Is Shortcuts really that useful?

[RustyFox]

I feel like I'm missing something with Shortcuts. I want to come up with things that work for me, but I never seem to find anything.

At the moment, all I have set up is one for adding a new To Do in Things, and one for setting the screen brightness to 25%.

I can't see anywhere else where it would actually save me much time etc, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not into home automation so that's all out for me. I'm talking real world simple examples.

One use I thought of is having one for taking me straight to the 'enter your weight' page in MyFitnessPal, but I can't seem to figure that out.

 

[Sital]

I have shortcuts to find family members in Find My Friends, but that's all the use I found for Shortcuts. Even then, I have the FMF widget in notification center which is even faster to access.

 

[Abazigal]

I feel like I'm missing something with Shortcuts. I want to come up with things that work for me, but I never seem to find anything.

At the moment, all I have set up is one for adding a new To Do in Things, and one for setting the screen brightness to 25%.

I can't see anywhere else where it would actually save me much time etc, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not into home automation so that's all out for me. I'm talking real world simple examples.

One use I thought of is having one for taking me straight to the 'enter your weight' page in MyFitnessPal, but I can't seem to figure that out.

Going by my personal experience, I downloaded the shortcuts app back when it was still "workflow" and the developers charged $3 for it. I played around with it for a day or so, then forgot about it. While Macstories was an ardent fan, I just couldn't find a use for it, and the programming-like manner in which I had to go about automating tasks was just too steep a learning curve to me at the time.

Then about two years later (yes, that long), something just clicked and I played around with it some and successfully made a few workflows. I haven't really created any new ones of late, but I am still using the ones I created (and they have since paid for themselves many times over).

I find that in order to find value in the app, you need to enter what I call an "automator's mindset". This app really only works when you find yourself having to perform the same task over and over again (else, the effort that you have to invest to make a complicated workflow work makes no sense if you are going to use it only once or twice), and even so, you have first be aware that you are in fact performing said task repetitively, and have a desire to streamline it.

Some simple workflows I have created are designed to launch me straight into sections which can be more cumbersome to access, such as the music and chill mix sections of Apple Music, and the app updates and subscriptions pages for the App Store app, since they just require you to paste the appropriate link in safari. I have also created a workflow to convert HEIF photos to JPG, and a few more work-specific workflows that apply to my work as a teacher.

So I guess the first thing you need to do (and which you probably won't be able to answer right away) is to identify what small tasks you perform on a regular basis. For instance, do you find yourself texting someone the same few messages (or could they be the same few texts?), or firing off a rather templated or similar email weekly? Then work on seeing how you can replicate the process in shortcuts.

The initial step is always the hardest, and it may not always pay off, but it can be a fun use of an afternoon here or there.

Here's a good repository to get you started.

MacStories

Apple news, app reviews, and stories by Federico Viticci and friends.

www.macstories.net

 

[bransoj]

Its one of those things that is very useful if you have a reason to use it. I have a few but the main ones i use are :-

One that takes the screenshots in my photos and let me delete them all out
One that lets me bulk delete photos by selecting the ones i want to get rid of
Main one is one that lets me select either my home or my wifes work address, works out the travel time and texts her when i will arrive and then fires up Apple Maps with directions to that address loaded. Mainly used when i'm leaving work to collect her from work on the way home.

 

[RustyFox]

Going by my personal experience, I downloaded the shortcuts app back when it was still "workflow" and the developers charged $3 for it. I played around with it for a day or so, then forgot about it. While Macstories was an ardent fan, I just couldn't find a use for it, and the programming-like manner in which I had to go about automating tasks was just too steep a learning curve to me at the time.

Then about two years later (yes, that long), something just clicked and I played around with it some and successfully made a few workflows. I haven't really created any new ones of late, but I am still using the ones I created (and they have since paid for themselves many times over).

