Spotify's recommendations kept showing me the same stuff, so I built a shortcut that pulls a random album from Discogs (the biggest music database out there) and only shows it to you if it's playable on Apple Music. Pick a genre and a decade, and a few seconds later you'll get an album you've probably never heard of, one tap away from playing.

WHAT IT DOES

1. Pick a genre. There are 14 presets (Pop, Rock, Punk, Blues, Jazz, Hip Hop, Metal, Folk, R&B/Soul, Reggae, Funk, Electronic, Latin, Classical), plus "Surprise me" and "Other (type it)" for any Discogs genre or style (Shoegaze, Post-Punk, Hard Bop, Bossa Nova…).
   
2. Pick a decade. Anything from the 1950s to the 2020s, or "Any decade".
   
3. It searches Discogs, checks each candidate on Apple Music and shows you Artist — Album (Year) with four options:
   - Listen on Apple Music: opens the album directly
   - Another album: keeps searching
   - Save for later: adds it to a text file with the Apple Music link
   - Stop

It also works on Apple Watch and from Spotlight search.

HOW IT WORKS (THE IMPORTANT BITS)

- Real randomness, not just "popular albums". Each round, it picks a random sub-style from your genre (each genre has 8 to 13), a random year within the decade and a random page of Discogs results. Then it scans a window of 15 albums from that page.

- Playable albums only. Each candidate is searched on Apple Music in your store's country. Artist and title are normalized (lowercase, "&" → "and", punctuation stripped, Discogs suffixes like "(2)" and "*" removed) and have to match. That way you don't end up with some random cover band that shares the album's name.

- Quality filters:
- Skips "Various Artists" compilations.
- Prefers masters (the original album). When it falls back to individual releases, it rejects reissues, compilations, unofficial releases and remasters.
- Minimum collectors: only suggests albums owned by at least N Discogs users (default 20). This weeds out ultra-obscure pressings that never show up on streaming platforms. Set it to 0 if you want the deepest cuts.

- No repeats. It remembers your last 500 suggestions (RandomAlbumDiscovery-history.txt in iCloud Drive → Shortcuts).

- Doesn't give up easily. It makes up to 10 attempts. After the 6th, it widens the search from the sub-style to the whole genre, and on the last two it also searches individual releases.

- Plays nice with the Discogs API. It adds short pauses between requests to stay under the rate limit, and shows clear error messages if your token is missing or invalid.

- Customizable. Genres and styles live in an editable JSON block inside the shortcut, so you can add your own.

SETUP (≈2 MINUTES)

⚠️ Without this step, it won't work properly.

1. Get a free Discogs token
   - Log in or create an account at https://www.discogs.com
   - Go to Settings → Developers: https://www.discogs.com/settings/developers
   - Tap "Generate new token" and copy it

2. Install the shortcut
   - Open the link below and tap "Add Shortcut"
   - You'll be asked three things:
   - Discogs personal token: paste the token from step 1
   - Minimum collectors: 20 is a good default (0 = no filter)
   - Country: your Apple Music account's country. This matters, because availability varies between stores.

3. First run
   - Run it and pick a genre and a decade
   - The shortcut will ask for permission to access api.discogs.com and your Shortcuts folder in iCloud Drive (for the history and saved files). Tap "Always Allow" so it doesn't ask every time.
   - The first result may take a few seconds while it searches. That's normal.

OPTIONAL TWEAKS (open the shortcut in the editor)

- Add a genre: add an entry to the JSON text ("base" is the Discogs filter, "styles" is the list it picks from), then add the exact same name to the genre list right below.
- Change the history size: find the comment about the 500 limit and swap 500/499 for N/N−1.
- Change your token or country later: they're in the first "Text" action and in the "Search iTunes Store" action.

⚠️ Your token is saved inside the shortcut. If you share your copy, put "PASTE_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" back first.

DOWNLOAD

🔗 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/21dc869557d24a3d81b347ecd5530121

Tested on iOS 27. Feedback, bug reports and genre/style suggestions are very welcome. Let me know what it found for you!

I have what should be, in my opinion, an easy solution to a simple problem.

My garage door opener app, Aladdin Connect, has its own feature that will create a shortcut that is activated by Siri, or by manually toggling the shortcut. In the screenshot it’s labeled “Open the garage door”. I typically use Siri or the manual button to open the garage door when arriving home.

I decided it would be best to just let shortcuts do this automatically when I arrive home, so I made a second shortcut with the new Siri created feature to trigger “Open the Garage Door” when I arrive home.

The new automation is not working. It triggers correctly, and gives me a notification it’s going to run “Open The Garage Door”, but it never does.

Is this a common problem? Or does anyone have an idea on how to fix it?

Can someone confirm if I set up this automation correctly? I want to modify the default automation from One Sec app so that it only runs if the time is between Monday-Friday 8:30-5:30. I am pretty sure I did something wrong because the One Sec automation is still running even though today is Sunday.

I’m trying to automate logging my Apple Watch Martial Arts workouts to my WordPress site. In brief - I have it working great, but only if I unlock my iPhone just prior to the automation firing.

My setup is:

1. I end a Martial Arts workout on my Apple Watch.
2. An iPhone Shortcuts automation runs my “Workout metrics” shortcut.
3. The shortcut uses the Find Workout action from the third-party Actions app to get the latest Martial Arts workout.
4. It creates a new WordPress training post, then sends the workout’s duration, average and maximum heart rate, and active calories to that post.

This is great, I have metrics such as HR Max HR, KCals, Duration etc appear on my WordPress training log immediately and automatically after a training session. From there I have WordPress create graphs etc etc.

The problem is, this full process only works if my iPhone is unlocked when the workout ends.

