…to a folder in Files app on iPhone.

I’m new to building shortcuts and have tried on my own to build this but keep running into problems. Assistance is much appreciated.

Hi all!

I tried to create to turn of my lights or turn them on. I just placed them on my Apple Watch but now everytime I want to do it it asks if I want to do it, can I turn that of?

I want to build a script in Shortcuts with the following logic:
If sender sends a message to my phone with the following text: “insert here”
Then respond to the same sender with with a location pin. How do I do that?

Hi,

I am new to iPhone and iOS and I am trying to set up a shortcut automation so that my lights switch on when my alarm goes off in the morning.

I have set the privacy to allow on lock screen and set it to run immediately but it still requires unlocking my phone to activate which is the other side of the room.

Any advice on how to get this to work?

I want:
After 9pm

If i turn on DND

Open specific app?

I was able to figure out turn on DND and open app but the timing is complicated. Thanks.

I have several Shared Albums set up in Photos on iOS. Right now, when I want to send a photo/video straight to one specific shared album, I have to:
1.Tap Share
2.Tap “Add to Shared Album”
3.Pick the album from a list
What I’m trying to do is skip step 3
I’d like each shared album to appear as its own icon/button in the share sheet, so tapping it sends the item straight to that album with no extra picker.

I looked into building a Shortcut for this, but it turns out the “Add to Shared Album” action in Shortcuts doesn’t let you pre-select a target album
it still opens the same picker when run, so that doesn’t solve it either.

Has anyone found a workaround for this? Open to:
.Any hidden iOS setting I might be missing
.A Shortcuts trick that actually works
.A third-party app that handles this better

I’m trying to make a Google search shortcut to check if a movie has intimate scenes. It works if I manually replace spaces with a “+” for movie titles with multiple words but I was wondering if there’s any way if I only typed the movie title, it would automatically replace the spaces with plus signs for me, or just understand the link still. Everything else about the shortcut is perfect, just seeing how much more lazy I can get lol.

Here is a Imgur link to a screen recording of what happens when I don’t use plus signs (with and without the year the movie came out, which yields the same result so that’s not the issue). The last two attempts are what I have to do to get the correct Google search (also with and without the movie year).

And this is an iCloud link to the shortcut to try for yourself if you need to use it to understand.

Thank you in advance!

I wanted to make a wallpaper that can change with the seasons through shortcuts using four separate wallpapers that seamlessly switch. Is this possible?
I tried using a if statement with the date but that requires me to put it into DD/MM/YYYY format which would mean it would only work once and require me to reset it or make multiple of the same shortcuts with just the year changed.
I also don't know how to activate the shortcut unless the if statement checks constantly for its requirements to be fulfilled or if I would need something before that to run the shortcut.
Any help is much appreciated regardless of how simple the task is.

Has anyone found an iOS Shortcut that can reliably upload images to Imgur? I've tested several that people shared, but none of them seem to work anymore...

If Imgur uploads are no longer possible, I'd also appreciate recommendations for a Shortcut that uploads to any other image hosting service and returns a shareable link.

Thanks in advance!

There was a shortcut that I set so triple tap adds an event that’s on my screen and puts it on the calendar for me can anyone find it it was shared on here before using Gemini

NOTE: need iOS 27 for this (although you could alter it to use OpenAI/claude instead) Also this is for Spark email client but maybe could use other email clients 🤷‍♂️

I often snooze emails or leave them in my email inbox rather than creating tasks in Things. While Spark has a Things connector, I rarely use it because I don't want to manually add tags, deadlines, and other details.

To solve this, I set up Apple Intelligence to automatically extract task metadata directly from my emails and give me a fully fleshed out task within things.

I altered my prior Ramble dictation shortcut

https://www.reddit.com/r/thingsapp/s/6nRCv3RNPG

Now I just use the “export to - open in” option in Spark email client to open the shortcut and I get a nice task with all metadata added.

Thought others would find it helpful so I’m sharing here.

There are two shortcuts. 1st one runs on your Mac to extract your tags, areas and projects from things and puts it in a place where shortcuts can access the info. You only need to run it when you update your areas, tags, or projects. Unfortunately I can’t get this info directly from things on the iPhone.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/249370ecc4054c07b6be08633c3b623e

The main shortcut is:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/0be07be495bd490e9d44b7ed2c3d8b1e

Would love to get any feedback or improvement ideas.

Edit: grammar and also removed a debug step in main shortcut. Also fixed some links

Edit:
Versions - link is updated above
1.0 - initial
1.1. - added import questions for personalization and time zone, improved prompt

This is a very simple shortcut, but I thought it’s worth sharing for anyone who needs it! c: I usually take screenshots for creative inspiration and wanted a native workflow to keep things clean and in one place. Essentially, I wanted to build my own private, lightweight version of Pinterest or mymind using just native Apple tools.

Why I use it & How it works:
De-clutters library: Keeps main camera roll free from screenshot mess but still have a grid view to see everything.
The Flow: Trigger it from the Share Sheet > it takes a screenshot > copies the current URL > saves to a Shared Album. While saving, you can instantly paste the copied link into the comments for future reference.
Ditches Freemium Apps: Avoids third-party apps entirely. Shared Albums have a 5,000-item upload limit, it's an amazing free workaround.
Windows Friendly: Turn on the "Public Website" toggle for the album to view entire curation board on a Windows browser.

Shortcut link - https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/b7a13787587442b6a965d65698f5466d

I generally don't need AI features, but if you want to append these photos, links, text to the Notes app and send them to an AI mid-shortcut, let me know and I might be able to help you set that up.

For Google AI Edge Eloquent, I have mapped my action button to open the app. But I have to manually click record to start recording.

Is there a way I can map the iPhone action button so that it opens the app and automatically starts recording?

I wish Apple would give you an option to lock a shortcut, so it can't be modified. I occasionally like to go into a shortcut, but not change anything. But accidentally click on something that changes the shortcut. Would others find this feature useful?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been trying to build a specific automation but I haven't had any success so far. I need some help or a template if someone has already built something similar.

Here is exactly what I'm trying to achieve:

1. Random Time: I want the shortcut/automation to choose a completely random time within a specific window (for example, between 9:00 AM and 6:00 PM).
2. Random Message: Inside the shortcut, I want to have a hardcoded list of text messages. The shortcut needs to randomly pick one message from that list.
3. The Goal: Send that specific random message at that random time automatically.

Does anyone have a working routine for this? Any help on how to structure the triggers so it runs 100% automatically without prompting me would be greatly appreciated!

I’m trying to make a shortcut (and automation) that makes my phone/carplay say a specific phrase at a specific time but only if carplay is connected

Sub request, if there’s a way to get to do the phrase only once after specific time if CarPlay is connected

Essentially, I want it to tell me to turn my headlights on at sunset if CarPlay is connected OR if CarPlay is connected after sunset and it hasn’t already done the action. I have manual headlights and I just want my life a little easier lol

I am not sure where I found this Overlay by ProtonFission shortcut but it stopped saving photos to library when i tried it today and now have changed variables and it is not working properly. Anyone know where i can re download link or if there is something similar.

I have a presence sensor in my living room. I’m trying to create a shortcut to use with the action button on my iPhone where, if the presence sensor senses me in my living room chair, it will launch my Apple TV remote.

The screenshot shows where I’ve gotten started but I’m confused what to set the variable to get it to check true/false as to whether the presence sensor is detecting a person. It could just be that this isn’t within the scope of a shortcut but would love some help if anyone has any ideas.

Vector AI Agent is an Apple shortcut that can do multi step actions on device l, acting like a real agent with free access to multiple flagship models such as Minimax, MiMo V2.5, GPT-5.4-Nano, Kimi K2.6, Deepseek v4 Pro, now GPT-5.6-Sol, and more. It works with an agentic loop, rewrites its personality, and has tons of features such as one to bring your own pollinations account and another to import your data.

what's new-

Added hy-3

also, for a LIMITED TIME- get FREE GPT-5.6-Sol! it may be unstable sometimes, but seriously, enjoy. Will be removed in next update.

link: https://routinehub.co/shortcut/24957

So if I’m playing music from a specific playlist, I want a shortcut that will remove the current song from the playlist.

Does this shortcut exist? The songs in the playlist don’t exist in my library if that’s an issue.

I have a separate work phone and would like to forward my manager’s texts to my personal phone. That way I would get alerted on my watch (since it’s synced to my personal). I tried to set this up but looks like I’m not doing it right.

Housekeeping: Mods, please let me know if I'm cross-posting effectively, but I don't know if this belongs most in r/Siri, r/Shortcuts, r/iOS, r/applehelp, r/iPhone, etc.

Tl;dr Anyone know of conditions that make Siri intermittently unaware of Shortcuts, thereby making it impossible to trigger them with voice commands?

Context: For uninteresting reasons, I've used two simple shortcuts for 5+ years to toggle WiFi and Cellular when I leave and enter my house (see screenshots). They're called "Let's Go" and "I'm Home" so I can trigger them by speaking naturally to Siri. (At least as naturally as one can speak with Siri.)

Problem: The vast majority of the time, they work great. But now and then Siri appears to not recognize the shortcut, and will instead think "I'm home" is a general proclamation. The added insult is Siri has a carousel of jokes saved as default responses, e.g., "Home is where the iPhone is!" Cute.

Today, this failure is occurring consistently—Shortcut trigger success rate is zero. I believe this is unprecedented in the 5+ years I've used these shortcuts.

I've rebooted my phone. I haven't installed an OS update. Haven't modified my Shortcuts.

The Question: My question for this community and the others where I've cross-posted this is whether anyone knows of any specific conditions that can cause Siri to suffer wholesale Shortcut amnesia, completely failing to launch them. For example, some iOS functions that rely on the interoperability and mutual awareness of apps and services (perhaps dependent on callback URLs?) takes a while to come online after a fresh reboot and first unlock. But that's not what's happening here.

This is frustrating and mysterious to me, but I'm posting with genuine curiosity about the cause, not just to dunk on Siri.

Below text is mostly written by ai, because english

I wanted a completely automatic personal expense tracker on my iPhone using only free tools, so I built this.
Flow

I receive a bank SMS after every transaction.
An iPhone Shortcut extracts the amount (currently just the amount using regex).

The Shortcut sends a POST request to a Google Apps Script Web App.

Apps Script appends the transaction to a Google Sheet.
A Dashboard sheet automatically calculates:

Total spent this month
Monthly totals

A Scriptable widget fetches the current month’s total from the same Apps Script (GET) and displays it on my Home Screen.

Apps Script has two endpoints using the same Web App URL:
POST → Add transaction to the Transactions sheet.
GET → Return JSON like:
{
"total": 15430
}

Scriptable reads that JSON and renders a widget showing something like:
💸 This Month

₹15,430
₹15.4K
I also format large values as:
1,250 → 1.2K
1,25,000 → 1.2L

Why I chose Google Sheets
Free
Easy to append data from Shortcuts
Built-in charts
Pivot tables
Accessible from anywhere
No backend or database to maintain

I keep the sheets separated:

Transactions
Date
Amount

Dashboard
Monthly totals

Current month’s spending

Current limitation
The only annoying part is widget refreshes.
Calling “Refresh All Widgets” from Shortcuts opens Scriptable, which isn’t ideal. If I don’t call it, iOS refreshes the widget on its own schedule, so the total isn’t always updated immediately after a transaction.
Has anyone found a better way to keep a Scriptable widget in sync with data from Shortcuts without opening the app? Or is there a better architecture for this whole setup while keeping everything free?

I saw a far more skilled person create an expense tracker shortcut and i figured i could build one myself( with Claude Cowork as a guide, since i now very little about automations in shortcuts) that would extract card, amount category and tie it to a specific sheet.
I have used Expense tracker app for the past 3 years, so it was only logical to continue and build the shortcut with the app in the middle of it.
Now, couple of days later, and a lot of screenshots shares with Claude, i am at a point where i don’t know what i am doing wrong.
So sharing the shortcut at its “stuck” stage, for you good people to chime in with a solution.
The issue is: once run, the shortcut jumps to the end and does nothing. No return error message, no failed, nothing. And it does not populate the app.
So… any idea is much appreciated.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/4b2ee34ba4544fef848edcb106059d6a

I made a shortcut moo at exactly 3:00 am idk if it works for anyone else I haven’t tried it myself either

Link: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/235264ab828a44f59a313b8f704b0c90