Keep Your Favorite IOS Shortcuts up to Date With RoutineHub
For some reason, Apple launched the Shortcuts app for iOS 12 without offering users any centralized hub for storing and sharing the useful shortcuts they create. So here’s what happens: you find a neat shortcut on the internet, you launch Safari on your iOS device and install it through some kind of shared iCloud link, and it stays on your device forever. If the developer of the shortcut updates it to include additional functionality (or fix bugs), you will never receive any change notifications, unless you rediscover the shortcut and notice something new.
In other words, shortcuts need an app store, or at least some place where users can download, find, and update shortcuts. I doubt Apple is planning on doing this anytime soon, so I’m very glad someone has: RoutineHub .
While there have been several “ hubs ” for shortcuts since the release of iOS 12, I love RoutineHub’s simple, organized layout — and its growing number of shortcuts. More importantly, if you have a shortcut that you want to share with the world, RoutineHub makes it easy to add an UpdateKit that gives you version control and your shortcut fans a way to get the latest and greatest version of your creativity.
Uploading new shortcuts to RoutineHub (using the cleverly named “ RoutinePub ”) requires a little work, but the initial setup is worth it, especially since you can then publish shortcuts (or shortcuts updates) directly to RoutineHub from the iOS Shortcuts app. You can also integrate UpdateKit into your own shortcuts without using RoutineHub at all, but it is certainly more convenient to use the free hosting solution that is already built for you.
Here’s how the entire update process works, courtesy of UpdateKit creator (and RoutinePub co-creator) Mike Beasley. If you just want to see what it looks like when one of your shortcuts has a new version, skip to 1:15 in the video: