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…

* * *

? New from the blog

On Wednesday, I published my latest opinion column for iMore that talks about how new users need a more powerful onboarding experience to really get into the app.

John Voorhees agreed on MacStories as well, saying this:

Shortcuts has made a lot of progress over the past few years, especially when it comes to meeting experienced users’ needs. Now would be a good time to focus on bringing new users into the fold.

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

For such an important app, Apple 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

On Thursday, I did my first beta stream that works with the new Find Tab actions in Safari — I’m super excited to finally be able to work with all my tabs in Shortcuts.

We covered a lot of the basics (and what doesn’t work in the current beta), and I’ll be streaming again to work out some deeper ideas soon — but check out the chapters in the stream & save it before it moves to members-only after this week:

Shortcuts Live: Working with Safari Tabs in iOS 16 Public Beta 2 Shortcuts Live: Working with Safari Tabs in iOS 16 Public Beta 2 — matthewcassinelli.com

Tune into the latest episode of Shortcuts Live, where I streamed for a little over an hour covering the new Find Tab action that I discovered in iOS 16 public beta 2.

I also followed up the stream with my Saturday Shortcuts piece covering the new actions in Safari, Mail, and Reminders — I’ve also updated my iOS 16 actions post with the new actions too:

Shortcuts gains powerful Find Tabs action for Safari, more in second public beta Shortcuts gains powerful Find Tabs action for Safari, more in second public beta — matthewcassinelli.com

In my piece for iMore on iOS 16 public beta 2, I covered the new set of actions for Shortcuts that work with Safari, Mail, and Reminders.

On Friday, I admittedly got frustrated and wrote it out, because I’m basically constantly concerned when I livestream that Shortcuts is going to expose my personal data. I know this problem affects multiple other Shortcuts creators too, so I hope Apple makes these specific changes:

Shortcuts shows too much personal information and that needs to change Shortcuts shows too much personal information and that needs to change — matthewcassinelli.com

I am writing this post because I am frustrated with the fact that Shortcuts shows personally identifiable information about me when live-streaming about the app, when Apple could easily change the interface to show the same information without exposing me and my girlfriend to personal safety problems.

? Links of the week

On Friday, Rosemary Orchard released the 2nd edition of “Take Control of Shortcuts,” her guide to everything Shortcuts that now includes Shortcuts for Mac along with the iOS 15 updates — and as I mentioned on the link on my blog, it’ll be updated for iOS 16 too.

Rose is amazing and you should definitely buy her book:

Take Control of Shortcuts – Take Control Books Take Control of Shortcuts – Take Control Books — www.takecontrolbooks.com

This book shows you how to use Shortcuts, a powerful app available on iPhones, iPads, and Macs that lets you perform sequences of tasks with just one tap or click. It covers how to run, build, install, and sync shortcuts and includes step-by-step recipes for creating many useful shortcuts yourself.

The folks at Routine Hub, the shortcuts-sharing website, has been publishing some great blog posts with shortcuts shared on their platform — I need to dig deeper into the Discord ones myself:

4 Apple Shortcuts for Photos that are Really Useful 4 Apple Shortcuts for Photos that are Really Useful — blog.routinehub.co

Useful Shortcuts to create your own GIFs, convert image formats, set frames, and more!

Top Apple Shortcuts For Discord power users Top Apple Shortcuts For Discord power users — blog.routinehub.co

These shortcuts have quite useful functions for advanced Discord users.

? Tweets of the week

My friend Brian Hamilton posted the funny shortcut below that plays off this Twitter meme for spotting titular characters in your favorite media:

Dan Seifert, Deputy Editor at The Verge, shared a series of tweets this week about his Shortcuts setup — I’ve seen him tweeting about Shortcuts from time-to-time and these are all good points:

Ambas shared this pomodoro setup for macOS 13 — this kind of thing will be great for the Menu Bar when Ventura comes out:

I saw this great exchange from two users who’ve replaced many of their Alexa devices with Shortcuts that work directly with their apps — I’ve seen the opposite of this as a route for non-HomeKit devices to work with Siri, but it makes sense that this would work with most Alexa/Google Assistant devices too.

Maybe I need to do some more exploring there…

That’s all for this week!

Next week will be an in-between week for betas, so there’ll likely be no Apple news about Shortcuts — but that means it’s just time for the rest of us to build and share our ideas.

I’m looking forward to what’s in store for August… see you next Sunday!

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