Use This App to Add Nearly 150 Features to Your Apple Shortcuts
Apple Shortcuts is a powerful automation tool, but the built-in actions are a bit lacking. When creating something, it’s easy to feel stuck when you realize something is impossible. The free Actions app now helps by adding 141 actions, many of which Apple really should have included in the first place.
I could spend the rest of this article just listing the functionality, but I’ll spare you that and just say that it’s a lot. Highlights include plenty of tools for converting units of measurement, plenty of system integrations for checking things like whether a specific Bluetooth or Wi-Fi device is connected, and plenty of features for working with images and lists. The app works on both mobile devices, including iPhone and iPad, and Mac computers. Some actions only work on one device or another, but the vast majority work on all devices.
To get started, simply install the application and create a new shortcut. The best way to experience the new features is to go to Shortcuts, create a new shortcut, and view activity by app. You will find everything in the “Shortcuts” section.
I had a great time playing with this. The first workflow I created turns any selected text into an image with a random Unsplash image as the background. Here’s how the shortcut works:
And here’s a random image I made with it:
And that’s just the beginning when it comes to images. For example, you can get the middle or dominant color of an image, which can be useful for automating font selection. You can also blur the image.
There are also some handy tools for automating URLs. For example, you can get the title of any web page if you have a URL. I used this to create a plugin that quickly gets the title of the latest Lifehacker article and outputs the link in markdown format along with the title.
There’s a lot to dig into there too. There are device-specific features, such as checking which Bluetooth devices are connected, which apps are currently open, and whether cellular data is turned on. The best way to figure out what you can do, as with shortcuts in general, is to dig in and try.