Apple Shortcuts User Guide | Hacker News Reader

Apple Shortcuts User Guide

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121 pointssunraa58 comments

Given other people's response, I'm clearly the odd one out here, but I found it buggy and infuriating to use. I wanted what I can't imagine is a unique shortcut, "Good Morning", which should:

- Set the volume to 50% on my home pod

- Start playing an ambient radio station in Apple Music

- Start a slow fade in on my bedroom lights

It's been a nightmare, and I finally gave up altogether. I got my shortcut configured and set up with Siri. It's pretty simple, being only 3 steps, so I don't see where there's that much room to go off the rails, but oh boy does it.

The HomePod responds, and says "okay, running your shortcut". It then sets the volume on my phone to 50% and starts playing music there instead. It then tries and probably 80% of the time fails to set the home scene to turn on the lights. When it fails, it says "Please continue on your iPhone", where Siri's output states that it doesn't understand, as if I misspoke something to it... but it's running a set list of commands, there's no room for me to misspeak when setting the HomeKit scene. And clearly the shortcut triggered since it's now playing music at half volume a foot from my head.

And there's no way that I can tell to have it specify an AirPlay speaker to play out of. I don't get why the home pod, which responded to the request in the first place, can't play the music. If I tell it to play the exact same playlist directly it does so just fine. Maybe I'm "too advanced", being a tech person myself, but this really feels like basic stuff, and it seems to have missed the mark by a wide margin.

Yup. Everything I've tried has run into obvious bugs.

There's a toggle in the "Send Message" function called "Show When Run". Turning it off is supposed to bypass the iMessage send-message prompt and silently send the message. This works... unless you have an image in the message.

You may be speaking to the HomePod, but the phone is the thing actually running the Shortcut. And the list of Shortcuts actions does not include controlling the music output of a HomePod. I would encourage you to file a bug report with Apple at https://bugreport.apple.com to request the ability to instruct the HomePod to play music.

As for the HomeKit scene, that sounds like a bizarre error to get from a Shortcut.

Shortcuts is the most exciting release of iOS 12.

Every time I run into a recurring task on my phone, I can usually make a shortcut to do it for me. For example, when I get an email saying my build failed, I open it and click “view logs” but need to scroll to the bottom of a very long page to see why the build failed. Now I just run “Scroll to Bottom” [1] and then I’m looking at what previously took a solid 15-20 seconds of scrolling.

I can only imagine how many thousands of hours are lost per day on similar recurring tasks across all mobile users that could be saved with a shortcut. I’m really excited Apple is taking iOS in a direction where anyone can be a developer.

[1] https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e1daf0c6017e4db382272390f89...

Yes it is the most exiting feature but booooy is it buggy.

I have couple shortcuts in the widget. 80% of the time I click the shortcut in the widget it does like half of the stuff. I have workflow that does:

- Find one song in Apple Music, start playing that - Find all other songs by that artists and play them after the current one - send a message to my wife "I'm leaving the office"

Messages works all the time, 80% of the time music simply don't start playing. And when I try to hit that shortcut button several time in the widget, widget itself fails and stops showing any shortcuts, only an error message.

Oh wow that's a clever shortcut. I didn't realize you could write shortcuts that execute JavaScript in the context of a Safari webpage.

For those who also just started playing around. I just found out yesterday that you can write full blown python programs with packages and everything in http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ and trigger it from Shortcuts. That’s pretty powerful, especially if combined with Slack webhooks and other external services.

Pythonista is amazing if you want to do any programmatic graphics twiddling on an iOS device (which Workflow/Shortcuts really doesn't do at all well.) Dr Drang (leancrew.com) has a whole bunch of good blog posts up about his Pythonista use that's been extremely helpful for me.

There’s also [Scriptable](https://scriptable.app), which is sort of like a JavaScript flavor of Pythonista.

Neat, so it's like scripting but for normal people. This is honestly a good idea for making phones more useful without extensive programming knowledge.

> scripting but for normal people

It looks like they took a page out of the macOS Automator, and an encouraging sign that OS automation hasn’t been abandoned at Apple, despite the fears after they fired the person responsible for some of the impressive automation in macOS [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218080

I just tried Shortcuts for the first time then opened the "Play Favorite Albums" to see how it works and now it feels like I'm dumb. It took me a long time to understand; start from a empty text (I didn't event know I need to fill texts here) , separate lines, set variables, and count. The visial representation was not obvious at the first look.

