Transcription
It's finally here! Iowa's 26 brings Apple Intelligence to Shortcuts, and it is crazy powerful. I'm about to show you 20-plus shortcuts you can use right now that all utilize Apple Intelligence in Shortcuts, like summarizing any PDF document, even automating it when you receive an email, summarize any Apple News article, website, create social media posts and blog content from anything, transcribe and summarize audio files directly on your iPhone or iPad, generate wallpapers in seconds using Image Playground in Shortcuts, recognize objects or people in photos. And I've updated some of my most popular shortcuts with Apple Intelligence.
Number one, let's start easy. The Apple Intelligence action, "Use Models," is right here. And even though it says "Use ChatGPT," you can tap that to use the on-device large language model, even available if you don't have internet access or private cloud compute, Apple Intelligence. For some of these actions that use a lot of text, I'm going to use the ChatGPT extension because there is a maximum character count on the private cloud compute and local models. And where do you find that action? When you slide up the drawer here, just go to "Apple Intelligence" down here in the Shortcuts app, and that "Use Models" action is right up top. There's also actions like "Create Image using Apple Intelligence," "Summarize," and more. We'll get into some of those in a minute.
But let's say I have a PDF that I downloaded to my phone and I wanna get a summary. Well, now I can just tap and hold, tap the share button, and that shortcut will live here in the share sheet. I'll go down to "Summarize Doc AI." It's gonna send that PDF through the shortcut, and that quickly, now we have a three-sentence summary here up at the top, and the key points underneath it. Then I can save this to a note, copy and paste this to my clipboard, or do something else. And the beauty of having that "Use Models" action is you can customize this prompt however you'd like. And even if you do use the ChatGPT app on your iPhone, this action is going to be way more reliable than the ChatGPT Shortcuts action.
For instance, a shortcut that really benefits from Apple Intelligence is my "Recipe to Notes." This will actually work on Instagram, TikTok, and even on websites where you find a recipe. This will live in the share sheet. And what it will do is pull the raw HTML from whatever link you send it, whether it's a social media app or website. I have a special prompt here to format it into a recipe, and that's going to create an Apple Note automatically. Side note, if you don't see the shortcut in the share sheet that you're intending, make sure to tap the "i" at the bottom of the shortcut and toggle on "Show in Share Sheet."
Let me show you this in action. Let's say I'm scrolling on Instagram. I find a recipe. I can just tap the share button, go over to "Share To," and then I have access to all my shortcuts. I can scroll down, run my "AI Recipe to Notes." It's going to send this reel, get the HTML. It's going to go through Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT, format everything nicely, and then create an Apple Note with everything I need to mimic this recipe. And in just a few seconds, here's my Apple Note. You can have this saved to a specific recipe folder, formats the ingredients nicely up here and the steps, plus it includes a link back to that reel if you want to refer to it later.
That same shortcut can also work in TikTok. So here in TikTok, I'll share it and share to do my "AI Recipe to Notes," give it a few seconds. And once again, I had the ingredients, the steps, and a link back to that TikTok. And finally, with that same shortcut, maybe I'm looking at a recipe in Safari. Well, I can share that website, use my "AI Recipe to Note" shortcut, and it's going to do the same thing. Boom, just like that, ingredients, steps, and a link back to that website. That Apple Intelligence action allows me to use one shortcut across multiple platforms, and it works every time. Links to download this shortcut and all the others are down in the description.
Now, real quick, I spent a lot of time building all these shortcuts, and I had been sitting in an old, kind of busted chair for the last couple of years, and it was killing my back. And so, big thanks to Habata for sponsoring this video and sending me a brand new office chair that feels amazing. I can build as many shortcuts as I want, and I don't feel my back screaming at me. And this is the Habata E3 Pro ergonomic chair. I looked around at many office chairs, just couldn't pull the plug on ones that were thousands of dollars. This one is way more affordable, supports my back, is incredibly adjustable. It has three-zone elastic lumbar support, a 4D biaxial headrest, which is also able to remove. This way, you don't see it in the back of my videos, but I can just put it on to support my head later. It has 6D adjustable armrests where you can adjust the height, pivot them in or out, and even angle them up or down. Plus, you can slide the seat forward or back. It can recline 140 degrees, and you can even get it with a pullout footrest. I will be building hundreds of shortcuts like this. It has a high load-bearing metal base, feels super sturdy. Casters are smooth on carpet or on hard floors. And not only does that three-zone lumbar support go up and down, forward and back, you can adjust the wings, but also the back of the chair is height adjustable. It is breathable, stays cool, and it's incredibly comfortable. And it comes in three colors: gray, black, or even pink. So check out the Habata E3 Pro ergonomic office chair today. Buy directly on their website with promo code STEPHEN for 5% off, or you can buy it on Amazon for 5% off with promo code STEPHEN E3. Those links and promo codes are down in the description. And my thanks to Habata for saving my back and helping me power these shortcuts.
