Fairly late in the summer, but if this helps anyone, I just discovered a Tech Talk (not a WWDC session) that digs into migrating custom intents to App Intents. Very very useful and I feel silly for not knowing this was out there the whole time:
There’s plenty of new features in iOS 17 in September, but one has barely received a mention in Apple’s promotional material. In fact, it’s not even listed.
The feature? Pets are finally join People in the Photos app. And given how much people love their pets, this is gonna be crazy popular.
The feature itself is understated. Open a photo with your pet, enter its name, and instantly every photo of Bunny, Pot Roast or Hamlet is catalogued into their own fluffy album.
The full list of supported vehicle controls include:
Bioweapon Defense Mode
Camp Mode
Defrost
Dog Mode
Precondition Vehicle
Set Seat Heater (seat position and heat level)
Set Temperature (choose climate temperature)
Vent Windows
Set Media Volume
Emissions Test
Close All Windows
Flash Lights
Honk Horn
Lock/Unlock
Open Frunk
Open/Close Charge Port
Open/Close Door (Model X)
Open/Close Rear Trunk
Sentry Mode
Set Charge Limit
Start/Stop Charging
Regardless of, well, ~everything~ associated with this, I am certainly jealous of any car owners who can automate their vehicle with Shortcuts.
Having just reviewed Apple’s documentation for how to Design great actions for Shortcuts, Siri, and Suggestions, these actions could use some improvement – actions like “Set __ Mode” or “Open ___” should be grouped under single actions using parameter relationships, not have individual actions per function.
When you pin a link, you can refer back to it in the profile details for the contact(s) in that thread. That’s the popover you get by:
Tapping the user avatar in the center of the top navigation bar on iOS.
Clicking the “i”-in-circle Info button on MacOS.
Scroll down in that popover and there’s a section for pins, right above the section showing all photos in the conversation.
Gruber goes on with a few updates to the post to explain all the oddities with how the feature is currently implemented – the feature is a good idea in theory, though.
On Wednesday, August 16, I had the pleasure of joining Dan Moren and Mikah Sargent as a guest along with Kathy Campbell on Clockwise to talk about:
Whether we speed up audio and video media, how we’d want Apple to change Disney Parks, our thoughts on new Apple Watch bands, and what we’re hoping to see from Apple’s Shortcuts.
Since the last issue at the end of July, we’ve seen two beta releases – and with it, a major change to Shortcuts automations in the form of Location automations gaining true background support.
Plus, App Shortcuts are coming to Apple Watch and HomePod – make sure to read up on the limitations, however.
Further, the Camera app actions teased in the developer sessions are now out – I got to test them in a real-life situation at a music festival this weekend.
Also, I made Apple Music’s new Discovery Radio into a shortcut, and released a set of Keynote shortcuts I’ve been using lately for some client work.
Otherwise, we’re looking ahead at the home stretch ahead of the full iOS 17 release coming in September – I hope apps are updating their App Shortcuts for Spotlight!
The problem, if you’re a longtime Google Maps user, is all of the places you’ve saved in Google Maps over the years. These pinned locations come in handy, and switching to another map program often means starting over. Jumping from Google to Apple Maps would be a lot easier if there were a way to grab all your pinned places and take them with you. There is, it turns out, but it’s not exactly straightforward. The process will technically work on an iPhone or iPad, but I recommend you do it on a Mac, if possible.
Spoiler alert: he uses Shortcuts to process the JSON from Google Takeout – what a great idea.
Secondly, App Shortcuts are now supported on HomePod.
This requires an App Shortcut enabled app to be installed on a companion iOS or iPadOS device. Unlike running on iOS or iPadOS, where App Shortcuts can result in launching the app, on HomePod, App Shortcuts may not launch the app at all.
For example, by simply having my Demo app on my iPhone, I can say to my HomePod, “Hey, Siri. Summarize my groceries list with Demo.” HomePod support for App Shortcuts is available from version 16.2 and newer.
When designing App Shortcuts for HomePod, consider that it is a voice-only device. Make sure you are returning clear and concise dialog to be spoken by Siri, since there won’t be any corresponding visuals.
The IntentDialog class has an initializer that takes both a “full” and “supporting” string. The HomePod will use the “full” dialog, while visual devices like iPhone will use the alternate “supporting” dialog. This allows you to be more brief when a user can reference a visual output, but remain fully descriptive if no screen is available.
I’m glad Apple (and developers) are putting in the work to match the dialog to the device – and that HomePod is getting even better Shortcuts support this year.
I’m pretty sure it’s new that watchOS-only apps can now enable shortcuts to the shortcuts app without having an iOS companion app 😍✨
I can indeed confirm this is new – Apple mentions it in their “Spotlight your app with App Shortcuts” developer session from WWDC’23. Here’s what they say in the video:
App Shortcuts now work on Apple Watch, but you should be aware of some limitations to get the best possible experience. App Shortcuts on Apple Watch must come from a watchOS app installed on the device itself. App Shortcuts from a paired iOS device cannot be run on the Watch. This means that if you have an iOS app installed on iPhone, but not the corresponding watchOS app, your App Shortcuts will not work from watchOS.
Flexible matching with Siri is not available on Apple Watch, so phrases must be spoken exactly. Apple Watch support was introduced in watchOS 9.2 and is available on all devices running that version or later.
App Shortcuts are also now discoverable on Apple Watch. Just like on iOS, the Shortcuts app on watchOS prominently features App Shortcuts available on the device.
Just to be clear, App Shortcuts will work on both standalone watchOS apps and companion watchOS apps.
Plus, you will run into issues if you’re trying to run App Shortcuts from the watch and the corresponding iPhone app doesn’t have a Watch app – developers, get to building your watch apps!
Folder Actions is pretty clever—you can run scripts when items are added or removed from a folder, when the folder is opened or closed, or when the window of that folder is moved in Finder.
Unfortunately, this is a feature that is wired directly into AppleScript. So in order to use a version of my existing shortcut with Folder Actions, I needed to write a three-line AppleScript script:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
tell application "Shortcuts Events" to run the shortcut named "Apple Result Transcriptor" with input added_items
end adding folder items to
Pretty dumb — for those keeping score we’ve now gone from Audio Hijack to AppleScript to Shortcuts in order to get what we want. (I could’ve rewritten my Shortcut in AppleScript, but… I don’t want to do that!) And yet also pretty brilliant, because I’m using a 21-year-old OS feature to run a Shortcut, an automation system that didn’t appear on the Mac until 2021.
Neat feature – and I agree with Jason’s conclusions at the end about Automations on the Mac.
Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory speaking on The Talk Show #382, starting at 1:13:23 (transcribed and lightly edited for text):
I see a lot of opportunities there for developers to make the widgets just come alive. I think it’s a great little thing that they’ve done.
The side effect of this, I think is—even kind of probably better in the long term—is that that way you do this is something that’s sort of like a little shortcut. And it’s gonna expose a lot of developers to the Shortcuts technology.
So like that button that’s on your widget that says, oh, play this radio station? Well, I’m obviously gonna write a shortcut that says, play this radio station. So you can automate that. So, like, if I go into my Focus mode, or if I get home, it starts playing the radio station on the kitchen HomePod.
And for me that’s the thing that really is powerful because it takes that interaction and makes it something that you can use throughout your life. That’s for me the most interesting thing, that’s why we’re talking about vision OS and all these other things is interactions that fit into your life, are really – that’s the goal.
From Kurt Knutsson of the CyberGuy Report over on Yahoo:
With the power of technology at our fingertips, it’s becoming easier to manage daily life, even for those grappling with issues such as short-term memory loss. Apple’s “Remember This” shortcut is one such tool that acts as an invaluable assistant for memory support and mindfulness.
This shortcut lets you quickly build a visual and textual log of your daily activities and serves as a handy digital journal.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on setting it up and using it effectively.
I missed sharing about this shortcut when it was originally released by Apple back in May – worth checking out for sure.
Since the last issue in mid-July, news has been a bit quiet on the Shortcuts front thanks to a delayed second public beta – developer beta 3 was a bit rough, and now beta 4 is out today along with the public beta late in the he day.
As such, I held off on a few stories related to beta features that I have yet to cover, so my Automations and Widget coverage are coming tomorrow morning instead.
However, I did discover a new action in the betas, plus uploaded my new Threads scraping tool to the Library too – shortcuts are live now, and stories on those are coming later this week as well.
Otherwise, I published a couple of holdover posts on Threads, a few interesting tips related to power user features you might use if you’re a Shortcuts fan, and a series of linked posts to check out.
Are you worried about leaving your iPhone to charge for extended periods and what it can do to your battery life? While your device notifies you when the battery percentage drops below 20% and 10%, there’s no other way to know when it’s fully charged without manually checking.
But having to constantly check if your iPhone is fully charged can be an inconvenience. The good news is, with the built-in Shortcuts app, you can set up a custom alert that triggers when your iPhone reaches full charge. We’ll show you how to do it:
A lot of shortcuts come in pairs. I have one shortcut that sets my phone to light mode and bumps up the text size for taking screenshots; a corresponding one sets my phone back to dark mode and lowers the text size again. On my Mac, I have a shortcut that turns on my Podcasting focus, launches Logic, Chrome and Skype, and hides everything else; a matching one turns off the focus and opens all my other apps back up.
It’s natural that you might want to put two matching shortcuts in one small widget. Now, in iOS 17, that’s possible:
According to the code found in iOS 17 beta 4, the Action button could have nine different options that users can customize and assign to different actions. While the code only lists feature names related to the Action button, we can infer what most of them will be able to do:
[…]
Shortcuts: As on the Apple Watch Ultra, this option would let users run any shortcut they have created or downloaded from the Shortcuts app, such as sending a message, playing a playlist, or controlling smart home devices.
If the Action button is coming from Apple Watch Ultra, it will surely support Shortcuts – the question is, do we only get one shortcut for the button at all times? Apple definitely needs a more advanced interface for picking which shortcut works on the Action button – I suggest Focus modes.
As our Twitter apps are updating to now be called “X,” you might long for the old blue bird logo. It harkens back to a similar time, when Twitter certainly had its issues, but at least it was not owned by Elon Musk. Thanks to the shortcuts app on iOS, we can kid ourselves into believing that Twitter is still being run by a different short-sighted billionaire, rather than this even shorter-sighted one. Lucky us!
Here’s how you can change your X icon back to Twitter again:
As I joked on Twi…er, X… “Who’d have thought the world’s primary use case for Shortcuts would be app icon replacement”?
