Ask HN: What are your favorite iOS/macOS automations? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are your favorite iOS/macOS automations?

35 pointsuser0x1d38 comments

I set up an automation to "reduce white point OFF" at night and back ON in the morning, so if I pick up my phone in the middle of the night my eyes don't burn

View on HN

Not an automation, technically, but maybe it could be: I have an AppleScript that is set to run every hour that grabs any files on my desktop that have been there longer than a day, and puts them in a dated folder in an archive folder. Same for my downloads.

Could you share this? I have something similar for my own workflow but it's manual and involves a folder called "Everything".

I'm also interested in this!

I wrote it up here a long time ago: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/keeping-a-clean-des...

I've made changes since then and I haven't documented them :-/ I'll try to find the time to write it up.

Here's what ChatGPT spits out: https://chat.openai.com/share/89b37ac6-cbe1-4f07-b1dc-7736c5...

This reply seems very low effort and not helpful.

I wrote it up here a long time ago: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/keeping-a-clean-des...

I've made changes since then and I haven't documented them :-/ I'll try to find the time to write it up.

I do this with my Downloads folder using Hazel[1]. I have an “Archive” folder split into subfolder of screenshots, pdfs, videos etc.. After a month in the downloads folder, Hazel moves everything into the Archive subfolder automatically, sorted by year and month.

[1]: https://www.noodlesoft.com/

Yep, I've been recommended Hazel before, but I like the control I get with the AppleScript. In particular I like the higher cadence of sweeps, mine does my desktop, downloads, and documents folders, and mine will ignore a file if it has a label, so I can easily keep things if I want.

I have a cron job taking a picture of my desktop four times per minute into a dated folder structure. It allows me to zoom back in time (days out weeks back) to figure out what I was doing at a particular time or if I was showing someone a particular bit of code or something like that.

Making this searchable for text would be the killer feature here.

Check out Rewind.ai! I used a similar app (Capturer.app) to do this automatically, and have since switched to Rewind - it's much better for my purposes.

But its constantly using 30% CPU... maybe the screenshot solution is lighter!

Mind posting the script? How much space do the images end up taking per day roughly?

Podcasts in the shower: on bluetooth speaker connect, add 15 mins to the current time, set focus mode that ignores everyone until 15 mins later, resume podcasts playlist wherever it was left off. Only annoyance with this shortcut is it’ll pop up a notification to approve running the shortcut when it detects the speaker has been turned on.

I have those cheap paper nfc stickers hidden in random spots around the house and we have the same shortcuts setup on our phones so we can add dog food/loo roll/cleaning supplies etc etc to the shared shopping list in todo.

Similarly i like being able to tap my phone on the way out my home office to run script over ssh and shut everything down, turn off the lights and plugs etc

What app are you using for shared shopping list?

Not OP but Apple’s native Reminders app supports shared lists.

sort of an automation, but I install all my favorite apps with brew and then use brew again (brew upgrade && brew upgrade --cask -g) to update everything

Bonus: I went the extra mile and wrote a script that bootstraps my entire setup: https://github.com/fastily/autobots/blob/master/macOS/setup/...

Friends here: https://github.com/ickc/bootstrapping-os-environments/tree/m...

Brew supports dumping installed things into a brewfile: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle

I was using text files before as well to manage it.

Looks interesting for someone who wants to bootstrap only those "stores" they support, and want to write in a DSL that doesn't translate to other usage scenarios.

Don't get me wrong, it serves the general users with 4.6k stars, must be very useful for many people. But mine only serves me and serves me better than that—not that my code is better, but because I know what I need.

I was bored, so I used my parent's work iPhone to make a shortcut that grabs Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day, plus definitions. It's based on the one Apple pre-made, but sends notifications instead of that web preview thing. It's not automated (so my parents wouldn't know), and runs via a home screen widget.

Not a specific automation, but the ability to run automations upon receiving an email lets you do some very cool stuff. For instance, I forward emails to a particular alias of mine, which kicks off a shortcut that adds the email to my reminders. But since you have access to the email body you could really do anything.

1. Switch off wifi, bluetooth, enable battery save mode at night and re-enable them in the morning 2. Switch off mobile data when connecting to my home wifi 3. Automatically enable and disable orientation lock when entering the photos app

MacOS: Combine several PDFs using Automator. Not spectacular, but always handy

iOS: Activate low power mode when battery drops below 95% - neat workaround since there is no way to have low power mode turned on permanently. Also, activate Airplane Mode from 1 am to 6 pm to save energy.

> ...no way to have low power mode permanently

Actually, this is indeed possible. Create an automation with the trigger "Low Power mode switched off" and add a single "turn low power mode on". Every time iOS switches it off, it should automatically retoggle back on.

Wish I could create an automation, which would notify me when battery level in either of my AirPods drops bellow 10%... because sometimes when I put them in, they don't start charging. But nope, I cannot do it.

they should automatically be playing a sound when it reaches low battery levels

they do, the moment I plug them into the ears... :-(

I'm a deep sleeper and need several alarms to wake up.

I have an automation which sets several at various increments, enables the sleep focus mode on my phone and sets the Home Assistant alarm script at that time too.

How’d you do this? I’ve got an alarm entry at every 10th minute of every hour from manually doing this over the years

Automatically battery saving mode when battery charge drops below 50%

I have mine set to go to power save mode whenever I unplug it. I don’t know what a non-power-save-mode phone works like.

Same. My phone goes for 3 days on that mode, easily.

NFC card/sticker/tag tap: vibrate-confirm with audio description of associated object for vision impaired users.

URL -> ssh -> shell script for actions not possible on iOS.

i used to have a couple of these stickers in my kitchen so when i need a timer for a specific amount of minutes, i just tap that one (rather than be pained to use siri and withstand the emotional turmoil using siri is)

I setup an automation to tell me when my battery reaches 100%.

Sometimes I want to know so I can disconnect and move about for extended periods of time ASAP.

On my Pixel phone I'm doing this with the Macrodroid app.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com