Author: Matthew Cassinelli

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iMore Offsite

Five apps Apple could automate to win over pro users

Yours truly for iMore:

Apple’s Shortcuts app is the best way to automate processes across its devices and develop professional workflows to get things done.

With iOS 16, Apple is adding many more actions for its own apps and improving its Shortcuts support with deep new actions. However, these updates have been limited to more everyday apps like Safari, Mail, and Reminders — but Apple’s pro-level apps haven’t received similar updates.

This piece covers five first-party apps that “pros” use to get their work done and some starter actions that Apple should add for each of them:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #073

Welcome to Issue 73 of “What’s New in Shortcuts”!

This week we saw the second Public Beta of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS — which meant an awesome new Shortcuts action called Find Tabs for Safari, plus more for Mail and Reminders too.

I streamed for over an hour as I played around with the new actions, so make sure to jump through the chapters and see what we built off the chat’s ideas.

I also published a few strong opinions on iMore, Rosemary released her second edition of Take Control of Shortcuts, and I learned about a new Easter egg in the Shortcuts app…

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #073”
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iMore Offsite

Shortcuts gains powerful Find Tabs action for Safari, more in second public beta

Yours truly for iMore:

On Thursday, Apple released iOS 16 public beta 2, which includes a set of new actions for the Shortcuts app that work with Safari, Mail, and Reminders.

These actions include Find Tabs, Find Tab Groups, Find Bookmarks, Open Bookmarks, Find Reading Lists, Open Reading List Items, Search Mail, Open Mailbox, Open Smart List, Create Reminders List, and Search Reminders.

Read the full story on iMore.

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Links

Rosemary Orchard releases second edition of “Take Control of Shortcuts”

As part of Take Control Books, Rosemary Orchard has updated her book Take Control of Shortcuts to the second edition, now covering iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey now that Shortcuts has expanded to the Mac.

Here’s the description of the book from their website:

Automation is no longer just for advanced computer users! Apple’s Shortcuts app lets anyone with an iPhone, iPad, or Mac automate day-to-day tasks, from the simple to the complex. This book is a complete introduction to Shortcuts, covering every aspect of building, installing, debugging, running, syncing, and sharing shortcuts. It also includes step-by-step recipes for creating numerous useful shortcuts yourself.

Take Control also notes that the book will be updated for free during the iOS 16 cycle for anyone who purchases this edition, so that means you’re covered for everything new this upcoming year as well.

If you don’t already know Rosemary, you should familiarize yourself — she’s the host of Automators, iOS Today, and Nested Folders, plus she’s an all-around amazing person.

She’s taught me so much and anyone who uses Shortcuts should get her books & listen to her shows — congrats on the launch, Rose!

Get Take Control of Shortcuts for $14.99.

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Shortcuts

Shortcuts shows too much personal information and that needs to change

I am writing this post because I am frustrated with the fact that Shortcuts shows personally identifiable information about me when live-streaming about the app, when Apple could easily change the interface to show the same information without exposing me and my girlfriend to personal safety problems.

To fix this Apple needs to overwrite personally-identifiable information in Shortcuts with generic placeholders that the user can understand from context, and they need to add the ability to remove Suggestions.

Every time you go into Shortcuts and try to pick a location, it will show your Home Address in the view — please just change this to say “Home” and do not input the address into the Location field, Home is plenty.

When you first open Shortcuts to a blank shortcut, in the bottom right there are often “Suggestions” based on your recent activity. However, there is no way to remove this information, meaning that recent contacts will always show up there and your friends & family have no choice but to have their names, images, and sometimes phone numbers appear on-screen. I’ve had Apple PR contacts of mine appear in this view when producing public content, for example.

Any suggested actions in the Shortcuts app should also be able to be removed — in my Reminders suggestions, the app is currently recommending that I make a shortcut with my most-recently added reminder, which includes information I do not want on-screen and cannot remove before trying to record my screen.

