Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts | Hacker News Reader

Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

support.apple.com

387 pointsgshakir142 comments

So exciting. When Shortcuts was first announced I was thrilled since I could think of hundreds of flows that would be amazing for my daily life to simplify things. But quickly realized there were many limitations such as it couldn't be run automatically at a set time, and nearly every flow I wanted it was missing a few actions to make them fully possible. As such I used a couple but overall didn't use it at all.

With this update, Personal Automations for me at least opens up many possibilities by removing so many limitations. Such as now when connecting to CarPlay you can automatically trigger workflows like opening Waze in background for alerts, getting directions to your next even that has a location, asking if I have kids in the car, if I say yes, play kid friendly podcast station, if not play my other station, and so on.

There are still so much unmet potential. Core apps like Apple Podcast have so few actions compared to third party options, which is very odd. And then other third party apps that would so love to have certain actions offer none at all.

So hopefully with the Personal Automation people will use it more, and with that use, Apple will offer more actions for their core apps causing more people to use it and then eventually more third party apps to offer actions, and then hopefully Apple offering a dedicated app store section for them for true mass appeal. Of and of course having it available on macOS (replacing Automator) would be wonderful since writing more complicated scripts is much easier on the Mac.

I think personal automation is what will finally make Shortcuts useful. Like you, I've got a ton of flows that could benefit, but without triggers a lot of the shortcuts were just saving me a few button presses. To me, that's just not worth cluttering the Shortcuts UI and having one more thing to maintain.

As you point out, there's unmet potential. So many times I go to create a shortcut, "surely they have an action for $FOO, it would be one of the first things I'd implement", and...no. But it's getting there. Maybe not this year, but I hold hope that Apple will keep at it and in the next year or two this feature will start to open up.

I've been looking forward to this feature, but I must say I'm pretty disappointed that most of the personal automations still require a manual approval before they will execute. For example, I can schedule a particular shortcut to always run at a specific time. When that time comes, however, my phone will display a notification which I must physically tap to execute the automation. If I miss the notification, nothing will happen. The same is true for "When I Arrive..." and "When I Leave..." triggers. Which means, often, I'll get a notification in the car, while I'm driving, which I must tap to execute the automation.

I can see why Apple would want to step cautiously with consumer-based automation, but I was really expecting that all of these new automation triggers would fire without needing any manual approval, or at least that there would be a way to configure them to do so.

I have read that you can use a HomePod, Apple TV, or always-plugged-in iPad as a home hub, and my understanding is the triggers offered here will run in a fully automated fashion. I hope to explore that at some point.

Still, I'm very happy to see the progress in Shortcuts, and I expect it will only get better.

Agreed. Unfortunately the list that requires manual action are the ones I really wanted to run, particularly bluetooth and time of day:

https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/enable-or-disable-...

The list of auto-approved items seems somewhat arbitrary, but I think they had privacy concerns in mind when they made the list (although it seems stupid that you can't override those protections if you'd like).

All of the ones on the "cannot be run automatically" list are things that a bad actor could do if they had your phone, like wait for a certain time of day, or move your phone to a specific location, or bring it in range of a particular bluetooth or wifi device.

But then, NFC is on the "can be run automatically" list, meaning that a bad actor could touch your phone to a NFC tag to trigger an action, so that doesn't make much sense. The rest of the items on the "can be run automatically" list are all ones that require your phone to be unlocked (I think).

Very odd choice by Apple for something that will be used by relatively few people and would greatly increase the usability of the feature

The NFC automation is tied to specific tags. So the thief would have to be in your house tapping a specific tag you setup.

Yes, but what if the NFC tag was on your keychain with your phone, which the attacker also had? That seems far more likely than being able to spoof a Bluetooth device that your phone had already paired with in the past (yet that one is in the list of "not automatic" choices)

When the attacker has your keys and your phone, you have bigger problems.

That's true about the potential for bad actor, but it's also true for many false positives.

Passive automations based on location, bluetooth, wifi, etc. stand a good chance of many accidental triggers. Connections are flaky, location accuracy is flaky; without some form of throttling mechanism or way to better control accidental firings, it should remain manual.

Thanks for this. Was wondering why my music wasn't automatically shuffling + playing when I got into my car :(

I agree it's disappointing. Any interesting automation is basically impossible. I've also found the arrival and leave triggers to only work about half the time, which seems a lot worse than I would expect from Siri location-based reminders which work pretty well.

I have never gotten location based reminders to work. I've tried setting up reminders when I arrive or leave work / home, but they never fired. The worst thing is that there is no indication that tells you why it didn't work.

They seem to be working with me a lot better on iOS 13.1 than they ever have in the past. Might be worth having another try?

that's odd.. those have always worked great for me. Did you let iOS know what your home and/or work locations were?

Ah, just wrote a flattering post here on it, but wasn't aware it still had the manual approval issue which is unfortunate. I understand it for some things like When I arrive home, since otherwise when I'm outside running loops by house, each time I come by the house it would open the garage which wouldn't be good, but so many other cases where manual approval seems odd, and at least should be able to approve with with one click on apple watch with out having to open the notification then approve.

Apple watch is a great idea! I wish they had a shortcuts app on the watch too.

Hopefully they'll have the notifications there, if they don't already.

Notifications (in general) are mirrored between phone and watch, so they do show up on the watch

They could implement to run automatically for the first time and them need approval in the next 30 mins to avoid spamming.

Foursquare third party clients during its hey day that did auto check-in would have a cooling off period of X minutes or hours not to check-in to same location again.

Apple could do something like that. Probably a bit more sophisticated.

I think battery usage could be a primary concern here. Yes, this should continue to improve. Imagine coming home and all your blinds open automatically, lights turn on etc.

I don't think battery usage is the concern, because the alert still triggers - you just have to approve it. By the time you get the alert to approve it, the bluetooth or wifi or location services have already been running (using battery) and triggered the action

> Imagine coming home and all your blinds open automatically, lights turn on etc.

Try home assistant. Open source. Integrates with nearly everything, including apple homekit stuff.

This can already be done in the "home automation" side of the shortcuts / home app. My own house lights up whenever my wife or I come home after dark and goes dark again when we leave.

I've heard quite a few times now that some of the reasons these automations aren't completely automatic is to avoid them being abused by people with bad intentions.

Say for example someone setting one up on someone else's phone (without their knowledge) to run every X minutes and using it to track someone's location, without them ever knowing about it.

I'm not entirely sure that's the real reason behind these notifications, but it does seem plausible.

Apps already do this in the background without end users knowledge. Not saying this is right but it seems odd that it's okay for an app to do this to its users but not a user doing this to themself?

It would be nice if these automations could run automatically but perhaps, notify the user that said automation has run and allow them to easily disable the automation.

I don't think it's so much a privacy concern (it certainly is), but more with regards to accidental triggers by actions that are passive and flaky.

Location accuracy isn't always the greatest, particularly indoors; in-and-out connections to wifi/bluetooth are possible when you're on the fringe of its range.

These issues need to be addressed in some form before _true_ automation is given to them.

I would be perfectly happy to receive a popup that an automation had just run. Also, Apple has been pushing for self-adjusting notification preferences. Imagine a popup like:

"The shortcut 'Foo' wants to run. Do you want to allow it?

- Never

- Not this time

- Run once

- Always"

Put an icon next to each shortcut showing whether it's always (or never) allowed, and it seems like the problem would be largely solved without asking much from the end user.

This sounds like a very reasonable solution. I kinda hope this is the way they end up solving it, if this really is the reason they're not truly automatic.

The malicious person would then click "Always Allow" while they are setting up the shortcut. It might be better if it worked like the location/bluetooth prompt, where some time later, it would prompt you if you still wanted that action to occur.

Make the allow and always allow options require Face ID, Touch ID, or passcode…

You don't need them to authenticate again, as the phone would be already unlocked.

