Apple’s Shortcuts app can be easy to overlook. Open it for the first time and you may see actions, menus, automations and a Gallery full of examples.
At first, it can seem like something made only for advanced users. It doesn’t have to be.
Some of the most useful shortcuts are simple. They take something you already do, such as checking your schedule, saving information, sending a message, finding directions or checking your battery, and remove a few unnecessary steps.
That is a good way to approach Shortcuts. Don’t start by asking what you can automate. Start by noticing what takes more time or effort than it should.
Once you begin looking at your everyday iPhone or iPad habits this way, useful shortcut ideas become much easier to find.
What’s an Apple Shortcut?
A shortcut is a sequence of one or more actions that your iPhone or iPad performs for you.
An action is one step in that sequence. One action might get your current location. Another could create a note. Others can start music, open an app, send a message or get information from your calendar.
Put several actions together and you have a workflow.
For example, a morning shortcut could check your calendar, calculate travel time to your first appointment and start a playlist. Instead of doing each task separately, you could launch the entire sequence at once.
Apple describes actions as the building blocks used to create shortcuts. The Shortcuts app lets you browse actions by category or app, search for particular actions and pin actions you use often.
Shortcuts can also be started in several ways. Depending on your device and settings, you may be able to run them from the Shortcuts app, Siri, the Home Screen, a widget, the share sheet, Control Center, Apple Watch or the Action button on supported iPhones.
The important part is that you don’t need to build something complicated to save time.
How to spot a task worth turning into a shortcut
Think about the small frustrations you encounter while using your phone.
Maybe you open the same three apps before leaving for work. Perhaps you often copy information from Safari into Notes. Maybe you regularly send the same type of message when you’re heading home. You may also have a task you rarely bother doing because it requires too many taps.
Those are good shortcut candidates.
A useful rule is to look for tasks that follow the same basic steps each time. If you know what you want your phone to do and you repeat the process often, Shortcuts may be able to handle some of those steps for you.
Here are ten ideas to get you started.
1. Build a one-tap morning dashboard
Your morning may involve gathering information from several places.
Instead of manually checking your calendar, weather, reminders and commute information, you can build a shortcut that collects the information you care about.
For example, it could
- Show today’s calendar events
- Display unfinished reminders
- Check travel time to work
- Show useful weather information
- Start a morning playlist
You don’t need to automate your entire morning. Even replacing several app-opening routines with one shortcut can make the feature useful.
This is also a good beginner project because it introduces an important Shortcuts concept. Information created by one action can be passed to another action later in the shortcut.
2. Create a leaving home check
There are some things you would rather notice before leaving home than ten minutes later.
A shortcut could help you check useful information before you go.
It might
- Check your current battery level
- Show your next calendar appointment
- Calculate travel time to your destination
- Display reminders you need before leaving
- Open directions to a regular destination
You can run the shortcut manually or experiment with personal automations once you’re more comfortable with Shortcuts.
Shortcuts also supports automation triggers connected to things such as battery level, charging, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Focus modes and opening or closing certain apps.
A battery automation can be especially helpful. You could have your iPhone alert you when the battery falls below a percentage you choose.
3. Save your current location for later
Where did I park?
It’s a simple question that can become surprisingly difficult in an unfamiliar parking garage, a large event or a busy city.
A shortcut can capture your current location and save useful information about it somewhere you can find later, such as Notes.
The same idea can be useful in other situations.
You might use it to
- Save where you parked
- Remember an interesting shop or restaurant
- Record a hiking location
- Save a photography spot
- Keep track of a property you want to revisit
This is another useful way to think about Shortcuts. Your iPhone already knows a lot of useful information. A shortcut can help move that information somewhere more useful.
4. Turn the share sheet into a personal filing assistant
Some of the best shortcuts don’t need to begin inside the Shortcuts app.
They can begin with the Share button.
Imagine you find an article in Safari that you want to save for research. Normally, you might copy the web address, open Notes, find the right note, paste the link and then return to Safari.
A shortcut could reduce those steps.
Depending on how you build it, a share sheet shortcut could
- Save an article link to a note
- Add selected text to a research file
- Save an image to a chosen album
- Send information to another app
- Add something to a reading or research list
This can be especially helpful for students, researchers and anyone who regularly moves information between apps.
Think of the share sheet as a place where you can add your own commands for handling whatever you’re viewing.
5. Make a study or research capture shortcut
Students can use Shortcuts for much more than homework reminders.
You could create a research shortcut that collects information and saves it in a consistent way.
For example, a shortcut might
- Accept selected text from a web page
- Ask which project the information belongs to
- Save the text to the correct note
- Include the source or web address
- Add the date for easier reference later
Another shortcut could ask for an assignment name, due date and class before creating a reminder.
Language learners could also experiment with shortcuts that send selected text to translation tools available on their device.
The goal isn’t to replace your study apps. The goal is to connect the tools you already use so you spend less time moving information between them.
6. Create a quick expense logger
Tracking spending can be difficult for a simple reason. Recording a small purchase can feel like more effort than the purchase itself.
Shortcuts can reduce that friction.
You could create a shortcut that asks how much you spent and then lets you choose a category.
