Category: Offsite

Welcome to Issue 48 of “What’s New in Shortcuts”!

Next week is official the iPhone event, with Apple sending out press invites for a September 14th keynote at 10 am. Folks on Twitter are speculating that iOS will release one day and one week later, on September 22nd, a day before reviews will drop and one day before iPhones begin arriving.

Hopefully that’s the case, although last year Apple dropped it the day after, so it could be September 15th – I certainly wouldn’t mind an extra week to polish my work up before everything drops though!

Welcome to Issue 11 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week, we’re nearing the end of the beta cycles, and the iOS 15 updates are almost upon us.

There’s still bugs to be ironed out in Shortcuts, and more clarity on what’ll happen with Shortcuts for Mac is needed with the amount of actions missing or troubles in the editor – but the community is raising their concerns, so hopefully Apple can jump on it.

This issue covers those concerns, plus some guides from the community, a handful of great shortcuts, some new member shortcuts for Shortcuts for Mac, and a spotlight on Wind Down shortcuts – here’s what’s new this week:

Welcome to Issue 46 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this one is packed with ideas!

I was blown away by what I found on Reddit this week and there’s at least 3 shortcuts that I’ll be integrating into my core workflow, alongside a whole set of great tips & tricks.

Plus, the folks from The Sweet Setup have a time-tracking guide, MacObserver has thoughts on what Shortcuts needs to add, and I interviewed Rosemary Orchard on her own show as a guest host.

And of course, MacStories had their big launch – I think anybody reading this newsletter should also be signed up for Club MacStories too.

All that and more – enjoy:

Welcome to Issue 45 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week we’ve got good examples from the subreddit, new app shortcuts to dig into, and some Feedback for Apple to review.

Thankfully, we also got iOS 15 beta 6, which resolved some of the nagging issues in Shortcuts – it’s much more feasible to use it for daily work right now.

But of course, some actions started randomly failing—such as Post to WordPress, which is core to my workflow—so this week I continued with my meta work, and streamed with Jason Snell to post directly to WordPress using XML-RPC.

We’ve got all that and more – enjoy:

Welcome to Issue 44 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – I’ve returned after a week off and am back at it again!

This week we got a new beta, but it’s a bit rocky still – I’m seeing slowdowns, missing Apple Watch actions, and tweaks to permissions mean beta users have to reauthorize every step yet again.

But there’s still more to learn thanks to a handful of podcasts that’ve come out the last few weeks – and there’s some big changes to the Shortcuts Catalog I want to tease:

Welcome to Issue 43 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – this week we saw developer beta 4 and another public beta, bringing a new action to Shortcuts, a new feature, and stability improvements.

Plus, the newsletter finishes off with a set of Power automations, both with full screenshots and linked shortcuts you can copy yourself.

But before we get into everything, a programming note – I’m out next week on vacation, so I won’t be sending an issue next Friday, August 6th. After that, I’ll be returning to the normal schedule on August 13th.

Until then, here’s what’s new this week:

This week, I spent a lot of effort furthering my Home Screens – and I think I got to a pretty good place to write things up soon.

I also spent my time researching Shortcuts for Mac, building out Apple TV shortcuts, and working ahead on some new guides for the future.

Otherwise, there’s lot’s to share this week – let’s dig in:

Welcome to Issue 41 of “What’s New in Shortcuts”!

This week we saw the release of developer and public beta 3, which has brought some overall stability to iOS, but unfortunately more bugs in Shortcuts as well.

Read on for my set of free shortcuts, new member shortcuts, feedback I’ve submitted to Apple, more apps adding Shortcuts support, new automation ideas, and a spotlight on cross-platform actions with a note from the Things team – lots to enjoy this week:

Welcome to Issue 40 of “What’s new in Shortcuts” – and to mid-summer!

With the public betas out last week and another developer beta still on the way, we’re in between the latest features and fixes for common bugs – but this time I’ve pushed through the issues and made some new shortcuts for all you folks.

Plus, I discovered a handful of actions for Apple Watch and Files that I’d missed – read on to get all the details:

Welcome to Issue #39 of “What’s New in Shortcuts” – the public betas are out!

The brave-hearted can sign up here on Apple’s website, but be cautious as there are many Shortcuts-related bugs specifically that you are almost guaranteed to run into.

That being said, the more Feedback filed to Apple, the merrier we’ll be with a fully-operational version of Shortcuts – I’m submitting my own regularly, so I hope you are too.

Along with that, I’ve got a lot of links to share, updates on more Mac apps getting Shortcuts support, and a preview of how Mac users can script Shortcuts itself:

Welcome to Issue #38 of “Welcome New in Shortcuts”!

We’re now two weeks out of WWDC and, with the second developer beta now out, there’s plenty to learn about Shortcuts before the public betas come out in July.

This week, I’ve got a new interview, tons of information about Shortcuts for Mac, great ideas from r/Shortcuts, more podcast coverage, tweets about the betas from Ticci, and one previously unknown feature coming to the Mac:

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Welcome to “What’s New in Shortcuts?” Issue 1 of the iOS 15 season!

Before we dive in to all the exciting changes announced at Apple’s WWDC, some housekeeping:

• First, I wasn’t able to send one of the previous week’s newsletter as I was travelling to visit my family – if you can take time off to be with family once you’re vaccinated, I highly recommend it.
• Second, I have moved my newsletter to Revue, hence the design changes and subsequent delay this last WWDC week (I foolishly waited until the last minute to import my subscribers and they put my account under review for the weekend).
• Third, the newsletter will be send out regularly on Fridays starting June 25th as well – I’ve experimented with multiple schedules and think this will work best along the changes to the Shortcuts User Group (more below).

And finally, thanks for reading!

I love sharing what’s happening with Shortcuts, passing along everything new I’m creating for the Catalog and Membership, and hearing from readers about what you’re learning – I hope you get something useful from it every week.

With all that said, here’s everything you need to know about Shortcuts coming out of Apple’s annual developer keynote – let’s dig in: