On Thursday, April 4th, I hosted an episode of Shortcuts Live with special guest Stephen Robles to discuss how the iOS 17.4 update makes Action button shortcuts more dynamic, Stephen’s latest videos, and what’s coming at WWDC.
Throughout the discussion, we also covered special techniques for If statements, potential improvements to the Podcasts actions, and future ChatGPT integrations, as well as filed “verbal Feedback” on issues we want to report to Apple.
I have both the Stream Deck XL and Stream Deck Mini, and both are fantastic purpose-driven designs. The big one is best for having all your buttons visible, while the mini is best for having the right buttons nearby.
I have all my main commands spread out on the XL, but always have the mute switch, scene switcher, or media controls on the Mini ready to go.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Wicked Little Letters in theaters ahead of release thanks to Regal Cinemas’ Mystery Movies, a series they put on that lets fans buy $5 tickets to an unknown movie (usually an upcoming film).
Now, for April 2024, they’ve put out tickets for three more Monday Mystery Movie nights, each linked below – I just happened to be checking their site out and these aren’t even listed on the main portal yet:
Show my Regal Unlimited Card: Opens the Regal website to your Unlimited account page so you can tap to reveal the QR code for your card number.
Show my Regal orders: Opens the Regal site to your orders so you can see past or upcoming tickets.
Open Regal cinemas site: Opens the main Regal Cinemas website to show curated categories like Now Playing, Coming Soon, Saturday Morning Kids Flicks, and Limited Engagement pictures.
Show Regal movies: Opens the “Movies” page of Regal Cinemas so you can see current, upcoming, and special release films that are available to buy tickets for.
Show Regal theaters: Opens to a page of nearby theaters available from Regal Cinemas.
Browse my favorite Regal theaters: Presents a menu of your favorite nearby theaters, then opens the corresponding URLs for that theater so you can buy tickets.
Open Regal Mystery Movies: Opens the site for Regal Cinemas’ Mystery Movies, where they show an upcoming film without releasing which movie it is ahead of time.
Show my Regal account: Opens the main Account page of your Regal Cinemas profile, where you can log in and see an Overview of your past upcoming & past books, plus rewards status.
Show Regal promotions: Opens the Regal cinemas Promotions page where you can see new categories, current promos, available upgrades, and special engagements.
Open Regal Crown Club: Opens the Regal Crown Club site where you can see your credit balance, check out featured rewards, order gift cards, and link out to even more member deals.
Show Regal value days: Opens the Regal cinemas Promotions page for Value Days to see prices and days for low-cost tickets at your nearby theaters.
Show Regal store: Opens the Regal Cinemas store where you can buy branded merch from current movies or the Regal brand itself.
Show Merchandise rewards: Opens the Regal Crown Club merchandise page where you can see physical products for sale like the Dune or Ghostbusters popcorn buckets.
Show Concessions and Ticket rewards: Opens the Regal Crown Club section for Concessions and Ticket rewards, like discounts on popcorn or free passes/upgrades.
Open Regal TV: Opens the Regal Cinemas app on the selected Apple TV, then shows the Remote so you can navigate.
Learn how to build 15 iPhone Shortcuts, inspired by YOU. Automatically play music when an alarm is snoozed, schedule a text to auto-send, make your screenshots look pro, and more.
Stephen continues his Shortcuts series on YouTube by building shortcuts off listener requests – a great watch as always.
Voice Dictation Mode in the Camera Hub app looks great for getting your thoughts out quickly without focusing on your performance, then immediately revisiting it on the Prompter to deliver for the camera. Very welcome new feature.
With Shine, you create an album for a time and place, choose the type of selection process, and then share with other people – the selection part is where the “magic” happens, since Shine lets you optionally let AI select the best photos for you (or you can choose manually). Shine can also suggest albums automatically after-the-fact too.
The “Magic Mode” automatically uploads the best photos identified by AI as they’re taken, and when in manual mode you’ll still get suggestions but the app lets you approve them before sharing.
Shine lets you share photos in full resolution, automatically removes duplicates, and lets viewers download the photos from the app or see them with an album code, link, or QR code.
The app also has comments and reactions built right in, turning each album into a psuedo-social network for each event. After the event, these interactions are shared into an Activity feed, making the entire app a feed of comments around event’s you’ve attended.
Shine looks super interesting as a Minimum Viable Product from Marissa Mayer’s team, not only because it seems to truly take a honest stab at solving this problem well, but also because it’s backed by a powerhouse in the tech space. Right now there’s only an iPhone app and no web interface, and some of the design leaves a little to be desired (the app generally seems to lack padding) – things that are easily fixable over time, however.
I think the drawbacks actually speak to the true MVP nature of this app – it’s clearly not the best version of the app product itself, but I do think how they’re approaching this problem is novel and still worth addressing, even in 2024. I’m glad Shine focused their energy on solving the core problem properly first, and over time they can invest in making the app experience even better.
Unfortunately, Apple didn’t make a first-party USB-A to USB-C cable for this situation. Instead, the company sells a $29 USB-C to Lightning adapter as its official solution.
My advice? Don’t spend $30 on a dongle when you can just replace the cable. Even though Apple doesn’t sell one, USB-A to USB-C cables are easy to find.
Zach’s recommendations are great for more reliable brands, but I was looking for a super-short cable and landed on these “OneKer” cables that are only 1 foot long (and only just now noticed the pun in their name 🤣).
Today, alongside the announcement for WWDC’24, Apple revealed their Apple Developer channel on YouTube where they’re now publicly hosting developer videos, starting with everything released from WWDC’23.
Previously, videos were only available Apple’s own website or Developer apps, limiting the potential reach to folks who’d already heard of it – now YouTube users can freely discover and watch Apple developer videos to learn about building for their platforms.
As of writing, there are 40 videos uploaded – so it’s not the complete set from WWDC’23 (yet?) and as such I unfortunately can’t find any Shortcuts-related videos. Once more are uploaded, and folks tune in after WWDC’24, it’ll be super interesting to see view counts and comments on these videos – we’ll be able to see what’s more popular/interesting to folks, as well as check on common questions in the comments.
Plus, for the intrepid Shortcuts user, all of YouTube’s RSS or URL functionality is now available for Apple Developer videos – I’ll be able to scrape the title, thumbnail, and descriptions to make quick embeds on my website, for example 🤓.
Living in a house, or even an apartment or condo, as an adult, requires periodic maintenance tasks, like cleaning the bathroom, changing your sheets, replacing the furnace filter, etc. A lot of these tasks should ideally be done on a regular schedule, like changing your sheets every two weeks, or your furnace filter every 3 months for example.
I’m sure a lot of people just kind of mentally keep track of this kind of stuff, but I’ve never really trusted my own memory on it. And I don’t like the idea of a room being dirty serving as my reminder to clean it. I’d ideally like to clean it before it gets too dirty.
So to keep up-to-date on my household tasks, I need a way to help me with of the following:
How many days has it been since I did that task?
A reminder to do that task if it’s past the time it needs to be done.
Tom basically made the perfect solution I’ve been looking for using Reminders, Chronicling, and two custom shortcuts – well done.
Performing repeatable tasks is something everyone does on their Apple devices, whether you’re accessing relevant information, sharing from a set of common links, or taking the same actions over-and-over – OneTap, an alternate keyboard app, makes it easy to find and share all that from any app using quick keyboard shortcuts.
Distinct from Apple’s Shortcuts, OneTap allows you to set up a series of shortcuts that you can switch to from the default keyboard, quickly navigate to find, and tap once to activate.
Your shortcuts in OneTap can be organized into convenient groups, letting you put similar shortcuts together under a unique name, icon, and color so they’re easily identifiable. These groups show up when accessing the alternate keyboard, letting you tap through and find individual shortcuts.
OneTap also adds a single-tap AI options for passing selected text to GPT-4 and returning generative text, letting you essentially integrate Chat GPT into any application with this one app.
OneTap is available on iPhone and iPad as an alternate keyboard, plus on Mac the app makes it functionality available via Apple’s Shortcuts app by providing a shortcut that you can trigger using the wide variety of ways you can use Shortcuts for Mac, like via the Menu Bar applet.
Plus, OneTap comes with actions for Apple’s Shortcuts app, letting you manage your groups and add, move, or edit your items in an automated fashion – or take advantage of the ability to generate a OneTap AI response.
Even though I can see these mounting points on my Prompter as I type this, I have never thought how to actually use them.