I doubt "normal" people would understand and create new shortcuts.

Agreed. "Normal people" might be able to get a shortcut pre-written by somebody else working correctly on their phone, but even that is doubtful.

This should probably be titled 'iOS 12 Shortcuts User Guide' instead.

I'm a relatively new Macbook user, so I was looking forward to reading about all the keyboard shortcuts and touchpad gestures I'm missing out on.

I only buy Android phones, though, so :(

> Macbook ... keyboard shortcuts and touchpad gestures

There are many guides/“cheat sheets” about those, and macOS has always had great discoverability and customizability:

• System Preferences -> Trackpad or Mouse: Shows you [some] gestures, with videos.

• System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts: Shows you all the system shortcuts, and also lets you modify or add custom shortcuts for any Apple or third-party app.

• Help Menu -> Search Field: Start typing the name of any menu command you expect an app to have, and it will show you the menu items matching it along with their shortcuts.

Shortcuts was the most exciting thing from the WWDC Keynote this year, but I still haven't really found a killer use for it yet. But I do have some simple ones, such as a Shortcut I use on an image that prompts me to rename it before triggering the "Save to Files" flow (as Save to Files doesn't let you rename the image before saving).

Federico Viticci over at MacStories.net did post a pretty cool one though, which adds iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max frames to screenshots you take. https://www.macstories.net/ios/adding-device-frames-to-iphon...

I'd love to see a version that just adds the rounded corners and the notch, instead of the full frame, but I'm a bit too lazy to figure out how to adapt his shortcut to do that (the idea being to share a screenshot that represents what's visible on the screen, rather than trying to make it actually look like the phone).

The most recent cortex had some interesting ideas: https://www.relay.fm/cortex/75

I just made one for launching safari. It prompts me to nap, walk, go to google with a 3 min timer, or go to hacker news with a 10 min timer.

Basically, I shouldn’t be on safari on my phone in most cases: it’s my #1 time sink. I’m hoping this will make me more intentional about use. The walk and nap options lead to notes I wrote to myself.

I’ll eventually start having it log time and number of opens.

This person has example shortcuts and other interesting ideas: https://angrybunnyman.com/blog

Personally, I found it hard to get started with shortcuts, because it’s such a blank canvas. A more fruitful way to start might be to ask “what frustrates me about my phone” or “what do I do repeatedly”. Then see if it can be automated - a surprising number of things can be now. The subreddit for shortcuts is a great help. Seeing what cgpgrey in cortex did really opened my mind to the potential.

One person has a shortcut that puts the phone into least brightness, sends a text message to a contact and switches on the front camera when the police pull you over.

I tried it, but can't get it to activate when I say the phrase :(

Did you actually set up the phrase, or did you just try the phrase that the author was using? Open the settings for the Shortcut (the button in the upper-right) and "Add to Siri".

> but I still haven't really found a killer use for it yet

I think the main "killer feature" is that it allows you to optimize the way you interact with your phone. It's obviously more useful for power users than casual users, but both could benefit since shortcuts are so easy to share.

I have two Shortcuts that stemmed from real-life problems.

[1] - When I'm in a bookstore, I tend to go through dozens of books looking at the GoodReads reviews for each one, trying to discover new authors that might be worth a read. I made a shortcut to turn this into a single-tap barcode scanner, instead of me typing the name of the book into Google each time.

[2] - I was recently suggesting my favourite spots in NYC to a friend, and was trying to remember the streets and addresses of some of the places I took photos of. With a shortcut, I was able to easily geolocate photos in a map, and even get a nearby 360º panorama to remind me of what else was in the area.

Videos/code:

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9jnhc5/scan_a_bo...

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9klosk/find_near...

Wow both of those are very cool. I had no idea Shortcuts could even scan barcodes. I don't buy physical books any more, but I wonder if I could get the same info from whatever Books.app provides in the share sheet for the bookstore? I'll have to play with that.