What you want to do is periodically (at a random time each time) ask the user if they still want it to do the privacy sensitive action still. This way, it vastly increases the chances of detection if the action was added by a third party.

I agree with one of the replies that a pop up of some sort saying a shortcut has run is good.

They could also do what Gmail and possibly others do when forwarding is added. An obnoxious red colored warning at top of Gmail for 7 days about new forwarding. iOS could do that in some fashion.

My guess is that it's a security issue. Suppose your phone were confiscated and you had an automation that revealed some sensitive information to the possessor of the phone, or a compromised third party. You might not want to run the automation under such conditions.

Do you have to unlock the phone to confirm the automation popup?

The failure mode for full automation that's set up by consumers and controlled by a third party via the web can be really bad.

Can you at least approve them on the watch so you don't have to dig out your phone every time?

I'd been trying to figure out why they required a user interaction for some of these. 5 out of 6 of these can be explained by debouncing.

• "Wi-Fi" and "Bluetooth" connection triggers are extremely susceptible to bouncing on and off with variable radio conditions

• "Arrive", "Leave", and "Before I Leave" are all susceptible to bouncing in and out; they combine a fuzzy location of variable precision with a point and radius

By requiring a user interaction, it makes sure that bouncing never causes the shortcut to trigger more often than desired. Apple certainly tries to debounce the event automatically, but that comes with other side effects: the trigger can be delayed significantly and unpredictably.

(As for why "Time of Day" requires a user interaction, I have yet to hear a satisfying explanation. I want my Cron!)

I'm using IFTTT for similar functionality on my Android phone and I've never had a problem with a task bouncing in and out of a specific location. In fact, the location selection process only allows you to zoom in so far on the map to prevent you from getting to specific with your geofence.

Obviously you're not going to be able to write a GPS specific enough to detect which room you're in, but that's expected.

Considering the lack of accuracy in GPS, I can envision problems.

Sometimes GPS thinks I'm in my neighbor's front yard across the street, or in my neighbor's backyard behind me, even if I'm in my bedroom.

If I stop at my neighbor's house on the way home, it could trigger an action in my house, for example.

Is there proximity detection besides connected SSIDs and NFC? I guess blue tooth devices could work. I'm not sure the range on them. I like how when I get in my car, my music automatically starts playing (bluetooth) seems like cheao unique bluetooth devices for determining where exactly you are at could be useful. One for the kitchen, bedroom, etc.

The iPhone Xs was my first ever iPhone. Before that I had been an Android power user for 8 years. I installed my own custom ROMs, xposed framework, rooted, etc.

Although I'm firmly in the iPhone camp for privacy and other reasons now, I miss the automation provided by Tasker and the Android OS.

I used to have many useful location + time based profiles. For instance, I had a profile for if I was at home and it was between 9pm and 7am, Do not disturb mode would be turned on (which still allowed 'emergency' calls) and i would switch to a dimmer screen brightness profile. If I was at work, my media volume would be put to 0, phone would change to vibrate, etc.

The point is, many repetitive tasks were easily automated on Android and it required ZERO interaction from my end. No shortcut button press or anything. Smart phones should make our lives easier.

Sooooo...a quick skim of the article indicates that personal automations can now do what you're missing. My question is, are you complaining about something that this article specifically addresses, saying "yea! About time!", or...? Because your "point is" is specifically addressed by TFA.

It’s a valid complaint. I haven’t used android in 5 years and I still miss tasker. It’s the kind of basic, important tool that any personal device should have. It isn’t difficult to implement well. There really isn’t a good excuse that it took so long and it is nice to finally have. Every “reason” why it took so long is simply someone imposing their personal opinions onto a wide range of users.

It’s a valid complaint.

It was yesterday, sure. But what I haven't heard is, "but it's still missing...". All I've heard so far is, "what took so long? Android...". Which I suppose is a valid complaint, but I thought there might be more.

Imposing their opinion on a wide range of developers is also a key differentiator for Shortcuts vs Tasker.

