Our Latest Automation April Shortcuts 
This week, Federico and John dig into the collection of shortcuts that they’ve released during Automation April so far, including Federico’s Split View Presets and Cleanup Twitter Link and John’s Timestamped Notes and myTunes shortcuts.
Automating NASA Wallpapers with Shortcuts and SpaceWall For this week’s special issue of MacStories Weekly to celebrate Week 2 of Automation April, I dusted off an old shortcut of mine and updated it for the modern era of Shortcuts automations and the ability to set wallpapers on your devices. The shortcut is called SpaceWall, and it lets you wake up each day...
Configuring Obsidian Sync with Multiple Devices and Organizing Research and Writing Projects Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week: Nicolas shared a great tip on how to properly configure Obsidian Sync on multiple devices if you’re storing the vault locally. Speaking of Obsidian, Mitch asked about how we organize writing projects in the app, and both John and I shared a few thoughts....
Automation April is well underway: we’ve entered the second week of our month-long special event about automation on Apple platforms, and – in case you haven’t noticed – things are happening everywhere. We’ve published Shortcuts-focused articles on MacStories; interviewed developers of Shortcuts-compatible apps on AppStories; we’ve hosted a Town Hall Workshop on our Discord along with giveaways. And, of course, our panel of judges is now busy testing and evaluating shortcuts submitted by people for the Automation April Shortcuts Contest. If you haven’t yet, now would be a great time to start following @AutomationApril on Twitter to keep up with everything we’re doing.
Last week, I shared an initial batch of 10 shortcuts I prepared for Automation April here on MacStories. I’m back this week with another set of 10 shortcuts that encompass a variety of platforms, app integrations, and functionalities. In this week’s collection, you’ll find even more shortcuts to speed up macOS multitasking; a shortcut that makes it easy to create a calendar event starting from a date; there will be a couple of shortcuts for Markdown and Obsidian users too.
I’m having a lot of fun sharing these sets of shortcuts for Automation April. So once again, let’s dive in.
Automation April: Interviews with the Developers Behind Pushcut and Working Copy
This week, Federico and John interview Rodrigo and Victor Araújo, about the many-layered ways that Pushcut extends the utility of Shortcuts and Anders Borum, the creator of the iOS and iPadOS Git client Working Copy, about the app’s use of Shortcuts.
My Obsidian Setup, Part 9: Saving Articles and Music Albums for Later with Shortcuts and Dataview In Parts 6 and 7 of my Obsidian Setup series, I explained how I created a system to save Safari webpages and YouTube videos as ‘rich links’ in Obsidian thanks to a combination of Dataview and Shortcuts. For this first week of Automation April, I thought I’d add two more examples of content I’ve been...
Interesting Links Cider is a new, open-source Apple Music client for Windows, macOS, and Linux built with Electron. I installed it on my Steam Deck, and it’s a very nice experience with an Apple-inspired design that feels right at home with the Apple Music aesthetic. (Link) Writing for MacRumors, Joe Rossignol reminds us that five years...
Discord Giveaways, Raindrop.io Shortcuts, Using Regex to Match Multiple Device Models, and Icons for PC Gamers Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week: This week, we kicked off giveaways on Discord for Downie, Permute, Bear, and Streaks, with more to come next week and throughout Automation April. Check out the #giveaways channel on Discord for details on how to enter each giveaway (it only takes one click...
It’s Week 1 of Automation April, and as I announced last week, alongside the several initiatives we’ve prepared for this month-long automation event, I’ve been working on 30 shortcuts to share with everyone for free on MacStories this month.
Today, I’m pleased to share the first group of 10 shortcuts that will join the other 250 on the MacStories Shortcuts Archive. These shortcuts are a diverse collection of utilities that have been specifically optimized for the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS Monterey. Below, you’ll find shortcuts that take advantage of new actions for Translate and Live Text; there are Mac-only shortcuts that integrate with Finder and AppleScript; there’s even a shortcut that helps you speed up multitasking and window control on macOS.
As always, all the shortcuts I’m sharing as part of Automation April have been tested across all Apple devices and you can install them via the iCloud download links in this story. So grab a good cup of espresso, take a break from the Automation April contest, and let’s have a look.
John
