Category: iMore

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Apple should add a Lock Screen widget for Shortcuts

Yours truly for iMore:

In iOS 16, one of the hallmark features for iPhones is the new Lock Screen customization — users have been excitedly adding their own combinations of widgets to show up on their always-on displays. However, one of Apple’s own apps was curiously missing from the options: Shortcuts.

Across its platforms, Apple makes it easy to run shortcuts in tons of places — the Shortcuts widgets are extremely useful, you can run shortcuts from the Menu Bar on Mac, and the Apple Watch extends the functionality to your wrist.

But in this newest release, Apple didn’t add a Lock Screen widget for Shortcuts. And while this did open up the demand for third-party developers, it’s left an odd gap for everyday users who want to run shortcuts right from the first screen they see.

In this story, I’ll share a few reasons why Apple might not have added the Lock Screen widget, argue that Apple should one anyway, and share the best apps for adding shortcuts to your Lock Screen as it works in iOS 16 today:

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50+ apps that work with App Shortcuts in iOS 16

Yours truly for iMore:

Released with iOS 16, the new App Shortcuts features adds powerful new Siri capabilities automatically, generating folders of shortcuts for your apps programmatically in the Shortcuts app for you — it’s a big deal for Apple’s Siri strategy.

Taking advantage of App Shortcuts does require having supported apps installed — once you have them installed, however, their shortcuts will work with Siri right away.

To help you get started taking advantage of this new feature, we scoured the internet and found every app we could that adopted App Shortcuts for iOS 16 — here’s over 50 apps to get you started:

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How Apple put its weight behind App Shortcuts in iOS 16

Photograph of the App Shortcuts feature open on an iPhone, with a bookshelf in the background showing the corner of Shortcuts' original logo as the Workflow app as artwork on the shelf.

Yours truly for iMore:

Apple released iOS 16 on Monday and with it the latest update to their Siri Shortcuts feature, this time making “App Shortcuts” automatically available to users when they install supported apps. With App Shortcuts, users can speak the trigger phrases of no-setup shortcuts that are now generated ahead of time and found in the Shortcuts app, acting as pre-programmed Siri commands for everything you might want to do in that app.

As I wrote at the beginning of the summer, App Shortcuts is Apple’s big bet on Siri, switching from the top-down model of defining “intents” in specific categories that Apple needed to build ahead of time and lay out a path for certain types of apps to work with Siri. Now, the “App Intents” feature that powers App Shortcuts gives developers the control, defining every way their app might be used with Siri and automatically creating every permutation of that action as individual shortcuts for the user.

With iOS 16 now live (and our iOS 16 review ready for you to, er, review), and developers releasing their App Shortcuts into the wild, here’s how you can expect to see more Siri Shortcuts throughout your experience, plus how to best take advantage of what’s possible.

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iPhone pre-orders: Apple Store shortcuts to help get your order in

Yours truly for iMore:

The iPhone 14 pre-orders will go live bright and early Friday morning from Cupertino, with Apple releasing the newest versions of its flagship product alongside the new Apple Watch Ultra, AirPods Pro 2, and just a few days before iOS 16 is released to customers. Folks are setting up their orders now ahead of the store going offline.

If you’re looking to secure the best iPhone for you during pre-orders and want to maximize all your options for getting in and out as quick as possible, we’ve built a set of eight shortcuts you can use with Siri, in a Shortcuts widget, or right from the Home Screen around pre-order day.

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Automating the Apple keynote: 5 shortcuts to use on any event day

Yours truly for iMore:

The Apple keynote day is upon us and, as usual, Apple nerds will descend upon Twitter and endlessly share their thoughts for a few hours. In lieu of excitedly eating popcorn, we’re collectively leaned in toward our iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple TVs, ready to share hot takes, funny quips, and the latest news. Nothing else quite brings us all together — except maybe some fun automations.

To get the best of both worlds, here’s a set of shortcuts you can use on keynote day to get set up to watch, organize your live-tweeting apps accordingly, and take notes on anything new:

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16 ways to use Personal Hotspot with Shortcuts in iOS 16

Yours truly for iMore:

In the iOS 16 developer and public betas — and soon the full release — Apple has introduced a new action to the Shortcuts app to control the Personal Hotspot feature of the iPhone.

Personal Hotspot enables non-cellular devices to connect to your iPhone directly and utilize its cellular connection to provide Wi-Fi to your other devices. This works great for your favorite iPad or Mac, making it easy to utilize your bigger screen when out of the home or away from your main networks.