Take a look at how many apps support Tasker vs Shortcuts:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19q_jvRRM4htT6-9QTX6m... https://airtable.com/shrNcsx3n8uUajpsW/tblv8ai4KM1YZ4LgH/viw...

Now consider how much older Tasker is than Shortcuts.

Imposing a universal standard across your platform is a very effective model.

Shortcuts is an amazing, truly underrated app. Almost anything your phone can do, Shortcuts can do. Extremely powerful.

For fun, I created the Martin Luther Insulter shortcut[0]. Say, "Hey Siri, have Martin Luther insult me", and it fetches the list of insulting quotes from Martin Luther's books via GitHub, then reads the insult back to you in a dark, slow raspy voice.

[0]: https://shareshortcuts.com/shortcuts/725-martin-luther-insul...

Can't thank you enough for this.

Kind of neat that the way these are shared is a PNG file with appended data. The PNG file is the icon for the Shortcut :)

Example: https://cvws.icloud-content.com/B/AZc9tIA45EozUwn3Zs0zZEJSUY...

The icon does not contain any of the shortcut data

I know. I mentioned that it's a PNG with appended data. Are you saying the appended data is not the Shortcut information? I think it is.

Has anyone found any of these useful?

I'm racking my brain for something that would benefit me, but nothing comes to mind... but I feel like I'm just lacking creativity here.

Apple provides a gallery of script ideas, so you might start there and see if anything inspires.

I got a shortcut to log when I've fed my baby, and create a reminder to let me know when he'll start to get hungry again. This way I'm not constantly checking my watch. The best part is that it works with Siri, so I can trigger it with my voice since I won't have a hand free.

I have an NFC sticker on my fridge that runs an automation to set a reminder that something will expire, like milk. I have some to quickly set up calendar events, send my wife my location or the amount of time until I get home, calculate how much time in hours and minutes is left until the sun goes down, turn on assistive touch with one click when my mouse pairs to my iPad, log my weight to the health app, just to name a few.

I definitely felt like that for a long time. With automation, I only have a few ones right now: One that is activated with my alarm in the morning and opens my Things agenda and the weather, and ones toggling Do not disturb when I get to/leave work.

Of course, everything shortcuts can do can be done manually, but for some I think it can be worth it to automate or reduce the workload of a lot of menial tasks

Not everything could be done manually, for example injecting JS into a webpage in Safari

Shortcuts in general are nice, particularly now that they can be conversational. Hey Siri log... lets me easily log my weight, water and caffeine intake just by speaking. I already had shortcuts to do those through tapping, but the easier I can make things to do the more likely I'll do them.

Another I have is "Hey Siri, heading home" which texts my wife my ETA and starts my last played podcast.

Question: how do you get your last played podcast in Shortcuts?

I use Overcast. If I just call "Play Overcast" from the shortcut, it starts playing the last podcast that was playing. I assume Apples Podcast app would do the same?

Checkout Federico Viticci at MacStories - he's been using Shortcuts and Workflow before it to automate his entire iPad based life. Some of the stuff he gets it to do is amazing.

Any links? Googling seems to just give me a list of random shortcuts rather than any discussion on how he uses them

https://www.macstories.net/shortcuts/

and another collections https://shareshortcuts.com/ https://shortcutsgallery.com/ https://routinehub.co/ https://sharecuts.app/

As well as leo-tada's links, this is a good article on how Federico uses the iPad as his primary computer (including how Workflow/Shortcuts is essential to that) - although this predates iPadOS

https://www.macstories.net/stories/beyond-the-tablet/8/#cont...

I wrote a shortcut that posts to HN from a Safari page !!

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/5f95b87eba6544929fb2a40b72c...

A simple shortcut to send web urls through outline.com and or archive.is is a life saver for mobile browsing particularly when EU blocking news sites are the target

I spent the other night writing a cowsay shortcut, so that’s something.

I sorta feel the same. But I did make one that I’m using a lot. It’s a typical “read later” workflow but it adds the site to both safari reading list and pinboard at the same time.

