This Friday, I spent an hour and a half chatting with Matthew Cassinelli about using Apple’s Shortcuts app to simplify my work and life. We went through 13 of my 156 shortcuts, showing how they work, explaining how I built them, and answering questions from the chat. As promised on the stream, here are 5 of those shortcuts that I use every day, with a brief explanation of why they save me so much time and links to download them.
As a power user of Apple software and developer of apps for their platform, I have a lot of, shall we say, feedback. So whenever I run into a paper cut bug or an API I wish existed, I run this shortcut to file a new feedback report (née radar) and then pray it gets addressed in a future OS update.
My MacBook sports a daily random wallpaper illustrated by the supremely talented artist David Lanham, whom I’ve followed for decades. But sometimes, macOS chooses an image that doesn’t fit the day’s mood. It’s times like these I run this shortcut to have the OS change my wallpaper to another random image from David’s collection without waiting for the following day when it will refresh again. The clever AppleScript it uses was written by a user of the MacWorld forum.
I hyperschedule my day in Fantastical, blocking out events for everything from work meetings to workouts to leisure reading. But sometimes, I get delayed (or overly ambitious), and I need to shift a whole bunch of events later in the day. That’s where this shortcut comes in. It’s so much faster than tapping through every event individually. Tell it how long you want to delay things, tap the events you want to move, and you’re done.
We use Slack statuses at Lickability to communicate all kinds of things: lunch breaks, doctor’s appointments, vacations, and more. This handy shortcut from Jake Bathman, which I’ve lightly customized, lets me update my Slack status from anywhere without even opening the Slack app. And it’s even better than that! I can even use it from within other shortcuts to automate my status. Jake has written a detailed setup guide that makes it super simple to use.
At the end of the workday, I like to step away from my desk and start unwinding. I run this shortcut from a button on my StreamDeck. It quits all my apps, turns on my favorite screensaver, and mutes my computer so notification sounds don’t draw me back into work. A little simple ritual for leaving my Mac how I want it for the next day.
That’s all for now! I hope these shortcuts speed up your workflows as much as they have mine. If you enjoyed this post, let me know on Twitter, and maybe I’ll share more in the future.
We launched a new app yesterday at Lickability. Buildwatch is a brand new Mac menu bar app for iOS developers that lets you track, graph, and analyze your Xcode compile times. I’ve wished this app existed for a long time, and now it does. 📊
