Transcription
You guys did it again. I got 10 new awesome and useful shortcuts that you guys requested. And honestly, I feel like these Apple shortcuts just keep getting better and better. Such as a shortcut that will auto reply to spam messages and stop them. A shortcut that tracks your expenses monthly and keeps you in budget. And a new version of my morning shortcut, I think we're on like version four now, that will use something called URL schemes to provide sleep data from the night before. You're not going to want to miss that one. And like always, all these shortcuts will be linked below in the description so you guys can start using them yourself. And please comment down below for any shortcuts you would like to see in future videos and subscribe to know when those videos come out. Let's dive in.
Starting now is the expense tracker shortcut. Someone requested an expense tracker using the numbers app. They wanted something that could easily keep track of their purchases and their budget. So to do this, we first would actually need to set up a numbers spreadsheet. That spreadsheet should look something like this where we have a totals table that shows what our budget is for each month, the total spent for each month and the remaining budget left in that month. And in this table, I have some simple formulas that will sum the spend column for each month and automatically do the math for the remaining budget. And then we will need tables for each month of the year. And under those tables, we need three columns for what money was spent on, how much money was spent, and what date it was spent. And now, if you're going to want to use the pre-made shortcut I'm about to show you, then you will want to use the same name and structure for the title of the page, the title of the sheet, and the title of the tables and the title of each columns as this is important automating the data into the sheet.
All right, so heading to the shortcut, we are going to start with asking for a number with how much did you spend. Then set that input as a variable named money spent. Then we'll set up an input that will ask for what did you spend your money on. Then set that answer to a variable named money spent on. Then we'll set another variable called current month for the current date. And then if I click into the date, we want to make sure the date format is custom and has four M's. This is important so it can look at the right monthly table on the spreadsheet. Then it will add all the variables and the current date to the bottom of the expenses sheet we created earlier. So now when I run this shortcut, it will ask how much did you spend? Let's put a,000 bucks here. Then for what did I spend it on? iPhone 16. And then it will automatically pull up the sheet and add a new row with all the new information. And if I scroll to the left, you will see the total added up for that month and the remaining balance on my budget. I think this is one of the most useful shortcuts you can make. It's a great way to keep track of expenses and help you budget.
The next requested shortcut is called unplug me. You guys wanted an automation for when your phone charges to 100%. You wanted it to send you a notification to unplug it and then remind you in 15 minutes if it is still not unplugged. So to do this, you will first go to automation and then find the battery level trigger and crank that to 100%. Do equals 100% and run immediately with notify when run off. Then for the action you can choose a shortcut I created. The shortcut first gets the current date formats the date and if you hit the drop down you'll have to have it at custom date format and format string of h8 to use the 24 hours in a day. Then if the formatted date is less than or equal to 21 which is 9:00 p.m. it will send me a notification that says iPhone is fully charged. Please unplug. Then it will wait 900 seconds which is equivalent to 15 minutes. It will then check if the phone is still connected to a charger and if it is, it will go through the cycle again and send a notification to unplug the iPhone. Now, I have it to do three notifications. Otherwise, if you unplugged it the first time, then you won't get those additional notifications. And with this shortcut, I realized it really only makes sense if you have an Apple Watch because you might not even be near your phone when it is charging. So, you also want to make sure show on Apple Watch is turned on for the shortcut. So now when it is fully charged, you can receive a notification on your Apple Watch letting you know to unplug your phone.
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Now, this next shortcut is called spam autoreply, and it's one of my favorite requests that you guys send in. The shortcut will autoreply to marketing and spam messages, so you could unsubscribe. So, to do this, we need to go to automation and select the message trigger. Here, you will want to leave the sender as blank so it works with any message. Then, for message contains, you will want to type in reply stop as most marketing and spam messages use that verbiage. Then, run immediately. Now here you actually have to build out the actions from the automation trigger in order to use the number from sender. The action here is simply a send message action that will reply stop to the shortcut input and turn off show when run. So now when I get a message that contains reply stop from anyone, it will auto reply stop and unsubscribe to that marketing campaign. Now you may have to set a few of these if you get spam messages that use different verbiage outside of reply stop.