Some things that I've setup or use in shortcuts:

- "gas prices" pull up the gasbuddy website, regex the first element and get siri to read it aloud.

- "going home" Uses maps to obtain how long it takes to get home from my current location, sets the volume to 70% to get siri to dictate it, and sends the ETA and a nice message to my +1 that i'll be home soon. Version 2 will be to prompt me when I actually leave the GPS of my office around 5-7pm and send it after verbal confirmation. (Barring if there's a pop up that has been mentioned)

- "Share Location" this is one of the ones available in gallery that let's you send people your current location. I hope they make 'Share ETA' available but I don't see that option in maps yet. That would let people know when i'm arriving at their house.

This is fun enough that I'm hoping to buy some NFC stickers and get some homekit devices to play with.

Apple Maps now shows a "Share ETA." You can slide up from the arrival time to find it after setting a destination, but it also popped up pretty prominently a few times. The only bummer (the only time I've tried to use it) is that it only has options to send to contacts.

I think it's one of those tools that everyone has their own niche use. These are for Home, not for Shortcuts or Personal automation, but my wife tends to leave the floor heaters on. So I have an automation that turns them off at 10am and midnight. I get home after dark, so I had my front porch light turn on at sunset and off at midnight. For awhile my garage door opened onto a busy street, so we often left it open. I hadn't automated it, but I wanted either for it to automatically close or message me if it was open for 30+m and have the option to close it remotely. We have room heaters in my young son's room. It would be nice to remotely control that instead of going downstairs (thankfully his baby monitor shows the room temp). Most of these could be addressed with a manual device, but the lack of friction really helps--until your network goes down.

As for Personal Automation, I've heard others text their spouse every day as they leave work. Now they can do that automatically with an ETA.

I made one just for fun to see how they work.

I say "Siri, record my weight" and the iPad response "Sure, how much do you weigh?" I say the number and it gets appended to a Google Docs spreadsheet with the current date.

The next step that I never finished was to have Google Docs generate a graph and mail it to me every month.

I did the same thing but it just records it directly into Apple's Health app. Then you get the graphs for free!

For some reason you can't put the health app on an iPad and that's my only iOS device.

I don't know if shortcuts included ssh key support before this update, but I just noticed that it does now! ed25519 appears to be the default key type.

Now I can run Terraform automatically when I get home to provision some tea! /s

The key support is new, yes! I use it to connect to my Mac Pro at Apple Park :)

https://ndmckinley.github.io/terraform-provider-dominos/

I started small. I have an automation that launches at 8 pm that does three things:

* Sets dark mode * Sets reduce white point * Runs a shortcut I made asking me a few questions

The questions are:

1. Will you get ready for bed? Sleep affects your next day. (I have to click yes/no) 2. Will you go brush your teeth after this? (The first step. I have to click yes/no) 3. It gives me a list of things I may want to do to wind down: a walk (based on steps), tidying, reading a book 4. Then it prompts me to look at a small diary/todo I made in the morning and comment on it. And then look at my screen time stats.

I find this helpful. And since I always want to reduce white point, this means I will automatically want to click the notification to run it.

I hopefully eventually they will have AND and OR conditions in automations. Eg if between 8:30 and 11:30 AND I open instagram, open my todo list.

On a very distantly tangential note, based on your list of questions, I wonder if you may find this pair of links very interesting:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-31-the-feltro...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reporter-app/id779697486

I'm not suggesting you replace your steps, I just think you're more likely than average to enjoy them. If not, no worries :)

You know that Do Not disturb and Nightshft can both be scheduled to come on at 8pm without automations? (Not that I'm knocking you, if you just wanted to tinker).

Yeah. Set white point can't be scheduled. I put in night mode because why not run both the light reducing features at once?

Plus it's an incentive to run the shortcut. I want darkness, and run the questions as a side effect.

> The following automations cannot be run automatically: > Arrive > Before I Leave > Bluetooth > Leave > Time of Day > Wi-Fi

Well that's disappointing. It isn't automation if you have to have a human involved.

