Shortcuts is the opposite of "enough rope to hang yourself with": not enough rope to even tie a knot.
This is an exaggeration, though. I managed to use Shortcuts even while writing this text, so it definitely is useful.
But why is Apple so goddamn afraid that if I get to do what I want, something terrible will happen? Why can't my shortcut paste, keystroke, or use SMS as triggers? I understand there could be unintended consequences, but to me at least, the limitations of Shortcuts as it is now are obviously not technical but philosophical/political from Apple. Give me keystroke shortcuts and proper triggers! I promise I won't abuse it, and I also promise to not run with scissors!
qsort · 3h ago
More than anything it makes me wonder who the hell it is for. My personal devices are the full Apple loadout and it's still hard to make anything meaningful with it, too confusing for the average user, not powerful enough for the power user.
It could become interesting if there were some integrations with Apple Intelligence: the tasks you'd delegate to a shortcut are the kind of low-stakes stuff AI integration is a good fit for. It doesn't look like it's in the cards, though...
I use it daily to turn my iOS device to low power when I use a photo and video app - this little trick turns off HDR that I profoundly detest and can't visually stand for.
savolai · 1h ago
Converting pdfs scanned with the builtin Files document scanner to jpegs or pngs has been the most helpful so far
soulofmischief · 46m ago
You shouldn't have to make any promises to a corporation about what you will and won't do with a device that you purchase from them, including what software you wish to run.
omneity · 30m ago
True in principle. Looking at it from Apple’s side, they are selling an ecosystem of clients to digital (or physical) service providers with certain guarantees on how that ecosystem operates.
Opening up automation is a double whammy for Apple:
- More savvy users are able to solve more of their problems themselves, reducing the LTV of their potentially most engaged clients who might buy less on the App Store as a result
- Some guarantees of the ecosystem crumble (banking apps don’t know anymore if it is really you who initiated that transaction, ID verification apps don’t know if that camera stream is really from your device, and plenty other things devs suddenly have to worry about)
As a final nail in the coffin, it also means that the networks that Apple sells to its _users_ are less reliable or have less guarantees as a result - you don’t know if the text you received was really sent now or scheduled in advance etc.)
Of course a lot of these rules are not justified, user hostile or plain non-sensical, but what I’m trying to say is that from Apple’s perspective the consideration is not just “user owns device” but a lot of interplaying dynamics that do not seem to be in favor of empowering users.
soulofmischief · 23m ago
All of these things are beneficial to various corporations attempting to financially exploit me, but not necessarily beneficial to me, the owner and operator of the device.
bayindirh · 22m ago
This is also why CLI tools are second class citizens in the very same ecosystem.
theglenn88_ · 3h ago
Perhaps the reasoning is not that you will abuse it. But could other people abuse it and use it against you.
If you try to paste anything into the dev tools in Chrome, it forces you to specifically allow pasting because scammers have convinced people to do it over the phone to con them into something. How I’m not quite sure.
jjcob · 3h ago
Security concerns are one thing that hold Shortcuts back, but a lot of the stuff just doesn't work. It's pretty half assed. For example, sending messages is broken and according to forum posts has been for a few years.
It's pretty obvious that automation for non-developers is not a priority at Apple.
dev0p · 2h ago
The problem is not you, nor anyone tech savvy enough to comment on hacker news, but the masses who can barely paw their way through their smartphone screen. It will be abused and cause problems, and Apple knows that.
rcarmo · 4h ago
Well, yeah. It’s borderline usable in iOS, and almost pointless in macOS because we still have Automator and much more useful AppleScript integrations—which are being eroded by time and little maintenance from Apple.
Then there’s JavaScript for Automation, PyObjC, and many other technologies that Apple never really invested in because they just don’t get automation.
Somehow, Shortcuts survived being acquired, but in the process they actually killed stupefyingly useful functionality like being able to run some automations directly from the Apple Watch (I used it to send automated SMS messages to query bus schedules based on my location, and it was awesome).
TheOtherHobbes · 3h ago
This is so typically Apple. You can do incredible things with AppleScript and Automator, but the process can be painful.
Someone put a lot of effort into designing that system. Then it was basically forgotten.
Then it was resurrected in partially zombified form as Shortcuts - and forgotten again.
walterbell · 2h ago
> Someone put a lot of effort into designing that system.