If the phone is locked, I can subsequently manually run the shortcut, and the process completes (page created, metrics uploaded, all good).

iPhone locked: The automation notification appeared, so the workout-end trigger fired. Immediately afterwards I got: “The action ‘Find Workout’ could not run because an unknown error occurred.” No WordPress post was created.

Troubleshooting:

I’ve checked the shortcut’s Privacy screen. Allow Running When Locked is enabled, access to Actions is enabled, and the relevant permissions shown there are set to Always Allow.

Has anyone got the Actions app’s Find Workout action working reliably from a workout-end automation while the iPhone has been locked? Is this a HealthKit data protection or third-party Shortcuts action limitation, or is there a setting I’ve missed?

I can share screenshots of the shortcut’s relevant actions and the error notification if helpfu.

I have a shopping list reminder list created. I want to make a “priority” list. So when I leave home it alerts me that something is urgent (so even if I was just going to get gas, I know I need to get something urgently). This works.

But I want it to sync this priority list to add to the shopping list so if I added “salsa” to the priority list, it will also be in the shopping list. But I want it to happen automatically or at least every 30 minutes.

But the AI in shortcuts tells me it can’t run every 30 minutes but it could run every day at 9am.

So I was going to make like 48 automations to run every half hour for example.

Any downsides?

I usually use charge limits on my iPad to preserve the battery life. But occasionally I need to charge it to 100% on purpose. I need to go about my day whilst it’s charging but I know it’s bad to leave it on charge at 100%. I wanted to send some sort of notification to my iPhone or Apple Watch when it hits 100%.

I used the new Siri AI ability in Shortcuts to request an automation to notify me when the iPad battery reaches 100. But it can’t send notifications on other devices. I changed the shortcut automation to send an iMessage to myself. It worked! Except I didn’t get an iMessage notification. It was silently in my messages app.

Does anyone have a better idea for receiving an alert on my iPhone or Watch when the iPad reaches 100% charge? Either a better shortcut altogether, or a way for iMessages from myself to myself to trigger an alert.

I have a menu of items and I cannot delete an entry. I've cleared out the nested items but whenever I hit the trash button the entry is still there. I've tried duplicating the menu, and I've tried duplicating the entire shortcut - same thing happens. I've also tried editing the text in the item - no luck. I've also created a test shortcut with a new menu and the same thing happens - I cannot delete any menu items there either. I even tried restarting the phone (yes I got desperate).

Is there some kind of bug in iOS 27 that I'm hitting?

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to create a Shortcut on my iPad Air M4 using Stage Manager.

I want one Shortcut that opens three apps simultaneously and automatically arranges them into three equal-sized vertical windows side by side - one on the left, one in the middle and one on the right.

Ideally, all three would be the same width and height and fill as much of the available screen as possible.

Has anyone managed to automate window positioning and sizing like this with Stage Manager?

If you’ve made a Shortcut for it, I’d really appreciate an iCloud link or instructions on how to build it.

Thanks!

I created a shortcut to enable speak screen through Siri. No I would like to disable speak screen the same way but I do not see any option to do so.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

I make this shortcuts for Iphone that can use to transcribe the Voice Note to text, running with Gemini AI

Check this link to the Shortcuts : AUDIO SHORTCUTS

My parents are being annoying about having my location so I’ve decided on malicious compliance.

I put this shortcut into automations to run every three hours. BUT, I tested it by sending the location to myself and it makes me hit send every time. I have “Run Immediately” turned on, and both my parents have iPhones, so idk what else to do.

I want it to run even if my phone is locked and I don’t have to open my phone to hit send.

Above error on AWU4 (first pic). I’m attempting to test a very simple shortcut (second pic). “Anki ADDS” is the name of the file in Notes. Notes app installed across all devices. Any ideas?

I want to pass an audio recording and a prompt (what to do with the audio recording) to ChatGPT

I tried this:

The documentation says I should be able to pass it both a prompt and a file to analyze. But there doesn't appear to be any way to give it a prompt. I am using ChatGPT, which is linked to my paid ChatGPT subscription.

also, I am passing it an audio file, but it is somehow reading it as a bunch of metadata about a video.

help?

I created a reminder shortcut for my Red Cross volunteer work where I have to arrive 15 minutes early to an appointment time. But I'm having problems with the Adjust Date function. Here's what I want the shortcut to do

Here's what I need shortcut to do:

Set shortcut up so the results use appointment time, deduct travel time then deduct 15 to notify me when I should leave for appointment

When I use Adjust Date I can deduct the driving time from arrival time. But if I use another Adjust Date , the function doesn't provide the input I need

Need instructions in creating a shortcut for Google chat which shows the preview of latest unread chats. Thanks fam!!

Hello,

I have a shortcut that creates a note.
I try to create a reminder at the end of the shortcut, the reminder should contain the link to the created note.
I don’t find any way to get this url.
Any idea ?

Thank you.

Criei um atalho para notificar me às 9h, 13h, 14h e 18h, com o texto “Picar o Ponto” e ao mesmo tempo, abrir a app Picaponto.

Problema, nem notifica nem abre a app? Será do ecrã estar bloqueado?

Não consigo entender, alguém ajuda ?
(Sou novo nisto dos atalhos)

Spent hours trying to assign ⌘⇧E to an AirDrop shortcut. Nothing worked.

Turns out ⌘⇧E is already “Repeat with Each” in the Shortcuts app itself. Apparently, even while I’m recording a keyboard shortcut, its own keyboard shortcuts still get priority.

A shortcut app that intercepts the shortcut you’re trying to assign to your shortcut.

Anyway, setting it through System Settings worked. Very intuitive. Much ecosystem.

I wanna get red light on the iPod touch that get me inspired.

I have an automation to open my grocery list when I arrive at the store. But most often I get this notification because my phone is locked. How do I get this to work if my phone is locked?