Author: Matthew Cassinelli

Welcome to Issue 68 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – what a week for Shortcuts tweets!

Florian Bürger shared his Fjorden automation (say that five times fast), an important SOS shortcut is making the rounds on TikTok, there’s a handful of new apps with great Shortcuts support, and an impressive list of ideas straight from the community.

Plus, stay for the end as I guide you through my super-intelligent choice to delete my entire Shortcuts database on the Mac – and learn how I barely made it through the other side with my library (partially) intact:

Welcome to Issue 67 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week is full of feedback reports, beta testing, and, as always, great ideas from the Shortcuts community.

I was up to no good with Jason & Dan on the stream, Federico followed up an impressive week with another impressive shortcut, the Albums app & Ochi caught my eye, and Stephen Robles & Chris Lawley shared their expertise on YouTube.

Plus, I’ve got a stream with Lickability cofounder Matthew Bischoff coming this Friday, as well as some new posts dropping throughout the week – enjoy:

Welcome to Issue 66 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week we saw the release of iOS 15.3 with a slew of bug fixes, the beta for iOS 15.4 and the long-anticipated drop of Universal Control, and we’re now on the tail end of iOS 15’s remaining features before Apple switches gears to iOS 16 this summer.

Shortcuts is now much more stable than it was previously in the fall and it seems like Apple has managed to process all of the Feedback we’ve been submitting – I’m very grateful for the bug fixes this week, as is much of the community who’ve been awaiting these changes.

I spent much of the week flying through new shortcuts for GTD (still a work-in-progress), put together a good technique in the Discord community that I’ll be sharing for members soon, and started unleashing a series of Shortcuts stories I’ve been working on (linked below).

Next week, I’ll be streaming with the Six Colors crew, and covering some new apps dropping throughout the week.

Until then, here’s what was new in Shortcuts – the Twitter community shared good ideas as always, MacStories had another banner Shortcuts week, and Jarrod Blundy took off in a rocketship:

Welcome to Issue 65 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week is the last iteration of the current iOS and Mac beta cycles, meaning soon we’ll have new versions of Shortcuts with bug fixes out.

As I mentioned last week, Shortcuts seems to be mostly stable now and I’ve been able to rely on more shortcuts that were previously broken – things like Copy to Clipboard and Convert Time Zone are fixed.

I am unfortunately still having sync issues (my folders lost their sort order twice this week) intermittently, so I hope you all don’t run into that after the update.

Otherwise, this week we’ve got a lot of goodness to cover – I shared some soundscape and mind mapping shortcuts, we saw some new apps adding actions, Six Colors put out more podcast notes follow-up, and there a very, very cool spotlight from the App Store:

Welcome to Issue 64 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week we saw iOS 15.3 beta 2 and macOS 12.2 beta 2 come out, resulting in a slew of bug fixes coming out from the various feedback that the community sent in over the fall.

I specifically saw clipboard fixes on macOS, fixes for “Get My Shortcuts” on iOS, and a bunch of other quality-of-life improvements, which are extremely welcome – I’ll say this cautiously, but I think this next release could be properly stable for Shortcuts users still cautiously waiting.

It is quite encouraging to see some of the specific Feedback that I’ve filed now being addressed, and it does make sense that turnaround times from Apple may be more like from release-to-release rather than beta-to-beta.

And while that’s still honestly hard to stomach up to 8 weeks of a bug persisting, it does prove the investment in getting problems you’re specifically aware of fixed by submitting Feedback rather than hoping it gets addressed – something I banked on too much last year and will be tackling head-on this year if something gets in my way.

Beta changes aside, I was very pleased with the volume of ideas, stories, and discussion material I’m seeing this week. People seem rested up and ready to tackle their problems with automation this year, so there’s lot of Shortcuts goodness to dive into – plus a new set of shortcuts from yours truly:

Welcome to Issue 63 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – and Happy New Year!

I’m back after a few weeks off and I hope everyone else had a chance to rest up as much as possible. I know I had plenty of time to actually _not _think about Shortcuts for a change… but of course spent a few days on it just for fun ?.