Sal Soghoian, the man who headed up user automation tools at Apple – including AppleScript and Automator – says that he left the company last month when Apple eliminated his position ‘for business reasons.’ … The decision to lose Soghoian after almost 20 years in the role, together with a statement that makes the future of user automation tools seem uncertain, is bound to cause concern among those of us who depend on them on a daily basis. The fear will be that Apple may gradually cease support for power tools as part of an increasing consumer focus.
In the next year or two, Apple is rumored to be entering the smart-home automation market with:
- wall mounted 6" screen + voice control
- iPad on robotic arm
- FaceID door locks
- security cameras
Is HomeAssistant popular on Apple platforms?
theshrike79 · 29m ago
Yes and no. You can use HA as a "bridge" in HomeKit for example.
So you add your automation crap to HA, scan a QR code from HA and everything pops up in HomeKit
For me that was a bit oof, as it literally adds _everything_. So I just use Apple TV as a HomeKit hub with the basic stuff added directly to it and a few specific devices (Shelly) bridged from HA using a whitelist.
This way the WAF stays high and Siri works properly.
HA still does the more complicated stuff (ATV is on pause -> make lights in the TV are a bit brighter. ATV playing -> dim the lights according to the time of day etc.
jessekv · 3h ago
Shortcuts is buggy and difficult to work with, but it is the escape hatch on apple watch that makes the watch usable without also carrying your phone everywhere.
I have a shortcut for captive portals when you want to get on WiFi, a shortcut to dictate a quick search on Kagi (I am working on another for Kagi Assistant) and another to check the trains on the train website. Between these and apple wallet I can leave my phone at home.
aucisson_masque · 3h ago
Shortcut is one of the main selling point for an iphone vs an Android. There is just nothing comparable.
Yet even then, I know I have particular need, I'm not the average apple customer. Most people never heard about shortcut and wouldn't care if it disappeared.
Working on shortcut must be quite time consuming and benefit something like 1% of apple customer, so I get that it's never really going to be a priority.
They would rather focus on artificial intelligence that the average Joe can use.
doix · 3h ago
Isn't Tasker[0] the Android equivalent? I have never used an iPhone though, so I can't comment on the differences. I also haven't used Tasker in about 5 years, so I'm not sure if it's gotten more or less powerful over time.
Also, a quick search shows Automation[1] as an open source alternative. No personal experience with this one, but will probably try it out soon.
Yep - I switched from iPhone to Android and Tasker is much more powerful. Slightly less good UX and mainly systems focussed. But actually allows any trigger.
Also extensible - it can trigger scripts in Termux. You can install any command line open source tool inside Termux and trigger it on tasks.
eg When my home radiator thermostat stopped supporting IFTTT, I made a Python script to call their API and trigger it with Tasker. Works flawlessly.
I've used Tasker for a while, and it does absolutely everything that can be done on an Android phone, you can even make UIs with it.
I had an iPhone for a few months recently, and I tried the Shortcuts app, but it was extremely limited and couldn't even do some simple things I needed.
ubercore · 3h ago
What kind of uses do you have for it that make it this indispensable? Not doubting, just feeling like I'm missing out because I don't think I've ever used it.
hn_throw2025 · 2h ago
I’m more positive about shortcuts and looking for ways to integrate it with my home automation.
I think it’s pretty cool that I can make a shortcut connect to a host on my home network via ssh and execute a command. To just trigger that using my voice and Siri when my phone is nearby.
I live in a country with stupidly expensive electricity, so have my home media center connected to a smart switch, which I switch off last thing at night. I am thinking of moving my Pi mini NAS setup with it’s various drives into that media center setup, so last thing at night I can get a shortcut to SSH to that host, do a clean shutdown, wait a short while, and then use the Hue connector in Shortcuts to cut the power. I couldn’t do all that with either Amazon Echo or the Hue app.
walterbell · 2h ago
> I couldn't do all that with.. Amazon Echo
The saddest part is that both the Alexa and Apple walled gardens spent years constraining users from integrating with other ecosystems, but now they are all racing to give data to 3rd-party LLMs like OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini, which can ... integrate with other ecosystems via APIs, MCP servers.
Users can now escape walled gardens, at the cost of multiple middlemen. If Alexa and Apple had allowed users to access other ecosystems, there would now be thriving customer communities with proven open workflows that could be sherlocked into commercial success by the platform owners. Instead, that value will accrue to foundation model companies.
hn_throw2025 · 1h ago
Very true.
