Use Shortery to Add Automation to MacOS Shortcuts
The Shortcuts app for Mac is missing one of the iPhone’s best features: automation. The Shortery app for Mac bridges this gap.
Shortcuts on iPhone has an Automation tab that allows shortcuts to run automatically when certain events occur. For example, you can turn off alarms when you leave the house (a feature I use to turn off my cat’s food alarms when I’m away from home). However, the Automation tab is missing on the Mac, which is odd since Automator, Shortcuts’ predecessor, did offer some of these features—you could, for example, use Folder Actions to run an automation whenever a file was added to a folder. . This solution still works as Automator still exists, but it’s understandable that Shortcuts are preferred at this point – it’s clearly the automation tool Apple is putting resources into at the moment.
This is where Shortery comes to the rescue. This app is free but offers extremely limited features—the full version costs $10. With this application you can set up your own rules for running shortcuts. There are 17 different categories of triggers, such as when the contents of a folder change or a certain time of day occurs.
You can set up rules and choose a shortcut to run when these triggers occur. For example, let’s say you want documents to print when they are added to a specific folder. First, you should create a simple shortcut that prints the document using your default printer. Next, you’ll set up an automation in Shortery that will run that automation whenever a new PDF is added to that folder.
Click Save when you’ve set everything up the way you like it, and you’re done: every PDF you add to this folder will print.
This is just one example. I’ve set up an automation that instantly starts a Time Machine backup whenever I connect my backup drive. Lars Gerkens, part of the two-person team that created Shortery, told me that users have set up automation for things like controlling lights based on the time of day and automatically turning on Do Not Disturb mode when they’re physically in a room. office.