If an app supports handoff it pretty much gets Siri shortcuts for free, so there will be a lot of support out of the gate.
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Will many people use the Shortcuts app?
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Seriously? Do people really create workflows for driving home from work (call my roommate, lower the thermostat, turn on the fan, map my trip home)? Doubtful. It looks to me like a solution in search of a problem.
No, I’m not talking about the macro-like actions, as you describe. I’m talking about the suggested actions that will be like current Siri Suggestions, but open to all apps, and not just payments, ridesharing, etc... These have the potential to turn Siri into almost a wrapper for much of the iPhone experience. Instead of 5 or so steps to order my Starbucks' coffee, as now, I will only need to say “order my coffee” and I’m done. This obviously works best with routine, frequently repeated actions, which is why, I think, they are giving it the possibility of Workflow-style multistep workflows. But, from watching the WWDC presentations on this, the emphasis is much more on opening Siri up to the greater app-verse than it is on the multi step actions.
Yes.
My personal feeling is both major OS'es (and Amazon) are aiming towards a future where they are the front end for much, if not all, of the user experience. Apps will become more like Alexa skills, generating or fetching the content, but Siri/Alexa/Google Assistant will be the ones requesting it and then delivering it to your digital doorstep.
There will be much resistance to this from app developers, who run the risk of being marginalized in the process. But the upside, eventually, may be not needing an app on your phone for every food chain, pharmacy, hotel chain, retailer you patronize in order to do the things people do routinely on their mobile devices.
The downside, of course, is the risk of Apple/Google/Amazon moderating your experience, which could lead to a distinct lack of innovation and, at worst, lock-ins with particular vendors who have struck deals with these companies to be preferred or exclusive suppliers to their users.
Thanks for all the great info!
This part is definitely the feature that would appeal to me the most! (Love the idea of concatenating commands into a macro! Have been wanting to do that for so dang long!) If this is finally going to be a reality, I'm so freaking there! Did they say whether this will be just for iPhone X users, or will this one be available to absolutely any device on iOS?
I absolutely will. Get in the car, activate Siri through CarPlay and say "I'm going home" then it texts my wife I'm leaving, opens up Waze on CarPlay (can't wait for this) and starts the nav, and starts my Spotify playlist.
I will literally use this every day and can't wait
Federico Viticci does a deep dive on shortcuts and the shortcuts app.
https://www.macstories.net/stories/shortcuts-a-new-vision-for-siri-and-ios-automation/
https://www.macstories.net/stories/shortcuts-a-new-vision-for-siri-and-ios-automation/
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I'm so glad you said that! (while I can't see any technological reason why it wouldn't have been on all devices that share the same iOS version, I know what Apple' can be like sometimes!) They have been known in the past to lock certain features down to only people with newer models, to make you buy the phone. (Even daft little tings like the shortcuts for emoji keyboards don't work on older ones, but do on iPhones past a certain date) There have been a bunch more stuff like that, which only iPhone X got that 6's and 7's didn't etc (So I wouldn't have put it past them)
But I'm so glad that this one's coming to all of them for this one! Pretty sure all of mine will support iOS 12
What do you think about all the new VR emoji things they're bringing out?
Here's to hoping that Siri Shortcuts can become really powerful in the future, perhaps something akin to AppleScript.
I use Stringify and IFTTT to do many of these things now. Even better than telling Siri that I’m leaving work, my flows and applets know I have left work. In my office suite, I have several lamps, a television, and one of those smell good warmers. When I leave the office those all turn off. I get a text message that gives me the shortest route for my commute. It texts my daughter with an expected time that I will pick her up. It sets my home thermostat to start cooling.
What I’d like Apple shortcuts to do is allow me to integrate these things but instead of a text message, open maps with the route, and start a podcast. I use Carplay so this would be excellent integration.
I’ve been playing around with shortcuts extenively with my own apps. Pretty nice. Two points:
1) the beta is very buggy re: shortcut features. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work for days at a time.
2) an app can’t receive parameters into its siri shortcuts. In other words, say you have an app that can display chapters from a book. You can’t create a short cut like “show me chapter ___.” Siri won’t pass the chapter number to the app. Instead you must create shortcuts like “show me chapter one” and “show me chapter two.” And for each one, the user has to record the voice trigger separately.