I could probably do much of this stuff with Home Assistant, but it’s always a bit too far down the todo list. One day…
Spivak · 1h ago
Is there any reason people won't just use the MCP server without an LLM?
meindnoch · 38m ago
T-that's illegal!
oneeyedpigeon · 43m ago
The most useful Shortcut I've written on macOS is a simple 'toggle dark mode'. It's very simple and works as a good 'first task' if you've never used the app before. I wrote up the process here: https://medium.com/@bobbyjack/how-to-toggle-macos-dark-mode-...
Overall, Shortcuts feels like a nice polished app, but it's definitely severely lacking compared to Automator.
xeonmc · 39m ago
iOS already has a built-in Action Center button for toggling dark mode, I'm surprised that there isn't a first-party equivalent on MacOS.
jbverschoor · 3h ago
Shortcuts fails for programmer and for non-programmers. This is the result where you don’t know your audience
In iOS18 on iPhone Pro with lidar, a shortcut can trigger Magnifier to provide audio description of live camera image.
NFC stickers or expired transit cards can trigger shortcuts by physical proximity.
dawnerd · 3h ago
All I want is an automation to turn my hotspot on when I get in my car. You can do this, it’s easy. What’s not easy is being able to rely on it. It fails with a notification about half the time. Which is another thing, can I please have a setting to surprise the automation run notification? I know it’s there for safety but if it’s an explicit option… just let me do what I want to do Dangit.
ErneX · 1h ago
Even though they are a bit limited I still find Shortcuts very useful. I have one that adds a global share option that triggers the download of any X video. I also have a few that run a Python script via a-Shell mini.
jfernandezr · 3h ago
I only have configured a task in Shortcuts that I find useful. I'm a freelance, and sometimes I have to use my personal car to do some work. So, I did a task that I voice activate on CarPlay in order to record the current mileage into a Notes note, storing the current date and the voice transcribed mileage.
I could not find another use for Shortcuts because there aren't enough integrated apps.
haiku2077 · 3h ago
I use shortcuts to automatically start a specific music playlist based on the current time of day when my phone connects to my motorcycle's helmet audio system. I also have it automatically play music when I turn on the cheap waterproof bluetooth speaker in my bathroom. Finally, I used it to create an alarm that selects different music based on what I've been listening to recently instead of a static song I have to pick manually in advance.
internet_points · 3h ago
I recently learnt that you can use Shortcuts to enable power-saving mode on unplugging from the charger. It's amazing. Now I no longer regularly go around turning on power-save on all my family's devices to avoid them hogging all the chargers right before a trip.
jen20 · 2h ago
Despite being a "power user" of macOS (and having had been for close to 25 years now), I only tried Shortcuts for the first time last week, to try to automate opening any of the live TV streaming apps (YouTube TV, Fubo etc) to a specified channel in one button click. Unfortunately none of the TV apps on the platform have bothered to expose such basic functionality, so I ended up cancelling my subscription to each one I tried.
If anyone knows of an app that gives access to live TV and actually cares about the basic functionality of the platform they run on, I'd love to hear about it and they can have my money.
This is an exaggeration, though. I managed to use Shortcuts even while writing this text, so it definitely is useful.
But why is Apple so goddamn afraid that if I get to do what I want, something terrible will happen? Why can't my shortcut paste, keystroke, or use SMS as triggers? I understand there could be unintended consequences, but to me at least, the limitations of Shortcuts as it is now are obviously not technical but philosophical/political from Apple. Give me keystroke shortcuts and proper triggers! I promise I won't abuse it, and I also promise to not run with scissors!
It could become interesting if there were some integrations with Apple Intelligence: the tasks you'd delegate to a shortcut are the kind of low-stakes stuff AI integration is a good fit for. It doesn't look like it's in the cards, though...
Opening up automation is a double whammy for Apple:
- More savvy users are able to solve more of their problems themselves, reducing the LTV of their potentially most engaged clients who might buy less on the App Store as a result
- Some guarantees of the ecosystem crumble (banking apps don’t know anymore if it is really you who initiated that transaction, ID verification apps don’t know if that camera stream is really from your device, and plenty other things devs suddenly have to worry about)
As a final nail in the coffin, it also means that the networks that Apple sells to its _users_ are less reliable or have less guarantees as a result - you don’t know if the text you received was really sent now or scheduled in advance etc.)
Of course a lot of these rules are not justified, user hostile or plain non-sensical, but what I’m trying to say is that from Apple’s perspective the consideration is not just “user owns device” but a lot of interplaying dynamics that do not seem to be in favor of empowering users.
