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Posts tagged with "shortcuts"

Shortcuts App Beta Arriving through TestFlight Soon→

Today Apple updated the download page of its developer website with an option to request access to the TestFlight beta version of iOS 12’s Shortcuts app. This was first discovered by Steve Troughton-Smith:

The release notes for beta 1 of Shortcuts confirm that Workflow users who install the new beta will have their existing workflows imported into Shortcuts, as Federico previously noted.

Up until now, the Shortcuts app has made no appearance in existing iOS 12 beta releases. This was unsurprising because Shortcuts is going to be released as an App Store download, but it was unclear whether beta testers would be given the chance to gain access to the Shortcuts app before its public release. Fortunately, if you’re an Apple developer, the answer is officially yes.

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Shortcuts: A New Vision for Siri and iOS Automation

In my Future of Workflow article from last year (published soon after the news of Apple’s acquisition), I outlined some of the probable outcomes for the app. The more optimistic one – the “best timeline”, so to speak – envisioned an updated Workflow app as a native iOS automation layer, deeply integrated with the system and its built-in frameworks. After studying Apple’s announcements at WWDC and talking to developers at the conference, and based on other details I’ve been personally hearing about Shortcuts while at WWDC, it appears that the brightest scenario is indeed coming true in a matter of months.

On the surface, Shortcuts the app looks like the full-blown Workflow replacement heavy users of the app have been wishfully imagining for the past year. But there is more going on with Shortcuts than the app alone. Shortcuts the feature, in fact, reveals a fascinating twofold strategy: on one hand, Apple hopes to accelerate third-party Siri integrations by leveraging existing APIs as well as enabling the creation of custom SiriKit Intents; on the other, the company is advancing a new vision of automation through the lens of Siri and proactive assistance from which everyone – not just power users – can reap the benefits.

While it’s still too early to comment on the long-term impact of Shortcuts, I can at least attempt to understand the potential of this new technology. In this article, I’ll try to explain the differences between Siri shortcuts and the Shortcuts app, as well as answering some common questions about how much Shortcuts borrows from the original Workflow app. Let’s dig in.

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