[uxjw]

Maybe designed to help with anti-theft? I already use a shortcut automation when airplane mode is turned on to lock my phone and turn off airplane mode, as that’s the first thing thieves would do.

[Shank]

You can just disable access to Control Center and Siri when locked. If you have an eSIM device, this is a really great thing to do, as it’ll always connect to a cellular network when available.

[dangus]

I think the cool thing about this shortcut is that it'll work even if the thief stole your phone while unlocked.

[layman51]

How is this shortcut even possible? Maybe it’s because I have an older model or haven’t figured out how to build good Shortcuts yet, but I thought that every shortcut requires some kind of manual activation. Would you launch the shortcut from an Apple Watch? Wouldn’t iOS require confirmation from the thief to turn off airplane mode?

That being said, I have heard of a weird automation someone made where it would open an app as soon as they went to the Home Screen. It took some thinking for them to deactivate it because the shortcut was really fast to activate.

[skygazer]

It’s in the automation tab of the shortcuts.app. You define trigger conditions and the shortcut to trigger.

[zarzavat]

This is a great idea. Perhaps add a moderate delay (say 30 seconds or 1 minute) to confuse them even more. Then they will think that airplane mode is active when it isn't.

[hunter2_]

When you say theft, do you mean by someone with interest in the hardware or the data? Assuming hardware, I'm not sure I understand why a thief who intends to wipe it anyway would care about an auto restart versus normal screen lock. Assuming data, that's exactly what the article is about.

[ruthmarx]

Are thieves really even stealing phones anymore? You can't pawn or sell them anymore because they can't just be reset and setup with a new account, batteries are becoming impossible to remove...all you can really take is the screen which isn't really worth much either.

[chatmasta]

How do you turn on airplane mode when that's actually what you want to do?

[hunter2_]

Personally I only use it for battery savings when camping or similar. It's not the kind of thing everyone cares about. I think we're long past the days where a flight full of phones frantically searching for towers during takeoff/landing would degrade the network for people on the ground, as may have been true way back when (and why) airplane mode was adopted as a standard feature.

[brewdad]

I typically activate airplane mode twice and have it fail. Remember the automation, go deactivate the automation and then airplane mode works. On actual airplanes, I’m more likely to simply power off my phone.

[ruthmarx]

Savvy thieves would just use a faraday cage case/bag I guess.

[zarzavat]

Savvy thieves would probably choose a different occupation. Prisons are full of stupid criminals.

[sroussey]

Sure. Or just power down. No FaceID or password code required. Find My may still work though, so thieves do use faraday bags.

[counternotions]

Neat trick. But in what cities do people need to live like this?

[ronsor]

San Francisco. Or almost any other big American city for that matter.

[brendoelfrendo]

Any city with police that might steal your phone. So... all of them.

[throwway232423]

Latin America cities