Since Workflow became Shortcuts, I’ve started using many more Shortcuts that use Siri to their advantage, and also some new Shortcuts to add to my collection.
I’ve already written a post about the Workflows I used every day, and you can find that post here. The Workflows still work in Shortcuts, and I still use them daily.
Amazon Price History
Prices often change on Amazon, and this Shortcut allows you to see what the price changes have been, and how cheap the product is compared to recent times. The graph shows the highest and lowest points, along with the dates for all the prices.
The Workflow is run on the Amazon page, and returns a graph like below:
This Shortcut is from Reddit, and can be found here.
Things Task With Photo
The biggest disadvantage of Things is the inability to add a photo or attachments to your task. Using this Shortcut, you can upload a photo to Evernote, and link directly to it in the Things note content, allowing you to open up the note in one tap. Set the title of the task when you run the Workflow, and then the Evernote note and the Things task will have the same title.
I can’t figure out how to link to the Things task from the Evernote note, which is something I would like to add.
View Deleted Reddit Comments
This is especially useful on AskReddit when a deleted comment breaks the chain of conversation. With this Shortcut, you can share the link to the Reddit post, and it will automatically show the deleted comment in Removeddit.
You can download this Shortcut here.
Things Parser
This is a Shortcut made by the people at Macstories, who have an in-depth post on it. The Shortcut allows you to make this:
Into multiple tasks in Things:
The parser allows you to add tags, notes, deadline dates and more to a project, and is very useful if you want to bulk add to Things, and easily add things such as notes and deadlines.
Make sure to view the Macstories post about it in order to learn more, including the syntax used in the Shortcut.
You can download the Shortcut here.
Custom Do Not Disturb
I use Do Not Disturb a lot, and one of the things that annoyed me was that I could not set custom times for it to work. However, with this Shortcut I can choose the date and time for Do Not Disturb to disable.
Simply select the time and date on the time picker, and your phone won’t bother you until that time. Of course, you can still manually disable Do Not Disturb
The Shortcut can be downloaded here.
Pipeline Maker
I use pipelines to manage projects, such as my post schedule for this site. They allow me to easily see what needs to be done and for when, and what has been done.
I’ve written an entire post on this Shortcut, and described how it works and how you can customise it to your needs.
Essentially, it automatically creates a table with my custom headers for the Saturdays in the next 26 weeks, each with the correct date. It saves me a lot of time as I would use to create the tables manually, and now it is done all in one tap.
You can read about the Shortcut here, and also download it.
Morning Routine
This is a Shortcut that I only use from Siri. When I wake up, I simply say Hey Siri, good morning and this Shortcut will run.
It tells me the time, weather for the day ahead using Carrot Weather, and then reads my events for the day. Then, it tells me the headlines from BBC News.
The Shortcut is a great way to get my day going, and it makes sure I am up to date with the news, and that I know what events I have coming up. You do not need to unlock your phone for the Shortcut to work either which is great.
You can download my morning routine Shortcut here.
Shortcuts is a great evolution of Workflow, and I’m glad to see that it is being updated and brought in closer with the iOS ecosystem.
It’s saved me a lot of time over the years I have sued the app, and I really recommend you try it out in your daily usage. It’s a brilliant app and I’m looking forward to it improving further.