The addition to Shortcuts presents Personal Automation opportunities for discovering new situations you hadn’t yet thought of, building new workflows in particular locations, generally while traveling and in specific connectivity situations.

In this piece, I asked for Personal Hotspot ideas from the Shortcuts community, then took their responses and found the best Personal Automations in Shortcuts to get you started:

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How the Shortcuts widget makes the Home Screen much more powerful

Yours truly for iMore:

The evolution of the Home Screen has been the most interesting change to iOS and iPadOS of the last few years, with the addition of widgets, Focus modes, and now Lock Screen changes tied to Home Screens coming in iOS 16.

With the rollout of iPhone widgets, then iPad widgets and Focus, and now dynamic Home/Lock Screens, things have changed slowly over time — and yet all at once now that everything works together better than ever.

For folks invested in the Shortcuts app, this progression has meant an ever-deeper integration of their shortcuts into the ecosystem and onto their Home Screens. That’s because the Shortcuts widget has always had special entitlements that make it interactive, something no other widget has — you can run your shortcuts right from the widget, without opening the Shortcuts app:

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Shortcuts for Mac: Scripting your desktop with Apple’s Mac-only actions

Yours truly for iMore:

When Apple brought Shortcuts to the Mac in macOS Monterey, the initial set of actions available that take advantage of Mac features were ported over from Automator.

These actions were previously available (in a similar form) in Automator for users building workflows to automate their tasks — with Shortcuts for Mac, those same functions were recreated as native actions, largely located in the Scripting category.

This piece explains how to best automate your Mac with Shortcuts actions for your controlling your apps, changing window arrangements, and adding advanced functionality using the Script Editor app actions:

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iOS 16’s sleeper hit? Focus Filters might change how you use Apple devices forever

Yours truly for iMore:

With Apple’s iPhone event just under two weeks away and iOS 16’s imminent release soon after, we’ve started to see developers share teasers for special features like Focus Filters that are being added to their apps.

And after testing the built-in Focus Filters actions for Mail, Safari, Calendar, and Messages during the beta period, I’m convinced Focus Filters will be a powerful — but slept-on — feature once iOS 16 releases.

To help people get started so they don’t miss out on this new capability, here’s how to set Focus Filters up and customize them using Shortcuts, along with three examples of apps implementing Focus Filters to customize their app’s contents when inside a Focus mode:

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Why the Menu Bar is the best way to get started with Shortcuts for Mac

Yours truly for iMore:

Part of the core macOS experience is interacting with the Menu Bar, whether it’s choosing from the current app’s specific commands from the top left or using Menu Bar apps that sit at the top right of your screen all day long.

That’s why it’s fantastic that Apple released Shortcuts for Mac with Menu Bar support, showing a small Shortcuts icon that can be clicked to reveal a list of assigned shortcuts.

This small spot is perhaps one of the best to place the most-important shortcuts you use on a daily basis from your Mac, giving you quick access to running them, editing them, and even working interactively with what you currently have open on-screen:

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The best ways to get started with Shortcuts on iPad

Yours truly for iMore:

The iPad has always provided the best experience for Shortcuts. From the much larger screen, to the drag-and-drop experience based on multitouch, and the natural opportunity for automation on a hand-held device, using Shortcuts on an iPad feels like the ultimate expression of the app.

But if you’re not familiar with good use cases for Shortcuts or don’t have a workflow based on the tablet, finding the best methods for working via Shortcuts on iPad might not immediately be obvious coming from a traditional computing experience.

That’s why we’re here to explain how multitasking, bookmarks, templates, and processing information are great opportunities for automation on your favorite iPad and how you can use Shortcuts to switch in and out of apps to get things done quickly, accurately, and without too much OS overhead:

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Why everyone should be using Share Sheet shortcuts

Yours truly for iMore:

Shortcuts for iPhone, iPad, and Mac is one of Apple’s most versatile apps — it connects actions you take on your device together, connects apps and the content inside in new ways, and the variety of ways to run shortcuts from across the system makes it a multitool like any other.

One of the more powerful ways to use the Shortcuts app is by sharing from an app into a shortcut using the Share Sheet, which takes the content and uses it as the “Shortcut Input” at the start of your shortcut.

This powerful tool allows Shortcuts users to initiate their shortcuts from inside other apps, allows users to interlink their apps and content together in their workflows, and provides a key use case that allows users to get a lot more value from learning how to build Shortcuts — here’s how to take advantage of the Share Sheet in your shortcuts:

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12 ways to get the most out of Shortcuts for iPhone

Yours truly for iMore:

The best automation is the one you have with you, and that means Shortcuts for iPhone is the biggest opportunity for people to take advantage of Apple’s automation platform.