Maybe that’ll be resolved in iOS13.
1) the beta is very buggy re: shortcut features. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work for days at a time.
2) an app can’t receive parameters into its siri shortcuts. In other words, say you have an app that can display chapters from a book. You can’t create a short cut like “show me chapter ___.” Siri won’t pass the chapter number to the app. Instead you must create shortcuts like “show me chapter one” and “show me chapter two.” And for each one, the user has to record the voice trigger separately.
Maybe that’ll be resolved in iOS13.
This is true. Using Siri you can’t input data into the shortcut. You can however do this in the shortcuts app (same as workflow today).
Looking forward to this. Already use Siri to control lighting, Central Heating, Individual thermostats, Air Quality /temperature sensors, Harmony remote and switching on appliances.
I can ask what the what the temperature is in each of the rooms or outside, turn up the temperature of the nest, ask for movie lighting, switch on Apple TV via harmony, turn on Christmas lights or air conditioning etc via a smart socket.
Alexa may be able to do a lot more than Siri (I also have Alexa, but don't use it now) but what it does do it does it well. You just need to invest a little time to get it set up the way you want it. So, I'm really looking forward to the new Shortcuts app. Alexa had a habit of just starting up on it's own, not understanding what was being said etc. Never had those problems with Siri.
I can ask what the what the temperature is in each of the rooms or outside, turn up the temperature of the nest, ask for movie lighting, switch on Apple TV via harmony, turn on Christmas lights or air conditioning etc via a smart socket.
Alexa may be able to do a lot more than Siri (I also have Alexa, but don't use it now) but what it does do it does it well. You just need to invest a little time to get it set up the way you want it. So, I'm really looking forward to the new Shortcuts app. Alexa had a habit of just starting up on it's own, not understanding what was being said etc. Never had those problems with Siri.
Personally, I don't think so. For one, Home app does more than toggle/change device state. You add devices there, configure them, configure notifications etc. Second, sometimes I just don't want to talk to my device, I'd rather use a UI regardless of task. Generally, this is situational. Lastly, more generally, doesn't Siri shortcut need somewhere in an app to actually create shortcuts to?
Agree with your points. Regarding your last sentence, my understanding is that is how Siri Shortcuts works: an app "donates" an intent (an action) to Shortcuts. So basically, you get exposure to the actions an app can take, such as "Turn off the entertainment center" or "open the garage door". Right now, I have a Chamberlain garage door MyQ, which lets me turn my dumb garage doors (really, really dumb...) into connected devices and open and close them using the MyQ app. To get HomeKit functionality I need to get a MyQ bridge. I don't really want to buy a bridge for every strain of home automation I buy, so I'd rather just use the Shortcut app to let me use Siri to open and close the doors without HomeKit.
Now I get you and that's a really interesting use case that hadn't occurred to me. When you put it that way it's almost less about, "do we need the Home app?" and more "do we need Homekit at all?" or at the very least, "do I need to be as concerned integrating non-Homekit devices" in this particular case if I understand you correctly?
I suppose the answer to both questions really boil down to how much inter-app orchestration and, most importantly, how much active feedback you can get from these heterogenous apps. In the case where you just want to actively trigger something, you're 100% correct; if you can "slice into" the app for that device Home and Homekit almost don't matter. Where I see the value in Home (and Homekit) is in orchestration. Using Siri shortcuts can we find out when someone else opens our Garage door and act on it?
Exactly! I'm sure Apple has given (a lot of) thought to whether ShortCuts would replace / supplement HomeKit. You're right about orchestration, especially things tied to moving events, like sunrise and sunset. But I could see a "bed time" shortcut: turn off the lights + shut the garage door, etc...
It's a really interesting question you raise. Like I said, I hadn't even thought about that use case at all and I'm just starting to process it and think about the possibilities. Even if it doesn't replace Homekit/Home I'm now quite excited by the possibilities it presents for integrating other home automation frameworks. I can certainly imagine how shortcuts could tie together actions for Homekit and Alexa compatible devices seamlessly for example simply by having an Alexa app that exposes its own possibilities as intents.
yes, this is the stuff that really excites me about the app. It may not be an overstatement to say that this may potentially be the most important development since the app store was created. Or, without support from developers, it could be a bust....