Otherwise, you could normally just have picked a Song in the Alarm menu – but this Automation also lets you choose playlists, radio stations, podcasts, or anything else you can think of!

View the original post on Mastodon.

Categories
Apps Links

Track time in the Dynamic Island with Timery’s updated Shortcuts actions

@Timery on Mastodon:

Timery 1.5.3 is available! This update has four new Shortcuts actions and several small improvements & fixes!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1425368544

What’s new in Shortcuts:
• Start Recent Timer
• Find Recent Timers
• Export Saved Report
• Start Live Activity

What else is new:
• Improvements to reordering saved timers
• Easier-to-tap time-adjustment buttons
• More project colors for paid Toggl accounts
• Fix for exporting reports on Mac
• VoiceOver improvements

Here are some more details […]:

Developer Joe Hribar of Timery has revamped some of the Shortcuts actions for his app to activate the Live Activities feature, which begins a timer in the Dynamic Island if you have an iPhone 14 Pro – neat. 🤓

Check out the thread for more on the update and get Timery on the App Store.

Categories
Links

Use This Automation To Protect Your iPhone If Stolen While Unlocked

Diego Jimenez on Twitter:

I made a quick Automation to protect my iPhone if someone steals it while unlocked:
If they turn on Airplane Mode (Find My), it asks for a passcode.
If wrong… it automatically locks the phone 🔒, turns ON all connectivity 📡 + Low Power Mode 🔋, and shares its current location📍

This is a clever use of the newest “Lock Screen” action available in iOS 16.5 – it’s a Personal Automation set up for the Airplane Mode trigger.

If your phone is already locked, a thief can’t get in to disable Find My; but, if your phone is grabbed out of your hands after entering your passcode, this shortcut will reverse any attempts to wipe the device, plus fully lock them out while enabling you to continue tracking it.

View the demo video on Twitter and check the ongoing thread for the latest version.

Categories
Links

How to Automate Your Life With Apple’s Shortcuts App »

Lance Whitney for PCMag:

You probably spend a lot of time on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac running one task after another after another across a variety of apps. Think how much time you could save if you automated those tasks or combined them into a single action. You can do all that and more with Apple’s Shortcuts app.

This resource covers all the basics of Shortcuts – like how to run a shortcut, create a shortcut, create an automation, add shortcuts to the share sheet/widget/Apple Watch, and how to find shortcuts online.

Read the full story on PCMag.

Categories
Apps Games

No Man’s Sky for Mac now available; no iPad yet

@NoMansSky/Sean Murray on Twitter this morning:

No Man’s Sky Mac 🍎

🫂Cross Play
🪄Cross Save
🤘Metal 3
👟High Performance
👨‍💻Apple Silicon and Intel
🦄MetalFX Temporal & Spatial Upscaling
🛝Optimised Loading
🕹️Full Controller Support
🫀7 years of updates

Free to millions of existing Steam Players

https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No\_Mans\_Sky/

From Apple’s press release last year:

The power of Apple silicon enables every new Mac to run AAA games with ease, including upcoming titles such as EA’s GRID Legends and Capcom’s Resident Evil Village.
[…]
And since Apple silicon also powers iPad, game developers can bring their AAA games to even more users, like No Man’s Sky from Hello Games, which is coming to both Mac and iPad later this year.

After being delayed, the Mac version of No Man’s Sky from developer Hello Games launched today.

Despite only having played a bit on Xbox, I’m looking forward to diving in with cross-play support once it rolls out to iPad (and any other platforms) – this is one of the first AAA games for Apple devices that I care about and seems a perfect launch title for a top-tier gaming experience outside the confines of my console setup.

Get No Man’s Sky on Steam ($59.99 new, free if already purchased on Steam for another platform).1


  1. The lack of a Mac App Store release is interesting, especially given the relationship with Apple.

    No Man’s Sky has also been tweeting some very telling teasers ahead of WWDC, which I am having fun theorizing about on Mastodon

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.