I originally sent this feedback to Apple on July 24, 2019 as FB6809181. It’s now been three years and I’m basically lucky this hasn’t been a bigger issue so far.

I really hope Apple takes this post to heart and adds these small but significant changes to the Shortcuts app in iOS 16.0 — I really don’t want this to become a much larger and much more personal issue by having my family’s privacy violated because I choose to share about this cool app I like to use.

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Livestreams Membership

Shortcuts Live: Working with Safari Tabs in iOS 16 Public Beta 2

Tune into the latest episode of Shortcuts Live, where I streamed for a little over an hour covering the new Find Tab action that I discovered in iOS 16 public beta 2.

Tune into the latest episode of Shortcuts Live, where I streamed for a little over an hour covering the new Find Tab action that I discovered in iOS 16 public beta 2.

Join me from just after the launch of iOS 16 public beta 2 to build Shortcuts live — this stream, we’ll cover the new Find Tabs and Reading List actions that I just discovered in the betas, plus the Reminders actions that just reappeared after disappearing after the first developer beta.

The Safari actions are pretty exciting, so come share your ideas in the chat and we’ll come up with some great use cases together!

Here’s a list of the chapters:

  • 00:00 – Start of stream
  • 05:45 – Markdown list of current tabs
  • 12:52 – Filter Links That Don’t Contain Specific Website
  • 15:17 – Find Bookmarks & Reading List filters
  • 20:13 – Find Tab Groups
  • 22:00 – Find Tabs from Specific Tab Group (doesn’t work, but we covered Focus Filters & Scripting)
  • 35:37 – Add to Reading List, Instapaper, Pocket
  • 38:15 – Set Playback Destination / Speaker Groups
  • 39:45 – Stream Deck teaser
  • 42:12 – Saving Links to Clipboard
  • 45:58 – Auto-Lock
  • 48:32 – Open Tab & Choose From List
  • 49:53 – Search Tabs
  • 53:25 – Quick Note
  • 57:20 – Quick Note with Link
  • 1:00:04 – Get Article Details From Tabs
  • 1:03:21 – Mail app
  • 1:04:45 – Reminders Smart Lists
  • 1:07:11 – Reminders Templates
  • 1:10:47 – Add Tabs As Rich Reminders
  • 1:12:43 – End of building / Revue discussion
  • 1:15:27 – Wrap-up / Logging shortcuts
  • 1:24:00 – Actual Goodbye

If you’re watching the replay, you can still leave comments and I can respond to them afterwards!

This content is marked as members-only – you’ll need a membership to access it.

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iMore Offsite

Apple isn’t doing enough for new Shortcuts users — here’s how they can fix it

Yours truly for iMore:

When it comes Apple’s Shortcuts app, many new users are caught off guard. They hear about the potential, but the app is very complicated. When presented with a blank slate, many often don’t go further figuring it out.

For such an important app in Apple‘s ecosystem, the company needs to do a lot more to onboard first time Shortcuts users and get them familiar with the app and how to build in it. Here are three areas the company could improve on and why those matter for newbies:

Sometimes you need to call it like it is — I’ve written about some of these before, but I want to see a lot more so new users can get further quicker.

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #072

Welcome to issue 72 of “What’s New in Shortcuts!” — this week is a quieter mid-summer period where we didn’t see any news, but there’s always new shortcuts ideas popping up on Twitter.

Plus, I published a few stories for iMore, showed off my Focus Modes on TWiT, and got deep into some design changes that I’ll be showing off in a few weeks:

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #072”
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iMore Offsite

Here are 7 ways to get started with Shortcuts for Apple Watch

Yours truly for iMore:

The Shortcuts app for Apple Watch is a small but powerful way to access the vast array of capabilities from the apps on your device, all from the convenience of a few taps on your wrist.

Some of the ways Shortcuts on Apple Watch can be most useful, however, are not immediately obvious — there’s a lot of potential in Shortcuts, but honing in on the best use cases and avoiding too much complexity is important for a good Watch-based experience.

