Author: Matthew Cassinelli

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Tips & Tricks

Automating how loud Siri replies on the HomePod

Hero image of HomePod in the author's home

I’m a huge fan of the HomePod – after bearing the investment cost, it’s improved my daily interactions with music and opened access to controlling my smart home gear, plus provides a new medium for everything I’ve built in the Shortcuts app.

But one of the nagging problems with HomePod is the way Siri, regardless of the current time of day, will respond loudly at whatever volume you’ve previously set.

Whether it’s the middle of the night or super early in the morning, it’s all too common to ask Siri something and the answer shouted backed at you, only because you listened to music loudly sometime yesterday. Hopefully nobody wakes up, you curse at how dumb your supposedly “smart” speaker can be, and frantically try to turn it down.

Thankfully, iOS 13.2 provides a route to a solution by adding HomePods and AppleTV to scenes and automations – the HomePod didn’t fix this on its own, but, with a Home Automation, you can make it “smart” enough yourself.1

Continue reading “Automating how loud Siri replies on the HomePod”
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Siri Shortcuts

Opening directly into Watch Later on YouTube with a Siri Shortcut

After adding a few videos from YouTube to my Watch Later playlist this afternoon, I looked in the Apps section of the Shortcuts app for some Siri Shortcuts from the YouTube app.

I’ve found actions that open the Search and Subscriptions section of the app before, but I wanted to quickly jump into the Watch Later bit which is buried in the Library tab – alas, there was no shortcut.

However, I then realized that YouTube.com links often redirect into the app, and I might be able to use that deep link instead.

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Offsite Podcasts

Smart Tech Today #7: Make Your Smart Home Work for You

On episode 7 of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about the following:

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Offsite Podcasts

Smart Tech Today #6: Smart Tech: It’s for Everyone

On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talk about:

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Offsite Podcasts

Smart Tech Today #5 – Hearables: AirPods Pro & Echo Buds

On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talk about:

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Offsite Podcasts

Smart Tech Today #2: Mesh WiFi and Voice-First Computing

Mikah Sargent and I have recorded episode 2 of Smart Tech Today, this time over Skype and on the Twitch livestream. Here’s the description from the TWiT page:

  • Mikah reveals he’s now dual-wielding mobile operating systems. Along with his iPhone 11 Pro Max, he’s carrying a OnePlus 7 Pro to better understand and make use of the Google Assistant and Android in general.
  • The two discuss recent discounts on mesh WiFi systems and how mesh WiFi systems can lead to a better smart tech user experience.
  • Matthew explains how Siri and Spotify are working together to provide Spotify users with Siri voice control and the two hosts reveal why they subscribe to both Spotify and Apple Music.
  • Mikah waxes ecstatic over the ultra-wideband chip in the new iPhone 11 and the two dream up a future where UWB controls both the smart home and mobile connected tech.
  • Mikah details how he’s been using Alexa Routines to start his day and Matthew compares this functionality to Siri Shortcuts.
  • Matthew gives us a look at his Google Assistant- and Alexa-controlled Xbox.
    Mikah details how he’s trying to use the Google Assistant and Siri to be a little more voice-first with his devices.
  • Matthew complains about the lack of Google Assistant support for G Suite accounts and Mikah shares how much he enjoys the ETA feature in Apple Maps on iOS 13. The two hosts also try the same feature using Google Maps.

Plus, here’s a set of Siri Shortcuts I created last week for subscribing and listening to the show:

We’ll be live next Monday at our usual 4pm PST – thanks for listening along so far!

Links for the show:

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Offsite Podcasts

Smart Tech Today #1: Voice Assistants in Your Ears

On Monday, Mikah Sargent and I recorded episode 1 of Smart Tech Today in person at the TWiT studio. In the show, we:

  • Attempt to create nicknames for the major voice assistants. Be sure to share your ideas for Siri, Alexa, and Google nicknames by emailing [email protected]!
  • Discuss all the products Amazon announced at its recent press event. Matthew gets Mikah to change his mind about the smart oven Amazon launched.
  • Ponder the future of voice-based operating systems given the fact that every company seems to be announcing earbuds that work with smart assistants.
  • Give a brief rundown of their smart home setups.
  • Answer questions about automating alarms using Siri Shortcuts and NFC tags.
  • Give a shout-out to the one-and-only Gemmy the Twerking Bear.

Here’s Mikah and I after recording – had a blast! We’re off to a great start, but any help sharing the show to new people still goes a long way.

Once we hit 30,000 subscribers, we’ll have a full video feed of each episode too, available on our YouTube channel:

Plus, here’s a set of Siri Shortcuts for subscribing and listening to the show:

We’ll be live every Monday at 4pm PST, with the episode dropping later each evening. Thanks for listening!