I find that in order to find value in the app, you need to enter what I call an "automator's mindset". This app really only works when you find yourself having to perform the same task over and over again (else, the effort that you have to invest to make a complicated workflow work makes no sense if you are going to use it only once or twice), and even so, you have first be aware that you are in fact performing said task repetitively, and have a desire to streamline it.

Some simple workflows I have created are designed to launch me straight into sections which can be more cumbersome to access, such as the music and chill mix sections of Apple Music, and the app updates and subscriptions pages for the App Store app, since they just require you to paste the appropriate link in safari. I have also created a workflow to convert HEIF photos to JPG, and a few more work-specific workflows that apply to my work as a teacher.

So I guess the first thing you need to do (and which you probably won't be able to answer right away) is to identify what small tasks you perform on a regular basis. For instance, do you find yourself texting someone the same few messages (or could they be the same few texts?), or firing off a rather templated or similar email weekly? Then work on seeing how you can replicate the process in shortcuts.

The initial step is always the hardest, and it may not always pay off, but it can be a fun use of an afternoon here or there.

Here's a good repository to get you started.

MacStories

Apple news, app reviews, and stories by Federico Viticci and friends.

www.macstories.net

Some interesting points there, thanks. I guess that's kind of how I ended up adding mine to create a new task in Things - I realised I'm constantly unlocking my phone, opening Things, tapping to add task when actually I can swipe to the widget from the lockscreen and press one button.

From there I struggle though. I add my weight to MyFitnessPal every morning, but can't seem to make that work with Shortcuts. Other than that I don't know what I'd automate.

 

[Abazigal]

Some interesting points there, thanks. I guess that's kind of how I ended up adding mine to create a new task in Things - I realised I'm constantly unlocking my phone, opening Things, tapping to add task when actually I can swipe to the widget from the lockscreen and press one button.

From there I struggle though. I add my weight to MyFitnessPal every morning, but can't seem to make that work with Shortcuts. Other than that I don't know what I'd automate.

Don’t force yourself to come up with shortcuts if you can’t think of any at the moment, though I t might be useful to play around with it for a while to get a general idea of its capabilities (you can check the gallery for some samples) so you have a better idea of what you can do with it (should the need arise) and what you can’t.

 

[Super Spartan]

I feel like I'm missing something with Shortcuts. I want to come up with things that work for me, but I never seem to find anything.

At the moment, all I have set up is one for adding a new To Do in Things, and one for setting the screen brightness to 25%.

I can't see anywhere else where it would actually save me much time etc, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not into home automation so that's all out for me. I'm talking real world simple examples.

One use I thought of is having one for taking me straight to the 'enter your weight' page in MyFitnessPal, but I can't seem to figure that out.

I saw a video on YouTube about it once and never bothered, nothing in it interests me. I would rather do things myself. To each his own.

 

[djr7572]

Funny, someone brought this up, as I was thinking about asking the same question.

I’ve got the Shortcuts app downloaded as well, but have yet to really find a need for it. I was feeling like I was missing out on something, too!

I’m always looking for a reason or a need to dive into Shortcuts, but just haven’t found one yet.

 

[stephenschimpf]

I wake up in the middle of the night, and rather than getting up and looking at my iPhone, I simply say:

"Hey Siri, what's my glucose?"

and out in the living room Siri's voice comes from my HomePods and says:

"You're 104 and steady."

That's really neat, and very useful to me!

 

[bushman4]

Shortcuts could be very useful if Apple thoroughly explained it
It’s NOT self intuitive.

 

[now i see it]

Where AppleScript on the Mac was a really really useful tool once you learned how to use it (which I did years ago and depended on it for my job) Workflow (now called "Shortcuts" I found to be virtually useless for anything I wanted to do. I deleted the app after fiddling around with it for a while. To me, it's waaaay too limited to really be useful (for me)

 

[NoBoMac]

Don’t force yourself to come up with shortcuts if you can’t think of any at the moment, though I t might be useful to play around with it for a while to get a general idea of its capabilities (you can check the gallery for some samples) so you have a better idea of what you can do with it (should the need arise) and what you can’t.