This piece covers seven areas where you can build Shortcuts for Apple Watch that are worth exploring, have powerful actions to take advantage of, and work well when running from your favorite Apple Watch:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Guest appearances Offsite Podcasts

iOS Today #611: Setting up Focus Modes on your iPhone

This Tuesday, I had the pleasure of being as a guest on iOS Today with Mikah Sargent:

Personalize your custom Focus modes in iOS 15 or iOS 16, from silencing specific notifications to switching screens based on location.

  • Home Screen customization
  • Lock Screen customization
  • Focus activation scheduling
  • Using particular colors for context

Watch the full episode on TWiT or  on Apple Podcasts.

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iMore Offsite

14 Shortcuts for Safari Views, Tab Groups, and Focus Filters to use with iOS 16

Yours truly for iMore:

Safari has gained six actions of its own so far in the betas:

1. Open View
2. Open New Tab
3. Open New Private Tab
4. Create Tab Group
5. Open Tab Group
6. Set Safari Focus Filter

[…]

Currently only available for developers and public testers (but coming to everyone this fall), these actions are aimed at interacting with different “views” in Safari, plus creating tabs and doing basic Tab Group management.

 

To help you take full advantage of these, here are 14 shortcuts built out with each potential option across the actions so that you don’t have to build them yourself:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #071

Welcome to issue 71 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — the public betas are finally here and more of you can play around with the new Shortcuts features!

That being said, I’ve definitely run into some bugs that break my very-specific workflows, so I wouldn’t recommend installing everything unless you have backup devices.

Otherwise, the betas are fairly stable, the new actions are ready to be used, and now’s the best time to dig into your Shortcuts workflows before the busy season — my summer of Shortcuts is really just getting started…

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #071”
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iMore Offsite

iOS 16 public beta adds 46 new Shortcuts actions for Focus Filters, Background Removal, Parked Cars

Yours truly for iMore:

If you’re installing the public beta, developer beta, or just curious about the new features for Shortcuts coming to iOS 16, you’ll be glad to know that Apple added 46 new actions that add deeper access and advanced functionality to the Shortcuts ecosystem.

The main set of actions for Shortcuts focuses on Notes, Voice Memos, and Safari, plus Shortcuts itself. Additionally, Apple added new actions for Clock, Files, and Parked Cars, plus more for features like Focus Filters, Background Removal, and Personal Hotspot, and PDFs.

Here’s the full list of what’s new (so far) in the public betas:

As a follow to my post covering the full set of actions coming in iOS 16, I wrote about the current set in the public betas — actions for Books, Mail, and Reminders aren’t working, so I’ll be publishing a follow-up on iMore when they become available in future betas.

Also of note — almost none of these work on the Mac either (yet?).

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #070

Welcome to Issue 70 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — we are very close now to the public beta, and with that comes a new set of actions to play around with until the launch of iOS 16.

Now that we’re on the third round, the developer betas are a bit more stable and I’ve gotten past some of the high-level bugs (the kind that tend to affect users with as many shortcuts as I do). However, as I note below, a few new actions ended up breaking too…

Otherwise, this week I published a handful of fun stories, found some great ideas and apps on Twitter, and got extremely jealous at an awesome NFC workflow — here’s what’s new this week:

Editor’s note: Revue, the service I use to send this newsletter, has had email delivery issues lately, leading some readers to get the last issue sent to their Spam folder — if this happens to you, mark the email as Not Spam to help ensure future issues make it to your inbox.

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #070”
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iMore Offsite

8 ways to get help from Apple Support using Shortcuts

Yours truly for iMore:

Apple’s Support resources are incredibly helpful when you’re running into issues, need to repair a device, or for learning more about how to use your devices.

With an entire Knowledge Base online, the Apple Support app, and their social media pages, there’s a lot of ways to access help pages, get direct support, and browse more to learn on your own — so here’s a set of shortcuts to help you do just that.

Read the full story on iMore.

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iMore Offsite

Apple is releasing tons of “hidden” features in Shortcuts — what about everyday users?

