Shortcuts in Limbo

I’ve enjoyed some recent posts from John Voorhees and Jason Snell about expanding Shortcuts on the Mac using AppleScript and the terminal. However, I still am having trouble getting consistent and reliable automation with Shortcuts on the Mac. The product still feels a lot like a beta in that some parts of it just don’t work as advertised. This is troublesome for a few reasons.

First, I worry that folks eager to try Shortcuts for Mac are going to get frustrated when the creation process fails them. (For example, I spent 10 minutes fighting with Shortcuts this morning to set a variable.) Once new users get a Shortcut built, there is no guaranty it will perform correctly given the current state of things. To make this worse, there is very little in the way of error reporting. A lot of times the Shortcut will fail with no feedback whatsoever to the user so you don’t know if you made a mistake in constructing it, or if the feature you called is just broken.

Second, I’m trying to build a Shortcuts for Mac Field Guide, but many of the lessons I want to teach are in a holding pattern until particular bugs get fixed.

Put simply, Shortcuts for Mac is in limbo right now. The good news is that it is improving a lot in the betas and every sign we can see from the outside points to the fact that the Shortcuts Team is aware of these issues and working on them. I suspect it’s one of those things where they just ran out of time and couldn’t get it entirely in shape before Monterey was released.

Hopefully, this limbo period is short-lived.

The Idea of Shortcuts on the Mac

This week Jason Snell wrote an excellent article about the need for Apple to bring Shortcuts to the Mac. I’ve been thinking about that article a lot. My position on Apple bringing Shortcuts to the Mac has always been, “wait”. The reason being that automation is alive and well on the Mac. With a much more open platform and the existence of Apple events, AppleScript, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, TextExpander, and the ability to run virtually any scripting language via the terminal, there is very little that I can not automate on my Mac.

The iPhone and iPad, however, are a much different story. Apple had no automation tools on its mobile platforms until Shortcuts came along. Shortcuts is, practically, the only way to automate on mobile and for years now there has been lots of low-hanging fruit on mobile that Shortcuts has yet to pick.

I wanted Apple to keep the Shortcuts team working exclusively on mobile so it could get better rather than spend its time moving Shortcuts over the Mac. However, Jason’s article has moved me on this. While my argument about waiting made sense a few years ago, nowadays we’ve got Apple Silicon Macs and Shortcuts on mobile is a lot more powerful than it used to be. Moreover, even with all the above-mentioned Mac automation tools, there is room under the tent for one more. If done right, we’d be able to pull Shortcuts actions into scripts and Keyboard Maestro and make those tools even more powerful.

So put me on team Mac Shortcuts. Let’s hope WWDC 2021 brings us Automators some new toys.

ThoughtAsylum Icon Generator

Stephen Millard has made an ingenious shortcut that solves the problem of generating icons. The particular itch that Stephen was trying to scratch was the development of icons for his Stream Deck. However, if you do any automation, you're constantly bumping into places that you'd like to have icons. One of the things I particularly like about Stephen's solution is the way it works with Apple's SF Symbols, which I like.
Either way, if you want to render 10 or 10,000 icons this weekend, check this out.

Today's Shortcuts Webinar

As I post this, we are just an hour away from firing up the Shortcuts Webinar covering all the new iOS 14 Shortcuts features and a bit of contextual computing on the iPhone. It’s not too late to sign up.

Shortcuts Field Guide Update, Discount, and Free Shortcuts Webinar

Are you ready for iOS 14? Because it is coming today. I have to admit when I got my popcorn for yesterday’s Apple event, I didn't expect Tim to announce they are releasing iOS 14 the next day. Regardless, I've been working on an updated to the Shortcuts Field Guide and I'm pleased to announce it is already published.

I've added 16 videos and 48+ minutes of new content all about iOS 14 features. If you purchased last year’s Shortcuts Field Guide, this is a free update to that. Just log in to your course and the new material is already there. If you'd like to get onboard with the Shortcuts Field Guide, I'm discounting the price by $5 for a short time to celebrate the iOS 14 launch and Shortcuts Field Guide Update. Just go to the Shortcuts Field Guide Webpage and the price is discounted for a short time. Everything is downloadable and I've got the iOS 14 materials both integrated into the course, and collected together so no matter how you want to learn it, I've got you covered.

Also, on October 1, I'm putting on a free webinar where I'll be going over all the big changes to Shortcuts with iOS 14. If you sign up but don't make it to the webinar, you'll still get a link to the video replay. I'll, hopefully, see you at the Shortcuts Webinar.

Warhol Shortcut

Dr. Drang wrote a great shortcut this week that combines Shortcuts, Photos, and dogs. Did you really think I wouldn’t link it?

IOS 14 Back Tap for Camera and Flashlight

I couldn’t help myself and installed the iOS 14 beta on my iPhone. There are a lot of nice new features, but one obscure one is Back Tap. This new accessibility feature lets you trigger Accessibility functions by tapping the back of your phone two or three times. It also can trigger a Shortcut. So I made some simple shortcuts to trigger the camera and toggle the flashlight and added them to Back Tap triggers. Here is a video showing how it works.

