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Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

support.apple.com

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Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#21

Post by jasongill »

gshakir wrote: post #19
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…

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

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#22

Post by konschubert »

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#23

Post by philo23 »

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…

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#24

Post by judah »

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...

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#25

Post by jakobegger »

josephhainline wrote: post #13
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…

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#26

Post by otterley »

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…

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.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#27

Post by gshakir »

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

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

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#29

Post by graeme »

jasongill wrote: post #20
matwood wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#30

Post by graeme »

heavymark wrote: post #14
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…

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 wit…

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.

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