Author: Matthew Cassinelli

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News

iOS 16.4 beta: New Shortcuts actions for Stage Manager, Intercom, VPN, Always-On Display coming

Today, Apple posted the first developer beta for iOS 16.4, iPadOS 16.4, macOS 13.4, and watchOS 9.4 — as is tradition, the Shortcuts community rushed to download the new betas and checked for new actions available in the app.

On Reddit, r/shortcuts moderator u/ibanks3 has posted a full list with links to screenshots of each action – here’s the list so far:

  1. Silence Unknown Callers
  2. Set Stage Manager
  3. Set True Tone
  4. Set Announce Notifications
  5. Shut Down
  6. Lock Screen
  7. Set Always on Display
  8. Intercom
  9. Set VPN
  10. Set Airdrop Receiving
  11. Set Night Shift
    Continue reading “iOS 16.4 beta: New Shortcuts actions for Stage Manager, Intercom, VPN, Always-On Display coming”
Categories
Newsletter Offsite

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #095

Welcome to Issue 95 of What’s New in Shortcuts – it’s the second Friday in February and I’ve got a huge newsletter for you!

Creativity in the Shortcuts community is super high right now—maybe it’s from folks connecting more on Mastodon?—but the ideas coming out in just the last 10 days are excellent across the board.

This issue includes my new Mastodon Lists shortcuts, article & video guides from Shortcuts creators, a whole slew of AI shortcuts that keep getting more & more interesting, and lots of clever ideas from folks sharing their individual workflows — plus, more Feedback for Apple.

I continue to have too much fun with the subtitles in these – enjoy:

View the full newsletter or sign up for future issues.

Categories
Shortcuts

New for members: Mastodon Lists shortcuts

I’ve just added a new bundle shortcut to the Shortcuts Library — it’s called Mastocuts Lists — and the set of Mastodon Lists shortcuts that it contains:

Categories
Newsletter Offsite

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #094

Welcome to Issue 94 of What’s New in Shortcuts – it’s hard to believe January is over and we’re already starting in on February.

The new M2 Macs have already been reviewed and shipped, plus the 2nd generation HomePod reviews are out before going on sale in-stores on Friday.

Since last issue, we also saw three major apps integrate with Shortcuts (Ivory, Things, and Pythonista), plus quick app updates, blog posts to read, shortcuts to add, and automation ideas to get inspired by.

Plus, I shared some feedback from folks in the community, highlighted some interesting details in the Shortcuts Spotlight section, and had a little too much fun with the subtitles in this one – enjoy:

View the full issue or sign up for future issues.

Categories
News

What’s New in Shortcuts in iOS 16.3 and iPadOS 16.3, macOS 13.2, and watchOS 9.3 »

From the Apple Support website:

This update includes the ability to disable a shortcut from being run while the device is locked, enhancements to existing actions, and reliability improvements to editing and running shortcuts.

Updated Actions

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

  • Find Reminders can now filter reminders due in the next or previous week
  • Log Workout now supports Ask Each Time for workout duration
  • Log Health Sample now supports Ask Each Time for values on watchOS
  • Find Health Samples now supports searching for health types in the editor
  • Get Contents of URL can now use variables for the file parameter for POST or PUT requests
  • Configure Focus Filter actions now correctly set the Focus Filter on iPhone when run from watchOS
  • Show Notes Folder action now correctly appears in the editor

View the release notes on Apple.com.

Categories
Apps Shortcuts

Making a simple Menu Bar applet to replace Shortcuts’ progress meter

Yesterday on Six Colors, Jason Snell wrote a post called Create visual feedback for running Shortcuts about a method he’s using to check his progress in a long-running shortcut using a Menu Bar utility.

His post was born out of frustration with the Shortcuts menu bar applet, which we discussed on Mastodon as being somewhat unobvious as a signal for progression:

Earlier today, I was complaining to Shortcuts expert Matthew Cassinelli about how there’s no really good way to view progress of a running Shortcut on macOS. Yes, the Shortcuts menu item in the menu bar sort of tries to display progress, but… it doesn’t provide any information I find particularly valuable.

I’m frustrated because I do have some Shortcuts that take time to run, yet unless I have them beep or display a notification when they reach a certain point in the process, I have no idea what they’re doing or if they’re even working.

If you didn’t know, the Shortcuts menu bar icon changes while a shortcut is running to indicate progression.

Continue reading “Making a simple Menu Bar applet to replace Shortcuts’ progress meter”
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Shortcuts

New in the Shortcuts Library: One Thing Menu Bar shortcuts

I’ve just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of One Thing Menu Bar shortcuts:

Open One Thing:

Activates the One Thing menu bar app to display any text.