I'd like to use this for making a shortcut to connecting to a specific Bluetooth device, but it seems that changing the iPhones settings is not part of actions that you can choose from. My stereo does not connect automatically, so I have to always go to Settings -> Bluetooth to connect them. Would be nice if I could just push a button / ask Siri to connect it.

From iOS 11 it is no longer possible to develop widgets that does this: https://forums.imore.com/ask-question/376402-no-widget-conne...

Same for me, but I want to join a particular wifi network. Was hoping I could do it via shortcuts. Oh well.

Does anyone have example SSH, Javascript or Python shortcuts? e.g. would be nice to have a shortcut for Textastic to push a file over SSH then run Jekyll build on the server.

This shortcut will put a video into PiP mode for iPad multitasking: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/dda08a01a17d41feb3e887a4a12...

I thought this would be a document listing all the hidden UI shortcuts that you never use because you don't know they are there

I have been able to piece together some simple shortcuts that I use frequently.

My biggest complaint so far is that they do not run in the background.

So, what are some usable shortcuts HN has come up with? I fail to find a single one that I could use. Looking for inspiration.

This one is pretty useful:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2d68cb1ee7b84f08ace2fd600b9...

Article link below, but here's the relevant description:

Petersen’s command “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over” will pause music if it’s playing, turn down the brightness, turn on “Do Not Disturb” and sends a message to a chosen contact. It then activates the video recording on the front camera.

Once the user stops recording, according to Petersen, it sends a copy of the video to your specified contact. It also brings up the brightness and turns of “Do Not Disturb.” His shortcut already has drawn hundreds of comments on Reddit.

https://www.cultofmac.com/578615/shortcuts-siri-traffic-stop...

It's interesting to see how this gets so much attention in the US. In Europe, specifically NL, I haven't been in a single situation the past 32 years of my life where I would have needed this. I do not expect I would need it the coming decades either. These are stories we catch from Russia where each and every cop seems to be corrupt. To see a similar thing in the US is mind blowing to me.

Thanks for sharing though! Might help another reader in this thread. I guess I must be happy to pass on this one.

It's not corruption, but a lack of professionalism. I'll assume police in the Netherlands see their job as just an occupation rather than an identity. Some people in the U.S. imagine police officers as this 'lawman' figure like a young Clint Eastwood in a poncho rather than just a citizen with a shift job to work like a garbage man. This notion ends up normalizing the artificial 'us vs them' thinking that leads to so many of these escalated situations and tragedies. It doesn't help that movements like blue lives matter seem to be actively engaged in supporting this thinking.

I have one that acts a generic file chooser “function”, which then serves as the base of a couple of other Shortcuts: one unzips archives, and another previews property list files.

Can you elaborate a bit? Sounds interesting enough but I may misinterpret what you mean.

Here’s my “Get file” shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/6b2c54340ed6432e932e61bc886.... It looks at its input and passes it through if it finds anything (to allow it to be used in the share sheet, where items are already specified), otherwise it brings up the system file picker and outputs the selected file.

I have two shortcuts that rely on this one. One uncompresses the selected archive to the destination of your choice: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d4de9ed40aec42baa6b920f6da7.... The other allows you to glance at the selected property list file, which is strangely something that the built-in preview cannot do:https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/68db9e02bf9448f394312b36d7e....

I downloaded “Calculate tip” from their library and it returns total garbage. Most of the time it adds some random percentage to the total I enter instead of calculating 20% of it. Maybe it has to do with my regional settings, but I already stopped bothering.

I’ve a great shortcut to download YouTube videos.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c2997c4bcd0a4a01a470ac7f6c1...

I use shortcuts to do time tracking at work, which works great.

I do hope though that they bring back Shortcuts for the Apple Watch - with the old Workflow app I could do everything on the watch, now I have to grab my phone every time.

Just add your shortcut to Siri and speak it to your watch - it's faster than launching the workflow app used to be...

No it’s not. I used to have button prompts for some actions in Workflow, which is faster. Also, there are many instances where speaking to your watch is ridiculous (such as meetings, public transit, etc.)

Also the old workflows ran directly on the watch (for example calling a REST api) which gave you the result right away.

Now they can only run on the phone and take a lot longer (usually it says "I'll tap you when I'm ready...").

Even if it would work reliably I just don't like to talk to my watch.

