Join me and special guest Stephen Robles of AppleInsider as we work on shortcuts for managing a podcast — we’ll be live Wednesday, October 5th at 1pm PT / 4pm ET.
Stephen runs the AppleInsider podcast, a top-charting technology podcast from the folks who cover everything Apple — and I’m sharing my podcasting workflows that I built over the course of hosting 150+ episodes across my past shows Supercomputer and Smart Tech Today (and being a guest on various other shows).
We’ll be talking about podcast production, how to use the Podcasts app actions in Shortcuts, and how to take advantage of Apple’s Podcast Marketing Tools.
Join us in the chat to ask questions, share your favorite podcasts, or just say hi!
Welcome to Issue 81 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — fall is here, iOS 16 has been out for a few weeks now, and all of Apple’s new products have been in folks’ hands for a bit.
Now that we’re into October, we’re expecting iPadOS 16, macOS Ventura, and possibly another hardware announcement — potentially via press release only — and all Apple platforms will thankfully be back in sync.
Hopefully by then, Shortcuts will reach a bit more stable ground than in the latest betas, which has had ongoing bugs from the last few rounds — make sure to keep filing Feedback if you run into anything!
This week, I’m digging into the iPhone and the AirPods more, waiting on an Apple Watch Ultra, and settling into my new schedule now that this newsletter goes out Mondays.
Plus, in light of reduced columns at iMore, I’ve been massively reworking my member releases so I can publish much more often — thanks as always for your support.
In iOS 16, one of the hallmark features for iPhones is the new Lock Screen customization — users have been excitedly adding their own combinations of widgets to show up on their always-on displays. However, one of Apple’s own apps was curiously missing from the options: Shortcuts.
Across its platforms, Apple makes it easy to run shortcuts in tons of places — the Shortcuts widgets are extremely useful, you can run shortcuts from the Menu Bar on Mac, and the Apple Watch extends the functionality to your wrist.
But in this newest release, Apple didn’t add a Lock Screen widget for Shortcuts. And while this did open up the demand for third-party developers, it’s left an odd gap for everyday users who want to run shortcuts right from the first screen they see.
In this story, I’ll share a few reasons why Apple might not have added the Lock Screen widget, argue that Apple should one anyway, and share the best apps for adding shortcuts to your Lock Screen as it works in iOS 16 today:
Welcome to Issue 80 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — this last week, we saw the Apple Watch Ultra & AirPods Pro 2 ship, and with those the extension of the hype cycle around the Apple event.
I’ve got my hands on the new AirPods—and used the excellent new volume controls while writing this newsletter multiple times—but I’ve not gotten the Apple Watch Ultra just yet…
However, I did get a chance to take the ferry over the Bay into San Francisco with a small group and test out the new iPhone camera for a photowalk on Sunday. As a follow-up, I’m also streaming this evening to edit up some of the shots we took. I will definitely be hosting another in-person event sometime in the future — we had a lot of fun!
Also, a bit of housekeeping: this newsletter will be going out Mondays now — that way, I can cover the entire Monday-Sunday week prior, plus do more fun experiments (and take proper breaks) over the weekend.
Matthew Cassinelli is back for our 5th annual catchup on what’s new with Shortcuts! In this first part we catchup on how he sees the iPad, all of the updates Apple rolled out after the initial releases for Shortcuts last year, and begin our discussion on what’s new with Shortcuts for iPadOS 16, iOS 16, MacOS Ventura, and watchOS 9.
If you want to listen to our past episodes; check out episodes 41, 42, 58, 90, 91, and 122.
A few weeks ago, I had my annual appearance on iPad Pros to talk through all the latest Shortcuts updates — as usual, we covered everything in detail.
Released with iOS 16, the new App Shortcuts features adds powerful new Siri capabilities automatically, generating folders of shortcuts for your apps programmatically in the Shortcuts app for you — it’s a big deal for Apple’s Siri strategy.
Taking advantage of App Shortcuts does require having supported apps installed — once you have them installed, however, their shortcuts will work with Siri right away.
To help you get started taking advantage of this new feature, we scoured the internet and found every app we could that adopted App Shortcuts for iOS 16 — here’s over 50 apps to get you started:
We are both casual photographers trying to get together with other folks who are looking to practice their photography skills as a group — what better opportunity than the new iPhone launch?
You don’t need an iPhone 14 to attend, but we’re looking to share tips on places or things to shoot in SF, cool mobile apps or gear we use, and just spend time getting to know how to use our new phone cameras.
Feel free to attend or bring a friend if you live in the area — we’ll meet up at the large space just outside the building (the Harry Bridges Plaza) at 10. We’ll take photos for 15 minutes or so there, then head off into the city for a few hours.