Use this shortcut to activate One Thing on your Mac and have its applet display in the menu bar.

Tapping on One Thing will display its edit window, which lets you change the text and have that show up in the Menu Bar instead.

Continue reading “New in the Shortcuts Library: One Thing Menu Bar shortcuts”
Categories
How To Shortcuts Siri Shortcuts Tips & Tricks

How to copy meeting availability across multiple calendars using Shortcuts

Yesterday over on Six Colors, Jason Snell wrote about his difficulty helping a friend use the Calendar actions in Shortcuts to pull data from two separate calendars:

Lex wanted to use this shortcut to quickly generate a list of times where he’s available for meetings. This is a great use of automation—I wish I’d thought of it. Unfortunately, the shortcut only checks a single calendar, and Lex wanted his availability judged based on entries in two different calendars.

This thread caught my eye: both because I haven’t personally run into that issue, but also because I had actually thought of the automation.

Here’s my Copy my availability shortcut that I built all the way back when Shortcuts was Workflow, which has managed to live on in the Shortcuts Gallery today as the “Share Availability” shortcut.1

In the piece, Jason came up with a solution after Shortcuts couldn’t get all the data in one action:

Continue reading “How to copy meeting availability across multiple calendars using Shortcuts”
Categories
Membership Shortcuts

New beta shortcuts for members: Ivory for Mastodon

Hey members!

This morning I got access to the TestFlight for Ivory, a Mastodon client from the makers of Tweetbot, and immediately spent the whole morning putting together a set of shortcuts based on the Open Ivory action and all its possible parameters.

I’ve just added my folder of Ivory shortcuts—including the Ivorycuts bundle—in beta and will be releasing these in the free section of the Shortcuts Library (along with a review) when Ivory gets released!

Check out the shortcuts below – I wrote about 1,000 words across all the descriptions explaining how to use the shortcuts, why the features from Ivory in particular are interesting, plus how I’m using Mastodon compared to Twitter:

Continue reading “New beta shortcuts for members: Ivory for Mastodon”
Categories
How To Video

How to transfer camera settings on a Panasonic LUMIX GH5

I recently got a second Panasonic LUMIX GH5 for my video setup and will now be sharing settings across two cameras regularly — thanks to a Reddit post I found the official Panasonic video explaining how to do just that:

Continue reading “How to transfer camera settings on a Panasonic LUMIX GH5”
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Newsletter Offsite

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #091

Welcome to Issue 91 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – I’m sneaking in one last issue on Revue!

I just got back from playing superheroes with my nephew in Portland over Christmas and I’m feeling super refreshed for next year – I hope you all had a chance to relax over the holiday break.

In this issue, we have more adventures with Mastodon, a new Stable Diffusion AI app with Shortcuts support, great Automation ideas, and some more newsletter housekeeping ahead of 2023.

Stay tuned for future newsletters on the 10th, 20th, and 31st of each month next year – details below:

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #091”
Categories
Shortcuts

New in the Shortcuts Library: Mastodon shortcuts

I’ve just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of Mastodon shortcuts:

Mastocuts:

Presents a menu to open every section of Mastodon, plus convert profiles as needed.

Use this shortcut to access every section of Mastodon on your default instance.

Enter your domain, your handle, then choose from any option to pass your link and open to the corresponding page.

If a profile link is passed as input, using the Mastodon handle converter option to reformat it.

Continue reading “New in the Shortcuts Library: Mastodon shortcuts”
Categories
Shortcuts

New in the Shortcuts Library: Christmas shortcuts

I’ve just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of Christmas shortcuts:

Open Apple Music Holiday

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.

Continue reading “New in the Shortcuts Library: Christmas shortcuts”
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Newsletter Offsite

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #090

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:

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #090”
Categories
Shortcuts

How to export your full Revue newsletter archive using 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).

Continue reading “How to export your full Revue newsletter archive using Shortcuts”
Categories
News

Apple posts Shortcuts release notes for iOS 16, 16.1, and 16.2

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:

Continue reading “Apple posts Shortcuts release notes for iOS 16, 16.1, and 16.2”
Categories
Guest appearances Offsite Podcasts

Clockwise 481: A Series of Shortcuts

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…

Continue reading “Clockwise 481: A Series of Shortcuts”
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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #089

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:

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #089”
Categories
Membership Siri Shortcuts

New for members: Things beta shortcuts

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.

Continue reading “New for members: Things beta shortcuts”
Categories
Livestreams

Shortcuts Live: Building with the Things 3 beta

I’m streaming about the excellent new actions in the Things beta — tune in now!

Continue reading “Shortcuts Live: Building with the Things 3 beta”