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15 iPhone Shortcuts YOU Requested: Auto-Texting, Alarms, Music, and More!

Learn how to build 15 iPhone Shortcuts, inspired by YOU. Automatically play music when an alarm is snoozed, schedule a text to auto-send, make your screenshots look pro, and more. Apple Frames Shortcut https://www.macstories.net/stories/apple-frames-3-1-extending-screenshot-automation-with-the-new-apple-frames-api/ Toggle Background Sounds https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f0ee7af90eb243758e09df82b0edfa49 Scan Document to Folder https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/0b4580820581472a902114ccb5c14968 Mute Ads https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d8a051c98dfb40d3b3c25e480e84b1b1 Check My Subscriptions https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7c48c2048fac412a81c30411728a1fdc Edit Calendar Events https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/68217f6777ab428d8b04b05ca3871c0c Battery Health Settings https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/91b4ff9d540845d6b9ad08ea774e4cc3 Get Toolbox Pro https://apps.apple.com/us/app/toolbox-pro-for-shortcuts/id1476205977?uo=4 🖇️ URL Schemes Apple Subscriptions itms-apps://apps.apple.com/account/subscriptions Battery Health prefs:root=BATTERY_USAGE&path=BATTERY_HEALTH 🎙️ Listen to Primary Technology, my new podcast! Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/primary-technology/id1723943281 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1vWb9Q9BHHRCREwYnOl46W YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PrimaryTechShow Support the show and get bonus content every week: https://primarytech.memberful.com/join 🏠 Full List of Current Apple Home Devices https://beard.fm/homekit 🎧 My Podcasts: Primary Technology: https://primarytech.fm Movies on the Side: https://mots.fm 📲 Follow me on: Threads: https://threads.net/@stephenrobles Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@stephenrobles Instagram: https://instagram.com/stephenrobles Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephenrobles Join my newsletter: https://beard.fm/blog Website: https://beard.fm Chapters ➡ 00:00 Introduction 00:21 Alarm Automations 01:57 Auto Text at Time 02:50 Check Apple Subscriptions 03:13 Auto Rotate for Video 04:35 Mute Ads Automation 06:00 Scan Doc to Folder 07:50 Background Sounds 08:51 Apple Frames Shortcut 09:42 Apple Watch Automations 11:04 Play Song on HomePod 11:49 Toggle Cellular on Wi-Fi 12:48 Edit Calendar Events 13:58 Jump to Battery Health 14:22 De-Duplicate Action 15:07 Weather Report Help My Gear: 🛒 Earthworks Ethos Microphone: https://amzn.to/35hIh2h 🛒 Sony A7 IV Camera: https://amzn.to/3fZcp4S 🛒 Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 for Sony E-Mount: https://amzn.to/3qWe0yt 🛒 Earthworks Icon Microphone: https://amzn.to/3KLYLjq 🛒 Shure SM7B Vocal Microphone: https://amzn.to/3DzZe3n 🛒 Elgato Key Light Air: https://amzn.to/3EvNb8T 🛒 Sony a6400 Camera: https://amzn.to/3GlVqog 🛒 Sigma 16mm 1.4 Lens for Sony E Mount: https://amzn.to/3DxqyiK 🛒 ATEM Mini Pro: https://amzn.to/3dHfcyx 🛒 Rodecaster PRO II: https://amzn.to/46mK2WK 🛒 Sound Devices MixPre-3: https://amzn.to/3doT3EO

Stephen Robles

5 days ago

In this video, we're gonna build 15 new shortcuts that you requested. From automating actions like playing music when you snooze your alarm, quickly checking the subscriptions on your iPhone, scan documents with your iPhone and save it to a specific folder, make your screenshots look professional, quickly edit your calendar events and more. And as you're watching, if you get any shortcuts ideas or wanna know if it's possible, leave comments below this video and we'll get to it in a future one. F
irst up, let's talk about alarm notifications. Let's go to the shortcuts app on our iPhone and over to the automations tab. If we hit the plus button, You'll see Alarm as one of the first options. And this can be triggered multiple ways. An automation can be triggered as soon as the alarm goes off. When the alarm is snoozed, I have a tendency to do that. Or when you stop an alarm. Let's say we need a little more help getting up in the morning. So I'm going to choose when my alarm is snoozed, any
alarm that goes off, or you can choose a specific alarm that you already have programmed. Let's say you have a weekday alarm that goes off Monday through Friday for work. You can choose for this automation to only activate for that specific alarm. Then I'm going to choose run immediately and no notification. This way I don't have to do anything. As soon as I snooze the alarm now it has some pre-made options here, but I'm going to go with new blank automation. Now a useful action might be to pla
y some music. It's actually suggested right here. So I'll just hit the plus button. If you don't see it, you can also just search for music down here, choose the music option and you'll see a bunch of actions play. Music is right there. Then in that play music action, tap where it says music and you can choose from your library. It could be a song, an album or playlist. Let's say you want to get some real ominous wake up music like the dune two I'll hit the plus button to add all of those songs
to this action. I can expand it. You can also shuffle and repeat if needed and hitting done. Now whenever I snooze my weekday alarm, it's going to play the dune two soundtrack. Now I can go back in here and change the do part. Maybe I actually want to send that to a home pod I have in my bedroom. Search for the change playback destination action here. And if I tap that I can change the playback destination to any of the home pods or even Apple TVs that I have in the house. Another request I've h
