iOS 12 Shortcuts app

I’m going to play around with Shortcuts over the next few days. Has anyone used it yet? Any cool shortcuts that you’ve set up?

I’ve just received an email from Tripit about shortcuts so that I can ask Siri for itinerary updates. Hope to find some time to play with these, but it is good to see companies on the front foot with new features.

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I’ve set up one in NextThere so I can ask Siri when the next train is. Pretty cool.

Apparently Lifx works with it and you can trigger scenes and stuff but buggered if I can work it out!

Edit: Worked our lifx. You do what you want in the lifx app then in iOS go to Settings > Siri & Search > All Shortcuts and you can add from there and record a phrase.

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Because I lack imagination, the most creative shortcut I’ve made is something that saves the URL of the current page to a new line in a plain text document in my Dropbox folder. I also created a workflow to log weight in the Health app — I was previously logging weight/date in a notebook, but then decided I wanted them in Health.

If iOS automation is something you’re interested in, you should definitely check out the posts on MacStories about Siri Shortcuts.

E.g. their latest is using Shortcuts to trigger IFTTT applets, which increase the capabilities of Shortcuts by about 1000%.

There’s also the Sharecuts website, which has user-uploaded Shortcuts that you might be interested in.

I’ve been playing around with it and can’t seem to find a pratical use for anything in there. Sure, there’s some great automation and workflows, just can’t find anything that really benefits or makes life easier for me.

If this went a step further with other triggers (such as geofencing) it would be really handy. I had this set up with IFTTT but it was very unreliable.

I made a little one for my iPad today where I can ask Siri to open logbook file I have and it does, ready for marking up with the Pencil. Not a big thing, but it will save me from having to open it from Files on the odd occasion I need it.

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If you’re a YNAB user this one is cool. I just set it up for all of my everyday categories. I’m trying to work out how to tweak it so my HomePod will read it out.

Hi folks, are people still using Shortcuts?

I started looking at making one for sending a message to clients advising them of the date and time of upcoming appointments. The shortcut is nothing amazing, it just asks you a bunch of questions, puts the answers into a mesaage and then pops that into the Messages app.

What would be cool is if I could integrate this with the calendar to make the appointment and the message at the same time.