What is next one? You guys wanted the action button to show a menu of actions. However, this time you also wanted the menu to change based off the time of day. So, this is my TOD or time of day action button menu. So, to do this, you'll need to first get the current date, then format that date by hitting the drop down and choosing custom for date format and HH for format string. This allows us again to break down the date into 24 hours. Next, we'll have an if statement that says if formatted date is between 5, which represents 5:00 a.m., and 17, which represents 5:00 p.m., then a menu will pop up with these options. Each of these options is then connected to another shortcut or action. So, in this case, this is the time I would have my shortcuts I want in the morning or throughout the workday. And then, if otherwise, meaning 5:00 p.m. to 4:59 a.m., a different menu will be shown with different options and actions. Here I have things like turn off lights, adding new movies or shows to my watch list, and ordering Uber Eats. Then you simply go to settings and to action button and connect the action button to this shortcut. So now when I activate the action button, it will only show me the options I designated for that time of day. This is great for when you are at work and want to have specific functions, but then you want something different at night when you're at home relaxing.
And actually, that movie and show watch list is one of the shortcuts you guys requested. This shortcut will allow you to add any show or movie to a watch list with the preferred stream of link. To set this up, I first have a choose from menu option to ask if you are looking for a show or movie. Then if it's a show name that has spaces in it, it will then format it and then add it to the end of this URL text. This is just a URL for the just watch site that contains a bunch of shows and movies and streaming links. And then now on the shortcut, it will show a web view of that URL. And this is where you will copy a link and then it will wait for you to return to the shortcut. It will then get what is on your clipboard. Then create this text that says show and the title of the show you wanted and then add that text to a reminders list called movie and show watch list which is a list I made on reminders before running the shortcut. And it will also input that URL from the clipboard. Then for a movie is the exact same thing but will say movie in its text instead of show. So now when this is ran, it will ask if I want to look up a show or a movie. Let's say show. Then it will ask for the name of the show. So let's just type in Severance, which is the best show out right now. Then after that, it will pop up a web view of the Just Watch site with Severns already searched. And it has the streaming links right below it. Then you will simply hold down and copy the link of the streaming link. Then hit down at the top left. And that's it. Now, when you go to your reminders list, you will see a movie and show watch list with all the movies and shows you saved with a link. And when you click on that link, it will take you directly to the streaming service you chose. This is a great shortcut for anyone who loves shows and movies and your friends or family always are recommending something for you to watch.
This next one is called Chat GPT prompts. You guys wanted a shortcut that has pre-made prompts to tell ChatGpt so you don't have to type out the request every single time. To do this, I actually had to create a series of shortcuts that work together. The first one is called run chat GPT prompts. It's a simple shortcut that opens chat GPT, then it goes back to the home screen and then runs the next shortcut called chat GPT prompts. So, I had to do this for two reasons. One, the chat GPT app has to be open to receive any requests. And second, because when I built everything out under one shortcut, I kept getting this error saying, "You are logged out. Please open the chat GPT app to log in." However, when I made it run a separate shortcut, it didn't give that error. Not sure why, but it did.
So, now on the chat GPT prompt shortcut, I used a menu action that has solve this problem and create a bedtime story options. These are just examples of some reoccurring prompts people may use. Obviously, you could choose your own here. For each prompt, I simply asked for a text input with a question such as, "What is the problem you're dealing with?" Then I created the prompt with a text saying can you give me a few ideas on how I could solve this issue with the input at the end of that text and then it will ask chat to PT that text I built. Now here I decided to create a note instead of a popup because sometimes the responses can be really really long and it's hard to read as a popup but as a note it looks really good. So I have it created a new note with the answer in a folder I named for this prompt. And then pretty much I did the same thing for the bedtime stories one as well. So now when this is ran from the other shortcut, it will ask me to choose a prompt. And let's go with create a bedtime story this time. Then I will input what I want the story to be about. So let's say my cat, Lieutenant Dan, and a bunch of mice. Then I hit done and let it d for a few seconds. And then bam, it will create a note in a neat format and we have oursel a bedtime story. And what's great is that you could create as many prompts as you want here. The ideas are limitless.
The next request was for a new version of my mass message shortcut I made in my last video, but this time you guys wanted a way to also be able to send a photo to multiple people at once without creating a group. So to do this, I created a menu that allows you to choose between sending just a message or a message with a photo. Now, when I say photo, I mean only one photo. I couldn't get it to work with multiple photos. If someone can, then drop how you did it in the comments. Now in the shortcut for the send message part is the exact same setup as the last version where it asks you for the text you would like to send. Then it has you select the contacts to send this to and then repeat that message individually to each contact. And then I create a variable person for the contact, a variable message for the input and then it will send the message variable to the person variable. for the photo option is pretty much the same setup, but this time there's a select photos action. And even though it says you could choose multiple photos here, it just won't send multiple photos. So I keep it off to make sure only one photo is chosen. Then again, it will do the repeat with each contact with a new variable called photos that is also added after the message variable we send out. So now when activated, it will ask if I want to send a message or send a message with photo. Let's choose the photo one. And then it'll ask me to choose my contacts. And a tip here is if you have a contacts list, then you can easily select the contacts from that list and toggle all of them by just using the two fingers and sliding down to capture them all. Then once those contacts are selected and you hit done, it will send those messages with the photo to all those contacts. A quick note here to know is that one bad number can mess up this whole mass message. So, make sure the numbers selected are valid numbers. And I think there's a limit of how many could be sent at a time. This is different on which carrier you have and is in a place to prevent your phone number from eventually showing up as spam.