ad several times is automatic. I'm not exactly texting someone at a certain time. Well, let's stay here in the automations tab, hit the plus button, and let's choose time of day for this automation. Maybe we want to choose every morning at 8 a.m. We want this to happen every day and this to run immediately with no notification. Again, we'll start with a blank automation. You see, one of the suggestions is already send message, but we can also search for that action. And now you can customize wha
t to send. If you want to get complicated, you can actually choose a menu option where it randomly selects certain messages. If you want to see something like that, leave a comment below, but we'll just go with a good morning and then emoji. And then you can choose the recipient from your contacts and it will automatically send a message to that person every day at 8 a.m. If you expand this little arrow here, you can also toggle off the show and run. So it just happens in the background automati
cally. Be warned, if you have an automation like this, you might start sounding like a chat bot to your significant other. Number three, this is a quick shortcut that lets you check all your in-app subscriptions across your Apple devices. This is a simple open URL scheme. We've talked about URL schemes and-- videos. I'll put this text down in the video description so you could just copy and paste it, but all it does is when it opens that URL it jumps you over to your subscriptions and you can qu
ickly see all the monthly or annual subscriptions you have signed up to your Apple ID. Number four, someone asks, "Can my iPhone automatically rotate when I'm watching a YouTube video?" Now if you're like me you probably keep orientation lock on all the time, but some apps like photos and YouTube it's helpful for orientation lock to turn off. So here in the automations tab, we're going to create a new automation and This is going to be when an app is open and here I can choose YouTube as when it
's open You can also select multiple apps at a time and this is really helpful again for photos or maybe other video apps Let's hit done. So when YouTube is opened. We want it to run immediately. Don't notify when run Let's do a new blank automation start searching for orientation and you'll see this action set orientation lock I can choose to toggle it or I like to be a little more granular with this So I'm gonna turn orientation- When you tube is open that means when I open the application I'l
l be able to rotate my phone and see the video full screen. Let's test this out You'll see orientation lock is on right now, so I can't rotate my phone But if I open the YouTube app, you'll see orientation lock is already going to be turned off now when I start playing a video I can rotate my phone and it'll go full screen because orientation is unlocked now I typically like to create a second automation for when the app is closed and then orientation lock will be enabled once again For photos,
but again, you can choose multiple apps and the same action will apply whenever you open any of those apps Another request was can I mute the ads in YouTube now? There's no automatically mute an ad action, but what we can do Let's create a new shortcut search for the volume action and let's choose set volume We can set our media volume and let's go all the way down to zero now ads are gonna be a different length So this next step is not gonna be perfect But let's choose a wait command, and let's
wait about five seconds. I can duplicate this action. I'm going to drag it underneath the weight action. Now let's set it to about 50%. So when I run this shortcut, the volume on my phone for media is going to go down to zero. Then it's going to wait five seconds and bring that volume back up. I can set this shortcut for the action button or even a back tap on my iPhone. Let's call this our mute ads shortcut and let's program it to our action button just to see if it works. We'll go to action b
utton here, choose our shortcuts, and there's our mute ad shortcut right here. Now I'm going to play this video. Now let's Now let's pretend this is an ad, we'll start playing it. But I ran my shortcut which sets the volume down to zero, it waits five seconds, and then turns it back up. So you can customize how long that wait time is to make sure it's about the length of ads normally. And then run the shortcut when you start watching a YouTube video. Again, you can program this to a back tap on
your iPhone instead of the action button. And this will give you a temporary mute feature. I'll be sure to link these shortcuts down in the video description to download them directly, but I can't share automations because these are device specific. So you'll have to build those from. Next up, I've had several people ask about scanning documents to a specific folder. Now, if we create a new shortcut and just search for scan, there is a built-in scanning option right here in the files app, but th
is doesn't let you choose a folder to send that scan as far as I can tell. So what I would recommend is downloading the toolbox pro app and the toolbox pro gives you more shortcuts actions just by the app being installed on your device. I'm going to choose this scan document action. Don't change anything down here in this menu. And if you want to learn more on how to use it, tap the icon. And then show info here it explains that it will open the scanner so you can take a picture and then you nee
d to add Two more actions wait to return and then get clipboard. So let's add those actions here We'll search for wait to return and add that and then we're gonna add a get clipboard step So this is gonna scan a document wait for it to return to the shortcut and that scan is actually gonna be on your clipboard So we want to get our clipboard then I'm gonna add a make PDF action This will make a PDF out of what was on the clipboard and then we can choose our save to files action And it's gonna sa