Why on Earth did they tie it to Siri? Why can't I drop a shortcut on my home screen and tap it? Why does Siri have to be enabled? This feels like just a ploy to get Siri usage up.

You can do exactly that... you can add shortcuts to the ‘Today’ view, and to the home screen.

Ok, I must be doing something wrong as I keep getting a popup telling me to enable Siri.

Edit: Ok apparently it was just the shortcut I was trying. I tried another and am able to add to home screen w/out Siri being enabled.

In addition to sibling comment, you can do just that, add it to the Shortcuts widget, or (as I just did an hour ago) add Shortcuts to the Share sheet and it will show up there. This is particularly important because I have shortcut for sharing a web page with my wife. If I use Siri, it doesn't get the URL because Siri is in the foreground and no URL is obtained. But it works fine as a Share sheet object.

Can you only look at your widgets from the springboard?

TIL that Apple is using Facebook's React. Thought they were using Ember before.

It's really innovative how they were able to add all these features but still prevent customers from creating an action like "Play I am the Walrus on [competing music service]."

Isn't it up to [competing music service] to implement this? Podcasting apps work with Shortcuts, so I don't see why [competing music service] wouldn't work.

Apple has not been clear about the capabilities of Shorcuts and still has limits[1] that prevent "competing music service" from working as OP suggests:

> Apple may have been slightly coy about this API (extensive documentation was not available at all during the iOS 12 beta)... There are caveats in the API, which may also be a turn-off for the likes of Google and Spotify: media shortcuts don't enable full-blown integrations with third-party audio streaming services. You can only ask Siri to play items you have previously assigned a custom phrase; this suggests that most users will only record a handful of phrases for entire playlists, charts, or artist pages. The ability to ask Siri to search and play any song or podcast episode is still exclusive to Apple Music and Podcasts.

[1] https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-rev...

Exactly, thank you. Apple is absolutely prioritizing short-term profits and their own ambitions before customers' feature requests in this area. Spotify, and every other music service, would've had integrations ready to go well before the iOS 12 launch if that was all it took for them to be given first-class music player status on iPhone.

Spotify has been given a number of APIs that lets them act similar to a first-party app in iOS 12. As far as I’m aware, they haven’t really used them yet.

So you're saying every third-party music app has the ability to be run with "Hey Siri, play [song] on [spotify/tidal/etc]?" and Spotify is blatantly lying? Because on their support forum they straight up say this can't be done.

That particular example isn’t possible (so they’re technically right): Shortcuts can only detect constant phrases. But there’s a easy way around this: split it into two parts, the first one detecting “Spotify play a song”, asks “which one”, then listens for the song name and plays that. A bit more cumbersome, but still fits the fixed-text restriction.

There are user-made shortcuts for Spotify already[0]. These use external website to connect to Spotify API and require a prompt. So, instead of "Play Kurt Vile" you have to say "Play artist", wait for a note, then say "Kurt Vile". Far from perfect, but works. Sometimes. Like all things Siri.

[0] https://shortcutsgallery.com/siri-shortcuts/?_search=spotify

Useless app. They rebranded it recently. It is not deeply rooted with iOs. I gave up a while ago.

Side not: This title is helluva misleading. I thought it is a list of shortcuts for OSX.

Assuming I understand what you mean by "deeply rooted with iOS," then that is in fact a crucial difference between the new Shortcuts and the Workflow app that it replaced. Shortcuts triggered from Control Center or the share sheet run the way Automator actions on the Mac do; there's no more of this "switch to Workflow, switch to an app Workflow is calling, switch back to Workflow" stuff.

I don't think the title "Shortcuts User Guide" was particularly misleading; the name of the app is Shortcuts. If it were a list of keyboard shortcuts for macOS, it would probably have a name like, I don't know, "macOS Keyboard Shortcuts."

One of the nice and quite innovative features of IOS 12 update, however I can’t feel good about this update because it has completely ruined Apple News. Apple News used to be a very nice slick news browser - I used it a lot, until some retard UI designer, decided to steal 1/3 of my precious screen estate - why?? for a horrible ugly useless navigation bar, with no way of collapsing it in landscape mode - I NEVER use Portrait mode on iPad.

The navigation bar hides for me once I scroll.

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