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.
I think personal automation is what will finally make Shortcuts useful. Like you, I've got a ton of flows that could benefit, but without triggers a lot of the shortcuts were just saving me a few button presses. To me, that's just not worth cluttering the Shortcuts UI and having one more thing to maintain.
As you point out, there's unmet potential. So many times I go to create a shortcut, "surely they have an action for $FOO, it would be one of the first things I'd implement", and...no. But it's getting there. Maybe not this year, but I hold hope that Apple will keep at it and in the next year or two this feature will start to open up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 with one click on apple watch with out having to open the notification then approve.
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'd been trying to figure out why they required a user interaction for some of these. 5 out of 6 of these can be explained by debouncing.
• "Wi-Fi" and "Bluetooth" connection triggers are extremely susceptible to bouncing on and off with variable radio conditions
• "Arrive", "Leave", and "Before I Leave" are all susceptible to bouncing in and out; they combine a fuzzy location of variable precision with a point and radius
By requiring a user interaction, it makes sure that bouncing never causes the shortcut to trigger more often than desired. Apple certainly tries to debounce the event automatically, but that comes with other side effects: the trigger can be delayed significantly and unpredictably.
(As for why "Time of Day" requires a user interaction, I have yet to hear a satisfying explanation. I want my Cron!)
I'm using IFTTT for similar functionality on my Android phone and I've never had a problem with a task bouncing in and out of a specific location. In fact, the location selection process only allows you to zoom in so far on the map to prevent you from getting to specific with your geofence.
Obviously you're not going to be able to write a GPS specific enough to detect which room you're in, but that's expected.
The iPhone Xs was my first ever iPhone. Before that I had been an Android power user for 8 years. I installed my own custom ROMs, xposed framework, rooted, etc.
Although I'm firmly in the iPhone camp for privacy and other reasons now, I miss the automation provided by Tasker and the Android OS.
I used to have many useful location + time based profiles. For instance, I had a profile for if I was at home and it was between 9pm and 7am, Do not disturb mode would be turned on (which still allowed 'emergency' calls) and i would switch to a dimmer screen brightness profile. If I was at work, my media volume would be put to 0, phone would change to vibrate, etc.
The point is, many repetitive tasks were easily automated on Android and it required ZERO interaction from my end. No shortcut button press or anything. Smart phones should make our lives easier.
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.
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.
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.
I say "Siri, record my weight" and the iPad response "Sure, how much do you weigh?" I say the number and it gets appended to a Google Docs spreadsheet with the current date.
The next step that I never finished was to have Google Docs generate a graph and mail it to me every month.
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.
Shortcuts in general are nice, particularly now that they can be conversational. Hey Siri log... lets me easily log my weight, water and caffeine intake just by speaking. I already had shortcuts to do those through tapping, but the easier I can make things to do the more likely I'll do them.
Another I have is "Hey Siri, heading home" which texts my wife my ETA and starts my last played podcast.
- "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 of my office around 5-7pm and send it after verbal confirmation. (Barring if there's a pop up that has been mentioned)
- "Share Location" this is one of the ones available in gallery that let's you send people your current location. I hope they make 'Share ETA' available but I don't see that option in maps yet. That would let people know when i'm arriving at their house.
This is fun enough that I'm hoping to buy some NFC stickers and get some homekit devices to play with.
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.
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.
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
I sorta feel the same. But I did make one that I’m using a lot. It’s a typical “read later” workflow but it adds the site to both safari reading list and pinboard at the same time.
A simple shortcut to send web urls through outline.com and or archive.is is a life saver for mobile browsing particularly when EU blocking news sites are the target
I don't know if shortcuts included ssh key support before this update, but I just noticed that it does now! ed25519 appears to be the default key type.
Now I can run Terraform automatically when I get home to provision some tea! /s
I started small. I have an automation that launches at 8 pm that does three things:
* Sets dark mode
* Sets reduce white point
* Runs a shortcut I made asking me a few questions
The questions are:
1. Will you get ready for bed? Sleep affects your next day. (I have to click yes/no)
2. Will you go brush your teeth after this? (The first step. I have to click yes/no)
3. It gives me a list of things I may want to do to wind down: a walk (based on steps), tidying, reading a book
4. Then it prompts me to look at a small diary/todo I made in the morning and comment on it. And then look at my screen time stats.
I find this helpful. And since I always want to reduce white point, this means I will automatically want to click the notification to run it.
I hopefully eventually they will have AND and OR conditions in automations. Eg if between 8:30 and 11:30 AND I open instagram, open my todo list.
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 was hoping Personal Automation would solve a long-time goal of mine: waking up to a carefully curated playlist rather than a ringtone. But it looks like this still won't work, because it requires human interaction to kick off the 'automation'. That's a shame, since this is something that every radio alarm handles.
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.
Another issue. When setting time of day you can choose says, but unlike Apple Calendar or any third party calendar app like Fantastical, you can't set custom. Such as Repeat Monday and Wednesday every 2 weeks, etc. Everytime I get excited to use Shortcuts I see seemingly small but major issues that prevent from creating the desired workflow, so end up giving up. Since when it was owned by Workflow had hopes little things like that would get resolved quickly, with Apple, assume if its not part of the first release most likely won't be fixed until next year as a 'feature'.
