Transcription
This video is sponsored by MorningBrew. I get so many requests here on the channel to make some content about the Shortcuts app for iPhone, and I can understand why because, in my opinion, it's one of the most misunderstood but, at the same time, most powerful apps in the Apple ecosystem. You can do so much with this app, and whilst it's true that becoming a real Shortcuts expert isn't easy, especially when compared with other Apple apps, don't let that put you off. There really is something here for everyone, regardless of how tech-savvy you are.
I'm going to cover Shortcuts in a range of videos, but for now, this is my introduction video where I'll explain what a shortcut is, the different ways that you can get a shortcut up and running on your phone, and show you a couple of simple shortcuts that you can create yourself today. This is Shortcuts basics, Shortcuts 101. So if that sounds good to you, stick around until the end of the video. I think you'll be pretty surprised at just how much cool stuff you can do with your iPhone and this app. I'm already working on some more Shortcuts videos where I'll be diving deeper into the app, so do consider subscribing to the channel if they sound good to you. Okay, let's get into it.
If you've ever used a macro in something like Excel, where you pre-program a bunch of functions to happen in sequence at the push of a button, that's essentially what a shortcut is on your iPhone. A shortcut allows you to run functions, the same functions that you might otherwise do manually, just by pushing a button or saying a spoken command to your phone. But it's the ability to customize these functions and run multiple functions automatically, one after another, that makes Shortcuts so extremely powerful.
So, an example, and a pretty basic one. I've got a shortcut set up where if I speak the phrase "get me home" to my phone, my phone will open up Maps, input my home address, find me the fastest driving directions to my address, and then automatically begin turn-by-turn driving directions for me. I literally just have to say that one phrase, and my phone will complete a number of tasks that I would otherwise have to do manually, which is great if I'm sat in my car at the time and need to do everything hands-free.
But Shortcuts can do so much more than that. Some of the more advanced Shortcuts can do things like create meeting notes for you at the touch of a button, or capture a screenshot of what's happening on your phone and automatically send the image to a predetermined contact, or delay the sending of a text message for you, sending it automatically later on at a time of your choosing. Shortcuts cover pretty much every aspect of your Apple device, and they can even integrate with third-party apps. So the potential for creating meaningful Shortcuts that will make a real difference to you is pretty much limitless. And thankfully, as I'll show you a bit later on in this video, you don't need a degree in computer coding to be able to create some for yourself.
Before we continue, a quick word from the sponsor of today's video, MorningBrew. My morning routine typically looks something like this: I wake up around seven, I make a coffee on my pride and joy coffee machine, before sitting in my favorite living room chair to catch up on the latest edition of MorningBrew. MorningBrew is a free daily newsletter that takes all of the important news of the day and condenses it down into an easy-to-read, and above all, enjoyable format. I used to get a lot of my news from social media first thing in the morning, but it's so easy to fall into a hole of negativity and endless scrolling, which isn't exactly a great way to start your day. MorningBrew takes important, but let's be honest, pretty dry subjects like business, finance, and tech, and reports on them in a witty, relevant, and informative format, getting you up to speed with everything you need to know in just five minutes. Like the first images from the $10 billion James Webb Telescope, showing the most detailed images ever captured of the universe and giving scientists the ability to view galaxies that no human has ever seen before. Or how about the story of Joey Chestnut, who consumed 63 hot dogs in 10 minutes to claim his 15th victory at the Nathan's Famous 4th of July hot dog eating contest, while suffering from a ruptured tendon in his leg. That's commitment to competitive eating, right there. MorningBrew is completely free and takes about 15 seconds to subscribe, so there really is no reason not to. If you're interested in business, tech, or finance, sign up to MorningBrew for free using the link in the description. And thanks again to MorningBrew for sponsoring this video.
A quick mention of Siri, because I think this confuses a lot of people. Apple themselves often refer to Shortcuts as "Siri Shortcuts," and that's simply because for each shortcut that you can create, you can choose to either run the shortcut by tapping a button on your iPhone, or you can assign a specific phrase to the shortcut. Then, when you say that shortcut to Siri, it will run the shortcut for you instead, which of course can be helpful if you need to do something hands-free. Clearly, some Shortcuts work much better with Siri than others, and you don't have to use Siri; it's merely there as an option should you want it.
Okay, so we know what a shortcut is. How do we go about getting some Shortcuts? Well, there are two methods. One is very simple, and the other ranges from very easy to, you probably need a little bit of coding knowledge to make this work, difficult. We're going to keep it simple in this video, though, so don't worry. We'll talk about the easy one first.
You can download Shortcuts that other people have created. Apple have created a bunch of them themselves and included them within the Shortcuts app in the Gallery. I'll show you this in a few minutes, but you can also get them from the web. In much the same way that Spotify users can create playlists and share links to them, or in the same way that you can upload a file to Dropbox and share that file with other people, you can share Shortcuts that you've created with other people, and you can download Shortcuts that other people have made public or available to you. You might need to do a little bit of tweaking to get the shortcut to work just right for you, but in general, this is a pretty easy way of getting Shortcuts.