Once we’re done, we can all share our photos and get everyone’s different perspectives on the same places — it should be fun!
If you do plan on attending, please let me or Mikah know in some way—preferably on Twitter—just so we can understand if you’re coming and we know to wait for you!
This 9to5Mac article explains “What you can assign to the Action button, secondary actions, third-party apps” with a list of “Native options for the Action button can start/launch”:
Workout
Stopwatch
Waypoint
Backtrack
Dive
Flashlight
Shortcut (from Shortcuts app)
None
However, being able to use “Shortcut (from the Shortcuts app)” really means a lot more than that one line.
Back at WWDC ’22 during the keynote presentation, Apple’s Senior Director of Siri and Language Technologies, Robby Walker, said this line about the Shortcuts app (at ~0:16:30 in):
“There are over 15,000 apps that work with Siri using SiriKit and Siri Shortcuts.”
That means the Action button can be set to any shortcut using any of the:
• 15,000+ apps with Shortcuts support,
• 300+ native actions available for custom shortcuts,
• automatically-generated App Shortcuts from your apps
As I’ll explain in an upcoming post, the Scripting actions in Shortcuts can also be used to make your chosen Action button shortcut fully dynamic. With a bit of setup in Shortcuts, you can program one shortcut to serve multiple purposes depending on the time of day, day of week, Focus mode, or any other condition that can be detected — sign up here for my newsletter to get updated once that post goes live.
I’m super excited to test this out and get my hands on an Apple Watch Ultra — I missed the preorder, however, so I suppose I’ll be outside my local Apple Store this Friday…
Welcome to Issue 79 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — iOS 16 is finally out, the iPhones 14 are in people’s hands, and that means it’s time for a new set of Shortcuts actions!
I’ve released my set of iOS 16 shortcuts below, which everyone can get for free — these are my own App Shortcuts-like folders for each of the new actions available for Voice Memos, Notes, Clock, Hotspot, Parked Cars, Safari, Background Removal, and Shortcuts.
Basically, I wanted each of you to immediately have a new shortcut for each action available, so you don’t have to generate them yourselves — get them below.
Plus, as you’ll see in this issue, I managed to go viral this week with over 3 million views, I shared an initial look at App Shortcuts in iOS 16, and tomorrow I’m hosting three app developers to talk about their implementations — enjoy:
We’ll be live on Monday September 19th at 5:00 PM PST / Tuesday September 20th at 9:30 AM ACST on YouTube:
All three guests are app developers who dove into the new “App Intents” API available from Apple this year, which power the new App Shortcuts and Focus Filters features.
Ever since I installed the macOS Ventura beta on my MacBook Air, I’ve been having a weird issue where the Recents folder in Finder didn’t populate and showed as entirely empty — here’s how I fixed it.
Apple released iOS 16 on Monday and with it the latest update to their Siri Shortcuts feature, this time making “App Shortcuts” automatically available to users when they install supported apps. With App Shortcuts, users can speak the trigger phrases of no-setup shortcuts that are now generated ahead of time and found in the Shortcuts app, acting as pre-programmed Siri commands for everything you might want to do in that app.
As I wrote at the beginning of the summer, App Shortcuts is Apple’s big bet on Siri, switching from the top-down model of defining “intents” in specific categories that Apple needed to build ahead of time and lay out a path for certain types of apps to work with Siri. Now, the “App Intents” feature that powers App Shortcuts gives developers the control, defining every way their app might be used with Siri and automatically creating every permutation of that action as individual shortcuts for the user.
With iOS 16 now live (and our iOS 16 review ready for you to, er, review), and developers releasing their App Shortcuts into the wild, here’s how you can expect to see more Siri Shortcuts throughout your experience, plus how to best take advantage of what’s possible.
In particular, I wanted to highlight Part 7, which deals with Shortcuts:
In iOS 16, the Shortcuts app hasn’t undergone a major redesign or technical rewrite; instead, Apple’s efforts have focused on adding more actions for system apps, extending the developer API, bringing more stability, and making Shortcuts more approachable for new users.
The last point is both important and likely the reason why some Shortcuts power users will be disappointed by this year’s update. There isn’t a lot for them in this new version of the app: as we’ll see in my iPadOS review, there’s no integration with Files quick actions, no support for Stage Manager actions, and no system-wide hotkeys still. If you’re an advanced Shortcuts user and were wishing for more system-level enhancements in addition to stability this year: I hear you, but we’ll talk about this later on.
What we do have in iOS 16 is a fascinating new feature to get newcomers started with the Shortcuts app, a grab bag of useful new actions for Apple apps, and some solid developer-related enhancements that will make third-party actions much better than before. Let’s take a look.
