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What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #078

Welcome to Issue 78 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — did you order an iPhone too?

After this week’s keynote, I opted for a black iPhone 14 Pro and upped my storage to 1TB (in case of video), plus put in an order for AirPods Pro 2 to replace my aging set — and I’m still thinking about getting an Apple Watch Ultra in-store at launch… (you’ll know why in a moment).

Now, iOS 16 is all set to release on Monday and I’ll be going wild over all the new App Shortcuts & more-powerful Shortcuts actions — I can’t wait to try everything out once they hit the App Store in full.

Plus, I’m super excited to put out my set of iOS 16 shortcuts, start in on covering this year’s new opportunities, and get back to YouTube videos now that I’m fully settled in my new apartment — until then, here’s what new this week:

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #078”
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iMore Offsite

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.

Read the full article on iMore.

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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #077

Welcome to Issue 77 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — we’re just a few days away from the iPhone event and likely only a few more until iOS 16 after that.

That means a whole new season of Shortcuts is almost upon us, with new opportunities for native actions, third-party apps, and deeper integrations all around.

I’m getting super excited to release my iPhone shortcuts first, then iPad and Mac once those OS updates come out in October — and some long-awaited member projects ?

If you’re in the U.S., I hope you’re enjoying your long Labor Day weekend — here’s what’s new in Shortcuts to finish off the summer:

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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full article on iMore.

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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full article on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #076

Welcome to Issue 76 of “What’s New in Shortcuts!”

I took last week off after moving into a new apartment all week took longer than expected, and this week Apple announced their iPhone event coming September 7th.

That means we’re in the last two weeks of the iOS beta cycle—with iPadOS and macOS Ventura coming later—so we’re in the final stretch before the new OS features get released.

I’ve got a set of iOS 16 shortcuts for iPhone waiting, plus more on the way once the iPad and Mac are released, so I’m excited to get those into people’s hands. Plus, I’ve got a new set of member shortcuts in production — I’m pumped for this release!

Until then, here’s what’s new in Shortcuts these last two weeks:

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #076”
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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full story on iMore.

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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full story on iMore.

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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #075

Welcome to Issue 75 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — we’re probably a month or so away from iOS 16 and the App Shortcuts scene is starting to heat up!

In this issue, I linked to a few new apps with Shortcuts support you should check out, I got fantastic ideas around automation from my stream with Rosemary Orchard and the Twitter community, and I published two stories about using Shortcuts from the Share Sheet and on the iPad you can read on iMore.

Plus, Shane Whatley shared a great NFC automation trick for AirTags, and John Voorhees shared a tip Mac users will want to know for their scripting shortcuts — here’s what’s new this week:

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #075”
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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full story on iMore.

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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #074

Welcome to Issue 74 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” — this week I shared my Pro Apps Shortcuts Wishlist, how to best use Shortcuts on iPhone, and worked off the CardPointers’ developer’s tweets to explain how App Shortcuts in iOS 16 will look.

Eve also updated their Motion sensor to add luminosity-based Home Automations, a new Playpen app for parents launched in beta, and your NATO alphabet needs just got resolved.

Plus, I’m livestreaming with Rosemary Orchard this Friday — you should join us Friday for the stream.

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #074”
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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Livestreams Offsite

Shortcuts Live with special guest Rosemary Orchard

Join me and special guest Rosemary Orchard on Friday, August 12th at 10am PST to talk everything Shortcuts, especially her recently-updated book Take Control of Shortcuts (2nd edition).

Rosemary is the cohost of Automators on Relay FM with David Sparks, iOS Today on TWiT with Mikah Sargent, and her independent show Nested Folders with Scotty Jackson — she has a depth of knowledge about automation, smart homes, productivity, development, and everything in-between.

Come say hi in the chat and ask us questions as we talk all about Shortcuts!

Get notified here when the stream goes live.

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iMore Offsite

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:

Read the full story on iMore.

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Newsletter

What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #073

Welcome to Issue 73 of “What’s New in Shortcuts”!

This week we saw the second Public Beta of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS — which meant an awesome new Shortcuts action called Find Tabs for Safari, plus more for Mail and Reminders too.

I streamed for over an hour as I played around with the new actions, so make sure to jump through the chapters and see what we built off the chat’s ideas.

I also published a few strong opinions on iMore, Rosemary released her second edition of Take Control of Shortcuts, and I learned about a new Easter egg in the Shortcuts app…

Continue reading “What’s New in Shortcuts – Issue #073”
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iMore Offsite

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.

Read the full story on iMore.

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iMore Offsite

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.

Read the full story on iMore.