I agree with what you “mean to mean”, but surely by that definition a human being carrying a cellphone into a designated “Arrival” zone rules out that as being automation too?

But that's not what was being automated. The only part being automated what the part that happens AFTER arrival in the designated arrival area. And apparently, that's not being automated (well, partially).

We could go all the way up that chain till we get to the point that anything at all is not automated. But that seems ridiculous.

I tried to have it launch spotify when Airpods were connected, but found only Apple music supported. I’ve always wondered, is the lack of Spotify support in Siri, Shortcuts, due to Spotify or due to Apple blocking them?

I just got Airpods. I had to sign up for Apple Music yesterday because offline support (when the watch isn't in bluetooth range of the phone) wasn't available with Spotify.

Not sure if this is simply a feature Spotify decided not to implement, or if they can't implement it due to Apple Watch restrictions.

I have similar questions with the Hulu Apple TV app. Results for content in Hulu aren't always included in Apple TV wide search, while content from other apps is.

Apple has done a lot of good things, but they went a little over the top with creating such a strict walled garden. (Another example is their blocking of 3rd party billing system - that's a clear example of Apple hurting the user experience to boost their profits)

> Results for content in Hulu aren't always included in Apple TV wide search, while content from other apps is.

I'm unclear if Apple needs to add support or if the third party needs to offer it in a specific format. I do often see Hulu, Netflix, and other third parties show up. Often they pop up before Apple. But other services like Hoopla and Kanopy don't show up. To be fair, searching across services is a mess all around. Third party websites have popped up, but seem to be missing a lot of data or stop working after a few months.

> offline support (when the watch isn't in bluetooth range of the phone) wasn't available with Spotify.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/09/watchos-6-spotify/

That seems to be up for debate. This article calls out other apps that do this without issue...but it may not be fair to compare it to Overcast, which doesn't have any contractual restrictions on storing it locally in an encrypted format or any other hoops Spotify might need to address.

The new version of WatchOS makes audio streaming to the watch a public API.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/716/

Spotify can implement the feature any time they like.

Similarly, Hulu has long been able to provide the search metadata needed to integrate into Apple's universal search system, if they choose to do so.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/508/

Perhaps one reason they don't choose to do so is that some subscribers have different levels of access depending on the subscription tier. At least that's my guess.

Very much the latter https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

I'd love for someone to chime in with specifics, but I'm pretty sure it's both--depending on the feature.

I remember reading a story where Spotify either bought or sued an app that allowed streaming to the Apple Watch (it may have been something specific like via LTE with no phone involved). Here's an article from June harping on Spotify not allowing offline playback on the Apple Watch [1]. Spotify launched https://www.timetoplayfair.com and sued Apple in the EU because they can't work with Siri and Apple's Home pod.

On the other side, Netflix disables Airplay requesting you use the app on that device. I'm sure this is to enforce their per-device limits at different subscription tiers.

So it could be Apple not offering APIs, inaction on their part, or strategically not allowing that feature.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/09/watchos-6-spotify/

Spotify is hypocritical to say the least. They complain about Apple controlling their ecosystem too tightly and being too unfriendly to third parties while also refusing to provide a modern replacement for the deprecated and broken libspotify, removing playback capabilities from their other SDKs, breaking numerous Spotify-capable hardware devices, and shutting down third party devs trying to build on their platform.

Spotify has no room to complain.

Spotify has previously complained that there was no API to transfer music to the local storage of the watch and play it back from there, but after the feature was added in last year's WatchOS update, they failed to add support for it.

Now that cellular music streaming has been added in this year's WatchOS update, we'll have to wait and see if they will update their app to support that feature.

FWIW, I'm able to create an automation that runs a shortcut to start playing podcasts in Overcast when connecting AirPods. It's not super-clear, but you need to set the automation to "Run a Shortcut" from the Shortcuts app, rather than pick a shortcut from the app itself.