Categories might include
- Food
- Transport
- Shopping
- Entertainment
- Bills
- Other
The shortcut could then save the information to your preferred app or file.
You can expand it later by adding the current date, location or a short note.
This is also a good reason to browse actions by app. Instead of searching the entire Shortcuts library, you can open the Apps section and see which actions your installed apps make available.
7. Build a smarter contact button
Calling someone normally isn’t difficult, but a shortcut can make contacting an important person more flexible.
You could create one shortcut for a partner, parent, friend or colleague. When you run it, the shortcut could show several choices.
For example
- Call
- Send a message
- Start a FaceTime call
- Share your location
- Open the person’s contact card
One shortcut can then become a small communications menu.
This can work especially well when the shortcut is added to the Home Screen, a widget or the Action button on a supported iPhone.
It also demonstrates another useful feature of Shortcuts. A shortcut doesn’t always have to perform the same sequence. It can ask what you want to do and follow a different path depending on your choice.
8. Give your Action button more than one job
If your iPhone has an Action button, Shortcuts can make it much more flexible.
Instead of assigning the button to one task, you could create a shortcut that opens a simple menu.
The menu might include
- Start a timer
- Open the camera
- Get directions home
- Play music
- Create a note
You choose an option and the shortcut performs the matching action.
This gives one physical button access to several useful tasks without requiring a complicated setup.
Try to keep the menu short. A list of five useful choices is often better than a list of 20 options you rarely use.
9. Make music shortcuts that match how you listen
Opening the Music app and choosing a playlist is already easy, so copying that exact process with a shortcut may not save much time.
A better shortcut can combine music with other parts of a routine.
A workout shortcut might
- Start a workout playlist
- Turn on a suitable Focus mode
- Open your fitness app
- Start a timer
A relaxation shortcut might
- Play quiet music
- Turn on a Focus mode
- Lower screen brightness
- Open a reading or meditation app
The exact actions available depend on your device, apps and settings.
The larger lesson applies to every shortcut. Don’t automate one tap just because you can. Look for routines with several steps.
That is where Shortcuts can save more time.
10. Create shortcuts that respond to your phone
The next step after manually launched shortcuts is personal automation.
Instead of tapping a shortcut yourself, an automation can react when something happens.
Depending on the options available on your device, Shortcuts can respond to events involving
- Battery level
- Charging
- Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth
- Focus modes
- Certain apps opening or closing
- Time of day
- Other supported triggers
That creates many useful possibilities.
Connecting to a particular Bluetooth device could start a routine. Opening a work app could trigger related actions. Reaching a low battery level could display a custom warning.
Automations are useful because you don’t have to remember to start them yourself.
The fastest way to find useful actions
You don’t need to memorize everything Shortcuts can do.
Use search.
When editing a shortcut, search for the task or information you need. Apple suggests broad terms such as get, find and add. You can also search for topics such as music or events, or browse the actions offered by a particular app.
If you use certain actions often, you can pin them so they’re easier to find later.
It is also worth looking at the information provided for an unfamiliar action.
Two things are especially useful to understand.
- Input is the information an action receives
- Output is the information an action produces
For example, one action might get your current location. The next action could use that location to calculate travel time.
Thinking about shortcuts as a chain of small steps can make them much easier to understand.
Start small and test as you go
One of the easiest ways to make Shortcuts feel difficult is to begin with a huge automation.
Start with the smallest version that solves your problem.
If you want a morning shortcut, you might begin with only one action that shows today’s calendar events.
Test it.
Then add another step, such as travel time.
Test it again.
Continue adding features one at a time.
This makes problems easier to find. If something stops working after you add a new action, you’ll have a much better idea of what caused the issue.
It also makes your shortcuts easier to change later.
Be careful with shortcuts downloaded from the internet
Shortcuts can be shared, so you’ll find many community-created shortcuts online.
Some can be very useful, but it’s still wise to check what a shortcut does before running it.
Pay attention if a shortcut wants to
- Access personal information
- Upload information to a website or service
- Modify or delete files
- Access your photos or contacts
- Send messages
- Connect to unfamiliar websites
- Request permissions you weren’t expecting
Apple notes that actions involving other apps may require you to grant access before they can complete their tasks.
A permission request isn’t automatically a problem. A shortcut that saves an image to Photos may need access to your photo library, for example.
The important thing is understanding why the shortcut needs the permission.
For beginners, creating a few simple shortcuts yourself is also a good way to learn how normal shortcut workflows are put together before trying more advanced community creations.
The best shortcut is one you’ll actually use
It’s easy to judge a shortcut by how clever or complicated it looks.
That isn’t the best measurement.
A simple three-action shortcut that saves you 30 seconds every morning can be more useful than a complex shortcut you only run twice a year.
Pay attention to how you use your iPhone or iPad for a few days.
Look for
- Tasks you repeat every day
- Apps you always open together
- Information you regularly copy between apps
- Messages you often send
- Settings you frequently change
- Tasks you avoid because they require too many taps
Then open Shortcuts and see whether you can remove one or two steps.
Once you’ve built one shortcut that genuinely makes something easier, you’ll probably start noticing many more opportunities.
Available actions and automation options can vary depending on your iOS or iPadOS version, installed apps, device hardware, permissions, region and the services you use.
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