Take Control of Shortcuts

Rosemary Orchard, my fellow co-host of the Automators Podcast, just released a book on Shortcuts through the Take Control series. I know Rose has been working very hard on this book and it's excellent. If you want to learn some more about Shortcuts and support Rose, check it out.

Guest on MacVoices

It’s always fun checking in with my pal Chuck Joiner. You can watch or listen to us on MacVoices talk about how I had to rebuild the newest Shortcuts Field Guide since Apple rebuilt Shortcuts. Among other things, I also give some examples of what you can accomplish with Shortcuts to make your iPhone and iPad work for you.

Announcing the Shortcuts Field Guide, iOS 13 Edition

I’m pleased to announce the release of the new iOS 13 edition of the Shortcuts Field Guide.

The Short Pitch for the New Field Guide

The new Shortcuts Field guide was shot entirely new with the new Shortcuts for iOS 13. Apple changed a lot and it is all covered in this field guide:

• Over 6 hours of downloadable video tutorials

• New materials for both beginners and advanced users

• New Downloadable Shortcuts

• So much Automation

As a blog reader, you get a limited-time $5 discount with the code “BLOGSHORTS”.

If you want to go straight to the course now, here you go.

If you’d like further explanation, read on …

Mobile Automation Is within Your Grasp.

Apple continues to put the gas down on iOS automation. The iOS 13 version of Shortcuts represents a significant improvement over the prior version. Best of all, anyone can do it. Shortcuts does not rely on scripting languages but instead a common-sense approach to Automation. Here are just a few possible things you can do with Shortcuts in iOS 13:

• Get an automatic weather report for the location of tomorrow’s appointments

• Block schedule an entire week

• Put your iPhone into focus mode when you connect to a coffee shop’s WiFi

• Build simple apps, like a self-creating packing list customized for you

• Automate your meetings

• Automate sending a message when you are running late with an accurate, automatically generated ETA.

These are just a few examples of what you can do with Shortcuts, and all of these examples (along with many others) are included among the many video lessons in this course.

With Shortcuts, you can automate just about anything. In addition to teaching you all of the mechanics of Shortcuts, this course includes many walkthroughs of automation workflows you can use, download, or alter to automate your own iPhone and iPad.

There are 107 lovingly crafted screencasts totaling over six hours of content. Each tutorial includes a full transcript and closed captioning. Where appropriate, the tutorials also include downloadable Shortcuts that you can install and run alongside the video.

Course Outline:

1. Introduction

Learn the basics of Shortcuts, including installation and interface. This section covers basic application concepts and how it organizes your Shortcuts. Also, build your first Shortcut.

2. Shortcuts Key Concepts
Shortcuts is a simplified type of programming, and there are several basic, key concepts you’ll want to know to get the most out of it. This section covers those basics, including the Shortcuts programming model, variables, magic variables, conversational shortcuts, share sheet-based shortcuts, and more.

3. Triggers

With Shortcuts, there are a lot of ways to kick off your automation. It can be something you physically trigger, such as a button on your screen, or something automated, like at a specific time or when you connect your phone to WiFi (or CarPlay!) or tap your phone against an NFC sticker. It’s brilliant. This section includes sixteen videos explaining every possible Shortcuts trigger.

4. Actions

Once you have figured out all of the triggers, you will want to start making your iPhone and iPad dance. Just like triggers, Shortcuts is capable of so many actions including the ability to control applications; control settings; add notifications; type text; get directions; create and modify calendar events, bulk adjust photos; make a better share sheet; automate mail; and so much more. There is so much that Shortcuts can do. This section includes 28 videos showing off all of Shortcuts’s tricks.

5. Advanced Concepts

Shortcuts is a lot more powerful than you may think. Once you work through the basic concepts, triggers, and actions, it’s time to dig in on advanced concepts like nesting, programming logic, URL schemes, Base64, regular expressions, and more. This section demystifies some of Shortcuts’s more powerful tools so anyone can use them.

6. Useful Shortcuts

Here you will find a laundry list of useful shortcuts. This section includes 32 screencasts of helpful walkthroughs and downloadable scripts to get more out of your iPhone and iPad. You can download and start using these scripts immediately, or use all of the knowledge that you will have picked up to customize these scripts and make them your own.

7. Conclusion

Learn about more Shortcuts resources.

Here is the course, by the numbers:

• Over 6 hours of streaming or downloadable video

• 107 separate videos, 7 separate sections

• Many downloadable shortcuts

• Heaps of dangerous knowledge, tricks, and hacks to make your iPhone and iPad dance

The Shortcuts Field Guide is Now Available for Purchase.

Want a preview? How about a 40 minute preview …

Automating Shortcut Links

The Shortcuts team continues to delight. Today’s iOS 13.1 Beta 2 added a new feature that lets you automate the process of getting a downloadable iCloud link for your shortcuts. Neat! Rosemary Orchard explains it in detail.