Message sent to myself via Shortcuts action does not show as a new message notification on other devices. Any tips or workarounds?

[BigBlur]

When a message is sent to myself via a Shortcuts action, the new message notification does not show up on my other devices, presumably since it's sent to me from me (or that it showed up on the device that sent it, even if it was sleeping at the time). Are there any tips or workarounds for this behavior? I'm basically looking for a way to notify me on my devices when something is triggered on another device.

For more context, I want to get a notification on my iPhone when my iPad is done charging. On my iPad, I created a simple automation that sends me a message when the battery level hits 100%. Perfect, just what I need...the iPad will be sleeping and the new message notification should pop-up on my iPhone (and Mac), right? Well, not so fast. The new message notification actually doesn't show up on my other devices even though they receive the message.

So then I created an automation on my iPhone to run the notification action when I receive a text from me containing the certain words. This works, but still not quite what I had in mind. Now I'll get a notification on my iPhone asking me if I want to run the automation which then shows me the notification. Unfortunately, there is no option to not ask before running when using this trigger. I suppose I could replace the notification action with some other dummy action since I don't really need that second notification, but that still feels somewhat half-assed. Yes, I get a notification when it's done charging, but it's to ask me if I want to run an automation instead of just stating that it's charged.

Are there any other methods or tips/tricks I could try that might be a little more elegant?

 

[adrianlondon]

Could you get it to send yourself an email or iMessage?

I don't know if Shortcuts can do either of those without you having to respond to it, but it'd be worth trying.

 

[reppans]

How about an automation on iPhone:

When: ‘receiving message from me’

Do: ‘start timer for 2 seconds’

But you’ll need to have the iPhone with you to turn the timer alarm off.

 

[BigBlur]

Could you get it to send yourself an email or iMessage?

I don't know if Shortcuts can do either of those without you having to respond to it, but it'd be worth trying.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing. I should have clarified in my original post, but my iPad is sending me an iMessage when the battery hits 100%. I just used "message" since that's how it's worded in the app, which could be an iMessage or SMS depending on the recipient. This is all automatic and no interaction is needed to send it. It's just too bad that Messages doesn't push out a notification when the iMessage is received.

I just tried the email action. It looked promising when testing the action manually, but it turns out that it doesn't work automatically. Apparently we need to "Tap to respond" in order to send emails when the screen is locked. It seems odd that no interaction is needed to send an iMessage/SMS automatically, but one is needed to send an email. There is always a hiccup...

How about an automation on iPhone:

When: ‘receiving message from me’

Do: ‘start timer for 2 seconds’

But you’ll need to have the iPhone with you to turn the timer alarm off.

This is basically similar to what I originally intended to do by showing a notification as the Do action. I found that the Do action is redundant for what I'm trying to do though. When the receive message trigger is hit, I get a notification from the Shortcuts app stating "When I Get a Message Containing 'iPad is charged' From BigBlur" and a button to run the action. Since I get this notification from the Shortcuts app, I already know the iPad is charged so there's no need to do anything else. I ended up using the Nothing action since I cannot have this particular automation run without asking. I guess it works for my needs, but it just feels a little awkwardly done with the oddly worded notification and having to run "nothing".

 

[reppans]

Yup, it’s redundant… in my case though, my phone is carried in a belt clip/holster, so I wouldn’t see the notification, unless I were actually using it. The timer alarm gives me the haptic and audio feedback.

FWIW, unplugging your iPad before 100% will increase the batteries life, and can be automated with a $10 smart plug.

 

[BigBlur]

Yup, it’s redundant… in my case though, my phone is carried in a belt clip/holster, so I wouldn’t see the notification, unless I were actually using it. The timer alarm gives me the haptic and audio feedback.

FWIW, unplugging your iPad before 100% will increase the batteries life, and can be automated with a $10 smart plug.

Right, but the 'when I receive a message' automation can't run automatically without asking...so I would have to tap Run for it to start the timer. Or I'm missing something here?

 

[SaguaroSeven]

Came across this thread looking for a solution myself. Thanks to a redditor, I found a way to do this with Scriptable [free] or ToolBox Pro [paid]. Using personal automation + one of these apps will generate a real notification when you message yourself. Both apps have their own notification structure. Toolbox Pro is more obvious. Below is how to do it with Scripable shortcut....

Note: I had to use "whenever I receive a message containing <text>" to get this to work. Just recieving a message from myself didn't seem to work correctly.

 

[BigBlur]

I was just looking into this again the other day, and came up with my own trick for this issue. I forgot I had created this thread, so here's my update...

I created a focus mode, and made sure my settings are set to sync the focus mode across my devices. So on the triggering device, I have a personal automation to set this focus mode when my condition is met. On the receiving device, I have a personal automation to run whenever that focus mode is turned on (synced). This then turns the focus mode back off and does my stuff (show a notification).

I rarely use focus modes so this "hack" works for me. If you use focus modes regularly, then this probably won't work so well. It would be tricky to know what focus mode to set it back to instead of just turning it off. (You'll also need iOS 15. This isn't possible with iOS 14, where this thread was posted when I was trying to solve this issue 6+ months ago.)