If you try to paste anything into the dev tools in Chrome, it forces you to specifically allow pasting because scammers have convinced people to do it over the phone to con them into something. How I’m not quite sure.
It's pretty obvious that automation for non-developers is not a priority at Apple.
Then there’s JavaScript for Automation, PyObjC, and many other technologies that Apple never really invested in because they just don’t get automation.
Somehow, Shortcuts survived being acquired, but in the process they actually killed stupefyingly useful functionality like being able to run some automations directly from the Apple Watch (I used it to send automated SMS messages to query bus schedules based on my location, and it was awesome).
Someone put a lot of effort into designing that system. Then it was basically forgotten.
Then it was resurrected in partially zombified form as Shortcuts - and forgotten again.
https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/17/mac-user-automation-sal-sogho...
In the next year or two, Apple is rumored to be entering the smart-home automation market with: Is HomeAssistant popular on Apple platforms?So you add your automation crap to HA, scan a QR code from HA and everything pops up in HomeKit
For me that was a bit oof, as it literally adds _everything_. So I just use Apple TV as a HomeKit hub with the basic stuff added directly to it and a few specific devices (Shelly) bridged from HA using a whitelist.
This way the WAF stays high and Siri works properly.
HA still does the more complicated stuff (ATV is on pause -> make lights in the TV are a bit brighter. ATV playing -> dim the lights according to the time of day etc.
I have a shortcut for captive portals when you want to get on WiFi, a shortcut to dictate a quick search on Kagi (I am working on another for Kagi Assistant) and another to check the trains on the train website. Between these and apple wallet I can leave my phone at home.
Yet even then, I know I have particular need, I'm not the average apple customer. Most people never heard about shortcut and wouldn't care if it disappeared.
Working on shortcut must be quite time consuming and benefit something like 1% of apple customer, so I get that it's never really going to be a priority.
They would rather focus on artificial intelligence that the average Joe can use.
Also, a quick search shows Automation[1] as an open source alternative. No personal experience with this one, but will probably try it out soon.
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....
[1] https://server47.de/automation/
Also extensible - it can trigger scripts in Termux. You can install any command line open source tool inside Termux and trigger it on tasks.
eg When my home radiator thermostat stopped supporting IFTTT, I made a Python script to call their API and trigger it with Tasker. Works flawlessly.
https://www.flourish.org/2023/11/netatmo-smart-thermostat-ho...
I had an iPhone for a few months recently, and I tried the Shortcuts app, but it was extremely limited and couldn't even do some simple things I needed.
I think it’s pretty cool that I can make a shortcut connect to a host on my home network via ssh and execute a command. To just trigger that using my voice and Siri when my phone is nearby.
I live in a country with stupidly expensive electricity, so have my home media center connected to a smart switch, which I switch off last thing at night. I am thinking of moving my Pi mini NAS setup with it’s various drives into that media center setup, so last thing at night I can get a shortcut to SSH to that host, do a clean shutdown, wait a short while, and then use the Hue connector in Shortcuts to cut the power. I couldn’t do all that with either Amazon Echo or the Hue app.
The saddest part is that both the Alexa and Apple walled gardens spent years constraining users from integrating with other ecosystems, but now they are all racing to give data to 3rd-party LLMs like OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini, which can ... integrate with other ecosystems via APIs, MCP servers.
Users can now escape walled gardens, at the cost of multiple middlemen. If Alexa and Apple had allowed users to access other ecosystems, there would now be thriving customer communities with proven open workflows that could be sherlocked into commercial success by the platform owners. Instead, that value will accrue to foundation model companies.
I could probably do much of this stuff with Home Assistant, but it’s always a bit too far down the todo list. One day…
Overall, Shortcuts feels like a nice polished app, but it's definitely severely lacking compared to Automator.
They can run external tasks via SSH scripts or API endpoints, e.g. send audio to LLM, https://www.innoq.com/en/blog/2023/03/openai-gpt-on-macos-io...
For local actions, app-specific URL schemes can be driven from shortcuts, https://www.macstories.net/tutorials/guide-url-scheme-ios-dr...
In iOS18 on iPhone Pro with lidar, a shortcut can trigger Magnifier to provide audio description of live camera image.
NFC stickers or expired transit cards can trigger shortcuts by physical proximity.
I could not find another use for Shortcuts because there aren't enough integrated apps.
If anyone knows of an app that gives access to live TV and actually cares about the basic functionality of the platform they run on, I'd love to hear about it and they can have my money.