I’ve just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of Christmas shortcuts:
Opens the deep link to the Holiday section of Apple Music.
Use the shortcut to find Albums, playlists, and radio stations related to the Holidays on Apple Music.
This shortcut works great on iPad for finding your favorite playlists and saving them for later.
Welcome to Issue 90 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — this is the last issue of 2022, and, as such, I wanted to thank you all for your readership this past year.
In 2022, I sent 25 issues covering everything new in Shortcuts, plus took an extended break that allowed me to rerelease my Shortcuts Library at scale — thank you for your support during this time.
2023 brings a lot of promise for Shortcuts and particularly how much better prepared I am to share everything I know — and we’ll always have this archive of what’s come before to learn from.
Unfortunately, Twitter is imminently shutting down Revue and deleting all of the data — so, for now, I am exporting my list and will be importing everyone into a new service when I figure out where to move the newsletter.
I’ve also published every issue directly on my blog (where it can’t get deleted, except by me) and will experiment with the format going forward. I may simply back to those stories in a more minimal newsletter style — I’ll have to see as I test this and other newsletter services over the break.
I’m off next week for Christmas and then the next issue lands on the 2nd of the New Year, so I’ll see you… next year.
Until then, here’s what’s new in Shortcuts:
With Twitter announcing the imminent shutdown of Revue, I wanted to share my method for creating a proper export of your full newsletter archive as HTML using Apple’s Shortcuts app.
Revue is currently offering an Export tool, however, it’s fairly limited for the average user — it provides a list of issues and their introductions… but all the links and tweets are shared in .JSON format.
That means all the data must be extracted in a complex manner if anyone wants to do something with the information — it’s not too practical unless you have the skills to patch it all together.
Instead, I’ve solved this problem with the Shortcuts app from Apple, which lets users automate daily tasks — one action in the app is Get Contents of URL, which lets users connect to web services like Revue that have an Application Programming Interface (API).
Following the release of iOS 16.2 on Tuesday, Apple published an update in their Support knowledge base detailing new features and issues fixed in Shortcuts in the last few releases since iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, and macOS Ventura launched.
The main headline features for iOS 16.2 are new actions for Books and changes to the Wallpaper actions:
I had the pleasure of being a guest on this week’s Clockwise podcast on Relay.FM alongside guest Kelly Guimont and hosts Mikah Sargent & Dan Moren. We talked about:
Whether we’d install a third-party app store on our phones, our most anticipated Matter devices, the tasks we’d pawn off onto an AI chatbot, and our non-holiday holiday traditions.
Always a pleasure to be a guest on Clockwise — and no I swear I’m not just a series of Shortcuts…
Welcome to Issue 89 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — this week we saw the final beta release of iOS 16.2, which means the imminent public release (likely this Tuesday).
After the release is out, I’ve got plans to stream while playing around with the updates to the battery and wallpaper actions, plus any other changes we can find.
Speaking of streams, I had a fun time last week previewing the amazing Things actions coming soon and built a whole set for folks testing the beta — all the details below.
Plus, the ChatGPT shortcuts are getting even better, there’s a few good shortcuts ideas I’ve saved for future streams, and I’ve linked to five apps you should check out — enjoy:
Hey members, I’ve just published 11 new shortcuts from today’s stream featuring the new actions from the Things beta!
I am super excited about this initial set of shortcuts and the updated actions that Things is bringing to their app soon — I’ve been looking forward to this level of support for many years.
I’m streaming about the excellent new actions in the Things beta — tune in now!
Welcome to Issue 88 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — this is a special double issue after I took a short break the week of Thanksgiving in the U.S!
This Black Friday and Cyber Monday were full of discounts as usual, and I did the typical scoff at all the things I surely didn’t need… before promptly spending a bunch of money. I upgraded my WiFi setup for better stability while streaming, got a second 4K monitor, and managed to talk myself into buying an entire second camera setup — I’m excited to put this all to good use.
Since the break, I’ve been hard at work on my livestream process, building out the next release of the Shortcuts Library, and put time into the behind-the-scenes setup work that’s necessary to make my upcoming YouTube videos.
I’ve also built out hundreds of new shortcuts for the Mac, livestreaming, Apple TV, recipes, meal planning, groceries, online shopping, deliveries, and affiliate linking — those are all still in-progress, so stay tuned there.
On the stream coming soon, I’ve got plans for working on Things, Pixelmator, and StreamDeck — plus anything else that might come up.
Until then, this issue is full of goodies — there’s nine new Shortcuts stories, a slew of ChatGPT automations, great ideas and shortcuts to download, plus app updates you don’t want to miss:
I’m streaming today on YouTube — tune in now:
Logged All Quiet on the Western Front, 2022 – ★★★★ on Letterboxd:
Welcome to Issue 87 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — it’s Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. and that means downtime, Black Friday sales, and and the beginning of the extended holiday season.