Might try mounting my shotgun mic here instead of on a boom arm and get rid of the last few stands left in my studio – another way this Elgato gear can simplify my setup.
Add to my grocery list: Presents a dialog to input a title for a new reminder, then adds it silently.
Dictate groceries: Dictates text, then splits it by new lines and adds them to Reminders in your groceries list.
Mark off items from my list: Asks you to pick from incomplete grocery reminders, then marks them as complete.
Get travel time to the grocery store: Asks you to pick from pre-programmed grocery store locations, then estimates travel time, distance, route, and arrival time before presenting the option to get directions.
Add from past trips: Asks you to pick items from previous grocery orders, adds new copies to the list, and clears the old ones.
Clear my grocery list: Asks you to pick from completed grocery reminders and removes them.
Dive into the latest iOS 17.4 update with NEW Shortcuts actions for iPhone. Learn how to leverage new orientation and physical activity actions for enhanced device control and automation.
Peaks is a unique app for iPhone that, when I discovered it, caused me to exclaim “How I have not heard of this before?” This circadian rhythm app visualizes the daily rise and fall of your energy levels based on your internal clock, taking into account things like your sleep patterns and routines to create a guide for how to approach your day.
Peaks offers a set of routines that you can toggle on or off, plus get notified for, like when it’s time to Avoid Caffeine in the afternoon or Wind Down at night. Routines like Creativity, Exercise, Energize, Focus, and Decisions are helpful as well – these fall into time periods throughout your day that you may understand inherently, but are helpful to remember and even actively be notified it’s the optimal time for.
Certain routines also offer unique options, like tracking your streak for avoiding late meals or fitting tasks in your optimal working times.
As your day progresses, Peaks’ visualization also zooms in to let you see peaks and valleys, plus marks off previous routines in the timeline. Tapping the Share button in the top right corner lets you share the graph of your biorhythm with someone else.
The Insights tab also shows visualizations of your sleep patterns, showing time asleep and sleep quality data, your consistency over the last two weeks, and heart rate data from Apple Watch or a third-party sleep app. Plus, you can see your Energy Score, letting you estimate today’s potential based on a summary of your other metrics.
Peaks works best when combined with its great widgets for the Home Screen, Lock Screen, and StandBy mode for iPhone, letting you ambiently see your progress throughout your day.
Plus an Apple Watch app complete with complications and Smart Stack widgets makes it easy to check in with your body, right from your wrist.
You can also set up control of the always-on display in the Shortcuts app – which offers Siri support:
Open the Shortcuts app
Tap the + in the top right corner
Choose Add Action
Use the search bar to find “Set Always On Display”
Tap the blue Turn or On buttons to customize what will happen when you run the Shortcut
Tap Done in the top right corner to add your new Shortcut
The article mentions using Focus modes to change the setting as well – you can also use Automations in Shortcuts combined with the action mentioned above.
Updated on March 13, 2024, Apple has added release notes for Shortcuts for Shortcuts in the iOS 17.4 cycle, including new actions for the Action button on iPhone, restored actions for Apple Vision Pro users, and fixes for Shortcuts for Mac.
Here’s the full release notes:
This update includes new actions and enhancements to the Shortcuts app on macOS.
New actions
Get Orientation provides the current device orientation (such as portrait or landscape) on iOS and iPadOS
Get Activity determines your current activity (walking, running, cycling, or in a car) on iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS
Shut Down, Copy to Clipboard, Recognize Music, and Show Definition are now available on visionOS
Shortcuts app on macOS
Keyboard navigation is now supported in menus when running shortcuts
Shortcuts can now be dragged from the library while in list view to folders in the sidebar
Opened windows are now restored when the app relaunches
Improved performance and reliability
Get Orientation and Get Activity are great options for making your Action button shortcuts more dynamic, changing their behavior if the phone is face-down, for example.
Bringing the Clipboard actions to visionOS is perhaps the most important update for Apple Vision Pro users, whose Clipboard shortcuts weren’t functional in vision OS 1.0 – Shut Down, Recognize Music, and Show Definition are also welcome fixes (I actually use the Restart function of Shut Down often when running betas).
On the Mac, we got a few quality of life changes, plus performance improvements – I hope to see more actions on Mac soon, especially Safari Tabs actions that came to iOS years ago.
