Welcome to Issue 52 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – hope your October is going well!
This week we had a bit of a shake-up on the Shortcuts team, more bugs to be wary of, apps to check out, a few good threads to browse, new Macro photography shortcuts, and a quick guide to Birthdays – let’s dig in:
Hello and welcome to Issue 51 of “What’s New in Shortcuts”!
This week I’ve got a ton to cover – we’ve got: an update on my Catalog, coverage of the public’s reaction to Shortcuts bugs, two new actions, new iOS 15 shortcuts, Automators’ new episode, a great YouTube video, Shortcuts for Mac teasers, some good shortcuts ideas, and a spotlight on Background Sounds.
Let’s dig in:
Welcome to Issue 50 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – it’s iOS 15 week!
Plus, the new iPhones and iPad Mini are out as well, so I’m looking forward to reviewing those soon ?
Until then, here’s what’s new in Shortcuts this week:
Welcome to Issue 49 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – it’s almost time for iOS 15!
I’ll be busy all weekend preparing for the next launch of my Shortcuts Catalog, prepping my YouTube video covering everything new, and getting excited about the iPhone and iPad Mini preorders I’ve placed.
Beyond that, it’s been an interesting week in Shortcuts land – the final Release Candidate of iOS 15 leaves us with a fairly buggy Shortcuts app, we learned exactly who deleted all the iCloud links for your shortcuts last spring, and there’s still a steady stream of great ideas from the community.
Plus, I shared a handful of shortcuts ahead of my big release – enjoy:
Welcome to Issue 48 of “What’s New in Shortcuts”!
Next week is official the iPhone event, with Apple sending out press invites for a September 14th keynote at 10 am. Folks on Twitter are speculating that iOS will release one day and one week later, on September 22nd, a day before reviews will drop and one day before iPhones begin arriving.
Hopefully that’s the case, although last year Apple dropped it the day after, so it could be September 15th – I certainly wouldn’t mind an extra week to polish my work up before everything drops though!
Welcome to Issue 11 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week, we’re nearing the end of the beta cycles, and the iOS 15 updates are almost upon us.
There’s still bugs to be ironed out in Shortcuts, and more clarity on what’ll happen with Shortcuts for Mac is needed with the amount of actions missing or troubles in the editor – but the community is raising their concerns, so hopefully Apple can jump on it.
This issue covers those concerns, plus some guides from the community, a handful of great shortcuts, some new member shortcuts for Shortcuts for Mac, and a spotlight on Wind Down shortcuts – here’s what’s new this week:
Welcome to Issue 46 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this one is packed with ideas!
I was blown away by what I found on Reddit this week and there’s at least 3 shortcuts that I’ll be integrating into my core workflow, alongside a whole set of great tips & tricks.
Plus, the folks from The Sweet Setup have a time-tracking guide, MacObserver has thoughts on what Shortcuts needs to add, and I interviewed Rosemary Orchard on her own show as a guest host.
And of course, MacStories had their big launch – I think anybody reading this newsletter should also be signed up for Club MacStories too.
All that and more – enjoy:
Welcome to Issue 45 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week we’ve got good examples from the subreddit, new app shortcuts to dig into, and some Feedback for Apple to review.
Thankfully, we also got iOS 15 beta 6, which resolved some of the nagging issues in Shortcuts – it’s much more feasible to use it for daily work right now.
But of course, some actions started randomly failing—such as Post to WordPress, which is core to my workflow—so this week I continued with my meta work, and streamed with Jason Snell to post directly to WordPress using XML-RPC.
We’ve got all that and more – enjoy:
Today at 10am PST, I’ll be streaming with Apple blogger/podcaster Jason Snell to walk through using the WordPress XML-RPC protocol to post directly to one’s blog.
We’ll be live on YouTube for a half hour or so, while I recreate Jason’s shortcuts he shared on his website Six Colors for my own WordPress installation.
Join us on the stream and ask questions in the chat, or catch the replay at this link:
See you there!
This Wednesday at 12pm/7pm GMT PST, I’ll be hosting a members-only livestream on YouTube to cover some of the meta work involved with being a Shortcuts creator.
I’ll be scraping data from a .shortcut file, plus potentially going into my Airtable logging process and how I save Action data as well.
Members can access the stream live below to get a reminder when it’s live or get back to this post at the right time using shortcuts.live:
Become a member to get access to access to the stream, plus:
Welcome to Issue 44 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – I’ve returned after a week off and am back at it again!