All right, next, let's say you send emails to the team, and maybe you wanna create a professionally written email just from some random brainstorming. So what this does is uses the Apple Intelligence Actions. This time I'm using Private Cloud Compute specifically, and you can share this from Apple Notes or wherever you take your notes, and it will create an email based on whatever content you might have in that note. Let's say I have here just a few ideas jotting down for my tech podcast, Primary Technology. Subscribe above and down in the description. I'll go down and I'll choose my "Send Email from Note AI." That's going to take a little content or ideas I might have jotted down, make them into a professional-sounding email, and I even have it programmed to make a subject with a little emoji to start with out of that content. Then I can, of course, massage this and send it if I'd like, but no more writing from scratch or trying to figure out how to go from your note to an email.
Next, one of my most popular shortcuts last year was a way to search for movies, find out where it's streaming, and then add that information to an Apple Note. Well, I've supercharged it even more. Now, you can actually choose where you want to stream it or watch it from, and it all happens with built-in Apple Intelligence actions behind the scene. So when you run the shortcut, search for a movie, let's go with "The Thunderbolts." I'll tap Done. It's going to bring up several results. This is coming from the Movie Database API. I'll choose the one I mean, and then it's going to look to see where I can stream or rent this movie and provide me with a list right here. I don't have to load a webpage or leave the shortcut. I see all the places it's streaming here, including Disney Plus, or I can buy it on Apple TV. Disney Plus, tap Allow, and now it's going to create an Apple Note with the movie poster in the Apple Note. It tells me what streaming service it will stream on and a link directly to watch it in Disney Plus. Save these to a specific folder in your Apple Notes, and you're good to go. Also, you can customize all of these shortcuts to run with Bear or your note-taking app of choice, but let me know down in the comments if you have any specifically that you'd like me to change that action, and I'll send you a link.
Next, if you're reading articles in Safari, you have reading lists, and you can open the reader view, but if you read news in the Apple News app, you don't have all the same options. One of the reasons is Apple News wants to be able to serve ads here in the Apple News app, and there's no way to add it to your reading list directly here in Apple News. You can save the story for later, but then it's someplace different than other articles you might be reading in Safari. So I built a shortcut that when you tap Share here in Apple News, you can run my "Apple News Article AI." That's actually going to get the title, the image of the article, and the full text, plus a summary, which is not here in Apple News directly. And it's going to put all of that in an Apple Note for you. And you can save it to a folder that's "Apple News" or "Articles." And now you get the title of the article, the lead image. You get a summary of that article up here, and then the full article underneath that. All of it from running a shortcut, all with Apple Intelligence.
Next, you might have done this with ChatGPT before, but now you can use Apple Intelligence on-device LLM models, either private cloud compute or the local LLM. So this will even work if you don't have internet access. It's going to start by dictating text, format the things you say into a nice note, and that's going to put those brainstorming ideas into an Apple Note. So let's say these are ideas for my podcast, Primary Technology. So I just dictated that into the shortcut. It's going to send what I dictated through Apple Intelligence, and look how fast that was. That's one of the benefits of the Apple Intelligence models, even opposed to ChatGPT. Now I have a note. It has those ideas up here with today's date, a bullet point, and a full transcript of what I dictated. If speed is what you're looking for when doing things with large language models, the Apple Intelligence "Use Model" action, private cloud compute, or on-device, I think are the fastest.
