You Really Need to Customize the Shortcuts on Your Mac
With macOS 12 Monterey debuted the Shortcuts app, bringing automation to iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and HomePods. If you’ve installed shortcuts on your Mac, you should try some of the best automation routines for your computer . As you do this, you will benefit from these helpful tips to help you get the most out of your Mac shortcuts.
Upgrading to macOS 12 Monterey for the Shortcuts app
Unlike iOS and iPadOS, the Shortcuts app is preloaded on macOS. All you have to do is go to System Preferences> Software Update and make sure you have updated to macOS 12 Monterey. Once the update is complete, click the Apple logo in the upper left corner of your screen and click About This Mac to make sure you are using macOS 12.
Once you’ve done that, you can use Spotlight search (or better alternatives) to find the app. Use Command + Spacebar to open the search bar and find shortcuts. You will find that the app is similar to the iPhone and iPad versions.
Sync Shortcuts from Mac to iPhone
Editing complex shortcuts on the iPhone is painful to say the least. The constant scrolling back and forth can easily drive you to the wall, and despite that, the enterprising people in the iPhone automation community have made shortcuts with over a thousand (!) Actions. Now that the shortcuts are on your Mac, you can start creating shortcuts on your iPhone or iPad and editing them on your Mac if they get too long.
The Shortcuts app has iCloud sync that you can turn on on your Mac by opening the Shortcuts app and choosing Shortcuts> Preferences> General . You can turn on iCloud sync to make sure your iPhone’s shortcuts sync to Mac as well. Unfortunately, personal automation routines that let you do cool things like automatically turn on low power mode on an iPhone don’t sync across devices.
Import Automator workflows into your Shortcuts app
All of your Automator workflows are saved on your Mac as .workflow files. Find the workflow you want to import and simply drag and drop it into the Shortcuts app. The workflow will be quickly imported, and if there are any problems, the shortcuts will tell you which parts you might need to change. Likewise, to import shortcuts, you need to drag the .shortcut files into the application.
Launch shortcuts from menu bar
Once you’ve armed yourself with a lot of shortcuts, you have to tweak them to work faster. Open the Shortcuts app on your Mac and click the All Shortcuts tab in the left pane. You can now drag your favorite shortcuts to the menu bar tab on the left pane.
Once you’ve done that, click on the Menu Bar tab to make sure all the shortcuts are displayed there. Then you can click the Shortcuts icon in the menu bar and you will find shortcuts there. Now you should be able to launch these shortcuts without having to open the app every time.
Add shortcuts to context menu on Mac
Another way to quickly launch your favorite shortcuts is through the context menu. Apple allows you to add shortcuts to the Services menu, which opens when you right-click virtually anywhere on your Mac.
To do this, open the Shortcuts app on your Mac and click the All Shortcuts tab in the left pane. Now drag the shortcuts you want to the Quick Actions tab in the left pane. Once you’ve done that, right-click anywhere on your Mac and select Services to see all of these shortcuts and launch the one you want.
Make sure your shortcuts work on your Mac
The shortcuts make it easy to distinguish between device-specific actions, as shown by Matthew Cassinelli on Twitter. If you want shortcuts to launch on both Mac and iOS, you can quickly add an If action to the shortcut and select Device Information as a condition. Under Device details, select the type of device under Get submenu, select an operator, and choose Mac from the list of device types. You can now add all your Mac actions in the If box and iOS actions in the Otherwise box.