Try creating a shortcut in the Shortcuts app to play something in Spotify. Then search for "Run a Shortcut" when you're wiring up the personal automation, and then tap the word "Shortcut" in "Run Shortcut" to pick your Spotify shortcut.

The proper fix here should be that all the shortcuts should be direct actions.

> Try creating a shortcut in the Shortcuts app to play something in Spotify

how ?

Search for "Launch", choose "Open App" in the actions category, pick Spotify.

I'm able to also launch Spotify with by opening a spotify URL using the actions, but can't get it to auto-play.

same here, play/pause do not work either after url action :( so i Subscribed to apple music

Oh wow! Can this finally solve the “play the first song in Music App when CarPlay is connected” issue?

Yes!

I wrote an automation yesterday that simply says

When Connected to Carplay Media > Pause.

So far, it seems to do the trick. Doesn't require manual intervention.

I wonder if this works with older non-carplay car audio systems. Definitely going to try it out!

I'm so glad my car implements it correctly, I would have hated to deal with that for years

So far my cleverest idea:

  when beorg is opened, pull this repo in working copy.

maybe also:

  when carplay connects, stop playing music.

I was hoping Personal Automation would solve a long-time goal of mine: waking up to a carefully curated playlist rather than a ringtone. But it looks like this still won't work, because it requires human interaction to kick off the 'automation'. That's a shame, since this is something that every radio alarm handles.

automation on alarm snooze => apple music playlist

Is it possible to write these in regular code? I am not a big fan of these visual tools. Seems they are quite clunky compared to code.

With an app like Scriptable, you can indeed! This one lets you write JavaScript code, and they added the feature to pass in parameters with iOS 13.1!

https://scriptable.app

Pythonista 3 (currently on TestFlight) is another option. I like the custom keyboard shortcuts that it adds. It can also trigger shortcuts, I reckon.

This is interesting. I thought iOS is pretty locked down.

In addition to the others listed, there's also https://shortcuts.fun/

It's a hack, but it works pretty well.

There's also a lot of work been done in iOS 13 to reduce the number of steps required to do a thing. There's info about that here: https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-and-ipados-13-the-mac...

I tried to build an automation that would send a message to my wife with my expected time of arrival as soon as I leave work.

Unfortunately, the transit skill can only tell you the travel duration, but doesn’t take into account departure times.

It will tell me that I need 20 minutes by train, but it’s impossible to tell at what time the train will depart.

Absolutely love this. Realized it is scriptable. Managed to create notes from templates in Bear Writer and in iA Writer, also started logging my caffeine consumption (a predefined shortcut), log my expenses by appending to a csv file and many more things. This is like Automator for iOS. Opens totally new perspectives and use-cases for iOS devices.

I am having so many ideas for scripting my iPhone. Totally sold.

Been using automation tools on my Mac for quite some time. Tools like Keyboard Maestro, Alfred App, shell scripts, Python scripts, snippet expander like aText or Dash App. Now we get a tiny bit of this on iOS. Right direction.

Another issue. When setting time of day you can choose says, but unlike Apple Calendar or any third party calendar app like Fantastical, you can't set custom. Such as Repeat Monday and Wednesday every 2 weeks, etc. Everytime I get excited to use Shortcuts I see seemingly small but major issues that prevent from creating the desired workflow, so end up giving up. Since when it was owned by Workflow had hopes little things like that would get resolved quickly, with Apple, assume if its not part of the first release most likely won't be fixed until next year as a 'feature'.

how does one automate the resetting of Adversting Identifier every 2 mins?

I don't think you need to. Just enable Limit Ad Tracking: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223

Does this finally end the nonsense that is Dropbox being unable to stay open and finish uploading photos? I.e. could I set it to open the Dropbox app every ten minutes during the night?

Nope

I’m missing the “Disconnect” action for Wifi and Bluetooth. I’d like to be able to increase text size automatically when getting in the car (based on bluetooth connecting to the car) for improved visibility, but to undo it when I exit the car. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be possible (yet).