Next, I have shortcuts that pull wallpapers from services like Pexels. But now that you can generate an image in Shortcuts, you can generate whatever wallpaper you want, as many times as you want, using Apple Intelligence. Now, what I've done in this shortcut is give you an option of what you would like your wallpaper to be: oceans, mountains, what have you. When you first run the shortcut, you can choose from that list. Let's choose "Ocean." It's going to send what you chose through a little prompt, trying to format it specifically for the iPhone screen. Now, generate an image through Apple Intelligence does take a little while, but after a minute, set my wallpaper, which you can do automatically. Just like that, I have a new wallpaper generated with Apple Intelligence and Image Playground. There's the ocean view right there, and that was generated with AI. Also, since I'm on iOS 26, I'm actually going to change that clock so it actually layers behind the water, change the clock size just a little bit. And now it's behind the ocean here on our lock screen. Now, if you download this shortcut, make sure in this last action that you actually choose the wallpaper that you want to change when the shortcut runs, especially if you have it on a Focus mode or something like that. I'm gonna add a quick look action real quick and run this again just to see what it does. Let's choose "Forest" this time. And there's the image Apple Intelligence generated. This time, it's automatically gonna set it as my wallpaper. In that last action, you can see it automatically changing the background there. I don't have to do anything. And if I swipe down, there's my new Forest wallpaper. If you create some wallpapers with this that you really like, let me know. You can also change that prompt. Tag me also on social media. I'm on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, everywhere @stevenrobliss. Those links are down below too.
Next, if you're like me and read physical books, sometimes you wanna pull a page or a summary, but then you just have a bunch of photos of book pages. Well, this shortcut actually lets you choose photos that you've taken. It's going to extract the text from those photos and then use Apple Intelligence, the private cloud compute model, to summarize, get key quotes, and then add it to a note of your choice. Right here, it's appending to my note called "4,000 Weeks." You can change this to create a new note every time or however you'd like. But when I run this, I get to choose photos from my library. So these are all pages from books that I was reading. I'll choose a few of these photos. The blue check. Now it's going to run through each photo, extract the text from that photo, run it through the Apple Intelligence action, and then provide summaries and quotes from those pages. And it was pretty quick. Apple Intelligence now pulled it all out. I have some meaningful quotes and key points from those book pages that I took pictures of.
Also, I had that "AI Documents Summary" earlier, but I also made one specifically for PDFs. This is using Apple Intelligence private cloud compute instead of ChatGPT. So I'll link this one down in the video description along with all the other ones if you want to try this one out as well.
Next, Apple Intelligence can actually recognize images, and you can pass images into that "Use Models" action. So this is a simple shortcut, run it from the share sheet, and Apple Intelligence is going to describe what it sees in the photo. And my next shortcut, I'm gonna show you an even more powerful use case for something like this, but I'll go to one of my photos. Let's just see what it says. I'm gonna run my "Describe Image AI" shortcut. That's just passing this image to Apple Intelligence and asking it to tell me what it sees. And remember, this is the private cloud compute model. DT, telling me it sees an outdoor pool screened in an enclosure. It even talks about the lounge chairs in the background. Pretty detailed description of this image. I'll run it again on this photo, took in a restaurant. This one described the table in detail, also described the main dish. It is a piece of fish, got that right. And even the accompaniments, pretty detailed description here from Apple Intelligence.
Now, in what ways could that be useful? Well, number one, if you're visually impaired, using this kind of shortcut means you can get descriptions of any images. Or you can program this to screenshot first and then describe that screenshot, so you can always get a description of what's on screen or what your phone is showing. But another example might be asking Apple Intelligence, "Are there people in this photo?" Plus, an additional advantage that the "Use Models" action has here in Shortcuts is you can change and dictate the output. So here you can ask Apple Intelligence to output text, a number, a date, or a Boolean, meaning a yes or no. So I actually put a "Show Response" action here so we can see what Apple Intelligence is telling us about the photos we selected. So let's choose a couple photos here. This is one. It's a pretty dark photo. We'll see if it detects any people. Then a photo with definitely no people, and another one with a person. And each one, we'll see what Apple Intelligence gives us as a response. So, yes, there were people in the first photo. That's correct. The next one should be no. Let's see what it does. Correct. No people in that photo. And the third one where there definitely was a person. Yes. All right.
