Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

support.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 150 posts

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#91

Post by pfranz »

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 think it's one of those tools that everyone has their own niche use. These are for Home, not for Shortcuts or Personal automation, but my wife tends to leave the floor heaters on. So I have an automation that turns them off at 10am and midnight. I get home after dark, so I had my front porch light turn on at sunset and off at midnight. For awhile my garage door opened onto a busy street, so we often left it open. I hadn't automated it, but I wanted either for it to automatically close or message me if it was open for 30+m and have the option to close it remotely. We have room heaters in my young son's room. It would be nice to remotely control that instead of going downstairs (thankfully his baby monitor shows the room temp). Most of these could be addressed with a manual device, but the lack of friction really helps--until your network goes down.

As for Personal Automation, I've heard others text their spouse every day as they leave work. Now they can do that automatically with an ETA.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#92

Post by marksomnian »

jasongill wrote: post #34
graeme wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, but what if the NFC tag was on your keychain with your phone, which the attacker also had? That seems far more likely than being able to spoof a Bluetooth device that your phone had already paired with in the past (yet that one is in the list of "not automatic" choices)

When the attacker has your keys and your phone, you have bigger problems.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#93

Post by Ididntdothis »

prashnts wrote: post #67
merryMellody wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With an app like Scriptable, you can indeed! This one lets you write JavaScript code, and they added the feature to pass in parameters with iOS 13.1! https://scriptable.app

Pythonista 3 (currently on TestFlight) is another option. I like the custom keyboard shortcuts that it adds. It can also trigger shortcuts, I reckon.

This is interesting. I thought iOS is pretty locked down.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#94

Post by jrnichols »

jakobegger wrote: post #25
josephhainline wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's odd.. those have always worked great for me. Did you let iOS know what your home and/or work locations were?

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#95

Post by kstrauser »

philo23 wrote: post #23
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 notific…

I would be perfectly happy to receive a popup that an automation had just run. Also, Apple has been pushing for self-adjusting notification preferences. Imagine a popup like:

"The shortcut 'Foo' wants to run. Do you want to allow it?

- Never

- Not this time

- Run once

- Always"

Put an icon next to each shortcut showing whether it's always (or never) allowed, and it seems like the problem would be largely solved without asking much from the end user.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#96

Post by pfranz »

bunwich wrote: post #86
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.

Some things that I've setup or use in shortcuts: - "gas prices" pull up the gasbuddy website, regex the first element and get siri to read it aloud. - "going home" Uses maps to obtain how long it takes to get home from my current location, sets the volume to 70% to get siri to dictate it, and sends the ETA and a nice message to my +1 that i'll be home soon. Version 2 will be to prompt me when I actually leave the GPS…

Apple Maps now shows a "Share ETA." You can slide up from the arrival time to find it after setting a destination, but it also popped up pretty prominently a few times. The only bummer (the only time I've tried to use it) is that it only has options to send to contacts.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#97

Post by mikestew »

willis936 wrote: post #55
mikestew wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sooooo...a quick skim of the article indicates that personal automations can now do what you're missing. My question is, are you complaining about something that this article specifically addresses, saying "yea! About time!", or...? Because your "point is" is specifically addressed by TFA.

It’s a valid complaint. I haven’t used android in 5 years and I still miss tasker. It’s the kind of basic, important tool that any personal device should have. It isn’t difficult to implement well. There really isn’t a good excuse that it took so long and it is nice to finally have. Every “reason” why it took so long is simply someone imposing their personal opinions onto a wide range of users.

It’s a valid complaint.

It was yesterday, sure. But what I haven't heard is, "but it's still missing...". All I've heard so far is, "what took so long? Android...". Which I suppose is a valid complaint, but I thought there might be more.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#98

Post by leo-tada »

rogy wrote: post #76
rahoulb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Federico Viticci at MacStories - he's been using Shortcuts and Workflow before it to automate his entire iPad based life. Some of the stuff he gets it to do is amazing.

Any links? Googling seems to just give me a list of random shortcuts rather than any discussion on how he uses them

https://www.macstories.net/shortcuts/

and another collections https://shareshortcuts.com/ https://shortcutsgallery.com/ https://routinehub.co/ https://sharecuts.app/

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#99

Post by philo23 »

kstrauser wrote: post #95
philo23 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 notific…

I would be perfectly happy to receive a popup that an automation had just run. Also, Apple has been pushing for self-adjusting notification preferences. Imagine a popup like: "The shortcut 'Foo' wants to run. Do you want to allow it? - Never - Not this time - Run once - Always" Put an icon next to each shortcut showing whether it's always (or never) allowed, and it seems like the problem would be largely solved witho…

This sounds like a very reasonable solution. I kinda hope this is the way they end up solving it, if this really is the reason they're not truly automatic.

Re: Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

#100

Post by GeekyBear »

cj wrote: post #82
chrischen wrote: post #81

I tried to have it launch spotify when Airpods were connected, but found only Apple music supported. I’ve always wondered, is the lack of Spotify support in Siri, Shortcuts, due to Spotify or due to Apple blocking them?

I just got Airpods. I had to sign up for Apple Music yesterday because offline support (when the watch isn't in bluetooth range of the phone) wasn't available with Spotify. Not sure if this is simply a feature Spotify decided not to implement, or if they can't implement it due to Apple Watch restrictions. I have similar questions with the Hulu Apple TV app. Results for content in Hulu aren't always included in Apple…

The new version of WatchOS makes audio streaming to the watch a public API.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/716/

Spotify can implement the feature any time they like.

Similarly, Hulu has long been able to provide the search metadata needed to integrate into Apple's universal search system, if they choose to do so.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/508/

Post reply on HN