In the current beta cycle, we’re at iOS 16.2 beta 3, which means a new “Get Battery Status” action is available for testers.
On the Shortcuts Catalog, I spent over 15 hours streaming around my shortcuts upload process, scraping information from .shortcut files, and working on the YouTube streaming process.
I’m basically solving my own problems live on-camera and stacking my progress to gain better momentum while developing in Shortcuts. Plus, I’m honing my streaming skills for future sessions — which will be a lot more approachable than these very complex discussions.
Otherwise, this week we have another great set of app updates, clever Shortcuts ideas, and more feedback from the community:
I’m streaming today on YouTube — tune in now:
Hello folks!
I’m excited to launch a new set of downloads for the membership program: my Apple Watch faces!
I’ve been using the Apple Watch since the first model and, after seven years, have developed very specific methods of using my watch.
Combined with automatic switching with Focus Modes in iOS 16, I’ve designed a set of Watch faces for my various custom modes that get activated automatically and show contextual apps when I need them (and hide them when I don’t).
I’ve written up descriptions for each watch face that explains how I use everything, so check out the full page for all the details.
Welcome to Issue 86 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — I can’t believe I’m already back up to this many issues after switching to Revue (and soon to another service), so thank you for reading along. ?
This week, we got Apple Frames 3.0 from team MacStories, there’s an intriguing set of apps who’ve upgraded their Shortcuts support, I found some helpful shortcuts for ADHD & autistic folks, and we’re seeing more & more good ideas around Color Filters.
Plus, I’ve started to release my Apple Watch updates — enjoy:
Welcome to Issue 85 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — it’s been quite a week in the wake of new leadership at Twitter, but thankfully the Shortcuts community kept up their efforts in sharing good ideas.
Before we get to that all though, I saw in the news that Twitter will be shutting down Revue (the service I use to send these newsletters) by the end of the year.
Right now, I’m not sure what tool I’ll use to replace it — but I will import my subscriber list over so there shouldn’t be a change there, and I will let you all know of any news before I switch over.
However, I will have to rethink how I deliver the material, as Revue uniquely allows me to embed links and tweets easily/natively into the email — something other services don’t provide, especially for free. As such, this change means I may have to reconsider what I can feasibly offer.
I don’t have anything to share now, but I wanted to be transparent ahead of the change — plus, if you have any thoughts on what I should do, feel free to respond to this email and let me know:
Welcome to Issue 84 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — I’m back after some time off for my 33rd birthday!
In the last two weeks, we saw the launch of this year’s iPadOS and macOS Ventura releases, Live Activities coming to iPhone 14 Pro in iOS 16.1, the M2 iPad Pro and 10th generation iPads shipping, and the next iOS beta dropping — lots has gone down.
I also have some exciting news: I have an Apple Watch Ultra review unit from Apple!
I’ll be working on my initial impressions after unboxing it, plus focusing on Apple Watch shortcuts/apps/tips (amongst others) in the coming weeks — fun times!
Until then, here’s what’s new in Shortcuts:
Welcome to Issue 83 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — this week has Apple announcement energy in the air, but no news as of yet.
iOS 16.1 is just over the horizon and with it iPadOS & macOS — I’ve written that line too many times, but it’s creeping up now.
Aside from some continued sync issues that I ended up ranting about, the community puttered along quietly in anticipation of what’s hopefully a more-stable period for Shortcuts ahead.
Until then, here’s what’s new in Shortcuts since the last issue:
I had the pleasure of being a guest host on this week’s iOS Today:
Matthew Cassinelli joins Rosemary Orchard this week to supercharge iPhone/iPad shortcuts with some very useful apps that enhance functionality. Matthew also explains App Shortcuts and how they’re organized in iOS 16.
Thanks to Rosemary for having me on again — and Mikah for taking a week off so I could host in his place! ?
Welcome to Issue 82 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — this week we saw some critical bug fixes in the iOS 16.1 betas, a lot of ideas from the Twitter community, and great resources popping up elsewhere online.
Especially with Shortcuts reaching a more stable footing than in the past few months, I got the sense that I was finally actually experiencing the full iOS 16 release in a regular week.
I’ve still only really used Stage Manager on iPad a handful of times, I finally gave in and set up “Open Folder” shortcuts for all of my folders—a strategy that 100% only makes sense for me alone—and truly tapping into App Shortcuts is taking time after bugs in the betas preventing all of them from showing up.
I’m excited for the iPad and Mac releases to drop in a few weeks and be able to really settle into this full release — it’s definitely making my daily work more productive.
Until then, here’s what’s new since last time: