Quick thoughts that link out to other sites
Last Friday, the episode of Automators that I recorded with Rosemary Orchard and David Sparks dropped — and it’s a great hour-and-a-half conversation about the current state of Shortcuts.
Rose, David, & I haven’t talked since the release of iOS 14, so this is a dive into how I’ve been applying those features, my latest breakthrough with my shortcuts, and my updated Shortcuts Library.
Rose & David are my kind of people, so this conversation was naturally a blast — listen to the full episode:
Last week, I had the pleasure of being a guest on episode 4 of Sigmund Judge’s podcast Magic Rays of Light, a new show dedicated to all things Apple TV.
That episode is out now and available to download in your podcast app of choice.
Talking with Sigmund was a treat and we had a great conversation about:
This free newsletter is designed for anyone interested in learning more about Siri Shortcuts, covering:
* feature updates as they’re discovered,
* interesting ways to use Shortcuts related to topical stories, and
* creative new shortcuts or apps with Shortcuts actions.
In addition, What’s New in Shortcuts acts as a way to subscribe to learn about future updates to my Shortcuts Library, Action Directory, and upcoming additions to the Shortcuts Catalog.
Shortcuts creator and designer Brad Siefert has created a dedicated website for people looking to discover various links and creators related to Siri Shortcuts – check out the new Shortcuts Directory.
Em Lazer-Walker, Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, on what she’s calling the “audio version of ARKit” in iOS 14:
They talked about this largely in context of playing movies with multi-channel surround sound, but that’s probably the least interesting application of spatial audio.
As someone who’s been working in the field for a long time — my research at the MIT Media Lab in 2015 and 2016 focused on location-based storytelling in public spaces using spatial audio — I wanted to try to give some context around why this is interesting and what it might enable.
Fascinating summary of Apple’s new Spatial Audio feature and its potential – this covers what it is, how it differs from surround sound, and goes into detailed applications for this like wayfinding, vocal content, and real-world play/gaming experiences.
Every year for the past few years, John Gruber of Daring Fireball has interviewed an Apple executive or two on his podcast The Talk Show, just after WWDC and often in a venue right nearby the conference.
This year, as with everything else WWDC, it was done online, with special guests Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Apple, and Greg Jozwiak, Apple’s Vice President of Product Marketing.
Federighi and “Joz” filmed from Apple Park (in seemingly separate rooms, as one does nowadays) over the web with Gruber for over an hour and a half, which you can watch on YouTube:
New shortcut: I’m washing my hands:
Sets a timer for 20 seconds so that you can wash your hands thoroughly without thinking about how long it takes.
Use this to help internalize how long it takes to wash your hands, especially amongst the Coronavirus concerns.
Matt Haughey, writing for his site A Whole Lotta Nothing:
As you might have guessed from a previous post, I’m not a fan of carrying keys and or even having to use them. When I moved to a new place, I knew I’d use the front door as my main point of entry (instead of a garage attached to a house), so I wanted to get it as automated as possible, where the front door unlocks as I approach it, and locks when I leave.
Matt started with an August Smart Lock and ended up getting NFC tags so that everyone in his family could tap in and out of the house. Be sure to check out the full article for all his photos of the setup too.
This bit is excellent – I’m definitely thinking about NFC “skins” instead of having white dots all over the place:
To make them blend in a bit more, I went to my local Lowe’s and bought a $5 roll of adhesive-backed shelf paper in a maple pattern that mostly matched my wood posts. I used a NFC tag as a template, traced it onto the paper, and cut out two holes, then pulled off the backing and stuck them over the tags. From a distance, you can barely tell they’re there since I put the NFC stickers over wood knots and they look like wood repair patches now.
I’ve joked before that Matt is my smart home spirit animal – he continues to fill that role well ?.
On episode 14 of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about what I saw at CES 2020.
But before I get to what we covered in the show, I have exciting news – Smart Tech Today is now available as a video show in addition to our regular podcast feed!
We’ve always had the cameras on for our livestream, but the show’s been doing well enough to add in video production as well.
So, make sure to subscribe on YouTube if you want to watch along afterwards, or add the video podcast feed to get them delivered directly in Apple Podcasts.
Today’s new shortcut is How far did I walk today? is designed for CES attendees but is also good for anyone really:
Looks at the Health app for total steps and distance for today, then formats the information to display in an alert or be spoken back from Siri.
Uses only the Apple Watch as the main source of data so no information is duplicated from the phone.
New shortcut “Which CES shuttle should I take?“ for CES attendees:
Pulls from a dictionary of CES hotel names and their associated shuttle #s, lets you choose from the names, then tells you which shuttle to take.
Also opens your final destination in Maps so you can follow along.
This afternoon, @kcjokes asked for a shortcut that can play a podcast based on the time of day:
Here’s a Personal Automation for Apple Watch that I’m running automatically at the start of my Walking workouts – Log UV index:
Gets the current weather at the current location and logs the UV index for the hour into the Health app, then displays it or speaks it back when run via Siri.
Includes “Get Device Name” and an “If” action to account for being run on the iPad, which does not have the Health app and would otherwise fail.
New shortcut Singalong for Apple Music users:
Turns on the Apple TV, asks if you want to Hand Off music to the TV from the current device, then opens the Music app and shows the Remote on the current device.
Sometimes you just have to make a meme into a shortcut:
Takes the “2020” meme with a line of text in the middle and uses a find & replace to swap out your own text, then copies it and opens Twitter. Your new input must be less than 30 characters to fit.
Self-search is a handy shortcut I built for Twitter users:
Using a Twitter username inputted on import and a keyword entered when the shortcut is run, this shortcut takes the info, URL-encodes it into a Twitter link, and opens into the app to show the results.
If you love The Office and want to have a random episode picked for you, this shortcut is for you:
Using a dictionary filled out with the season numbers and corresponding episode counts for each, this picks a random season, then episode, then displays it in an alert as Netflix opens on the Apple TV.
Works aloud when run from Siri; good for HomePod.
Just created this new shortcut Move from Ulysses to iA Writer:
Gets sheets from a group in Ulysses, asks which one to use, then adds it into iA Writer via their URL scheme. Only accepts text, so you’ll have to move over any images.
Federico Viticci, doing his usual excellent work on MacStories:
For the past several months, I’ve been working on a shortcut designed to be the ultimate assistant for Apple Music.
Called MusicBot, the shortcut encompasses dozens of different features and aims to be an all-in-one assistant that helps you listen to music more quickly, generate intelligent mixes based on your tastes, rediscover music from your library, control playback on AirPlay 2 speakers, and much more.
I poured hundreds of hours of work into MusicBot, which has gained a permanent spot on my Home screen. Best of all, MusicBot is available to everyone for free.
MusicBot is yet another one of Federico’s shortcuts that turns a vast number of functions into a single Siri Shortcut for you to use. Plus, look at that custom icon!
I quite literally have over 50 music-based shortcuts that this will be replacing.
Jon Fingas, writing for Endgaget about Transit for iOS releasing a new version of their Apple Watch app:
The popular public transportation tool is now a native app, of course, but it also gives you considerably more detail than just arrival times, including future arrivals and a map indicating where to go.
I’m glad to see more apps slowly returning to the Apple Watch (or adopting it for the first time). Will be trying this out over the weekend ?.
