Practical Programmatic Testing Scopes
March 14, 2022
Siri Automations for Task Shortcuts
May 12, 2022People tend to find themselves doing daily, repetitive tasks that they find annoying or just take some time to do. Finding the most appropriate way to handle and complete those tasks is what most strive to do. One of the ways that I like to automate some of these tasks is using a native app to Mac, iPad, and iOS called Siri Shortcuts.
What are Siri Shortcuts?
Siri shortcuts Shortcuts can include things such as performing certain actions for your apps and run automations.
What’s a Siri shortcut?
- A shortcut is a quick way to get one or more tasks done with your apps. The Shortcuts app lets you create your own shortcuts with multiple steps.
- These shortcuts can contain actions and automations.
What’s an action?
An action—the building block of a shortcut—is a single step in a task. a user can mix and match actions to create shortcuts that interact with the apps and content on your Apple devices, as well as with content and services on the Internet. Each shortcut is made up of one or more actions.
What is automation?
an automation is a type of shortcut that’s activated by an event, rather than manually. You can use the Shortcuts app to set up a personal or home automation and then have the automated shortcut run when you arrive or depart, when you change a setting on your iPhone, at a time of day, and much more.
Siri Shortcut Examples
- Todo List Shortcut
- Application-Start-Up Shortcut
- Rickroll Checker Shortcut (https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/8e95be866058406aa889d15e83020e51)
- Caffeine Intake Tracker Shortcut (https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/a261ba3572c74decbad9d9b32edb9220)
Siri Shortcut Walkthrough
Today I will walk through how to make a Todo-List-Shortcut on MacOS.
Start by opening the shortcuts app by spotlight searching “shortcuts”
In the top right-hand portion of the app, you will see a ‘plus’ sign. Click on that to create a new shortcut.
After clicking on the button, a screen that looks like this will pop up.
On the right-hand side of the screen, there is a list actions listed by categories and by apps. Use the search bar and find the action labeled ‘Ask for input’ and pull that into the editor. Now, change the ‘prompt’ field to ‘New Task?’.
A prompt will pop up after running the task. View the photo below.
Search ‘Split Text’ in the search bar and drag it into the editor.
Change the ‘Provided Input’ to be equal to ‘Task’. Now, split the the text by ‘New Lines’.
This splits each new line of text into a new task.
Next, search for ‘Repeat with Each’ in the search bar and drag it into the editor. If shortcuts hasn’t done so already, populate the variable field with ‘Split Text’ from the action before it.
After that, click the variable field and enter ‘Repeat Item’. Subsequently, run the shortcut, make a list, and hit enter.
After all of that, open the app of choice and the list of items show in bulleted fashion.
Be sure to checkout Adam’s blog that dives deeper into Automations which can be found here!