I agree with most everything Federico covered, although I do suspect App Shortcuts still prove useful to power users like him and I rather than mostly aimed at new users (as he posited) — it’s nice to not have to set up basic shortcuts for my apps, and I can focus my custom shortcuts on only the more advanced use cases instead.
Welcome to Issue 78 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — did you order an iPhone too?
After this week’s keynote, I opted for a black iPhone 14 Pro and upped my storage to 1TB (in case of video), plus put in an order for AirPods Pro 2 to replace my aging set — and I’m still thinking about getting an Apple Watch Ultra in-store at launch… (you’ll know why in a moment).
Now, iOS 16 is all set to release on Monday and I’ll be going wild over all the new App Shortcuts & more-powerful Shortcuts actions — I can’t wait to try everything out once they hit the App Store in full.
Plus, I’m super excited to put out my set of iOS 16 shortcuts, start in on covering this year’s new opportunities, and get back to YouTube videos now that I’m fully settled in my new apartment — until then, here’s what new this week:
The iPhone 14 pre-orders will go live bright and early Friday morning from Cupertino, with Apple releasing the newest versions of its flagship product alongside the new Apple Watch Ultra, AirPods Pro 2, and just a few days before iOS 16 is released to customers. Folks are setting up their orders now ahead of the store going offline.
If you’re looking to secure the best iPhone for you during pre-orders and want to maximize all your options for getting in and out as quick as possible, we’ve built a set of eight shortcuts you can use with Siri, in a Shortcuts widget, or right from the Home Screen around pre-order day.
Today in Apple’s “Far Out” keynote presentation, the company released their new Apple Watch Ultra with a new dedicated Action button that can be used for physical access to key goals in apps at the appropriate time.
According to Apple engineering manager Michael Gorbach’s post on Twitter, the Action Button is powered by the new App Intents APIs that were released at WWDC and power the upcoming App Shortcuts feature as part of iOS 16 — and Shortcuts users can assigned a dedicated shortcut to the button as well:
The Apple Watch Ultra’s Action Button is powered by some awesome new App Intents APIs. You will be able to build your own apps to integrate with it, like a hockey app that uses the button to record goals! And for users, the button can kick off any Shortcut you want!
The Apple keynote day is upon us and, as usual, Apple nerds will descend upon Twitter and endlessly share their thoughts for a few hours. In lieu of excitedly eating popcorn, we’re collectively leaned in toward our iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple TVs, ready to share hot takes, funny quips, and the latest news. Nothing else quite brings us all together — except maybe some fun automations.
To get the best of both worlds, here’s a set of shortcuts you can use on keynote day to get set up to watch, organize your live-tweeting apps accordingly, and take notes on anything new:
Welcome to Issue 77 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — we’re just a few days away from the iPhone event and likely only a few more until iOS 16 after that.
That means a whole new season of Shortcuts is almost upon us, with new opportunities for native actions, third-party apps, and deeper integrations all around.
I’m getting super excited to release my iPhone shortcuts first, then iPad and Mac once those OS updates come out in October — and some long-awaited member projects ?
If you’re in the U.S., I hope you’re enjoying your long Labor Day weekend — here’s what’s new in Shortcuts to finish off the summer:
In the iOS 16 developer and public betas — and soon the full release — Apple has introduced a new action to the Shortcuts app to control the Personal Hotspot feature of the iPhone.
Personal Hotspot enables non-cellular devices to connect to your iPhone directly and utilize its cellular connection to provide Wi-Fi to your other devices. This works great for your favorite iPad or Mac, making it easy to utilize your bigger screen when out of the home or away from your main networks.
The addition to Shortcuts presents Personal Automation opportunities for discovering new situations you hadn’t yet thought of, building new workflows in particular locations, generally while traveling and in specific connectivity situations.
In this piece, I asked for Personal Hotspot ideas from the Shortcuts community, then took their responses and found the best Personal Automations in Shortcuts to get you started:
The evolution of the Home Screen has been the most interesting change to iOS and iPadOS of the last few years, with the addition of widgets, Focus modes, and now Lock Screen changes tied to Home Screens coming in iOS 16.
With the rollout of iPhone widgets, then iPad widgets and Focus, and now dynamic Home/Lock Screens, things have changed slowly over time — and yet all at once now that everything works together better than ever.
For folks invested in the Shortcuts app, this progression has meant an ever-deeper integration of their shortcuts into the ecosystem and onto their Home Screens. That’s because the Shortcuts widget has always had special entitlements that make it interactive, something no other widget has — you can run your shortcuts right from the widget, without opening the Shortcuts app:
