Getting Started with iOS Automation
Vidit Bhargava
I’ve been using the workflow app since it came out back in 2014, and over the years, I’ve been able to amass a few nifty workflows that help me increase my productivity. With Shortcuts (a successor to Workflow, which was acquired by Apple about an year and half ago), this gets taken a step further, as the app has gained some more capabilities and has Siri support, which lets users present the Shortcut’s results in a Siri Interface. So, I thought of sharing some of my favourite Shortcuts / Workflows:
Photos > PDF > Share
A simple shortcut that takes multiple photos, converts them into a PDF and then presents a share sheet to share the files. It’s a workflow that I created to share my class notes with friends back in college. You can also add a Dropbox / iCloud Drive / Google Drive upload command to upload the files to a cloud sharing service and then share its link. (I removed that after Whatsapp started allowing PDF Sharing).
Batch Resize Images
This one lets you resize multiple images to your desired size all at once, and then saves them in an iCloud Drive folder to access them later. Incredibly useful for when I need to upload images for my blog.
Live Photo To GIF or Video
Live Photos are really cool, but they’re seldom supported by websites Like Facebook or Instagram. To make them shareable one could convert them into videos or GIFs, depending on the nature of the photo.
Combine PDFs
Takes multiple PDFs and combines them into one. I’m not sure why more PDF readers don’t have this option by default. It’s such a handy tool that helps in consolidating files.
Speed Test
I found this one online but decided to a bit of customisation to get the Network Name in Shortcuts as well. So now, technically Siri can report the results for my WiFi’s speed every time I feel the need to.
Top 25 Songs
Back in the day iTunes had this cool feature which’d let you rank your songs by play count and create a smart playlist for you. This can be done by using Shortcuts in iOS now. You can even add filters to restrict the genres or artists in the list.
Device Overlay
Device Overlays are something that I often need to for my blogposts and product shots. In this shortcut it’s easy to select multiple screenshots for different devices and add overlays to them. It even masks the screenshots for iPhone X around the sensor area.
Lumous Maximus
I’m a Harry Potter Fan, and I like the idea of saying magic spells to my phone. Complete with the “you must speak clearly” part! 😉
Speak Clipboard
Another one that’s largely specific to the Shortcuts app, it’s a simple shortcut that lets Siri speak your clipboard items allowed, useful for proof-reading.