The other method is to create your own shortcut from scratch. This is definitely more complicated, and it can get really complicated if you want it to, but for a lot of Shortcuts, it's actually much easier than you might think. And to prove this, I'm going to walk you through two examples in the next section.
Okay, so I think the best way of really understanding what a shortcut is, is to create one. So let's do that. Let's start really simple. Let's say that you always FaceTime call a specific person from your contacts list every day. Now, the manual way of FaceTime calling that person would be to open up the FaceTime app, then search for that contact within the list, then press the FaceTime button. What we can do is create a simple shortcut that can live on your phone's home screen that will allow you to do all of that just by tapping one button.
We start by opening the Shortcuts app, which you can find by going to the Spotlight search of your phone and looking for it. If you don't have it downloaded on your phone already, head to the App Store and download it. It's free. It looks like this, and it's an Apple app, so it's perfectly safe to download. Once you've done that, open up the Shortcuts app, and then tap this little plus icon in the upper right of the screen. This is the button that we use to create a new shortcut. We'll start by naming the shortcut. So, because I'm going to create a shortcut to FaceTime my friend John, I'll call the shortcut "FaceTime John." I'm then going to tap the "Add Action" button underneath to begin creating the actual shortcut. We'll focus on this section up at the top of the screen where we've got a header called "Categories" and a header called "Apps." Basically, this is where we can choose from all of the various commands that we might want to use as part of our shortcut. We'll explore categories in more detail in a moment, but for now, let's keep things simple and let's get the commands that we need for our shortcut. Do this by choosing "Apps" and then choosing "FaceTime."
Back on the shortcut screen, you can see that the command to "FaceTime Call Contact" has been added to our shortcut. Notice that the FaceTime part of this is in clear color, but the "Contact" section is kind of grayed out. This is because the app is waiting on us to choose a relevant contact. So, I'm going to tap into that. I'm then going to choose my contact from the list, and that's it for this shortcut. That's all we need. The way Shortcuts work visually is that the shortcut will begin at the top and work its way down through the commands. So, if we look at this, we can see that this shortcut is going to launch FaceTime, then call the contact that we've selected. If you think about it, that's it. That's all we need. We could add more commands in underneath if we wanted to, but we don't for this particular shortcut.
So, I'm going to finish up. The final thing to do is down here at the bottom of the screen, choose "Add to Home Screen" so that this is on our home screen ready to go. Then, on this page, I'm going to tap into the icon and tap "Choose Photo," and then I'm going to choose a photo of John that I've got in my photo library. And now, back on my home screen, you can see that the "FaceTime John" button is there, complete with his photo. Tapping that will immediately launch the FaceTime app and call John.
Now, that's obviously a very basic shortcut, but it was just to give you a feel for how Shortcuts work. Let's look at something a bit more complex in the next example. This time, let's create a shortcut that will take a screenshot of whatever is on our screen at that moment in time and send it automatically via email to a predetermined contact. Again, the idea here is that we're reducing loads of steps down to just one button, and having the shortcut do everything for us. I just want to hit one button or speak a phrase and have the phone do everything for me. This could be useful if you have something happen on your device that you're unfamiliar with, like an error message, for example, and you want to share it with a friend or family member who might be able to help you figure it out, for example.
So, again, just like the previous example, we begin by opening up the Shortcuts app and then choosing the plus button in the upper right of the screen. For the name, I'm going to call this "Email Screen," as that's pretty much what we're going to be doing here. Then I'm going to choose "Add Action."
So, let's think about what we want to do. We want to take a screenshot and email it. So, the first thing that has to happen is we need our phone to take a screenshot for us. Now, remember in the last example, we searched by app and we went to FaceTime to choose an option from there. This time around, "App" isn't going to work because capturing a screenshot isn't linked to an app; it's a generic phone action. So, for this, we need to look under "Categories." You can see that we have an option called "All Actions," which is of course useful because it shows you everything, but that in itself can be an issue as it can get a bit complicated in there. "Scripting," if you look in there, does have some useful options, but it doesn't have the option that we want. For us, we need to head into "Media" and then scroll down to where it says "Device," and there you can see "Take Screenshots," which is the first action that we're looking for. I'll tap on that to add it in.
Remember that I mentioned in the previous shortcut example that the way a shortcut works is it begins at the top and works its way down. So, right now, our shortcut is going to take a screenshot of whatever is on the screen, but nothing more than that. So, we need to add another action to do that. Tap the cross down at the bottom to get the search menu and tap into that to bring us back to the previous screen. If you think about it, the next action that we want is to take our screenshot that we've just captured and email it. So, I'll tap on "Sharing," and you can see that I've got a range of sharing relevant options to choose from. I could send this screenshot in a message to someone, I could post it to a shared album in Photos, I could AirDrop this to someone, or send it via WhatsApp. Obviously, for this, we're going to send it via email, so that's the option that I'm going to choose from the list.