Now, what can you do with that information? Well, then you can add an "If" statement that says, "Yes, if there are people in this photo," maybe save those images to a specific album. I'm going to choose the "Save to Photos" action. I don't want to save the response. I'm actually going to tap and hold, select the variable, and I want to save the "Repeat Item" depending on the response. And I'm going to save it to a new album I just made called "Landscapes." I'm actually going to change the response to "No." So if there are no people in the photo, then I want it to be added to my "Landscapes" album. Otherwise, do nothing. I'll put a link to an ideal version of this shortcut down in the video description.
Next, I created what I call a "Post and Blog Creator," Apple Intelligence private cloud compute model. This lives in the share sheet and will basically create content on whatever it is that you send it. So this could be a note that you've written down. Maybe it's a website. So maybe I'm looking at an article here on beard.fm. I can just tap share. I'll go to my "Post and Blog Creator" shortcut. And here's some social media posts I can use or massage. And here's a whole blog post based on the content that I shared. Side note, if you're loving these shortcuts, you should totally join my Shortcuts community, create.beard.fm. Almost 2,000 people have joined, and over 500 people have actually supported the channel through this community with $5 a month or $50 a year. You can do either one. And I'm going to be bringing more benefits like live streams for shortcuts so I can build them while you watch. You can send your requests live as I stream, and that's going to be a benefit for paying members. So go to create.beard.fm. You can join the community for free, but I would appreciate your support. And you can join me for some live streams and get access to my Shortcuts GPT, which I've trained to help with API, match text, regex, and more things like that. So once again, that's create.beard.fm. I appreciate your support.
Next, there's a lot you can do with RSS feeds plus Apple Intelligence here in Shortcuts. So I created a simple one where it's going to pull 50 items from the New York Times homepage RSS feed. I'm going to filter those articles, so just news that happened today. And then it's going to run through each article, pull the title, the full text of the article, and then use Apple Intelligence Private Cloud Compute to summarize that article, to get the header image, and then create an Apple Note with today's date and all of today's news. So I'm going to run this shortcut. It does everything automatically. You can even automate this to run at a time of day in the background. So you just wake up to an Apple Note with this information. And now here's an Apple Note with all the news articles of today, including the header image, the summary, full text, and link back to the article if you want to read it on the New York Times. And this was a lot of stories from today, and it pulled them all consistently. Remember, you can do this with any RSS feed you'd like. Just switch that out here. If you want it to run faster or just get less items, you can change that number here as well.
Next, you can transcribe audio files directly on iPhone and then use the Apple Intelligence Models action. I would recommend using ChatGPT for this because Private Cloud Compute will error out after longer transcripts. Then you can have it summarize whatever it transcribed and create an Apple Note. I do use a Private Cloud Compute model down here to actually make a title for that note. And this can run in the share sheet. So let's say we're in our Files. I'll choose an audio file here. This is "Primary Tech Daily," that's a benefit of members to support Primary Technology. I'll choose my "AI Transcribe and Summary" shortcut here. And that happened pretty quickly. There's the title, there's the summary, and you can choose whether you want to make that summary shorter with key points. And then the full transcript is underneath that. Now, if you use this shortcut on macOS Tahoe, it will transcribe even hours-long files. But I find on iPhone and iPad, that transcribe action will error out if you try to do an hour-plus audio files. But if you want to see even more shortcuts in action specifically for macOS Tahoe, I did 10-plus minutes on that in my macOS Tahoe review video. You can watch it right up here.
Next, you might have seen this in a video over the summer, but I created what I call SiriBot. Even the built-in Apple Intelligence actions don't really have context for your past conversations, nor does it let you follow up and actually save the whole conversation afterward. So I created SiriBot just for that purpose. When you run SiriBot, it actually looks at a notes folder that I call "SiriBot Past Conversations." Then you can ask it something like, "What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?" I'll tap Done, and this is going to use an Apple Intelligence action to give me a response that's also related to some of the context of my past notes. That quickly, I now have an answer here about the fall of the Roman Empire. And while you can follow up using the "Use Models" action, it doesn't have full context or save your conversation, but my SiriBot shortcut does. So then it's going to ask if you want to continue the conversation, and you can have a follow-up question like, "Write me five social media posts based on that explanation," and you don't have to restate anything about the Roman Empire again because this shortcut has the context of what you already asked. And so there are some social media posts based on the first question. Then, if you want to continue the conversation, you can ask it, "Write a 500-word essay on that" as well, and again, don't even have to specify the Roman Empire because it still has context for the whole conversation. And there's my essay. And when you're finally done with the conversation and tap "No," meaning you don't have to continue it, it's going to take the entire thing and bring it into Apple Notes with the title, the actual responses, and it has your full conversation history. Look, there's the social media post I asked for as well. And so you can have a chatbot using Apple Intelligence right on your phone.