This.

Overall, I'm pretty "meh" about Shortcuts, as there are not a lot of things I do on iDevices that need automation. Ie. not sending a text of "on my way home" to SO, turn on Maps, start music player in car, etc when leaving work. No Home automations. Not turning off cellular data when on wifi. And so on. And Automations have been really hit/miss for me.

But, after playing with it a bit, it has provided a couple of useful things that might not be doable or easily doable without Shortcuts.

• I was having an issue of Reminders not alerting. Turns out some of them lost their alert fields (think it was due to a 3rd party app I use and how I use Reminders). Made a Shortcut to find the reminders without an alert set and reset to what it should be (that info was still intact in the due date field).
• Whipped up a Shortcut for a relative to extract pictures from a PDF and save to Photos.
• Whipped up for me a Shortcut to extract text from a PDF and save it to the clipboard.
• When using iPhone as a scanner (from Photos and or Notes), save results as a PDF to my Dropbox and name the file as a timestamp (yyyy-mm-dd.pdf).
• Pill reminder: create Reminders for every X hours since first dose for the day.

So, dig around Shortcuts a bit, and you might run into a situation where it might prove of some use.

 

[drunkmouth]

I've got a few set up. For example when I connect to my car's Bluetooth (after 5pm on a Mon-Fri) it'll lower the brightness slightly, start navigation to my home address, play my selected driving playlist.

 

[nfl46]

Very useful to me. I mainly use it to save pictures and videos off of Instagram.

 

[JackyWood]

Shortcuts could be very useful if Apple thoroughly explained it
It’s NOT self intuitive.

Shortcuts is more sincerely to programmer. If you want to do some repetitive work automate on compute, just write a script. You can't run script on iOS, so shortcuts is a substitute.
Shortcuts is a way of thinking, Apple can't explain it easily to the peoples who don't think in that way.

 

[Jessica Lares]

It has an app support problem. It should be that you can use one or two actions to do the things that you want, like the way they demoed it at WWDC the first time. Most questions I see are about making shortcuts that work in that way. The Sweet Setup just posted an article on shortcuts that use one action even.

15 One-Action Shortcuts to Make Your Life Easier – The Sweet Setup

Shortcuts is a wonderful app, but it can also be overwhelming. Today, I'm going to show you 15 one-action Shortcuts you can create, and let's be honest — with one action, there's not a lot of work for you to do!

thesweetsetup.com

People want to use the apps they already know how to use though.

 

[Super Spartan]

Very useful to me. I mainly use it to save pictures and videos off of Instagram.

and how would you do that?

 

[nfl46]

and how would you do that?

I use SMD.

SMD 4.0.3 - Siri Shortcuts

social media downloader for youtube twitter instagram and instagram posts, videos etc. work for all of the social media links

shortcutsgallery.com

Once downloaded, go to the Instagram post, hit the three little dots to copy the link, then click on the SMD shortcut and it will download and give you the option to save to your photos app.

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

It‘s better now that it predicts things I might want (like adding a new line to a numbers spreadsheet I use often). Saves a little time.

I’ve also made one that toggles mouse connection, which is cool.

 

[Soybomb]

Everytime I think I’ve found something to do with it, I’ve found out it can’t do that. last week I thought a way to quickly my iPad grab the airpods Connection would be handy.

 

[LizKat]

Don’t force yourself to come up with shortcuts if you can’t think of any at the moment, though I t might be useful to play around with it for a while to get a general idea of its capabilities (you can check the gallery for some samples) so you have a better idea of what you can do with it (should the need arise) and what you can’t.

Yah it's a good idea to start noticing stuff you realize you do "all the time" and get impatient with, then take that list to the how-to-use and see if those tasks can be made less annoying with a shortcut.