I was hoping that I can finally change night shift intensity based on time of day. Unfortunately night shift isn’t configurable by Shortcut yet.

You can change the whitepoint. Not the same, though, but something.

https://www.iphonetricks.org/the-ios-reduce-white-point-feat...

Cool! I'm on 12.4.1 and for a while now enjoying my simple accessibility shortcut > color filters to enable triple-click side button to toggle greyscale vs normal color mode. Less battery usage, helps keep the device less unnecessarily stimulating, doesn't interfere w/ sleep, and sometimes good for random conversation ("how'd you do that?"). :)

> unnecessarily stimulating

Willie, remove all the colored chalk from the classrooms!

I'm sure you were just trying to be funny, so I forgive your snark. But your analogy is inept. I'll try riffing on it to explain why:

By default, our "smartphones" are attention-capturing entertainment devices. Disabling notifications is one step towards regaining control and putting apps in their place -- which is to say, tools I will leverage with intention, on my schedule. Disabling colors is another step in that same direction. It's not removing chalk from the classroom, it's temporarily closing the window to mute the ice-cream truck during exams. The whole point of the triple-tap shortcut is to make it trivial to toggle modes, so I am the only one who gets to decide whether I'm in the library or the arcade.

Still no way to turn off my coffee machine half an hour after I turn it on. Seems like such an obvious and useful thing to do, and yet nobody has this feature. This, to me, suggests that nobody is seriously using home automation.

I love that I have a shortcut set up to play my podcast and navigate to home when I leave my office... and that it still prompts me to start it, so I can not do that when I'm actually driving to lunch with coworkers.

Congrats, they invented Activator[0]!

[0] https://cydia-app.com/activator/

Ryan was a fantastic mentor to me and a lot of people in the jailbreak community. His work set a high bar for what tweaks could be, and Activator in particular spawned a small ecosystem of quick actions. I’m honored by the comparison :)

(context: I work on Shortcuts)

That's awesome to hear! Sorry if my comment came off as snarky. I was pretty involved in the jailbreak scene back in my iPod Touch days (years and years ago), and I'm really happy to see some of the functionality I loved then coming to life now (in a much more polished way :))

Yeah, for sure! It didn't come off as too snarky to me. The jailbreak scene is what made me the engineer I am today for sure :)

I also just saw that you founded Workflow - it's been awesome to see y'alls evolution after the acquisition. Good to see more things coming out of it!

Will this finally allow me to switch WiFi and Bluetooth off (instead of just disconnect for 24h) from the control centre?

No.

From the control center? No. But you can do it from the shortcuts widget when you swipe left from the homescreen

WiFi - https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/a92a26177fae4bafb9c8a7b369e...

Bluetooth - https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7b367448c4a04b1483af4af004a...

Oh. This is fantastic. Thank you so much!

For anyone else having issues allowing untrusted shortcuts. The toggle in the settings only appears after running any shortcut for the first time. This is an iOS bug apparently.

You can access bluetooth settings from the control center now.

And you can create a shortcut that will turn off wifi/bluetooth if you put shortcuts on your homescreen or homerow and make that shortcut one of the first 4 you can access it with force touch.

Too bad the settings option are just accessibility options.

I just want a shortcut that turns off and on vibration when in silent mode.

When I updated to iOS 13, Shortcuts no longer listed actions for third-party apps. Has anyone else run into this?

Great release; looking forward to the future of this feature.

My one complaint with shortcuts is that the apps have to expose an interface of "actions" which so far is very limited for tons of apps. I want to create a shortcut to the "user & passwords" store under "Settings", but I can't because it isn't exposed as an action.

Idea: Create shortcut to track your car parked location when you disconnect from car play

Actually, this is a standard feature of iOS Maps.

This already happens pretty well with Apple Maps. (I think Google Maps does something similar too.) You just have to check the map for your parked car’s location.

I hope they add email, message and call-based triggers.

Which can also be used as a cheap RPC mechanism.

+1 request for automator on iOS?

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