iPhone iOS 13's all-new built-in shortcuts strategy

[FireFish]

I'm a big fan of SHORTCUTS, ever since it first launched before Apple even bought the company.
Since then, Apple has integrated them all-thru iOS by having 'shortcuts' show up as the first icon when hitting the SHARE arrow for anything. That shortcuts icon (when clicked) would allow you to select any subroutine to run thru.

Fast forward to iOS 13, and Apple has deconstructed the SHORTCUTS app by making those subroutines available outside of the SHORTCUTS app. This really screwed up their simplistic UI design and I guarantee will hear and see tremendous pushback.

 

[spudWorks]

I think Shortcuts/Workflow is neat but without more baked in useful workflows and a more obvious way to use them, I don't really see it taking off for the average person.

I wrote my own, more out of curiosity than anything, to take a piece of text in all caps, and then headline case it. I did this because I write my German class notes in Nebo MyScript and the way I write it all gets interpreted as uppercase letters (I'm a savage without good penmenship). German, though, capitalizes nouns and other random things (look at the capitalization in the Constitution and you start to get the idea). The idea was to make my short text samples more ready for sending before-hand.

I then added the ability to select the capitalization as an option and... it's neat!

But I'm a programer by trade and messing around with a simple utility was fun. I have a hard time seeing my dad or aunt who also use iPads messing around with it though. If it was as simple as "Dad, look for this and use it like that" then... maybe? But it's still a hidden feature beneath the Share menu that they'd never look for.

And, from a programer's point of view, it's okay to chain actions across apps and take advantage of some built in functions but I had no way to customize what is capitalized and what isn't (like, say, an exclusion list). I used what was available or I basically needed to write my own app to do it through an x-url scheme... which is fine for me but... most people don't have developer accounts to side-load their own utility apps.

I think it's like Automater on MacOS. It's great if you know what you're doing and you want to stop doing a repetitive task. But, if you're the 99% of people who use Macs, it's one of the apps you just never open much less try. Most people don't even want to know about the terminal much less understand regex or logic flow or, really, anything else.

 

[Paddle1]

I didn't even notice you could run shortcuts from the share sheet. I'm sure many others don't either. The button was all the way at the back for me.

 

[Skoal]

I think Shortcuts/Workflow is neat but without more baked in useful workflows and a more obvious way to use them, I don't really see it taking off for the average person.

I wrote my own, more out of curiosity than anything, to take a piece of text in all caps, and then headline case it. I did this because I write my German class notes in Nebo MyScript and the way I write it all gets interpreted as uppercase letters (I'm a savage without good penmenship). German, though, capitalizes nouns and other random things (look at the capitalization in the Constitution and you start to get the idea). The idea was to make my short text samples more ready for sending before-hand.

I then added the ability to select the capitalization as an option and... it's neat!

But I'm a programer by trade and messing around with a simple utility was fun. I have a hard time seeing my dad or aunt who also use iPads messing around with it though. If it was as simple as "Dad, look for this and use it like that" then... maybe? But it's still a hidden feature beneath the Share menu that they'd never look for.

And, from a programer's point of view, it's okay to chain actions across apps and take advantage of some built in functions but I had no way to customize what is capitalized and what isn't (like, say, an exclusion list). I used what was available or I basically needed to write my own app to do it through an x-url scheme... which is fine for me but... most people don't have developer accounts to side-load their own utility apps.

I think it's like Automater on MacOS. It's great if you know what you're doing and you want to stop doing a repetitive task. But, if you're the 99% of people who use Macs, it's one of the apps you just never open much less try. Most people don't even want to know about the terminal much less understand regex or logic flow or, really, anything else.

I’m no coding wizard by far but I do love poking around and using everything ios has to offer and I still don’t find myself using shortcuts. To me it’s like swiping right for widgets. It’s cool they’re there but I just never use them. I think it comes down to the fact I’ve used ios one way for so long I’m not bothering to add another way of doing things. Same goes for 3D Touch etc. I need to force myself to use these options and I’m not sure I do enough repetitive tasks on the phone that would warrant me creating a shortcut.

 

[spudWorks]

I’m no coding wizard by far but I do love poking around and using everything ios has to offer and I still don’t find myself using shortcuts. To me it’s like swiping right for widgets. It’s cool they’re there but I just never use them. I think it comes down to the fact I’ve used ios one way for so long I’m not bothering to add another way of doing things. Same goes for 3D Touch etc. I need to force myself to use these options and I’m not sure I do enough repetitive tasks on the phone that would warrant me creating a shortcut.

I hear you. I'm the exact same way. Never use 3D touch, just mess around with Workflows. I do use widgets a bit more and think they'll be way more important now with iPadOS featuring them on the home screen but it's tough to imagine an iPhone user that doesn't already use them getting excited about them suddenly.