When building Shortcuts for iPhone, users should try to think about automation opportunities that work well for a small screen, can be carried around with you, and take advantage of the device-specific features.

With that in mind, here are four areas (with 12 example shortcuts) that are good to focus on in your own adventure:

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Five apps Apple could automate to win over pro users

Yours truly for iMore:

Apple’s Shortcuts app is the best way to automate processes across its devices and develop professional workflows to get things done.

With iOS 16, Apple is adding many more actions for its own apps and improving its Shortcuts support with deep new actions. However, these updates have been limited to more everyday apps like Safari, Mail, and Reminders — but Apple’s pro-level apps haven’t received similar updates.

This piece covers five first-party apps that “pros” use to get their work done and some starter actions that Apple should add for each of them:

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Shortcuts gains powerful Find Tabs action for Safari, more in second public beta

Yours truly for iMore:

On Thursday, Apple released iOS 16 public beta 2, which includes a set of new actions for the Shortcuts app that work with Safari, Mail, and Reminders.

These actions include Find Tabs, Find Tab Groups, Find Bookmarks, Open Bookmarks, Find Reading Lists, Open Reading List Items, Search Mail, Open Mailbox, Open Smart List, Create Reminders List, and Search Reminders.

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Apple isn’t doing enough for new Shortcuts users — here’s how they can fix it

Yours truly for iMore:

When it comes Apple’s Shortcuts app, many new users are caught off guard. They hear about the potential, but the app is very complicated. When presented with a blank slate, many often don’t go further figuring it out.

For such an important app in Apple‘s ecosystem, the company needs to do a lot more to onboard first time Shortcuts users and get them familiar with the app and how to build in it. Here are three areas the company could improve on and why those matter for newbies:

Sometimes you need to call it like it is — I’ve written about some of these before, but I want to see a lot more so new users can get further quicker.

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Here are 7 ways to get started with Shortcuts for Apple Watch

Yours truly for iMore:

The Shortcuts app for Apple Watch is a small but powerful way to access the vast array of capabilities from the apps on your device, all from the convenience of a few taps on your wrist.

Some of the ways Shortcuts on Apple Watch can be most useful, however, are not immediately obvious — there’s a lot of potential in Shortcuts, but honing in on the best use cases and avoiding too much complexity is important for a good Watch-based experience.

This piece covers seven areas where you can build Shortcuts for Apple Watch that are worth exploring, have powerful actions to take advantage of, and work well when running from your favorite Apple Watch:

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14 Shortcuts for Safari Views, Tab Groups, and Focus Filters to use with iOS 16

Yours truly for iMore:

Safari has gained six actions of its own so far in the betas:

1. Open View
2. Open New Tab
3. Open New Private Tab
4. Create Tab Group
5. Open Tab Group
6. Set Safari Focus Filter

[…]

Currently only available for developers and public testers (but coming to everyone this fall), these actions are aimed at interacting with different “views” in Safari, plus creating tabs and doing basic Tab Group management.

 

To help you take full advantage of these, here are 14 shortcuts built out with each potential option across the actions so that you don’t have to build them yourself:

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iOS 16 public beta adds 46 new Shortcuts actions for Focus Filters, Background Removal, Parked Cars

Yours truly for iMore:

If you’re installing the public beta, developer beta, or just curious about the new features for Shortcuts coming to iOS 16, you’ll be glad to know that Apple added 46 new actions that add deeper access and advanced functionality to the Shortcuts ecosystem.

The main set of actions for Shortcuts focuses on Notes, Voice Memos, and Safari, plus Shortcuts itself. Additionally, Apple added new actions for Clock, Files, and Parked Cars, plus more for features like Focus Filters, Background Removal, and Personal Hotspot, and PDFs.

Here’s the full list of what’s new (so far) in the public betas:

As a follow to my post covering the full set of actions coming in iOS 16, I wrote about the current set in the public betas — actions for Books, Mail, and Reminders aren’t working, so I’ll be publishing a follow-up on iMore when they become available in future betas.

Also of note — almost none of these work on the Mac either (yet?).

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8 ways to get help from Apple Support using Shortcuts

Yours truly for iMore:

Apple’s Support resources are incredibly helpful when you’re running into issues, need to repair a device, or for learning more about how to use your devices.

With an entire Knowledge Base online, the Apple Support app, and their social media pages, there’s a lot of ways to access help pages, get direct support, and browse more to learn on your own — so here’s a set of shortcuts to help you do just that.

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