What does all of this mean?

I think one of the best ways to help better understand what shortcuts are is to look at an example of one. At the beginning of every shortcut is a problem, because let’s face it, if you don’t have problems then you probably don’t need shortcuts. I consider myself as someone who has an active mind and like everyone else, I have to write stuff down when I think of it to remind me to take care of it later. Everyone works differently, for me if something lands in my email, I know that I will see it while I am working and investigate it. I found myself writing a lot of ‘notes to self’ in off hours to remind to take care of things when I was back at the office. The problem was each time I wanted to quickly shoot a note off to myself I would need to open my email app > create a new email > address it to myself > put a subject line > write down a quick note > send the email. While this may not seem all that cumbersome, in the context of just wanting a quick reminder for myself, the process of going through all these steps was scaring me away from keeping up with it and thus tasks slipped through the cracks. It was time to streamline all of this through a shortcut. Every shortcut starts with some sort of trigger, in my case it was a big ole button that looks like any app on the home screen that says ‘Note to Self’ on it. When I tap on it, my phone will automatically create a new email, address it to 3 separate email addresses, and then fill in the subject line with “Note to Self”. From there all I need to do is type my message and press send and then go about my business. Now this shortcut is not very high on the complexity scale and may not be useful for everyone, but it does offer a nice example of what types of day-to-day functions and issues could potentially be simplified with a shortcut.

How do I get started?

There are definitely a few things to keep in mind if you are thinking of building your own shortcuts, but the good news is there is no sign up or setup required to use them. The most useful knowledge to have going in are the various parts of a shortcut. As mentioned above every shortcut starts with some sort of trigger, these come in many shapes and forms but some of the most common are buttons conveniently placed on your devices in place of apps, geography-based triggers, and device connection triggers. A trigger is exactly what it says, it is the very first step that kicks off a shortcut, without a trigger there is no way to start a shortcut. An example of geography-based trigger would be a shortcut I built that automatically sends me the estimated travel time (including traffic) between my office and my home whenever I leave my office. When my phone detects me leaving a circle I set around my office it triggers the shortcut and returns the amount of travel time to me through a simple notification. The next two parts of a shortcut, the variable and the logic, are usually added together. These are the predetermined set of items and actions your shortcut will run through once it is set off by the trigger. If you’re familiar with the English language, variables are similar to nouns and logic is similar to verbs*. Lastly, there is the notify part of the shortcut. This is the final step in a shortcut when it completes all steps and returns the data to you in the form of some type of notification. Without the notify part it is still possible to build a successful shortcut, however there is no way to tell when it’s done and if it worked. In the travel time shortcut example I used, this would be the actual notification my phone sends me once it triggers and runs the shortcut. The different parts of a shortcut are tied together into a format known as “If this, then that” statement (a.k.a. IFTTT), which serves as a nice phonetic way to help understand what a shortcut is doing. If we use the travel time shortcut again as an example, then plug the variables into the IFTTT format it would look like this**:

IF <Max leaves office>

THEN <map route home> <send ETA via notification>

The trigger follows the IF part of the statement, the logic follows the THEN statement, and the notification is the last step of the shortcut.