You can see that I've got some information that I need to fill in. Where it says "Recipients," it's grayed out, so as we know, the app is waiting for us to confirm some information here. If I tap into that, I can choose a recipient. I'm going to type an email address in there. Then, underneath that, we've got the same kind of field for "Subject." I want to have the shortcut automatically input a subject line for me; I don't want to have to do anything manually. So, I'm going to tap into there and type a subject out. If I scroll along here, you can see that we can automatically add some other details in, like including the device details of the phone that I'm using, or adding in the current date. I'm not going to add any of these, but they are there if you need them.
So, our shortcut is taking shape. We can check progress by pressing the play button at the bottom right of the screen to see how the shortcut is looking. If I press that, you can see that the phone takes a screenshot and inserts it into an email, but then the email pops up on screen. We have to manually press the send button, which is still pretty good, but it's not what I want. I want the entire thing to happen automatically, which we can achieve. We just have to tweak a couple of the shortcut settings to do this.
I'm going to tap on this down arrow to bring up some options. In the "From" field, I'm going to type my name. You can also see that you've got a "CC" (carbon copy) field, which lets you add an additional recipient or recipients in if you wish. "BCC" stands for blind carbon copy; it's the same as CC, but the recipient won't be able to see any of the email addresses included in this field. The important menu for us to change is this one here: "Show Compose Sheet." Essentially, if that's toggled on, when you run the shortcut, it will compose the email for you, but it will then show you the email for you to approve and manually send first. We don't want that, so I'm going to toggle this option off. Notice that when I do that, we then have to choose which email account to send the email from, which I'll now do.
Okay, so we now have a shortcut that will take a screenshot of our screen, input it into an email, populate the subject of that email for us, and send it to an email address that we've approved from an email address that we've chosen. That's essentially everything. So, I think we're good to go.
Notice up here at the top, underneath the name of the shortcut, it has a Siri command. That's because that's the command that we need to speak in order to run our action, if we'd like to do this using a voice command. So, I'm going to close out of this and then I'm going to open up another app. Let's open up Safari, and let's just say, for the sake of illustration, that I've got a problem with this webpage and I need to send a screenshot. I'll access Siri and just say, "Email screen." If you get a message asking you to allow the shortcut to run, choose "Always Allow." You shouldn't have to allow it again. And look, just like that, our shortcut has run. I can see in my email inbox that I've got a screenshot that has been sent out automatically, and we literally just had to speak a phrase to our phone. Amazing, right?
Now, obviously, I get that this is a niche shortcut. Not everyone is going to find this useful, but the idea was to show you just how quick and easy it is to get started with Shortcuts and just how powerful they can be. We'll explore more Shortcuts in future videos, but for now, let's move on to the next section, which is even easier.
If making Shortcuts isn't really for you, you'll be pleased to know that there is a much, much easier option that still gives you enormous potential for adding incredible Shortcuts to your device, and that's to download Shortcuts that other people have created themselves. There's a couple of ways that you can do this. The first is via the Shortcuts app. Instead of going into "Automation," choose "Gallery" down here at the bottom of the screen. I'm then going to scroll down a bit until you begin to see these sub-sections. I've got one called "Get Stuff Done," then one called "Essentials," then one called "Work From Anywhere." Let's take a look at some of them.
To do that, we just tap on one of the shortcut tiles to learn a bit more about it. So, "Turn Text Into Audio" will create an audio file using text-to-speech. So, in other words, if I've got a notes document that I've compiled or downloaded, I could use this to quickly create an audio file that I could then listen to while I'm on the treadmill or out for a walk or something like that. If I tap on the ellipsis menu, I can actually see how this shortcut has been created. Down here at the bottom, in the "About This Shortcut" section, you can see that there's a voice command to run the shortcut. It will appear in Quick Actions on my Mac, and it will even appear on Apple Watch. This sounds pretty useful, so I'm going to add the shortcut using this blue button down at the bottom.
Let's keep looking. Here's another useful one: "Make GIF." If I tap into that, you can see that the way this works is that it will create a GIF file from a Live Photo or a video. We'll keep looking. Here's one called "Time Tracking," and this one is interesting because it's a good example of a shortcut that you have to configure in order to run it. So, if I click into it, you can see that this is a quick way of tracking time spent on tasks and inputting that information into a note. If I tap into the ellipsis for "Time Tracking," you can see a comment that explains that we'll need to input some data before this will be able to run. The data is in this "List" section here. So, for me, for example, if I was going to use this, I might have an option in the list called "Script Writing," and then option two could be "Shooting Video," and then option three could be "Editing Video." And then, once this is configured, I could add this shortcut and then run it each time I want to log some time that I've spent working on the various parts of my business.
There's loads of different ones to choose from in the Gallery, way too many for me to include in this video, so it's definitely worth you spending some time having a look to see if any of them would work for you. The other way that you can add Shortcuts that other people have created is to download them directly from the web.
So there you go, an overview of the Shortcuts app. Honestly, the best thing that you can do now is go and open the app up and spend some time with it. Think of an action that you carry out on your phone on a regular basis, and then see if you can automate it using the Shortcuts app. I've deliberately kept this video pretty basic, but I do plan on making some follow-up videos where I'll look at more specific Shortcuts and get way more in-depth. What about you? Have you created any useful Shortcuts yourself? If you have, drop me a comment and let me know about them. And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future. See you on the next video.