Yours truly for iMore:

As Apple continues to develop the Shortcuts app experience across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and even Apple Watch, there are even more features and functionality that’s possible on Apple’s platforms, but only through the Shortcuts app.

As features like custom speaker groups become possible to create and break apart with Shortcuts, iOS often lacks a built-in, Apple-like way to activate the same functionality without using Shortcuts.

To put it another way, Apple is adding features to their OSes that otherwise don’t fit into the platform itself, but they can get away with adding by putting it into Shortcuts.

For example, there’s no elegant way to make combinations of speaker groups besides tapping around in Control Center, so instead Apple can ship it in Shortcuts, the power users are happy, and…everyday folks just…don’t get the feature?

I already got some comments on iMore in reply to my post, and I’d really love to know my readers’ thoughts on this too — please leave yours in the comments!

Read the full story on iMore.

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Links

How Shortcuts changed one Redditor’s life

Today while working on this week’s upcoming newsletter, I came across a tweet sharing this story from r/shortcuts from last month where u/AngriBuddhist shared how “Shortcuts has literally changed my life”:

Prior to being a Workflow/Shortcuts user, the closest thing to automation/scripting that I’d done is make some pretty in-depth spreadsheets. For the last 5 years, though, I’ve been using Shortcuts to create daily reports for work. Manually, these would take more than 24 hours a day. I do them in 10-20 minutes. I’ve created other weekly reports that would also take more than 24 hours to create manually. With Shortcuts, it takes about 5 minutes.

No one has tried to create these types of things in my company because of the complexity and time investment. Without Shortcuts, I wouldn’t have imagined these projects in the first place.

These reports have had a huge impact on manager productivity, financial results and my visibility within the company.

Today, because of those results and visibility, I was offered and accepted a new role in the company, moving from 4 days a week of manual labor to 3 days of admin work from home, making the same salary[…].

I love seeing posts like this and I’m super glad this Shortcuts had such a big impact on this Redditor — what a great testimonial for the real-world impact that automation can have on one’s life.

See the post on r/shortcuts.

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iMore Offsite

How to create speaker groups for HomePod using Shortcuts

Yours truly for iMore:

In iOS 15.4, Apple added new parameters to the Set Playback Destination action that updated the capabilities from being able to switch destinations to additionally being able to add and remove destinations.

With this functionality, Apple users can create and break apart speaker groups on-the-fly using Shortcuts, something that’s only otherwise been possible by manually selecting and deselecting speakers in the Control Center view.

This article covers four shortcuts that utilize the Set Playback Destination action, making it easy to change speakers, add to a group, remove from a group, and cast to multiple speakers at once:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #069

Hello readers!

It’s been a while — I took a break from this newsletter while working on try big Shortcuts Library rerelease (more below) and continued through WWDC to focus on the updates. Now I’m back at it, just ahead of the public beta release that’s scheduled for sometime in “July.”

This issue focuses on the major headlines from the last three months, including all of Automation April from MacStories, plus a regular section of this week’s community posts at the end.

Throughout the summer, I’ll be covering tweets, articles, and ideas that I missed the last few months and integrating it into the regular newsletter content — I’ll try to get everything so nothing is missed from the break.

Thanks for being a reader! Hopefully this first link will make it clear why I needed to focus my efforts:

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #069”
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iMore Offsite

Apple’s developer APIs for Shortcuts are way better this year

I interviewed three app developers about Apple’s latest improvements to the Shortcuts APIs for iMore:

Apple’s newest framework for implementing Shortcuts support in iOS, iPadOS, and Mac apps has been called “modern,” “expansive,” and “much easier,” according to app developers who’ve been testing the new framework since its release at WWDC.

I asked three developers — Alex Hay of Toolbox Pro, Seth Sandler of AffinityBlue (responsible for apps like Tunable), and Josh Holtz of ConnectKit — about the new App Intents framework, what new feature they’re looking to utilize going forward, and how things compare to what was previously available.

Here are their responses:

Read the full story on iMore.