Does this finally end the nonsense that is Dropbox being unable to stay open and finish uploading photos? I.e. could I set it to open the Dropbox app every ten minutes during the night?
[+] [-] TechRemarker|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mikestew|6 years ago|reply
As you point out, there's unmet potential. So many times I go to create a shortcut, "surely they have an action for $FOO, it would be one of the first things I'd implement", and...no. But it's getting there. Maybe not this year, but I hold hope that Apple will keep at it and in the next year or two this feature will start to open up.
[+] [-] adamjcooper|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] matwood|6 years ago|reply
https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/enable-or-disable-...
[+] [-] philo23|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] josephhainline|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otterley|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavymark|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gshakir|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavyset_go|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hamuko|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0dest|6 years ago|reply
• "Wi-Fi" and "Bluetooth" connection triggers are extremely susceptible to bouncing on and off with variable radio conditions
• "Arrive", "Leave", and "Before I Leave" are all susceptible to bouncing in and out; they combine a fuzzy location of variable precision with a point and radius
By requiring a user interaction, it makes sure that bouncing never causes the shortcut to trigger more often than desired. Apple certainly tries to debounce the event automatically, but that comes with other side effects: the trigger can be delayed significantly and unpredictably.
(As for why "Time of Day" requires a user interaction, I have yet to hear a satisfying explanation. I want my Cron!)
[+] [-] ShamelessC|6 years ago|reply
Obviously you're not going to be able to write a GPS specific enough to detect which room you're in, but that's expected.
[+] [-] hart_russell|6 years ago|reply
Although I'm firmly in the iPhone camp for privacy and other reasons now, I miss the automation provided by Tasker and the Android OS.
I used to have many useful location + time based profiles. For instance, I had a profile for if I was at home and it was between 9pm and 7am, Do not disturb mode would be turned on (which still allowed 'emergency' calls) and i would switch to a dimmer screen brightness profile. If I was at work, my media volume would be put to 0, phone would change to vibrate, etc.
The point is, many repetitive tasks were easily automated on Android and it required ZERO interaction from my end. No shortcut button press or anything. Smart phones should make our lives easier.
[+] [-] mikestew|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judah|6 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] codezero|6 years ago|reply
Example: https://cvws.icloud-content.com/B/AZc9tIA45EozUwn3Zs0zZEJSUY...
[+] [-] conradev|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rahoulb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|6 years ago|reply
I say "Siri, record my weight" and the iPad response "Sure, how much do you weigh?" I say the number and it gets appended to a Google Docs spreadsheet with the current date.
The next step that I never finished was to have Google Docs generate a graph and mail it to me every month.
[+] [-] qubyte|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matwood|6 years ago|reply
Another I have is "Hey Siri, heading home" which texts my wife my ETA and starts my last played podcast.
[+] [-] bunwich|6 years ago|reply
- "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 of my office around 5-7pm and send it after verbal confirmation. (Barring if there's a pop up that has been mentioned)
- "Share Location" this is one of the ones available in gallery that let's you send people your current location. I hope they make 'Share ETA' available but I don't see that option in maps yet. That would let people know when i'm arriving at their house.
This is fun enough that I'm hoping to buy some NFC stickers and get some homekit devices to play with.
[+] [-] pfranz|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gshakir|6 years ago|reply
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/5f95b87eba6544929fb2a40b72c...
[+] [-] post_break|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batmenace|6 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] chrisrogers|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gen3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FPGAhacker|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianpenney|6 years ago|reply
Now I can run Terraform automatically when I get home to provision some tea! /s
[+] [-] DenseComet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conradev|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|6 years ago|reply
* Sets dark mode * Sets reduce white point * Runs a shortcut I made asking me a few questions
The questions are:
1. Will you get ready for bed? Sleep affects your next day. (I have to click yes/no) 2. Will you go brush your teeth after this? (The first step. I have to click yes/no) 3. It gives me a list of things I may want to do to wind down: a walk (based on steps), tidying, reading a book 4. Then it prompts me to look at a small diary/todo I made in the morning and comment on it. And then look at my screen time stats.
I find this helpful. And since I always want to reduce white point, this means I will automatically want to click the notification to run it.
I hopefully eventually they will have AND and OR conditions in automations. Eg if between 8:30 and 11:30 AND I open instagram, open my todo list.
[+] [-] chooseaname|6 years ago|reply
Well that's disappointing. It isn't automation if you have to have a human involved.
[+] [-] chrischen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbourke|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Angostura|6 years ago|reply
I wrote an automation yesterday that simply says
When Connected to Carplay Media > Pause.
So far, it seems to do the trick. Doesn't require manual intervention.
[+] [-] hprotagonist|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamdamian|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ididntdothis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] konschubert|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] submeta|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] heavymark|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustinNeprati|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jl6|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kilroy123|6 years ago|reply