Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#1

Post by gshakir » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 11:23 AM UTC

Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts
support.apple.com

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#2

Post by submeta » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#3

Post by crazygringo » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#4

Post by chrisrogers » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #3

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#5

Post by adamjcooper » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#6

Post by qubyte » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#7

Post by post_break » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#8

Post by TechRemarker » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#9

Post by batmenace » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #3

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.

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

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#10

Post by matwood » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

adamjcooper wrote: post #5

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…

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-...