Links for the show:

Categories
Apps

New DuetCam app shoots video with both cameras at once

Today, as first noticed by 9to5Mac, developer Marcel Schmitz launched a brand new app called DuetCam for $2.99 that takes advantage of iOS 13’s ability to record video with both the front-facing camera and one of the back cameras at the same time.

Schmitz’ app basically lets you film what’s in front of you while also recording yourself in a smaller picture-in-picture box, creating an immersive experience where you can talk to the camera while showing what you’re looking at.

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Guest appearances Offsite Podcasts Siri Shortcuts

Guest spot on the iMore show #674: Shortcuts!

The day after iOS 13 launched, I was a guest on the iMore show to talk all about the updates to Siri Shortcuts (and a bit about the new iPhone):

Shortcuts expert Matthew Cassinelli is here with a wealth of information for making life better with iOS 13! He guides Lory Gil and Georgia Dow through the basics of shortcut creation and shares some of his own creations from matthewcassinelli.com.

I had a really great time talking to Lory Gil and Georgia Dow – Lory is the editor at iMore and corrects the mistakes in my freelance articles, and Georgia does a wonderful job as Senior Editor there too.

We also recorded this as a livestream, so here’s the video if you want to follow along – I even turned on my main camera with a top-down shot for part of it:

Continue reading “Guest spot on the iMore show #674: Shortcuts!”
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Links Offsite Podcasts

Announcing Smart Tech Today, my new podcast

Today, I’m happy to announce a new podcast I’m hosting with Mikah Sargent on the TWiT network – it’s called Smart Tech Today and you should subscribe to episode 0 now!

A couple of weeks ago, Mikah reached out to me and asked if I’d like to host a podcast with him about smart technology on the “This Week in Tech” podcast network, commonly known as TWiT.

We’d be covering all aspects of the “Internet of Things”, automation as it stands in 2019 and beyond, and how to think about using & integrating smart tech into your daily life – naturally, I said yes.

Airing each Monday evening (with a livestream at 4pm if you want to tune in), we want the show to be informative, practical, and fun.

Mikah does incredible work, previously for iMore where I met him through my freelance work, but also for the Clockwise podcast on Relay FM and now also full-time for TWiT.

I am super glad to be cohosting with Mikah, because I think:

  • We’re both well-suited to finding the right news for you
  • We can contextualize it all in a way that’s practical but still critical, and skeptical but not cynical
  • We’ll provide a considered look at what it really means to integrate these products into modern life

I’m also looking forward to staying on top of smart tech outside the Apple ecosystem, because we’ll be talking about all types of brands and products on Smart Tech Today.

There will surely be plenty of Siri Shortcuts talk, but I’ll be experimenting and learning about all of it, and intend to cover everything with the same intentionality I do in all my work.

We’re airing our first episode next Monday, October 7th, but please subscribe to the trailer episode now.

Any new listeners and episode ratings are weighted heavily by Apple Podcasts, so a great launch helps propel the show forward – we appreciate the support!

Here are the links for the podcast:

Looking forward to next Monday! Hope you’ll be listening too 🙂

Categories
Gear Siri Shortcuts

4 types of NFC tags to buy for your Siri Shortcuts automations

In iOS 13.1, the Shortcuts app added Automations, a feature that lets you use contextual triggers to show notifications for shortcuts you want to run or, for a subset of the option, run a shortcut entirely in the background. I’ll be covering those updates in the future, but I wanted to share links to NFC tags that I’ve bought and tested.

See, one of the Automation triggers lets you use “Near-Field Communication” tags that look like little wires printed onto stickers or stashed in cards like your credit cards, transit cards, or even in the Apple Watch or payment terminals for things like Apple Pay.

Thankfully, the new NFC tag automation trigger is one of the Automations that lets shortcut run “without asking” – they can fire off immediately when the trigger is detected, performing its operations in the background instead of requiring you to confirm via a notification first.

In iOS 13.1, this lets you run almost any shortcut just by tapping your iPhone to a small tag you’ve set up with Shortcuts, bringing the power of your apps and smartphone into the physical world with simple, cheap NFC tags.

So naturally, I bought a bunch, stuck them all over my house, and started testing them:

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Links Offsite Siri Shortcuts Video

Covering the Siri Shortcuts update for iOS 13 live on YouTube

On Thursday, a few hours after the release of my Shortcuts Library, I covered the entire iOS 13 update for Siri Shortcuts in a YouTube livestream.

After a bug in the macOS Catalina beta last week prevented Final Cut Pro from staying open at all, the work on my in-progress video was frozen1. I couldn’t re-do it in time while I was also publishing over 150 shortcuts for people to use.