So, this next one is called autobe text. You guys requested a shortcut that will automatically know whose birthday is today and send them a birthday message. To do this, you want to go to automation and here you'll want to choose the time of day trigger. And then you'll choose a time. You could choose right at midnight or first thing in the morning. For this one, we'll just do at sunrise, then repeat daily and run immediately. Then for the action, you would input the shortcut I created or build it out yourself like this where it first finds all contacts whose birthday is today. This is based off the birthday section under the contact. Then I want to make sure the limit is off because in the case there are multiple people, we need to set each contact as a variable. I did birthday peeps here for the variable. And then I count how many birthday peeps are in the variable. So if it is greater than zero then it will choose those contacts from the variable. And then here we will want to make sure that select multiple on and select all initially on too. Then from here we will repeat with each contact and send a happy birthday message and if no birthdays it will show no birthdays today. So now when ran it will automatically send that birthday message to that person. This is great if you're someone who always forgets birthdays.
Now, for this next one, you guys wanted another version of my morning summary shortcut that also shows you the amount of sleep you got when you wake up. I won't go over the original shortcut in full since this is like version 4 now, but if you guys want to see the original, then you could click on the video on the top right, but in short, the previous versions of the shortcut will send a message to yourself in the morning that tells you the weather, what reminders you have due for today, and what counter events you have for the day. But this time, you guys wanted to add sleep data. So to add sleep data, we had to get creative since there is not really a way to pull data from Apple Health where your sleep data is into a shortcut. However, there is something called URL schemes that allows us to link Apple Health to this morning message. So a URL scheme is a URL code for specific apps. And sometimes these schemes could take you directly to a part of the app. Now, with Apple Health, there is only one URL scheme, which is a URL that goes directly to the Apple Health homepage. So, all I added to the morning shortcut this time was some text that says, "Check how you slept here," and then the URL scheme typed out. So, now when I receive this message, I can simply hit the link and it will take me to my Apple Health where I have my sleep pinned to the top. And if I click into the pin module, I could see my sleep data from the night before. And if you guys don't know how to pin that, you just simply just go to your Apple Health, hit edit under summary, and choose sleep. Obviously, with the shortcut, you need a sleep tracker that connects to Apple Health. This could be an Apple Watch or a smart ring. And if you have a third party app, then you could also use URL schemes. For instance, I use the Ultra Human app with my Ultra Human Ring. So, I created a shortcut that opens this app, then uses a URL scheme that runs that shortcut. So now when I get my Lauren message and click the link, it will open my ultra human app. The use of URL schemes can really open up some doors with shortcuts.
Now for number 10, we have the long screenshot shortcut. You guys want a shortcut that could take two or more screenshots and make it into a single long photo. This is actually pretty simple to do this. The shortcut first makes you select the photos you want to combine. Then make sure select multiple is on here. Then we'll use the combine action to take these photos and combine them. but we're going to combine them vertically. Then we have a show image action to make sure everything looks good. And then it will save the combined image to your photos. So now, for example, if I go into my text messages and screenshot one section of my message thread and cut off the bottom a little bit, then screenshot the next portion and cut off the top.
Then when I go to activate the shortcut, I'll make sure I choose the one I screenshotted first, then the second. And as you can see, it now looks like one long screenshot. And then when I hit done, it will save to my photos album. The key thing here is to make sure you could cut off specific sections to make it look like it was one long screenshot.
I want to thank you guys again for sending in these requests. These shortcuts are really awesome, and I even added a few of these to my personal daily shortcuts. Let me know in the comments which one was your favorite. And if you guys potentially want to see your request in a future video, then comment what you would like to see down below. And try to give me as much detail as possible so it's easy for me to understand what you're looking for. If you guys want to check out my other shortcut videos I made, then hit the shortcuts playlist somewhere on the screen. Or if you want to learn how to start making shortcuts yourself, then hit the beginner's Apple Shortcuts guide. Thanks again, guys, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.