ve that PDF either asking where to save each time we run this or you can toggle this off and choose a Specific folder right here. This way it saves it to the same place every time. Let's choose our desktop Now if we run this shortcut, it's gonna open the scanner on your iPhone. Let's just scan this rumble pack here Ideally, that would be a page or document now. I'm gonna choose keep scan here Now you can add multiple pages by continually taking pictures, but I'm just gonna hit save for this one
page document It sends us back to shortcuts. This is the first time, but yes I want it to access my desktop folder and always allow. And now it's going to save that PDF document to my desktop. Let's go over to files to see if it worked. And there that PDF document is on my desktop. Now if you're scanning something with a lot of text, it will actually use OCR to make literal text that's selectable and that will be the PDF saved in the files app. Alright number seven, you actually have background
or white noise sounds built into your iPhone. If we create a new shortcut, then just search for the action background sounds. And there's several options here for setting the background sound, changing it, and even the volume. Let's choose set background sounds, and this just defaults to turning the background sounds on. Let's just play this and see what happens. So that was set as an ocean background sound, and that can turn on automatically. This is also a great action for the automation side,
like if you want to pair it with your alarm automation. Now you can create a toggle, meaning turn background sounds on or off, or we can add a change background sound option. Let's put that above. As the first action and let's choose ask each time now every time I run this shortcut It will ask me what background sound I'd like to hear let's go with rain this time and it'll turn on the rain now I can also change the turn word to toggle and now whenever I run the shortcut it'll toggle it on and o
ff pretty fun I'm gonna take a screenshot of this shortcut and show you the power of this next shortcut now I did not build this shortcut. This is actually a shortcut by Federico Vittici over at Mac stories I'll put a link to download this shortcut in the video description. It's pretty long and complicated. I don't even know how to build it myself. But basically when you run this shortcut, it's going to get all the screenshots you've taken with your iPhone, iPad, or any Apple devices. I'll choos
e that last screenshot I took and if you choose multiple, it will actually create multiple screenshots. So I'll hit Done and what this shortcut does is actually put that screenshot in a frame so it looks like the actual device. A lot of options for exporting it. I'll just save it to my photos. And this is what the screenshots look like after you run them through that shortcut. It's an an iPhone, it'll put a nice iPhone. I'll put a link to that Apple Frame shortcut down in the video description.
Number 9. A couple of you have asked about Apple Watch automations, so let's actually go back to the Automations tab and let's choose a time of day, like in the evening when you're ready to go to sleep. I can choose a time here. You can also choose the Sleep Focus to trigger some of these actions as well. But we'll go with time of day and we'll go with 1106. we want this to run every day and run immediately. No notification or confirmation to run. Let's go to a new blank automation and now let's
search for watch. When we tap watch these are all the actions available to manage your Apple Watch from this automation. Two requests that I saw was to set theater mode which will keep the display off sometimes even in that sleep mode that display can turn on. So we could say at this time turn theater mode on and I want to keep that toggled off so it doesn't show me anything when it runs. Maybe you'd also like to activate your sleep focus mode, which will also go to your Apple Watch at this tim
e of day. Well, if we search for focus modes or just focus, I can choose the set focus mode and we can choose our sleep one to turn on at the same time. Now at 11.06 every day, theater mode on our Apple Watch will turn on and our sleep focus mode will also turn on. You can create another automation for it to turn off, but you can also program this in the alarm app just to have your sleep focus mode activated at a certain time. You can do that in your sleep wake. Take up times and then change tho
se times depending on the day or set a different schedule. For number 10, what about playing a specific song on a HomePod? Let's create a new automation here and we can choose our play music action. You can also search for that. And here you can choose an individual song, a playlist, or an album. Let's just choose the first song in the Dune 2 soundtrack and it's going to start playing on my iPhone as soon as I run the shortcut. You can also choose the shuffle and repeat actions if it's a playlis
t or album. And again, this is where you want to search for that change playback destination and you can choose set and choose one of the HomePods in your home. That will start playing that music automatically and then move that music to a HomePod of your choice. You can also do this with the control home action. You can choose a HomePod in your home here or multiple HomePods, tell it to play, and then you can choose your audio and music just like I do with the music action. Next up is another a