I’ve also officially ended the run for Smart Tech Today, the smart home podcast I was part of, and am continuing to gear up my biweekly iMore column on Shortcuts, all in an attempt to align all of my weekly work more with my own business. So now that change and this new Sunday newsletter schedule are opening up more space for pure Shortcuts goodness going forward – I’ll have more to report there soon.

Plus, I’m attempting to identify and report every issue in Shortcuts that I can (and I’d love your help). I’m determined to get long-standing problems and issues like my sync bugs fixed – I don’t want to re-sort my folders ever again (like I did yet another time over the break ?).

That being said, I’m full of fresh ideas for Shortcuts, my next release is almost fully operational, and I’m super inspired by the folks in this week’s newsletter – I have a feeling 2022 will be a great year for Shortcuts, so let’s dig in:

Welcome to Issue 62 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this is the last issue of 2021!

This week we’re onto iOS 15.3 beta 1, there’s new apps for the Mac (as is usual now), and I found another handful of good ideas from Twitter that are worth checking out.

I also wrote a new column for iMore, started the Siri Shortcuts community on Twitter, and made a new member shortcut for saving for Mac’s window arrangement.

To wrap things up, I also linked back to every Shortcuts Spotlight from this iOS 15 release cycle – save some of the links to your Reading List for this winter break.

Enjoy the issue – I’ll be back in two weeks on the first Sunday of January to kick off next year!

Welcome to Issue 61 of “What’s New in Shortcuts!”

This week there were tons of great ideas shared on Twitter, I got deep into Apple Watch (and JIRA?), and there’s a batch of new Shortcuts actions from indie apps – but first, some housekeeping.

In case you hadn’t noticed, this 25th issue marks the beginning of my new Sunday delivery schedule.

I wrote about this briefly on Twitter, but ahead of my work schedule changing in the new year and in an attempt to capture the full week of material from Monday-Sunday, I will now be sending this newsletter at the end of every week on Sundays.

(I’ll also be taking the week after next off for Christmas break, so there’ll be no issue on December 26).

In other news, my Shortcuts Catalog release is officially coming, so thank you everyone for your patience in the meantime – I’m ready to get things rolling and help folks take their personal productivity into their own hands in 2022.

Until then, here’s what’s new in Shortcuts this week:

Welcome to Issue 60 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week we saw a new beta, which means it’s time to file new Feedback to Apple! ?

While things are steadily improving on that front, the community has been leaping forward – today’s issue has some exciting shortcuts from John Vorhees from MacStories, plus there’s two new Mac apps folks should try out.

I also covered some stories from Six Colors that talk about what’s possible with Shortcuts, some ideas from the community, and a set of five folders for Read Later for my members just below – enjoy:

Welcome to Issue 59 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – it’s Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. and I’m thankful for having a great community of readers like you to share with ?

I really enjoy passing along the fun and joy that I get from building new shortcuts and seeing other share their stories about Shortcuts, so thank you for being here with me along the way.

I’m especially grateful for my members, whose direct support has allowed me to expand into more areas and dedicate ever more time to making the full Shortcuts Catalog – your membership has been a powerful presence in my life, particularly in the face of the last two years. And I’ve been extremely hard at work to expand the program – I can’t wait to share what’s in store ?

Until then, I’ve got a great issue for you – including my guest spot on the AppleInsider podcast, some quick ideas to jot your brain over the weekend, a slew of MacStories links all about Shortcuts, and a deep dive from yours truly on the new Pushcut widget update:

Welcome to Issue 58 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week we’re inching closer to stability in the latest betas and an upcoming iOS release, which should bring the necessary fixes folks have been itching for since iOS 15.0 and 15.1 (and the Mac equivalents).

As those rough edges get smoothed out, the community is still trucking along and pushing things forward on both iOS and the Mac – this week we’ve got another Automation app, new Actions to play around with, a great tip editing for accessing iOS Automations, two utilities from Jarrod Blundy, and a Spotlight on Stream Deck shortcuts.

On my end, I’m also nearing the last stage of my Shortcuts Catalog release – I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but still more finishing touches until this beast is ready…

Until then, here’s what happened this week: