Automation

Apple Shortcuts: Love It or Hate It?

Shortcuts is coming to Mac and Automator is on life support. What say you?

Screenshot of a Shortcut I use to keep track of my wife’s doctor appointments

If you don’t know anything about Apple’s Shortcuts app, you are missing out on something really fun, easy to use, and terribly important.

Nope. That’s a big fat lie. Most of us can exist quite happily with not knowing or caring about anything to do with Shortcuts. I’m going to tell you about why Shortcuts has some value for me, but should you choose to dive into this app yourself, I have to warn you that you may be in store for some pain and frustration.

Apple seems to disagree

Apple promises great things with Shortcuts.

Screenshot of the Shortcuts App

Sounds like a piece of cake, doesn’t it? Well, this is a cake that comes in a thick plastic cake dish that seems impossible to open. You‘ll need heavy duty cutters. Good luck sawing out your first slice: you might need power tools.

Maybe it’s me?

The first time I dabbled in Shortcuts was when it was an app called Workflow. People were pretty excited by that…