utomation to toggle your cellular data depending on whether you're connected to Wi-Fi. So we'll go over to the automations tab, hit plus, And then we can go down to Wi-Fi. as a trigger. You can choose when you're joined a network or when you leave a network. We can choose our home network. Yes, my Wi-Fi is called Ministerith. Now this toggle right here is trying to bypass any intermittent connectivity issues you might have with your Wi-Fi network. So if for some reason you connect to the network
, the automation will run the first time. But if it sees a reconnect within three minutes, it won't run the automation in rapid succession. I'm gonna leave that toggled off and run immediately. Now when I hit next, I'll choose blank automation and we can search for our action. Under our Scripting heading, you'll see Set Cellular Data as an option. And let's choose Turn Cellular Data off. Now, whenever you connect to your home Wi-Fi network, cellular data will be turned off automatically. Then yo
u can create a second automation where when you're disconnected from that Wi-Fi and turn cellular data on. Number 12, someone asked about editing your calendar events here in shortcuts. This is something you can do as long as you're using the built-in calendar app on your iPhone. Let's search for calendar and we'll see several different actions. The first action needs to be Get Upcoming Events. Now, you might have to change this depending on how many events you might have in a day. I'll put Get
the Next 10 Events and you can choose which calendars that are synced to your iPhone you want to pull events from. And because we only want to edit a specific calendar event, I'm going to do the Choose from List action and then I'll be able to choose a specific event out of my Next 10. We'll search for one more action under Calendar and we have the Edit Calendar Event action. Now, we have to edit this last action by tapping Set and we want it to ask each time and on the next video. To the detail
s section, we also wanted to ask each time of our chosen item. Now when I run this shortcut, it's going to show me my next however many events I've chosen. I can choose the next event here and then I can select what part of the event I want to change. Maybe I want to change the title, I'll tap set and now I can change what I want the title to be. I'll change it to haircut test and now I've changed the title of my event and again you can choose any of the event details in that menu to edit that p
art of the event. 13. I might've done this one before. But someone asked again, "How can I quickly jump to my battery health settings if you want to obsessively check your battery health percentage?" Well, there's a URL scheme for that. I'll put this link down in the video description as well. But when I tap that, it'll jump over to my battery settings. You can't go directly into battery health, but now that I'm here I'm one tap away from seeing that yes, I'm at 97% battery health on my iPhone 1
5 Pro Max. All right, this next shortcut is actually just an action. I want to give you this tool to maybe use in some of your own personal shortcuts. But this is a toolbox project Pro action and remember if you have toolbox pro installed on your iPhone You have lots of different actions and actions not already built into the iPhone things like create folders create icons But one I use pretty often is this remove duplicates action if you have a list of URLs Maybe it's a list of emails Whatever y
our input is for the shortcut you can choose your clipboard on a get clipboard action above it And so if you've copied a long list of something you can just remove any duplicate items from that list and then you can add it back to your clipboard, But whatever you're doing, this remove duplicates action, which is not built into shortcuts, it's the Toolbox Pro app that gives you that really, really useful. And finally, number 15, this is actually a request for you all. Or if Matthew Castanelli is
watching, it's for you. Help me Matthew, you're my only hope. This shortcut's request was someone asking, "Can I get the weather forecast and have a shortcut tell me when the highest temperature in the day will be and at what time?" So one of the actions is get weather forecast, that's totally possible. You can change GetDaily to Hourly. So you can get the hourly forecast at your current location or anywhere specific. And I'm going to add a quick look action just to show you the data that this a
ction gives you. So when I hit play, you'll see it'll give me all the temperatures and conditions hourly for the entire day. So I have the data. Now the part I'm struggling with is an action in shortcuts to get the highest number from this list, which it's right there, 71 degrees and rain, and it tells me what time it's going to be happening. This person would like to speak. the text for that hour where it's going to be the highest temperature and when. I tried a bunch of different actions and I
couldn't figure it out. So shortcuts experts out there and Matthew Cassinelli, maybe Federico Vittici, if any of you know how to program this shortcut let me know and I can share it in my next request. Which remember, I'm going to create a whole playlist of my shortcuts request from you in YouTube comments. You can check that playlist right up here. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Keep sending your request for shortcuts down in the comments below. And if you're new to shortcuts and yo
u want to start from the very beginning, this is the perfect video for you. 7 easy shortcuts really explaining the basics step by step. Thanks for watching. Hit that like button before you go and I'll catch you next time.

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