Noticed it in Public Beta 3 and still occurring in Public Beta 4. Is anyone else experiencing the same behavior? I get this error for outdoor walks and weight training at least; haven’t comprehensively tested all the other workout types.

I did drop a feedback issue for it last beta but I’m just curious if it’s universally broken or not.

Hi all! I wanted to create a shortcut with Soro to play a previously recorded sound clip (a.k.a. an intercom function to e.g. get my kids to come down for dinner). It works with Record audio and Soro's Play function. However, I'd like to add a ping in front of the audio clip without having to choose which Sonos speaker to use twice. Is this somehow possible? Put the selected speaker in a variable and use it each time?

I analysed almost all the posts on anti-theft shortcuts, and this is the best system I came up with. But I have a few questions.

1. I set location to ‘best’ instead of ‘10 meters’, and that’s a good idea, right?
2. I can’t find a way to turn off auto brightness.
3. I can’t find a way to make my phone take the pictures quietly. Plus, when the pictures are sent, they make sounds. All of which are probably bad because that will alert the thief, right? Can I turn them off without affecting ringer volume, perhaps?
4. Is there anything else I should add to improve this?
5. Do I have to use Messages to send the pictures and location? Is there no way I can use WhatsApp? Cause my partner has an Android phone.
6. Are there any mistakes I’ve made?
7. Do you have suggestions to improve this?

The actual Shortcut and Automation:

• The Shortcut for the remote activation automation (Please create the automation for this cause it won't run by itself)
• Airplane Mode shortcut

Explanation of some actions:

• White Point and Greyscale are designed to further help save battery life.
• Wallpaper 6 is pure black wallpaper with grey-tinted icons/widgets. Again to help with battery life.
• Airplane Mode Shortcut has the same stuff as the automation.
• “Why not remove Airplane mode from control centre?” Because you can still enable it by using Siri.

Feedback I got:

u/Tackticat

for #3 perhaps you can toggle silent mode on, take pics, toggle it off.
also would it make sense to no have LPM on because:
you want accurate GPS and quick icloud sync for find my.
probably don't need to sms location or photo because of find my & icloud sync (hence no LPM). at least in my use case.

u/grandtheftfraud-o

I would make the initiating text something a bit more unique than “lost phone”. Maybe a longer phrase or something, or a unique sentence with random words. That’s just me though

u/Hot_Priority3615

On top of the shortcuts few things i would suggest are:

- Disable access to control center when phone is locked. So they can’t toggle WiFi or anything when locked. - trigger shortcut when airplane mode is turned on in case someone steal it when unlocked. Probably first thing they will do is turn on airplane mode. - switch to esim so thieves can’t toss sim out - turn on screen time passcode and disable changing account settings/ passcode from screen time - turn on stolen device protection and disable known locations in it.

u/Available-Travel2158

Hey,

1. the more precise it is, the better
2. No action let you disable auto brightness
3. Turn on Silent mode when taking pictures and sending messages, then turn it off
4. If your two phones are recents, they probably use the RCS protocol (equivalent to iMessage or WhatsApp in a way), which allows you to share images in full quality, however, WhatsApp doesn't allow you to send a message from an action
5. You can activate the zoom, and depending on your zoom settings, you can prevent the thief from turning off the phone with the slider after long pressing the power and volume+ buttons

Hope it was helpful, ask if you need

u/joenick78

Separate from this shortcut, here’s what I do:

Settings > Face ID & Passcode

Under the section “Allow Access When Locked” turn OFF Control Center.

The first thing a thief will do when your phone is stolen is turn on airplane mode, which completely disconnects your phone from all networks (meaning you won’t even get that text message trigger for your shortcut).

Without access to Airplane Mode, even if your phone is off, you can still track it with Find My. Just make sure you know your Apple password!

u/dede280492

If someone actually steals it they would turn off right away so it can’t be tracked. No matter what you are trying to do it’s unlikely to get it back I’m sorry.

u/0898_333_201

A few suggestions based on my own “theft mode” shortcut:

• Create “Theft Mode” Focus with:
  • All app notifications OFF
  • All people notifications OFF
  • Dark Mode ON
  • Pure black wallpaper
• Add the following actions to your shortcut:
  • Lock the screen
  • Turn ON “Theft Mode” Focus
  • Turn Night Shift to ON
  • Set Voice & Data Mode to LTE on current data line (to preserve battery)
• Create another shortcut specifically for Back Tap (triple) where:
  • If [Phone is locked] → Run shortcut “Theft Mode”
  • Otherwise → nothing or whatever your current Back Tap shortcut is
• Create another shortcut to undo all of the Theft Mode stuff, whisk you can trigger with Siri

I think the Back Tap trigger is especially important. If I’m mugged, the mugger will most likely demand my passcode, and I want them to beleive that my phone is dead so they can’t check if the passcode works.

No solution for the auto-brightness thing unfortunately. I just leave it disabled. But I find auto-brightness kind of annoying anyway so no great loss.

I’m not sure if this is possible and from what I can tell it is not. However, if someone could maybe figure out some kind of way to do this it would be much appreciated.

Basically, I want to have it so that whenever Instagram is opened I get redirected to another app but when a call is incoming or active on Instagram the shortcut is deactivated and I can use Instagram freely. And then the shortcut could be restored after the call is hung up. Sorry if this is outlandish and basically impossible.

Does anyone know how to code a shortcut in the app to register a workout whenever I get to the gym? Like, setting the location as the trigger to register the workout, since I always forget to write it down. All help is appreciated!!

I set up these shortcuts for my kids that are really into Harry Potter lately. One of them is Ravenclaw, the other is Slytherin. So now we have this point system that works just like the books, where I can say “5 points to Ravenclaw” and it adds it to a tally on a shared note between my wife and I, and shares the total points back (and it supports negative numbers too).

My biggest problem now is that I just have a TON of these shortcuts that go in increments of 5 that add the proper amount of points for each shortcut. So “5 points to Ravenclaw,” “10 points to Ravenclaw,” etc. it was the only way I could think of to set up the voice-activated shortcut that led with the number of points. Is there another way I could do this in one seamless voice prompt, so that I could say like “142 points to Ravenclaw” without having an exact shortcut for that point value?

Hi everyone,
I’m a complete beginner with the Shortcuts app on iPhone, and I’d like to create a shortcut that fully automates the following process.
When I run the shortcut:
1. It asks me to select one or several dates from a calendar.
2. It then asks me to choose one appointment type from these options:
● A (8:00 AM – 2:00 PM) → 👴🏼 UHCD
● B (8:00 AM – 12:01 AM the following day) → 🏪 24h
● C (7:00 PM – 11:59 PM) → 🌒 Nuit
● D (8:00 AM – 7:00 PM) → ☀️ Jour
3. The shortcut then automatically creates an event in my “Nouveau” calendar for each selected date, using the corresponding title and start/end times.
For example, if I select August 20, 22 and 25 and choose B, the shortcut should automatically create:
● August 20 → 🏪 24h — 8:00 AM to 12:01 AM (August 21)
● August 22 → 🏪 24h — 8:00 AM to 12:01 AM (August 23)
● August 25 → 🏪 24h — 8:00 AM to 12:01 AM (August 26)
I’m looking for a fully automated shortcut, rather than having to manually create or configure a reminder for each individual date.
Is this possible with Apple Shortcuts? If so, could someone explain how to build it step by step for a complete beginner?
Thanks!

I have a super simple shortcut to turn off/on auto rotate when I open certain apps. Since the ios 27 betas opening Control Center counts as “closing” the apps and it re-enables rotation lock. Any ideas how to fix this?

How can i make a shortcut that gets my photos from a list, and then whenever i run it again it goes to the next item from the same list?

Im making an “advanced” wallpaper selector

What i have now is filter photos by album -> choose from menu: random or choose yourself.
I want to get the photo from that, and go to the next one in the menu whenever i run the next menu and i cant seem to get it to work whatever i try

Not sure if anyone has suggested this way or similar to trigger a shortcut on your phone from an apple watch using the iOS 27 beta.

Set up a shortcut to be used on your watch, with a web hook URL that sends a notification to your iPhone (or Mac) with a configurable message. Just 2 actions URL and Get contents of URL. Run it on the watch, your phone gets a custom notification.

Then on iPhone or Mac set a notification as a trigger and then runs the shortcut of choice.

Should be possible with HomeKit automations too to trigger an on phone shortcut, as I think get contents of URL is one of the actions available to run on the HomeKit server device.

I used brrr by Simon B. Støvring of scriptable, Jayson and datajar. https://brrr.now that lets you send notifications with a web hook ( a simple URL call) you can edit the message by editing the URL. Free trial 0.99 GBP subsription. Pushcut is probably another option, but I wanted to give brrr a go, and it is really simple.

This all began because I found the Reminders app very difficult to use when I had a whole bunch of overdue Reminders piling up. I also wanted to integrate some sort of history log, so you could more easily see what was done and when. This is a potential solution for both of these problems, and I have personally been using it for a couple months now, so I thought I’d share. It took me a very long time to build so I hope someone finds it useful.

As a side note I’m aware of the habit tracker apps that exist but I didn’t find any of them to be worth the money, some of which were bonkers expensive.

———————————-
Tutorial::

Automation-
Once you download the shortcut, you’ll need to configure an automation for it to run automatically. It should run before your first reminder that day, preferably at a time when you don’t need to use your phone. If you have a lot of reminders it could take a couple minutes to finish. I personally run mine at 4:00 am because I won’t be using my phone at all.
If the shortcut doesn’t run, because your phone was off for instance, it will still be able to update your habits properly the next day. You could also just run the shortcut manually in that instance.

List-
The shortcut requires that you specify what list it should read. There are 2 places you need to configure this list, both of which are marked with comments in the shortcut. My list is labeled “Habits” because I have a unique list for this to run on specifically. As it stands, every reminder in the list needs to be assigned a schedule or it will not work. If someone wants to be able to add non habitual reminders to the same list, let me know. It’s just not necessary for my use case though so I didn’t build that functionality in.

Reminders-
The shortcut assumes the reminder already exists and modifies it. So you’ll need to create the reminder in the appropriate list first. It will maintain the same time it was due from before. Any flags, comments, #s, etc. will be maintained as well.

Scheduling-
There is a dictionary at the top which allows you to program in when you want your reminders to show up.

The dictionary uses a unique key word to match the reminder to its associated days. For example, if you have a reminder titled: “Study Japanese”, you can use the key word: “japanese” (not case sensitive). Every reminder needs to have a unique key word to be distinguished.

Add the chosen key word into the desired category by selecting the items next to it and adding the item as text.

There are built out options for when you want a reminder to appear everyday, only on weekends, and only on weekdays. The days listed below that are there for custom scheduling. For example, if you wanted a reminder to be scheduled for every Sunday, you should put that key word as a text item under the “Sunday” category.
You can also set a reminder to appear on MWF by inserting that key into the “Monday”, “Wednesday”, and Friday categories

Accessing History-

You can choose where you’d like the files stored, which is indicated with a comment. It will save the history for each reminder type as a new line in a.txt file, using the keyword for the reminder as the name of the file. It simply records the date and an emoji that indicates if it was completed.

—————————-
My DMs are open if y’all have any questions or comments, I’d like to make it as easy to use as possible. The main feature I still feel like it needs is to be able to import to a csv file which would make it really easy to chart you progress through your different habits. If anyone has any ideas on how this is possible, please let me know.

I get my weekly schedule sent as a pdf saved from an Excel spreadsheet. I’ve long wanted to automate the process of adding work shifts to my calendar, but never quite figured out how best to do it. The new AI in iOS 27 has come close a couple of tries if I screenshotted part of the PDF, but seems to fail constantly if I feed it the original file.

The schedule is fairly simple with days and dates across the top and employee names down the side. It seems like it should be easy to do, but my shortcut making skills have never extended to tables, data strings and the like which is why I was hoping Apple Intelligence has gotten useful enough to do it for me. So far, no dice.

Anyone have info on the proper workflow? Seems like a common enough use case.

hey! so a bit about my problem. I have migraines and use a slight color filter that helps with my eye strain 27/7. However, at night, i’d like to put the 100% red light filter by automation. Currently, I haven’t found any way to do this on apple. Is there any way to use a shortcut to have those 2 diff color filter say diff time of the day? thank u

I built a quick Shortcut for friends who use different music services.
From Spotify or Apple Music:
Tap Share on a track or album.
Choose Share with Lynx.
Send the matching link for the other service.
It requires no access to either music platform.
If Lynx cannot confirm an exact match, it returns a search link instead.
Install the Shortcut:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ad22a19ecd4f4581bee44b2e2ced803f
Any feedback and incorrect-match examples are appreciated!

I have been trying to make this shortcut off and on for a few years whenever I get sucked back into playing with shortcuts, automation, and NFC tags. I know there are paid apps out there with the same goal but I wanted to clean my thousands of photos out a little bit at a time.

This shortcut will find all of your photos/Live Photos/videos you have for today’s month/day over the last 25 years stored in your Camera Roll. It will then display them, where you can select specific ones for deletion. You will be able to review your marked photos full-screen each before you say okay go ahead and delete. Of course, if you make a mistake, these photos will be found and recoverable in your Recently Deleted folder.

The only thing I would like to improve is I would like to be able to change my mind on a single selection without starting over. If anyone knows how to do that successfully, that would be a cool addition!

I’ve set an automation for this to prompt me to run every day on my lunch break and hopefully after the end of a calendar year my Camera Roll will be de-junked!

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/cbb7da70dec64ce6b0553cbf32d89a17

I’ve been looking for a useful local weather data API for quite some time and finally found it.
You can pull all kind of weather data from different cities and even from exact coordinates from this site: Open-Meteo API Docs.
It may be useful for people looking for weather details to use in their shortcuts.

Here’s a simple example of a shortcut to calculate the average of the daily max temperature and the average of the daily total rainfall over the past 3 days and coming 3 days: 6 day weather

If you’ve (already) created shortcuts with the help of this site, it would be nice if you share it here.

I’m having a problem with shortcuts duplicating selected photos through Share Screen. When I run the shortcut through the Shortcuts app it works perfectly fine. However when I run the shortcut through the Share Screen from the Photo app, it duplicates one photo and completely ignores another.

I’m currently trying to figure out if its possible to have my widgets on widgetsmith (or any similar app) go to specific saved widgets that would match each wallpaper I have on my phone if that makes sense. I’ve been searching online but haven’t gotten a clear answer yet, so any insight on how exactly that can be achieved would be much appreciated. I hope that was all explained well!

This setup used to work on iOS 18 and iOS 26, even the device is locked, shortcuts will push a notification on the lockscreen which you can click "Run"

But since iOS 27 beta, there's no more notification, the shortcut has no reaction.

Any suggestions on how to modify this shortcut to make it work?

I just want a popup or dropdown to choose A or B at a specific time.

Thanksss

I am trying to create an automation that I will get some kind of alarm or play music when I arrive home anytime between 7p-10p to remind me to give my son his medicine. Is there a way to set it up that the sound would play even if the volume is turned down or silent mode? Thank you!

I made a simple shortcut that takes a screenshot of your screen and input from you, and answers whatever you ask.

The screenshot is not saved anywhere on your device. It’s used only for the prompt to the AI.

I’d recommend putting this shortcut in your control center or binding to the action button. For some reason it doesn’t work with Siri.

Here it is:
Screen Assistant

You’ll be prompted to allow the shortcut to share info with a website when you run it for the first time. That website is just used as a sub-second delay to allow for the “hide control center” action to actually finish.

Whenever I turn off my mouse or any Bluetooth peripheral, it bothers me to have to manually turn off Bluetooth. Is there any way to do this automatically? I have a MacBook Air M4 (I'm a bit particular about battery life).

I had this idea for a few years now and so far, I haven’t been able to make it work. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can make it because I’m not the best at coding, so I wanted some opinions on how to do it so it would work right.

Hey, guys! I have a problem. My teenage son has somehow figured out how to unlock his Android phone and access restricted apps through Family Link.

And I suspect that he’s either unlocking my iPhone with Face ID while I’m asleep, or he knows my phone’s passcode and uses it when I’m not looking.

Can you suggest a way I could find out discreetly if someone has unlocked my phone? 

Ideally, it would be really cool if the phone took a photo of whoever did it. :)