So I did it live:

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Siri Shortcuts

Announcing my Shortcuts Library, featuring 150 Siri Shortcuts to use with iOS 13

Photograph of Matthew Cassinelli's Shortcuts Library open on his iPad on his desk.
Photograph of Matthew Cassinelli's Shortcuts Library open on his iPad on his desk.
My Siri Shortcuts library

Looking for the updated collection? Check out my Shortcuts Catalog, the announcement post, and my new membership.

Now that Apple has officially released iOS 13 to the public, I am excited to share my personal library of 150+ custom Siri Shortcuts for everyone to add and use.

I’ve worked countless hours this summer building up a database of my shortcuts, giving each shortcut a description and explanation of how I use it. These are saved inside each shortcut in Comment actions as well, so you can still reference the intended use after adding it to your Shortcuts app.

You can find my Shortcuts Library at the bottom of this post and here on my website at matthewcassinelli.com/siri-shortcuts. But first, I wanted to contextualize my collection.

Continue reading “Announcing my Shortcuts Library, featuring 150 Siri Shortcuts to use with iOS 13”
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Links Siri Shortcuts

The Siri Shortcuts Field Guide, iOS 13 Edition (from MacSparky)

David Sparks has completely redone his Siri Shortcuts Field Guide1 for iOS 13:

The new Shortcuts Field guide was shot entirely new with the new Shortcuts for iOS 13. Apple changed a lot and it is all covered in this field guide:

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Links

watchOS 6: the BirchTree review | Matt Birchler

Matt Birchler on the Apple Watch’s latest operating system update:

watchOS continues to grow up, and each year it gets objectively better than the year previous. The team behind this product have done a fantastic job of maintaining its simplicity all while adding on genuinely useful features that don’t always feel like much at the time, but have added up to an improved platform in almost every way.

Matt does these reviews every year, and this one summarizes the changes nicely. Also, I’m totally using the list of available workouts as a reference for future Shortcuts posts.

Read the full review on BirchTree.

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Apps Links Tips & Tricks

Audible update lets you use credits to buy books in iOS app

In the latest app update on iOS, Audible now lets users actually buy audiobooks inside the app using existing credits.

According to a tweet from Chris Fralic of First Round (originally sourced by Joshua Topolosky of The Outline), the “Add to Library” button in Audible will show the message “You can now use credits without leaving the app!”:

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Links Siri Shortcuts

13 Features of iOS 13: Shortcuts (Six Colors)

Jason Snell, giving an overview of Shortcuts in iOS 13 for Six Colors:

Shortcuts just got a lot more useful if you use Siri, too. You can now create interactive Shortcuts that can ask questions and accept text input, especially useful if you’re not able to look at a screen because you’re using AirPods or CarPlay. And the redesigned Share Sheet in iOS 13 means that you can prominently place specific individual Shortcuts in the Share sheet, making it easy to access them with a single tap.

Jason and Dan are covering iOS 13 feature-by-feature – this piece is a nice summary of what you can expect from Siri Shortcuts in iOS 13.

Check out the full article on Six Colors (they’re celebrating their 5-year anniversary today!).

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Links Offsite Podcasts

See You Later, Nerds

New episode of Supercomputer out:

Alex and Matthew talk about the close of the beta season – and the close of the show.

Today unfortunately marks the end of Supercomputer.

It’s been a privilege to start my first podcast with someone as wonderful as Alex Cox, and I will cherish the opportunity to share with others and learn about myself in the process.

I’m happy to have made 40 episodes of this podcast and it’s been a significant experience in my life.

Thank you for listening.

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Links Offsite Podcasts

Android Just Smells Like Home (feat. Julia Skott)

New episode of Supercomputer out:

Matthew hosts special guest Julia Skott – quite literally in his home. Julia’s all about Android, but uses an iPad and Mac, so the two have a lot to talk about. Plus Julia is just amazing.

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Links Offsite Siri Shortcuts Tips & Tricks

iPad keyboard shortcuts for the Shortcuts app

Screenshot of the Shortcuts app showing the two keyboard shortcuts from the My Shortcuts view – Command F for Find and Command N for new.

From my piece iPad keyboard shortcuts for the Shortcuts app on iMore:

While the Shortcuts app is primarily a touch-based system—where are you drag and drop actions around to create your scripts—there are a few keyboard shortcuts for iPad users that can speed up the experience of creating and managing their Siri Shortcuts.

Whether you’re opening the Gallery to view suggested shortcuts, searching for a shortcut in your list, or quickly controlling parts of the shortcuts editor, these simple keyboard shortcuts are worth learning.

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