This week we got a new beta, but it’s a bit rocky still – I’m seeing slowdowns, missing Apple Watch actions, and tweaks to permissions mean beta users have to reauthorize every step yet again.
But there’s still more to learn thanks to a handful of podcasts that’ve come out the last few weeks – and there’s some big changes to the Shortcuts Catalog I want to tease:
Welcome to Issue 43 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week we saw developer beta 4 and another public beta, bringing a new action to Shortcuts, a new feature, and stability improvements.
Plus, the newsletter finishes off with a set of Power automations, both with full screenshots and linked shortcuts you can copy yourself.
But before we get into everything, a programming note – I’m out next week on vacation, so I won’t be sending an issue next Friday, August 6th. After that, I’ll be returning to the normal schedule on August 13th.
Until then, here’s what’s new this week:
This week, I spent a lot of effort furthering my Home Screens – and I think I got to a pretty good place to write things up soon.
I also spent my time researching Shortcuts for Mac, building out Apple TV shortcuts, and working ahead on some new guides for the future.
Otherwise, there’s lot’s to share this week – let’s dig in:
One of the excellent features coming to Shortcuts for Mac is the addition of a scripting capability for the Shortcuts app itself – Apple has added AppleScript support for commands like opening and running shortcuts, even without opening the app at all.
Naturally, I immediately got excited to bring this possibility to life using the Stream Deck, a USB device from Elgato with hardware keys that can be customized to your heart’s extent (including using folders and subfolders):
The Stream Deck software for Mac allows users to add third-party plugins offered by the community, including one such plugin called “Run OSA script” that lets users input a script that gets triggered when the button is pressed:
To take advantage of this plugin, I’d need to write my own AppleScript – something I’m not super familiar with.
Thanks to this tweet from Alex Hay, developer of Toolbox Pro, I knew to use the Script Editor app to look into the capabilities of Shortcuts app by examining its’ AppleScript dictionary – here’s how:
Welcome to Issue 41 of “What’s New in Shortcuts”!
This week we saw the release of developer and public beta 3, which has brought some overall stability to iOS, but unfortunately more bugs in Shortcuts as well.
Read on for my set of free shortcuts, new member shortcuts, feedback I’ve submitted to Apple, more apps adding Shortcuts support, new automation ideas, and a spotlight on cross-platform actions with a note from the Things team – lots to enjoy this week:
Welcome to Issue 40 of “What’s new in Shortcuts” – and to mid-summer!
With the public betas out last week and another developer beta still on the way, we’re in between the latest features and fixes for common bugs – but this time I’ve pushed through the issues and made some new shortcuts for all you folks.
Plus, I discovered a handful of actions for Apple Watch and Files that I’d missed – read on to get all the details:
Welcome to Issue #39 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – the public betas are out!
The brave-hearted can sign up here on Apple’s website, but be cautious as there are many Shortcuts-related bugs specifically that you are almost guaranteed to run into.
That being said, the more Feedback filed to Apple, the merrier we’ll be with a fully-operational version of Shortcuts – I’m submitting my own regularly, so I hope you are too.
Along with that, I’ve got a lot of links to share, updates on more Mac apps getting Shortcuts support, and a preview of how Mac users can script Shortcuts itself:
If you’re like me and have long relied on the Bartender app for macOS to clean up your Menu Bar, plus you tend to live on the dangerous side and install macOS betas, then you’ll want to grab the beta of Bartender so it works on your Mac again.
Looks like it won’t support every feature of Monterey until the full release, but it’s still worth grabbing now to clean things up as best it can.
Welcome to Issue #38 of “Welcome New in Shortcuts”!
We’re now two weeks out of WWDC and, with the second developer beta now out, there’s plenty to learn about Shortcuts before the public betas come out in July.
This week, I’ve got a new interview, tons of information about Shortcuts for Mac, great ideas from r/Shortcuts, more podcast coverage, tweets about the betas from Ticci, and one previously unknown feature coming to the Mac:
Mac users can now easily automate their window management, interact with Finder, make disk images, perform actions taken from Automator, and take advantage of deeper Mac automation – plus there’s two actions not yet found in the betas.
In this 4,800-word piece (about 20 minutes average reading time), I’ll explain each of them in detail, plus give you my initial thoughts on what bringing this functionality to macOS means for the transition to Shortcuts as Apple’s main automation platform.
Become a member to get access to the post, plus: