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With the iOS 17 finally rolling out, expect to see a lot of new features and improvements on your iPhone‘s system. This includes changes in Shortcuts, which the company detailed in its support document.
According to the Cupertino giant, iOS 17 has new actions and personal automation, existing action enhancements, and running shortcut improvements for Shortcuts. As Apple notes, The details also cover iPadOS 17, macOS 14, and watchOS 10.
New Actions
- Transcribe Audio generates text from an audio file
- Delete Alarms removes specified alarms from Clock
- Edit Sleep Alarm skips the next sleep alarm, or reactivates a skipped sleep alarm
- Open Camera opens the Camera app into a specific capture mode, such as “Selfie”
- Open Collection navigates to a specific section of the Photos app, such as “Places”
- Show Passwords navigates to Passwords in Settings on iOS and System Settings on macOS
- End Workout completes your current workout session on iOS and watchOS
- Scan Document captures an image and saves it to the Files app on iOS
- Get Current Timer, Pause Timer, Resume Timer, and Cancel Timer are now supported on iOS
- Start Stopwatch, Lap Stopwatch, Stop the Stopwatch, and Reset Stopwatch are now supported on iOS
- Set Hotspot Password and Get Hotspot Password are now supported on iOS
- Toggle Cellular Plan, Set Default Line, Set Data Roaming, Find Cellular Plan, and Reset Cellular Data Statistics are now supported on iOS
- Start Time Machine Backup starts or stops backing up your data with Time Machine on macOS
- Move Window, Resize Window, Find Windows, Find Displays, and Find Apps are now supported on macOS
Updated Actions
- For those building custom shortcuts, some actions have been updated:
- Set Timer can now start a new timer even if there’s already one running
- Find Alarm now replaces Get All Alarms, retrieving all alarms or only those which match filter criteria
- Set Volume can now adjust either the Media volume or the Ringtone volume
- Health Samples now support more data types, like sleep, mood, and appetite changes
- Event Attendees for Calendar now include a Type attribute, to distinguish people, groups, and rooms
- Get Network Details now includes more options, such as channel number, hardware MAC address, and rate information
- Take Photo is now more reliable when taking multiple photos in a row
New Personal Automations
- Transaction automations can run when a Wallet transaction is made on iOS and watchOS
- Stage Manager automations can run when Stage Manager is turned on or off on iPadOS
- Display automations can run when an external display is connected or disconnected on iPadOS
Updated Personal Automations
- Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Arrive, and Leave automations now have the option to run immediately
In the future, more complex Shortcut capabilities are expected, especially with a recent report saying Apple has a huge plan for Shortcuts and Siri in iOS 18 update next year. This should enable users to use the voice assistant to automate complex actions. It is reportedly a part of Apple’s current AI efforts and investments, which will bring new language models to Siri. If true, users might be able to ask Siri to take a series of photos, transform them into GIFs, and even send them to contacts with the help of Shortcuts automation.
