How to Install Shortcuts
Some of the shortcuts listed below are custom-made and aren’t found in the Gallery section of the app. Here’s how to get these onto your phone or tablet: To use untrusted shortcuts, select a shortcut from the Gallery section of the app and run it at least once. Then, go to the Settings app, select Shortcuts, and tap the button next to Allow Untrusted Shortcuts.
Using the Shortcuts App
You can enable the Shortcuts widget if you want easy access to one or more shortcuts from the widget area. Others are ideal for Apple Watch, when using the action menu (like when you share something), or as a home screen shortcut. To launch one with Siri, record a phrase that Siri understands as instructions to launch a specific workflow. Learn how to use Siri Shortcuts for help. Most shortcuts can be set up to run from any of these areas. The descriptions below call out which type of shortcut is best for each of these tasks. When you open this shortcut, not only can you choose which event to navigate to but you can also customize the settings to make it fit you and your events. For example, display events that start anywhere from seconds away from the current time to years in the future, change the map mode to driving or walking, only query events that are not all day long, and set the GPS app to use for navigation. This shortcut is great for the Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad. Set it up as a quick-access button by putting the shortcut on your home screen, making it a widget, or viewing it from your Apple Watch. For example, if you’re late to a hockey game, the message says, “Running a little late to hockey! Be there in 35 minutes.” By default, this workflow works as described above. However, you can make several changes to customize how it works with your events (which ones it finds) and what the message says (any of the text can be changed), whether a contact should be preloaded into the compose box, and what app to send the message through (e.g., email or WhatsApp). Unlike every other shortcut in this list, this one is paired with another app, so you’ll also need the free Scriptable app installed. This shortcut is best used as an action extension so that you can highlight an address and tap Share to get the travel information. To enable this in the shortcut settings, select Show in Share Sheet. Make this a widget so that you can use it from the home screen or notification area, and then tap it once to be prompted to delete the last photo that was saved. Keep using it to remove recently added images. For example, tap it once to delete the most recent picture, then tap it again to delete the new most recent picture, and so on. If you want, customize the picture count to be even more, like 10 if you want to be asked to delete that many at once. You can also have it include or exclude screenshots. This shortcut finds more than gas stations. Change it to locate hotels, restaurants, parks, museums, or any other place you find yourself always searching for. Edit the shortcut and change gas to wherever you want, or choose Ask Each Time so that you’re prompted when you run the shortcut. This shortcut is fully customizable from the tip percentage to the number of decimal places to calculate. Modify the options to include a smaller or larger tip percentage and customize the final alert box. The Calculate Tip shortcut works with any device, including Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Make it a widget for easy access. If you want it to do something else with the collage instead of showing the picture, remove Quick Look at the end and add a different action. For example, choose Save to Photo Album to save the image without asking what to do with it. Select Send Message to open a new text message window with the collage inserted into the body. This shortcut asks you which playlist to play when you open it. You can also enable shuffle and repeat. Unlike some shortcuts, this one doesn’t display alerts or prompts asking you for anything (unless you want it to). All you do is customize the shortcut and your music plays instantly when you open it. The other one is Video to GIF. This one converts videos that are stored on the device into GIF files. It has you trim the video to create a GIF of any clip. Both shortcuts have the option to remove the last action and change it to anything you want. For example, save the GIF to your device or email it to someone. Modify this app to adjust how many contacts are shown in the alert, change what the alert says, choose when the birthday must be in order to display in the list, sort the names, and more. There isn’t much to customize with this simple workflow except for the icon and name, but it’s extremely useful. If you don’t want to pre-set a number, choose Ask Each Time in the phone number text box. Then, when you run the shortcut, choose any contact or enter any phone number. This shortcut is best used as a Today Widget or Apple Watch shortcut. On an iPhone, swipe left on the home screen and tap the shortcut to call someone. To use this, highlight the text that you want to search for, then use the share option to open this shortcut. The highlighted text is imported into a new Google search result in Chrome. This works from Safari and any application where you can select and share text. For this shortcut to work, it must be set up as Show in Share Sheet. In Safari, share the highlighted text to Chrome Google Search to open the same text in a new Google search in Chrome. You can adjust the is greater than value so that the shortcut doesn’t give a distance for images taken more than one mile away. You can also adjust any of the message text. This workflow is best used as a widget or home screen shortcut. All you have to do is trigger the shortcut, and everything happens automatically in the background. Or, if you’re free to monitor your screen, tap to end the recording early, and the rest will continue automatically. For example, start the shortcut, then lay the phone down or put it into your pocket or backpack. It records for 30 seconds (you can change the time), uploads the recording to your Dropbox account, copies the URL to the recording, then texts the recording and other pertinent information to the one or more contacts you chose when you set up the shortcut. You can also use this iOS shortcut to record snippets of your voice while driving or walking and like to be hands-free. If you use the shortcut this way, send the recording to yourself or save it to Dropbox without sending the link to anyone. Make this iOS shortcut a home screen icon or a widget for easy access. To modify this, enter the websites you want to read news from, the URLs to the RSS feeds, and the number of items to fetch from the feed. This is how many articles will show up in the list of feed items to pick from. To customize each feed, add filters to show articles from a certain author, include articles with certain words, and more. You can also change which browser to use to read the news, such as Safari to Chrome. This RSS reader is totally customizable and best used as a widget. This shortcut only searches for completed reminders, but you can add other filters to find and remove specific reminders. For example, clean reminders from certain lists, delete reminders with a specific due date, delete ones that match a particular creation date or title and remove reminders that aren’t complete. There are lots of filters you can set up.