Or let's do another image-based shortcut. This can also live in your share sheet, and it's going to ask Apple Intelligence to give you the hex codes of predominant colors found in an image. So you can run this on an image you find in Safari or something in your photo library. I'll run my "Image Colors AI" shortcut. It's going to send this image to Apple Intelligence. Look at the predominant colors, and right there, I have the hex code values of the colors I see in this photo.
Next, this was a past shortcut request that came from my community, create.beard.fm, and it gets even more powerful with Apple Intelligence. Basically, any website that you might want to check regularly for information, these two actions get contents from URL and then make HTML from those contents, and then sending that through the Apple Intelligence action means you can do a bunch of stuff. So I'm gonna give you two examples. This one is sports-related. I have a bunch of teams here, and this website is the schedule for that team. Well, when I run this shortcut, it's going to look at each of those websites, the schedule for the teams, make it into HTML, and then send that to Apple Intelligence and actually get the next game date. And it's going to show me a list of my favorite teams and whether they're playing today or the next time their games are scheduled. I actually changed this to use the on-device Apple Intelligence model, so it's even faster. And right there, I have my favorite team schedules. Lets me know the day and time they'll be playing.
If you want the high temperature for the day, and you can use the Apple Weather actions, but sometimes it can be difficult to parse that information. So what this shortcut does is it uses your current location, sends that to the weather.gov API, and it's actually going to get the high temp for the day. But parsing that information, you can see all the dictionary actions I already had to do, still didn't give me the exact information I wanted. So in the end, I just send it to Apple Intelligence, and it will tell me what I want to know: "What is the high temperature and when is it happening today?" Just like that, now I have a notification. Temperature for today and the time it's going to happen.
Last two shortcuts, these are actually going to be automations. I'm going to take my "Summarize Doc AI," which will summarize any document that gets sent through the shortcut input, and let's create an automation. Hit the plus button at the top. We'll choose "When an email is received." We'll say when it comes from my podcast email, podcast@primarytech.fm. I'm going to leave the subject blank. You can choose what email account you want this to run, any recipients, but importantly, you want to set it to run immediately. I'll tap Next. Create new shortcut, and then we'll look for the "Run Shortcut" action, and I'm going to choose my "Summarize Doc AI" shortcut. Then I'm going to expand this action and on the input, I'm going to tap there, choose "Shortcut Input," meaning the email that I just got. I'm going to tap it again, and here you can choose "Attachments," meaning when I receive an email from this person with an attachment, this shortcut is going to run, and it should take that attachment, maybe it's a PDF, automatically summarize it without me doing anything. I'll enable that automation. So let's say I receive that email from the address I specified. Oh, it just came in. You'll see that automation is now running in the background. I didn't have to do anything, and it's going to show me the summary of that email attachment right here. Boom, there it is. I just got a summary of that attachment that was in my email. Totally happened in the background. Didn't have to do anything. So if you have reports get sent to you all the time and you just want to get that summary, you can have it right here or create Apple Notes with that summary. No action on your part.
And finally, Apple Intelligence can do wild things like look inside the contents of your documents and automatically sort them and move those folders. I showed up that shortcut in my macOS Tahoe review. I'll link it down in the description along with all the shortcuts I mentioned. But also, you can watch that Tahoe review here, and I explain even more in-depth on how all of that works, plus some macOS-specific automations and shortcuts. If you enjoyed this, let me know down in the comments, hit that like button, and subscribe to the channel. Of course, more shortcuts content is always coming soon. Plus, we have the iPhone 17 review, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro 3, and more all coming very, very soon. Also, if you want to see my entire review of iOS 26 and all the new features there, check out my video right up here. Thank you for watching. I'll catch you.